Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''We want...your children. [[Creepy Monotone|We will take your children.]]''|'''The 456''', ''[[Torchwood (TV)|Torchwood]]''}}

[[Adult Fear|Losing a child is many people's biggest nightmare]]. Creators play into this fear by creating characters that steal children for a living. [[Always ChaoticExclusively Evil|Almost always]] one of the [[Complete Monster|lowest forms of filth imaginable]].

{{examples|Examples:}}

* At the end of ''[[Batman: No MansMan's Land]]'', [[Complete Monster|Joker]] does this. Interestingly, he doesn't harm a single one, but {{spoiler|he does murder Commissioner Gordon's wife, who found him and tried to stop him. Which was probably his goal all along, to make Gordon snap and kill him.}}

* Nanny and Orphan-Maker from ''[[X-Factor (Comic Bookcomics)|X-Factor]]''. Nanny steals mutant children from their parents to raise them herself.

* Mr Baek from ''[[Sympathy for Lady Vengeance]]''. Also a serial child murderer; he kidnaps children for the purpose of videotaping their murders.

* The Penguin in ''[[Batman Returns (Film)|Batman Returns]]'', after his plan to get elected mayor of Gotham City goes to hell, steals everyone's first-born sons, intending to take them into the sewer and "toss them into a deep dark watery grave" as revenge on the Gothamites. When he captures Max Shreck (Penguin allows him to take his son's place in a brief moment of basic compassion), who manipulated and betrayed him, he changes this plan slightly -- heslightly—he intends to make Shreck watch as the kids sink into a deep puddle of his industrial byproducts before then making him join them. Fortunately for the kids, Batman is able to stop this evil plan before it gets too far.

* There's a B-grade horror movie called ''The Guardian'' that uses this trope.

* ''[[Monsters, Inc.]]'' has this as the [[Evil Plan]].

* In ''[[Ghostbusters (Film)|Ghostbusters]] 2'', Dana's baby is the target of a supernatural kidnapper.

* The idea of [[The Fair Folk|fairies]] replacing healthy babies with (often sickly) [[Changeling Tale|"changelings"]] (either their own offspring or [[Fridge Horror|an enchanted piece of wood]] made [[Doppelganger|to look like]] [[Creepy Child|a baby]]) comes from traditional folklore; see [[Changeling Tale]] for examples.

* The Other Mother from ''[[Coraline (Literaturenovel)|Coraline]]''.

* The Hadals, a distinct human race living [[Beneath the Earth]] in Jeff Long's novels ''The Descent'' and ''Deeper'' respond to an attempted genocide perpetrated by the surface-world humans by kidnapping dozens of children from the United States during Halloween both as retribution, and in order to replenish their fallen numbers. Adoption into the Hadal society involves extended ritual mutilation and rapes, and the conditions in their caves cause severe cancerous physical deformations, most notably growth of horns, with the added possibility of brain damage.

** On the plus side, they are extremedly long lived, have a healing factor, and have a number of strange Hadal powers, so it's not[[Cursed Withwith Awesome|that bad]]

* ''[[Discworld]]'' (Literature)/Lordselves: and Ladies|''[[Lords and Ladies]]'', being based on [[The Fair Folk]] legends, references [[Changeling Tale|the folklore version of this]] -- elves—elves are known to have a habit of stealing children, and while they aren't seen to do it in the book itself, the mere possibility is [[Berserk Button|so infuriating]] to the [[Beware the Nice Ones|usually laid-back]] [[Mama Bear|Nanny Ogg]] that she actually (if half-jokingly) suggests [[Cold -Blooded Torture]]. Later, in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/The Wee Free Men|The Wee Free Men]]'', their child-stealing ways get actual page time.

* The climax of the first ''[[Warrior Cats (Literature)|Warrior Cats]]'' book involves ShadowClan stealing kits from ThunderClan.

* A background mention in ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Literature)|The Lord of the Rings]],'' when Gandalf describes how Gollum's presence is felt as he makes his way across Middle-Earth -- asEarth—as a shadow in the night that climbs into nests to find eggs, burrows into dens to find the young, slips through windows to find cradles.

== [[Live -Action TV]] ==

* The 456 from ''[[Torchwood (TV)|Torchwood]]: Children of Earth'' are this on a global scale, with the sickening twist that they require human co-conspirators (and have some very effective means of coercing human cooperation). In the 1960s, they offered humankind a cure for a pandemic that would have killed millions, in exchange for 12 children. They return in the events of ''Children of Earth'', this time not offering help, but an ultimatum: 10% of all Earth's children, or humanity's extinction. {{spoiler|The most disturbing part of all this? They use the children as living drug dispensers. Not the prescription kind...the ''recreational'' kind. The 456 are space junkies and they're holding the Earth at gunpoint for a ''fix''.}}

* An episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' had this with a rather frightening twist; the children were replaced by changelings, exact replicas of the real thing, but they sucked blood from their mothers and killed their fathers. The real children were kept in cages.

* The Others on ''[[Lost]]'' took the children of people that landed on the island. Another plot thread that sadly went nowhere.

* A quest in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has you save children that were stolen by the Arrakoa. The players also get their turn at this trope for a quest that requires you to kidnap baby Wolvar so that the Tuskarr can preserve their species... Usually after you [[What the Hell, Hero?|kill their mothers in front of them]]... Yeah.

* Kamek and his Toady minions from the ''~[[Yoshi's Island~]]'' series; first they attacked the delivery stork in the first game (and Yoshi and such), then stole every child in the nearby town in the DS sequel while looking for the 'Star Children'.

* ''[[Dragon Quest IV (Video Game)|Dragon Quest IV]]'' opens with the soldier Ragnar investigating why several children have vanished from a nearby village. Learning ''why'' is what prompts him to set off in search of [[The Chosen One]].

* ''[[Dragon Quest VII (Video Game)|Dragon Quest VII]]'': the kingdom of Coastal has been cursed so that any newborns will eventually change into monsters, rampage through the streets every night, then wander off and vanish. When they first arrive, the heroes witness this firsthand, along with the complete breakdown of the unfortunate mother. While they have witnessed many atrocities in their time-traveling quest to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], they all quickly declare this situation to be the worst they've ever seen, and vow vengence on the [[Complete Monster]] responsible.

* A humorous (or disturbing) version happens on ''[[Invader Zim]],'' which features an alien species whose adult forms happen to resemble human babies. Due to an unfortunate mix-up, their mothership accidentally beams up a collection of newborns instead of the landing party scouting the planet, forcing the aliens to take the babies' place for ''seven years.'' (No, they don't age, but [[What an Idiot!|the parents don't notice]].)

[[Category:InvasionKidnapping Ofand TheAbduction Baby SnatchersTropes]]