Characters
"Horrifying creature" turns out fine thanks to their human parents.
Spoiler
A terrifying alien, monster, etc. is adopted by humans. Despite their incredible destructive power or explicitly violent nature, love conquers all.
1). Superman:
In at least two versions (the 2025 Superman movie and My Adventures with Superman), Kryptonians are conquerors. And even if they weren't, Clark develops near-unstoppable powers. Part of it is his inherent nature, but the values instilled in him by his parents (the Kents) are one of the main reasons he's an incorruptible beacon of good.
2). Dragon Ball:
The Saiyan Kakarot was sent to Earth as a baby to wipe out its dominant life. But thanks to the intervention of Son Gohan (and some handy brain damage), Kakarot was raised as "Son Goku." A slightly-feral but otherwise good natured kid.
3). Lilo & Stitch:
Experiment 626 was designed to be destructive. But thanks to his human family, he learns he can be more.
4). Hellboy:
Hellboy is supposed to be the harbinger of an apocalypse. But he was raised by a professor of the occult and turned out fine.
5). Black Clover:
An unnamed, low-tier devil ended up in the human world. He is briefly adopted by a human woman and showered with love. This motivates Liebe to help the protagonist stop the other devils.
6). Fullmetal Alchemist:
"Pride" was created from the original homunculus, the Dwarf in the Flask. He represents his father's arrogance and does not value human life in the slightest.
After having his foundational bank of human souls depleted, Pride is reduced to a small child. He is raised by a human mother without any of his memories, and by all accounts is an empathetic child.
Nope, as Angstrom Levy mentioned, many Earths show Debbie going evil and joining up with Omniman as his "partner" or lover, so the main verse Debbie is basically a cut above the rest.
Gammamon from Digimon Ghost Game
He's an unstable Digimon who can potentially evolve into unimaginably powerful dark form. However, he met a human, Hokuto Amanokawa, who tamed him and eventually made Gammamon a partner Digimon for his son, Hiro.
From the moment I laid eyes upon him I knew he was my favorite partner. I play his deck in the TCG and have my own vital bracelet. Get this man his champions!
He was supposed to be the Antichrist but thanks to a bizarre accidental baby switcheroo he was given an idyllic countryside childhood instead of the one that was supposed to corrupt him so demons spent 12 years tempting and corrupting a normal human child while the actual antidivine reality warper got really into sci fi magazines on his parents house in Tadfield.
Warlock (Yes, that's his name) is a really edgy sadistic kid but because he's a normal 12 year old with no supernatural powers his darkness is confined to making really edgy drawings.
The son and grandson of the dark knight Sparda respectively, these two are unbelievably powerful. But thanks to their human moms (and Sparda himself being a heroic dude) they end up being humanity’s greatest defenders against demonkind.
She is a kaiju that shapeshifted into a human after imprinting on her "mother." Thanks to that mom, she didn't become a city-destroying kaiju for a while. And when she does become said kaiju, named Harugon, the worst damage she does is like a few stalls at a rock concert or a boat crashing to the shore.
I mean, her mom is Lowkirkuinely evil, just not towards her... (Spoilers): she did nothing while kuroe's "sister", another Kaiju, just rampaged on through the city, potentially killing people and causing huge damages, knows that more Kaiju exist, and may be very destructive but just straight up does nothing about it. She doesn't do much actual evil beyond just doing nothing to stop harm, but she is set up to be a meddling force of misdeed in the story
When kotaro brings up what would happen if kuroe lost control and wrecked a bunch a shit, she says, and I quote "that's fine, a world where she and this little girl(the other Kaiju) can live freely might be a better one", while images of a city completely leveled flashes on screen. She shows total disregard towards humanity and does not care that the red Kaiju turned out evil and waves off any probability of kuroe being dangerous
Only One from Goddess of Victory Nikke: She was born as the ruler of the game's monsters, but the protagonist realized that she is just a newborn baby, so thanks to that, she has the chance to grow up to be a good person instead of a monster, just like the other queen.
adam young from good omens is the literal antichrist who is accidentally given to a normal human family in place of their own newborn baby so they raise him as a normal human kid. basically, him accidentally ending up a normal human kid is what stops the apocalypse from happening in the end, not any of the main characters' shenanigans
Adventure Time - 2 examples, Jake the Dog and Sweetpea
Jake’s biological dad, a shapeshifting alien, was an asshole. Jake himself was raised by Joshua and Margaret - a pair of hero dogs and inherited their better natures.
Sweetpea is the reincarnation of the Lich, an undead nihilist seeking the end of all existence. Reborn as a baby, he was raised by Treetrunks, a tiny elephant that’s kind of a hot mess but raises him with love and care. In an epilogue, he’s shown carrying Finn the human’s weapon, implying he also became a hero.
Lucy (Lucifer) is the son of the devil who is at the orphanage on Marsyas island, under the care of Arthur Parnasus who runs the orphanage. While the Department of Magical creatures treats Lucy as a danger, Arthur treats and teaches him like the other children. Arthur and Linus (who comes to inspect the orphanage) spend time during the novel telling him that he can be more than people think he is.
Mostly those who had funcional families when growing remained loyal or at least tried to be loyal (coughMagnuscough), those who didn't have proper family figures or were abused ended up being recruited by chaos.
This does not consider the ones that were directly corrupted by outside forces, such as demon possession and nails; also doesn't consider Alpharius.
Guilliman absolutely counts. Konor taught him that while Roboute may be faster, stronger, smarter than humans, that doesn’t make him better. His duty is a help those who need him, not to rule them. And that no matter how elaborate his plans may be, failure will still find him.
I've heard some people complain that they preferred the Grimdarkness of 40k around it's release. Fair enough, but it's undeniable that Guillemans return, and Cain being a propaganda poster-boy are evidence of the Imperium trying to claw it's way back into functionality and decency.
The tone of the setting has definitely changed over the nearly 40 years it's been out. Originally it had a lot more influence from the punk genre; now it's much more firmly in the cosmic horror category.
I actually feel like a setting where there's occasional flashes of hope and goodness is much better at being grimdark. If almost all the characters are evil, you can't get that upset when bad things happen to them, nor can it be upsetting when they succumb to temptation. And if there's not hope, there's no despair when hope is subverted. If there's nobody aiming for at least what they understand to be be functionality and decency, there's no stakes when they fail to achieve those things.
40K's original lore makes me feel the same way I do when watching the original Heavy Metal animated movie; very few of the characters are sympathetic enough for me to care what happens to them.
Functionality yes, but never decency. For both of them, horrific atrocities to us is just an average day to them. Both would find themselves right at home in Nazi Germany. Shit, Guilliman has at least a thousand Hitlers worth of genocide just during the Great Crusade.
Originally it wasn't a fascist and genocidal regime; they only killed people who refused to join the empire diplomatically or if you were a filthy xeno.
Magnus' doom was always his arrogance. While Guilliman took Konor's lessons to the heart, Magnus ignored his adoptive father's warnings because he thought he knew better
Similarly to Goku, Zidane from Final Fantasy 9 was actually an artificial lifeform called a Genome. he was meant to cleanse Gaia of all life so the people of Terra could take it over. Fortunately, Kuja his older brother, was jealous and made sure he lost his memories. Kuja didn't want any competition.
Instead, Zidane was raised by a band of thieves named Tantalus. Although he was involved in all manner of criminal mischief it was much better than the omnicide he was supposed to be doing.
Should it be mentioned that most of these are because said "horrific monster" looks like a cute human and if they looked any worse they would be treated like shit and turned out to be monsters? Like hellboy had to be raised on an army base because naturally most people would look at him and immediately try to kill him.
in all star superman, superman finds a baby sun-eater and raises it in the fortress of solitude. it ends up sacrificing itself trying to save him from solaris, the tyrant sun
Yeah but my point is that the general population wouldn't accept you and chances are there isn't going to be a batman or a superman to accept you and considering that it would naturally lead to dark places. Like if the kents saw a horrific monster baby instead of Clark, he wouldn't have a chance and only know human cruelty from that moment forward and act as such. Again with the hellboy example it took an extraordinary situation for everyone not to immediately want to kill him and your examples here proves my point even more considering it is fucking superman and batman.
In Fate Grand OrderSpace Ishtar was originally the Evil Half of a galaxy sized Goddess that would have destroyed the universe had it not been put to sleep and split in half.
The professor, a human or rather one of the last humans in existence, that found her was like “Holy shit, this can’t be good” but deciding that raising a good kid from the literal evil half of a goddess would give him some crazy bragging rights as well as strengthen his faith in human goodness, he raised her as his daughter, and somehow semi successfully made her a good girl who was sadly money grubbing and a bounty hunter, still a kind girl tho. She later ends up saving the galaxy from…uh past self
In a subversion of the trope, the good half was kidnapped by an evil space samurai who successfully corrupted her. She’s still really nice, like when she kidnapped a dude but then also tried to give the dude as much comfort as possible in apology, but she also is willing to commit crimes like kidnapping a dude so she’s an example of human malice spreading. And then that got subverted again when she found her past self, the original goddess, trying to breaking time and space to annihilate the universe, so she’s did a fusion dance with her evil half to repel that version
And this got subverted again because then she turned evil again cause she got high on her power and tried to rule the galaxy, so a passing space cop came by and beat her up and now she’s good again.
Tangential fun fact: a version of her also recently got isekai'd to the Honkai Imaginary Tree by hitching a ride with a version of Tohsaka Rin who may or may not be the first version from the Fate/EXTRA timeline (as I understand it, contemporary "Rin" in Fate/EXTRA is actually Rin's descendant or something), as suggested by certain lore incongruities mentioned by that Rin and Ishtar, despite the fact that the Honkai: Star Rail collab is technically with Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works.
Why am I bringing this up? Because even the IRL collab lore is starting to get confusing and labyrinthine in this case, since there's genuine confusion around which versions of the characters were in the collab - or even if it's new versions of them - despite the collab officially only being from one timeline.
Believe it or not I’m actually about a character who is exactly this. It’s a girl who was a telepath that is later possessed by an evil spirit(think ace from jlu mixed with Regan from the exorcist) and is later purged and rescued by a paranormal investigator. He later adopts her and teacher her to use her powers which she then uses to defend her hometown from the paranormal after her father mysteriously disappears.
Jolteon is actually an eldritch monstrosity of unlimited power but he was riased by his dads Umbreon and Espeon so well that hes just a sweet and gentle boy who wouldn't hurt a fly but still occasionally eats souls cause he doesn't understand that, that is a bad thing.
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u/redelectro7 9h ago
Mark Grayson - Invincible
Mostly 'parent' but it's heavily shown in the show that Debbie is the reason Mark doesn't turn out like his father and other Viltrumites.
https://giphy.com/gifs/9hR8Dv4tYNYeWriXXC