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{{trope}}
[[File:701422771a4466041910b172479131l 4977.jpg|link=Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl|frame| Note [[Light Is Not Good|that the blonde, little girl in the pink, frilly dress]] ''[[Creepy Child|is actually dancing on a coffin]]''.]]
{{quote|''"All things truly wicked start from an innocence."''|'''Ernest Hemingway'''}}
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Compare [[Pure Is Not Good]] and [[Virginity Makes You Stupid]]. The related idea of the "Fall" being a good thing is very common (perhaps even required) in works where [[God Is Evil]] and/or [[Satan Is Good]]. See also [[Ignorance Is Bliss]], [[Kids Are Cruel]]. [[Obliviously Evil]] is related.
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Sensui from ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' has the same sort of thing going for him, although it's played off a bit differently. A devout Demon-Hunter from childhood, with a moral-code so rigid that watching a group of [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|humans raping, torturing and murdering]] dozens of [[Dark Is Not Evil|innocent-and-helpless demons]] shattered his mind into seven personalities and set all of him off on a genocidal fit of raging misanthropy.
* Explored in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' with Kaworu, particularly in the manga. Sadamoto had Twain's ''Mysterious Stranger'' in mind when plotting out his character, resulting in what some fans call 'Evil Manga Kaworu'.
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* The work of the Danish artist [http://julienord.dk/English.html Julie Nord] carry themes of this trope.
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* [[Lenore]], the cheeful grave-dancing girl in the picture, is an innocent undead abomination who has a habit of accidentally killing all her pets. From her page: Lenore's actions often result in the death or injury to those around her, and in various forms of chaos, yet she is not a malicious character, and often thinks she is doing good.
** [[Alternate Character Interpretation|Maybe.]]
* A character (or rather, a [[Tarot Motifs|Basanos Card]]) from ''[[Lucifer (comics)|Lucifer]]'' is called Innocence and takes the form of a young girl. She turns out to be pretty much out-and-out evil in the end.
* Little [[Usagi Yojimbo|Keiko]] travels with her "Uncle" Jei and later [[Dark Action Girl|"Auntie" Inazuma]], who call her "My Innocent" and slaughter everyone who they believe is evil, which thus far has been everyone (except Keiko and Inazuma, obviously). Considering that Jei thinks that [[Chaste Hero|Usagi]] [[Miyamoto Musashi|Miyamoto]] isn't just evil but '''the''' evil he must slay to rejoin the gods, ''what the heck does that make Keiko?'' {{spoiler|[[Word of God]] originally wanted Keiko to be Jei's next host, but that seemed a little excessive to make a child that evil. Maybe in a few years...}}
== Fairy Tales ==
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** Or rather, they provide what was considered at the time to be clear-cut rewards and punishments. Quite often along the way, Prince Charming is blinded or in some other way maimed for doing the right thing ''before'' he gets the girls.
== [[Film]] ==▼
▲== Film ==
* One possible interpretation of the [[Deconstruction|character]] of [[Princess Classic|Lily]] from [[Legend]] is this. [[Big Bad|Darkness]] goes out of his way to tell everyone how innocent she is, but in the first few minutes of the movie, we witness her lie and steal. Later, she takes to manipulating [[Tim Curry|Darkness]] with terrifying ease.
** The other explanation, naturally, is that it was never she who was innocent, but [[The Hero|Jack]].
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* The villain in the [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] novel ''Whose Body?'' is a sociopath who kills for the fun of it, and has a dream of returning people to the pre-Garden of Eden state by freeing them from guilt (and implicitly making them more like himself). Note, that [[Dorothy L. Sayers|Sayers]] was also a Christian writer.
* [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]] explores this idea in the planet of Perelandra in the [[Space Trilogy]] which was without original sin. In an aversion, it wasn't depicted as a bad thing. The entire plot of ''Perelandra'' is the hero's efforts to prevent the Adam and Eve figures of the planet from committing their own Original Sin, and his success in doing so is presented as cause for celebration.
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* In J.M. Barrie's ''[[Peter Pan]],'' the defining traits of children and fairies (and Peter Pan ''especially'') is that they are innocent ''and heartless''. Peter himself is an especially poignant case: being stuck in childhood means that he cannot learn from his experiences—or even remember them. At the ending of the traditional stage play, {{spoiler|when Wendy is starting to outgrow Neverland, she mentions that Tinkerbell is dead of old age (fairies don't live very long) and Peter asks, "Who's that?"}} Also note Peter's [[Angst? What Angst?|merriment and delight at killing pirates and indians.]]
** It's also mentioned that when there are too many Lost Boys, or they started growing up, Peter "thinned them out."
* Several [[Terry Pratchett]] characters, including [[Psychopathic Manchild|Mr Teatime]] and [[Dumb Muscle|Banjo]] from ''[[
* A major point in [[Philip Pullman]]'s ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' is that innocence is ignorance.
* [[Mark Twain]]'s ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]'' discusses this in great detail (along with many other stereotypical beliefs about the concepts of good and evil).
* The Howlers from ''[[Animorphs]]'' were a [[Tyke Bomb]] [[Super Soldier]] example of this. They were created by Crayak the [[Bigger Bad]] of the series for the sole purpose of rendering other species extinct. When Jake morphed one he expected violent rage and killing instinct. What he got instead was a sense of playfulness like a dolphin (note that dolphins are a good example of this in [[Real Life]]). Howlers are just a bunch of fun loving three
** Crayak works hard to enforce this innocence. The Howlers have a collective memory, and he ensures no memory of a Howler dying is included so the concept of death remains alien to them. They're eventually rendered useless to Crayak after witnessing a single moment of love between two humans.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Samantha Who]]'' addresses something like this in the way she treats her amnesia, describing her new, "good" personality as a "clean slate" and asserting that she is not responsible for the actions she committed before this time. Also interesting is one episode titled "The Virgin", which applies to her in an unusual way- her amnesia has caused her to lose all memory of ever having sex.
* [[Firefly|River Tam]] has moments where she comes across like this, blended with [[Obliviously Evil]]. She's around seventeen and [[Teen Genius|extremely intelligent]], but behaves like a child most of the time because of the [[Mind Rape|damage to her mind]] both psychological and physical. On top of that, she experiences a lot of [[Hallucinations]], so often her perceptions don't match up with what's really happening in the first place. She does usually have a sense of right and wrong, but she's prone to sudden violence and also sometimes seems oblivious to social conventions.
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* When {{spoiler|Reid}} on ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' is kidnapped by a serial killer who only kills people when he has unambiguous proof that they are "sinners," Garcia says something hopeful about the idea that the killer might not hurt him, since he's "completely innocent." Morgan quite correctly points out that when you're dealing with real people, there's no such thing. Turns out he's right.
== [[Theatre]] ==
* There's an idea in lots of plays with [[Wife Husbandry]] (i.e. Moliere's ''The School for Wives'') that having an ignorant wife is not actually a good thing, as while they might be too ignorant to plan to cheat on you, they are also too ignorant to avoid being seduced. A good example of this idea is in the [[Flashman]] books with the title character's [[Brainless Beauty]] wife Elspeth. While he's a [[Handsome Lech]] and deliberately a scoundrel, she is likely (it's never completely revealed) a nymphomaniac and serial adulteress who as Flashman notes is equally amoral because of her stupidity.
** Elspeth is ''so'' clueless that when Flashman first seduces her she actually asks him "Was that what the minister means by fornication?" [[Alternate Character Interpretation|Then again]], it might just be [[Obfuscating Stupidity]].
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* Morrigan from ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins'', for a given value of "innocent". She [[Raised by Wolves|knows little of the outside world]], having lived all her life in the Kocari Wilds with occasional visits to civilization. Her cynicism and social Darwinism is largely the result of her upbringing by Flemeth.
* Orpha in [[Eien no Aselia]] was raised to think of killing as a good thing. So she appears quite sadistic while completely unaware of how her behavior horrifies Yuuto. She wanted his approval and tried to get it the way she had been taught.
* One particularly weird example is Rance, from the [[Rance]] series of h-games. As harem heroes go, Rance is about as amoral as they come; his number one goal in life is to have sex with every woman on earth, and he doesn't particularly care whether said sex is consensual or not. (He prefers consensual, but he still has a loose definition of it
* ''[[Rosenkreuzstilette]]'': She may be portrayed as adorable, but {{spoiler
* Anna's portrayal in ''[[Epic Battle Fantasy]] 5'' has shades of this: her childish behavior has other party members curious about her actual age, and she treats hunting and killing wild animals and monsters as fun and games. {{Spoiler|After encountering and beating Annabelle, a gross caricature of her portraying her as a sadistic monster, she feels so horrible about herself that she considers giving up on hunting.}}
* Medicine Melancholy in ''[[Touhou]]'', a very young doll tsukumogami who knows little about the world and humans. Very childlike in behaviour but also very quick to feel threatened and attack anyone approaching her with an arsenal of deadly poisons.
* The Dimension of Lame from ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' is populated entirely by pure, innocent people. This makes manipulating them ''very'' easy for the [[Demonic Invaders]].▼
* Basically the entire point of ''[[Minus]].'', which combines this innocence with [[Goo-Goo Godlike|omnipotence]], resulting in an [http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus1.html imaginative little girl] who can do anything she wants, from creating magical worlds of wonder to [[Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant|effortlessly bringing nightmares to life]], from creating a whole new afterlife to ending life as we know it.▼
* The eponymous character of ''[[Axe Cop]]'' is described by the comic's artist as "borderline psycho." ''Axe Cop'' is also written by a six year old. Draw your own conclusion.▼
== [[Web Comics]] ==
▲* The Dimension of Lame from ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' is populated entirely by pure, innocent people
** They equate "peace" with "good", and are thus completely content as long as they don't have to face any kind of adversity, regardless of the consequences to anyone else - this results in them quite cheerfully looking for Torg to turn them over to the invading demons and get them to leave.
▲* Basically the entire point of ''[[Minus]]
▲* The eponymous character of ''[[Axe Cop]]'' is described by the comic's artist as "borderline psycho
* Schlock in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' is what happens when an alien of superhuman strength and durability with the mind of a child gets thrown into a world of outlaws and mercenaries that rewards aggression and intimidation. {{spoiler|He was actually born directly as an adult with an empty mind, and his own people chased him off their home planet, trying to kill him out of fear that he would become an out-of-control sociopath.}}
* Peter and Paul, the "hardly good boys" in ''[[Gunshow]]'', do all manners of reprehensible or even horrifying things in their genuine and naive efforts to do some good around them.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* [[Robot Buddy|GIR]] of ''[[Invader Zim]]'' often comes across as sweet and innocent... certainly [[The Ditz|dumb]]. But just as it's plain he doesn't understand the reason for conflict, he also often relishes in destruction. (And as the episode in which he was stuck in "duty mode" demonstrated, if he worked properly he ''would'' be evil.)
* Octavia in ''[[Helluva Boss]]'', Stolas' daughter. Despite being a demon (natural-born demon and of Hell's aristorcracy, no less) she seems like a typical teenager and the only recurring character with no onscreen kill count. Whether this can be explained by simply lack of maturity or whether she is living proof of [[Rousseau Was Right|the "nuture" side of "nuture versus nature"]] argument is hard to determine.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Religion Tropes]]
[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Ambiguous Innocence]]
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