Psychopathic Manchild

Johnny's wacky like that.
"I know you, you're the mad kid everyone's scared of."
—Susan Sto Helit, Hogfather

A dangerous villain, either a teenager or an adult, with a childlike nature, which creates a dissonance between innocence and savagery. Such characters can become repositories for Nightmare Fuel, especially if their childishness is never explained. Contrary to the term, many examples are not necessarily psychopaths in the clinical sense. Misaimed Fandom may not be out of the question, either; sometimes the character's more "Moe" attributes will be picked up on and subjected to Flanderization.

The exact extent of the character's childishness will vary, and in general Psychopathic Manchildren can come in several varieties, with possible overlap. Such a character may:

A: Be big Dumb Muscle, frequently mentally-challenged, that operates under someone else's direction. This type may be the most famous, and also the most likely to play to the audience's sympathy. Expect him/her to try to Pet the Dog, often with disastrous results. Could be a subversion of Dumb Is Good.

B: Seem superficially powerful and cruel, but have very childish or simplistic goals or motivations. May overlap with Adult Child.

C: Actually possess a lot of power, intelligence, and/or prestige, but also have some childish qualities or behaviors, to fit in with a certain aspect of the story being told, or else advertise that there is something seriously wrong with him/her, to make him/her creepier. These are most likely to be a story's Big Bad.

D: Appear cute and harmless on the surface, but actually be this trope. Especially common with female examples, because of the stereotype.

E: Be subject to a personal variation of Values Dissonance where violent, savage actions are viewed by the character in question in the same light as regular play is viewed by most real children. This variant is often an especially strong source of Nightmare Fuel due to the uncanny dissonance between his/her childish demeanor and the viciousness of his/her actions.

Whichever version these types of characters qualify as, often they are not fully aware of how nasty their actions actually are. In some cases (though not all), a Heel Realization may cause the character to develop into a better person. A more innocent or well-intentioned Psychopathic Manchild may be a Noble Demon.

One way to use this character is to face him off against a jaded, cynical, or shady Anti-Hero, to play with traditional hero-villain relationships by making the villain more innocent than the hero (at least in theory). Easier if he's a major villain in his own right.

Inversion of the Creepy Child and the Enfante Terrible. Contrast with Sociopathic Hero and the typically more benign Adult Child. See also Cute and Psycho. Related to, but distinct from, Kids Are Cruel.

Examples of Psychopathic Manchild include:

Anime and Manga

  • Johan Liebert of Monster is a classic Type B example. His goals and desires are still those of an eight year old but as an adult he pursues them with an appropriate level of sophistication. Exactly how childish he really is can be hard to judge given that he's an excellent manipulator.
  • Quant is a Ranker of the Tower, a position commanding great respect and implying a terrifying amount of power, which he does possess. His greatest weakness is his incredible immaturity, which not only let him self get lead on TWICE by the examinees he had to train and test, but also caused 197 people to die because he didn't give a shit about concocting a complicated preliminary exam and just settled with a 30 minute death match. His childish disposition would make him a B or C-class case.
  • Tongpu from the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot Le Fou" is a somewhere between Type A and Type B. An unstoppable killing machine who is terrified of cats and reveals his childlike nature upon being wounded by Spike, making several viewers weep their hearts out.
  • Female example: Miata from Claymore is little more than a child (who actually breastfeeds from Clarice to stay calm) though several other fighters don't realize this, what with her ungodly ability to kill masses of Yoma at a time. And, if necessary, with her bare hands.
  • Gluttony from Fullmetal Alchemist is Type A - he is a ridiculously strong Artificial Human with the temperament and intelligence of a young boy. Throughout most of the anime, he's reliant on his "keeper" Lust to do the thinking for him (his main input being to ask her if he can eat people). When she dies, the poor guy suffers a nervous breakdown. It's almost a relief when Dante scours away his mind.
    • In the manga, he isn't much more different. But he appears to have finally met his end when he gets eaten by the creepy childman Pride. Poor guy, all he wanted was sum num nums.
  • King Hamdo from Now and Then, Here and There is a power hungry ruler (with more than a passing resemblance to certain African dictators) who throws tantrums and calls for his assistant Abelia to comfort him when things go wrong. He thinks little of human life and often laughs maniacally.
  • Ryoko Asakura from Suzumiya Haruhi. She has that cute smile on her face, always cares for every person in the class, a total hottie, has a lot of friends and seems to take a special interest in you! When you meet her alone, her smiling face changes into that of an innocent little girl that stole a lollipop and felt bad about it. And then she tries to slice you up with a combat knife, while keeping her cute expression. "Because whether you care about it or not, I really want you to die ^_^"
    • This is partly to do with her being an artificial human, whose outward appearance doesn't necessarily correlate to her actual emotions. Fellow artificial human, Yuki Nagato, is the same thing, except with her personality stuck on Emotionless Girl mode.
  • Like the above mention, Tsukuyomi of Mahou Sensei Negima has such expressions in combat complimented by constant giggling.
  • Mao from Code Geass, whose child-like attitude is slightly justified by the fact that he was orphaned at a young age and never received anything even resembling a traditional upbringing. Of course, that does not justify the wanton More Than Mind Control he engages in...
    • It's even more obvious in the supplemental reading, in which he is, in a word, so innocent that he manipulates and kills people with evil impulses to stop them from hurting his beloved C.C..
    • Also, due to the young age at which C.C. gave him the Geass and the fact that it evolved at such a young age too, he's never really matured, or had a chance to.
  • Nova, Hikaru's Enemy Without from Magic Knight Rayearth's second season. She just wants to be loved by Hikaru...and by that, we mean cover her friends in large pools of blood so that only the two of them can "play" forever and ever.
  • Russia in Axis Powers Hetalia deftly combines this trope with Stepford Smiler and Yandere. He even has the same voice actor as Gluttony.
  • Dark Action Girl Nena Trinity from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is an excellent Type D. She's pretty, spoiled, cheerful, friendly, mock-fights with her brothers, will happily invade your personal space and kiss you if she thinks you're cute, has a really funny mascot in the form of her purple Haro... but after being raised as a Tykebomb Artificial Human with no concept of morality, she will bomb your house if she's got to work while you have fun at weddings. And then she'll be all "Whoopsie! :3" when asked why did she do that.
  • Renge in the Flame of Recca manga, who is so childishly nuts she tore up a Teddy Bear just because it doesn't answer her when it doesn't have a speaking device, only to cheerfully laugh to ask for her Papa to get her a new one. Speaking of her Papa, Mori Kouran, Complete Monster extraordinary and literally, she thinks her Papa's horrendous monstrous look after fusing with Tendou Jigoku looks EXTREMELY COOL. She doesn't end really well.
  • Bambi from Bambi and Her Pink Gun is incredible childish in many ways, but also subverts this in others. While she's a psychopath who acts almost entirely on instinct, she's also a vain health nut who doesn't eat anything she hasn't personally boiled and will kill you if you so much as smoke near her.
  • Fat Majin Buu from Dragon Ball Z is Type A - he has no idea that what he's doing is wrong, and is single-handedly converted to good by Hercule / Mr Satan. Super Buu is type C; he sounds increasingly intelligent once he starts absorbing people, but still throws tantrums when he's outmatched. Kid Buu, who doesn't have any desires that don't involve blowing things up, is Types C and E put together.
    • Broly is somewhere between Type B and Type C, arguably. His motivation to kill Goku? Goku's crying scared him when they were babies in the same 'nursery'.
    • Also Emperor Pilaf from Early Dragon Ball, and Dragon Ball GT.
    • Chilled from the Gainax manga Episode of Bardock presumably qualifies under this trope, as he has shown himself to be exceedingly childish, and yet was shown to be even more ruthless than even Frieza, notably killing one of his soldiers while in a good mood just because the soldier was unfortunate enough to just happen to be blocking his view.
    • Android #17 is Type B. Even more so in the Bad Future of Future Trunks' timeline.
    • General Blue technically qualifies. Although he has other reasons for disliking Bulma, his exact reaction regarding Bulma's attempts at seducing him is extremely similar to a little kid not wanting to interact with the opposite gender due to a fear of cooties.
  • Misa Amane from Death Note is Type D- an endearingly naive Kawaiiko who looks and acts like a teenage girl (despite being almost in her twenties), obsesses over fashion like any young girl, is completely boy-crazy, and was able to translate her Moe Moe appeal into a successful career as an actress/model. All this is likely due to the fact that her parents were murdered while she was still a child, trapping her in a perpetually immature state. Unfortunately for the world, this apparently happened before the Amanes had the chance to explain to their daughter that human life has an intrinsic value beyond being useful to Misamisa-chan, who latched on the man who used his Death Note to kill the burglar years after the actions that shattered Misamisa's mind. The results weren't pretty.
    • It's possible that she was just a nice, cute, but immature young woman at least partially driven insane by the Death Note. Given Light Yagami's flying leap off the slippery slope from an idealistic young man who thought he was doing the right thing to a maniacal tyrant willing to kill anyone and anything to further his raging god complex and Teru Mikami's astonishingly short break from a focused, serious lawyer with an inhumanly high standard of justice to a barely coherent Ax Crazy psychopath, it's not too hard to imagine that the Death Note has an unspoken With Great Power Comes Great Insanity rule that Misa was affected by. For example after she permanently gives up the Death Note, she's completely harmless and probably quite fun to be around, unless you're Takada.
    • Light himself qualifies as Type C (flirting with D). When L details the psychology of Kira to the police, one of them suggests that they could stop him by no longer publishing the name of convicts in the news, as he clearly was getting the names of his victims from the media. L states that won't work because Kira will then simply start killing people he thinks are guilty and will further blame the police for any innocent people he kills, and L specifically identifies his childlike personality as the reason for this. Sure enough, Light does display lots of childlike evil throughout the series, such as killing the fake L for insulting him on national television and his need to gloat to L and Near when he thinks he's beaten them. His Villainous Breakdown at the end takes the form of a blatant childish fit.
  • Umineko's Stakes of Purgatory seem to have some elements of this. Oh no, their new toy broke...
    • Depending on how you interpret the series, you could probably include Beatrice, Eva-Beatrice, and Erika in this trope. Maria gets excused because, well, she is a little girl.
  • Wonderweiss Margela from Bleach fits pretty well. He can't even speak coherently, but heaven help you if you don't let him play with your hat or aren't Yamamoto.
    • Type A - under Aizen's control, appears to have limited understanding of his actions, will attack Aizen's opponents, but seemingly at random with no real indication he's enjoying the violence as such.
  • Domu: A Child's Dream: A Child's Dream, one of Katsuhiro Otomo's lesser-known works, features Old Cho, a powerfully psychic but senile old man whose primary source of amusement happens to be wreaking mischief on his fellow tenants in a large apartment complex. Unfortunately, he also has a mean streak a mile wide, so his pranks are often lethal - and if he's denied his fun, he's prone to throwing tantrums. You do not want to be present when this happens.
  • Ladd Russo of Baccano! can get pretty child-like in his homicidal glee, and is usually shown skipping, babbling excitedly, dancing in pools of blood, or any combination of the three.
    • In the light novels Chick and Maria are described as having the personalities of 12-year-olds.
    • Speaking of, Chick qualifies in the anime as well.
    • Ladd's Loony Fan Graham Specter may also count.
  • Arguably Kano from Texhnolyze. He's eloquent, intelligent and charismatic, but that doesn't change the fact that he sees the world as a one big playground, and himself as the only real person in it.
  • Diva from Blood Plus is a very depraved type B. For example, in episode 24, she bites young Riku and drinks his blood, then childishly laughs and jumps around in a white and blue Pimped-Out Dress when caught by the heroes, before she captures Saya herself and almost kills her. Later, she will rape and kill Riku to impregnate herself.
  • Friend from 20th Century Boys is a rare Magnificent Bastard version of this. As clever as he is, it doesn't change the fact that he is only trying to destroy the world because he never grew out of his childhood grudges.
  • Machina of Hayate the Combat Butler. He nearly kills Hayate, even stating it wouldn't be murder, and the next chapter he's turned into a canine-like. Tail, ears, speech patterns. Gets very excited when his master gives him money to get something to eat. He orders 100 hamburgers.
  • Pegasus J. Crawford / Maximillion Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh. He steals people's souls (including a small child's), attempts to take over a company by killing the CEO and pursues Ancient Egyptian artifacts with no regard for anyone in his way, all to bring his wife Back from the Dead. In his spare time he watches cartoons and loves them to the point that he creates an ENTIRE DECK based around them. In the anime, he becomes a good guy later on, though. (Ether type C or type B)
  • In One Piece, Monkey D. Luffy is your typical Shonen Adult Child Idiot Hero. So what happens when you remove his shadow and create a hundred-foot-tall monstrosity with it, using the body of an ancient demon warrior? Oars has all of Luffy's idiocy, childlike naivetie, and personality, with none of the tempering kindness and concern for friends.
    • Also in One Piece, the Demon Guards of Impel Down, four bizarre Zoan users seem more animal then man but like to goof on each other and cower whenever their officer Sadi-chan is angry like them like children to an angry mom. They are also extremely sadistic, and love the brutalize prisoners.
    • One of the newest members of the Blackbeard Pirates San Juan Wolf seems to apply. In his past, he was a Pirate who committed crimes "so atrocious they were effectively erased from history itself", a bounty likely to be in the upper multi-millions, and when caught offscreen, was transferred to the lowest level of Impel Down, and to earn his freedom from there, was forced to kill everyone in his cell on orders from Marshall D. Teach and co. Also, he is the largest man alive in the show, easily dwarfing Oars at least four time over, and is compared to a walking Sears Tower. But, in his first appearance, he peeks out from Maineford HQ's main building like a curious child, has an expression like he was caught stealing from a cookie jar when spotted by Mooks, expressed surprise that a Vice Admiral knew his name, and was scared by Whitebeard and hid while the rest killed him.
      • Let's not forget his classic "They found me!" line , which is all the more hilarious when one looks at this size comparison pic, yes the circled person is one of the regular giants.
  • Rip van Winkle from Hellsing is an excitable young woman who likes to sing opera and enjoys killing things. She intends on conquering the world for Millennium.
  • Vincent from Pandora Hearts might as well be the king of this trope due to his nasty habit or slicing up dolls with scissors and causing the tragedy of Sabrie.
  • Jack Winslow of Power Stone is a really 100-year-old crazy who was orphaned at a young age and lost at sea. Lack of human contact might explain his behaviour.
  • Chrono Crusade has Joshua Christopher, who was kidnapped by the Big Bad as a young boy and given powers that turn him insane. Although he's 15 in the main bulk of the story, he still sometimes acts like the child he was when he was kidnapped, treating attacking a girl as a "game" and pouting about pudding being ruined right before slaughtering the demons responsible. The anime version emphasizes the "childlike" side, including the ending having him lose all of his memories and reverting back to the personality he had as a kid, while the manga makes him more mature and aware but possibly more insane.
    • The anime also seems to treat Shader this way, by keeping her Genki Girl personality but changing her morality from a grey shade to nearly completely black, giving her a sadistic streak to boot.
  • Sojirou from Rurouni Kenshin. At least until his Heel Face Turn, when his whole personality acquires something of a shift....
  • Puppetmon from Digimon, anyone? He kidnaps Takeru in order to play hide and seek. While trying to kill his brother Yamato and the rest of his friends, and then Takeru himself. Way to go.
    • Arguably Diablomon from Our War Games. There isn't much known about it, but consider that the e-mails it sends suggests that it sees the battle as a game, and that the only sound it makes (in the original version) is a creepy childish giggle.
  • Izaya of Durarara!!. One of the rare Manipulative Bastard versions. It becomes quite obvious as the series progresses that he sees everyone and everything around him as little more than toys to be played with until they break.
  • Eva-R and Eva-Q in Seikon no Qwaser are conscious of and delighted with being playthings, meant to suffer and die for Eva Silver. And yet in a backwards way, they regard any prospective dominant (i.e., anyone they look at) as their plaything, and are quick to break any 'toy' who isn't breaking them to their satisfaction.
  • Naruto has a mixture of villains who act mature and others who act like kids, though to be fair the same is true of the heroes.
    • Orochimaru definitely has elemenets of Type C with his gleeful sadism, particularly he resurrected the first two Hokages pretty much just to rub it in his old teacher's face.
    • The Type B Deidara is even worse and commits suicide just because Sasuke had beaten him and was treating him with indifference.
    • Sasori is a mix of B and C. He is an insanely talented and cold-blooded Puppetmaster in his 30's, who also transferred his essence into a puppet resembling his 15 year old self, and was more or less beaten by a memory of his parents coming to hug him. Justified Trope, though: Sasori's parents were killed in battle by Kakashi's father Sakumo when Sasori was a baby and he left the Sand Village when he was around 15 years old after killing and turning the 3rd Kazekage into one of his puppets. From his broken childhood to his subsequent defect from his village, he grew cold and stoic due to the lack of parental love. His emotions were stunted to that of an abandoned, forgotten child.
    • Pain is a deliberate inversion however, as his villainy derives from a twisted version of Jiraiya's philosophy that growing up is based on suffering; since he has suffered so much, Pain believes that he has matured into godhood (in a non-Westernsense).
    • What, no Hidan? The anime portrays him as a big Type B: he's pretty much the Akatsuki version of a Hot-Blooded teenager in the body of an adult man.
  • Gates from Full Metal Panic! is an over-emotional Cloudcuckoolander who acts rather like a child throwing temper-tamtrums, and whose completely random actions would be hilarious if they didn't involve killing so many people.
  • The villain from the second episode of Pumpkin Scissors shows signs of this, in that he kills the people in his charge as part of a fun game, and is hinted to be capricious to the people in his court.
  • Chaka from Black Lagoon is introduced as a Type B. He seems like a dimwitted yet likeable Mook who harbors an almost childlike enthusiasm for guns and shootouts... then said facade falls down, and we're faced with an Ax Crazy Complete Monster. Who's also Too Dumb to Live, as Ginji eagerly proves.
  • Ni Jianyi's pupil who is only known as Kami-sama in Saiyuki is a sadistic bastard who loves to toy with people while pleasantly torturing them (evident by "helping" Goku get rid of a pendant ball embedded in his leg). When the Sanzo group stormed his castle, he played games with them as if they were in an amusement park. They eventually found him in his room surrounded by stuffed animals which were actually the souls of people he had stolen. And once he started to lose, he threw a temper tantrum.
  • Tamaki, the Promoter of Deadman Wonderland. When he isn't causing the deaths of or torturing inmates he's often found playing with toys in his office, including a Lego model of the prison and a dancing flower. He's also a bit of an RPG Otaku and sees the Wretched Egg as a Big Bad to defeat.
  • Kure Kirika of Oriko Magica is pretty much completely unfamiliar with the concept of maturity. She's also hunting down and killing other magical girls. Although her motive for doing so is because she was asked to by Oriko, whom she is obsessively in love with, rather than her childish tendencies.
  • The Big O's Alex Rosewater. "This is my Big! This is my dome! You can't have it!" Also, to an extent, Alan Gabriel.
  • Haruko from FLCL.
  • Amaimon of Blue Exorcist is a demon king who displays childish Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, uses his visits to the human realm mainly for sightseeing, and is extremely fond of candy. He's also excited by the thought of killing people and treats fighting like some sort of "fun" game.
  • Michio Yuki, the Villain Protagonist of MW, is either type C or D.


Comic Books

  • Deadpool.
  • Bizarro and Solomon Grundy from The DCU.
  • Amygdala, a minor Batman villain.
    • It's a bit of a stretch, but technically you can call most of Batman's Rogues Gallery this. Two-Face, Riddler, Calendar Man, Scarecrow (kinda), Firefly, Maxie Zeus... seeing as how psychology-driven Batman is, it makes sense that all of his villains would be so simply motivated. Most of them are just trying to prove something to Bats, making them the "Childish Motivations" breed.
      • Specifically, TRY to deny that Joker's motivations are... arbitrary. You will fail in this.
        • The Joker is arguably one of the more fitting examples in the Batman Rogues Gallery. For starters, when Batman is telling Joker to stay away from the Gordons after he apparently hurt Gordon's wife (it was actually his son, Gordon Jr. who did the deed), Joker commented that he didn't do anything to "the old bitch", and starts commenting to Batman that he misses the old Batman, and commented that he "doesn't want to go to bed yet" and that he "wants to play." The scene is detailed here [dead link]
  • Though a Serial Killer and not a Psycho for Hire, Johnny from Johnny the Homicidal Maniac fits the trope perfectly, mostly due to unfathomable mental instability.
    • And coming to Squee for a band-aide after cutting his hand on a "Skettie-Os" can probably clinches it.
  • Validus, from the Legion of Super-Heroes. Basically a mindless powerhouse, easily controlled by his teammates in the Fatal Five. In the original continuity, he turned to actually be the child of Legion founders Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad (time travel was involved).
  • DC's Superboy-Prime: An alternate Clark Kent/Kal-El from a world where he was the only superhuman, which was destroyed. After helping to save the universe he spent years in a pocket dimension, (and didn't age or mature past his early teens), which drives him Ax Crazy. A dose of The Punishment from the Guardians Of Oa gave him the power to traverse dimensions at will and destroy whole planets. To make things worse, he has the power level of the Silver Age Superman (only with a seriously warped morality), almost none of his weaknesses (only red solar energy will keep him in check), and a suit that ensures he is constantly charged with yellow sun energy.
  • Billy Kincaid of Spawn. While the comic version is more Freddy Kreuger-ish, the version portrayed in the HBO animated series definitely had the mind of a child. A child that liked to kill things. Mainly real children. With a paedophilia subtext.
  • The Flash villain (and later member of the Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains and Terrible Trio Injustice League) Big Sir is extremely large and powerful, but mentally deficient and easily exploited. He was eventually killed by a bio-engineered bomb designed to look like a small child while he was trying to hug it.
  • Sergeant Crumb, the largest man to serve in the British armed forces, in Adventures in the Rifle Brigade. Possessing strength that is rather unnatural even for a man his size (at one point he punched a man's head clean off his shoulders), and constantly sporting a mindless, toothy smile, he seems incapable of actual speech and only ever says "Ey-oop!" The conclusion reached by his superiors in his official dossier (which mentions several events where he's implied to have killed dozens of people) is: "Mummy, I'm frightened."
    • Similarly, Corporal Geezer only says "Yer aht of ordah!" and is one of the most prolific murderers in British history, being tried for over 413 murders before evidence was waived when he was assigned to the Rifle Brigade, which desperately needed a maniac like him to tie it together.
  • Bobby in the opening "Euthanized" story of Hack Slash. A lot of people think Vlad is a rare good example because he talks funny, but he's cleverer than he likes people to think.
  • Larfleeze from Green Lantern has been living alone in a cave for billions of years with everything he's ever wanted being brought to him by his mindless constructs. This has given him the temperament of a spoiled three year old.
  • The Question villain Baby Gun. He looked like an giant toddler and used an air gun at close range to kill people.

Baby Gun: Got'nee cake? Got'nee candy? Got'nee ice cream? Ahm'na kill yew!

  • Funland from The Sandman. A Serial Killer who preyed on children at an amusement park, wore Mickey Mouse ears and a Big Bad Wolf T-Shirt and liked "playing" with other kids.

Not "fun", Funland.

    • To be clear, he's huge and pretty fat, and probably in his mid-thirties.
    • When Dream kills him causes him to fall into a magical slumber, he kindly lets him go having a dream that all the (dead) children come back and forgive him, and don't laugh at "the funny big giant," and they all play together forever and ever.
  • Alfie O'Meagan from Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja is stuck at a mental age of ten. He's also a powerful Reality Warper who casually neutralized the world's nuclear arsenal and thinks nothing of turning into Godzilla or Galactus when he rampages against the armies sent to stop him.
  • Gideon Gordon Graves, the Big Bad of the Scott Pilgrim series, a Type C with some Type B qualities thrown in there just for fun. He's a wealthy and successful entertainment mogul, and the epitome of a Villain with Good Publicity. However, he seems to have the emotional intelligence of a seven year-old—he's petty, vindictive, possessive, can't handle rejection, and just wants people to adore him, even if he has to make them adore him against their will.


Film

  • Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a mentally-retarded tool of his family, who uses him to gather meat for their restaurant.
    • In fact most of the "quiet stalker" type horror icons fit this trope. Michael Myers, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees. More recently, we've added Jacob Goodnight (as played by Glen Jacobs/Kane) in See no Evil. All of these examples result from childhood trauma as well. See, parents? See what happens when you treat your kids badly? They turn into axe-wielding hoodlums! Is that what you want? HUH?!?
      • Michael Myers is actually an aversion. In the original Halloween he just kills his sister without any real reason. Dr. Loomis describes him as being "pure evil". It wasn't until the remake that he became this. This was a major criticism since it took away from the looming mystique of the original character.
  • Loki in Dogma. Since Angel's apparently don't have a conscience and he used to be the Angel of Death, before resigning when he got pissed, there may be a reason to this.
  • Norman Bates from Psycho has a gangly childishness, due to his mother's isolating and dominating him.
    • It becomes more obvious when Lila Crane snoops through the Bates home and comes across Norman's room.
  • The movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, has the title character facing off against "Blaster" in the titular Thunderdome. ("Blaster" is the masked, hulking, none-too-bright bodyguard of one of Bartertown's leaders.) Max outthinks Blaster, knocks off his mask, and is all set to kill him when he discovers that Blaster has Down Syndrome and is essentially a child in a giant's body. Max relents, but the people who hired him to kill Blaster aren't feeling quite so charitable...
  • Kadaj of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children can go from vicious and sadistic to heartbreakingly childlike and back again in the span of around fifteen minutes. His older 'brother' Loz also qualifies, being less psychotic, but more childlike.
    • Probably Yazoo as well, so that's all three of them. He doesn't get much screentime, but just watch him laughing in childish excitement in the extended version as he steers his motorcycle off an exploding bridge to attack an airborne helicopter.
  • The DVD commentary for 13 Ghosts provides backstory for the Black Zodiac. This trope is represented by The Dire Mother and The Great Child, the Mother being a little person in a travelling circus and the Child being the result of rape by the circus' Tall Man. He was extremely spoiled by his mother and appeared as a fat, hulking brute of a man wearing diapers and a bib and carrying the axe with which he had killed his mother's murderers.
  • Tokka and Rahzar from the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.
  • The Merrye siblings in Spider Baby, who have a condition that causes them to revert intellectually until they have childlike minds in full-grown bodies. This enables them to do things like kill deliverymen as part of their games, and demonstrates how excellent it is that humans can be taught morality before they're big enough to do real damage.
  • Luigi Largo is a rather brutal murderer, and most of the time seems like a functional adult, but a stern look from his father or a sharp word from Mag can turn him into a contrite toddler. He also throws temper tantrums that would be hilarious if he didn't have a knife in his hand while he had them. At the end of the film, after Rotti's death, he breaks down sobbing in the middle of menacing a crowd of people.
  • Zigesfeld in If Looks Could Kill displays multiple signs of mental retardation, including a childlike dependence on the film's female villain. When she strokes his mechanical hand in one scene to calm him down, he grins like a little boy.
  • The towering 'trolley boy' in Hot Fuzz.
  • The 1963 film Cleopatra portrayed Octavian (the future Augustus Caesar) as one of these. The historical community was Not Amused.
  • The main villain of The House by the Cemetery is hinted to be one, as he is constantly crying like a little child. The film even closes by a quote by Henry James Lucio Fulci that says "No one will ever know whether the children are monsters or the monsters are children".
  • Nick Frost's cameo in Don't
  • Olaf in The Sinful Dwarf is a particularly frightening and extreme example. He plays around with eerie wind-up toys and uses them to lure girls in to be used as sex slaves. Just watching Olaf can be nauseating.
  • The titular character of The Mask. By the Doctor's analysis, the mask actually makes to surface all the "inner child" from that person, so it fits for all characters ever wearing it.
  • In Suicide Kings, one of the No Name Given kidnappers holds a gun to his partner's head, cocks the hammer, and begins to pull the trigger...because his partner changed the channel while he was watching a cartoon and wouldn't change it back. After he leaves, the partner checks the cylinder of his gun and finds that it was fully loaded.
  • Near the end of The Last King of Scotland Nicholas is captured by Idi Amin's men trying to flee the country, tortured and confronted by the dictator, leading to this little exchange:

Idi Amin: I am the father of this nation, Nicholas. And you have most... grossly... offended your father.
Nicholas: (battered and bloody) You are a child. Thats what makes you so fucking scary.

  • Buffalow Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.
  • The Ghost of Christmas Present from Scrooged is a female example.
  • Team America: World Police's depiction of Kim Jong-Il.
  • Suzanne Stone of To Die For is an evil woman who seduces a (very dim) teenager to get him to kill her husband, and her intellect level is just barely above his, or above a child.
  • Shinzon of Remus from Star Trek: Nemesis. He initially justifies his actions by a desire to free his people, and then by a desire to unify Romulus and Remus, and then by a desire to remove the threat posed by the Federation...but by the end of the movie, it becomes pretty clear that all that he really cares about is proving his superiority to his "father" Captain Picard.
  • The various Harry Potter film adaptations portrayal of Bellatrix Lestrange depicts her as having shades of this. For one thing, shortly after murdering Sirius Black, as well as her re-encounter with Harry at the burrow, she taunts Harry about her direct involvement in Sirius Black's death by singing "I killed Sirius Black!~~" repeatedly in a similar manner to a playground taunt by preschoolers.
  • In A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, the Big Bad, Hugh J. Magnate, ultimately turns out to be one once he gains access to Cosmo, Wanda, and Poof's magic. This is foreshadowed by the fact his evil lair is designed more like a playland. He says that this came from the fact his father never let him have a real childhood.
  • Sarah from Hocus Pocus.
  • Baby Firefly from the House of 1000 Corpses films. She cuts the heads off of dolls and nails them to the wall, has a childish high pitched voice and giggle, and recited the Rabbit Hutch rhyme while murdering a woman that she put in a rabbit suit.
  • William "Wild Bill" Wharton, from The Green Mile, displays shades of type C of this trope, at least in the film. Despite being on death row, his antics seem more childish and goofy than anything else, sometimes being played for laughs, until it's revealed he raped and murdered two little girls while working as a farmhand, a crime for which John Coffey takes the blame.
  • Prince Charming in Shrek the Third.
  • Butterfinger, the Dumb Muscle of the group of rogue CIA agents in Hudson Hawk. At one point, when the other agents are complaining about how long Hawk is taking with his Love Interest, Butterfinger asks, "You want me to rape 'em?" There's a long, uncomfortable silence, and then one of the other agents hands Butterfinger a book to distract him. It's Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, which Butterfinger seems to struggle with.
  • Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator's depiction of Hitler is of this trope, as evidenced by how he interacted with his "globe."
  • Stuntman Mike in Death Proof. He puts on a suave act, but at his core he's a vindictive juvenile who gets off on doing cruel things to people. His demeanor in the last act, when he comes across some women who fight back, is that of a kid whose prank has backfired on him.
  • Agent Lynch from The a Team acts like a 16-year-old with daddy's credit card and car keys. He leers at his assistant, constantly brags about how much cooler his job is than his opposite number's, and displays childlike glee at all the cool toys he gets and stuff he gets to do.
  • Chronicle: What Andrew becomes by the end.


Literature

  • Lennie Small in the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. While he never means to hurt anyone, his mental handicap and brute strength lead him to accidentally commit manslaughter.
    • While all that is true he's not really the best example and may tend to subvert the trope on some levels, since unlike most of the examples on this page he never tries to do anything bad at all (most of the others do bad things on purpose and may or may not know that what they're doing is wrong).
  • Merricat in We Have Always Lived in The Castle. She started out as a psychopathic child and is still very childlike though over 20.
  • Mr. Teatime of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather is one of the creepier examples.
  • Another Pratchett example: First Mate Cox in Nation is at one point given a description suggesting this, when his gleeful expression at shooting down a parrot was compared to a little boy proud of wetting himself.
    • But note that at no other point is he shown as anything but fully, rationally aware of what he is.
      • As Terry himself wrote "First Mate Cox had a choice, every day, and had chosen to be First Mate Cox."
  • Doopy and Goshy the clown brothers in The Pilo Family Circus are insane like all the other members of the clown division, but manifest their particular lunacy in remarkably childlike ways which seem quite harmless at first: Doopy has the mental age of about six years old and has a habit of whining like an impatient child, while Goshy communicates only in whistles and beeps and is in love with a potted plant. However, Goshy's apparent incompetence is offset by his appetite for wanton destruction and uncanny bursts of sadistic intelligence, and Doopy will fly into a homicidal rage if his brother is even mildly threatened.
    • JJ, the protagonist's vile alter-ego, will gleefully commit murder, vandalism, assault, and any number of crimes for his own childish amusement. However, if anyone responds violently or threateningly, he'll react by bursting into tears and running off.
  • The Howlers, an ancient race of genocidal warriors in Animorphs. Jake was essentially expecting them to have the mind of a super-predator, but upon morphing into one, he discovers to his shock that they are actually possessed of a childlike simplicity and engage in genocide because they think that it's just a fun game. Eventually, the Animorphs were able to exploit this by revealing to the howlers that their victims are more than just mindless toys which exist for their amusement, thus "ruining" them.
  • The Somnambulist by Johnathan Barnes features a pair of these, called The Prefects.
  • The (presumed) Big Bad of The Meq is the Fleur-Du-Mal, who, like the rest of the titular race of immortals, is Really Seven Hundred Years Old, but he's also a Psycho for Hire with a bone to pick with the rest of his race. He likes to cut throats, kidnap little girls and turn them into prostitutes, dabble in the occult, manipulate normal people, or Giza as they're called, with his appearance as a twelve-year-old boy, and sadistically torment his own kind. Yeah, he's a Jerkass.
    • Soon, Ray's sister, Zuriaa was dangerously unstable and became Fleur-de-mal's twin. What a plot twist.
  • In the Redwall book Martin The Warrior", the heroes come across a tribe of Chaotic Neutral wild squirrels who live for pleasure and think it would be a really fun game to chase said heroes up a cliff and throw them off! They do end up working for the good guys later on, as they're convinced this would be an even better game. Also, the horribly spoilt Prince Bladd (though his age is unclear, so he may in fact be fairly young). He likes playink mitt fire.
  • In Tad Williams' Otherland, the Other is the quasi-sentient operating system of the titular network. One of its many bizarre attributes is that, despite being at least twenty years old, it seems to have the personality of an autistic child, and at several points in its "development", the Grail Brotherhood attempted to have it communicate with real children, in order to allow it to develop the capability to interact with people. The Driving Question of why an apparently home-grown AI behaves this way is only resolved when it's realized that the Other is not actually an AI; it's a real human child, stolen at birth and implanted as the "brain" of the network.
  • Ronald Niedermann from the Millennium Trilogy. Freakishly strong, near-invincible due to congenital analgesia, extremely intelligent, and for all intents and purposes a Complete Monster. He is also irrationally devoted to his unloving father, has probably never physically achieved puberty, and is plagued by bizarre and terrifying hallucinations. Knowledge of which (or not) can come in fairly handy.
  • In Codex Alera, this seems to be the eventual demeanor of the Vord queen as she slowly becomes more and more human in her emotions.
  • Nightblood from Warbreaker is a lot like this, acting much like an optimistic child eager to please its owner—by killing things.

Nightblood: I did very well today. I killed them all. Aren't you proud of me?


Live Action TV

  • Reese from Malcolm in the Middle.
    • Hal says it best in one episode: "He has no more sense of right and wrong than a treefrog."
    • Arguably Francis from the same show.
    • Definitely Hal, if Lois isn't there to keep him in line.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series episodes:
    • "The Squire of Gothos". Trelane, an omnipotent alien obsessed with Earth culture, is a more urbane example of this trope; indeed, his childlike immaturity isn't revealed until the end of the episode when his even more omnipotent parents show up to scold him for his actions.
    • "Charlie X," full-stop. A human child raised by omnipotent aliens and given the ability to warp reality. Though 18 years old, he has the social skills of a spoiled five year old. Having committed mass murder before being picked up by the Enterprise, he causes so much carnage upon the crew of the enterprise (which the aliens ultimately undo) that he is handed back to the aliens at the end of the episode.
    • "Whom Gods Destroy" involves one of Kirk's heroes gone insane from a head injury during a starship crash. Imprisoned in an institution for the criminally insane, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs and banging his fist on the floor when he can't impersonate Captain Kirk well enough to be allowed onto the Enterprise. Most other patients exhibit this trope. They exhibit "entertainment" to Kirk in the form of wheelbarrow racing in a circle. One patient defends accusations she plagiarized a poem from A.E. Houseman by saying she "wrote it again this morning" and craves attention from all the other inmates.
      • Of course, the hero in question was played by William Shatner.
        • But only when the once-hero-gone-insane is impersonating Kirk, yes? If not, then someone's incredible make-up skills should also have been put to use in "Arena" (for starters).
  • Jackman's Hyde persona from Jekyll is repeatedly stated to be a child who just happens to have the intelligence and drives of a full grown man.
  • The title character in the Doctor Who story "The Celestial Toymaker". Lose his games and you become one of his toys. Win and he destroys the world. By the way, he cheats a lot.
    • The Master (Simm edition) in Doctor Who giggles, makes faces, takes a childlike pleasure in the Teletubbies, and dances around the room to pop music while taking over the world and ordering the annihilation of millions of people.
    • The Gods of Ragnarok in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy are extremely powerful beings who have been completely consumed by the desire to be entertained 24/7 (or whatever Segonax's day is). One of them even manifests as a child.
    • Melody Pond. She gets better.
  • Joey Heric of The Practice was sociopathic, calculating and exhibited a very childish attitude Such as announcing "I need to pee" to stop a trial session to get his way out of his own murder trials.
  • Blackadder II gives this treatment to Queen Elizabeth I, of all people.
  • Law and Order SVU gets one in its tenth season with CSU Tech Dale Stuckey; in the season finale, Stuckey kills several innocent people to try and frame a psychotic man who'd killed before, kills his CSU boss before he can tell the police he was the actual killer, and starts assaulting Stabler with the intent to kill him before Benson makes the save.
    • One flasher-turned-child rapist is a severely stunted man who knew he had a problem as a teen but his dad used it (and his cameras) after having his son watch him with prostitutes, than watching his son with prostitutes wasn't enough to get him off. Olivia feels very, very sorry for him.
  • Gem and Gemma from Power Rangers RPM are a rare heroic example. They're intellectually geniuses, but in everything except physics and technology, they're about five.
    • They are also really fond of violence in general, and explosives in particular.
  • Psycho Electro Company assassin Elle Bishop from Heroes.
    • Sylar himself is a Type C. He's shown to be extremely powerful, but also enjoys unnerving his enemies with toys and other mundane items. He's also shown to treat abilities as a giant toy collection and even explicitly compares Maya to a shiny new toy.
  • Cyril O'Reilly from Oz, an Irish gangster who became retarded after a blow to the head. He also has the bad luck of having a Manipulative Bastard brother whose orders land him in jail. Though he's normally quite good natured, he becomes one of the more feared inmates as a very strong man who's easy to set off.
  • Fringe's Walter Bishop is a seemingly harmless Mad Scientist and pretty likeable, until you remember he experimented on children in order to communicate with other dimensions, has created horrible monsters and oodles of other universe smashing stuff.
  • Dollhouse has Terry Karens, a wealthy serial killer who loved to "play house" by paralyzing and posing his victims like dolls.
    • Topher in the first season probably qualifies. (He starts to develop a bit of a conscience later in the second season.)
  • Many of the serial killers in Criminal Minds are emotionally stunted, but special mention goes to the killer in the two part "To Hell ... And Back", an emotionally and mentally retarded middle-aged man whose quadriplegic brother directed to pick up transients and use them in the smarter brothers' experiments.
  • Franklin from True Blood plays this trope straight off into the distance.
  • Battlestar Galactica: John Cavil is eventually revealed as an angsty teen literally stuck in an old man's body with a load of Mommy Issues to boot since said old man's body was based on his "mother" Ellen Tigh's father (it's probably a good thing she didn't know that when he forced her to have sex with him). He also killed his brother(s) Daniel out of jealousy.
  • Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire shoots Jimmy Darmody's pillow while he was sleeping as a joke. He also gives his boss Johnny Torrio an exploding joke cigarette in the middle of a meeting. Johnny is not amused.
  • How bad can a young man be when he wears Bert-and-Ernie shirts, keeps a lollipop in his mouth, and often mumbles like a shy four year old? If it's Marlo Stanfield from The Wire, pretty damn bad.
  • Kamen Rider OOO has three of these. Kazari, a childish Complete Monster and Chessmaster, Gamel, whose a little lacking on the "psychopathic" part but still a destructive and childish kaijin, and Lost Ankh, Ankh's body that obtained sentience and has the mind of a child, but is none the less evil and destructive.
  • Jay Wratten of The Shadow Line is an example of Type C. He's an extremely dangerous man and his outward childishness only makes him creepier. He also turns out to be much smarter and more manipulative than anyone realises.
  • Moriarty in Sherlock is this trope in spades (type C). It should be noted that this is in deep contrast to the Moriarty of the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
  • Chang on Community enjoys wielding the power of being a teacher a little too much, and is shown to be very immature playing mind games with his classes.
  • Lucas Taylor in Terra Nova seeks to destroy Terra Nova and the entire world in which it is located killing over a thousand innocent people, all because he wants to get back at his father for not saving his mother when he was a teenager and generally not giving him enough attention growing up proving that being a genius scientist is no bar to living up to this trope.


Music

  • The main character of the Thomas Fersen song and music video "Hyacinth".


Professional Wrestling

  • The entire gimmick of Abyss in TNA is this trope. When he's a face, the sympathy is milked for all it's worth.


Public Domain Characters


Tabletop Games

  • Apply this trope to an entire species, add a healthy dose of More Dakka and Clap Your Hands If You Believe, let (rule of) cool, and you've got the Orks of Warhammer 40,000. They think that they should do "wot's fun." It's just the rest of the galaxy's bad luck that to the Orks, "fun" means "NEEDS MORE DAKKA! Dat's 'ow ya killz fings!" They're like big, green, comic relief howlers.
  • Goblins in the Pathfinder setting have this kind of persona. They're such immature, comically inept little guys that they'd count as Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains if not for their rare moments of competence at murdering innocent noncombatants.
  • One of the most frightening and powerful incarnations of this trope is seen in the Dungeons & Dragons Demon Lord Kostchtchie, who rules a whole layer of the abyss based soley on sheer power and child like rage. It helps that he's secretly a pawn to Iggwilv, but still, most Demon Lords can't rise to the position, let alone hold onto it, without having shades of the Magnificent Bastard.
  • The Fair Folk of Exalted are mostly this. They don't mean to be horrible, horrible monsters, but they don't understand how reality works. They hail from the Wyld, where most any being they encounter is simply a figment of either their imagination or another Fae's, so they have difficulty processing the idea that every individual they meet in Creation is an independent and sentient being. Furthermore, in the Wyld, Death Is Cheap. A Fae killed by another Fae can just shape himself back into existence with a thought, so they have trouble understanding why the Creation-born are so uptight about the stabbing.


Video Games

  • The Boomers in Gears of War and other Locusts of his size. The other locusts use cover effectively and yell orders to each other. The Boomer stands out in the open, points his gun in the general direction of the enemy, and dutifully says "Boom" before firing. That's all he ever says.
    • Don't forget the oh-so-bland "SKY FIRE" when you fire a mortar.
  • Ramon Salazar of Resident Evil 4 has the build and proportions of a nine-year old, the skin of a sixty-year old, and claims to be twenty. He's also fucking nuts and suffers a severe Villainous Breakdown over the course of the game.
    • A less hilarious, more tragice example would be Lisa Trevor. After decades of Umbrella experiments, she's a powerful, seemingly unkillable monster with the faces of some of her victims sewed together and worn like a mask. Despite all this, her mind is that of a very young child, desperately searching for her mother.
  • Arguably GLaDOS of Portal. Her demeanour and behaviour certainly brings to mind a surly child, doing mocking impressions of Chell ("That's you! That's how dumb you sound!") and giving childish retorts ("If you love it so much why don't you marry it? Well, I won't let you!).
    • Don't forget the turrets and their child-like voices. "Hello, friend. I see you. Are you still there? Good night. Put me down! Malfunction. I don't blame you..."
      • "No hard feelings..."
    • GLaDOS also smacks of a naggy mother taken to the logical extreme, neatly encapsulating both extremes in one package.
    • And GLaDOS' creepy red core. Her yellow is curious ("Do you smell something burning?") her blue rattles off cake mix...plus other things ("Don't forget food garnishes such as: [...] fish-shaped dirt.") and the red is...er...well, it doesn't speak--instead it snarls and shrieks at you.
    • Wheatley, anyone? By the end, at least?
  • Kratos from the God of War series. He's a brutal sociopath, negligent father, sells his soul at the drop of a hat, and spends the entire series blaming others for his own actions. He rages constantly against Athena for not being able to magic away the guilt he feels over killing his family, wages constant and destructive wars upon being made the new god of war even when that's exactly why Zeus had Ares killed, and the series ends with Kratos coming to the conclusion that the forgiveness of others is pointless and you need only forgive yourself to absolve yourself of guilt.
  • From Mother 3, Porky Minch, the Pig King. Justified in that he extensively travelled through time after the end of EarthBound and only aged outwardly - he even describes himself as possibly being 10,000 years old or even older, yet still being the same kid inside, though he said it with the implication that that's somehow a good thing.
  • Debilitas, the hulking gardener from Haunting Ground, is the only one of the stalkers pursuing Fiona who doesn't have overtly sinister motives - he mistakes her for a 'big doll' and just wants to play. Unfortunately, his idea of playing is a little too rough for poor Fiona...
  • Achenar, from the game Myst, has a childish way of relating horrific thoughts and events to the player, even speaking in a mocking, higher-pitched voice and giggling like he's just thought of some ridiculous joke. The effect is unnerving, to say the least.
  • The Igniter bloodline from Bloodline Champions has animations that give one this feeling about them: their running animations looks like skipping, their standing animation is them strangely tilting their head to the left with their right palm up, and their idle animation is hopping up and down left and right on the spot.
  • Walter Sullivan from Silent Hill 4. He basically kills people because he believes that he can resurrect his "mom" that way.
    • Eddie from Silent Hill 2 also works.
      • And, while more tragic than psychotic, Angela Orosco. She routinely flips between being a normal woman, a suicidally depressed woman, a psychotic and hateful woman, an innocent child and a psychotic and terrified child. Sometimes in the space of less than a minute. But given what her father did to her it's not that surprising.
  • Mimi in Super Paper Mario is like this.
  • Chesty, from a Fable 2 sidequest, takes the concept of Nightmare Fuel and cranks it Up to Eleven thanks to having this personality...including not seeming to understand that his new "Super Best Friend" really isn't having fun during his Monster rush.
    • This super best friend had fun. She felt lucky to be able to do it twice thanks to a bug.
      • This super best friend was particularly happy when the game gave him back his lost youth.
  • Both Zant, the fake Big Bad from Twilight Princess, who despite being an ominous threat in the beginning of the game, reveals himself to be a cackling maniac during your battle with him, and Majora, the titular Big Bad of Majora's Mask, a Cosmic Horror who alternates between being a sadistic Omnicidal Maniac and a seriously creepy child, could qualify.
  • The Pyro from Team Fortress 2 is possibly a man-child. You never see his face, but his unlockable hat is a propeller beanie.
    • His other hats include a rubber glove on his head, and his taunts make it appear that he has an affection for fighting games and air guitar. Considering he's the Pyro, the psychopathic part isn't open to much questioning.
  • Shadow from the Sonic the Hedgehog series is an adorable little boy. He looks up to his friend Maria, whose terminal illness he was created to cure. They reflect on what life must be like on earth. Even after her death, he shapes his life like a fairy tale, would do anything Maria asked him, and often whines pitifully about who he is and what he's there for. He also thought that the peaceful Maria would want him to avenge her by destroying the planet, is obsessed with his status as the ultimate lifeform, values human life and happiness very little unless he associates it with Maria or himself, and loves guns.
    • YMMV with Shadow. Still, it's possible; seeing the one person who supported him the most and who he saw as a moral figure murdered in front of his eyes probably disturbed him to the point of becoming this trope.
  • The Witch from Left 4 Dead sits there sobbing until and unless you bother her, at which point she has an unfortunately lethal (to you) temper tantrum. Then, once you're dead, she cries and runs away.
    • Ellis is just WAAAAAAAY too happy during the zombie apocalypse. It's almost as if he views it as a big game Unless someone dies
      • "Ho-lee-SHIT guys! It's KIDDIE LAND!!!"
      • According to Nick, "He's like a five year old. With guns. And a comprehensive grasp of every swear word in the English language."
  • The XT-002 Deconstructor fight in World of Warcraft is a robot version of this. When you aggro it, it says "New toys? For me? Oh, I promise I won't break them this time!"; when a player is killed during the fight, "I guess it doesn't bend that way!" and "I think I broke it!" and one of its attacks is it pounding on the floor shouting "No, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!", all in the voice of a small child.
    • Background material indicates that Mimiron (his also-robotic maker) considers XT his son and, as such, built him to have a childlike character. It kinda justifies XT's childishness but not his Axe Crazy.
      • Mimiron himself mildly shows tendencies of being one. Not as a whole but some of his comments ("MEDIIIIC!") give a good idea about why XT was built the way he is. Unlike the most versions of this trope, however, Mimiron is a borderline genius.
      • Borderline? He's the god of invention.
        • Well to be fair at this point he is borderline, as all the bosses in Ulduar are Completly bonkers, thanks to good Old Good old Yoggy, being the Old God of Death and his powers being the power of inducing insanity into living beings.
    • Many of the undead abominations (giant bloated zombies made from multiple corpses) count as well. Patchwerk is well-known for his creepy childish lines:

Patchwerk: "Patchwerk want to play..."

  • Jackle from NiGHTS Into Dreams is a literal psychopath whose lair looks like a small child's play room; complete with teddy bears, a merry-go-round, and a guillotine.
  • Tira from Soul Calibur is more or less Type E. She has such an extreme case of bipolar disorder that it has separated her into two personalities: "Jolly" and "Gloomy". When "Jolly", she talks like a little girl and refers to people as if they are playthings, and gets a thrill from breaking them in the most perverse and sadistic ways, as evidenced by her win quotes. When "Gloomy", she becomes extremely cynical and is willing to harm herself to inflict damage on her opponent.
  • John DeFoe of the Chzo Mythos is essentially this, seeing as he was raised alone in the basement of DeFoe manor after being disowned by his father, whom he considers an abomination and resposible for his wife's death. Being posessed by the Tall Man after he was beaten about the head and neck with a wooden idol containing his soul certainly didn't help.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, despite being at least 16 Arietta acts like a small child and apparently cannot handle the news of her beloved Ion death so they lied to her and said that the clone was him. She is also one of the fiercest fighters and one of The Woobie (but they are pretty common in this game)
  • We have The Beloved in Bayonetta. Big and stupid with cherubic masks on their hideous heads. There are no pretty angels in this game.
  • Chidori from Persona 3 fits this to some extent. She has a fairly simple vocabulary for the most part, hasn't the faintest idea of how to deal with falling in love, and throws some pretty impressive temper tantrums when deprived of the gun-like Evoker she seems to treat as a comfort object. On the flip side, she works nights enacting revenge for people and has no problem with committing the occasional bit of telepathic breaking and entering.
  • No More Heroes has Bad Girl and Destroyman.
    • Let's not forget Matt Helms in No More Heroes 2. He's an undead who in his childhood made a deal with the devil, resulting in him going crazy. And all through his battle he laughs like a little child.
  • Half the cast of the Touhou Project says "hi". In particular, Flandre Scarlet, a vampire that looks like a little girl with the explicitly-defined power to destroy anything and a love for games that involve breaking her "toys".
  • Adachi from Persona 4.
  • Grunt from Mass Effect 2 shows shades of this. At one point, he talks about killing the other "weaker" species, all the while pointing out how funny that would be with a child-like glee.
    • Mosty because that's what a normal young krogan acts like.
    • Not really. He's Krogan and being Ax Crazy Omnicidal Psychopaths with a tendency to slaughter everyone around them is their gimmick. They are trying to change, though.
    • Reading his file in the Shadow Broker DLC reveals just how much of a kid he really is.
      • Really, it's somewhat justified in his case. He is less than a year old.
  • Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2. He likes to play "games". And as heroic characters such as President Peace and later Jaguar are unwillingly forced to take you on, he just laughs and at one point even DANCES happilly as they struggle in pain. He even goes as far as to basically have a temper tantrum and charges up the Ballistic Groove Gun to destroy everyone, including himself for ruining his plan. The game hints that he doesn't know love somehow, but it still doesn't keep it from being slightly disturbing.

"Time for a game! If you shoot like normal, you'll hit the president!"

  • Isometric Third-Person Shooter Loaded has Mamma, so named because it's the only word he knows. A hulking, diaper-clad giant prone to inadvertently crushing people to death, his backstory indicates that he was abandoned as a baby, but somehow survived to adulthood without acquiring any education or social skills.
  • Albedo from Xenosaga, especially with his interactions with MOMO and Jr. In the first game, he giggles at the sight of a Kirschwasser he tore apart and demonstrates his ability to regenerate as if he was performing a magic show.
  • Kefka from Final Fantasy VI was written as one of these in the original, Japanese script. He uses the first person singular verb "bokuchin", which is what little boys use when joking around or trying to act sweet. This idea was left untranslated in the English localisation.
    • A hint of this snuck its way into Dissidia Final Fantasy, where he talks about battle as playtime during his fight with Terra, as well as his referring to his opponents as "toys."
    • As well as in Duodecim, where he remarks that his fight with Vaan was "The most fun [Kefka's] had in minutes." in an over the top, high-pitched, giddy voice.
      • His successor, although it's not quite as in-your-face, unless he's talking about his "mother."
  • Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas is Type C. Charismatic, smart, and totally drunk on the power he coveted since he was a child in the Followers of The Apocalypse. Reading the flavor content in the back of the Prima Collectors Edition Guide reveals that he was petulant and gloryhounding ever since he was a boy. And if you rebuke him during a face-to-face visit, he throws quite a temper tantrum. He's like the Last King of Scotland: He's childlike, that's why he's so scary.
  • Mileena has been repurposed as a Type E variant in Mortal Kombat 9. Possessing the mentality of a young girl, she giggles her way through fights and seems to see butchering people as a fun hobby. One of the challenges in the Challenge Tower consists of her trying to force Scorpion to take a teddy bear she made.
  • In Double Switch, Eddie seems to be this. He seems like a normal Nice Guy who is a genius. Unfortunately, he wants an Egyptian statue so badly that he will hurt or kill to get it. He seems to be bothered by what people say about him at some points. It is also pretty sad to see him reduced to crying "Mom! Mommy!" by the end of the game.
  • N from Pokémon Black and White seems to be one at first due to his association with the villainous Animal Wrongs Group and childlike behavior (gleefully dragging you to the Ferris Wheel because he's never been on one before, not to mention his playroom). Subverted! He turns out to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist Adult Child with No Social Skills instead, and once you... convince him that Pokemon aren't really as abused as he thinks, he becomes quite friendly. And then you find out why he was that way to begin with...
  • Dr. Angus Bumby from Alice: Madness Returns is a rather subtle version of one whose childish behavior doesn't become clear until well into the story. While, normally, he seems calm and well-educated, as the story unfolds it becomes clear that he's just a possessive child unable to deal with being told no after raping Alice's sister, Elizabeth, seeing her refusals as teasing and then covering it up by burning down their house with them inside. Even the Dollmaker, his Wonderland counterpart uses childish suggestive motions with his hands throughout its boss fight. And, finally, in the end he takes time to gloat at Alice over using his hypnosis therapy to brainwash children into prostitution, that he will get away with it, and continues arguing that he has done nothing wrong.
  • Edward Richtofen from Nazi Zombies is a type C.


Webcomics

  • Thog from Order of the Stick is a half-orc fighter/barbarian with extremely violent tendencies, a sunny disposition, and an Intelligence score that's probably no higher than 5. Xykon, the Big Bad, occasionally has some childish tendencies.
  • Richard from Looking for Group often shows childish tendencies and extremely bratty and whimsical behaviour.
    • Tim the ogre would be a textbook psychopathic manchild (he refers to Cale'Anon as "Chicken", ex. "Chicken needs squishy?"), but has been described by one of his associates as being taking one too many maces to the head.
      • Tim is certainly a manchild, but he is really not the violent psychopathic sort.
  • Reakk from Sluggy Freelance. Even though he's a demon who eats people's souls, it's hard not to like the dimwitted little guy.
    • Oasis also qualifies to a fairly large extent, with her underdeveloped personality and sadistic fondness of killing. Bun-bun described her as a "demented toddler", and while she's theoretically opposed to killing innocents, once she eliminates someone from that category, she's willing to do things such as cut their ribs out one at a time out of curiosity while they're still alive.
  • Kharla'ggen of Drowtales is clearly insane and enjoys turning people into living dolls unable to move, but it's implied she's not actually that bad a person under her insanity. Being under the thumb of a Psycho for Hire who used her as a figurehead leader didn't help her at all.
  • In Eight Bit Theater, Black Mage is a rare example of a "heroic" Type C, in that he is intelligent and relatively well-put-together, but takes a psychotic, child-like glee from hurting close friends and innocent people for little reason more than the amusement it causes him. His tantrums tend to devolve rather quickly into childish whining as well.
    • Fighter is a Type A, who generally enjoys beating the living shit out of people, but is quite friendly and rather... slow.
  • Ethan from Ctrl+Alt+Del, who is almost completely bereft of maturity and/or responsibility, even from his own actions. He's basically Family Guys Peter Griffin, except he's a gamer. Yup.
  • Lawler of White Noise could be considered this. He's a skilled, ruthless, cheerfully sadistic operative who's obviously quite a few bananas short of a bunch. Yet he has a child-like unquestioning devotion to his boss, and spends his spare time having fun by drawing all over his hands. Aww.
  • Spot of Get Medieval has a childlike enthusiasm for fire and explosions and pure hate for those who try to stop him from making either.
  • Jared of Jared, despite being very intelligent and pretty much a Badass, is childishly selfish and obsessive.
  • Butch of Chopping Block can be this, though the degree to which it applies varies wildly from strip to strip. In one case, his mutilation of corpses was compared to a child playing with a cardboard box.
  • Christian Weston Chandler in Sonichu is a Type E. The twist is that he is the comics' author.


Web Original

  • One possible interpretation of HABIT from Everyman HYBRID.
  • Blaine Eno and Cillian Crowe from Survival of the Fittest are each brutal killers brought onto the island specifically to spice up the competition (it's implied that the terrorists actually broke Cillian out of his asylum to take him to the island), but Blaine is mentally and emotionally seven years old and has no real grip on what he's doing, while Cillian is almost literally under the control of an imaginary, daemonic, friend named Haddy.
    • Lately Liam "Brook" Brooks has shown signs of being one of these after having some Sanity Slippage which resulted in Ax Crazy tendencies.
  • Dragon Ball Abridged: Nappa.

"Look Vegeta...a Pokémon!"

  • The title character of Salad Fingers, though this may be a subversion as he's more True Neutral in the "uncaring, detached, and having no regard for either good or evil" sense.
  • The Nostalgia Critic is a Type B. Imagine him as a twelve year old boy with no supervision and a gun and you get the idea.
    • The Nostalgia Chick is a Type D. You get the impression sometimes that she genuinely doesn't know why Nella would be pissed off about cameras placed in her bedroom. And there's no guilt involved either.
      • Elisa's characters Dr. Tease and The Makeover Fairy both enjoy torturing people through science and makeovers far too much.
    • Genki Girls Obscurus Lupa and Pushing Up Roses occasionally wander into this trope when their excitement gets a touch too extreme.
  • In the "Agents of Cracked" webseries on Cracked.com, this is Michael Swaim all the way.
    • Reversed in Cracked's other content, where Swaim is a polite android, while D.O.B. and Brockway have the drug-fueled, destructive benders.
  • Pretty much every one from Profound Moments in Left 4 Dead 2 could count as this.
  • The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfic Cupcakes gives us Pinkamena Diane Pie, a Psychopathic MareFilly who loves inviting her friends to 'parties' which start with silly jokes and end with their hideous and torturous deaths.
  • Dr. Wondertainment, considering the toys he/it makes.


Western Animation

  • Futurama's Bender, the alcoholic, amoral gambler who deals porn and has no qualms with selling children as dog food occasionally becomes incredibly childish, most notably in the Mom-centric episodes.

"Mom! Mom! Look at me, Bender! Hey-ho, I want attention!"

  • Toyman of the DCAU, recreated as a childish madman who wears a doll head with a creepy smile.
  • The comic book sequel of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm implied that The Joker himself was a psychopathic manchild after his transformation, as Amanda Beaumont, despite her hatred for the Joker pre-transformation for what he did to her father, hesitated for a second when trying to take him to the explosion's core to finish him off because she saw that he was no longer a cold hearted murderer, but a grinning lunatic who was no longer capable of perceiving right and wrong.
    • Which would make this a case of Completely Missing the Point, since this version of the Joker was an evil, murdering gangster and psychopath even before his toxic bath; the point of this incarnation in the cartoon, and of that movie in particular, was to utterly subvert the idea that he is flat out crazy; he is, in essence, supposed to be a Type C, one posing as more more insane than he actually is.
  • Batman the Animated Series has a rather Tear Jerker Deconstruction in "Baby-Doll"; The titular supervillainess is a 30 year old actress with a medical condition that causes her to look about five, despite having the emotional and intellectual maturity of her actual age. Because of this, she was never taken seriously beyond her original role in a sitcom and ended up being Driven to Madness, throwing up her Cheerful Child stage persona as a psychological shield against her miserable existence (though it isn't perfect-she slips up and reveals her true, depressive personality on occasion). The plot is driven by her attempt to recreate the show's setting in an attempt to return to the one happy part of her life. Her emotional immaturity is a mask to help her avoid her problems with adulthood, as revealed when she crosses the Despair Event Horizon.
  • The titular character of Invader Zim can edge toward this. His interactions with his leaders, especially.

Zim: My Tallest! My Tallest! My Tallest! My Tallest! My Tallest! It's me! Look at me! My Tallest? My Tallest!

  • Dethklok
  • Grimlock from Transformers Generation 1 is a Psychopathic Mech-Proto who regularly tries to defeat Optimus Prime for leadership of the Autobots, destroys Decepticons with pleasure and rules his faction of Dinobots with an iron tail... in his down time, he enjoys fishing with said faction, hearing stories about the Good Ole Days from Kup (in the middle of battles) and giving human children and annoying, rhyming Autobots piggy-back rides. He also has his own brand of Hulk Speak.
    • Speaking of rhyming Autobots, Wheelie might actually fall into this catagory. He fights about as well as any other Autobot and has taken down robots three times his size, but generally speaks in sing-song rhymes and hangs out with a 12-year-old human boy.
  • The Warden from Superjail puts the Man Child in Psychopathic Manchild. He acts his shoe size and is barely sane enough to even keep his emotions together. For example, in the pilot as the Warden sings and pets a dead rabbit, he rips its skin off in a moment of unprovoked aggression, then promptly puts the bloody skin on his head and orders Jared to get bunny suits for the inmates.
  • Peter Griffin from Family Guy is essentially, Archie Bunker with half the IQ points. He is a bumbling Al Bundy type, who more often than not causes most of the conflicts in the show due to his selfishness or idiocy.
  • The X-Men animated series' rendition of Kevin McTaggert aka Proteus. The cartoon pretty much took the character and defanged him into becoming a teenaged mutant with the mind of a young child after being locked away from the world by his mother Moira due to said powers. He possesses people and mindrapes them while doing so, has minor reality warping power (which work like a charm on none other than Wolverine and reduce him to a borderline blubbering wreck for a while), and just wants to see the father who left the family shortly after his powers manifested. While this is a far cry from the horror version of the character in the comics, it's a somewhat Justified Trope since this particular X-Men cartoon was an animated series geared towards kids and young teens in The Nineties.
  • The Bowler Hat Guy from Meet the Robinsons.
  • The Batman's version of the Cluemaster. He was a former game show contestant and he believes he lost because his opponent cheated. He has spent 30 years doing nothing but plot his revenge. In his mothers basement no less.
  • Brak progressed from a supervillain in Space Ghost to being an annoying loudmouth with a childlike attitude in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Planet, and The Brak Show. It is said that he suffered brain damage after Space Ghost.
  • Quackerjack from Darkwing Duck, going along with his "power" of making deadly toys.
  • Cheryl from Archer, Combines the D and E types.
  • Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar: The Last Airbender is a Type C (Azula is on her way, but since she's only 14 she doesn't really count).
    • Tarrlok from the Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra, has shades of Type C in episode 8. He has a lot of power in Republic City but comes off as a spoiled brat who will do anything to get what he wants and won't listen when others try to reason with him.
  • Discord from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is a combination of Types C and Type E. He's an omnipotent Reality Warper and a Magnificent Bastard, but he's basically an all-powerful Trickster God who views the entire world as his own personal play thing. This includes the ponies, who he gleefully Mind Rapes, breaks, and drives insane. He's well aware of how evil his actions are, but doesn't care so long as he's having fun.
  • Baron Vain from The Modifyers, the Big Bad who gleefully goes "Yay!" when his favorite agent shows up, to ecstatically feeding incompetent henchmen to a gigantic fish while playing opera music.
  • The Earl of Lemongrab of Adventure Time has many characteristics of Type B of this trope; he's physically an adult, but he acts like a bratty little kid most of the time—thanks to his creator messing up his brain accidentally in a science experiment. He's a nasty, sour, unpleasant person who literally sends everybody in the Candy Kingdom to the dungeon for ONE MILLION YEARS. He throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and overreacts to small situations—whoever disagrees with him is immediately screamed at and imprisoned. He isn't a psychopath, though; his goal is to maintain a kingdom that's orderly, quiet, and clean. He tries to achieve his goal through screaming, Disproportionate Retribution, and generally just being a mean-ass tyrant. Oh- and he's only about one or two years old chronologically, though he was created to be an adult. So he is a man-child both literally and figuratively. If any of this is confusing, that's okay. Even Princess Bubblegum, his mother, says "it's complicated."
  • Darth Maul shows spades of this in his return in season four finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He hides himself from Savage behind boxes and can only be lured out by Mother Talzin's bright, floating energy ball, which he chases after in a way you would expect a small child to. Sure, he gets "better", but the effect is still fairly tragic and quite disturbing.

Meta

  • Works of fiction targeted towards children tend to make the villain fit this trope (Ironically to make the work more appealing to them).
  • Card Carrying Villains usually come off as this.


Toys

  • Vezon in Bionicle could be called one of these.


Real Life

  • Hitler had childish tastes according to most western views of maturity. He liked tons and tons of sugar in his tea, played with toys, loved Disney cartoons, and threw temper tantums often.
    • ...Since when did he play with toys?
  • Michael Jackson, who convinced himself that he was Peter Pan, named his home "Neverland Ranch" as a result, and was very close to children.
  • Assuming that Ghost from True Capitalist Radio is not the most talented troll in history he qualifies as this. Troll or not the character Ghost is an insane, ranting, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic manchild best known for trademark temper tantrums (aka cans.wav) which are thrown for the most trivial reasons and the large collection of terms he uses to describe the male anus, which he does a little too often.
    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.