Her babysitter charges extra.
"I'll slay anything that's evil! That's my deal!"
— Finn, Adventure Time, "The Enchiridion"
In fiction, heroes generally try to avoid killing the villain unless it's absolutely necessary. This especially applies to child heroes, who are more prone to Black-and-White Morality and are reluctant to take anyone's life except as an absolute last resort, no matter how evil or dangerous they may be. Some, however, have no such qualms and are more than willing to kill a villain in order to stop them or protect their loved ones, and seem to have no problem doing so if the villain is that evil. This is often a sign that the villain has crossed the Moral Event Horizon, that even a child who generally values all life decides they have to be destroyed.
This can count as Troubling Unchildlike Behavior if they take too much pleasure in it, but it may simply be used to show the hero's sense of justice or commitment to doing whatever it takes to stop the villain. Compare Children Forced to Kill, where the child is very unwilling to do this but is forced to against their will, and would likely be traumatized by it afterwards, and Child Soldiers, where the child is a member of the armed forces regardless of lethality. There's also Would Hurt a Child, when a villain is prepared to be violent to a kid; in such cases it may be self-defense. Contrast with Tyke-Bomb where the villain makes the child into a weapon. Also see Little Miss Badass.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Chargeman Ken! is about the titular Kid Hero who fights a race of Always Chaotic Evil aliens who seek to invade Earth and Kill All Humans. How exactly does he fight said aliens? By blasting them with his laser gun, of course!
- Digimon Adventure 02: Downplayed with Davis, at least in the english dub: he was willing to kill a Golemon who was causing trouble who was not Brainwashed and Crazy by being controlled by a dark ring or dark spiral, and he even gave Yolei a speech about how being the hero isn't always pretty to advocate killing Golemon. But before they resolved to kill it, Palmon informed them that Golemon wasn't even a real digimon, but an artificial construct made from dark spire material.
- Dragon Ball:
- Child Goku doesn't hesitate to kill enemies if he thinks they deserve it or they seem too dangerous to leave alive. Oddly, he actually becomes more pacifistic as an adult, possibly as a result of training under Kami, to the point that his tendency to spare enemies becomes somewhat problematic.
- Gohan is a similar case to his father, but he's already averse to fighting to begin with and will only throw down if his friends and family are in danger, unlike Goku. When Gohan is pushed to his limits, however, he can get surprisingly brutal for his age, especially when he's forced to fight Cell.
- Hunter × Hunter: Gon and Killua are a pair of adorable kid heroes, but have no qualms about killing their opponents when their lives depend on it. This is portrayed not as Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, but rather a trait of their Blue-and-Orange Morality, itself a product of Crapsaccharine World that is a twisted mockery of our own. Killua Zoldyck is the more notable of the two. At first glance, he appears to be an ordinary 11-year-old boy who acts just as cheerful and mischievous as most kids his age. In actuality, he's the heir of an entire family of assassins, having been trained to become a ruthless killer from an absurdly young age. As such, he's an Unscrupulous Hero who can murder a grown adult in the blink of an eye, and some antagonists realize they're Mugging the Monster the moment they feel his Killing Intent.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: In the "Bites The Dust" arc, 11-years-old Hayato Kawajiri, after seeing Yoshikage Kira's sub-Stand Bites the Dust kill the heroes in two previous loops, prepares to kill Kira to save the heroes and his mother. He secretly takes Stray Cat under Kira's nose, and when Kira's in position he has Stray Cat hit the Serial Killer with one of its air bubbles. Sadly, Hayato's attempt to manipulate the fate-rigid time loop leads Kira to put a wristwatch in his shirt pocket due to a burnt wrist, which protects Kira from the air bubble. Luckily, Hayato had a backup plan that involved calling Josuke to come to his house before the other heroes...
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: Part 5 of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is where Anyone Can Die is invoked due to a Black-and-Grey Morality System. Protagonist Giorno Giovanna is 15 and has killed a number of people in the Part. These include Leaky Eye Luca, Polpo, and Melone.
- In the final arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, Emporio Alniño is the only member of the heroes left after Enrico Pucci kills off the others during Made in Heaven, and Pucci plans to kill him so no one can prevent the heaven he and DIO plotted to create. However, Emporio took advantage of Pucci's current immunity to the gravity of fate to trick him into pushing Weather Report's Stand Disk into Emporio when he punched the young boy. With a combination of his own stand Burn Down the House, the temporary use of Weather Report, and Made of Heaven accelerating Pucci, Emporio kills the Big Bad by filling the air with oxygen, with Pucci suffering from oxygen poisoning faster than the young boy.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Simon, even as a young boy, has no problem killing off his enemies. This only continues when he reaches adulthood.
Comic Books
- Batman: Damian Wayne is the bastard son of Bruce Wayne & Talia al Ghul and the grandson of Ra's al Ghul, the leader of the League of Assassins. As such, being raised by assassins causes Damian to become much more willing to inflict violence on criminals than the rest of the Bat-Family, though he gets better later on.
- Captain America: Part of Bucky's backstory was that one of the reasons Captain America was given a "kid sidekick" is that Bucky was trained and perfectly willing to use lethal force to accomplish a mission, and would often do so without Cap's knowledge. It's generally accepted that Bucky was 15-17 years old for much of WWII (this is very much Truth in Television, as many conscripts and volunteers lied about their age being 18). This only really became a part of Bucky's backstory recently, as the Silver Age and Bronze Age Captain America didn't use lethal force, then it became something that was very much Depending on the Writer, and now it's accepted that Cap will use lethal force if that's what it takes to get the job done or protect others.
- Kick-Ass: Mindy McCready, also known as Hit Girl, is a child who dresses up as a superhero and butchers her way through dozens if not hundreds of criminals. At one point, she even breaks into a prison wing containing only death row inmates just so she can kill them before the state does.
- The Umbrella Academy: Invoked. Sir Reginald Hargreeves raised his adopted super children to be this as part of the Umbrella Academy. His abusive parenting, rigorous training, and encouragement of lethal force are shown to have caused psychological scarring and estrangement in the Hargreeves siblings as adults.
Fan Works
- Another Sunrise: Johanna, infamous for her ferocious killing spree at the end of her Games after feigning helplessness until then (which also caused a financial crisis in the Capitol due to almost no one betting on her), is a few years younger than the 21-year-old Gauge, who won two years before her, apparently making Johanna 13-15 years old during her Games, young even by outlying Victor standards.
Films — Animated
- Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker: Invoked and played with. In the original version, flashbacks show that a young Robin/Tim Drake was tortured and brainwashed by the Joker into becoming a mini version of him, as a way to hurt Batman at his core. Joker planned to have Tim shoot Batman, but Tim resists just enough to turn the gun on the Joker and kill him instead, ending his hero career due to the trauma of the whole ordeal.
- In Big Hero 6, Hiro Hamada comes dangerously close to Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and becoming this when he discovers Callaghan survived the fire, and didn't care that Tadashi went back for him at the cost of his life. Only Baymax showing him footage of Tadashi building him brings Hiro back from the edge.
- In The Incredibles 1, Dash and Violet take down several of Syndrome's henchmen, although it's clearly in self-defense and they've been explicitly warned that said henchmen are prepared to kill them. Most of the deaths result from using their powers to evade the bad guys or distract them into crashing their ships. Still, nobody seems particularly bothered about this at all.
- A deleted scene from Lilo & Stitch (2002) has a particular disturbing example where Stitch (who could be considered a kid due to being born quite recently and his lack of maturity) kicks Pudge the fish out of his tide pool and allows a flock of seagulls to eat him, all while smiling to himself (at least until Lilo gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech). Downplayed as his victim is an animal instead of a person, but the cruelty makes up for it.
Films — Live-Action
- In the climax of Ben 10: Race Against Time, Ben kills the Big Bad, Eon, and his minions.
- Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass (2010) is 12 years old and kills about 40 gangsters and Mooks throughout the whole movie.
- In Logan, Laura is only eleven years old when she is forced to fight Transigen's mercenaries, but she is Wolverine's daughter that shares his powers and his berserker tendencies.
- Kelly in The Lost World: Jurassic Park is about twelve and uses her gymnastics skills to kick a raptor to its death, being the first person to score a dinosaur kill in the films.
- The NeverEnding Story (1984): Atreyu is a sweet kid who looks 12 or 13 at most, but is willing to kill to save Fantasia, as he challenges his nemesis Gmork to fight to the death despite Gmork not knowing who he was facing, and kills him by stabbing him in the heart with an improvised stone knife.
- Star Wars:
- In The Phantom Menace, nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker (somewhat accidentally) blows up the Droid Control Ship, killing its Neimoidian crew.
- Jedi padawans in general are often rather young. While most are older teenagers, many 14-year-olds are put into action during the Clone Wars and participate in combat alongside their masters and clone troopers. Ahsoka Tano is only 14 when she becomes Anakin's apprentice towards the beginning of the war while Caleb Dume is only 14 when Order 66 happens.
Literature
- The Dark Tower: 12-year-old Jake Chambers becomes a gunslinger and kills several people in combat.
- Firestarter: 7-year-old Charlie McGee uses her pyrokinetic powers to kill several agents of an evil government agency called the Shop, who want to capture her and kill her father. She's severely traumatized by her own actions and refuses to use her powers afterwards for a long time.
- Mage Errant: The four very young main characters live in a Crapsack World where Might Makes Right and the only way to get what you want is to gather more power. So by the end of the series, due to a combination of self-defense and honest attempts to stop bad guys, all four of them have body counts in at least the double digits.
- Les Misérables: Gavroche is about twelve and is eager to join in on the uprising at the barricade, specifically requesting a gun and trying to shoot a soldier attacking him, only to discover it's not loaded. He also has no problem exposing Javert as a spy knowing that the rebels would likely execute him.
- In Peter Pan, while the eponymous character is centuries old chronologically, he's biologically and mentally about twelve. He has no issue with killing villains, especially the pirates.
- Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: While the titular teenage / pre-teen princesses usually spare their enemies after disarming them, that stops if they're fighting someone that can't be disarmed, cannot be dissuaded from killing them, or is a worshipper of the God of Evil.
- The Steam Man of the Prairies: Johnny Brainerd, a teenager, takes his machine out and ends up killing buffalo and a bear.
- Treasure Island: Jim Hawkins, whose age is unspecified but who is presumably either a preteen or in his early teens, shoots and kills the pirate Israel Hands in self-defense.
- Twig: The Lambs are all under 16 at the beginning of the story and have no problems with killing, as they're mostly child experiments in service to the amoral Radham Academy.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Dorothy, a child, accidentally kills the Wicked Witch by splashing her with water.
Live-Action TV
- The kids in Stranger Things show little problem with killing since most of the threats they face are supernatural monsters, but Season 3 has Dustin electrocuting Dr. Zharkov with a cattle prod.
Video Games
- 14-year-old Gunvolt from the Azure Striker Gunvolt Series is an extraordinarily powerful Adept with Shock and Awe powers who starts out making a living fighting the local Fantastic Racism-powered MegaCorp. Pretty much all of his fights are to the death, partially because there isn't really any way to make electricity any less lethal but mostly because if he doesn't kill his enemies, they will kill him first.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, Alphinaud and Alisaie are 16-year-old Teen Geniuses who join the Scions of the Seventh Dawn to follow in their grandfather Louisoix's footsteps. But their age doesn't exclude them from danger, and they wind up in numerous battles where they have no choice but to kill in self-defense. Given that they both come from the pacifistic nation of Sharlayan, it takes time for both twins to acclimate to this. Interestingly, while they both start off as Arcanists, which mixes DPS and healing magic, it's Alisaie who goes full tilt on being this trope as she takes up the Gladiator job before becoming a Red Mage. Alphinaud ends up becoming a Sage — still deadly, but heavily leaning towards healing.
- The Fuga: Melodies of Steel trilogy stars a group of children ranging from 4 to 13 years old, and while they do display plenty of Reluctant Warrior traits, they also have no qualms about killing those directly threatening Gasco and all who live in it; whenever the villains do survive their encounters with the Taranis it's usually not for the children's lack of trying.
- The Last of Us: Both in the game and in the TV adaptation, 14-year-old Ellie kills two people in self-defense, using a cleaver. In the game, she also shoots a man in the head to save Joel, but in the show, she only wounds him and Joel finishes him off.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Link is, at his very oldest, a teenager in the majority of the games, and a preteen in many of them. This doesn't stop him slaughtering his way through droves of enemies, including definitively sentient beings and even the occasional human (or close enough, anyway). There's a reason he's the page image for Villain Killer.
- Done in a particularly infamous scene from Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, when Zelda fatally stabs Hektan:
Hektan: YOU'VE KILLED ME!
Zelda: Good.
- Sonic the Hedgehog is said to be a Kid Hero in his mid-teens, but he's had no qualms with putting down some especially dangerous foes like the Biolizard, Solaris, the Erazor Djinn, Dark Gaia, the Black Knight, the Time Eater and THE END. He's also been perfectly willing to leave Eggman rotting in the vacuum of space or send him careening into the abyss (of course, Eggman's Joker Immunity prevents it from sticking). Sonic Forces even has him make this amusing counter-threat towards Infinite:
Infinite: What would you like your epitaph to read? How about, "Here lies the blue buffoon"?
Sonic: (unfazed) Why not, "Here dozes the masked clown"? Might as well make it for the person who needs one, right? - A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: The kid Sibling Team and friends don't shy away from killing criminals who are going to murder them, and only spare friends, friends of friends, or people who don't put their hearts into killing the Player Party.
Web Comics
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, the titular doctor has a kid sidekick in the form of Gordito, who's a 12-year-old gunslinger with a massive mustache he grew out of sheer will. Being a massive fan of Batman, the Doctor initially treated him as his version of Robin, which didn't work as Gordito is neither particularly plucky nor naive.
- My Impossible Soulmate: Discussed. In chapter 6 of this High Fantasy comic, after Nara has knocked out the Demon Marchosias, teenaged Eiji offers
to kill him while he's unconscious. But Marchosias wakes up before Eiji can actually do it.
- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal brings us a kid hero with the power to make puppies appear from anywhere. Absolutely anywhere.
Web Videos
- In Oxventure Presents Deadlands, Luke Westaway's character is Delacy, a 12-year-old boy with a short temper and a disturbing amount of skill with his pistol Rooster. He has a habit of believing Murder Is the Best Solution, notably shooting a famous singer through the neck in a formal duel because he offered to shoot his gun out of his hand, and in Season 2, shooting a guard in the head after he'd surrendered. His surrogate grandpa Nate at one point imagines a small Delacy on his shoulder, encouraging him to solve the situation with violence.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: As a child, Finn was more than willing to kill monsters if he thought the situation called for it (so long as they were evil, at least). He often ends up killing one-shot villains or bigger-scale villains if he feels he has to. As the series goes on and Finn grows, he starts to realize that killing all of your problems isn't a solution, and that sometimes attempting to understand one's enemy and/or making peace is a better way to stop conflict.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Played with throughout the series. The young characters, except for Aang, all grew up in the midst of the Hundred-Year War between the Fire Nation and the rest of the world. As such, most of them have expressed a willingness to kill the enemy though they will not go so far as to take unnecessary lives the way Jet's morally gray Freedom Fighters are. In Book 3 in particular, the other members of Team Avatar all try to convince Aang that the only way to stop the war is to kill Fire Lord Ozai, while Katara in "The Southern Raiders" has no qualms about killing the man who killed her mother, and decides to relent only because he is so pathetic that he isn't worth the cost of a revenge killing. Aang comes close to playing the trope straight in the final battle with Ozai, but is able to Take the Third Option due to his commitment to peace and his strong will, ultimately subverting the trope.
- Big City Greens: Cricket Green is a mischievous country boy with a love for adventure and tendency to get in a lot of trouble, which makes his intent to straight up murder his family's Arch-Enemy Chip Whistler all the more shocking before his sister Tilly tries convince Cricket that he's becoming no better than Chip.
- Gravity Falls: Subverted and played for laughs in "Blendin's Game". After being forced to compete in Globnar by Blendin Blandin, who planned to Time Wish them out of existence, and then winning against all odds, Dipper and Mabel are asked to decide Blendin's fate. Mabel screams, "DEATH!" but immediately takes it back, saying she got caught up in the heat of the moment. She and Dipper actually decide to give Blendin a second chance, to make up for ruining his life in the first place.
- Invincible (2021): Played for Drama; Oliver, Mark's half-brother and the half-Viltrumite/half-Thraxxan son of Omni-Man, believes strongly in killing villains in stark contrast to Mark's Thou Shall Not Kill policy. This leads Oliver to kill both of the Mauler Twins, even after the remaining one surrenders, all the while justifying it as necessary or trying to dodge the blame.
- In the series finale of The Little Mermaid (1992), Ariel kills the Manta's brain sponge by tying it between two pillars, then pushing a boulder onto it and crushing it to bits.
- My Little Pony: Megan Williams is said to be 13 in production notes◊ and is perfectly willing to kill the villains if that's what it takes, killing Tirac, Squirk, and Crank herself, which gives her the highest kill count in the show.
- The Owl House: Downplayed with the 14-year-old protagonist, Luz Noceda. While she doesn't outright try to kill Emperor Belos, she has no qualms letting him dissolve in the boiling rain and allows Raine, Eda, and King to finish him off for good.
- The Powerpuff Girls:
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Downplayed with the titular Powerpuff Girls. For the most part, despite their tendency to severely injure villains, they do their best to avoid outright killing them and defy the trope, especially Blossom. However, there are times when they resorted to lethal methods because of a certain villain being either too dangerous or powerful to keep alive, mostly minor villains. Both Bubbles and Buttercup are also known to have let themselves out of the hinges on occasion, especially against the recurring giant monsters who tend to be less sapient than their usual villain caste.
- The Powerpuff Girls (2016): In spite of the 2016 series being overall Lighter and Softer than the 1998 one, the Powerpuff Girls play the trope straight by being considerably less hesitant to kill villains outside of their Rogues Gallery (though many of the villains still don't die in the end, killing them is commonly intended by the girls), on top of also being far more violent to boot. This also extends to Silico, one of the gallery's new members for the series, who was subjected to a Fate Worse than Death in "Lights Out!" due to his increasingly dangerous schemes reaching a boiling point.
- Rick and Morty: 14-year-old Morty Smith went from an awkward and mild-mannered teenager into a darker and more cynical character because of the influence of his immoral supergenius grandfather, Rick Sanchez, who rarely shows any qualms about the horrible things he does on his adventures. While Morty tries to be Rick's moral compass and stop his grandfather from going too far in his actions, it's also shown that Morty is just as willing to harm or even kill others if pushed too far or if his family is in peril.
- Trollhunters: Jim is one of these after Gaining the Will to Kill killing Bular the Butcher note , Angor Rot (The First Time), Gunmar the Black And Bellroc in the Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans. Part of Jim's early development in Trollhunters is him learning how to kill, after openly defying the Trollhunter's second rule ("Always finish the fight.") by refusing to kill his first two opponents. Trolls being a Long-Lived Magic Race had this rule of "Kill your foe now so they don't seek Revenge or cause further harm."
- Downplayed in WordGirl, who generally uses non-violent means of stopping the villains, but does give a rather unsettling demonstration of what she might do if pushed too far.
