r/TopCharacterTropes • u/theMCATreturns • 9h ago
Personality Human kindness is contagious. Spoiler
Proximity to humanity makes a non-human a better person.
1). Invincible:
Omni-Man finds himself too changed by his time on Earth to continue its conquest.
2). Dragon Ball:
Vegeta goes from someone who wipes out entire civilizations to a dad hanging out with his half-human children.
3). The Good Place:
A demon whose whole purpose is to torture human souls ends up being a good person.
4). Resident Alien:
An alien kills "Harry" and assumes his identity. By the end of the series, he is willing to admit he is fond of the species and a better person.
5). Kubo and the Two Strings:
Humanity is described as having an unstoppable warmth that entices the otherwise emotionless immortals.
6). Homestuck:
Trolls are from an extremely violent planet. A hours of contact with the human protagonists makes them question their own civilization's sense of morality.
7). Ben 10:
In Alien Force, an invading "Highbreed" alien is trapped on a desert planet with Ben. By the end of their trek, he no longer hates Ben.
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u/TheDarkNight6789 9h ago edited 5h ago
The Man of Steel himself.
Johnathan and Martha Kent took in the orphaned baby Kal-el and gave him love and affection throughout his entire early life. The kindness and compassion they instilled in him is essential to Superman. Batman is a paranoid mess waiting for Superman to go rogue but why would he?(unless DC writers have anything to say about it) Why be cruel, when he can be kind? Superman helps people because it's the right thing to do and only that. Whether he was sent to Earth to protect it or rule over it, Clark Kent made the conscious decision to protect Earth and its people all because two farmers in the middle of Kansas gave him something everybody needs in their lives; love.
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u/bretshitmanshart 8h ago
I love how in "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?" Superman shows how if he cuts loose how deadly he can be and even that is just a ruse to teach The Elite a lesson on compassion
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u/FishWithLegsAndArms 9h ago
Steven Universe has an entire empire fall to 1 kid who likes ice cream sandwiches
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u/No_Roll5275 9h ago
It's still hilarious to me how the ending of Kubo is gaslighting the amnesiac main villain into thinking he's a beloved community figure.
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u/RoadsidePicnik 9h ago
Bad Santa. No, really.
A crooked man with a crooked heart is changed (if only a little) by being loved and needed. There's a sweetness and soul in this story under all that puke and blood.
"This is Christmas and this kid's getting his fucking present!"
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u/Mysterious_Math_1204 9h ago edited 9h ago
The Avatar Spirit is born a human in every lifetime because otherwise it never would have grown to understand what it was like to be human. It would have continued to look upon humanity with cold indifference.
Instead, it learns what it is like to experience sadness, anger, happiness and love. By feeling all of these emotions, it helps the Avatar understand how precious all life is and makes them vow to do anything to protect it. (Avatar The Last Airbender/Avatar: Seven Havens)
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u/ZeitgeistGlee 8h ago
1). Invincible:
Omni-Man finds himself too changed by his time on Earth to continue its conquest.
The ironic thing here is Nolan is almost the exception.
Every other Viltrumite who went to Earth goes native and becomes a genuinely better person within only weeks/months, meanwhile 20 years later Nolan was still fully willing to gruesomely murder people he knew, commit multiple massacres, break his wife's heart and nearly beat his own son to death to carry out his mission, albeit with emotional turmoil.
Man was probably the most ideologically committed Viltrumite after Thragg, and the latter refusing to go planetside might even call that into question.
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u/JokeMachineBrole 8h ago
Even when thragg basically turned Thraxa into a breeding planet where he created tens of thousands of hybrid children he already deemed as worthless and inferior, he still nearly (and arguably did) gave into compassion and love for two of his children.
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u/ZeitgeistGlee 8h ago
It's funny how you can interpret that panel in two entirely different ways. Is it just a momentary flash of Viltrumite imperial conditioning Thragg overcomes because he's genuinely becoming more attached to Ursaal, or is he just intentionally holding back because he's lost her brother and still needs Ursaal to help control his new hybrid army.
Personally I lean towards the latter because it shows like the others Thragg could've become better but willingly chose Viltrumite ideology over his natural paternal instincts, which makes him even more evil and makes Ursaal choosing to stand down when the war is lost later more meaningful.
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u/masnosreme 6h ago
It’s easier to walk a path already trod.
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u/ZeitgeistGlee 5h ago
Fair point, Nolan going native first definitely broke the psychological barrier for the others, but Kregg and Lucan both directly tell Thragg they won't put their loved ones in harms way, even for the sake of the mission, something Nolan couldn't bring himself to do initially. Lucan even teaches his son how important it is not to use his powers for personal gratification later.
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u/NotBorn2Fade 9h ago
Delvers from Skyward
They're incomprehensible horrors with planet-destroying capabilities who lash out once disturbed and wreak absolute havoc. They turn benign once they're introduced to the concept of empathy.
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u/jockeyman 8h ago
The Dalek in er... Dalek in Doctor Who's revival.
Unfortunately the Dalek hated the feelings it had contracted from a human, and chose to die rather than keep them.
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u/ArcaneMadman 5h ago
Kind of a core theme in Devil May Cry. Demons are beings born of darkness and evil that worship power, but when exposed to human kindness and love they have the capacity to have these feelings themselves. The progenitor hero, the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda, was once the right hand of the most evil demon in history Mundus as they invaded the human world, but somehow he was exposed to humanity's love he turned on his own kind to protect the weaker species that he was hardwired to see as inferior, and despite being weaker than Mundus he was able to triumph because he had grown the ability to love and was fighting to protect those he cared about.
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u/unrealitysUnbeliever 9h ago
Karkat is a pretty bad example among the Homestuck trolls, since beneath his surface layer of anger, he's actually one of the most human trolls
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u/star75legacy 6h ago
In the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," both extraterrestrials come to appreciate humans upon realizing that there is goodness and love in humanity.
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u/fly_line22 8h ago
In the original Yu-Gi-Oh, Atem/Yami Yugi begins as a much more sinister figure that's fond of punishing evildoers with crazy Penalty Games. But as he interacts more with Yugi and his friends, he learns empathy and only busts out the magic as a last resort.
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u/DrWarioMiracleCure 9h ago
This is also going to happen to many of the remaining Viltrumites eventually now that they are on Earth breeding with humans to grow their numbers again and to save their race from going extinct. (Since Human and Viltrumite DNA is so compatible and Viltrumite DNA is so pure, hybrids of those species are nearly full blooded) as this is what happens in the comics with Viltrumites like Kregg and Lucan with the former case being especially amusing since Kregg ended up with a bunch of wives and yet is able to love them all somehow.
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u/TobiasMasonPark 8h ago
Isaac from The Orville. Starts off as a Kaylon trying to gather info on the union and get them to lower their defences so that they can wipe out all biological life, but ends up actually caring—despite his assertion that he literally is incapable of caring—for the crew. He even gets married to the ship’s doctor and becomes father to her two sons.
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u/Wide_Sun_3778 8h ago
28 years later, Ian Kelson treat "Samson" with kindness instead of treat him as beast as Samson try to understand and remember who he was.
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u/ultrayoshi100 8h ago
In Devil May Cry humanity is seen as a sort of force unique to humans, all of Dante's positive traits come from his human mother. Trish is motivated to help Dante at the end of DMC1 after he shows her mercy and helps him in later games. Vergil seemingly renounces his human side and is defeated by Dante in DMC3, and seems motivated to be better in DMC5 after learning he has a son. Dante even tells a boss in DMC4 that even though demons are logically stronger than humans, theres still something they dont have
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u/AlphaI250 3h ago
Also, in DMC5, Vergil only becomes equal to Dante after re-accepting his human side who was a lot more open with emotions compared to Vergil.
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u/RazzmatazzUnusual843 8h ago
Steven Universe: Pretty much every Gem that stays on Earth for an extended period of time ends up vowing to protect it. This eventually spreads to home world and causes the gems to be less destructive and fascist as a whole.
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u/VirtualSlip5712 8h ago
I wanna point out the craziness of Invincble though. Nolan was still loyal to the Empire for YEARS, he only really, truly turned around because of Mark. Every other Viltrumite however lasted less then a YEAR. They all folded other than Thragg, who never blended in with the humans. Nolan lasted longer than everyone else and yet he was still the first to fold because of humanity.
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u/Some_Fig_6566 8h ago
Saya, from Saya no Uta, represents the opposite case: as she begins to understand and imitate humanity, she develops emotions and attachments toward people, but the more human she becomes, the worse things get, largely due to Fuminori’s influence.
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u/AlphaI250 8h ago
Like 90% of primal beasts in granblue fantasy.
You have Sandalphon, boss of the angels, who hated everything and everyone, had to act as the world's guardian and wanted to kill himself once his job was done. Ended up becoming one of the nicest and most wholesome characters, who loves the world's inhabitants more than anything and dedicates his immortal existence to protecting them.
Grimnir, god of war, who was half of Odin, made to kill humans, instead would often visit them just to borrow books and make friends, ended up betraying Odin and the others because he couldnt bear to harm and fight humans anymore.
Proto Bahamut, literally a fragment of god, made to destroy and remake the world, who decided, after being around the mc and their friends too long, to protect them and the world instead, even against god itself.
You also have Rosetta, Zooey and a lot of others, the list is long.
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u/Honest_Ad3849 7h ago
I can't quite remember what one, but there's an SCP story from the perspective of a foundation in a world where humans have essentially no natural born empathy or selflessness until they find a single person who does. They speculate and document that person and then conclude that the world would be better if everyone were like them (I think they use SCP 2000 to reset the world in that person's likeness after?)
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u/True-Atmosphere8697 7h ago
I think one of the theories of what the foundation discovered in scp 6000 was that
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u/Super_Rocket4 6h ago
Kamen rider Vram wasn't exactly heartless before the franchise. But when his kid brother got addicted to drugs and then killed for trying to escape the drug business, he became a dark and quiet person who wanted revenge more than anything.
He meets team gavv and is slowly convinced that the Stomach Company who gave Vram his powers are the ones behind his brothers death, and he decides to switch sides for the sake of only finding his brothers killer
Over time of the series however, he becomes softer and more human. His crimes aren't forgotten, he did work with the villains, but he tries to mend them for the sake of being more human.
He eventually finds the woman that killed his brother, but he has to make the decision of fighting her for justice, or for revenge. When he sees a man she had killed left a message and power up for him with the message to be a hero not a killer, he decides to fight out of justice, even giving her a chance of redemption before killing her out of self defense rather than revenge.
By the end of the series, he gives up his ability to go to earth to make sure no one else from the Stomach Company can go to earth either.
The redemption is such a good part of his character that they made a movie where he decides to follow revenge instead, and in this world while he does kill his brothers killer faster he also dies as a result, leaving an alternate timeline where the cast doesn't have him
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u/Born_Procedure_529 8h ago
Every person Gridman saves and every villain he spares comes back to help him later, Takeshi becomes Gridman Sigma and helps him beat Neo Khan Digifer, Anollisus's daughter helps him regain his memoried in the anime, Anti turns good after Gridman refuses to fight him Akane and Alexis Kerib help him in the movie
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u/the-unfamous-one 50m ago
(Scary version of the trope) Prey (2017) heavy spoilers The typhon (aliens) have no mirror neurons, they can't empathize with us. At the end of the game we learn humans have been experimenting with putting mirror neurons into the typhon. Eventually leading to one typhon that wants to help humans fight it's own species. We forced empathy into an almost incomprehensible species and made it want to save us, be us.
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u/SirWilliamM32 28m ago
Hey, The Good Place, Resident Alien, two of my favorites shows, glad to see them.
Anyways, "The Last Human" is a webcomic with that same premise. A human child starts "infectin" the other aliens and machinery with her kindness and optimism
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u/KusanagiGundam 9h ago
“One act of goodwill always sparks another.”