K: At any given time, there are approximately 15,000 aliens on the planet, most of them right here in Manhattan. And most of them are decent enough. They're just trying to earn a living.
J: Cab drivers?
K: Not as many as you'd think.
J: Cab drivers?
K: Not as many as you'd think.
Not all space aliens in fiction are evil invaders who terrorize our fair planet with their high-tech war machines, and demand to be taken to our leader. Some of them are in fact quite nice. They're not looking for any trouble, and all they want is to be left alone, make a friend, return home or just get by in our strange and unfamiliar Earth culture.
The Innocent Aliens are like this. They've just arrived at our planet (though in some, rarer cases, we go to theirs, instead) and are total babes in the woods, displaying a very warped understanding of the humans' way of life. They're wide-eyed and childlike, and occasionally even need protection from hostile human beings, often trigger-happy military types who think they're up to no good and need to be exterminated for the common good.
In some kinds of stories, these aliens are used to prove that Humans Are the Real Monsters, especially if they or the rest of the interplanetary community live peaceful, enlightened lives and we humans are the ones who go around shooting things and generally being destructive. Even worse are settings where humans are monsters who want to capture such aliens to study them — against their wishes, naturally.
Often the "come in peace" part of We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill. Contrast Aliens Are Bastards. If they're played for laughs, they may also be amusing aliens as well. It's possible that there are other aliens that aren't innocents in the setting, but the trope implies a whole population of aliens who are Always Lawful Good.
Sub-Trope of Otherworldly Innocents. See also Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu? and especially Benevolent Abomination when an Eldritch Abomination is innocent and loving. May overlap with Otherworldly Innocents in the case of especially powerful aliens with childlike natures.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The 1965 Osamu Tezuka series The Amazing 3/Wonder 3 (Known as W3 in Japan) involves a trio of aliens (Bokko/Bonni, Ronnie, and Zero) disguised as animals (rabbit, horse, and duck).
◊ The alien group is lead by a female alien named Bokko/Captain Bunny. They decide to visit planet earth to learn about humans and life on earth. They later befriend an adult male named "Kenny Carter" (Shinichi Hoshi in the Japanese version) and go on various adventures around the world.
- Cyborg 009: In the 2001 series Cyborg 009: The Cyborg Soldier, a group of these arrive during the "Little Visitors" arc. Unfortunately, they were followed by a hostile force out to subjugate the children and harness their vast Psychic Powers for evil means. Jet Link/002 tries to teach them to defend themselves [[spoiler:out of guilt for standing by and doing nothing while other street kids were preyed on
- Gantz: During the first Onion Alien mission, the Onion Kid seems like this (complete with Kato trying to protect it from the other trigger-happy Gantzers). Of course, they have no choice over whether to continue killing once its father tries to get revenge. A few other aliens are non-aggressive before being attacked, making it murky who you're supposed to be rooting for.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: It's not exactly clear if Mikitaka Hazekura is actually an alien, but he claims to be one, and is one of the nicest people that Josuke Higashikata has ever met. He's even willing to sacrifice himself so that Josuke can get out of Super Fly.
- Takopi's Original Sin: The titular Takopi plays this for drama. He's a cute little alien from a planet where everyone is friendly, innocent and wants to help others. However, his innocence makes him unable to help the human children he befriends since he doesn't know how to deal with deeper issues like bullying and abuse, and his attempts to fix things with his gadgets often makes things worse in the long run.
- Urusei Yatsura: One story featured a school field trip by an alien pre-school/daycare. It's a class of Rubber-Forehead Aliens and Starfish Aliens with their beautiful Human Alien teacher. Sure the kids look odd but they're completely harmless and can't even go to the washroom by themselves as Ataru Moroboshi learns.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Astral is an alien who suffered from amnesia and at first did not truly know why he was in our world, but he wasn't malignant, and rebukes anyone who claims that he is supposed to be. When he eventually discovered that his true purpose was actually to destroy the Barian World, not quite the noble goal he had hoped, he rejected it, and Yuma was forced to rescue him from his godlike Knight Templar master.
Asian Animation
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In Joys of Seasons episode 3, Little Flower, a Plant Alien, is willing to be friends with the goats, with the only thing causing her to change her outlook on them being Wolffy telling her that the goats attempted to poison her (which isn't true). This misunderstanding is cleared up, and Little Flower is seen off from Planet Earth by the goats.
- Simple Samosa: In the episode "Anda Bhatija", an fried egg alien lands in the town of Chatpata Nagar and follows Samosa around. Samosa is annoyed at first, but then realizes that the alien means no harm and decides to be friends with him, going as far as to name him "Bua".
Comic Books
- ElfQuest: The Firstcomers took the forms of elves and meant to land on an Earthlike planet during a time when such spirits were respected. Due to a bit of sabotage, they landed in prehistoric times surrounded by superstitious, violent cavemen, and had no idea how to deal with the planet.
- Far Sector: Most of the members of the "peace force" in the City Enduring don't even know what to do when a murder happens, since it's been so long. Jo is the only one that knows to seal it off and call whatever forensics they have.
- Judge Dredd: A small group of friendly transdimensional tourists once visited a next-door universe. Too bad they chanced to visit Deadworld, a dark dimension ruled by four necrotic bizarro-Judges who think that all life is a crime...
- Martian Manhunter: The Green Martians are a peaceful race of philosophers, of which the Martian Manhunter is a part. The same cannot be said for their Evil Counterpart race, the White Martians. There is one exception to the White Martians in Ms. Martian, who is a genuinely Nice Girl.
- Resident Alien: This is a central part of the story. Harry, the alien protagonist of the series, is not interested in causing any trouble; he just wants to lie low and blend in until he can someday, maybe, return home.
- Alan Moore wrote Skizz during his time at 2000 AD, which can best be described as "ET meets Crapsack World," the Crapsack World, of course, being Birmingham, England.
- Spider-Man: The Klyntar/Symbiotes, despite some really bad first impressions in the form of Venom and Carnage, are actually caring and genuinely supportive of their hosts; the ones who became supervillains were corrupted by outside sources, usually humans who were unstable on their own.
- Superman: Superman arrived on Earth in a rocket as a baby. It doesn't get more innocent than that. The same also applies to Supergirl as she and the rest of the House of El are good-hearted people despite the things that happened and what her parents did along with what happens to them as well. Some other kryptonians... not so much.
- Swamp Thing: A race of aliens that heavily resemble Pogo Possum appear in one issue. They were looking for a planet in tune with nature, but they unfortunately landed on Earth, where one of their party, a cartoon alligator, is eaten by our alligators. The rest flee the planet after seeing how humans behave.
Comic Strips
- Beetle Bailey: Aliens from Saturn come to borrow sugar in this strip.
Fan Works
- The Calvinverse: Given that aliens and monsters are commonplace in the series, Galaxoid and Nebular are outliers in their innocence.
- Child of the Storm: Clark Kent arrived on Earth as a toddler, and is generally noted to be one of the sweetest and most innocent members of the cast. While he's far from stupid, and often surprisingly perceptive, he also comes across as a Naïve Newcomer compared to most of the other young characters in the sequel (who by this point have Seen It All and are quite shell-shocked to one extent or another).
- Equestria: Across the Multiverse: A group of aliens called the Celestial Ponies eventually make First Contact due to Mainline Equestria's technology leap. They genuinely do come in peace and their first message is actually introducing themselves and asking to be friends. Subverted with Black Star the Light Stealer, who's one of the supervillains that has attacked their world several times and teams up with Chrysalis.
- A New World, A New Way: The aliens in question (Pokémon) are this for the most part. Even then, the ones that attack do it out of confusion.
- Transition: A disaster in Jump City is caused by a Godlike alien trying to give everyone on earth, and later the rest of the universe Enlightenment Superpowers. Unfortunately some collateral damage was unavoidable.
Films — Animated
- Barbie: Epic Road Trip: The aliens that show up are pretty friendly. In the worst case scenario, they just eat the cupcakes that Malibu and Ken leave behind. In the best case scenario, they help Malibu and Brooklyn get to the audition.
- Contact (1978): As weird and eldritch as it is, the alien genuinely doesn't want to hurt anyone, despite the artist's fears, and spends most of the film either trying to understand the world around it or trying to befriend the artist - to the point that the "chase" only begins because the alien is trying to return the artist's shoes.
- Dot and the Kangaroo: In the last sequel Dot in Space, the non-spherical inhabitants of the planet Pie-Arr-Squared, called the Squaries, are persecuted and imprisoned by the planet's evil dictator Papa Drop simply for not being round. Dot, unfortunately, ends up joining them when she crash-lands on their planet.
- Planet 51: It's Chuck who's an alien on the titular planet. While a bit of a Manchild, he honestly means no harm to the locals. He is, however, chased by the military (under the leadership of a General Ripper and his Mad Scientist advisor) for a good part of the movie.
- Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon: Lu-La, the alien who lands near Mossy Bottom, is extremely naive, fun-loving and childlike because she's actually a child. Her parents seem to be nice as well when they show up.
Films — Live-Action
- A low-budget (but interesting) South African movie called Alien Hunter (2003) has a twist revolving around this. The whole movie has built up the frozen alien as something akin to The Thing, but in actuality it and its species are quite well-disposed to humanity. They are, however, carriers of a disease that is aggressive, incurable, and lethal to basically all terrestrial life. Being pretty conscientious sorts, they've actually gone to the trouble of informing various world governments of this, making a benign Government Conspiracy also part of the situation. The situation deteriorates for the rest of the movie due to human mistrust and paranoia, before the aliens spring a Deus ex Machina to save the protagonist and his mates just ahead of Russian sterilization protocols.
- The Brother from Another Planet: The titular character is a mute alien who heavily resembles an African-American (thus allowing him to blend in with humans easily) and is quite nice, setting free a dog tied to a parking meter and punishing the members of a drug ring for causing two teenagers to overdose on drugs.. It's eventually revealed that he's a fugitive escaping slavery at the hands of another alien race who deem his race to be inferior becaus they have three toes. Fortunately, he is saved when other alien escapees show up to defend him; the two alien hunters pursuing him blow themselves up after seeing they're outnumbered.
- The Cat from Outer Space: Jake, the titular Space Cat, happened to land on earth because his ship was malfunctioning at the time.
- Cocoon: The aliens have no desire to hurt anyone; they just want to retrieve their lost friends.
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): Klaatu qualifies, especially considering he is a textbook example of the first variety of We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill. The Keanu Reeves remake one is more of a Jerkass, apparently due to Executive Meddling trying to make the remake as little like the original as possible.
- District 9: The aliens aren't exactly childlike or innocent, but they genuinely mean no harm, and in fact were in desperate need of aid when they arrived. Poor prawns.
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The title character is an innocent alien who got stranded on Earth, and ends up befriending three human children who try to help E.T. find a way to contact the other aliens who accidentally left him behind. However, some of E.T.'s childlike behaviors is probably due to being his people's equivalent of a child himself.
- Earth Girls Are Easy: The furry humanoid aliens double as both this and Amusing Aliens. The trio only ends up on Earth because, while leader Mac is sleeping, the other two — having not been around women of any species in quite some time — are trying to observe the sunbathing heroine Valerie from their ship and wind up knocking it off course; ultimately it crashes into her pool. She quickly realizes that they mean no harm but is Genre Savvy and takes them to her beautician coworker to get makeovers to better pass as humans while they work on repairing their ship. Between this and their Learnt English from Watching Television skills, most of the other human characters don't realize what they really are, while Mac becomes a Magical Boyfriend for Valerie.
- The Fifth Element: Leeloo is this, to a degree. Meaning 'until she grabs your throat/ puts a gun to your head for almost kissing her/ jumps off a building into your cab/ kicks a roomful of alien warrior ass'.
- Galaxy Quest: The Thermians are childlike aliens who idolize the crew of "Galaxy Quest" and treat them as legitimate heroes, to the point that they don't realize "Galaxy Quest" was an Earth television show simply because their race doesn't understand the entire concept of fiction, at all. At best, they liken it to lying (and even that is an unfamiliar new discovery, learned at great cost from the race that was wiping them out).
- Independence Day: Resurgence: The Sphere is the Big Good, being the leader of a group of aliens attempting to defeat the Harvesters. He only wants to help the Earthlings.
- It Came from Outer Space: The aliens just want to repair their ship and go home. They only abduct and replace people because they are terrified of being discovered.
- Men in Black (1997): Aliens are featured from 'the worst scum of the universe' to aliens that worship humans, as well as several aliens that more or less fit this trope.
Kay: At any given time, there are approximately 15,000 aliens on the planet, most of them right here in Manhattan. And most of them are decent enough. They're just trying to earn a living.
Jay: Cab drivers.
Kay: Not as many as you'd think. - The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey: Although not aliens in three dimensions, the characters are an exact isomorphism of this trope in the time dimension, where a group of 14th century black and white British villagers flee the Black Plague by digging a tunnel that leads to Technicolor 20th century New Zealand.
- Paul: The titular character plays with this — Paul is a definite and unironic example of this trope in plot terms, but instead of the pure-heartedness one would associate with it, he has a pretty crude personality and enjoys smoking weed.
- Short Circuit: Subverted when the alien turns out to be a Ridiculously Human Robot, much to Stephanie Speck's disappointment.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): Sonic himself is portrayed as an alien who fled his home planet to protect himself from people after his Super-Speed ability. Sonic is as friendly and good-natured as in the rest of the Sonic franchise, and even with his bucket list including stuff like "start a bar fight", he sees this as an innocent way of living life to the fullest.
- Star Trek: First Contact: After the Phoenix makes its historic first ever warp-speed flight, humanity sees the Vulcans, who basically just want to drop by and congratulate the funny-eared people on finally doing something really awesome. They even stick around for the next couple centuries and become fast friends of humanity; if highly snarky friends.
- Supersonic Saucer: Meba fits snugly into this trope. He is an affectionate, wide-eyed young alien who comes to Earth from Venus and befriends a trio of schoolchildren - trying to please his new friends when he hears them want things, but his naivety and lack of understanding on human laws/words often gets him into trouble. Despite this, he and the children later save each other from a group of human criminals - helped mostly due to Meba's alien powers.
Literature
- Animorphs: A few different species are this.
- The Hork Bajir were peaceful, none-too-bright herbivores before the Yeerks arrived. They had absolutely no concept of fighting, to the point that even a genius Seer like Dak Hamee needed several minutes to figure out what was happening when a Hork-Bajir Controller hurt him.
- The Pemalites were total pacifists who did not even bother trying to fight back as they were killed off by the Howlers. The Chee, a race of androids they created, are at least capable of understanding violence, but their programming makes them incapable of committing it.
- The Mercorans, who settled on Earth in the Cretaceous period, were also nonviolent, to the point that they committed ritual mutilation in mourning when some of them were killed the only time they were forced to fight against another sentient being.
- Also, the Howlers, who are, from a certain standpoint, the most innocent species that the kids meet. Unfortunately, the Howlers are a species of genetically engineered killing machines. It's just that they don't know that killing is wrong, and Crayak preserves their naivete by altering their collective memory.
- And the mind-reading giant frogs, the Leerans.
- Bill the Galactic Hero: Bgr claims that the Chingers used to be this until they were attacked by humans. After that, the Chingers quickly learned to fight. In fact, they're much better at it than humans, mostly because humans are led by a bunch of incompetents.
- In A Case of Conscience by James Blish, the Lithians live in a state of innocence with no knowledge of good or evil. Through convoluted religious reasoning, this persuades the protagonist, a Jesuit priest, to conclude that they are creations of the devil.
- Cat Planet Cuties: The Catians are this as a whole. Eris is only 16, but even the adult Catians are very pleasant attractive women and their main reason for establishing diplomatic relations with Earth seems to be to try out Earth foods and entertainment.
- The Color of Distance: The Tendus play with this. Tendu have no war and strive to be in harmony with each other and the environment. They hunt with an eye to local populations, and they don't murder; they also have very little in the way of technology, though they have an incredible biological-modification ability that actually allows them to clone and alter things. They have to metamorphose twice to become intelligent and they eat their own fertilized eggs and tadpoles, and treat their tinka like slaves and allow them to be killed. The human protagonist only finds this out after she's been eating fertilized eggs and narey for a while, and is absolutely horrified. But there are countless unintelligent narey and tinka, and nothing like enough resources for all to become elders. It's presented as normal to them, and Dr. Saari eventually comes to grips with it.
- There is also a greater subversion later in the book, when the human protagonist explains human war to an older Tendu and is deeply ashamed. The older Tendu, Naratonen, asks why humans go to war and is told that it's partially resource scarcity. Naratonen tells her about a time in which the Tendu were far too numerous, and the oldest among them designed a genocidal plague and spread it from village to village. Half of the population died before the last surviving oldest one — the others had also died of the plague — taught others the cure and let himself die. Since then they've eaten their narey and changed their ways to keep their population down.
"You have wars, we have sickness. Is there a difference? Which one of us is better than the other?"
- Its sequel, Through Alien Eyes, in which two of the Tendu come back to Earth with Dr. Saari, plays it a little more straight. The Tendu don't understand the degree of suspicion and distrust humanity is capable of. All the same, they're not unsophisticated, and there is never a point where either of them seriously thinks of humanity as without its good points, like curiosity and adaptiveness.
- There is also a greater subversion later in the book, when the human protagonist explains human war to an older Tendu and is deeply ashamed. The older Tendu, Naratonen, asks why humans go to war and is told that it's partially resource scarcity. Naratonen tells her about a time in which the Tendu were far too numerous, and the oldest among them designed a genocidal plague and spread it from village to village. Half of the population died before the last surviving oldest one — the others had also died of the plague — taught others the cure and let himself die. Since then they've eaten their narey and changed their ways to keep their population down.
- "Cryptic" by Jack McDevitt: The director of a SETI project is a great believer in this trope, and this causes him to hide some excellent candidate signals because they imply that a war is going on out there. This is only discovered after his death.
- Ender:
- The Buggers, who didn't realize for many years that humans were individually sentient beings (rather than drones controlled by a Queen) and resolved to leave them alone after the first two invasions of Earth, but by then humanity, faced with near extinction during the second invasion, had already launched their desperate counter-attack which culminated in Ender blowing up the Bugger homeworld.
- The piggies. That being said, they ritually sacrificed several scientists, but they didn't know that humans follow a different life-cycle than them and wouldn't turn into sentient trees. There are bad piggies in later books, though. They end up committing outright murder by infecting a character (one of Ender's adopted sons) and letting him die, then claiming they didn't directly kill him. Naturally, the humans call bullshit on such Loophole Abuse.
- The First Day of Eternity by Domingo Santos (published in Analog) features an alien species, "rollers", which respond to human colonists with curiosity and cautious friendship.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Calling Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox "innocent" is a bit of a stretch, but their reasons for visiting Earth were benign (Ford is a travel writer for the titular Guide, Zaphod just stopped off to play tourist on his way somewhere else) and for the most part, so are they. The Vogons... Not so much.
- Humanx Commonwealth: The book has a lot of alien races, so it stands to reason that some would be peaceful. However, this is taken to an extreme with the Ulru-Ujurrians, giant ursinoids who are nevertheless utterly innocent and devoid of malice. They eat, sleep, mate, and play games. Until Flinx shows up and starts teaching them the "game of civilization", at which point they turn out to be exponentially intelligent and rapidly assimilate all knowledge that the Commonwealth and AAnn societies have to offer. However, they remain utterly nonaggressive except when they or Flinx are threatened — which is a good thing as by the end of the series their capabilities approach Reality Warper levels.
- The Man Who Fell to Earth: Thomas Jerome Newton makes his journey to our world to acquire the means to bring the rest of his people (numbering a few hundred) here before they die of thirst back home; they would then be able to blend in with humanity and become a positive influence upon it. Tragically, he gradually loses his innocence as he lives amongst humans...
- Nursery Crime: Ashley is a blue-skinned, partly-translucent tridactyl from the planet Rambosia working as a cop in Reading, England. Though not quite as naive as most Innocent Aliens, he's confused by human mannerisms and even more so by our biology. One time, he needed Jack to explain to him how human mating worked.
- The People: The titular alien race, the People, are this when they first come to Earth and almost immediately run afoul of the Soul-Saving Crusader and his followers who give them A Taste of the Lash and then Burn the Witch! She initially wrote of the after-effects on the People's earth settlement a century later in "Pottage", which was used as the Film of the Book.
- Project Hail Mary: Rocky is a very friendly Starfish Alien from an already empathetic and social species, who is immediately interested in making peaceful contact with Grace once he sees the latter's ship. While he does have moments of being blunt and having No Sense of Privacy, he's still very much a selfless individual who is willing to do everything for his human best friend.
- "Report on 'Grand Central Terminal'": Leó Szilárd, the famous nuclear physicist, also wrote some short stories. In this one, alien scientists arrive to Earth after a nuclear war wiped out all life. They completely fail to understand things like the monetary system and think that war between the members of one species is impossible. The only alien who figures it out is dismissed by his superiors.
- Roadside Picnic: This is Somewhat averted in the way that the alien visitors don't even take notice of the human population, and leave all manner of artifacts strewn about. What the human populace does with, and for, these artifacts, though. . .
- The Space Trilogy: All the aliens on Mars and Venus are Innocent—in a technical sense as well as mostly following this trope; they are unfallen beings, in the Christian sense, Satan being local to Earth. C. S. Lewis plays with it a little in Out of the Silent Planet; the Hrossa, Sorns, and Pfiffltriggi have reasonably sophisticated cultures and gradually come to realize that humans can be dangerous, while the Eldila (angels, really) know almost immediately that Weston and Devine are up to no good on Mars.
- Spaced Out: Galaxa's a friendly, peaceful Gray alien who cares about and gets along well with everybody and enjoys helping those in need. At the end of the story, she reassures Jermaine that she's his friend and cares about him very much after she uses her Touch Telepathy to view all of his memories.
- Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Brinksmanship features the Venette Convention. The Venetans are almost completely unable to handle the shifty politics and misdirection of the major galactic powers, with their leading citizen becoming literally ill from stress when confronted with realities like espionage.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: The pak'ma'ra may be unpleasant to be around, being scavangers and carrion eaters, and they are commonly described as "lazy, greedy and obnoxious", but they are pretty much the only race in the setting who were not once involved in some shady or immoral activity or acts of unprovoked violence, and the driving force of their species is curiosity and thirst for exploration. The pak'ma'ra were among the first to join the Interstellar Alliance and the Rangers, and helped other races in times of need. Also, they reportedly have angelic singing voices.
- Doctor Who: This is occasionally present in the form of the Doctor's (usually human) companions meeting aliens on their homeworld before they save them from other, less well-intentioned aliens.
- The Thals in The Daleks. Subverted in that the Doctor's companion, Ian, deliberately dismantles their innocence so that they can stand up to the Daleks.
- The nameless aliens (implied to come from Mars) from The Ambassadors of Death.
- The Doctor's Human Alien companion Nyssa.
- The Kinda in Kinda.
- The Doctor himself, at times, during his Fourth and Eleventh incarnations. Though the Doctor's people, the Time Lords, in general, and for that matter, the Doctor himself, has generally not displayed this trope.
- Eight, in the Made-for-TV Movie, in which he's got amnesia and is therefore particularly innocent. It's especially apparent in the morgue scene, in which he's almost as scared of the morgue attendant as the morgue attendant is scared of him. And he's generally strange, overly friendly, and totally harmless. Grace has to babysit him a little because of it.
- The Ood, who got enslaved by humanity because of it.
- The Dukes of Hazzard: The Visitor, in the episode "Strange Visitor to Hazzard," which was clearly meant to mimick and play off the popularity of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
- Popular Brazilian children's character Fofão is a friendly alien who loves having fun and singing.
- The Mandalorian: Grogu, a.k.a. "The Child", is a curious, big-eyed baby alien of the same species as Yoda. Being an infant by the species' standards, he's not malicious and the only times he acts aggressively is when his adoptive father is in danger. While he does occasionally cause problems, it's the result of his curiosity or not knowing any better.
- Married... with Children: In Season 5 episode "Married... with Aliens", a bunch of aliens started coming into the house and stealing Al's socks; Al was afraid of them at first, but they turned out to be pretty friendly.
- Mork & Mindy: Mork from Ork is this trope personified. In contrast to his first appearance in Happy Days where he was a Jerkass, Mork in this series is an extremely nice, if kooky, humorous, and pacifistic Human Alien who is good with kids; the only times he does something bad were simply out of naivete. Mindy even describes him as "the nicest alien [she's] ever met".
- My Favorite Martian: The titular Human Alien crash-lands his spacecraft in the backyard of Earthling Tim O'Hara. He poses as Tim's "Uncle Martin" until he can affect repairs on his spacecraft. Although Hilarity Ensues when Martin's alien powers and Imported Alien Phlebotinum complicate Tim's life, the Martian is definitely not hostile.
- The Outer Limits (1963): The series has several examples.
- In the very first episode, "The Galaxy Being", a creature from the Andromeda galaxy is accidentally teleported to Earth in a First Contact Faux Pas. The alien is friendly, but it can't help wreaking havoc anyway because it's a radioactive Energy Being. The Andromedan eventually sacrifices itself to prevent further harm, but not before it implores humanity to explore "the mysteries of the universe."
- The Bifrost alien from "The Bellero Shield" is a Christlike All-Loving Hero, from its angelic apperance to its compassionate, forgiving nature. In fact, it's too innocent for its own good, because one of the humans it encounters is a greedy, murderous Lady Macbeth.
- Played with in "The Chameleon". The two aliens who crash-land on Earth mean no harm and just want to fix their ship and go home. One of them even forgives the protagonist when he kills the other alien. However, they know enough to be wary of humans from the beginning ("Your spur is fear. Your answer is destruction."), and they're capable of deadly violence, although only in self-defense.
- The titular alien in "Behold Eck!" is a perfectly flat being from a two-dimensional realm who blunders into our world through a dimensional portal. Like the Andromedan, Eck means no harm and just wants to go home, but his very nature makes him dangerous; in Eck's case, he's capable of (accidentally) slicing through three-dimensional objects such as skyscrapers. Still, he makes two human friends who protect him from the well-intentioned but overzealous people who want to destroy him.
- The Outer Limits (1995):
- In "The Second Soul", the N'Tal are a race of symbiotic Energy Beings who require host bodies to survive. They forge a deal with humanity allowing them to reanimate and take possession of the bodies of the recently deceased. Although Dr. Michael Alders, the Director of the Department of Alien Studies, becomes concerned that they may have an ulterior motive, it turns out that the N'Tal have been completely honest and straightforward in their dealings with Earth.
- In "Feasibility Study", Adrielo belongs to a race with a pre-industrial society, several hundred years less technologically advanced than that of late 20th Century Earth. The Triune, who were in search of slaves, abducted a small group of them to determine whether they could survive the petrification disease which had killed every other species that they had brought to their planet. However, Adrielo's race was as susceptible to it as the others and the abductees soon died out.
- In "The Grell", the titular race were peaceful and primitive, which it made easy for humanity to enslave them when it was discovered that their sun was slowly going nova.
- In "Rule of Law", the Medusans, the indigenous population of Daedalus, are a peaceful and deeply spiritual species who only resort to violence in order to defend themselves or their eggs.
- They're pretty much all Human Aliens, but this applies to many encounters in Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Usually, the natives of any given planet are perfectly harmless and need the heroes' help to survive the Big Bad.
- Cole, from Tracker (2001). Averted with most other aliens, who are escaped prisoners. On the other hand, one reveals that she was jailed for something that isn't even a misdemeanor on Earth.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Gift", Williams' goal in coming to Earth, giving humanity a Cure for Cancer, was entirely selfless and honorable.
- The Ultra Series have several examples. While most of the franchise's threat comes from alien invaders trying to conquer earth, every now and then there are peaceful, non-violent alien visitors who gets stuck on Earth, either fleeing from another much deadlier alien threat, or losing their home planets and being forced to take refuge in another planet.
- The Pegassa Aliens from Ultraseven lose their homes due to a nuclear weapons test when Pegassa City, their home, becomes too close into colliding with Earth. Most of them are reduced to space nomads, but those who crashed on earth decide to spend the rest of their days hiding in the shadows instead of genuinely threatening the human populace. In fact, a teenage Pegassa - simply named Pega - actually shows up in a later series, Ultraman Geed, as a reoccurring main character and one of Geed's closest friends.
- Return of Ultraman has Alien Mates, a Space Inspector who lose his spaceship after crash-landing. Deciding to live the rest of his life as a human, Mates even adopted a human orphan as his own child.
- Another episode has one of two Mystellar Alien brothers, fleeing from an intergalactic war ravaging their home planet. The older of the two brothers definitely qualifies for this trope, going as far as to rescue a human child early in the episode, and then finding out Goh Hideki's true identity as Ultraman Jack, but choosing not to expose Jack in public as a favour.
- Guiro from Ultraman Leo is a child-like alien who befriends Tohru; he won't do any harm unless if provoked, and only wants to get along with humans. Rolan (a bird-like alien from a later episode) also counts, taking the form of a woman named Hoshimura and making handcrafted toy pinwheels for children.
- Deban from Ultraman Tiga is an alien living with a troupe of circus performers, who blends in with public due to civilians assuming his alien appearance is a mascot costume. He spends his days performing in stageshows as a clown, and is as friendly and as harmless as he sounds.
- Alien Laseta from Ultraman Dyna are an alien species who had to migrate from their home planet due to an impending ice age. One of them lands on Earth, befriending a lonely boy and hanging out with other children as friends.
- Alien Kyulia from Ultraman Cosmos crash-landed on Earth near a rural 300 years prior to the series, and was accepted by the villagers as one of their own. He decides to repay the earthlings by using his alien form to absorb poisonous pollen from a meadow of deadly flowers spawned by a meteorite to prevent any harm from happening to the villagers, even though the poison might eventually kill him someday, until Ultraman Cosmos arrives to purge the poison from the meteorite and save him in the process.
- Alien Neril from Ultraman Max, dubbed a "Friendly Cross-Alien", is another alien refugee from a destroyed planet, who becomes fascinated with Earth's beauty and intends to live the rest of his life as a human, until a hostile alien named Alien Godley invades forcing Neril to give up his life to save the Earth.
- Alien Fanton from Ultraman Mebius has a peaceful relationship with earthlings, due to being harmless and liking the food on Earth, which they gladly provides their technology to assist humans in exchange for food. One of them named Guruman even shows up in Ultraman X as the leader of the XIO's science division.
- Ultraman Geed has Pega, a young Alien Pegassa who serves as Riku/Geed's best friend and is shown as a supportive and loyal friend as well as lacking the malice of most other members of his kind.
- Marluru in Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga is a friendly young Alien Metron who is part of the main cast and helps his defense team GUTS Select fight against kaiju, similarly to Pega. Also in the same series there are Special Episodes hosted by Tiga's classic friendly alien, Deban.
- The alien, Josh Exley, in The X-Files episode "The Unnatural" just wants to play baseball.
- We learn later in the series that the Greys used to be this, but were corrupted into warmongers by the Black Oil.
- Yo Gabba Gabba!: Faldarz from the Storytime segment from the episode "Friends" is one.
Music
- Malinda Kathleen Reese: In one video, Malinda took random suggestions from her audience about a song to create. The song wound up being an "I Want" Song from the perspective of a friendly young alien girl who wants to visit Earth, not as an invader, but as a friend looking to share her knowledge with the humans.
Podcasts
- The Books of Thoth tends to takes a fairly optimistic view of extraterrestrials:
- Su-Say and Yih from “Welcome to the Xenarium” are, respectively, a friendly edutainer and a hard working member of the xenarium’s husbandry staff. They’re both incredibly welcoming and accommodating. Both are more than happy to answer the protagonists questions about the alien animals of the xenarium.
- Inverted in “Starshot.” From the prospective of the protagonist, humans are the innocent aliens. The protagonist comes to the conclusion that the probes were sent as a mission of exploration. Not advanced reconnaissance scouts.
Tabletop Games
- Starfinder has the skittermanders, a peaceful and naturally cooperative race of adorable fuzzballs.
Toys
- Tamagotchi: The majority of Tamagotchi breeds are friendly, and at worst nuisances that can't do much harm. Their primary interest in Earth is to learn about it and befriend humanity, and only originally came to it in the first place to seek refuge from their intoxicated planet.
Video Games
- Xananab from DK: Jungle Climber is a perfectly pleasant banana-shaped alien who only wants to get his stolen crystal bananas back from King K. Rool.
- The Mr. Saturns from EarthBound (1994) and Mother 3, while not explicitly stated to be extraterrestrial, fit this trope to a "T". Shigesato Itoi deliberately portrayed them as "symbols of innocence."
- The Wraith in Escape Velocity Nova, mostly their youngsters. The reason they're at war with the Polaris is simply because some Wraith children out playing buzzed some Polaran border patrol ships. The Polaris thought said Wraith were attacking and killed them. The rest of the Wraith launched reprisals and things went downhill from there. In the Polaris quest-line, the "war" is ended very quickly once the player helps establish a means of actual communication
- Elvis, the Maian from Perfect Dark more or less fits this trope, as opposed to the malevolent Skedar race of aliens.
- In Simon the Sorcerer 5: Who'd even want contact? the aliens turn out to be tourists who are oblivious to the fact that their cameras have the side effect of making magical objects explode. And they intend to use a giant camera on their ship to take a picture of the entire magical world. The end credits even show scenes from the game featuring the aliens with their Black Speech translated which changes the context of the scene.
- In The Sims 2, the aliens that abduct Sims (and impregnate males) are not known as particularly friendly. If, however, you've put aliens in your neighborhoods and didn't set them as "grouchy," they will be this trope; they're just like any other Sims except green.
- The Wisps from Sonic Colors also fit this trope as well, helping Sonic by allowing him to use their unique powers to free other Wisps from Eggman's grasp and they rescue Sonic from an inescapable black hole. By the time of Sonic Forces, they seem to have established a resident population on Sonic's world.
- The Lumas from Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, who not only serve as allies to Mario, but also turn into either Launch Stars, planets, mushrooms, and even sacrifice themselves to stop the black hole/supernova created when Bowser's galaxy exploded.
- ToeJam & Earl are entirely benevolent aliens who want nothing to do with Earth and its inhabitants. In fact the plot of the first game revolves around them wanting to leave Earth as quickly as possible as the planet is "lame".
- Parodied with Orbulon in WarioWare. He's an alien living on Earth who wants to Take Over the World... the legal, slow, and effectively harmless way.
Orbulon recently bought some land with his savings. That advanced his plans for his Earth invasion... a little.
- The Recon Site map in Zombidle features peaceful alien citizens who just want to perform their agriculture in peace. Unfortunately for them, the Villain Protagonist is the destructive and evil Bob the Necromancer who is certainly keen on destroying their houses, setting them on fire, and killing off their ruler.
Web Animation
- The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: The “poorly-drawn alien cats” from the trailer finally show up as actual aliens in “The Most Epic Sci-Fi Adventure”, and they are friendly. Even sharing their star fruits with the protagonists.
- One Starship Regulars (an Affectionate Parody of sci-fi shows, mostly Star Trek) had a Koraeg kid. Their race was devoid of vices and was in a war with The Federation. The protagonists managed to capture one of them, and while The Captain contemplated whether he should inject him with a lethal virus to wipe out their race, the less-than-perfect regulars get him drunk and laid.
Captain: You created the ultimate biological weapon for their society! A lazy profligate boozer!
Wilson: Don't forget gambler and whore-manger!
Tycho: We were thoroughgoing.
Web Originals
- SCP Foundation: SCP-163 is an alien lifeform extremely different from humanity biologically, though not so much mentally. It is also capable of altruism, loves to paint, and is very, very homesick.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Grace downplays this. She's a human-alien-squirrel hybrid shapshifter who is wholly innocent and naive about things, especially matters involving sex and nudity. But that aspect of her personality comes from her being raised by a renegade super-soldier project, completely cut off from the rest of the world, not from her alien origins. Once she is confronted by her past, she is left in emotional shambles, though she has been recovering.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers: Tony the alien is a downplayed example. The Roswell Incident happened when America learned a UFO crashed in New Mexico; upon finding Tony, America tried informing his boss, only to be brushed off. Tony would comfort him, leading to the two becoming friends. However, while fond of American and developing a liking to playing video games and watching movies, Tony generally communicates using a lot of curse words, and can become insanely jealous if something is receiving more attention than him.
- Not So Distant: Most of the aliens are portrayed this way, though Earth is nothing more than a giant archeological site by the time they visit.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: This is discussed by two children. One asks what the ramifications of such a species would be, and the other states that if we encountered one we should run like Hell; since all intelligent lifeforms act cruel as a result of evolution, any race that appears not to is either lying or is the precious creation of a self-hating evolved species. Either way, encountering one means we're about to be killed. Note that this is a rather radical misreading of evolutionary theory (altruism exists for a reason).
- Sluggy Freelance: Aylee is this... in a complicated way. Part of her being innocent and clueless is not understanding why she shouldn't eat humans. Her species is also a Horde of Alien Locusts, but she's not doing any of that stuff herself.
Western Animation
- The title character in the Defenders of the Earth episode "The Starboy" is a genetically engineered alien child who has left a trail of destruction across the galaxy; those whose planets he destroyed have banded together to destroy him - by destroying Earth, where he has recently landed. However, the Defenders realise Starboy is not inherently evil and lashed out because he was afraid of being abandoned. In the end, Mandrake (disguised as Starboy's creator) helps Starboy to understand that, if he wants to gain the friendship of others, he must stop using his powers destructively and start using them to help people.
- The Fantastic Four (1978) portrayed the Impossible Man this way. The Poppupian doesn't mean any harm, but is very gullible and manipulated by a trio of criminals into helping them in their crimes. He eventually turns against the crooks after Reed Richards informs Impy that the criminals aren't really his friends and are just using him.
- Martin the Martian (not to be confused with Marvin the Martian, who is absolutely not an example of this trope, with two exceptions) from the Felix the Cat (Joe Oriolo) cartoons. He's a very nice guy and hit it off with Felix as soon as he met him. He's always more than willing to lend Felix or Poindexter a hand when the Master Cylinder gives them trouble in outer space.
- Mo-Ron from Freakazoid! — who, as the name suggests, is not exactly the brightest star in the galaxy.
- Futurama:
- Dr. Zoidberg, an especially pathetic example. He's incredibly friendly to others and continues to treat others such as Hermes and Bender well despite them constantly being mean to him. He's such a Nice Guy, that in the Robot Santa episode where said killer robot declares that every single being is Naughty and deserves punishment (even the Orphan Robot), he makes an exception for Zoidberg and gives him a pogo stick for Christmas.
- Kif Kroker, more so as the series commences due to Flanderization. He's an assistant and sidekick to Earth's prominent Miles Gloriosus, which means he's seen some seriously messed-up stuff, but in terms of his personal life he's non-violent, shy and incoherent around his crush, keeps a Secret Diary like a stereotypical teenaged girl, and ends up as essentially The Ingenue in his relationship with Good Bad Girl Amy Wong. (There's even an innocent dimension to his species' method of reproduction, which occurs through a combination of feelings of love and skin-to-skin contact and resembles nothing so much as a real-life version of a Miss Conception; in fact, when Amy kisses him he regards it as Their First Time, although it's implied that their relationship does get more physical in the human sense from there).
- The eponymous protagonist of Jack the Explorer. "Earth is full of surprises!"
- Orbie from Katie and Orbie, so innocent that in fact, nobody in the series seems to care that he's an alien and treat him as any normal kid (being apparently the same age as the other title character, a five-year-old girl).
- In contrast to his usual portrayal, Marvin the Martian of Looney Tunes gets recharacterized as this in Baby Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny Builders, due to both shows being aimed at a younger audience.
- The Propulsion family from Ready Jet Go!, who often do silly things (i.e mowing the roof) because they think it's Earth-like behavior.
- Rocky and Bullwinkle had the two bumbling aliens Gidney and Cloyd, although while innocent, they were naïve enough to think Mr. Big had good intentions for giant metal-eating mice.
- The Skinnies from Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles are only fighting the humans because they're under the control of alien parasites. With that cleared up, they become fast friends and allies of the humans.
- In the Rupert episode "Rupert and the Space Pilot", Rupert Bear encounters a pair of aliens who turn out to be lost children. Rupert and the Professor succeed in getting the alien children back home.
- Samurai Jack: Pretty much any alien that ends up on Earth gets royally screwed over by Aku. Special mention goes to the Vadaquians, whose poor home planet was shamelessly stripped of all its water by the wretched demon. Worse, the other type of aliens are welcomed with open arms by Aku for his evil is law.
- Starfire from Teen Titans (2003). The original one in the comics is older, dresses much more fanservicey, and has rape in her backstory.
- The aliens in the season one episode of Totally Spies!, aptly titled "Aliens," were a very friendly race, who only came to Earth because they received a false distress signal from the villain of the week, who then captured them and forced them to work for slave labor.
- Now M'gann aka Miss Martian from Young Justice (2010) plays a similar role as Starfire above. She might not be quite as innocent as she seems.