"Oh, monster of so little size... is that a parasprite before my eyes?"
Cute-looking characters that are on the evil end.
This trope occurs because, similar to other tropes such as Light Is Not Good, it neatly subverts the audience's expectations and keeps them guessing as to where the plot will go and where characters fall under the morality scale. Plus, the contrast can be just plain funny.
The phenomenon of people losing the ability to think critically around cute things, so The Reveal that someone or something was Evil All Along can serve as a nice Plot Twist, especially if the work in question is aimed at a younger audience where one might expect this trope to be averted.
Cute is often evil in Darker and Edgier works. In extreme cases, cuteness is a sign of someone being secretly an Eldritch Abomination.
Very often the core of morally questionable, if not outright malevolent, children types such as the Creepy Child, Kids Are Cruel, Deliberately Cute Child, Spoiled Brat, Evil Orphan, Little Miss Con Artist and especially the Enfant Terrible, who exists mostly to enforce this trope.
If they succeed at causing death and destruction, this trope will likely overlap with Grotesque Cute or end up showing that Evil Makes You Monstrous.
Contrast Creepy Good and Beauty Equals Goodness. Compare Beauty Is Bad, a milder form. The Fake Cutie is what you get when this type of character pretends to be the legitimately cuddly and nice variant. Also see Killer Teddy Bear, Creepy Doll, Psycho Poodle and Monster Clown.
Compare and contrast Adorable Abomination, which may or may not be evil. In some cases it can be played as a near-inversion of this trope, by creating a cute, friendly version of an Always Chaotic Evil creature. Also compare Adorable Evil Minions, where the cute critters serve as Mooks for the Big Bad or another villain.
See also tropes such as Cute and Psycho, Corruption by a Minor, Killer Rabbit, Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon, and Crapsaccharine World.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Black Butler: Ciel is absolutely adorable and looks like a weak, androgynous dandy, but he's from a long line of folks who straight-up refer to themselves as evil aristocrats. The boy sold his soul to a devil in exchange for a shot at a years-long spree of murder. His crimes include fraud, first degree murder, second degree murder, arson, kidnapping, threatening a child with a gun, child endangerment, and child murder. If you want to be Ciel's friend, you have to be subservient to him and be willing to die for him, or he will either abandon or kill you.
- Black Lagoon: For all their creepy qualities no one can deny that Hansel and Gretel are cute.
- Deadman Wonderland is set in a prison that is also a theme park. The inmates stage shows for the visitors. This is mostly promoted by the... er... Promoter, who seems to run the place and is a Psychopathic Manchild who loves to put cute, evil props everywhere. Even the sadistic way they restrain the prisoners is this: every prisoner has a collar constantly pumping poison into their body, the prisoners can't run away or else they won't get the "bitter candy" a foul tasting cure in a candy wrapper. Also they have to do menial or sometimes life threatening things to get the in prison currency to buy the candies. They can die in the bright and colorful carnival, from doing nothing! It makes you wonder what the guards think since they don't bat an eyelash, the whole thing is a sugary sweet and disgusting spectacle like death race, convicts dying and suffering for entertainment, mostly the promoter's.
- In D.Gray-Man, the Millennium Earl and Road Kamelot seem to have a theme like this going on.
- Digimon Frontier: Lucemon is, in his first form, a small and adorable angel boy, who also happens to be the real villain behind Cherubimon, a total Knight Templar, and a Satanic Archetype. Averted with his more evil-looking second and third forms.
- Dont Cry Maou Chan takes this trope to the extreme. The main character is so adorable that the heroes would much rather hug and fawn over her than fight her.
- Majin Buu, the final major villain of Dragon Ball Z. The form that our heroes encounter first is an Ugly Cute, fat pink humanoid of mass destruction with the mentality of a toddler. He also has a massive craving for sweets... sweets made by zapping his victims with his head antenna and transforming them into foodstuffs that are still completely conscious as they are being eaten. On the other hand, this is the version of Majin Buu that does a Heel–Face Turn later on.
- In Elfen Lied, as a general rule, if you see a cute thing (especially if it's a young girl with pink hair), it's generally a good idea to run screaming in the opposite direction. Most of the cute characters you see are superpowered psychopaths who would just as soon tear you in half as look at you. Mariko, for instance, is a little Diclonius in a wheelchair, and can tear apart opponents without lifting a finger. Special mention to Nousou, who is drawn in an effeminate, Bishōnen style and is fawned over by some of the other cute characters, suggesting that he may just be a nice guy after all. He is then promptly shown overseeing a messy process of stripping the spinal columns out of skeletal torsos of diclonii that were killed for that express purpose. But the shining example is the Diclonius DNA Voice, the Enemy Within to all Diclonii and the source of their evil, an entity which seeks to destroy all humanity... and takes a form resembling Kaede, Lucy's childhood self.
- The Puchuus from Excel♡Saga.
- Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist. He's an Eldritch Abomination that can effortlessly rip people apart with his Living Shadow, and he has the body of a small child.
- Housing Complex C: Yuri Koshide is a Bespectacled Cutie little girl who turns out to be an Enfant Terrible and one of the culprits behind the murders afflicting the complex who really likes killing people.
- Nui Harime from Kill la Kill. She's a complete psychopath, but will never stop smiling and being bubbly about everything even as she tells the protagonist how she killed her father.
- Most Disas/Netherbeasts in Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka look like cute mascot creatures. Doesn't stop them from sadistically ripping apart humans in all its gory details.
- Punie Tanaka from Magical Witch Punie-chan takes this trope and Crosses the Line Twice with it.
- Nobunaga the Fool has Nell and Bianchi. They act like adorable children, but their idea of playtime involves murdering people and causing chaos.
- Odd Taxi has a World of Funny Animals cast in which basically everyone is cute in kind of a Sanrio style. This doesn't stop them from featuring dangerous, murderous Yakuza and people driven to murderous extremes. And more to the point, the real villain of the piece is the saccharine-sweet Idol Singer "Yuki Mitsuya", actually Sakura Wadagaki, who's adorable in both human and cat form.
- Paranoia Agent: Everything cute or sweet puts you in great peril and the series is social commentary on how cuteness is over-saturating Japanese society (particularly Otaku culture) to unhealthy levels.
- Pokémon the Series has featured both an evil Teddiursa and an evil Togepi.
- Popotan being what it is, it still provides an example in the form of the little girl from episode 4. She appears to be a normal child at first, but is actually a ghost who wishes to trap people where she can be with them forever.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
- When you first see Kyubey, it's the most adorable thing in the world, looking part-fox, part-bunny, and part-kitten, but the blank red eyes and unchanging cat smile just get creepier and creepier every time you look at it. There is a very good reason for this. Gen Urobuchi specifically asked character designer Ume Aoki to make it "as cute as possible."
- There's Charlotte, who's incredibly adorable until you see her true form... Which is still kind of cute. It's just too big and has too many sharp teeth.
- Iron Maiden in Shaman King, but her alignment is more Lawful Stupid than evil.
Art
- While not "evil" per se, New York's Japan Society had an exhibit called "Bye Bye Kitty!!!", which is a reaction against the kawaii aesthetic.
Asian Animation
- Happy Friends: Terror (when she's not transformed) is probably one of the most prominent examples. She almost failed graduation because Big M. didn't think she was intimidating enough - or at all. Some of the other untransformed monsters also count as this.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who: The Cuddlesomes from Cuddlesome were the hottest must-have toys of the 1980s: cuddly pink talking hamsters, sold as the perfect toy for children of all ages. They are also the product of a Wicked Toymaker and designed to kill any adult who had not loved them enough.
Comic Books
- Beep the Meep from Doctor Who Magazine is a bloodthirsty alien warlord who looks absolutely adorable. When around people who haven't heard of him he plays up his cuteness in order to manipulate them.
- The Inventor from Ms. Marvel (2014). He looks like an anthropomorphic cockatiel, but he's also a mad scientist and criminal mastermind.
Comic Strips
- One Bloom County arc features an Alien Invasion by creatures called Zygorthians, who blast cities with death rays, enslave women, serve the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir as hors d'oeuvres, and lock Pat Robertson in a room full of AIDS activists. When one of them is finally seen, he looks like a cute little puppy. (With antennae.)
- Garfield: Nermal is sickeningly cute, and Garfield's mortal antagonist (Garfield keeps trying to mail him to Abu Dhabi). Nermal does tend to be downright mean to Garfield at times, and he admits in one strip that his is purposely stunting his growth with coffee and cigarettes in order to stay a baby, and admits to being a midget in another one.
Fan Fiction
- Pokémon Collagen: "Pikachu", who appears cute and friendly, is secretly trying to lure unsuspecting victims into a false sense of security so they can feed its Fibreap master.
Films — Animation
- Exploited in The Bad Guys (2022). Because the general public won't expect a cute little guinea pig as being evil, this lets Professor Marmalade use this as a cover-up for his evil deeds.
- Darla Dimple from Cats Don't Dance is an adorable child actress and a Shirley Template. She's also an obnoxious prima donna and a psychopath who's willing to take extreme measures to ruin Danny's life.
- Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove is the main antagonist of the film and is later seen turning into a cat. In the sequel Kronk's New Groove, she turns into a pink bunny to distract the angry senior citizens after they learn that her potion was a lie.
- In Hoodwinked!, a Little Red Riding Hood adaptation, the villain is Boingo, that little rabbit that follows Red around all the time. In the sequel, those dang "innocent" children they were trying to find.
- Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants has an adorable, fluffy, big-eyed spider who seems scary at first, but turns out friendly. Cue the sequel, which has... an incredibly cute, fluffy, big-eyed, colourful spider dead set on eating the protagonists (they are ladybugs). But man, it's cute!
- Lotso Huggin' Bear from Toy Story 3, whose jovial facade hides the fact that he runs Sunnyside Day Care with an iron fist, letting his cronies boss around other toys who have to suffer being roughed-up by the rambunctious toddlers in the Caterpillar Room. He also has deep-seated anger and resentment issues from when his old owner replaced him.
Films — Live-Action
- In Galaxy Quest, the crew stumbles upon a cuddly group of child-like aliens, which they watch from afar. They almost fall for it... until the creatures show their true colors and eat a wounded member of their own species. Of course, tag-a-long crew-member Guy Fleegman doesn't fall for it for a second, but that's because he watched the TV show and knows the drill.
- The title creatures in Gremlins start out as cute furry little things, but if fed after midnight, they become green monsters.
- In Scooby-Doo (2002), the villain is Scrappy.
Literature
- Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest: The Ice Caves Labyrinth has several bunny-like creatures that are adorable... and weaponize that, approaching unaware victims so they'll pick them up, allowing the monsters to drain them and make them die of hypothermia.
- In Artemis Fowl, Opal Koboi belongs to the subspecies of Fairies known as Pixies, well-known for looking child-like and absolutely adorable. She also happens to be an Ax-Crazy, greedy, deceptive, egomaniac Psychotic Womanchild and one of the major villains in the series.
- Kohina Hiruko from Black Bullet is the most adorable evil cursed child you can think of to the point that you just beg to be killed by her cuteness.
- Harry Potter:
- Shortly before the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling released a teaser statement saying that the book included a character with "a personality like poisoned honey." This character turned out to be Dolores Umbridge, a government bureaucrat who ended up as possibly the most hated character in the entire series, up to and including Voldemort. Her many terrible traits are underscored by her self-expression: she wears pink at all times, has an office decorated in china kitten plates, even has an Alice band in her hair (and she's well into middle-aged at least), and talks in a simpering, sweet manner.
- Hepzibah Smith, seen in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a lesser example: an elderly, extremely vain woman who hangs desperately onto coquettishness and sweetness in an attempt to seduce Tom Riddle.
- The Kicks from The Lost Fleet are a race of adorable four foot tall genocidal maniacs who every alien race in the galaxy fears, including the Enigmas and Dancers. Their resemblance to teddy bears and cows mean that Admiral Gerry finds it very difficult to convince the rest of humanity they are an existential threat.
- "Mr. Widemouth": The titular Mr. Widemouth is an adorable little Faux Furby creature that is also a repeat child murderer.
- Redwall: Baby Veil from Outcast of Redwall sends Bryony into paroxysms of Cuteness Overload, even when he's actively in the process of biting her. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work when he's in his teens and starts playing with poisons.
- The titular character of The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Tanya Von Degurechaff. She joined the military at age 9 and spent the next 3-4 years becoming one of, if not the most frightening soldiers in the entire Imperial Army (terrifying both allies and foes alike). She is a blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl, who looks almost like a doll. Despite her cherubic appearance, she is an absolute nightmare on the battlefield (able to slaughter entire battalions/squadrons single-handed). She is cold, calculating and ruthless above and beyond the call of duty. She has a personal grudge against God (not figuratively, but literally). And she has demonstrated on more than one occasion to have no problems using her childlike appearance and qualities to gain tactical advantages that typically result in bloody victory. As one of her commanding officers says, "She is a devil/monster in the form of a little girl."
- In Snow White: Fair & Sinister Heart, the cute little girl Mouse turns out to be part of the Queen's subconscious, who tries to make everyone have fun and stay in Diamant and actively sabotages the quest to escape.
- The Notha in Space Academy are four foot tall honey badger squirrel-esque aliens that have a more than passing resemblance to Ewoks. They're also The Empire and consider all other races to be nonsentient animals they can kill with impunity.
- Zones of Thought: The Aprahanti species from A Fire Upon the Deep are humanoid with soft features, big round eyes, butterfly wings, soft downy fur, and cute sing-song voices. They are also militaristic fascists who make their first appearance pushing around a shopkeeper and later take a flimsy pretext to attempt genocide on humanity.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who:
- The Pting from "The Tsuranga Conundrum" is an Ugly Cute little monster that eats anything.
- Like their comic book version, Beep the Meep is an adorable little Furby-esque creature with a cutesy voice... who turns out to be a genocidal maniac.
- Played with in Late Night with Conan O'Brien, which had a recurring character called "The Evil Puppy". It's a golden retriever puppy that sits on a throne of skulls with red lights and "O Fortuna" playing. The puppy itself, rather than being a trained dog, is just sitting there, looking around, not doing anything, even falling asleep once. The audience usually "awwww" him to which Conan responds "Don't 'aww' him, he's evil!" Sometimes during sketches, special effects will give him "evil" powers.
- This trope is inherent to many a Power Rangers monster, but also some villains. If the villainous group has a small child, expect her to be The Starscream or something close to that (case in point: Mora in SPD). It goes both ways. Super Sentai, has had kid villains too, like Tran in Choujin Sentai Jetman (who, before his Plot-Relevant Age-Up into Tranza, was only second to Radiguet in bastardry) and Akomaru in Gosei Sentai Dairanger (who hated Kou so much that even death wouldn't stop him). Then Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger took the trope to its logical extreme in Brave 19, with a Monster of the Week so sickeningly cute that she can force people to do her bidding just by making puppy-dog eyes at them. Kyoryuger also had a recurring villain that fell under this.
- In Stargate SG-1, Reese is a childlike android who gives rise to the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced: the Replicators.
- Tribbles in Star Trek: fluffy cute balls of doom. Though they can be pretty heroic when called into action.
Music
- Eminem:
"I'm sick of you little girl and boy groups
All you do is annoy me
So I have been sent here to destroy you..."- Slim Shady himself was adorable from 1999-2004, with soft, boyish features, platinum blond hair, enormous blue eyes, a high-pitched voice, and the straightforward, contrite mannerisms of a little boy. Part of his persona was that he was a Friend to All Children. Oh, and he's also a Heroic Comedic Sociopath who corrupts kids, uses slurs, and is the centre of the biggest moral panic in 2000s pop culture. Even as Eminem has aged, he still plays up his boyish mannerisms in his performances.
- The Frank Hayes song "Little Fuzzy Animals" warns spacers of the dangers on a Death World planet. The little critters have big, sharp teeth and are nasty, brain-eating telepaths to boot.
- A lot of the Vocaloids are this in their creepier songs. For example:
- Evillious Chronicles:
- Rin, playing The Caligula Riliane, is this in "Daughter of Evil".
- "Gift From The Princess Who Brought Sleep'', Miku wears a Fairy Tale Wedding Dress, and has her usual appearance. She plays the part of an Omnicidal Maniac, Margarita Blankenheim.
- Rin and Len will almost always be this in horror songs. Trick and Treat, The Fifth: Pierrot, Fear Garden, and Ant Observation are just a few examples.
- Gumi in Carnival.
- Oliver gets the Creepy Child treatment in several songs by momocashew, most famously Tarantula.
- Evillious Chronicles:
- "Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet Near Mars" by "Weird Al" Yankovic. They initially looked and acted exactly like ordinary hamsters, until they got "a little too close to the microwave", causing to mutate into Kaiju who proceed to wreak the sort of havok one might expect from one... but the narrator has to admit they're still pretty cute.
Professional Wrestling
- In 2017 Candy Cartwright and her "Cutie Pie Club" caused this trope to apply to SHINE Wrestling. Their earliest efforts to stink up and sabotage The Nova Tournament resulted in SHINE being the only WWN member where Priscilla Kelly was a face, and Kelly's opposition was not cute. While she doesn't care for Kelly's biting or weaponized pubic sweat, Cartwright's definition of "cute" is otherwise broad. She associates with the Ax-Crazy brute Dementia D Rose.
Tabletop Games
- A few Dungeons & Dragons sources mention a monster called a julajimus created by Tharizdun. Its true form is clearly not cute (a huge demon that looks like a monstrous ape) but it has the ability to take the form of a cute kitten or other harmless animal. Humanoid races have legends of this creature that parents use to scare their children; the story starts with a child finding an adorable kitten, who his parents refuse to let him keep. The story ends with the child disobeying his parents and sneaking it into his room, only for it to transform into its true form of a julajimus and devour him. The moral is very clear, but the julajimus is a very real monster, as far as the game world is concerned.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- The Unglued set has a card called Infernal Spawn of Evil. With a name like that, you're expecting some sort of demon, perhaps an Eldritch Abomination. It's... a mouse enjoying hot cocoa.
- The sequel set, Unhinged, introduces Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil, which is the same mouse, holding its cocoa in one forepaw, and its baby mouse in the other forepaw.
- While the Infernal Spawn and his son skipped the next "Un-" set, Unstable, they both made a return in the Unsanctioned box set, along with the third member of the family, Infernius Spawnington, III, which is the same two mice, though the Infernal Spawn of Evil is elderly now, and the Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil is now an adult holding his own daughter.
- On a more serious note, the non-joke set Ice Age included the Hyalopterous Lemure, which is pretty cute for a black card. Reportedly, the artist had never heard of a lemure (a minor evil spirit) and drew a lemur instead.
- In the horror-themed Munchkin Bites, a fearsome high-level monster simply titled "The Evil" looks a whole lot like... a fuzzy little kitty cat. It's a reference to Sluggy Freelance.
Toys
- Feisty Pets, created by William Mark Corporation, is a line of cute-looking stuffed animals whose faces turn monstrous when squeezed.
Video Games
- Acrylic: Brittaney the Collage is a Cute Ghost Girl in an Elegant Gothic Lolita outfit and rainbow hair... who also happens to be a malevolent Vengeful Ghost, Serial Killer, and Serial Rapist.
- In the Assassin games, there's usually some sort of justification for why you're playing as a hitman hunting down kids show characters or teeny-bopper celebrities. These range from the Olsen Twins status as child stars potentially turning them violent as they grow older, to Pokémon distracting the children of today from "boring lectures about crap that has no effect on their future in the real world".
- BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm: Downplayed with Arianna, who is Affably Evil and an Anti-Villain, but she is trying to destroy the Internet, and is an adorable Moe Anthropomorphism of ARPANET.
- The ghost children from Corpse Party are this in general until it's subverted because it turns out they're Brainwashed and Crazy, but the grand prize goes to Sachiko the Girl in Red, who torments people of her own free will.
- B.B. Hood from Darkstalkers is an adorable Little Red Riding Hood, but is more depraved and psychotic than the monsters.
- The flowers, teddy bears, and unicorns in Whimsyshire in Diablo III are every bit as vicious as the demons of Hell.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a trait of Vaermina, the Daedric Prince of Nightmares, especially her voice. In Skyrim, when she speaks to the player at one point, it's with the sweetest, most adorable voice you could ever hear... while she orders you to murder Erandur, a priest of Mara trying to rescue a village. In Online, she has even more dialogue. Her voice is still adorable, and almost childlike... while gleefully describing how she is going to spend the next century or so Mind Raping you for killing her Champion, whom she was apparently in love with.
- Final Fantasy has Tonberry (if you're in any way experienced, it can manage a One-Hit Kill) and Cactuar (not so bad when they can just do 1000 damage, but they often can do 10000).
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach boasts the most kid-friendly-looking animatronics to date. This crew looks downright adorable compared to how off-putting the first-generation animatronics looked. Having said that, it's still the animatronics we're talking about so you still cannot let your guard down around them. With the possible exception of Freddy.
- An advertisement for Globlins discusses this trope, which is also Played for Laughs: the titular Globlins form an Alien Invasion that take over victim's brains... but he struggles with the idea of popping them because they are just so cute!
- The hidden Big Bad of Hollow Knight behind the Infection turning the bugs of Hallownest into zombies is the Radiance, the overthrown original goddess of the Moth Tribe... who looks like a big, white fluffy moth woman when she finally makes her appearance.
- Most of the enemies in the Kingdom Hearts series qualify to varying degrees, but the Nightmare Dream Eaters from Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] are the worst of the lot, being merely slightly more evil-looking versions of the very cute Spirit Dream Eaters.
- In Kingdom of Loathing, one of the most evil, foul, reprehensible creatures of in the world is... seals. Adorable little seals. Naturally, one of the character classes is the Seal Clubber.
- Kirby:
- Marx from Kirby Super Star. If you thought all of the good characters in Kirby are cute and the baddies are ugly, you're wrong. Marx starts from being a really cute, armless jester-like being. He bounces on a really colorful beach ball, proving his innocence. Later, he turns out to be the main villain all along, but was ultimately defeated by Kirby himself. In Kirby Super Star Ultra, he transforms into the freaky-looking Marx Soul by the power of Galactic Nova, but was also defeated.
- Aside from Marx, there is also Scarfy. Don't let its cute looks fool you; once you try to inhale it, you're in for a nasty surprise...
- Waddle Dees on the other hand avert this. There are a few friendly Dees who help out Kirby on his adventures, most notably Bandana Waddle Dee, King Dedede's right-hand man.
- Magolor in Return to Dream Land looks cute, but he is the Big Bad. In fact, he seems to have taken his inspiration from the aforementioned Marx. Unlike Marx though, he is implied to make a Heel–Face Turn of sorts after you defeat him. This was since then proven true in Kirby's Dream Collection: Special Edition, where he builds a theme park for Kirby for his 20th anniversary as an apology for what he did in the last game and even have fun little races with him, as well as "Magolor Epilogue" from the Return to Dream Land Deluxe Switch remake, where he goes on a quest to atone for his misdeeds.
- And then there is Tick from Kirby's Dream Land 3 (and in later Kirby games). This innocently smiling little bastard is waiting for you to float above him, just so he can stab you to death, while revealing his Nightmare Face.
- Model W in Mega Man ZX, the form that Dr. Weil from the Mega Man Zero series had been reduced to after his final defeat. Guess you wish you could collect it along with the other biometals, don't you? Of course, that only applies to the small form; the Core forms (the broken pieces of Ragnarok containing Weil's conscious) are Nightmare Fuel-incarnate.
- Bob, the protagonist from Messiah is a cute little cherub; not truly "evil", but he's an Anti-Hero and Well-Intentioned Extremist at best, more than willing to commit murder to complete his mission.
- Pilgrim (RPG Maker): Master Alice looks like a pretty cute little blonde girl when not making her Nightmare Face, and she tends to act like a cutesy little girl, but she is a possibly demonic entity that steals souls.
- Pocket Mirror:
- The various antagonist girls who serve as the Arc Villains are very cute with the game's anime-inspired designs, yet all of them are mentally unstable tyrants who rule with an iron fist over their subjects.
- The Strange Boy, the Big Bad himself, is a small boy who's fairly adorable even with his weirdness, and his tiny goat form Flocke from Little Goody Two Shoes is even more so, charming Rozenmarine with his cuteness and prancing around. He's also a sadistic demon lord who eats girls and enslaves their souls, making literal theater out of their suffering.
- Pokémon:
- Beautifly looks like an oversized butterfly, with all the cuteness that comes with. But it feeds off of blood instead of nectar. Downplayed though, in that its less cute counterpart Dustox leaves the realm of predation by being outright destructive.
- Gorebyss is a giant pink toothless fish with big eyes that feeds on plankton. Get too close to one and you'll find out it also has a taste for blood, and turns more vivid in color while it feeds on your body fluids. However, this is still downplayed, as it's less cute counterpart, Huntail, is more actively predatory.
- The balloon Pokemon Drifloon looks cute, but it tries to kidnap children. (In fact, in one game, there's a park that you are only allowed to bring "cute" Pokémon into; Drifloon qualifies.)
- Purrloin steals from humans out of the belief its cute facade will let it get away with it. In the event it does not, it will tear its accuser apart with its claws.
- Litwick, which is a sweet little smiling candle that pretends to be a helpful guiding light but in reality is attempting to steal your life energy. Its evolutions are still pretty cute and even worse.
- Frillish is a tentacled marine animal, which should automatically make humans wary, but it's cute and smiling, so one could be forgiven for thinking it is okay as long as one keeps their distance. Trainers are almost uniformly disturbed to discover it's a vicious predator actively hunting for people to drown, smiling gleefully while doing so. And then it evolves into a no less cute but outright terrifying form that is actually practicing aggressive mimicry! Jellicent's faces are incapable of changing from a "cute" expression, regardless of what they are feeling, and they build underwater castles out of sunken human ships.
- Tinkaton is a small, pink Fairy-type Pokemon that wields a giant hammer. How does it use it? To knock Corviknight out of the sky and then harvest the metal on its body to improve its hammer. This is why Corviknight taxis are not in Paldea, since it's likely that a Tinkaton might strike them down mid-flight, endangering the passengers.
- A noticeable example is Courtney Gears of Ratchet & Clank. A beautiful robot diva whose music can brainwash robots into working for Dr. Nefarious.
- And there is also Vendra Prog in Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, though she is later forced to work alongside Ratchet to banish the Nethers back to their dimension following her brother's Heel–Face Turn.
- We've also got Luna in Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters. It was built in the shape of a little girl to lure Ratchet into a trap; and is revealed to be a genderless puppet/spaceship with a male voice near the end of the game, who serves as The Dragon to the Big Bad.
- The main villains of Raze's Hell are an army of cute creatures that decide to wage a genocidal war against the ugly creatures of the world.
- Iris Zeppelin from Rosenkreuzstilette, who, despite being an Ax-Crazy psychopath, is adorable in the most twisted way.
- In the RuneScape quest "The Eyes of Glouphrie", the player activates an anti-illusion machine... and discovers that the fuzzy, white, bunny-eared ant-like creatures the gnomes have been keeping as pets are spy constructs for the exiled gnome city of Arposandra, disguised by the titular Glouphrie's illusions. Even the revealed "Evil Creatures" could pass for Ugly Cute; they look like black beetles with big glowing red eyes.
- Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion has the titular Spooky, a Cute Ghost Girl who absolutely hates being called cute. Though she does a pretty bad job at being threatening until, as the game progresses, log entries reveal that she's the one that gathered all the specimens in the house with the purpose of being taken seriously.
- Stellaris randomly combines ethics and portraits, so it's possible for painfully adorable aliens to be Fanatic Purifiers, as The Chapel will attest. Later made canon with the Prikkiki-Ti, an event-spawned species that is guaranteed to be Fanatic Purifiers and to look like adorable geckos◊.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Lakitu in most games. He rides around on a smiling cloud, has cute glasses, is harder than hell to kill, and drops eggs on you that hatch into spinies when they hit the ground. The obvious exceptions are Super Mario RPG, where he's just another enemy, and the Kart games, where he actually grabs you if you fall off the track.
- Super Paper Mario has Dimentio, both more cutesy◊ and more evil than most Mario villains. How evil? Omnicidal Evil.
- Mimi from that same game also qualifies. The form she takes for most of the game is a small blocky humanoid that wears many dresses. She's also deceptive and runs a slave labor camp in her debut chapter, and her true form is that of an eltrich mechanical spider. With her vindictive, petty attitude, she's the second-meanest of Count Bleck's minions.
- Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams has the power parasites. They are cutesy in appearance and they sabotage JB's Planetarium by leaving large gunk.
- Undertale:
- Flowey the Flower, the tiny, smiling yellow flower you meet at the beginning of the game with cutesy speech mannerisms quickly reveals himself to be an Ax-Crazy maniac who tries to kill Frisk. Then he turns out to be the real Big Bad, manipulating Frisk into killing King Asgore so he can take the six SOULs he has and become a god, then kill all humans and monsters. However, this is averted with his other self, Asriel Dreemur, who is as fluffy and cute as he is a Nice Guy.
- Chara Dreemur, a small child with Blush Stickers wearing a green sweater, is the Greater-Scope Villain who tried to take over Asriel's body and slaughter the humans in the above world, and in the Genocide route, resurfaces thanks to your murders of the monsters and pushes you to kill every monster there is.
- The Chua of WildStar are as adorable as they are psychopathic, genocidal, and destructive. Which is to say, very.
- Wild ARMs 3: Beatrice, one of the main villains and the final enemy, is a wicked Dream Demon who ravaged Filgaia, turning it into a desert planet, and is directly or indirectly responsible for every bad thing that happens. She also looks like an adorable, purple-haired little girl.
- The Witch's House: When the titular Witch is finally encountered, she turns out to be Ellen, a seven-year-old (in appearance) Cute Witch with flowing purple hair and big eyes. Meanwhile, the demon who gave Ellen her powers is actually the tiny, adorable Black Cat. This doesn't stop them from being cruel, sadistic mass murderers who routinely kill children and screw over the innocent Viola- the Demon even more so as he is the one who corrupted and mentored Ellen in the first place.
Visual Novels
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations: Dahlia Hawthorne looks and seems like The Ingenue and a Yamato Nadeshiko with a white dress, Parasol of Prettiness, and butterflies flying around her, but all that hides a bitter, hateful Serial Killer with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder who uses her cuteness to manipulate men. Her sister Iris is more genuinely nice while having similar looks.
- In The Song of Saya, the titular Moe Cute Monster Girl Saya is actually the Big Bad, a terrifying Eldritch Abomination aiming to convert humanity into copies of her species.
- Spirit Hunter has the respective Big Bad in both games:
- Spirit Hunter: Death Mark: For how creepy Mary Kujou initially comes across, and how evil she truly is (being a demonic Creepy Doll who creates Vengeful Ghosts to kill people), she has the appearance of an adorable Elegant Gothic Lolita doll.
- Spirit Hunter: NG: Kakuya is an adorable little fox-girl doll with a beautiful kimono who speaks in third-person and acts like a little girl who wants to play with people. She's also a Creepy Doll who's appearance is actually unsettling up close, and she forces people into a Deadly Game for her amusement.
- Umineko: When They Cry has the witches, who are either cutesy or cute in a sexy way, but they're undoubtedly attractive, and undoubtedly Trolls, particularly the four major antagonists, or three if you consider an independent avatar (Erika) and her master (Bernkastel) as a single being.
Webcomics
- In Awful Hospital, if someone is conventionally cute for any reason other than being a baby, then they are probably evil and definitely dangerous. Ducks are symbols of madness, dolphins are embodiments of sadistic violence, and bunnies are implied to be dangerous too.
- In Captus Cinematic Universe, the pink cat girl known as Katsumi turns out to be a surprise villain who attacks the Planetary Protectors.
- The failed Cthulhu Corp product 'My First Necronomicon' from Cthulhu Slippers is a cutesy, pigtailed, bunny-eared edition of the Necronomicon. It's the book your Mom reads in the bath.
- Denma the Quanx: Dr. Yahwah. Its puppy shape is cute. But it does brutal things in Silverquick HQ. In fact, the puppy form is its avatar.
- The Dummy's Dummy: A master toymaker was cursed with evil magical powers. By the time he realized that all those adorable toys and fashion accessories were transforming into sapient killing machines, it was too late. All he could do was invert the trope, creating creepy monsters that would act as heroes to stop his old creations.
- God Spelled Backwards: Parhau, despite being a small and seemingly harmless bunny, has a chaotic personality. The use of black magic is also one of their more obvious character traits.
- Mechagical Girl Lisa ANT: The pink and frilly magical girl, Pink Flash, is working for the aliens who want to conquer the world. (The hero is the girl in the full-body robot ant suit.)
- Nixvir: Ragnar, the main antagonist, may look like an adorable snowman, but he's really a raving, mad maniac who wishes to conquer the multiverse and is very, very terrifying by himself because of how stupidly overpowered he is.
- Sluggy Freelance K I T T E N. Now in a compiled volume called "Little Evils", with Bun-bun featured front and center, brandishing his knife.
Web Original
- Noelle from the YouTube channel Bapcat is often characterized as this, particularly when her and her owner play Cards Against Humanity or other similar card games. Despite being an adorable Siamese cat sporting Cool Shades, she has the tendency to pick some of the worst cards, often prompting a disturbed reaction from her owner.
- Duo, the mascot of Duolingo, is supposed to be a Cute Owl and The Owl-Knowing One. The memes, on the other hand, make him evil. He is shown or implied to hold users' families hostage or threaten users' lives to make sure users don't skip a day on the app.
- The Harmsters from Hamster's Paradise are a race of sapient, jerboa-like hamster-descendants with round, chubby faces and fluffy tufted tails. They are also an Always Chaotic Evil race that revels in bloodshed, warfare, genocide, cannibalism and sadism, with certain factions being outright Nazi-equivalents who enslave, experiment and dissect prisoners of war, breed them into mindless animals and then still breed with said non-sapient slave animals.
- The Big Bad of "Midnight Mares", Nightfall Nod looks like a goth pony in a Halloween costume.
- Evilina, the adorable daughter of Satan, refuses to kill The Nostalgia Critic, because it would be crueler to leave him to live with the memories. Her other justification, of course, is that he died before and the loud portion of fans didn't like it.
- Pretty Blood: All Malino villains look like adorable little animals who nonetheless are extremely vile.
- Stephen King's Thing Of Evil.
- Stupid Kids: Raccoon seems to be an adorable mammal at first but he is a terrorist whose goal is to be a dictator of HiVille. He also Hates Being Called Cute.
