Basic Trope: An evil character is de-aged so a good character can adopt and raise him properly.
- Straight: After the final battle, Emperor Evulz is de-aged, and Hiro and his Love Interest adopt him to ensure that he grows up right.
- Exaggerated: After the final battle, everyone on the Emperor's team is de-aged and all the good guys adopt them.
- Downplayed:
- After the final battle, Hiro befriends Emperor Evulz so he can start to rehabilitate him.
- Emperor Evulz was already a kid and Hiro adopts him after the final battle in order to rehabilitate him, ultimately leading to Emperor Evulz becoming a good kid
- Justified:
- Hiro has a strict no-kill policy, however Emperor Evulz will just break out of jail. Solution to this moral dilemma? De-age Evulz.
- Hiro knows Emperor Evulz terrible childhood was what made him the villain he was before being de-aged. He's in better hands under Hiro's care.
- Inverted:
- After the final battle, Hiro is de-aged and Emperor Evulz adopts him so he can have a successor.
- The Emperor is aged up to an old man so he'll be frail and harmless.
- Subverted: The Emperor is de-aged so he'll be much easier to kill.
- Double Subverted: ...But as Hiro lifts Sword over Head, he realizes that he can't kill a child and adopts the Emperor.
- Parodied:
- The Emperor isn't de-aged, but he starts acting and dressing like a child so his opponents will drop their guard and adopt him. The only one who sees through it is the Only Sane Man.
- This is the 15th time Hiro and his Love Interest have tried to "raise him right". Almost anything bad that Evulz does reverts him back to being evil and trying to take over the world.
- Zig Zagged: Emperor Evulz was de-aged to childhood and the heroes adopt him. Only it turns out the child is actually the still-adult Emperor Evulz, who's a Master of Illusion disguising himself and pretending to be a child to spy on and manipulate the heroes. But then it's revealed that there's another child version of Emperor Evulz out there - who actually is a child, but a clone of the original, but is good. The original Emperor Evulz is not amused by this unauthorized duplication and kidnaps Clone Evulz, then attempts to kill him. Clone Evulz kills the disguised original Evulz in self-defense - but this taste of violence whets Clone Evulz's latent inborn appetite for bloodshed, setting Clone Evulz on the path to Emperor Evulz's corruption. And then there's also Eva, raised in an Orphanage of Love, who eventually dedicates herself to taking down Clone Evulz and becomes The Hero in the next installment...
- Averted: Emperor Evulz was never de-aged.
- Enforced: "You can't write a redemption arc for Emperor Evulz - he's so far past the Moral Event Horizon that no one would believe it and it would just annoy the fans. Turn him into a kid instead if you want a good version of Evulz."
- Lampshaded: "Yeah, I know adopting a kid who used to be Emperor Evulz might not be my greatest idea ever, but look at those adorable Puppy-Dog Eyes! Maybe I've read too many comic books."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz, knowing the good guys have a soft spot for kids and wanting a second chance at life, suggests this idea himself.
- Exploited:
- Emperor Evulz knows he's lost, but he also knows he'll retain his memories if he's de-aged, and who better to learn a man's weak spots than his own son?
- Emperor Evulz WON'T retain his memories if he's de-aged - and he uses this fact to set up a Memory Gambit.
- Defied: "This is Emperor Evulz. He's beyond redemption. Let's just kill him instead".
- Discussed: "You know those shows where a bad guy gets turned into a kid and the heroes raise him as a good person? Well, here's this kid who looks remarkably like Emperor Evulz. Someone needs to take care of him. Maybe it should be us."
- Conversed: "I'm watching two different series where a bad guy gets turned into a kid and people try to raise him as a good guy. You'd think the heroes wouldn't want a kid around who reminded them constantly of their old enemy. I guess heroes are just more generous people than I am."
- Played for Laughs: Little Evulz looks like an adorable miniature version of his adult self, complete with Spikes of Villainy and Black Cloak, but he's just fingerpainting and making snowmen.
- Played for Drama: Everyone hates Little Evulz for things he did that he can't even remember, and he's terrified that he'll grow up to be the villain everyone despises; the story follows him as he tries to grow up and do some good in a world where everyone is against him. Meanwhile, his guardians and other people he comes in contact with find he brings back memories of Emperor Evulz's crimes, and they can't even look at him without being frightened or disgusted, even if they intellectually think he is truly not the same. Some of the other characters are also angry at his guardians for harboring him and don't consider this an appropriate punishment, or think they're putting everyone at risk.
- Deconstructed:
- Evulz learns his past and becomes fascinated with the idea of continuing his old plan. He regresses into ambiguously moral old habits.
- Little Evulz doesn't want to grow up to be evil, but circumstances conspire to push him down the slippery slope.
- No one likes or trusts Little Evulz because of the sins of his adult self, and they make his life hell because of it - possibly leading to him becoming evil again because everyone already treats him as such, so why not benefit from it?
- Little Evulz may be little, but he's still the same person he was and still guilty of the same sins. Being de-aged doesn't erase his culpability.
- The heroes realize that turning the adult Evulz into a child and wiping his memories (or rolling them back to his apparent age) is effectively a sort of Death of Personality or Mind Rape, maybe not that much better than just killing him.
- It turns out Evulz was evil even as a child, so reverting his memories back to his childhood will not give the heroes a chance at rehabilitating him.
- Evulz is de-aged with all his memories intact, but only because he's much weaker and more vulnerable as a toddler than as an adult. The heroes then subject him to Mind Rape and Cold-Blooded Torture as a punishment for everything he's done, And He Must Scream.
- Reconstructed:
- Hiro pushes Evulz to do good. Evulz comes to enjoy it as much as he enjoyed kicking dogs and ultimately abandons his old plan, ashamed and disgusted with himself.
- Little Evulz is raised in a situation where no one knows of his past - or they treat him well despite it - and he ends up a happy kid who grows into a nice adult.
- Little Evulz is a clone of Emperor Evulz, but Clones Are People, Too and he's essentially a separate individual. It was Emperor Evulz who kicked all those dogs, not Little Evulz, who's really an innocent child.
- Emperor Evulz was killed and reborn or cloned as a child, so the heroes' raising him doesn't involve their mind-wiping him.
- But he still wasn't irredeemably evil like he was as an adult, and thus can still be turned around for the better.
Go back to Raise Him Right This Time, and this time read it better.
