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Fearless Infant - TV Tropes
Didn't even blink.
We all know that babies cannot be killed in mainstream commercial stories and shows. Many works, especially lighthearted ones, take this a step further and make it so that you can't even depict a baby being scared or disturbed by the scary and disturbing things happening around it. In fact, they'll often be depicted as enjoying whatever's happening, and they giggle and coo while a horrible monster is trying to eat them as they dangle over a pit of lava. Any Badly Battered Babysitter in charge of these kids, of course, will be freaking out.
This is done because showing a baby screaming and crying in terror would be disturbing to the audience and instantly change the mood of the work, darkening it greatly. So showing the baby literally laughing at danger is a way of reassuring the audience "Don't worry, the baby's fine, we wouldn't go there." It should also be mentioned that babies have True Sight usually because of their innocence. They can see monsters' true forms. They just don't realize that they should be afraid. It's not stupidity so much as lack of life experience.
If you are watching a genre movie or show such as horror, or a gritty social realism work, then babies might be terrified, as in these stories they are at risk from scary monsters or accidents.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Melk the second from Toriko was found abandoned as a baby by Melk the first, a muscle bound shaggy giant with more scars than skin who could fit her in one hand. He was feared by all as the "demon Gourmet", yet in two of the three panels showing the infant interact with the giant she was laughing in the embrace of a man who could squish her like a grape between his fingers. Apparently she could feel the demons' "love".
- Akachanman from Anpanman. He's a baby superhero that will automatically fight Bakinman when he sees him do something bad. He's been able to brave a gigantic cat robot (that brought crippling fear into Katsuobushiman, an adult master samurai), seeing it as just a kitty, and happily swinging it around until it broke. In fact, the only times he's cried has really been when he's tired or hungry, as these are actually essential to keeping his strength up.
- Played with through Tony in Toward the Terra. When Keith gets loose on Nazca, not only is toddler Tony unafraid of him but actively stands up against him and expresses his unfathomable telekinetic powers and nearly kills him. Then a few episodes later when Nazca is under attack by the Meggido and all hell is breaking loose, it's the 7 infant aged children of the Mu who leap to Blue and Jomey's aide in creating a shield to defuse the blast - by instantaneously aging several years and teleporting themselves into orbit.
Comic Books
- In Judge Dredd vs Aliens, one of the victims captured and cocooned by the Xenomorphs to be implanted with a Chest Burster is a friggin' infant. Though when one of the aliens gets in front of its face and hisses, the baby is rather amused.
Fanfic
- Somewhat deconstructed in Gensokyo 20XX in that an age-regressed Reimu was conditioned that way. In being conditioned that way, her sense of danger was also removed, as she doesn't even respond to pain and barely responds to being startled. Needless to say, this sort of thing was present as a hazard and it is.
- In Foundling, this is justified as she hasn't learned to fear anything out of the ordinary, thus she is perfectly fine when sitting amongst a group of youkai.
Films — Animation
- In The Incredibles, the entire family is having a loud, angry argument around the dinner table, and baby Jack-Jack simply coos and laughs. Averted, however, when Syndrome kidnaps Jack-Jack, and the baby cries and screams, before becoming angry and displaying his superpowers. Though Played With in that same scene: once he's safe in his mother's hands, he's cooing again, even as a fiery explosion occurs right above him. ("Look at Mommy," Helen says, despite Jack-Jack's clear indifference.)
- In Incredibles 2, infant Jack Jack gets into a fight with a raccoon and leaves unscathed. He also plays a more important role in the climax, showing more fearlessness than the last film.
- In Megamind, Metroman is showing off for an audience, and picks up and starts juggling babies. Instead of being terrified, they all just giggle.
- WALL•E: When the Axiom is listing, causing everyone to slide along the tilted floor, a group of babies are among those sliding. They're only heard crying for about a second before being caught, whereupon they immediately launch into cooing and giggling, even through the adults are still screaming.
- In Tarzan (1999), Baby Tarzan is pretty calm through the ship sinking, and later giggles and coos while being thrown around in the battle as Kala desperately tries to defend him (and herself) against Sabor.
- In Monsters, Inc., Boo, an infant kid, does not show the slightest fear of any of the monsters in Monstropolis, at one point scaring a restaurant full of monsters just by playfully saying "Boo!". Averted when Waternoose and Randall capture her and try to test the Scream Extractor on her.
- At the beginning of The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, the evil sea witch Morgana takes Ariel's infant daughter Melody and threatens to feed her to a shark. Melody is cooing and laughing the entire time.
- In The Prince of Egypt, baby Moses has quite the harrowing journey down the Nile, with his basket getting tossed around by fighting animals, rough waves and fishing nets. Yet when he's discovered by the queen, he's all smiles.
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Peter B. brings his toddler daughter Mayday to the Spider-Man HQ, and she crawls around and giggles without fear. When Peter B. and all the other Spider-Men chase down Miles, Mayday just bounces along without a care, and actually seems invested in the mission.
Films — Live-Action
- Pubert Addams in Addams Family Values has a number of things happen to him that would terrify a normal baby while he laughs and coos. Justified in this instance, though, because he's an Addams.
- The ghosts in The Frighteners at one point use flying babies to terrify their mother and nanny, but the babies laugh the whole time. An unusual version, as it's explicitly shown that the babies are in on the joke (they can somehow see and understand the ghosts.)
Literature
- The youngest Carpenter baby in The Dresden Files has an "ooh shiny!" reaction to one of the Denarian coins; something Harry knows is extremely dangerous.
- Harry Potter had literally just witnessed the death of his parents and escaped death at the hands of Voldemort, and was then flown by motorcycle to the doorstep of the Dursleys. We don't hear much of him crying in the book, and in The Movie he is more or less dozing off. note The movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 changes this; we see Snape clutching Lily's body in the foreground while Harry cries in his cot behind them, clearly well aware that his mother is dead.
- The Jungle Book: When baby Mowgli first encounters the leaping Father Wolf he just laughs. He then reacts calmly to the wolf picking him up by the scruff of the neck and taking him to Mother Wolf, and quickly pushes her other cubs aside so he can get at her milk. He doesn't even seem too flustered when Shere Khan tries to force his way into the wolves' den. Later on when the wolf pack are deciding whether he should live or die, he just plays with some pebbles.
- Gregor's little sister Boots in The Underland Chronicles will give a friendly hello to any creature she meets, be it giant cockroaches, rats, or lizards. She will also gladly throw herself off of cliffs, expecting the bats to catch her (they will). The Underlanders have a saying: "Courage only counts when you can count", meaning that young people have no fear until taught.
Live-Action Television
Myths & Religion
- Older Than Feudalism: Baby Hercules's first act of heroism was to grab the two snakes sent into his bed and wrestle them to death while his mortal half-brother cowered away.
Video Games
- Elite Beat Agents: In the song "ABC", a baby wanders into an active construction site, unaware of the various hazards the family cat Max has to save him from.
Western Animation
- Rugrats' primary characters, especially Tommy Pickles, who serves as the leader of the babies' many adventures and hardly bats an eye when they are occasionally in peril.
- In the A Pup Named Scooby-Doo episode "The Babysitter from Beyond", Shaggy's baby sister Sugie doesn't seem to be fazed by the monster Boogedy Bones.
- We Bare Bears: Panda's subplot in "Baby Bears on a Plane" has him trying to get pancakes while a human baby tags along who seems to take all the chaos the Bears cause in stride.
- The Boys: Diabolical: The first short "Laser Baby's Day Out" is about a baby girl who has gained Eye Beams from Vought injecting her with Compound V, then wanders into all sorts of peril while still being a cheerful little infant.
Real Life
- Truth in Television to a degree. Fear of heights, drowning, etc. does not kick in instantly after birth. Some individuals are crazy enough to not fear at all and become daredevils later on in life.
- Behavioural scientists have conducted experiments into depth perception in crawling infants. The child is placed at one end of a perspex tunnel which is supported at both ends but clearly (to adults) spanning a three or four foot drop. The child's mother stands at the far end calling the child to her. The question is whether or not the baby will crawl out over apparently empty space to get to Mummy. Many babies tested do, however, this goes away as infants become more mobile and use visual perception to explore their space. They soon become hesitant to cross the visual cliff even with encouragement.
- Recent studies from NYU, which use visual cliffs as well as real drop-offs, suggest that this isn't actually because infants develop a fear of heights, but because of conflicting tactile and visual stimuli as their depth perception improves. Once the babies realize that the cliff is false and safe to crawl, they're happy to crawl to Mommy. When confronted with a real drop-off, babies show little fear, instead they are at the edge of the drop-off, assessing how best to get down without injury. As in the visual cliff experiments, younger babies who are newly crawling tend to crawl right off the ledge, however, they become more confident in recognizing and analyzing the ledge as they've gained more experience. However, this tendency returns in newly walking toddlers, even if they were confident with the ledge while crawling, suggesting that depth perception does not lead to a fear of heights, but more that proprioception develops in stages.
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