Door Step Baby: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

You know the scene. [[Gray Rain of Depression|It's raining]], and a mother is carrying a baby in a basket. The baby is wrapped up in a blanket, but is obviously a main character. The mother may or may not be kept anonymous by a cloak.

Also known as a [[Foundling]]. Often causes [[Changeling Fantasy]]. See also [[Parental Abandonment]], [[Missing Mom]].

 

{{examples}}

 

* Kaito Doumoto in ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' has his first [[Heroic BSOD]] upon discovering a note from his parents explaining that they found him like this and took him in.

* There is a variety in ''[[Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran]]'', where Meow finds a baby in a basket outside of a restaurant. She's at a complete loss at first, but soon gets very attached, leading to her {{spoiler|being heartbroken when she has to return the baby to its family}}.

** Sadaharu might also count, even though he's a giant dog.

* One episode of ''[[Pumpkin Scissors]]'' has the eponymous unit searching for the mother of one such baby after everybody except [[Gentle Giant|Corporal Oland]] fails to pacify it.

* In the ''[[Cyborg 009]]'' 2001 series, a Catholic priest found a dying single mother and her healthy baby boy in the doorsteps of his church. The baby grew up and became Joe Shimamura aka 009.

* ''[[Berserk]]'': Has a rather dark version of this trope. A newborn Guts was found under the hung corpse of his mother, umbilical cord still attached. For a moment his discoverers (a band of mercenaries) thought he was a stillbirth... until their leader knocked him out of the arms of his girlfriend who went and picked him up, knocking baby Guts into a puddle and making him cry. It only gets [[It Got Worse|worse]] for him after that. (It's believed that the manner of his birth left him cursed.)

* Carlos Santana from ''[[Captain Tsubasa]]''. As a little baby, his teenaged single mother left him in a soccer field, and the caretakers of said sport place took him in. [[Break the Cutie|When his adoptive parents died, much misfortune followed.]] {{spoiler|In a subversion, he finds his genuinely remorseful mother when he's an adult, and they get reconciled. [[Earn Your Happy Ending]], indeed.}}

* Flute, from ''[[Violinist of Hameln]]'', was left in some villager's doorstep on a snowy day {{spoiler|by, supposedly, a dying soldier of her country, Sforzando}}. Subverted in that the house's owner refused to open the door, and the villagers who passed by the screaming baby in a basket purposefully averted their eyes; it was the Elder of Staccato who finally picked her up and took her home.

 

== Comics ==

* The Silver Age ''[[The Flash|Flash]]'' was published for more than a decade before the Flash and his wife Iris discovered that Iris had actually been born in the far future to time-traveling parents who abandoned her as an infant on the doorstep of a 20th-century couple. Iris's 20th-century parents had never told her that she was a foundling, and they never suspected that she was from the future. Eventually, Iris was reunited with her next-millennium parents. This plot development was followed for a while, then dropped, and most readers either forgot about it or assumed that it had been retconned out of existence. When Iris was murdered in the 1980s, no mention was made of her far-future origins. A couple of years later, when the Flash comic book was due to be cancelled, Flash was apparently killed ... but a twist ending revealed that he and Iris were both still alive in the distant future with Iris's parents.

* Skeezix Wallet, in Frank King's ''[[Gasoline Alley]]'', was left on Walt Wallet's doorstep as an infant. More than a decade later, Walt Wallet acquired a girl named Judy in the same manner.

 

== Films -- Animation ==

* The opening scene in ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]''.

* This happens to Kris in ''[[Santa Claus Is Coming To Town]]''. The Burgermeister's guard is taking him to an orphanage, but he blows away in a snowstorm. He is then left with the Kringle Elves to avert the Winter Warlock.

 

== Films -- Live Action ==

* The live-action movie ''[[Little Man]]'' has a gangster who is supposed to be able to pass for a baby leave himself at someone's doorstep.

** Basically, it's a live-action ripoff of the Bugs Bunny cartoon below.

* This happens in ''[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]'', where a baby is born old and ages backwards. The baby's mother died in childbirth, making the father swear that he'll have a place in the world. When the father gets a glimpse of his child, he's horrified and repulsed, and runs out the door with it. He seems to be about to throw the baby into a river when a policeman scares him away, so he leaves him on the doorstep of an old people's home. Unusually for this trope, not only do the people running the place -- a black couple -- not notice until they nearly step on him, but later [[Luke, I Am Your Father|the father meets and recognizes his son.]]

* In ''[[Breakfast On Pluto]]'', [[Cillian Murphy|Patrick/Kitten]] is left by his mother on the doorstep of his father -- the priest. (He's placed with a foster family.)

* John from [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s ''[[The Kid]]'' is an interesting example. His mother left him in the car of a wealthy family, complete with a letter. When the criminals who ''stole the car'' discovered the baby, they dropped it off in an alley next to a trash can, where Charlie finds him.

* ''[[Three Men And A Baby]]'' (both the original French movie and American remake) starts with the baby being left on their doorstep.

* Kicks off the plot of ''[[Willow]]''.

{{quote| ''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? That's what somebody did to me''}}

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

** While not as [[Anvilicious]], ''[[Joan of Arcadia]]'' had an episode dealing with an abandoned baby. A "safe haven" law is referenced during a discussion.

* On ''[[The Golden Girls]]'', Rose tells of having been left in a basket at an orphanage... along with some beefsticks, cheeses, and "some kind of cracker that didn't go with anything." She's Minnesotan, for those who find this scenario confusing.

* The final episode of ''[[Lois and Clark]]'' ends with the discovery of such a baby (wrapped in a Superman logo blanket) in L&C's living room. How it got there without Clark (who has super-hearing) hearing something is never explained. It was supposed to be the starting point for the fifth season, but the show was cancelled.

* Legendarily, each version/remake of [[Telenovela]] ''[[Cristal]]'' has the younger heroine being abandoned at a nunnery as a baby, only to grown up and unkowingly become the rival/main obstacle of her own mother.

* In one episode of ''[[MacGyver]]'', Jack Dalton finds a baby, allegedly his son, in the cockpit of his plane.

* In one episode of ''[[Bottom]]'', Eddie claims to have been left on a doorstep by his mother with her old service revolver and a note saying "Please look after my baby... I can't be bothered."

* Stephanie Mills, introduced in season 9 of ''[[All in The Family]]'', is a variation of this trope. While not an actual baby (she was about 9 years old when first introduced), she was left on the Bunkers' doorstep by her alcoholic father, who also happened to be Edith's nephew.

* The pilot episode of ''[[The Waltons]]'' had a six-year-old deaf-mute girl left on the Waltons' doorstep by her mother after the father - mistakenly believing her to be mentally retarded - threatened to have her institutionalized.

** In the episode "Soul Mates", the cop of the week asked where they found [[Insufferable Genius|Reid]]. [[Cool Old Guy|Rossi]] joked that he was left in a basket of the steps of the FBI.

 

* The title character of the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books follows this trope, left by Albus Dumbledore (with some help from Rubeus Hagrid, and the reluctant approval of Minerva McGonagall) on his aunt's doorstep, with a letter. The book makes it clear they knew the Dursleys were home when they left him, but unlike many versions of this trope, the Dursleys didn't exactly welcome Baby Harry into their homes with open arms.

** In one of the many parallels between {{spoiler|the mortal enemies}} the same happened to {{spoiler|Voldemort}} except he was left with an orphanage.

* [[Keith Laumer]] did this, although in his version the baby was a huge insect- or crustacean-looking thing and it took the army with lots of artillery to kill it -- and ''then'' they decoded the message which read, "Please take good care of my little girl." Somewhere between [[Tear Jerker]] and [[Squick]] there.

* The [[Jacqueline Wilson]] novel ''[[Dustbin Baby]]'', about a Doorstop Baby (actually found abandoned in a bin, as the title suggests) who sets out to trace her past on the day of her 14th birthday.

{{quote| "Believe it or not," he grinned, "I really vas the baby in the cartoons, you know, the vun left on the doorstep. I must have been only a few days old ven I vas found in a courtyard in Helsingør. That's the very pretty place you call Elsinore, [[Hamlet]]'s home town. I never learned vere I came from. Such happenings is very rare in Denmark, and the police tried hard to find out, but they never did."}}

* In the book ''[[The Children On The Top Floor]],'' a television personality makes a Christmas Eve speech in which he says he envies all the families out there with children... and in the morning he finds ''four'' babies left on his doorstep.

* [[The Moomins|Moominpappa]] was left on the doorstep of an orphanage. Wrapped in a newspaper.

* Astronomer Carl Sagan's book "Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors", sets this up as [[Book Ends]], the idea of ''humanity'' as a doorstop baby, an orphan raised by the laws of the universe and growing up to [[Ontological Mystery|wonder about its origins and how it got there]]. Only fragments of a note remain - the fossil record.

* In ''The Godsend'', this is how the Marlowe family end up with [[Enfant Terrible|Bonnie]], sort of: The Marlowes met Bonnie's mum and took her into their home, she gave birth during the night and left her daughter at the doorstep.

* The only thing anybody knows about Ambrosio's origins in ''[[The Monk (Literature)|The Monk]]''.

 

 

== Music ==

* [[The Decemberists]]' "The Chimbley Sweep":

{{quote| ''I am an orphan, an orphan boy<br />

== Video Games ==

* The main character's daughter in the video game ''[[Silent Hill 1]]'' is left by the side of the road in a manner like this. The protagonist takes her in and soon officially adopts her. Seven years later, he probably ends up wondering whether that was a good idea.

 

 

** Thankfully, the fox ruling cast gets better.

* In ''[[Blind Spot]]'' (now regrettably defunct), Dr. Dorian Mitchell is instructed to destroy the clone EUM061 he'd been raising at the laboratory. Harboring somewhat fatherly feelings toward the [[Designer Babies|Designer Baby]], he elects to drug him and smuggle him out of the lab instead; however, while driving down the highway, he panics and ends up leaving the child by the road unconscious.

 

 

== Theater ==

 

 

* Leela in ''[[Futurama]]'' was one of these and, as an adult, she still has the basket. However, she was left with Cookieville, a minimum security "orphanarium", instead of adoptive parents. (Inside, there's a large ''pile'' of baskets by the door.) She eventually meets her {{spoiler|mutant}} parents and finds out [[Pass Fail|why they left her there]].

* A [[Bugs Bunny]] [[Looney Tunes|cartoon]] features a midget gangster nicknamed Baby Face Finster who "leaves" himself at the mouth of Bugs's rabbit-hole, in order to recover a valise full of stolen money he had accidentally dropped down there. Hilarity genuinely ensues.

* This happened to all three protagonists of ''[[Sonic Underground]]''; one was raised by his aunt and uncle, one by an aristocratic family, and the last by a skilled thief.

** The aforementioned third hedgehog baby, Manic, is a minor subversion of the "there's always someone there to answer the door" part of this trope, he was actually stolen at the doorstep of where he was intended to be left, but was raised by the very thief who stole him.

** Lil Elvis has doubts about the situation, and [[Once an Episode]] he speculates over who might have left him there, usually related to the current episode.

* In ''[[Growing Up Creepie]]'', Creepie is an orphan left on doorstep of the Dweezwold Mansion, which is home to a family of various insects.

* Quagmire found a baby girl on his doorstep on ''[[Family Guy]].'' In this case it was actually his own daughter from a one-night stand. He ultimately {{spoiler|gives her up for adoption}}.

* ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]'': Bugs does this to a de-aged Daffy at the end of "Casa de Calma".

 

* ''[[The Three Stooges]]'' took a baby off someone else's doorstep when they thought nobody was home to find it... The mom was only gone for five minutes, and [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* In ''[[Problem Child]]'', the baby gets left on approximately eleven successive doorsteps, even as he grows into a toddler, before he's dropped off an an orphanage and a family finally keeps him, much to their future detriment.

* The titular ''[[Norbit]]'' was a ''drive-by'' doorstop baby.

 

== Literature ==

* In ''[[The Devils Storybook]]'' (forget if I or II), a priest finds a baby thus on the doorstep of the church. Only it turns out to be an imp, a baby demon -- there's a sulfurous smell and red skin and horns and everything. And a sooty spot that won't rub off the spot where the kid was left on the steps. The priest is all for caring for the kid, thinking it's God's will, but the townsfolk get so upset that a mob ends up setting fire to the church, telling the priest to leave the imp there and come out. Only the priest refuses to abandon a baby, and stands there ready to burn. The church burns down around him, and he remains utterly unharmed -- the imp now gone. Afterwards, he wonders which power it was that saved him.