Babysitter From Hell: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
While becoming a [[Badly-Battered Babysitter]] may be an adult's worst nightmare, having a
In [[Real Life]], child abuse by a temporary or hired guardian is a very serious thing. But in fiction, it can be comedy gold. It's also a good way to give a character a [[Dark and Troubled Past]] that's only [[But Not Too Evil|just dark enough]], without making the parents out to be bad. A common fate of characters with a [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood]].
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This villain type is always introduced the same way: parents need someone to care for their children. Often, possibly because either a parent or child has a bad reputation, short notice or bad timing (who'd have thought they'd schedule the high school prom and the elementary school PTA meeting on the same night?), the parents are left with few choices.
Only after the parents leave is the
# Children are frightened of them. [[Hilarity Ensues]] as adults take little notice of a child's instinctive concern, being either too busy or assuming it's just ordinary separation anxiety.
# The babysitter is impatient, angsty, or just plain mean.
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# They get away with it repeatedly.
[[Social Services Does Not Exist|With no support from adults]], the child is usually forced to take unilateral action to either foil or prank the babysitter. When the parents return, either the
This is a villain type where on the [[Sliding Scale of Antagonist Vileness]] the
The inversion of this trope is [[Badly-Battered Babysitter]]. If you have a case where this trope is subverted, check [[Badly-Battered Babysitter]] to see if it goes there first.
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== [[Live Action Television]] ==
* Mild instance in ''[[
* ''[[Everybody Hates Chris]]'' has the "Everybody Hates The Babysitter" episode in which the babysitter won't stay in the house.
* A bloodcurdling example occurs on ''[[CSI|CSI: Crime Scene Investigation]]'' when the team finds a little boy's corpse in a garbage bag. They discover that the little boy was one of three brothers staying with a prostitute who happened to be their mother's cousin. The prostitute locked all three of them in the basement of the shed in her backyard, and when one of them died she simply got one of her johns to put the body into a garbage bag and hide it in someone else's trash. The hooker claims that her cousin simply dumped the boys on her without leaving any money to pay for feeding them. Brass later discovers that the boys' mother did in fact give her hooker cousin $300...and as Brass put it "that skanky bitch went out and bought a new TV!" The CSI team eventually find the two surviving boys in the basement of the hooker's shed, and they're both close to death. Brass quite bluntly threatens the prostitute with the warning that, if either of them dies, he's going to do everything in his power to make sure she gets the death penalty.
** Let's not forget Nick's backstory - he was molested by his babysitter as a boy.
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* In the original ''[[Little Orphan Annie]]'' comic, the original orphanage manager, Miss Asthma, and her partner in crime, Mrs. Bottle, make Miss Hannigan seem saintly in comparison.
* ''[[The Far Side]]'' has a strip in which the parents come home and find {{spoiler|that the witch they hired cooked and ate not one, but both children.}}
* Rat proved himself to be the absolute ''worst'' babysitter imaginable in the [[Baby Blues]]-[[Pearls Before Swine]] crossover strip: Here's a rundown of what happened, he agrees to doing everything Wanda and Darryl ask of him, and as soon as they leave, [[Drinking on Duty|prepares to waste himself with shots of Tequila (and started wearing a beer hat)]]. He then has Zoe and Hammie go out to a package and liquor store to get more bottles of tequila (note: Zoe and Hammie, are incredulously too young to drive, never mind below the age limit of purchasing alcohol, so he's risking their being potentially arrested and doing time at a Juvenile correction facility for driving below the age limit, underage purchasing of alcohol, ''and'' possession of alcohol while driving just to get himself drunk yet again, at the very least). Predictably, it goes as badly as possible, with Hammie apparently wrecking their parent's minivan, which also caused a gas station to explode, and apparently they accidentially ran over Jeremy from Zits, and his reaction was horror that their liquor run was delayed. Likewise, he left Wren unsupervised while he went to watch a movie, which nearly got Wren eaten by the crocodiles (only reason they didn't eat her is because she turned the tables on them and actually bludgeoned them to death [[Batter Up|with a plastic bat]]). Honestly, at least [[The Fairly
== [[Video Games]] ==
* [[The Adventures of Willy Beamish]]: One of the evening events has Willy and his younger sister are the victim of a vampire babysitter. The rest of the evening involves avoiding her.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20101012034838/http://www.keepersoflists.org/index.php?ldate=2003-07-29;dir=next Top 53 Signs That Your Babysitter Is Evil]
== [[Western Animation]]
* Vicky from ''[[The Fairly
** Vicky had some redeemable moments, however. A notable example is when Timmy Turner wished to become an adult. When he seemingly disappeared from the house, she became genuinely worried about Timmy and tried to find him (although mostly to save her own butt from his parents should they come home and discover that she apparently was bad enough of a babysitter to not supervise the kid and keep him home), and when Timmy was finally found inside of a police station/jail cell ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]), she expresses genuine relief that he is safe. Ironically, when she did find Timmy a few points during the episode (the aged one), she beat him to a pulp, apparently because she mistook him for... [[Dirty Old Man|something that really wouldn't, and shouldn't, be mentioned on the show]].
* There's a [[Tom and Jerry]] cartoon in which the cat and mouse are on the same side, [[Badly-Battered Babysitter|protecting the baby from getting into danger]], but every time the babysitter pauses on the phone it's to beat them up for bothering the baby they just put back into the crib.
* The first season of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' had the Babysitter Bandit, a criminal who tried to rob the place. Bart, Lisa and Maggie manage to defeat her and flee to a pay phone, {{spoiler|but Homer and Marge get home before the police arrive, untied her and let her leave. Homer even carried the bags of loot she'd stolen from them to her car}}.
* ''[[American Dragon: Jake Long]]'''s [[Muggle Best Friend
* A robot babysitter (voiced by Sarah Silverman) looks after Meatwad in an episode of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]].'' It's soon revealed she is psychotic and abusive.
* ''[[South Park]]'':
** Stan's sister occasionally works as a babysitter, and she's terrible.
** Most attempts by Cartman's mother at finding a babysitter for him result in the [[Badly-Battered Babysitter|opposite Trope]], until she decides to hire a "dog-whisperer" (a caricature of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Millan Cesar Millan]]), who finally manages to successfully discipline him. Oddly enough, considering how much negativity the show gets from celebrities, the real Cesar Millan actually wrote to the shows creators [[Actually Pretty Funny| saying he ''loved'' it.]]
* ''[[The Amazing Spiez]]!'' episode "Operation Spy-Sitter". The kids' parents hire a babysitter named Melinda to look after them. Melinda appears to be perfect, having just the skills to help each of them. She turns out to be a he - an enemy spy named Mel who's been kidnapping WOOHP spies, and now wants the kids.
* In [[Kick Buttowski]]: Kick is chasing his sister Brianna, who has taken his trike.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Youngsters]]
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