The Fake Cutie

Behind the cute exterior lies a long trail of corpses and ruined lives.

"When you consider something charming, it never ends well."

— Satsuki Kiryuin to Nui Harime, Kill la Kill

While The Cutie is known for being a character that is sweet, lovable, and innocent, some characters, while apparently cute, aren't as innocent as they seem.

The Fake Cutie is either a full-grown woman or otherwise mature person, but insists on dressing, speaking, and acting like a child, or at least much younger than she is in order to be cute and "get dates" or other benefits.

This cutie act is actually camouflage to hide her intelligence, her true self, her nefarious intentions, or her insane jealousy. Sometimes she knows full well how shaken up her behavior makes her foes, and takes great joy in seeing them squirm. She tends to be very manipulative and is often murderously dangerous to those that see Beneath the Mask. For children, may involve levels of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior. However, it is entirely possible that she may have less malicious intentions.

She is the cute counterpart of the Stepford Smiler, and may even be her daughter. The Bitch in Sheep's Clothing is her meaner sister. The fully grown Fake Cutie is invariably a Psychopathic (Wo)man Child unless she is of the Broken Bird variant.

While this trope is almost Always Female, examples using little boys or adult Keets are not unheard of.

Compare and contrast Cute and Psycho, Deliberately Cute Child, Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon, Kawaiiko, Keet, The Ingenue, Kiddie Kid, The Cutie, Little Red Fighting Hood, Dawson Casting. See also Confound Them with Kindness.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Blend-S, Mafuyu is the group's Token Mini-Moe, Deadpan Snarker, and, more often than not, the group's Only Sane Man. She's also a 20-year-old college student despite her short height and youthful looks. However, she acts completely differently in her job as a waitress at the Cosplay Café Stile, where the waitresses act like anime character archetypes and Mafuyu is cast as the "Little Sister Heroine". She plays up her cuteness for maximum effect, speaking super sweetly to the "Onii-chans"/"Big Brothers" who patronize the café and, on one occasion, using her act to steer customers away from ordering items they can't make due to lack of ingredients.
• Minatsuki Takami from Deadman Wonderland deliberately acts like a sweet, demure girl at first, but this hides her true personality of a foul-mouthed, sadistic sociopath. Later on, she drops the act altogether.
• Death Note: Misa is this whenever she has all her memories intact and serves as the second Kira, playing up her cute looks and mannerisms to manipulate people. Otherwise, she's a genuine cutie.
• D.Gray-Man: Road Kamelot. Even though she appears to be a child, she's actually the oldest Noah and a total sadist, once stabbing Allen in the eye and then licking off his blood.
• Hunter × Hunter: Biscuit Krueger is an expert combatant and, for some time, a mentor to the main characters. She has the ability to alter her body to appear like a preteen girl; she does so because her true form is a Brawn Hilda and she is ashamed of looking like that. She also likes the bonus of keeping a low profile and, if she ever needs to get in a fight, having the opponent go easy on her due to her cuteness.
• Joshiraku: Kigu often acts cute and expresses interest in cute things since that's what the other girls expect of her. However, her inner thoughts show that she isn't naturally like this and it's all a front; for example, when she gushes about how cute pandas are, she thinks to herself that she doesn't actually like pandas and finds their eyes creepy.
• Kill la Kill: Nui Harime, a bubbly, bouncy, adorable girl dressed all in pink, and also The Dragon and an Ax-Crazy killing machine responsible for the murder of Ryuko's father. After Ryuko becomes strong enough to finally deal her a real defeat, she snaps and drops the cheerful demeanor for the rest of the show.
• Love Live!:
  • Nico Yazawa from Love Live! acts like a cute and cheerful idol who likes to go "Nico Nico nii~!" when on stage. However, her cuteness is a deliberate act, and she's really more of an Attention Whore with the temperament of a grumpy old lady.
  • Kasumi Nakasu from Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is obsessed with cuteness, referring to herself constantly as "Kasumin" and wanting to be the cutest school idol ever, but she's actually more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. She doesn't play this as straight in ALL STARS, where she acts that way because she thinks school idols have to act cute but secretly be cruel to each other, and she's ultimately more good-hearted.
• Lovely★Complex: Mimi Yoshioka acts this way around her crush, Otani. She does eventually slip, revealing her true nature.
• Lucky Star: Akira Kogami is a 14-year-old Idol Singer who usually acts like an adorable Genki Girl, but whenever something annoys or angers her, she reveals her real personality of a cynical, dried-up entertainer who's completely disillusioned with the entertainment industry. The main joke behind the Lucky Channel segments in the anime is her rapid personality switches between a kawaiiko girl even younger than her real age and her more bitter, jaded side. The cutesy act apparently doesn't go over well with the audience compared to Minoru or the main cast, of course.
• Flay Allster from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED becomes this when she goes yandere after her dad's death, acting sweet and kind to Kira while planning to get him killed in battle as "punishment" for him not being able to save her old man. Character Development fixes that, however. And then she dies.
• One episode of Pokémon: The Series features a Teddiursa who exhibits this sort of personality, taking advantage of their cute appearance to secretly steal food.
• Princess Principal: Princess, Ange, Dorothy, and Chise will act cute as part of their cover as spies operating out of a prestigious school, but they will switch to ruthless at the drop of a hat — they are spies after all.
• Ramen Fighter Miki: Megumi is a full-grown woman that insists on dressing, speaking, and acting like a cute child, sometimes to a sickening degree, as a ploy to get clients into her bakery.
• Shugo Chara!: Yaya goes as far as having her Shugo Chara, AKA the Anthropomorphic Personification of what's Beneath the Mask, be a baby. Her Magical Girl form even wears bunny pajamas and her special attacks include rubber ducks and a giant rattle. Oh, and she's prone to burst into tears if hurt. It's eventually made clear that she has a desire to be "the baby" forever due to her jealousy towards her new baby brother.
• Strawberry Marshmallow: Miu. Cute is practically a way of life for her, but so is being a Jerkass.
• Tenchi Muyo!: Washu, though it's definitely an act; she can move in and out of it at a moment's notice (she even physically alters her body to switch between the usual "Cutie" act and her true age). She's the smartest person in the galaxy, and Really Twenty Thousand Years Old... and that's in the continuities where she's closest to what she appears.
• Tokyo Ghoul: Roma Hoito. When initially introduced, she's a clumsy and forgetful waitress that has a crush on Kaneki because of his fame in the Ghoul community. She's a source of comic relief, and a slight annoyance to her coworkers because of her frequent mistakes. This cute personality is entirely false — she's actually a member of the Clowns and a sadistic Loony Fan that considers Kaneki's suffering romantic. Even fellow Clown Nico is mildly disturbed by her obsession with destroying Kaneki's happiness. To make it more disturbing, she's already on her 50s and the founder-leader of the Clowns, a jarring revelation considering her youthful appearance and childish disposition.
• To Love Ru: Momo Belia Deviluke presents an innocent, smiling face to the public. Behind that mask hides a girl that can be, at turns, a Manipulative Bastard, an Ax-Crazy Little Miss Badass, and a Lovable Sex Maniac that wants to create a harem around the boy she loves, Rito.
• Tousouchuu: The Great Mission: Mika Lelouch may look act and cute, but deep down inside, she's actually an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer.
• Ran from Urusei Yatsura deliberately plays up the image of a sugary sweet Kawaiiko, but she's not as innocent as she looks; she has a violent streak a mile wide and is deeply resentful of how often Lum got her into trouble when they were children.
• Vandread: On top of being a Genki Girl, Dita fits this description pretty well. She talks like a child ("Hello, Mr. Pilot!") and acts like one, even if you ignore the fact that she plays with toys. Her Character Development reveals a more complex reason why she grew up this way: When she was little, being a Cheerful Child brought hope and smiles to the adults around her in a tough time. She resolved to be as cheerful and cute as possible to continue helping out as best she could, and it kind of stuck. To her credit, she didn't let this get so out-of-proportion that she didn't learn more practical skills, like cooking, sewing, flying a Humongous Mecha and delivering babies — the last skill in particular is instrumental to saving the entire crew in the opener of the second season, as the cry of a newborn baby is the password to unlocking the central computer of the ship from its BSOD.

Comic Books

• In the Siege of the Crystal Empire story arc of the My Little Pony IDW comics, this trope is invoked by Umbrum, who initially appear to Radiant Hope as cute, pony-like pixies. However, it is all just a ruse to get on Hope's good side and manipulate her into believing that Umbrum are actually harmless, innocent creatures who were wrongfully banished by evil, xenophobic Crystal Ponies. When Princess Cadance accidentally reveals their true forms by using her magic in their presence... let's just say, it ain't pretty.
• Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) gives us Abigail, Molly's new best friend, who is ostensibly a pretty thirteen-year-old, but who is in fact a middle-aged woman who ate a magic cupcake as a child that prevented her from physically aging past thirteen. When Molly angsts about her role as the "kid" of the team, Abigail urges her to make a similar choice, in hopes that she'd have an eternal companion.

Comic Strips

• Nermal from Garfield is actually shown to purposely stunt his own growth to stay a permanently cute kitten.

Fan Works

• Agent Diamond, from Akatsuki Kitten: Phoenix Corporation Overhaul, seems to swing between this and Cute and Psycho. She is generally sweet and happy a lot of the time... she just has an extremely frightening tendency to do things like kill people while giggling madly. 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.
• Danganronpa: Memento Mori: Luka Aikuchi appears to be a rather cheerful and upbeat young girl. Emphasis on "appears to be", as she's actually a Serial Killer who rips out the teeth of and leaves Glasgow Grins on her victims, operating on an insane belief that "unclean" people should die.
• Loki: Agent of Doomgard gives us Loki, Goddess of Traps and Poisons, who is a short, cute, harmless-looking woman... so scared and vulnerable. Well, yes. It is a trap. When she gets arrested, the "cops" find a head in her freezer.

Films — Animated

• Darla Dimple in Cats Don't Dance. Literally a case of Nice Character, Mean Actor, Darla is a human child star who is America's sweetheart on-screen... and off-screen, a spoiled prima donna who despises animal actors and is even willing to kill or injure them rather than share the limelight.

Films — Live-Action

• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane: Mandy Lane seems like an innocent, virginal, late-teen girl whom all the teenage boys are obsessed over at high school. Turns out she's an evil, manipulative girl who uses her charms to make a multiple murder and suicide pact with her nerdy male best friend, which she then breaks by killing him too. And she gets away maintaining her innocent persona.
• Gogo of Kill Bill. Sailor Fuku on the outside, lethal meteor-hammer-wielding psychopath on the inside.
• Orphan: Esther fits this perfectly. Her entire life is based around hiding her Ax-Crazy personality, and the fact that's she's in her thirties, with a cute-girl facade.
• Scream 4: Jill Roberts, initially set up as the film's Final Girl, turns out to be the Ghostface killer, one who specifically cultivated a wholesome image so that, after she pinned all the murders on Charlie and Trevor, she could become famous as the hero who stopped a killing spree just like her older cousin Sidney had done.
• Blaire in Unfriended is presented as the film's Final Girl, the Girl Next Door audience POV character who's less overtly sexy than the sexpot Jess and the Alpha Bitch Val and is dating the Nice Guy Mitch. Except Laura's ghost was saving her for last not because she was innocent in Laura's death, but because she was more guilty than everyone else, having filmed and uploaded the humiliating video that drove Laura to kill herself. Either Laura wanted Blaire to suffer the most, or she wanted her to finally confess, and when Blaire refuses to do so even as all her friends die around her, Laura finishes her off. Oh, and not only is Blaire not a virgin, she cheated on Mitch with his best friend Adam.
• In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Jane dresses like a little girl and sings songs that would be adorable for a little girl but are incredibly creepy when sung by an adult.
• Almost all of the women in Women Who Flirt, but especially the main character's rival.

Literature

• In Bakemonogatari, we have Nadeko Sengoku, as revealed in "Nadeko Medusa". She acts cute, plays victim, and behaves non-confrontationally in order to avoid responsibility and get people on her side. In truth, she hates hard work and emotional stress, is extremely irresponsible and selfish, deeply jealous of Hitagi's and Shinobu's relationship with Koyomi (whom she's yandere for), and believes nothing is ever her fault.
• Beast Tamer brings us Natalie Brough who lampshades that she is this. At first glance, she appears to be the stereotypical cute adventurer's guild receptionist, but she later smacks down a known troublemaker with a several hundred pound wooden table and then grills protagonist Rein Shroud about taming a Cat Spirit (Kanade), terrifying said spirit and then goes "Oops! Showed you my true personality!" and switches right back to her cutesie persona without skipping a beat.
• Willie Connolly in J.R. Lowell's 1972 thriller Daughter of Darkness starts out as a Deliberately Cute Child Prodigy, and becomes this as she matures. She doesn't want her father to realize that she has hit puberty, because she thinks (and is probably right) that he will send her away to some stupid prep school instead of allowing her to stay home and care for him. She spends the next few years with a tight bandage around her breasts and dressing like an eight-year-old. It works for a while.
• David Eddings' The Elenium novels and their sequels The Tamuli have the goddess Aphrael. Her "real" form is an adult woman, but she always appears to everyone as a six-year-old girl. This allows her to use The Power of Love on everyone. When a cute young girl asks to sit in your lap, no one can refuse. Once she sits in your lap and gives you a kiss, she will get her way on everything she wants.
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil: The eleven-year-old brutally ruthless military commander Tanya Degurechaff usually tries to present herself as an adult in a child's body, but will occasionally take advantage of being a cute young girl when it suits her. In one case, when required by International Wartime Law to announce beforehand her attack on an enemy munitions factory, she does so in an overly-cutesy girlish voice. This leads the factory workers to assume that she is just some girl who is using the radio to play a prank, so nobody evacuates or prepares for an assault. Two minutes later the factory explodes.
• Natasha Rostov tries this for a long time in War and Peace. She's eventually broken though.
• Worm's Bonesaw is the veritable patron saint of this trope. She dresses in pigtails and dresses, is cute as a button, hates swearing, and is personally responsible for a not-insignificant chunk of the work's Fate Worse than Death and the And I Must Scream pages. Played with on account of this being a direct result of her being deliberately groomed for this role by Jack Slash, who's best described as an expy of some of the darker incarnations of The Joker.

Live-Action TV

• Amy Hughes from Dead of Summer. Initially presented as a wholesome, virginal Final Girl, she's actually the Big Bad who was responsible for every murder on the show, using a Satanic cult as her Unwitting Pawns to summon the demon Malphas. She murdered her best friend Margo in order to get her job at Camp Stillwater, and she embraced her Demonic Possession, seeing Malphas as the only one who "understood her".
• Ada Moon from the Here Come the Brides episode "Next Week, East Lynne" is an actress who appears to be somewhere in her twenties but claims to be thirteen. She acts like a caricature of a young girl, speaking in a falsetto and behaving in an aggressively perky manner. Most of the townspeople instantly fall for her act.
• Vala Mal Doran of the later seasons of Stargate SG-1 is portrayed as being in her early to mid-thirties, but most of the time acts like she's in her early twenties at best, even wearing her hair in a pair of unbraided pigtails. It's almost certainly calculated to make her appear harmless, because in an episode when she loses her memory, aside from trying to continue her thieving and lawless ways, she acts more maturely. It's helped when people make reference to pop culture, as she's not from Earth, allowing her to demonstrate something approximating real naivete. And when she stops acting cute and acts competent instead, she unnerves everyone. It's a skill.
• In the episode Shangri-La of Law & Order, one of the students at a high school was seduced by a teacher, who was suspected of killing one of his co-workers. The reality is that the student actually seduced the teacher, and killed his co-worker who had found out she was Older Than She Looked and a con-woman and threatened to expose her.

Music

• Morning Musume:
  • Sayumi Michishige plays this trope for laughs constantly in her TV appearances, putting on the attitude of a cheerfully narcissistic Kawaiiko.
  • Momoko Tsugunaga of Berryz Koubou does the same, only cranked up.
• Early appearances of Eminem's Slim Shady character show him exploiting his cute, white-boy appearance and squeaky voice to get away with acts of unspeakable depravity. Of particular note is the skit in the middle of the video for "Forgot About Dre" - Slim's interviewed on local news about a house fire that he obviously caused, playing it like a sweet young lad ("I was in my room listening to my Will Smith CD...")

Professional Wrestling

• Maki Itoh acts like a typical Idol Singer, but it doesn't take much for the facade to slip and her to reveal herself as the delinquent, narcissist Heel she is.

Theater

• One of the titular character's peers in The Madwoman of Chaillot is a downright ancient version of this trope.
• A subversion occurs during Murder Mystery Dinner Train, where one of the suspects, a one-time child actress, is revealed to have remained young and cute for so long because her agent used a variety of drugs to stunt her growth and keep her in the movies as long as possible.
• Rosalie in Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad is an oversexed version.

Toys

• Mockolate from Transformers: BotBots. He's a white chocolate bar that knows deep down that no one really likes white chocolate, so he plays a cute and innocent facade, waiting for the chance to overthrow the rest of the Sugar Shocks and become the lead candy.

Video Games

• B.B. Hood from Darkstalkers (notably, the only playable character in the franchise who is a perfectly ordinary human, for a given value of "perfectly ordinary human") plays up her cuteness, but is more vicious and psychotic than most of the monsters in the cast.
• Zigzagged with the Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate character Marie Rose. If she loses she'll sit on the ground and sob, but then mug for the camera as if it's an act. That said, she often is The Cutie and cheerfully smacks the crap out of her opponents with a smile on her face.
• Usalia from Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance is a downplayed example. She is genuinely The Cutie for the most part, but she also purposefully tries to make herself seem even cuter with her "plip" Verbal Tic.
• Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII is a Deconstruction of The Cutie. She pretends to be innocent in order to hide her guilt. While she's by no mean a bad person, some of the main characters, particularly Lightning and Sazh, end up not trusting her.
• Cindy from Kindergarten tries to be this to cover up her true Alpha Bitch self, being a little girl in Girlish Pigtails and a cute pink dress who calls herself "the prettiest, smartest, nicest girl you'll ever meet" and her numerous boyfriends various petnames. However, she's absolutely terrible at it, and nobody is fooled.
• Introduced in the fifth generation, the Pokémon Purrloin acts like a Cute Kitten to get out of trouble when it gets caught stealing things. It's actually bipedal, but it sits down on all fours to look more catlike. It's classified in the Pokédex as 'The Devious Pokémon'.
  Pokedex entry (Black): They steal from people for fun, but their victims can't help but forgive them. Their deceptively cute act is perfect.
• Momo Karuizawa, the skipping, pigtailed, stripey-socked, 4 1/2-foot tall tennis player from Rival Schools. Oh, and she's also evil. But she gets better in the Gorin path — it turns out a good part of said evil came from her loyalty and love for Kurow, and then he throws her under the bus. Shouma saves her and tells her to pick a side, and this drives Momo to a Heel–Face Turn.
• Ibuki from Street Fighter kind of reverses this trope. She is legit The Cutie and a genuine Girly Girl, but when dealing with evil and they don't take her seriously they can expect to be roughed up (as Gill finds out). Even worse for nameless evil characters, who can expect to have their neck snapped or have a kunai break through their skulls without hesitation from her.
• In Super Robot Wars Z2, Marilyn Catto's character encyclopedia entry mentions she's taken cosmetic surgery to maintain her looks and she makes the men in her squad treat her like a princess, which could mean that she is a case of Older Than They Look.
• Alice from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World is this in spades. Not only is she older than she looks (she's 18, but could pass for being in her early teens), but she's a sadistic bitch that is more than willing to torment her underlings and claim them as her pets. She is also very manipulative, using her looks to trick people by lying blatantly.
• Flowey from Undertale is an adorable, talking flower who introduces himself as supposedly your best friend, only to take advantage of the player's naivety to try and convince them to walk straight into his attacks. It all goes nowhere but downhill from there. Later subverted, though, as it turns out that he actually Used to Be a Sweet Kid, and, given half a chance, reverts to old habits.
  [player avoids the "white friendliness pellets"]
  Flowey: Is this a joke? Are you braindead? RUN. INTO. THE. friendliness pellets.^note The speech bubble says "BULLETS" instead for a split second.
  [if player continues to avoid the "friendliness pellets"]
  Flowey: [trembling text] You know what's going on here, don't you? You just wanted to see me suffer.
  [Flowey creates a huge, unavoidable circle of bullets]
  Flowey: DIE. [reveals his Game Face and lets out an Evil Laugh as the bullets close in]
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: In a sidequest, it's revealed that the Nopon race owes their nature as Ridiculously Cute Critters to this. Centuries prior, a Nopon pirate known as Captain Nopopon realized that the other races thought the Nopon were harmless and cute at first glance. To take advantage of this, he decided to quit piracy and become a proper merchant, deliberately fluffing up his fur and talking in pidgin with a Verbal Tic to get prospective trade partners to underestimate him. The entire rest of the species soon followed suit when it turned out to be ridiculously effective, to the point that acting and looking cutesy is a normal part of their culture in the present day, instead of a deliberate manipulation tactic.

Visual Novels

• Dahlia Hawthorne of Ace Attorney is introduced as a sweet, innocent girl in a pink dress with butterflies fluttering around her, winning over everyone in the courtroom. This hides her true nature, which is a scheming, manipulative murderer.
• Danganronpa:
  • Hiyoko Saionji from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is not only the same age as the other students despite looking like a little girl, but she's also rather cruel and sadistic towards everyone else, particularly Mikan Tsumiki. It doesn't help that she has rather childish mannerisms, which makes her actions come across as even more unsettling.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Much like Saionji, Kokichi Ouma appears younger than he really is, and uses his looks to his advantage. He plays up his appearance by speaking in a cutesy manner, calling everyone "-chan", and going out of his way to act like a kid. He often displays a child-like excitement over things that others are either wary or terrified of, such as the Exisals and the morphing Trial Grounds. While he openly insults and mocks others, especially Miu Iruma, he will immediately switch to acting like a threatened child if somebody else insults him. He cries crocodile tears and melodramatically accuses others of being bullies, only to return to normal moments later. Ouma seamlessly transitions between the role of a childish boy who just wants to have fun and his more sinister villain persona that he uses to frighten and upset his classmates. His inhuman sprites only add to the creepy effect.
• Played straight by Aizawa Eiichi of The Devil on G-String, who puts up a cute front to get close to the girls he wants, though Kyousuke knows his other side very well and Kanon easily saw through it.
• Higurashi: When They Cry:
  • Rena seems like this with her Obfuscating Stupidity and occasional forays into Cute and Psycho territory, but we eventually find her cute personality is not an act. She's just a nice teenage girl trying to put her Dark and Troubled Past behind her so she can live happily and peacefully surrounded by her dear friends. Unfortunately, she lives in a Town with a Dark Secret that makes this all but impossible.
  • A straighter example would be Rika. She spends most of the time looking adorable and acting like a child, much to the joy of Rena (when she's not crazy). But come the second half of the series, we learn that she is in fact quite mature (and somewhat cold), having lived through hundreds of years worth of bloodbaths, at the end of which she is always killed. And her only option is to live through each one, waiting until a miracle occurs or until she cannot resurrect into another timeline.
• Liliana in Princess Waltz. Some of it is natural, some of it is obfuscating stupidity. Hints start dropping fairly early that she's not as young as she looks.
• Kohaku from Tsukihime. Her faked personality isn't revealed until you get to the second to last route of the game, though there are hints beforehand. However, it actually appears as though she's been faking her personality on accident and out of habit. As a child, she was something of an Emotionless Girl, but now when Shiki sees her he thinks to himself, "If only Hisui had some of Kohaku's cheer."

Web Animation

• ATTACK on MIKA:
  • Ririna hides her Jerkass behavior under a cutesy facade. It helps that her pink hair has green tips.
  • Mina adopts a cutesy persona to manipulate boys. However, it falls apart when she swears at the boys after they fight over who gets to save her from drowning, accidentally beating her up in the struggle.
• Manga-Waido: Aya appears to be a nice young woman who is unfairly bullied by her female coworkers for being pretty, but it's all an act. She is actually a manipulative adulteress who became known for sleeping with the husband of a waitress' older sister. That is, the same waitress who squirted ketchup on Aya's arm and reveals the truth to Fuyuki.
• Sekai no Fushigi: Adachi plays up her cuteness to get out of any trouble she causes. No one dares to treat her harshly for being the daughter of the head of another department until new employee Kudo gets on board.

Webcomics

• Runie from 200:20 because of her carefree behavior and the fact that you're led to believe that her behavior is mostly just an act she's putting on for one reason or another◊.
• Bailey from Alternate. She even etches smiley faces on her food.
• Lutark Lampri from Hackbent is a decent male example. He's positively adorable in fake moe-mode, disconcerting when he shows his true nasty colors, and rather terrifying when he goes into full villain mode.

Web Original

• Less Than Three Comics' Brat Pack features Pixel, who is one year younger than her team-mates, and acts about five years younger most of the time, having a blast doing so.
• Syera of Springhole mentions that a predator trying too hard to be cute will use childish gestures, such as pouting, whining, or even talking in a childish vocabulary.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs: Dot Warner likes to think of herself as The Cutie and takes her cuteness very seriously, but she's hardly innocent. Press her buttons and risk pain, call her "Dottie", and you die.
• Mary "Baby Doll" Dahl of Batman: The Animated Series was a child actor with a growth deficiency which prevented her from physically aging, and similarly prevented her career from advancing as well. Years later, she snapped and started kidnapping old cast members, but kept doing so in character as "Daddy's widdle precious". It's only at the end of the episode, when she stumbles in front of a funhouse mirror that seems to show the adult form she could never have, that she breaks character and reveals what she's really like, in a speech that's a real Tear Jerker.
  Baby Doll: Why wouldn't you let me make believe...?!
• Beetlejuice: Little Miss Warden, a little girl who's the warden of Neither-Neither-Land, the Neitherworld's jail system: a Candyland-like environment where prisoners are "rehabilitated" into cute, sweet, playful creatures. She likes frilly dresses, wears her hair in long blonde ringlets, and forces her prisoners to work on the "daisy chain gang." Those who try to escape are made to spend the night inside a Scary Jack-in-the-Box, where Jack plays videos for brainwashing.
• This is spoofed on Drawn Together with Strawberry Sweetcake, a parody of Strawberry Shortcake. She turns out to be a homicidal and kinda-cannibalistic Stepford Smiler.
• Gravity Falls has Li'l Gideon, a child psychic whom everybody loves. Well... turns out he's a vicious Creepy Child who tries to kill Dipper after he tries to tell Gideon that Mabel's not interested in him, and is willing to summon a demon in order to get the deed to Mystery Shack.
• Lila, the "ever so" sickeningly sweet farm-girl from Hey Arnold!, is a love interest of Arnold. She is hated by Helga, who has a crush on Arnold. Later episodes reduce her character by taking away her flaws, making her more perfect. By Word of God, she has a hidden dark side, which is implied when she sings about having a inner sad side despite her perfect exterior. She is also theorized by fans as having led Arnold on, giving him affection while also reminding him that she does not like-like him while knowing Helga does. It is theorized by fans that her actions towards Helga and Arnold are her retaliating against Arnold for initially dumping her and against Helga for humiliating her when she first transferred over to their school. She also subtly manipulates Helga into revealing her feelings for Arnold when Helga was trying to pressure her into giving her the role of Juliet in the school play while Arnold played Romeo so Helga could kiss Arnold. An episode depicting the possible future from both of their POVs where Arnold and Helga are married has Lila from Helga's dream being depicted as a crazed Yandere after Arnold. Arnold has a dream at one point when he's going to visit his country cousin Arnie of alternate versions of his friends, including Lila as Lulu, who's a more forward and self-centered version of Lila. It's hinted to be the show's depiction of the manifestation of Lila's hidden dark side, since Lulu actively pursues Arnold despite being the girlfriend of Arnie, making it no secret that she prefers Arnold over Arnie in Arnie's presence even. She abandons Arnold at the end when Arnie gets jealous and crazy and fights Arnold, with Lulu cheering on the fight with Arnold being in danger because Arnie has gotten visibly rabid.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: Heloise, who has the appearance of a cute little girl but is a Mad Scientist and enjoys being mean.
• Looney Tunes:
  • The Bugs Bunny cartoon Baby Buggy Bunny has Ant Hill Harry, aka Baby Face Finster — a dwarfish bank robber who disguises himself as a baby. He can look very adorable — and at one point beats seven shades out of Bugs with a baseball bat.
  • From the main characters, this is entirely Tweety's shtick. His act is that of an innocent, sheltered bird who can be easily taken advantage of by cats and who then proceeds to arrange their downfall from as high as possible. This is especially noticable in the Bob Clampett era, where he’s more aggressive than later in the Freleng era.
• The season 8 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic reveals that Cozy Glow's ridiculously cute, sweet demeanor was all an act and that she has been plotting to take over the Friendship School and steal all of the magic in Equestria. She's even pen pals with former Big Bad Lord Tirek, who admits to being impressed by the little filly's ambition.
• Phineas and Ferb: Suzy Johnson may seem like a cute, innocent kid, but when she's alone with Candace her true personality comes out with a vengeance. Subverted in that she only does it when her brother and Candace's crush Jeremy is around because she only does it to manipulate him. When it's just the two of them Suzy is (in her own words) "off the clock", and has even assisted Candace in trying to bust her brothers.
• SheRa and the Princesses of Power: Flutterina acts like and is thought to be a cute little girl who joins the Rebellion, even though she's too young to fight. It is revealed that she's actually Double Trouble, the shapeshifter/spy of the Horde.
• Wander over Yonder has Little Bits, who at first appears to be a poor stray who Wander finds unbelievably cute, claiming he'll do anything for her... but then it turns out she's actually mind-controlling him so she can bring him to Lord Hater.
• WordGirl: Eileen (a.k.a. The Birthday Girl) is a spoiled brat who claims that every day is her birthday. She pretends to be sweet and innocent (complete with saccharine baby talk) to get what she wants. If she doesn't get her "birthday presents", she throws a tantrum and hulks out.

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