Cute and Psycho

Rena is adorable... until she gets out that cleaver.

"There's an old saying: Pretty girls turn heads… I break necks!"

— Lady Sports on Nikki Storm

They are cute, sweet, innocent, and extremely huggable. Incidentally, they are also varying shades of violent, unstable, and downright insane.

Cute and Psycho is a trope that describes characters who are genuinely cute in both appearance and mannerisms but have a completely batshit crazy side. Sometimes there are distinctly different sides which may be shown equally, but other times they are mostly one or the other, the Killer Rabbit displaying moments of sweetness and relative-sanity or The Cutie showing hints of a dark psychotic nature. Often there is some kind of Dark and Troubled Past, or Split Personality to justify how the two aspects of the person can both be genuine, but other times no explanation is revealed.

The primary difference between this trope and the Yandere is that the Cute and Psycho character is not driven by an obsessive need to possess a friend or lover. Their motivation, if they have one, can vary immensely. They also don't necessarily have to be provoked to enter their Psycho-state, but can switch for reasons observers would be hard-pressed to determine.

Cute and Psycho is a Sister Trope to Killer Rabbit, Psycho Pink, Creepy Child, Yandere, and Enfant Terrible, and closely related to Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon, Psychopathic Manchild, Beware the Nice Ones, and Cute Is Evil, though while there is frequent overlap between these tropes, being one doesn't necessarily mean a character qualifies for another. If the "cute" part isn't real, then the character is The Fake Cutie instead. Characters of this type tend to be female, though male examples do exist. The Ophelia is someone whose psychosis is part of the cute picture, rather than contrasted to it. Also compare Crazy in the Head, Crazy in the Bed, for someone whose insanity adds to their sexual appeal.

In some anime fandoms, this character is referred to as a yangire, an informal fanspeak term which is a portmanteau of yandere and kireru (a word meaning "to snap or lose one's temper"). It's also used to refer to Ax-Crazy versions of The Fake Cutie. Not to be confused with Fangire, which is a species of monster vampire.

While there were instances of seemingly polite and attractive persons who turned out to be psychotic criminals, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Akame ga Kill!:
  • Seryu Ubiquitous, the "Officer of Justice". Regularly, she's sweet around those who she doesn't consider evil. Around those that she does, of course... her personality switches over to bat-shit insane. As a matter of fact, she comes complete with a twisted conception of right and wrong.
  • To a lesser extent, but still quite potent, Seryu's teammate Kurome is also greatly disturbed and seeks to kill her sister, Akame. The drugs don't help her shattered mentality, either.
• Akuma no Riddle has plenty of cute lesbian assassins, most notably Otoya.
• Rio Miyaichi from Ana Satsujin. She's a cute, socially awkward college student, but also a psychotic serial murderer who favors slashing her victims' necks with a box-cutter.
• Hotaru, the female protagonist of Aoharu × Machinegun can be genuinely sweet, affectionate, friendly and kind-hearted. But she also has a bloodthirsty side that usually comes out when she is angry or getting excited in a fight. The comparison between her sweet side and bloodthirsty side can be jarring.
• Black Butler (2008) has Alois Trancy. Throughout the first episode of the second season, he flips from sweet and innocent to Ax-Crazy so many times, it could make someone dizzy. As of his Character Development, he moves into Yandere for Claude. That one backfired HORRIBLY.
• Luck Voltia from Black Clover. He has cute, boyish appearance, with messy blond hair and large blue eyes. This hides a nigh sociopathic fighter who enjoys bloodshed, with him being known as "the Cheery Berserker".
• Hansel and Gretel, the Creepy Twins from Black Lagoon. They seemed to be cute in a creepy way, they are also a pair of Ax-Crazy Psycho for Hire twins who kill because it turns them on and are absolutely insane. And that's to say nothing about their Dark and Troubled Past.
• Yukio from Bleach is revealed as such in chapter 466, when he gleefully uses his Fullbring against Hitsugaya while explaining how he drove his parents to commit suicide as revenge for their Parental Neglect. And once his rival presses his Berserk Button? The guy went BATSHIT INSANE.
• Diva, the Big Bad of Blood+ often acts like an amusingly spacey example of The Ophelia, but she's pretty horribly evil.
• Bungou Stray Dogs has Q, described by Dazai as "a demented ability user" with no regard for friend or foe who amuses himself by making people hallucinate about their worst insecurities and watching them attack their friends. He's also a cute thirteen-year-old who looks like he's nine, almost constantly has a sweet smile on his face, and carries a doll half his size wherever he goes.
• If there are types of criminals that Shinichi Kudo from Case Closed absolutely loathes, it's either this and/or Yanderes. And there's no shortage of those in such a Long Runner of a series.
• Code Geass has Euphemia, after she gets accidentally Geassed into becoming a mass murderer. "Those of you who call yourself Japanese, I have a favor to ask. Could you all die, please?" "I was hoping you'd all just commit suicide, but you can't, can you? O.K. So, soldiers, please kill the Japanese. Kill them all." Then she proceeds to grabs a submachine gun and shoot everyone.
  • R2 introduces Rolo, the false brother of Lelouch who is genuinely flustered by the school antics and socially awkward...because he's an assassin who has no experience with a normal life and thus defaults to "stab or shoot" when it comes to his problems. He then gets worse as he develops into a Yandere for Lelouch.
• A lot of child Contractors in Darker than Black come across this way, especially the female ones, who channel a similar idea to Girl with Psycho Weapon. Mai in the first season of the anime and both Azuza and Bai (in a flashback) in the interquel are shown killing or maiming people horrifically while having a staring expression on their faces. Maki might also count along with being a yandere. He sometimes comes off as an Adorably Precocious Child, but is completely psychotic and has an obsession with his leader, Amber.
• DEAD Tube brings the lead girl Mashiro Mai, her introduction and following scenes are made to establish her as a cute girl, diligent sports girl for her swimming club, sociable to her girlfriends, cheerful smiler all around; what follows that is she being thrilled about murdering someone in cold blood, and demanding that it be filmed.
• Deadman Wonderland has Shiro, the hyperactive, scatter-brained apparent Manic Pixie Dream Girl who can and will rip off people's heads with her bare hands whilst smiling like a kid who's just left the sweet shop. She's also the 'Red Man', the unstoppable killing machine who slaughtered Ganta's entire class at the start of the story.
  • Toto's facial structure, body type, manner of movement, and high voice all call to mind a fairy or something similar, but he's the reigning champion of Carnival Corpse and widely regarded as battle-crazed.
• Death Note:
  • Light Yagami, especially early in the series before Art Evolution and Character Development. His features do coarsen a bit the older and nastier he becomes.
  • Mello. He's a downright pretty young man with a borderline psychotic temperament.
  • Misa Amane is both Cute and Psycho and a Yandere.
  • Beyond Birthday from the Another Note spinoff novel. Take L's more Moe qualities and then add crazy-evilness into the mix.
• Future Diary:
  • Tsubaki Kasugano, the Sixth Diary Holder seems at first to be more of a mix of Yamato Nadeshiko and Bitch in Sheep's Clothing when dealing with Yukki and Yuno, but then we see that her backstory of orphanhood and sexual slavery drove her completely insane.
  • Fifth Diary Reisuke Houjou is a cross between Cute and Psycho and Tyke Bomb.
  • Yuno herself, typical of the poster girl for Yandere everywhere. She always has this adorable little smile on her face when she attacks people with axes.
• Henri Claytor from Future GPX Cyber Formula, who appears to be a cute and cheerful rookie racer in ZERO, actually has a homicidal obsession with making Hayato pay for ruining his life. This is due to his father ignoring and abandoning him after Hayato wins the championship instead of him. He somewhat gets better after the end of ZERO.
• Parodied in Galaxy Angel with the Character Exaggeration of Chitose, who already had some belonging issues; when the Angels left her behind or otherwise slighted her without knowing it, she went absolutely crazy with revenge, once even trying to turn them into rice and eat them. (Don't ask.)
• Girls Bravo: Lisa is a rare comedic example, since she's loopy, rather than crazy. While she's threatened to have Kosame cap Yukinari, if he refuses her, she's far more likely to cast a summon spell (provided she gets it right). Or, she'll simply have her servants kidnap Yukinari and bring him to her.
• Gundam:
  • Four Murasame and Rosamia Badam from Zeta Gundam, both of whom were some of the earliest Cyber-Newtypes and completely insane because of it. Not evil, just frightened and confused girls with a warped sense of reality (it is not a coincidence that they pilot something called the Psyco Gundam). Then Gundam ZZ introduces Elpeo Puru and her clones. Puru herself is mostly harmless but is still a Child Soldier with a deep-seated obsession with Judau, while her clones were all mentally conditioned to serve "Master Glemy" and were coldly classified by Zeon as equipment rather than people.
  • Mobile Suit Victory Gundam arguably has Katejina Loos, who doesn't look especially bad at first - she's initially rough around the edges, but fundamentally good-natured until Chronicle gets his mitts on her (and main character Uso even states she's changed since joining Zanscare and used to be nice and kind deep down). To further complicate things, in the novels it's strongly implied she underwent Cyber-Newtype treatments, which are known across the series for making those who undergo them violently unstable.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny has Stella Louisier, one of the Extended members of Phantom Pain, and the series' version of the aforementioned Four. Adorable, childlike, happy... and a supersoldier with mental conditioning and enhanced physical skills from a complex, long-term treatment of drugs (which she can't survive without). She ends up torching half of Europe with a superweapon not out of malice... but because she was scared and had been told that the people there were "bad things" that were going to get her.
  • Gundam 00 features Throne Drei's pilot Nena Trinity, a Genki Girl redhead who likes to wink, mock-fight with her violently overprotective brother and fellow Throne Michael and throw up the V-sign. She also gives Setsuna his Sacred First Kiss (also the first kiss for the series), much to his disgust. Exactly one episode later, Nena blows up a civilian wedding while on her way to the next mission to vent her frustration with having a hard day of work while others have fun. When asked by her brothers why she fired on civilians, Nena simply giggled and replied, "Heehee, sorry, I pressed the wrong button." In the second season, she dropped the facade as Liu Mei belittled her, and Liu Mei learns the hard way about double-crossing people when Nena traps her inside her ship as it's exploding, cackling maniacally all the while.
• Ayame from Hanayashiki no Juunintachi. On the outside, she looks like a normal (if tomboyish) girl, but when a pervert tries to have his way with her, she proceeds to mace him with bug spray, rearrange his face with a hammer, and stab him with a box cutter or scissors.
• In Happy Kanako’s Killer Life, Kanako is a genuinely cute young woman with a quirky demeanor, but she notably appears to have a few screws loose. While at first she was bothered by murdering people, she gradually becomes used to it eventually expressing glee at the thought of being the center of a rumor in the underground.
• Chaos from Heaven's Lost Property is what happens when you mix Ax-Crazy with Love Freak while avoiding Yandere. What you get is the creepiest Moe character in the series who wants to share her "love" with everyone.
• Hellsing:
  • Yumiko Takagi is a sweet, gentle soul who calls herself Yumie and go off her fucking gourd if her glasses are taken off.
  • Seras Victoria manages to pull this off very well. Her standard persona is a Genki Girl, but get her into a blood rage and you are in for a REAL treat.
  • Rip Van Winkle from Millenium is a cute young woman, who merrily sings opera whilst slaughtering enemies with her musket and magic bullets.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Russia is a mixture of Cute And Psycho and Yandere. He cracked for non-romantic reasons (the Bloody Sunday), has mood swings due to his childlike temperament and manipulative nature, but his unstable side comes out especially strongly in regards to those he wants to keep close.
  • Latvia has the potential to become one, having been abused so much by Russia that he comes close to snapping in the "Lily of the Valley" incident. It's not mentioned later.
• Yukino-sensei in Hohzuki Island, who at one point sneaks around the school in the dark, naked, with a wooden sword, ready to beat one of the children to death. Later turns out to be a subversion—yes, she's snapped and is fucking creepy, but it was because she thought one of the children was Cute and Psycho themselves, due to her best friend and fellow teacher turning up murdered. The kids acting very suspiciously didn't help matters. By the end of the manga, she realizes everything she thought was wrong, clears up some misconceptions about her, and then pulls a Big Damn Heroes on the real murderous teacher.
• I'm Gonna Be an Angel!:
  • Mikael is usually a cute, easily agitated boy, but when under great stress and when things don't go they way he wants them, can turn into a really scary and obsessive psycho. It might be caused by a side effect of his halo falling off.
  • The same can be said about Silksey — very moe and doll-like but tends to smash everything apart and set on fire when enraged. Only she was a scary psycho for most of the series and again it can be argued that it was mostly a side effect of her halo falling off.
  • Mama can turn into a very crazy witch when under too much stress.
• Yukako in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Initially, she appeared demure shy and sweet around Koichi before quickly showing her temper and obsession. She also tends to live in her own world, which makes her dangerous.
• Jormungand:
  • Mildo, a twisted rival female mercenary introduced in Volume 1, who is seemingly obsessed with defeating H&C Logistics Incorporated's resident knife nut in hand-to-hand combat.
    Mildo: Valmet, you're all I ever think about. How you live. How you fight. How bout we beat the living shit out of each other, then I kill you. Sounds fun, eh? Kinda poetic.
    Valmet: No... not at all... you psycho!
  • Chinatsu, a teenage member of a two-man hit squad under orders to kill Koko. Her hobbies include cold-blooded murder, building complex mechanical torture devices, and participating in gun battles while not wearing any underwear.
• Downplayed in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. Moeha is a cute 14 year old girl that never actually hurts anyone during the course of the story, but she has a habit of saying really disturbing things with a smile on her face (like how she wants to lock up her best friend Kei in a dungeon and torture her until she dies). Even the narration admits that she's "a bit of a psychopath".
• Nui Harime from Kill la Kill embodies this trope to the letter. She never lets up her playful and carefree nature, wears frilly dresses, and loves Breaking the Fourth Wall. She also gleefully admits how she was responsible for killing Ryuko Matoi's father. She didn't even let up her childishness while she sunk the Rending Scissors into him in a flashback. When Nui later suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of Ryuko, Nui completely loses it and drops her Faux Affably Evil persona in favor of murderous rage.
• In Love Hina, Motoko's sister Tsuruko is usually calm and graceful, but when Motoko makes the mistake of being... creative with the truth in front of her, she drops that facade and out comes her Ax-Crazy side. Because of this and her Implausible Fencing Powers, Motoko goes back and forth between admiring her and being scared shitless of her.
• Magical Witch Punie-chan is what happens when this trope is applied to an entire universe. The most prominent example is our protagonist Tanaka Punie, the princess of a Crapsaccharine World who does horrifying things to everyone and everything around her.
• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic gives us Kouha Ren, a seemingly typical flippant prince of the militaristic Kou Empire... right up until he takes an extreme amount of glee in utterly decimating a gang of bandits that tried to rob his carriage.
• Quattro of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS is sweet on the front, but this is revealed to be just an appearance.
• Kumagawa of Medaka Box combines this with Stepford Smiler. His cheerful expression doesn't change no matter what he does; whether it's eating taiyaki (in the creepiest way possible), impaling people with giant screws, or blinding them.
• My Hero Academia: Himiko Toga is a cute teenage girl, but also an Ax-Crazy serial murderer obsessed with blood.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Tsukuyomi is like this in her earlier appearances. As of her later appearance, she becomes a full-blown Yandere.
  • Chizuru Naba seems to be a somewhat less scary example. She is genuinely kind and protective, but there are some scary layers underneath... which are Played for Laughs.
• Yagami Yuu from Night Shift Nurses. When she's not being a good nurse who makes her patients comfortable, she's a psychopathic, murderous nymphomaniac.
• Chloe from Noir smacks of this, possibly going full-blown Yandere for Kirika by the finale.
• Sugar, in One Piece, has the appearance of a little girl wearing a fairy-tale robe, despite being much older thanks to her Devil Fruit. She also has the ability to turn people into Living Toys, neutralizing them of their powers and strength, and forcing them to have to obey anything Sugar says. She has no qualms about abusing her powers to create a slave army of toys, and if she gets angry, she will use them on her own non-toy subordinates.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Cilan probably. At first, it appeared as though his burst came from his battle with Burgundy, but in later episodes, he starts slipping into this more and more. His flip-outs are mostly played for laughs, though. Except for episode 69 where he flips his shit at Skyla because he didn't like her attitude problem as well as her not taking her job as a Gym Leader seriously.
  • There is also the evil Togepi that appeared as a villain in a Generation IV episode. She spends the entire episode simultaneously tormenting Ash, his friends, and Team Rocket for no reason other than she likes seeing people and Pokémon suffer.
  • Coral in Pokémon Horizons: The Series is the cutest of the Explorers, but she has a Hair-Trigger Temper and is very willing to have her Glalie be an Action Bomb.
• In Pokémon Adventures, when Lana enters battle mode, she will become terrible.
• Private Actress gives us Kana Juumonji, a sweet-looking person who commits all kinds of bad actions including downright murder or driving people to suicide while smiling angelically.
• Big Bad Byakuran from Reborn! (2004), and Daisy and Bluebell of the real Six Funeral Wreaths.
• Mari Illustrious Makinami from Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0. She only appears for roughly fifteen minutes in the movie, but these fifteen minutes show a rather nice character. As long as she isn't in an Evangelion, that is. When fighting, Mari is absolutely crazy - it is strongly implied that she actually fights simply because she enjoys fighting.
• Played for Laughs with Kafuka Fuura of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. This eternally happy, cheerful girl has an obvious and horrible past, involving suicidal parents, relatives in jail, ostracism at school, and at least one exorcism, and yet there she is, enjoying life... for a value of it. She shows no signs yet of snapping, though people are scared of her and fear the day she does. On one occasion, her classmate, resident Little Miss Snarker Meru Otonashi, tries to "read" what Kafuka is communicating through her eyes at her prompting; she sees nothing but a red screen with the words "die die die die die killy kill die die die" and so forth, despite Kafuka never once dropping her happy appearance.
• Tamama from Sgt. Frog is an adorable little frog alien with shiny eyes, but he has a darker and more vicious side that emerges from either rage or jealousy.
• Patti Thompson from Soul Eater. Cute Cloud Cuckoo Lander who exhibits odd moments of manic violence when she feels like it. Really, we should expect this, considering she grew up on the streets with her sister, surviving by mugging random people. Her 'training' suggests she's a mad, violent thing whose skill in combat has been overshadowed (as is often the case for Weapons) by her extremely powerful Reaper meister.
• Ran of Urusei Yatsura is the poster child for (and likely the inspiration for all other) Cute and Psycho characters. On the outside, she's a cute redheaded girl who likes frilly clothing, baking and flirting with Ataru. In reality, she's an embittered childhood rival of Lum who is out for some very violent revenge on the girl for well, a lot of things that aren't Lum's fault.
• Subverted in Wasteful Days of High School Girls. Hisui "Majo" Kujyo is indeed very cute, sweet, and doting, but her Nightmare Fetishist overtones tend to mar whatever she says to her classmates, who keep her at arm's length as a result. She is indeed very weird, but she's harmless.
• Kanon Nakagawa from The World God Only Knows. She's the epitome of the sweet, adorable idol... as long as you don't get on the wrong side of her Static Stun Guns, as Keima did. Kanon and Keima's very first interaction was the latter telling the former that he doesn't know who she is. Her reaction is to taze him repeatedly.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has this in a way. Yugi Muto is all timid, shy, and all-around nice guy, but when you threaten his friends or family, his other personality Yami Yugi takes over. Earlier in the manga, Yami Yugi sees no problem with torturing, cutting, burning, or giving a mental projection of death. He goes Up to Eleven when he activates "The Seal of Orichalcos" in the anime.
  • Bakura is also this, being a nice and quiet boy who becomes psychotic and cold when taken over by "Yami Bakura".
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has happy go lucky Jaden Yuki, who also has an evil persona known as the "Supreme King". The Supreme King is nothing like Jaden. Jaden is kind, aloof, and hot-headed. The Supreme King is cold, tactical, and ruthless.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has Yuya, who, like Jaden, is a nice and guy. But when he gets pushed to the brink, he gets taken over by Zarc, his original form. When in this form, he looks demonic, and is completely insane, doing anything to win. This also applies to Yuto and Yugo, but not much for Yuri. He takes this up to a whole new level in the last few episodes, his skin becoming pale dragon scales, his feet enlarged, and demonic wings on his back.

Comic Books

• Batman: Harley Quinn, a Canon Immigrant from Batman: The Animated Series. Easily one of the most adorable rogues on the series. Also likes to pummel people and shoot at them for fun.
• Scarlet Witch: The Scarlet Witch is a notably attractive woman with a history of suitors and admirers, but she also has a history of psychosis due to her traumatic life experiences which are exacerbated by her powers that deteriorate her mental state at their peak. She is primarily responsible for the events in Avengers Disassembled and House of M, which respectively caused the downfall of her team and 90% of mutantkind being depowered around the world. The fact she was considered the nicest person on the team made it hard for her teammates to believe her actions.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Rosy the Rascal. She looks exactly like Classic Amy, but she's Ax-Crazy and has the mind of a child.
• Spider-Man: Peter Parker/Spider-Man. While he's a goofy and nice guy most of the time, when people near and dear to his heart are hurt, a darker persona of his called "The Spider" will emerge. He will then proceed to pummel anyone responsible into a bloody pulp while not saying a single word. Even his allies have a hard time calming him down and find this side of him downright terrifying. Examples of this include The Death of Jean DeWolff, Grim Hunt, and Back In Black. He also really likes beating up bad guys.
• Teen Titans: Terra I from the 1980s story arc The Judas Contract in New Teen Titans. She seems like a sweet young girl but is actually a vicious and ruthless mercenary with distinct yandere traits — she's not only sleeping with the much older mercenary/assassin who hired her, she ends up killing herself (while trying to kill him) when new Titan Jericho possessed the assassin (who just happened to be his father) and freed the Teen Titans, making Terra believe that her lover betrayed her.
• Ultimate X-Men (2001): Rogue once borrowed Jean Grey's powers to incapacitate Iceman by making the poor boy mentally and physically re-experience a memory of him going through the surgical removal of his appendix. This time without the anesthetic. Considering she could have simply willed him unconscious, shows a considerable level of cruelty on her end. Being both Blessed with Suck with powers that do not allow any human contact, and being tortured in a concentration camp can do that to people.
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool: The closest Alternate Company Equivalent to Harley Quinn that Marvel has is Gwen Poole. She is adorable, sweet, cheerful, a hyper-fangirl of everything... but she happens to have a backstory reminiscent of Superboy-Prime's, which means she thinks all of this is fiction, so for example nameless extras are expendable in the name of the story of the hero (namely herself) and comic book death is very cheap too so why shouldn't she just murder (shoot, blow up, cut to pieces, etc.) the people in her way? This attitude changes dramatically over time, however, as part of her Character Development. and she becomes much less casual about apparently random people dying.
• Young Justice: Secret is a Cute Ghost Girl with a sunny disposition and slightly oblivious nature. However, she also has a disturbing dark side, including Yandere tendencies towards Robin (she's tried to kill his girlfriend several times), and her innocent nature means that she doesn't realize how disturbing it is when she cheerfully explains to the others how she consumed an Arc Villain and his gods condemned him to an eternity of suffering inside of her.

Fan Works

• Agent Diamond, from Akatsuki Kitten: Phoenix Corporation Overhaul, seems to swing between this and The Fake Cutie. She is generally sweet and happy a lot of the time... she just has an extremely frightening tendency to do things like kill people adorably. There may be a Freudian Excuse behind that, as well as basic nature: she "used to be" Renesmee Carlie Cullen and has only grown less human in mind since then.
• The Pokémon/Yu-Gi-Oh fanfic Between My Brother and Me: Mors Omnibus has Yvonne Maxa (an alternate version of Pokémon's Serena) who was once a little girl who had four adorable puppets and used them to put on shows. In the present, she's quite adorable and is known to murder people with a knife in hand and her puppets — which somehow look like Yuya and his counterparts, albeit if they were all 6 — come to life and join in on the murder time. Notably one reviewer of the story is terrified of her as they cannot comprehend how someone so cute as Yvonne can be so goddamn crazy.
• Captive (AbyssCronica): Heat is the sweetest Kid pirate but he is still a Kid pirate.
• This happens to Sweetie Belle in Cardfight Vanguard Equestria Arc after she acquires PSY-Qualia.
• Light Yagami/Kira in A Charmed Life as lampshaded by Ryuk.
  "You are just too damned cute, you know?"
  Kira shot him a glare.
  "I'm not cute," Light snapped petulantly.
• Child of the Storm has Harry develop into this towards the end of the first book; he's a cute dorky kid who, a bit of world-weary cynicism aside, just wants to do some good in the world, and loves his family and friends to pieces. He's also described as being cute, and increasingly, rather handsome, becoming an outright Chick Magnet in the sequel, being witty and actually quite charming when he tries. He's frequently described as being on the verge of becoming the next Magneto, which more than one villain finds out when they hurt family or friends. If you're lucky, he'll go off like a bomb and enter an Unstoppable Rage. If you're unlucky, as happens more and more frequently as he gets his temper under control, he'll slip into a Tranquil Fury and methodically dismember you or unleash a Fate Worse than Death. What with his Dark and Troubled Past and the Trauma Conga Lines (yes, plural) he goes through, and the author admitting that he was influenced by the 10th Doctor (another example of this trope, with Harry being an In-Universe fan), this is not especially surprising.
• "Sweetpea" in Except It Abide in the Vine. Out of combat, he's a Long-Haired Pretty Boy Gentle Giant Cuddle Bug and the biggest Woobie in a cast full of them. In combat, he's a giant berserker killing machine with occasional cannibalistic tendencies. Although to be fair, his backstory combines the most traumatizing parts of the Winter Soldier's and River Tam's pasts, so the poor guy has his reasons for being a little... eccentric.
  "He's the Li'l Bub of giant mentally unstable cannibal cyborg assassins."
• The MLP fic Harmony Theory has Charisma, a cute pink pegasus pony, who is also an ex-special forces Psycho for Hire with a what is essentially a Blood Knight Cutie Mark.
• A good part of the Hetalia: Axis Powers concept 2P!Talia relays on all or some of the Alternate Coloring Characters fitting in this trope, even when there is next to none canon info on them aside of their looks.
• Ganmed from Hivefled, who is "surprisingly CHEERFUL for a devout member of a faith which focuses so heavily on DEATH," has shades of this. He's an upbeat, kind of troll who writes bad Self-Insert Fic and commits troll sacrifice without any qualms. Much of the "psycho" is Deliberate Values Dissonance, as troll culture in general is pretty violent. However, a few of the more stable cast members do suggest that a moirail would do him good (the implication being that he needs a stabilizing influence).
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail has Chloe Cerise, a girl with long red hair and a flow white dress. She's a Badass Adorable who loves chocolate, has a corgi for a partner...and when she gets angry, she will bludgeon you to death with a pipe. Her most dangerous act was from before she entered the Train; after her bullies dump red paint on her ala Carrie, she lets it go until the ringleader foolishly mocks how her father doesn't love her. Chloe decides to tackle her bully, bash her brains out with the paintcan and full on strangle her looking like a demon coated in blood and threatening to massacre her entire class if they do this again.
• Inner Glory has Shuddercry. She is Fluttershy's Dark Reflection. Dark Reflections are Evil Twins of the ponies of Equestria with the exact opposite personalities of their good selves, meaning Shuddercry is a violent Sadist and The Bully, who just so happens to look like this.◊
• Intercession: When Mad-Eye Moody is transformed into a six-inch toothless snake to keep him from causing trouble, that doesn't stop him from "choosing violence and never looking back," futilely trying to attack anyone he can reach, including headbutting Taylor in the eyes.
• Harry/Tristan in The Jaded Eyes Series. It's lampshaded when Tristan, is in his next incarnation, is seen and pitied by one of the slaves who thinks that that poor child being held captive by the Dark Lord... until she realizes that the child isn't being held captive and is in fact far worse than the Dark Lord.
• Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises: Morgan is a petite and attractive girl along with having a reputation of being a violent stalker. Subverted rather quickly given that the accusations were horseshit and she's actually a nice person.
• Zara the White Ranger from Power Rangers: Shuriken Force. She's extremely cheerful and constantly trying to see the best, but it's really noticeable there's something unhinged about her, especially when in uniform and she's downright giddy when killing the villain's footsoldiers, and practically hysterical when angry.
• The Truth About Bleach has murderous fugitive on the run Rukia, as well as Orihime, cleverly disguised as an Alpha Bitch until she brutally murders two soul reaper junkies over their stash of mod soul pills.

Films — Animation

• The LEGO Movie: Unikitty may look adorable, but hurt her feelings or her friends and she'll turn into an uncontrollable weapon.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Olivia Octavius is an adorable hippie-chick science nerd, who may come across as a bit of a lovable ditz, but has a psychopathic side in the form of an indomitable alter-ego.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Lumalee is explicitly acknowledged as adorable by the Penguin King and fits the description, being an innocent-looking Sentient Star with big black eyes, but he's been in Bowser's prison for so long that he won't stop talking about dark things like his longing for death. Near the end of the movie, he reacts to being saved from lava by Donkey Kong with an unironic "Boo!" and, earlier, cheers when he's about to be dipped.
• Turning Red: Despite Abby's cute appearance, she really seems to love anything involving violence.

Films — Live-Action

• Liza in 68 Kill. She is definitely hot, with Clint delivering a monologue to an increasingly uncomfortable Chip about how hot his girlfriend is. Chip knows that she is crazy, and claims it is part of what makes her attractive, but he doesn't realise how crazy till they break into Ken's place. She murders Ken and his wife, kidnaps Violet, and attempts to sell her to her brother Dwayne, and obsessively pursues Chip when he tries to leave her, attempting to ram his car off the road.
• The little girl from The Bad Seed (1956). So pretty. So polite. So well-behaved. She's also a sociopathic serial killer.
• By Deadpool 2, Dopinder has become this. He's as friendly and adorably nerdy as ever, but has developed a disturbing enthusiasm for a hypothetical future career as a contract killer.
• Becky from Drop Dead Gorgeous is a pretty, smiling beauty queen... until someone gets in her way. Then out comes her shotgun.
• Hayley from Hard Candy looks like a sweet teenager on the outside but on the inside, she is pitch black.
• Ax-Crazy Yandere J.D. from Heathers. He's a boy with an attractive face, and a (seemingly) sweet personality who turns out to be all levels of bat-shit crazy.
• Lucindia from Hell's Highway. Being cute makes it pretty easy to be picked up by people, who can then be brutally murdered (and, in one instance, raped) For the Evulz.
• Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill. 17 years old stereotypical Japanese schoolgirl with mannerism to match, and incredible bloodlust.
• The main character of Little Sweetheart, Thelma. She's a cute little 9-year-old girl (admittedly, with an odd resemblance to a certain The Good Son star, though that came second) who is skilled at blackmail and stalking, and willing to murder her only friend because she was going to ruin her plans.
• The Maids is about a couple of sisters serving as maids. Their mistress loves how sweet they are and how well they serve her. Poor madame just doesn't know what they do with her clothes when she's absent. Mistress is a kind of yandere herself, just not as wicked as her maids.
• Belle Blake, from Malavita, is a cute blonde teenager who just happens to be proficient with weapons and beats the crap out of a sleazy boy with just a tennis racket. Justified as she's a Mafia daughter in hiding with her family.
• Sarah Jane McKinney in Miss Nobody is one of the sweetest people you could possibly meet... and she thinks little of murdering people to get ahead at work.
• The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog in Monty Python and the Holy Grail looks exactly the same as a regular rabbit, but it will kill anyone foolish enough to come near it without blinking.
• In Ms. 45, Thana is a Cute Mute who becomes a Spree Killer after being raped.
• Similarly, Holly, the Villain Protagonist from Pet, is a pretty, artistic, and very normal young woman. On the outside.
• Norman Bates, as the titular psycho of Psycho, has very cute mannerisms and verbal tics (nibbling candy, giggling, stuttering, saying "sorry" and "gee") and his boy-next-door looks don't hurt anything, but none of it changes the fact that he's completely bonkers.
• Rat Race:
  • Speaking of Kathy Bates, she plays a seemingly friendly Squirrel Lady in this movie. Two women in a car stop where she (and her squirrels) are on the side of the road. She tries several times to get them to buy a squirrel, but they only want directions. She gives them very specific directions before sending them off with a paper bag marked "I <3 SQUIRRELS". The women follow the directions that send them down a very steep incline. As they plummet, they pass several signs with one word written on each: "YOU... SHOULD... HAVE... BOUGHT... A... SQUIRREL". They end up in a ravine atop a large pile of vehicles...and a skeleton holding an I <3 SQUIRRELS bag falls onto the windshield.
  • The movie also has Tracy, a good-looking helicopter pilot... that after seeing her boyfriend cheating on her with his ex, goes violently unhinged, complete with Evil Laugh.
• In contrast to the rest of the gangster-esq Toon Patrol, Psycho from Who Framed Roger Rabbit has this sort of thing going for him.

Literature

• In the novel and movie The Bad Seed, Rhoda Penmark is an angelic little girl who loves her mother "Thissss much" except when she's drowning a boy who won the spelling medal she wanted, setting a dim-witted man on fire because he seemed to know too much, or pushing an old woman down a flight of stairs for her snow-globe.
• A Certain Magical Index: Agnese Sanctis, who goes from ditzy Innocent Fanservice Girl to psychotic religious freak proclaiming Catholics believe that marriage with 'outsiders' is bestiality in the course of a single scene. Which is offscreen.
• Fear from Cube×Cursed×Curious can become quite creepy when she decides to go fully psycho. It doesn't help that she IS a weapon able to become all kinds of torture devices, and that this is actually her original personality.
• Kurumi of Date A Live is cute and has a whimsical personality but there's a reason her codename is "Nightmare". She has to hurt or outright kill people to power her Angel, but she's also not above killing them just to amuse herself and at one point tried to kill everyone in Shido's school just to prove a point.
• The Poem from The Dollmaker is a tiny and beautiful woman. She's also a horrifying sociopath.
• In Dora Wilk Series, Joshua's "definitely-not-my-girlfriend" Laoise fits. On one hand, it seems she's a genuinely sweet and nice person. On the other, she's psychically unstable, which combined with her Playing with Fire abilities creates a rather bad mixture.
• Mairu and Kururi from Durarara!!. Since they're Izaya's little sisters, it was obvious, though at least they're kinda sweet until you directly mess with them. Other examples include Erika, Walker and Aoba.
• Sharon Falconer from the novel Elmer Gantry and its adaptations. She cultivates the outward appearance of a successful, articulate preacher, but Elmer discovers that she is deeply disturbed. In private, she toggles different personalities, including a petulant child-like persona and a pseudo-pagan priestess.
• Faye from The Grimnoir Chronicles is a heroic version. Short, barely eighteen years old, cute as a button....and will instantly and casually kill anyone who crosses her invisible line. Oh, and she's a teleporter with a love of firearms and a Mini Map in her head, so you can't hide and don't even bother trying to run.
• Skuld Silent-Third of Heavy Object presents herself as a delicate and vulnerable girl forced to fight on behalf of the Faith Organization. She's entirely cooperative with the Legitimacy Kingdom when captured and seems to have a major crush on Qwenthur. In reality, Skuld is a sociopathic Serial Killer who has to be carefully controlled by her older sisters to keep her from going on a rampage. She plans to use her capture to escape into a safe country and indulge her "hobby", starting with her latest target, Qwenthur.
• Phaidor in John Carter of Mars: The Gods of Mars is described as a beautiful young girl, who is first introduced as a Damsel in Distress captured by raiders. She is also a White Martian princess, belonging to an evil race of cannibalistic mystics with god complexes. Her Establishing Character Moment is giving a Slasher Smile to the hero when he declares he will kill all her captors, which creeps him out immensely.
• As mentioned, Annie Wilkes from the Stephen King novel Misery is an archetypical example. A qualified nurse, she rescues the main character and her zealously favorite author Paul Sheldon from a car crash in the middle of a blizzard and cares for him. Unfortunately, Paul later finds out that she is a psychopathic, schizophrenic Serial Killer who has no qualms against chopping off his foot with an axe and cauterizing the wound with a blowtorch if he acts up.
  Annie: "You. Murdered. My. MISERY!!"
• In Nine Goblins, the protagonists encounter a little girl who's the only survivor of a massacred village which she massacred herself; she has a powerful magical gift and a matching case of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
• The title character of Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! has this naturally since she claims to be Nyarlathotep, an insane and malicious Elder God from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, in the form of a beautiful teenage girl. Normally she's energetic, outgoing, and incredibly friendly with a passion for Anime and Toku. To her enemies, however, she's an Ax-Crazy lunatic with no sense of restraint and a propensity for turning her foes into Chunky Salsa, especially if anyone lays a finger on the guy she loves.
• Overlord (2012):
  • Two already at the beginning. Clementine who gleefully delights in slaughter, all the while acting in a cutesy manner, and Lupusregina Beta. The latter has the title "Sadist with a Smiling Mask" and acts like your typical Genki Girl in front of her friends. People who spend any length of time with her can see it's all an act and even the people she's been assigned to protect are scared shitless of her. We get to see what happens when she's allowed to slip from her leash in the aftermath of the Battle of Carne Village. Let's just say that she earned her moniker.
  • Princess Renner of Re-Estize, for the most part just looks like an incredibly competent and intelligent princess with a slightly unsettling side. In actuality, she's a depraved maniac who is so evil that she earns the respect of Albedo and Demiurge, two of the most evil NPCs of Nazarick, and has an obessive-possessive Yandere Bodyguard Crush towards Climb. When the Sorcerer Kingdom takes over, Renner sells the entirety of Re-Estize to Ainz, killing all the children and personnel in her orphanage as a sacrifice for her full transformation into an imp and manipulates Climb into giving her the Razor Edge to kill her father and have Ainz sit in his throne.
• In The Pale King, Toni really loves her dogs.
  "Now I'll know. If anything happens to these dogs. If they run off, or limp, or anything - I'll kill you, your family, burn your house down, and sow salt. I have nothing to live for but these dogs...But if anything gets done to these dogs I'll decide it was you and I'll sacrifice my life and freedom to destroy you and everyone you love."
• Kitten, the main villain in Price, is a sadistic rapist, can figure out how to kill people just by looking at them and looks 14 years old.
• In Reincarnated as a Sword, we have one of the two main characters, Fran, the 12-year-old cat girl. On one side, she's an adorable child who loves head-pats, hugs, praise for doing good deeds, and happily sings about being fed good food. On the other, she gets pouty if she's denied a good fight, goes into Tranquil Fury in the blink of an eye, and has to be given good reason to not go around killing and torturing people who annoy her. In her case, she has the Freudian Excuse of having to endure a childhood constantly on the run from slavers, helplessly watch her parents die, finally being captured by said slavers, and undergoing horrific abuse for at least 4 years, until she got her hands on the other main character, Teacher the sword, who acts as her Parental Substitute and encourages her to fight back...
• Tanya von Degurechaff from The Saga of Tanya the Evil. She is an 11-year-old girl, whose blond hair and blue eyes give her an almost doll-like, cherubic appearance. She's also a Child Soldier who is regarded as The Dreaded to both her enemies and allies for her cold, calculating, and absolutely ruthless approach to warfare, being more than capable of wiping out entire battalions/squadrons single-handed. On top of that, she's demonstrated on more than one occasion to have no problems using her childlike appearance and qualities to her advantage. One of her commanding officers outright refers to her as "a monster in the form of a little girl".
• Tyene Sand of A Song of Ice and Fire inherited her mother's pure, innocent appearance... and her father's love of poison. She's likely the most dangerous of the Sand Snakes because of this, and seemingly the most sociopathic as well, due to the Dissonant Serenity that she exhibits when talking about gruesome death.
• Helen from Twig often acts bubbly and adorable, but the other Lambs know that this is a mask she's chosen to wear to disguise her genetically engineered love of killing.
  Helen: Basics first. Eat, sleep, breathe, murder, drink.
• The Witchlands has Esme, who's also known as the Puppeteer. She's noted to be one of the most beautiful women alive. She also regularly corrupts other witches, binds them to her, and keeps them as her puppets (hence the nickname).

Live-Action TV

• All That: "Ask Ashley" featured a sickeningly sweet little girl with an insanely unstable temper answer moronic viewer's mail. Hilarity Ensues.
• Angel: Fred's tendency to be this is never completely gone — just dormant.
• Atypical: Evan's sister Beth is friendly, caring, enjoys baking and loves her brother's girlfriend Casey. After Casey breaks up with Evan, Beth begins sending videos of her baking cakes or cookies then destroying them violently. In one video, she places a cake on her lawn and runs a mower over it. The videos are often accompanied with loud screaming and an angry attitude directed at Casey. It is obviously an over-the-top way to express her feelings about the break-up.
  Beth: In addition to the daily pain of your betrayal, Dewey ran away. I guess everyone I love leaves me. So I decided to bake something cheerful. Behold, homemade angel food cake topped with strawberries and buttercream frosting. And it's still warm, just like my lawn mower.
• Bernadette from The Big Bang Theory. She is usually sweet, demure, innocent, even a bit of a woman child at times, but she has a very short fuse and is extremely impatient and will go off on someone over seemingly small things and is quick to give Howard ultimatums if he has a dilemma that involves her. She also almost never stops smiling. And it's always the exact same toothy smile, even when she casually mentions the potentially weaponizeable biological specimens she's working with, or threatening someone with grievous bodily harm.
• Stormfront in The Boys (2019). Contrary to her comic counterpart, she's a petite, upbeat, and outgoing woman who idolizes Pippi Longstocking and likes to interact directly with her fans through livestreams. However she's also a sadistic Nazi who destroys an apartment building in a black neighborhood during her first mission as a member of The Seven before brutally murdering Kimiko's brother while calling him a "fucking yellow bastard".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Drusilla Keeble is soft-spoken, loves dolls, and has a child-like innocence and affection for her "family" which can on occasion come across as vulnerable and sweet. She's also an omnicidal, certifiably insane vampiress who has on occasion been known to slit throats with her own nails. She was led to believe she was evil by Angelus who stalked, tortured, and assaulted her for years until she finally turned insane and was turned into a vampire to suffer for eternity, so by this point the "psycho" part of this trope is quite understandable.
• On the Soap Opera The City (1995) (a retooling of Loving), the cast was being stalked by a Serial Killer. Much to the audience's shock, it was soon revealed to be petite, perky blonde Molly Malone.
• Annie from Community: She is generally sweet and well-meaning, but minor things like a C grade or a lost pen have been known to make her crazy and/or violent for a while.
• The Trinity Killer from Dexter. It's also an inversion; we see the dark side first. It's the "nice guy and family man" side that comes as a complete shock.
• Doctor Who:
  • The basic characterization trait of the Fourth Doctor. He's naturally extremely cute and childlike and knows it (exploiting it as Obfuscating Stupidity to make his enemies assume he's silly and harmless), but also an extreme Nightmare Fetishist and occasionally dips into Blue-and-Orange Morality. Much of the appeal of his character comes from his ability to display both the "cute" and "psycho" sides of his personality at the same time.
  • The Tenth Doctor is also like this. He's handsome and charming, with many eccentric quirks and a fun, bouncy personality. Underneath that, though, Ten is seriously screwed up, largely due to the trauma and guilt he carries from the Time War.
    • In the two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood," he becomes human, adopts the identity of kindly schoolteacher "John Smith," and loses his Time Lord memories and his "psycho" side. When he finds out what he used to be, he does not want to go back to being the Doctor — because that would mean reviving the "psycho" in him. Duty calls, though. So after becoming the Doctor again, he promptly defeats the villains of the week and sadistically punishes them with various And I Must Scream fates for eternity.
      Son of Mine: He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing — the fury of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why — why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden. He was being kind.
    • In the episode "The Waters of Mars," Ten meets a woman who is fated to die and is heartbroken that he can't save her. Without a companion around to keep him under control, Ten decides to save the woman, laws of time be damned — even though he could destroy the spacetime continuum in the process. And he doesn't take long to jump off the slippery slope and decide that as the last of the Time Lords, he makes the rules of time. After declaring himself "the Time Lord Victorious" and starting to behave eerily like a certain other Time Lord, Ten is only jolted out of "psycho" mode after the woman he tries to save kills herself in order to set time back on the right course.
      Tenth Doctor: There are laws of time. Once upon a time, there were people in charge of those laws. But they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realize that the laws of time are mine and they will obey me!...For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am: a Time Lord Victorious.
  • Let us consider Eleven. Perhaps the most childlike of the Doctors to date, Eleven is easily Adorkable, but he has also been known to fawn over nightmarish creatures, was once thrilled to find himself in the mouth of a Star Whale, and possibly has a higher body count than all other Doctors, since he tricked The Silence into ordering their own execution, blew up an entire Cyber Legion to get them to tell Rory where Amy was being held, courted and married River Song, who he knew was raised to kill him, tricked a group of Weeping Angels into erasing themselves from existence, goaded a Dalek into arming its self-destruct mechanism so that he could then set its steering on permanent reverse, sending it back into its own comrades, and basically told a fleet of over one million ships of his combined enemies, as River put it, "Everything that has ever hated you", to basically "Come At Me Bro." And to top it all off, his Trademark Favorite Food, his first and last meal in this incarnation, was fish fingers and custard.
  • In her youth, before her Heel–Face Turn, River Song was raised as a Laser Guided Tyke Bomb by an Ancient Conspiracy who intended her to murder the Doctor, but she was every bit as sexy and quirky as the good River we all know and love.
• Firefly: River is generally a cute, sweet teenage girl who is friendly and playful. She's also a government-manufactured killing machine with Psychic Powers and spent three years being experimented on, trained, and surgically enhanced until her mind could no longer filter or control incoming stimuli. As a result, she is an unstable schizophrenic with ingrained martial arts and assassination training who often flips out without warning.
• Mel from Flight of the Conchords. She does things like bake the band the cookies and has a not-so-secret crush on them that leads to some awkward moments between them. This description, although while accurate, would give you the impression that she was a dorky and cute Dogged Nice Girl. But she's not, she's actually an insane Stalker with a Crush. And those awkward moments are the result of her creepiness and the fact that she sometimes coyly hits on them in front of her husband.
• In Game of Thrones, a cruel process of Break the Cutie has brought this out in young Arya Stark, whose "evening prayers" now consist of a list of enemies she intends to kill. It's illustrated at its best near the end of season three, when she calmly informs Sandor Clegane that she will stick a blade through his eye and out the back of his skull some day. The next episode, she hammers it home by catching a Frey soldier off guard with feigned cuteness and vulnerability, then repeatedly and viciously stabbing him, all without showing the slightest remorse. Keep in mind that she's barely more than a child.
• Glee:
  • Rachel Berry definitely is a high-intensity-low-stability kind of girl, with her Serious Business approach to... well... everything. It's absolutely adorable when it's not just infuriatingly annoying, especially to her fellow Glee Clubbers who just seem visibly tired of her antics at times.
  • Quinn can be incredibly sweet and endearing when she's not screaming at someone or going to absolutely insane extremes just to feel good about herself again.
• Elle Bishop in Heroes, a cute, childish, and sociopathic woman who delights in killing, hurting, and controlling people.
• Love and Destiny: Princess Bao Qing, though bubbly and completely in love with Jing Xiu, is also high-strung and rather spoiled... and she threatens to cut a man's eyes out for looking at her.
• Odd Squad: Oona is a Gadgeteer Genius who is nice to her co-workers and is loyal to Odd Squad through thick and thin. However, unlike her predecessor and mentor, Oscar, her mental health isn't in the best state, and she is often shown to be completely off her rocker. Perhaps the best example of this is in the episode "The Cherry-on-Top-inator", where she becomes giddy from destroying useless gadgets with her trusty mallet, coupled with murderous screams.
• Helena from Orphan Black is an Ax-Crazy fanatic with a murderous hatred of clones (not knowing she's a clone herself). But she's beautiful, quirky, sympathetic, and one hell of a dancer. In the second season on, she manages a Heel–Face Turn while remaining terrifyingly violent if she thinks that she or people she cares about are threatened.
• Gem and Gemma of Power Rangers RPM are a mild case. Mentally, they're about kindergarten age, and their favorite things in the whole wide world are explosions. Especially when it's the evil Killer Robots going boom. The reason they're only a "mild" case is that they don't really want anyone hurt (though there was one time they had to be reminded that there were civilians enslaved in a factory they planned to "vaporize from sub-orbit").
• Hooch from Scrubs. He's normally friendly and even charismatic, but pissing him off triggers his Ax-Crazy tendencies. This leads to J.D. and Turk frequently playing pranks on him to trigger his psychotic side, at one point even eating popcorn while Hooch is throwing death threats around. It becomes clearer with every appearance that the catchphrase "Hooch is crazy" thrown around by other characters is not exaggeration. After another of J.D. and Turk's pranks, he takes four people hostage and is subsequently fired from the hospital. In the very last episode of season 8, we see him in a straitjacket, proclaiming "Hooch is crazy."
• The third series of The Thick of It introduces us to Steve Fleming, MP, who is a spectacularly unstable version of this trope; that cheerful grin, the slightly creepy compliments and the "call me Uncle Steve" attitude you see when you first meet him? Get him even slightly agitated and his Ax-Crazy side will come to the fore. The scary part comes when he desperately tries to suppress his insanity, swinging from Stepford Smiler to Unstoppable Rage and back again so violently you wonder he doesn't give himself whiplash.
• Cassidy from Veronica Mars. He seems to be a sweet, nerdy, and helpless guy, but he's a rapist and mass-murderer.
• Alluded to in an episode of Victorious. Tori is being stalked by a mysterious student who disappears whenever other people show up, so they believe Tori is seeing things. Rex notes that he finds Tori more attractive now that she's crazy.

Music

• "Sweet But Psycho" by Ava Max is, as the title would imply, about a girl who is sweet but "a little bit psycho". Played for Drama in the music video, where the boyfriend finds her previous boyfriend's corpse in the closet and realizes he's next on the chopping block.
  Yeah, people say, "Run, don't walk away,"
  'Cause she's sweet but a psycho
  A little bit psycho
  At night she's screamin', "I'm-ma-ma-ma out my mind."
• Natalie Raps and it's sequel Natalie's Rap 2 by The Lonely Island informs us that Natalie Portman is in fact a total psycho.
• Jenny by British punk band The Lurkers tells about the narrator having a girlfriend named Jenny who apparently lead a double life where she killed a girl and got sent to prison, blaming the narrator who still loves her regardless.

Mythology & Religion

• The Maenads. Dionysus's followers who were once innocent, kind-hearted women until too much magic alcohol caused them to do horrific acts by tearing apart animals, children and sometimes men with their bare hands. They also killed poor Orpheus.

Professional Wrestling

• While Daffney Unger was bordering on and sometimes crossing over into Ms. Fanservice in her initial WCW run, this trope was the case in TNA. On TNA Xplosion, Don West described Daffney as "Just crazy enough to attract you and just crazy enough to make you want to get the hell away." When forced into a striptease after Impact went to Monday nights she proceeded to give perhaps the most unsexy undressing a genuinely attractive person ever gave on Spike TV, as her eyes screamed "Die". She also got herself cutup more than all the other knockouts, perhaps barring Roxxi, usually when her own designs to maim people backfired.
• Was, or at least became the gimmick of Lin "Bitch" Bairon in SMASH. She had to be restrained by a chained dog collar before matches.
• Subverted at first in SHINE, as Kimberly started to let herself go in the earliest stages of her Sanity Slippage, but then her losing streak was over and she cleaned up, during the latter stages.
• Nikki Cross from SAnitY: She can be found smiling like a kid in a candy shop at the violence brought on by her stablemates, commandeering her stablemates for piggyback rides, and, during her sit-down interview, repeatedly batted away the mic and tried to do her interview by walking too close to the camera and holding the mic herself (badly).

Tabletop Games

• Forgotten Realms sourcebook Shining South got a sample NPC like this. A smiling half-drow (and both halves do work in her favour) cutie with Girlish Pigtails. In a tasteful armor, with short sword and composite bow. According to her stats, a Talos-worshipping Neutral Evil ranger/shadow marauder. As in, a Dambrath noble pillaging neighbour countries more for the fun of it than any economical benefits, and trained to not be stopped by boring things like fortifications for longer than an eyeblink.

Video Games

• ALTER EGO (2018): Es is intended as a Love Interest of sorts to the player character, so most of her interactions with the player are meant to be wholesome and her personality is bashful and well-mannered. During the ID ending, however, she decides that her impulses are all that matters. Unfortunately, one of them is killing the entity that always tries to repress her desires, aka Ego Rex. For that purpose, she destroys the library world. Her design changes to a constantly glitching one and she wears a deranged smile.
• Ayla from Awesomenauts is a cute Sadak child with psychokinetic abilities. She is also a psychotic prison escapist with a penchant for starting fires and destroying property.
  Ayla: I'm a buttercup as sweet as can be. Please won't you buy some DESTRUCTION from me?
• Azur Lane: Roon. Sweet and caring towards pretty much everyone, then she gets into combat... Ax-Crazy and Blood Knight barely beings to describe her. People are afraid of her because how quickly and easily she switches back and forth.
• Harley Quinn has always been this, but in Batman: Arkham City it goes to new heights. Her goons think she is worse than The Joker.
• In Blaze Union, we get Eimi, also known as Garlot/Gulcasa's sister Emilia. Nothing could be more adorable than her in the whole game... But if you go for the B route and field her too many times in battle, her love for her Brother Captain and her other friends, together with her desire to be useful to them, ends up driving her over the edge. As a result, Brongaa's blood manifests at full power in her, and she becomes a monstrosity that will remind many Deptheavenites of Brongaa Possessed Gulcasa. At this point, she is bent on nothing but destroying anything that stands in her way, and Garlot is forced to put her to the blade, both to put her out of Brongaa's torment and to assure his survival and that of everyone else.
• Borderlands 2:
  • Tiny Tina (subtitle "world's deadliest 13-year-old") decorates her house with bunnies and is fond of tea parties. In which she uses electricity to torture a bandit to death. Said bunnies are also filled with explosives, the use and making of which Tina is very proficient in. She also talks like a pimp and describes the aforementioned bunnies very... strangely. Yet, she's still extremely huggable.
  • Gaige, the Mechromancer. For a school project, she developed DT (later renamed Deathtrap), a robot bullying deterrent — with razor claws and lasers, who proceeds to kill her rival when she threatens her. Her skills, apart from improving Deathtrap, allow Gaige to build up Anarchy, which improves her damage, weakens her Accuracy, and makes her sound slightly unhinged.
• Strawberry Crepe Cookie, from Cookie Run: Kingdom, is a small, pink-haired child with a very upbeat, perky attitude. They are also part of Dark Enchantress Cookie's Quirky Miniboss Squad and is by far the most murderous and bloodthirsty out of all of them. They send Wafflebots to attack Black Rasin Cookie village out of boredom and are constantly asking violent questions like "How long will it take to liquify a sugar gnome?"
• Ripper Roo from the Crash Bandicoot series, while at first completely insane, becomes like this after the epilogue of the first game, where he is stated to have undergone intense therapy and higher education.
• Darkstalkers has Bulleta/B.B. Hood. Adorable, Moe-laden Token Mini-Moe on the outside. Ax-Crazy Psycho for Hire Bounty Hunter on the inside.
• In Densetsu no Stafy 3, Hirara is an adorable pink fish found in Gabun's body, who is so torn up over her crush Halo getting together with Hillaryn that she plans to spend the rest of her life inside Gabun. She's prone to angry outbursts that turn her body spiky, and doesn't care that it's harming Gabun from the inside. Fortunately, Starly solves the problem by tickling Gabun's nose to get him to sneeze her out.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the 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. Taken Up to Eleven in Online, where 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.
  • From the backstory, Emperor Pelagius the Mad was said to be a handsome and personable young man...at least until the madness set in. Afterward, he was prone to bouts of Ax-Crazy insanity. Once his madness became too publicly apparent, he was institutionalized and died only a few years later.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Crown and Fool, two completely Ax-Crazy sadists with barely any loyalty to the player characters' team, only relishing the opportunity to kill and not caring if ally units get in the way of their area of effect attacks. They're also undeniably cute. This is even more apparent after their art upgrade in Giant Fist, where they cameo as trash talking dealers in the casino minigame.
• For all that Selphie of Final Fantasy VIII is a sweet little Genki Girl, she's also far and away the most violently pragmatic of the player characters. Whenever she's involved in the planning phase of a mission, she always seems to suggest using explosives. When planning how to escape D-District, while a Moomba is in the cell with everyone, she casually suggests skinning it and wearing it as a disguise. It's hard to tell if she was actually joking or not.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • Noire comes off as a delicate and soft-spoken young lady who has a timid demeanor due to being used as a guinea pig for her mentally-unstable mother's curses and coming from an incredibly doomed Bad Future. However, also BECAUSE of that, she has formed a split personality that surfaces whenever she gets fed up with the antics of her comrades or during the heat of battle. This side of her is also a bit of a ham.
    Noire: BLOOD AND THUNDER!!!!
  • Henry is unfailingly cheerful, but almost every single line coming out of his mouth reveals his very screwed-up psyche that comes from a horrifying Dark and Troubled Past.
• M4 SOPMOD II from Girls' Frontline. On one hand, she demonstrates puppy-like affection towards the Commander, acts as The Heart for Anti-Rain, and otherwise^note  More on that later looks like a pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair, pinkish-red eyes and some Cute Little Fangs. On the other, she's rather bloodthirsty, collects body parts from Sangvis Ferri gynoids and wears SF limbs, along with quite a bit of black clothing, a creepy-looking skull bandanna and a headset with some horns on the top.
• Also from Mogeko games, Rawberry from The Gray Garden, a cute little pink-haired demon who will murder and devour anything in her way when she's not sleeping. Including her teammates.
• Brightwing from Heroes of the Storm. A cute faerie dragon with an adorable child-like voice. With lines like "Let us make their insides outsides!".
• Marx from Kirby. He starts out looking almost the same as Kirby, only with a jester cap. Even his superstar superpowered monstrous form is still pretty cute.
• Teemo in League of Legends, a Moogle rip-off who couldn't care less about all the people he kills but is slowly cracking from prolonged isolation from others of his kind.
  • While how "cute" Jinx is varies from person to person, she's also an Ax-Crazy Bomb Throwing Anarchist who loves blowing things up just because she can and is completely out of her gourd.
  • While slightly less "psycho" and more Troubled, but Cute (and The Woobie) after lore retcons, Annie the Dark Child is still absolutely adorable in spite of being a budding pyromaniac whose only friend is her beloved teddy bear which transforms into a gigantic flaming monster when she wants to hurt somebody.
• Lobotomy Corporation has Ppodae, a cute little puppy that stands out from the more monstrous other Abnormalities you take care of. Its files describe how employees were lining up to work with it, and that it's so cute that it couldn't possibly be evil; its greatest danger would be someone exploding from its sheer cuteness. It's also very much capable of Hulking Out and breaching containment in order to snack on those very same employees.
  I mean, sometimes we found some weird bones from what looks like a human skeleton around Ppodae, but it’s just so cute! So really, who cares?
• Venus from Metal Gear Ac!d 2 is an extremely beautiful Femme Fatale, and seems flirtatious, sexually confident, and yet somewhat vulnerable at first. She also kills a frightening amount of people in cold blood and seems completely incapable of actually feeling normal emotion despite her seductive, romantic play-acting. It's easily her sexuality which is her most screwed-up trait — during the game, she gets aroused at least once by dowsing (in a Does This Remind You of Anything? comedy scene), shuriken, murder, a corrupt genocide incident, a Mad Scientist experimenting on little children, her partner killing people, and her partner nearly getting blown up. Her partner, naturally, is creeped out horribly by her.
• Mogeko Castle has the Mogekos, little yellow cat-like creatures with curly tails who love prosciutto... and also high school girls. In very disturbing fashion. They love playing with high school girls, and don't particularly care about consent.
  • Mogeko leader Moge-ko is a textbook example.
• Violet of Neon White is just as easily provoked into a shrieking, violent rage as she is inclined to Squeeing over cute little animals and hot guys. She considers gore and violence to be exactly as adorable as cupcakes and stuffed toys.
• Neptunia:
  • Compa is a ditzy Nice Girl who can heal her allies in and out of battle (although not without some accidents). She can also be very dangerous when wielding a Giant Medical Syringe and has an occasional morbid sense of humor.
  • Plutia is a sleepy Kindhearted Simpleton who truly loves her friends, but when someone gets on her bad side, she'll transform into Iris Heart, a sadistic, fear-mongering Dominatrix who indiscriminately frightens and tortures friend and foe alike, and will even go the extra mile when "playing" with her victims. Her civilian form isn't any better either, as one of her attacks in gameplay is called "Stress Relief", as in punching her own dolls.
  • Rei Ryghts is a darker example. In her human form, she's an amiable Shrinking Violet who can't stand up to herself when she's getting bullied by everyone around her. Once transformed, she becomes an Ax-Crazy tyrant who murders anyone who gets in her way.
• Lucy from Ninjala plays this trope straight as a way of being herself. Justified due to her Dark and Troubled Past when she is shunned by her first friends because of the power of her Magic Eye.
• Some characters of Orange_Juice's games invoke this trope:
  • Saki from SUGURI, a cute girl who fights with musical-based weaponry and powers, was at first reluctant to fight Suguri since she was able to communicate with her, only to suddenly tell her "please die!" with a psychotic face for laughs.
  • Syura from QP Shooting - DANGEROUS!! may look like a ditzy otaku weirdo, but she's also rumored to be a crazed demon with powers beyond Hell itself. Her name can also be translated as "carnage" and "bloodshed", which feels out of place in a cutesy game about a dog girl trying to restore pudding to existence.
  • Star Breaker, the Final Boss of sora, is a young and adorable Tyke Bomb with immense fire powers, dangerous explosive weaponry, and severe mental instability thanks to the experiments performed on her by the army. After being defeated by Sora, her mind falls to pieces, enkindling her determination to destroy the planet.
• Phantasy Star Online 2 has Risa, who's a CAST and an instructor for rangers. She's always smiling and full of enthusiasm, but her conversations typically revolve around her love of filling things with lead and/or blowing them up. Her fanbase constantly makes the mistake of calling her yandere in spite of the fact that her personality is considerably childlike and she thus has no real interest in intimate relationships.
• Lovrina of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness fits the bill perfectly. A cute, ditzy Valley Girl with a penchant for 'beautiful' Pokémon... who is also the Evil Genius of a criminal syndicate responsible for the routine Mind Rape of Pokémon in order to transform them into soulless killing machines. She turns very nasty when pushed, and one of her subordinates describes her as "nothing short of terrifying".
  • Among the new Pokémon introduced in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are Tinkatuff and Tinkaton, tiny, cutesy Fairy types who carry around gigantic metal hammers they make out of scraps of metal gotten from indiscriminately attacking Pawniard, Bisharp, and Corviknight.
• Eveline from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. She portrays herself as a sweet little girl for the most part but is an extremely sociopathic control freak who will incorporate anyone she sees into her "family", like she did to the Bakers, turning them into Ax-Crazy monsters.
• Iris Sepperin from RosenkreuzStilette is generally a prim and proper little girl over the course of the first game's story. Then, just before the final battle, she starts laughing madly and quickly shifts from her affable attitude to motormouthed insanity and arrogance during her Villainous Breakdown.
• Saints Row: The Third expansion Gangsters In Space:
  • Jenny Jaros. She's taller than Female!Boss, plays a Purple Skinned Space Babe, incredibly fit, and clearly works out judging by her figure. She starts out as a true Nice Girl in awe of working with the leader of the Saints in a film, and the director punts her like some Jerkass Take That! combination of Hideaki Anno, Christian Bale, and Joss Whedon. Boss; who can easily qualify for this trope themselves, pets, strokes, nurses, caresses and generally takes her under her\his wing in the face of all this abuse, and when the director goes one step too far and tries to replace Jenny she reacts by gunning down the extras with prop firearms, then beating them to death if Boss stays around. When the Director reveals he is actively trying to kill them in the movie Jenny snaps, and in a scene that frightens even the Anti-Hero Devil in Plain Sight Boss runs down the director in a spaceship, killing him. Apparently Jenny has anger management issues but hot damn was it not deserving.
  • Professor Genki as well, being a big, cuddly-looking pink cat with comical Nerd Glasses who yells in enthusiastic broken English... and loves him some Murder Time.
• While being drawn in a cute Gothic-inspired anime art style, pretty much all of the cast from SINoALICE qualify as off their rocker in one way or the other. Special mention goes to Little Red Riding Hood. Cute as a button, and likes to play games with others involving murder, torture, and wholesale slaughter.
• The titular Cute Ghost Girl of Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion is heavily implied to be not as innocent as she looks. Aside from the fact that her house is full of monsters and experiments, an in-game note has her laughing at her head scientist's concerns before leaving him to be killed. The three mini-games feature her brutally murdering people. She also sounds increasingly more disappointed that you survived as you go further through the game. In addition, there's this image released for the December update, which implies she murdered Santa Claus. It turns out that she is fully aware of how cute she is, and hates it. In fact, the entire reason she keeps a house of monstrosities is so that people can die in it and she can use their ghosts to form an army. Why? Because she won't be called "cute" anymore, of course.
• Blackbird from Strife. She actually gets excited when you find new weapons and starts talking about their killing potential. Not to mention that this is her preferred method of dealing with most problems that come up. To be fair, this is a First-Person Shooter, so powerful weapons usually are a great way to deal with most problems that come up.
• Mimi from Super Paper Mario. Just before her boss fight, her head turns upside-down with an audible crack and explodes, and spider legs come out and carry her body around. The paper that is her head is crumpled up, possibly to signify the insane head trauma.
  Mimi: I'll shred you all like bits of confetti!
• Alice from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World applies to this: While she appears to be a cute, innocent girl, she's actually the leader of a terroristic army, being called a sadist by one of the main characters.
• The Pyro from Team Fortress 2. While not traditionally cute (we can't tell for sure) it's easy to find their cheerful, cutesy attitude endearing. They also has a worrying love for arson and fire, cut off Soldier's hand for next to no reason, and brutally murdered some Smokey the Bear Expy.
• This fits Unknown from Tekken like the body paint she wears: turns out Jun is Unknown and whereas both are beautiful one had become much colder and unfriendly, the other comes across as sensual and seemingly happy to see you. She also takes over your body if you lose to her and eventually kills it off.
• Touhou Project has Flandre Scarlet, who, after spending almost five hundred years in the basement of the Scarlet Mansion to protect people from her immense powers, has the mind of a child and a poor understanding of restraint, only wanting to play but with a tendency to "break" those she plays with. She isn't exactly murderous, but she's unstable enough that Marisa — who has fought some of the most powerful denizens of Gensoukyou, which includes a few resident Physical Gods — actively avoids her whenever she goes to the Scarlet Mansion to steal books.
• Twins Mireille and Mischka in Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, the former being female and the latter male. They kill purely for fun and hold a total lack of compassion for those they fight against, and ultimately kill — even when it is not necessary, such as butchering a soldier who surrenders. Neither of them care to even hear the plight of rebel leader Natalie, who they kill. She is implied to be their mother, unbeknownst to them. This disgusts even Wylfred, a character who sacrificed his own friends and childhood companions for the sake of revenge.
• The Villain Protagonist of Yandere Simulator looks like an Ordinary High-School Student, and can interact like her classmates like a completely normal teenage girl. However, she's actually an Emotionless Girl who stalks the first person who made her feel anything, and will murder anyone who gets in the way. Depending on how you play, she can be a Manipulative Bitch, a pragmatic villain, or an outright Serial Killer.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Dahlia Hawthorne, Phoenix Wright's girlfriend in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations seems nice, pleasant, frail and feminine... but when Mia finally brings her to justice for her various crimes, she glares at her with Glowing Eyes of Doom while swearing revenge. Said revenge involves coming Back from the Dead to murder Mia's sister Maya, who had done nothing to Dahlia, simply because Mia was already dead and beyond direct punishment.
• Played for laughs with Riko in A Profile. As Masayuki's stepmother, she's very easily influenced, strong-willed and tends to have thought processes at right angles to any normal person. Thus, she is prone to brainwashing her children and any number of other odd things.
• Kozue in Chaos;Head. For a Cute Mute, she sure seems awfully indifferent to the idea of killing people. Well, killing jerks. Hell, she got her sword in the first place so she could kill.
• Sho, the Villain Protagonist from Crimson Rafflesia frequently changes her personality from cute and adorable to a creepy psychic murderer, breaking into fits of giggles while brutally dismembering people.
• Danganronpa:
  • Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. She has multiple personalities, one of which acts especially childlike and cute, and as the Ultimate Fashionista she takes great care in maintaining her personal appearance. But she's also the vilest character in the whole franchise, being completely obsessed with spreading despair For the Evulz, to the point of starting a sadistic Deadly Game for her own enjoyment.
  • From the sequel, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Mikan Tsumiki is an interesting case, as she's cute before catching the despair disease, but after she's revealed as a killer, she loses the cute factor quickly. However, if you play through her free time events, she still has that sadistic side, she just hides it better.
  • For a male example, Kokichi Oma from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. Subverted when it was revealed that he was Good All Along and hated the killing game.
  • In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, Monophanie is the only female Monokub and the "cutest one", especially with her English VA pulling off an incredibly cute high-pitched squeaky range to suit her personality. In the final chapter, she freaks out with Monotaro as they cry and beg Monokuma to spare their lives.
  • From the spinoff, Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, Monaca is the leader of the Warriors of Hope, a group composed of abused children trying to get revenge against society by slaughtering adults. Monaca is The Sociopath and a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, using her cute looks to manipulate people to further her own goals.
• Ilya in Fate/stay night, which is rather baffling to Shirou. Eventually he decides it's because she has no sense of right and wrong, and instead acts on any desire she has, no matter what it is.
• Kazuaki Nanaki (aka Hitori Uzune) Hatoful Boyfriend. He's a sleepy, gentle teacher who just happens to be so traumatized by the death of his brother Nageki that he's constantly haunted by a shadowy manifestation of his guilt that he believes to be Nageki's ghost hating and blaming him for his own death that drives him to do some truly creepy things near the end of the Bad Boys Love route, descending into a Madness Mantra as he does so. Another character tries to help him and is almost strangled, and correctly concludes the following.
  "He looks pretty gentle on the outside, but I think he's pretty messed up inside."
• Tsukihime features Kohaku, who appears to be a constantly smiling maid, but who actually is the Far Side Big Bad responsible for most of the tragic events. One of the first tip-offs that something is off is that whereas her Emotionless Girl sister Hisui occasionally shows emotions such as surprise, embarrassment, or anger, Kohaku never loses that smile.
• This is practically the selling point of When They Cry:
  • Higurashi: When They Cry features some of the more well-known ones, such as Rena Ryugu up there in the page image. A lot of the times the characters are delusional, so that either makes them Cute and Psycho or makes them appear Cute and Psycho. It's implied that all the central characters except Mion, Rena included, contracted Hinamizawa syndrome during many other iterations of the "Groundhog Day" Loop each; Rena would be a straight example in every one where she did. We're just only shown one. Well, there is another example of her going Cute and Psycho in the PS2 arcs. The biggest example would have to be Miyo Takano, the local nurse with an angelic face who set everything up and is this responsible for the other cute and psycho characters, in addition to being a sadistic Nightmare Fetishist with a liking for torture equipment, but is more low-key than the others.
  • Umineko: When They Cry: The witches, a species of sadistic Trolls who take delight in the misery they sow. Most notably the main antagonist Beatrice and Eva-Beatrice and Bernkastel and Lambdadelta.
    • Maria Ushiromiya. In some scenes, the cutest little girl imaginable. At others, well...
    • Her mother Rosa can swap between loving and motherly and abusive monster at the drop of a hat. This being the result of her being severely bipolar combined with possibly having PTSD as the result of a harsh childhood and certain incidents shown in the 3rd novel.
• Shiraki Aeka from Yume Miru Kusuri is a horribly, horribly justified example.
• Zero Escape: Akane Kurashiki, the founder of a Benevolent Conspiracy of psychics who have taken it upon themselves to kill anybody standing between the world and its safety. Some days she wears cardigans and sips tea, other days she hacks at enemies with a chainsaw or gleefully flings her proteges into danger to sharpen their abilities. Even her Love Interest Junpei, who has seen her kill multiple people firsthand, sometimes forgets how ruthless she can be.

Web Animation

• Pink and Blue from Charlie the Unicorn. Cute little innocent sickeningly optimistic and 'imaginative' unicorns, who pull elaborate traps for Organ Theft.
• Happy Tree Friends:
  • Flippy is calm and sweet part of the time, but the minute something triggers him (by reminding him of his time in the Weaponized Animal Regiment), whether it be something like a car backfiring, the sight of a knife, fire, or an airplane, he flips out and switches to his other personality, Fliqpy, and starts killing everything around him rather creatively and brutally with a huge Slasher Smile on his face.
  • Nutty also counts as an example of this, as his candy obsession can lead to him killing others, and even himself as he confuses things or people for candy.
• Helluva Boss: Millie is an absolute sweetie who can often be seen acting adorable, especially when it involves Moxxie. She's also the main muscle in I.M.P when it comes to murdering people. Moxxie himself absolutely adores this mercilessly monstrous aspect of her going by the song he wrote.
• Asiago from Puffin Forest is a little druid girl wearing a bearpelt which induces Cuteness Proximity in everyone around her. She is also a rampant pyromaniac who sets children on fire regularly, advocates cannibalism, floods cities with tidal waves, and commits fraud.
• RWBY: Neo is a small, adorable woman with an ice-cream theme; she has long pink and brown hair, mix-matched eyes and twirls a pretty parasol. She also takes a vicious pleasure in dispatching her enemies in battle. She is grinning gleefully when about to deliver a killing blow to Yang in Volume 2. She later stomps a soldier's face and takes over Ironwood's flagship with casual glee, despite the bodies she's piled. She repeats this in Volume 8, when helping Cinder take out the Atlesian command centre.

Webcomics

• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, adorable Cute Monster Girl Molly has an identical twin sister (well, clone) named Golly, who varies between Deadpan Snarker and stark raving megalomaniac.
• Lackadaisy: Rocky and especially Freckle. When times are good, Rocky is an upbeat, seemingly fun and friendly jazz musician who spouts poetry and random insights, and Freckle is a big-eyed, naive Shrinking Violet. When times aren't good, Rocky is a violent pyromaniac and Freckle is a gun-toting madman. It can be rough for both you and the people around you when your Shared Family Quirks include going Ax-Crazy and Laughing Mad under stress.
• My Deepest Secret: Elios is a handsome, bespectacled young man with a swoon-worthy smile who fawns over his girlfriend — and has an unfortunate habit of assaulting or even murdering those that upset her.
• Violet from The Noordegraaf Files is either this or a Yandere. She's implied to be very good looking, but hurt her (or her boyfriend), and you'll get a sword in your throat quicker than you can apologize. Not that an apology would help, of course.
• Sophie from The Overture is the most vile example of this. She uses her child-like appearance and sweet singing voice in order to lure children into her grasp. She then proceeds to torture them in order to hear their screams.
• Irina from Rasputin Catamite looks like a cute porcelain doll with pigtails, and speaks in the third person, but seems to enjoy hacking people to death with an ax.
• Buwaro from Slightly Damned is a demon, but he loves everything and everyone. He'll invite you to play catch, or explore, or just give you a great big hug. But if you value your life, do not remove his star pendant! While he goes berserk without it, it is not a Berserk Button, but a medical condition which the pendant is magically treating.
• The first thing Sandy does in Sonichu is horrifically slaughter her mother's killer. She's meant to be one of the "good guys".
• Tilly from Waste of Time can be very cute and charming, but she will threaten to hurt you without hesitation.
• Sock from Welcome to Hell is definitely this. He is cute, charming, very friendly, and he killed his parents in his sleep.
• Zoophobia has Cameron, a go-getting, curious young woman, who happens to be psychotically neurotic when in uncomfortable situations, or when around animals.

Web Original

• Alina Galenko from Anima's Conquest is a charming, pigtail-sporting neo-hippie of sorts who is absolutely not above kidnapping and terrorizing the faculty of Salva Academy.
• Three examples come to mind on Channel Awesome; Ask That Guy, with his poshness and suaveness hiding a monster, Bennett the Sage, who looks sweet and cute but can terrify Ask That Guy, and The Nostalgia Chick, who really is girly and generally decent, but has a mess of issues and sociopathic qualities underneath. As Doug Walker does more and more sketch-review videos as himself, he'll usually portray his personality as big smiles and Innocent Blue Eyes covering a Depraved Bisexual Nightmare Fetishist who like manipulating people.
• The Laughing Clown from Dark Dream Chronicle types in pink and generally acts like a little kid. She's also dangerously psychotic, once biting someone's tongue out for "shiggles". Even the other members of the cast think she's completely insane.
• The Gaming Pixie, apparently, particularly when she reviewed Eversion. The review starts off cheerfully enough... and slowly descends into fearsome. Much like Eversion itself.
• Kakos Industries has Hailey Solomanari. She's adorable and girly to a fault with a sweet voice drenched in Valley Girl speak but is also easily the most violent and intimidating character even when the cast is composed of nothing but villains. She's murdered people simply by having sex with them and relishes in absorbing power from all the weak humans she's "fed" off of. When given a place of power for a few weeks, she just murders and feeds off more people all while narrating her achievements with the same cutesy dissonance.
• The Overly Attached Girlfriend, both in the videos created by Laina and the memes that sprang from those videos. While the OAG is undoubtedly physically cute, (naturally leading to a Misaimed Fandom that says "She can be overly attached to me any time") her tendency for large, disconcerting smiles complete with overly wide, unblinking Creepy Blue Eyes makes her slightly off-putting right from the start. Then you add in her Yandere-esque behaviors, which include stalking, becoming violently clingy and potentially murderous towards any man she takes a fancy to, and she starts becoming pretty scary. Notably while the memes about her tend to downplay the psycho side somewhat, Laina's videos make no bones about the fact that the OAG is terrifying and is only a few steps away (at most) from treating her "boyfriends" similarly to how Annie Wilkes treated Paul in Misery.
• Based from a murder case that occurred in Japan in 2004, "Nevada-tan" became the memetic Moe Anthropomorphism of the concept.
• Survival of the Fittest has a fair amount of these sort of characters, mostly of the Beware the Nice Ones variety. A textbook example of this trope, however, would be Mariavel Varella of v2. Due to abuse at the hands of her father, she can go from a cheerful teenage girl to a hardened delinquent who apparently once beat a man to death with a baseball bat before being abducted. And when she gets to the island... well, she just gets even more crazy.
• Jane Dean of The Veronica Exclusive is a murderous psychopath, but it's easy to forget when she's charismatic, charming and looks like this◊. Megan Lambie's prettiness is part of what makes the "psycho" part so unsettling.
• Jade Sinclair (codename Generator) of the Whateley Universe. She's cute and sweet and cheerful. She looks like she's ten or eleven. She 'invents' wacky devises. She looks like the harmless member of Team Kimba. Right up until she handles an attacker by stapling him to a tree with railroad spikes through his arms and body, and burns a message into his flesh. That was in September 2006; By the end of the year, she has a body count over one hundred, mostly racked up during two separate trips over An Asskicking Christmas vacation. To be fair, she didn't start any of that — but she definitely finished it.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time:
  • Princess Bubblegum is not only a Lady of War, she's a Science Hero who's capable of resurrecting the dead — and she's completely adorable. However, she does not have a Berserk Button — she has a berserk keyboard, and she will go Laughing Mad Ax-Crazy on you if you happen to hit a button. She's also genuinely very nice.
  • Flame Princess has a Hair-Trigger Temper and she's destructively powerful, capable of setting kingdoms (and at one point the entire planet) ablaze and she's evil; she could get mad at any time. But when she's not mad, she's really cute.
• American Dad! has Francine Smith, the childlike and airheaded wife of CIA agent Stan Smith. At her worst, she can also be mentally insane, going on rampages or rambling about messed-up events at the drop of a hat.
• Arcane: Jinx is significantly cuter than in League of Legends since she's just a teenager. She knows it too, using her Puppy-Dog Eyes to catch her enemies off guard. Jinx is already plenty nuts though, hearing voices in her head, blowing things up to pass the time, and taking a sadistic glee in recklessly killing people.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • Numbuh Three, when you get her angry enough. Her little sister Mushi is even worse.
  • Lizzie in her first few appearances, before she mellowed out and became a Clingy Jealous Girl.
  • Sonia looks like a sweet little girl who doesn't belong in a world of kids fighting adults, but then you tell her you're going to shove her into a dark place. Prepare to get your ass kicked.
• Family Guy: Joan is shown to be very sweet and she falls in love with Quagmire. The two were married, but when Quagmire mentioned the prospect of divorce, Joan does a complete 180 in her mannerisms and threatens to kill herself and Quagmire.
• Mabel of Gravity Falls occasionally slips into this. "We have an ax! Ree! Ree! Ree!" Kristen Schaal also voices Louise from Bob's Burgers, who also applies here. "I smell fear on you!"
• Hazbin Hotel: Niffty, the Hotel's janitor, cook and housekeeper, is cute as a button and completely bonkers. She's easily distracted by sharp objects, is completely cheerful in the face of physical pain and, well... Let's just say the rest of the cast is regularly disturbed by her antics, to the point that even Alastor can't quite figure out exactly what is going on in her brain.
  Niffty: Sometimes, I kill mother bugs in front of their children as a warning to others!
• The title character of Kaeloo. While her Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque split personalities physically differ (cute, innocent frog, and violent tower of toad muscle, respectively), they overlap so heavily in the later episodes that some scenes give off the impression that at times Hyde Plays Jekyll.
• Adorabat in Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart is a tiny bat-creature child with big eyes and an accurate name. She's also a Blood Knight who at one point threatens someone with a katana for being insufficiently respectful to Mao Mao.
  Adorabat: Violence! WOO!
• Metalocalypse has Toki Wartooth, Dethklok's adorably immature rhythm guitarist, has what could be called an unconventional mental state. Sometimes, this manifests as pastel-colored acid-trip musical numbers. Unfortunately, he also has substantial anger management issues, particularly when the show's been putting him through a round of Break the Cutie.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Fluttershy, the shrinkingyest, sweetest, one of the most precious of the ponies in Equestria... and also the scariest pony in all Equestria. Threatening her friends will put you on the receiving end of her Stare, which made an adult dragon burst into tears. Some well-intentioned assertiveness training resulted in a complete 180 flip from an Extreme Doormat to a violent, hateful bully. And after a bunch of animals refused her offer of friendship, well...
    "You're... going... to LOVE ME!!!!!"
  • Pinkie Pie's Genki Girl nature survives most things, and if it doesn't most of the time it means she only becomes depressed. But you should still never break a Pinkie Promise.
  • Twilight Sparkle is Cute Bookworm extraordinaire and the Only Sane Mare in Ponyville most of the time, but multiple episodes showed that she can be more unstable and dangerous than the rest of the main cast combined, with one scene from "Lesson Zero" taking the trope to an art form.
    "HIII, GIRRRRRLS!"
  • Princess Luna is Cute and Psycho in Physical Goddess form. She is adorably dorky and has the absolute cutest facial expressions in a show that seems to run on cute facial expressions. Yet the first time we meet her she is an Omnicidal Maniac who is trying to bring forth The Night That Never Ends and is consumed by envy of her sister's greater popularity. Even after she is cleansed of all evil she retains a Hair-Trigger Temper which expresses itself through her fondness for summoning lightning in the sky to add emphasis to her sentences.
• The Owl House: The Collector may be cute as a button, but they have no qualms about trapping or killing creatures as part of their "games", which they can easily do considering their Goo-Goo-Godlike status.
• Bubbles in both the 1998 and 2016 incarnations of The Powerpuff Girls, but it's more frequent in the 2016 series, whereas in the 1998 series, she reveals herself to be this in "Bubblevicious", where she kills a bunch of monsters with ease in a simulation turned Up to Eleven and also beats up citizens for minor infractions.
• Teen Titans' depiction of Terra is Lighter and Softer compared to the comic version but still qualifies. She seems friendly, funny, and kind, although her Dark and Troubled Past has saddled her with destructive tendencies that can, and if helped along by Slade, will, manifest as homicidal psychopathy. Her switch from a cool gal-pal to Slade's Apocalypse Maiden was astoundingly dark, given the show's track record at the time.
• Total Drama:
  • Izzy is energetic, happy-go-lucky, and crazy as all gets out.
  • Zoey is this and Beware the Nice Ones personified in her "commando" phase.
• In Total DramaRama, Izzy is as cute and psycho as her teenage self, if not more so.

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