Examples of this trope in Literature:
- Nineteen Eighty-Four, which became even scarier with the passing of the Patriot Act, not to mention the fact that just about every store these days is full of security cameras, or the kinds of private information available to the people who run social networking sites, or that employers have figured out how to access said information.
- And what about children spying on their own parents and reporting to government?
- In the first book of The Thrawn Trilogy, from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Leia is pregnant. She spends some time brooding about whether the twins will turn out like her father, and whether evil skips a generation. More explicitly, Thrawn's Nohgri commandos pursue her all over the galaxy, seeking to capture her without the use of Stun Guns. Stun guns would make these things simpler, but they can induce miscarriage. Meaning that they want to catch her and her unborn children. No matter where she goes, the Nohgri find her, and her escapes get narrower each time. At one point she realizes that Chewbacca and her other defenders would probably be killed, but not her. She'd be taken before Grand Admiral Thrawn, who would smile, and speak politely, and take her children away.
- When Leia has her third child, the reborn Emperor Palpatine chases after her and the baby so he can replace its soul and take over the infant's body. He doesn't want to kill the baby—he wants to replace it.
- New Testament. Herod ordering the murder of all the newborn babies.
- The resurrection/healing of the little girl in Mark 5. Obviously her resurrection is a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" but a poor little girl is dead.
- Old Testamente. Jewish male babies being abandoned or killed via Pharaoh orders. 'Nuff said.
- And earlier, Joseph's Secret Test of Character for his brothers... which involves the youngest of all of them, Benjamin.
- This makes Coraline arguably more frightening for adults than it is for children. For children, it has fairly standard Aesops about being careful what you wish for and being wary of strangers. For adults, it's about how failing to pay attention to a child can result in the child's kidnapping and death. Word of God states that this was intentional, and indeed, was Gaiman's primary reason for authoring the story—namely, scaring the pants off parents while leaving kids merely a little creeped out.
- In the movie, it becomes a sobering moment for children (even teenagers) when Coraline can't find her parents. The first time staying alone in your house can be a scary thing. In Coraline's case, she doesn't know where her parents are, if they're even coming back, or what will happen to her. The scene with the pillows in the bed is both heartbreaking and oddly terrifying.
- Occurs in, of all places, Goosebumps. Specifically the Night of the Living Dummy series. As several people, along with the blogger himself, pointed out on the snarky Goosebumps blog, the Night of the Living Dummy series may be creepy as a child, but as an adult, a completely different layer of creepy reveals itself. The living dummy in question is obsessed with making preteen girls (and it's always girls, never boys in these books) into his slaves. When they refuse, he punches and slaps them — a rare act of physical violence for this series — and even knocks one girl unconscious. In Bride of the Living Dummy, he goes further, demanding a 12 year old girl as his bride (instead of the female dummy), and even calling his violence against her a "love tap". From adult eyes, it takes on a whole new meaning that flew over our heads when we were kids, with some really disturbing subtext...
- In the TV adaptation of Night of the Living Dummy III, it is shown that Slappy has demonically possessed or at least is using his powers on a young pre-teen boy. The effect is no less creepy than it was with the girls.
- Arguably most of the series could count. The books center around preteen children who are stalked by monsters, cursed, subjected to Body Horror, kidnapped, and all sorts of other horrible things, and very rarely have parents or adults in general who can help them. It gets to the point where the above-mentioned blog has a "Questionable Parenting" section.
- Stephen King draws on this a lot. The Shining, for example, deals with Jack Torrance's fear of hurting his wife and son, of failing as a writer, of becoming crazy and/or an alcoholic, etc.
- The image for this page comes from The Film of the Book of King's Pet Sematary which is, as heart, a prolonged riff on the very adult fear of the death of a child.
- A Clockwork Orange: In addition to the aforementioned elements shared by the movie, the book features, among other things, a chapter in which Alex rapes a pair of young girls, and graphic descriptions of the World War II footage he is forced to watch as part of his "treatment".
- Two Weeks With the Queen is told from the perspective of the young Colin, who takes a long time to understand what's going on. However, the focus on the book is still a very adult fear: living knowing you are going to lose your brother (Colin), your child (his parents), or your life partner (Ted).
- The Harry Potter series, despite being aimed at children, has plenty of moments that scare the parents more than the kids, and a lot of them have to do with child abuse, Parental Abandonment, and not being able to protect or take care of your own children. Most of this probably came from Rowling's own fears as a mother (and especially as a single mother, having broken off an abusive marriage.).
- In the very beginning of Harry Potter Part One, when Hermione has to erase all of her parents' memories of herself so Voldemort can't torture them for information. It gives a parent a sense of failure to protect their child, that they're weak and powerless.
- It's very easy to see why Molly Weasley goes full Mama Bear during the Battle of Hogwarts. Not my daughter, you BITCH, indeed. After all, we saw her boggart in the fifth book — her family dead. Not to mention, she lost her two brothers in the last war, one of the Weasley twins has just died, and the daughter she so desperately wanted after having several sons is apparently the next one...
- Fenrir Greyback. In the book he just manages to edge out Bellatrix in the bone-deep creepiness category. In the movie he's downright disturbing, especially with Hermione. This was entirely intentional on Rowling's part.
- In the first part of the final film installment, Fenrir's part is downplayed... but they play up the character of Scabior, one of the snatchers. To children in the audience, Scabior is frightening because he's feral-looking, gross, cruel, and hunting down the main trio. To slightly older viewers, particularly women, he is... a lot more frightening because he's threatening to rape Hermione.
- The flashbacks to the night Lily and James were killed, full stop. The two died in total fear, but doing their best to protect their infant son. In the end, they weren't able to hold back the guy who broke into their house at all. If it weren't for The Power of Love and Lily's Mama Bear Dying Moment of Awesome, they would have had no way to protect baby Harry at all.
- When you're a kid, the scene in the first novel with Harry seeing his family in the mirror is interesting and sort of sad. When you're older it kind of makes you want to cry.
- Xenophilius Lovegood is a whole lot more tragic in Deathly Hallows because of this. "They took my Luna, and I don't know if I'll get her back!" The poor guy nearly blows up his house trying to catch the trio, but not out of ill will towards them... but only so he can save his poor daughter from being imprisoned by Death Eaters.
- Narcissa Malfoy's most prominent and sympathetic role in the story comes from her attempts to save Draco from the power of Voldemort. So much that she managed to lie to the face of Voldemort so Draco would live.
- In the fourth book, Harry is trapped in a room with someone he thought he could trust, a teacher no less. Only for said person to try to murder him.
- Order of the Phoenix, full stop: there's a catastrophe looming in the horizon but the government is too scared/incompetent to do anything about so it just decides to pretend it doesn't exist, manipulate the media into discrediting those trying to warn people about it, send bureaucrats to force institutions to leave people less prepared for the catastrophe and finally just start arresting people who keep insisting.
- In Terry Pratchett's Hogfather the entire reason the Boogeyman, the living embodiment of the "monster under the bed" type scare, became the Tooth Fairy was to protect children from real monsters like Teatime.
- Many of Bentley Little's novels deal with these sort of themes, including the nullification of personal identity (The Ignored) and the destructive power of consumerism (The Store).
- The premise of The Lovely Bones is based on the worst possible outcome of the "Oh, shit. My kid was supposed to be home hours ago; what if they're dead?" fear.
- The Anita Blake series has an example of this in the first book, Guilty Pleasures. Anita is hopping through, having a genuine Worthy Opponent moment with Jean-Claude, who can actually roll her, if briefly. Then she meets Nikolaos. Nikolaos doesn't try to convince Anita that she's seeing something she isn't. She tries to convince Anita that she is someone she isn't. And Anita is conscious enough to realize what's happening, but not quite enough to stop it on her own. It's a boogeyman doing bad things, yeah...it's also someone putting you in a position where even someone who was as calm as Anita was incapable of fighting back, and has no reason to expect help. Oh, and Nikolaos looks like a child, and was springing between innocent and B-Movie villain before that.
- Battle Royale (and by extension, Survival of the Fittest and any other works based off of it). The plot revolves around a highschool class being sent on a deserted island and forced to kill each other. And there's nothing you could really do about it, as well; two of the adult characters protested against it in the book and manga, resulting in one getting brutally killed and the other getting raped to silence her. Yikes.
- Thomas Ligotti's short story "The Frolic" plays into both this and existential terror with the walking, talking slab of undiluted Paranoia Fuel that is "John Doe". Think of the worst thing that someone could possibly do to a child. Now, think of someone who does this. Often. Someone that does this without even knowing that it's even slightly wrong. Someone (or rather something) that may not even be human. His capture, he says, is merely time for him to rest. Now, imagine that, for what ever reason, he just knows that you have a daughter...
- A Little Princess is about a young girl named Sarah who is forced into a life of servitude after her father dies and leaves her apparently penniless and with no other living relatives. And his closest and most trusted friend and business partner believes it's his fault that he supposedly lost the fortune and drove his friend to die. He wants to find his friend's daughter (Sarah) and take care of her because he feels he owes her father that much, and is worried for her safety. But he has no idea where she even is, or even if she's within the country! His search for her lasts years. Arguably it's even worse in Cuaron's movie version, where her father is alive and living next store, but due to his injuries and trauma he's suffering from memory loss. When Sarah is running from the police and hides in the house, she recognizes him and starts crying and trying to get him to remember her as she's dragged away to be arrested. He remembers her at the last minute, but still!
- Although Joffrey Baratheon in A Song of Ice and Fire is one of the most hated characters in the series, his death in the books is uncomfortable for many parents because of the very realistic desperation and grief of his Smug Snake of a mother, Cersei, neatly triggering the fear of one's children dying and illiciting sympathy for both.
- Don't forget how Catelyn sees her eldest son Robb being horrifyingly killed in front of her. And then she also gets killed off. And ends up coming back wrong.
- Bridge to Terabithia, period. The idea that a cheerful, friendly, imaginative and full of life child suddenly dies in a freak, senseless accident ( best swimmer in a class drowning in creek shallow enough to walk through) is utterly terrifying to parents, especially since said child did nothing to deserve death. "Bonus" points for this being the only child.
- Another terrifying point is that the whole is Based on a True Story. It was a lightning in reality making it even more tragic. One minute that little girl is happily playing on a beach, the next there is a corpse...
- In The Stones of Green Knowe, the protagonist, Roger, at one point sees what he thinks is his own village being massacred, with his family slaughtered. Despite the fact that Roger is only a child in the story, this would have been a very realistic fear for anyone at the time the novel takes place (the twelfth century), as well as in parts of the world today.
- Die Wolke ("The Cloud") by Gudrun Pausewang describes what would happen to a country if a nuclear plant would go fully caboom.
- Pausewang is very fond of this trope. Compare also: Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn (The Last Children of Schewenborn), which describes the aftermath of an implied nuclear war with all its horrors (the protagonist's family save his father dies one after another while suicides, murders, radiation sickness and starvation deaths happen all around him), and Der Schlund (The Abyss), which is set in a Germany that falls pray to another fascist regime a la Third Reich. The protagonist here loses her entire family to the regime and essentially commits suicide-by-proxy at the end.
- The Hunger Games centres around Katniss who takes on a motherly role for her young sister prematurely due to her father dying in a mining accident and her mother's ensuing depression. To feed the family she breaks the law and increases her odds of being picked for the deadly games. But because this is a Crapsack World, the sister is picked for the Games anyway, so Katniss volunteers as sacrifice, knowing she'll never win and her family will be left without a provider. Harrowing enough but then her younger sister dies in the revolution Katniss starts — likely at the hands of the man Katniss loved.
- Just the thought of it being your kid chosen for the Deadly Game...
- Three Days by Donna Jo Napoli focuses on an eleven-year-old girl visiting in Italy with her father. All is well until he suffers a heart attack while driving and passes out...and then the girl ends up being kidnapped. So now in addition to watching her father get a heart attack and probably die while they were driving and she was right next to him, she's trapped in a stranger's home, surrounded by people who don't speak any English, in a strange country that she doesn't even know her way around.
- What about never being able to see someone you love — ever?
- The Knight and Rogue Series has a woman who collects mentally handicapped children to experiment on, since the law is more likely to miss perfectly normal kids or adults.
- Warrior Cats deals with this a couple times. The forest is dangerous, so it's always frightening to the characters when a young cat disappears... one mother has to deal with the fact that her daughter's hindlegs are paralyzed so she'll never live a normal life and might die early... another mother's kits go missing, and she's forced to realize that her mate may have kidnapped them to live with him.
- Those That Wake had everyone forgetting about teenage Laura, even her parents. And at the end of the book, they still don't remember.
- School Crossing, by Francis King, is about a child-hating headmaster bitter after being sacked from the school where he worked. Whenever he drives anywhere near the school, he begins seeing the ghosts of children on the crossing outside. After being told by a doctor that he is hallucinating and should drive at the ghosts to prove they're not real, he does — only to run over and kill several children. The "ghosts" were a premonition. This is a fear instantly understandable to anyone with kids or who drives anywhere near places where children gather. The author has stated that he began having nightmares about it after acquiring a large, powerful car that he found difficult to handle.
- House of Leaves has many scary things going on, most noticably the Nothing Is Scarier aspects. But perhaps the most insidious facet of the book's creepiness is the fact that these terrible things are all going on in a family home. And then the children start changing. And also the claustrophobia, and the steadily escalating insanity that's probably the only thing of these that's actually happening.
- Fay Woolf's short stories "Slowly" (about a child being trapped beneath a fairground ride — engineers try to free him but then discover the machine sliced him into a pile of body parts, which rain down upon the rescuers) and "Sideshow" (about a boy suffocating to death during a party game at a school fair.) The events of both stories are described in such a way as to hold off the full horror until the end, and they are reasonably unlikely to happen — but still perfectly plausible and possible. Not fun for any parents reading.
- Someone Else's War examines the life and world of a child soldier from the inside out. It's a harrowing read in its own right, but if you have children of your own, you will find yourself unconsciously putting them in Matteo's place. Or Asher's. Or Otto's. Or Ruth's. And weeping with terror. And then you remember that there are really children going through this.
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