http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatingLifeIsBad

IT'S ALIVE!

Blutengel, " , " The Oxidizing Angel "He created an angel just for himself, he gave her beauty he gave her life, but she couldn't live without a soul..."

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In many lores and settings, humans creating life (especially intelligent life) are not awesome, and the act of creation does most certainly not make them valid Gods. On the contrary, the act is considered to be a foul act of hubris, often referred to as Playing God. Even if the character doesn't claim to be (like) one.

The creation of autonomous, independent, and above all intelligent life has long been the exclusive province of the divine. Just about every creation myth has the creation of animal and then sapient life forms as the second or third thing done; right after space/time but before waffles. Even assuming there is no God, the odds of it happening are such that it is a secular miracle not to be taken lightly. Thus this trope.

This archetypal plot probably emerged due to how artificial lifeforms might invoke an effect similar to the Uncanny Valley.

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Subtrope of Creating Life. Contrast its sister tropes Creating Life Is Awesome, Creating Life Is Unforeseen, Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!, and Deity of Human Origin. Different than Sex Is Evil, unless artificial creation of life is explicit symbolism for sex.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

In the Silver Age Superman comics, this formed part of Lex Luthor's origin. Young Lex Luthor was an aspiring scientist who resided in Smallville, the hometown of Superboy. Luthor saved Superboy from a chance encounter with Kryptonite. In gratitude, Superboy built Luthor a laboratory, where weeks later, he manages to create an artificial form of life. Grateful in turn to Superboy, Luthor created an antidote for Kryptonite poisoning. However, an accidental fire broke out in Luthor's lab. Superboy used his super-breath to extinguish the flames, inadvertently spilling chemicals which caused Luthor to go bald; in the process, he also destroyed Luthor's artificial life form. Believing that Superboy intentionally destroyed his discoveries, Luthor attributed his actions to jealousy and vowed revenge. In the Post-Crisis Pocket Universe, though, because Superboy died before Lex Luthor had a chance to meet him, Lex was able to complete the creation of an artificial lifeform, which ended up becoming the Matrix form of Supergirl.

The title character from Omega the Unknown was created to be a real Übermensch by an ancient race of aliens.

Gargamel in The Smurfs created Smurfette as a weapon to destroy the Smurfs, with that purpose being more apparent in the Animated Adaptation and in the film series. When Papa Smurf turned her into a real Smurf, Gargamel in the comic books abandoned the idea of creating any similar life forms, while Gargamel of the cartoon show tried it again by creating a giant named Doofus, and Gargamel of the film series created the Naughties in The Smurfs 2 with the intention of them being turned into Smurfs so he could extract their essence to power his magic, create more Naughties to turn into Smurfs, and gain enough power for world domination and total destruction of the Smurfs.

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Fan Works

A major part of the Fourth Movement of With Strings Attached. Brox discovers a spell that will turn inorganic items into living creatures; she wants to use it to repopulate Baravada with monsters for the skahs to kill. To that end, she mind-controls Paul, who seems to be able to boost spells well beyond their parameters, and teaches him the spell so he can boost it and then channel it through the Vasyn, which will boost it exponentially.

discovers a spell that will turn inorganic items into living creatures; wants to use it to repopulate Baravada with monsters for the skahs to kill. To that end, mind-controls Paul, who seems to be able to boost spells well beyond their parameters, and teaches him the spell so he can boost it and then channel it through the Vasyn, which will boost it exponentially. The Psyche Master of Empath: The Luckiest Smurf became the creator of his own Master Race, the morally-ambiguous Psyches.

Films — Animated

Igor focused on playing with and inverting this trope; the title character was trying to be bad in creating Eva, only for her to turn out as a Gentle Giant who's later instrumental in the Character Development of the entire twisted society.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Blutengel's song "The Oxidizing Angel" twists the Frankenstein myth a bit: the created woman is exquisitely beautiful, and unlike Frankenstein's original monster, her creator doesn't abandon her. However, while she has a mind, she does not have a soul, and this is utterly traumatic for her. Her creator, being selfishly in love with her, refuses her plea to kill her, driving her to kill him instead.

Myths & Religion

Averted in Shinto. In short, Shinto believes that everything in existence has a kind of divine spark ("kami"), from the smallest pebble to the tallest mountain, and of course anything organic, like plants, animals and humans. According to this viewpoint, everything is already "alive" in a way, and it's understood as a good thing to "uplift" life into a higher state of consciousness. Often, this is the given explanation on why the Japanese are so fond of A.I. and robots (which would be uplifting the unorganic materials of the robots); they're doing God's work in a good way, so to speak.

Gnosticism. The god who created life is not the real real god and botched up the job royally. (To simplify it a bit.)

Tabletop Games

The game Promethean: The Created, loosely based on Frankenstein. Each of the major lineages of Prometheans was created because somebody started channeling the Divine Fire and decided to create life, either for purposes of companionship, servitude, just rule, an idea of what was happening on "the other side," or just plain because. Every Promethean is essentially a walking Came Back Wrong on many levels. Humans instinctively hate them, they rot the environment, and are prone to cause destruction. They have to earn a soul and become fully human to end the karmic pain from merely existing. Incidentally, part of the process of becoming human requires creating another Promethean.

In Genius: The Transgression, creating life is one of the first things you can learn. Creating intelligent life is a bit tougher, although any two-bit Mad Scientist could create shambling zombies to handle really menial tasks. Both cases are Transgressions against Obligation, mostly because ordinary humans would find it kinda weird (and Obligation takes a very hard line against rejecting standard human norms).

Video Games

Visual Novels

There are two forms of this in Edelweiss. The first is apparently not that big of a deal, creating plants spontaneously. The second is the extremely difficult task of creating a homunculus. One of the heroines is a homunculus created accidentally in an attempt to revive a girl who died. She Came Back Wrong , but in a good way.

Web Comics

Web Original

Subverted in The Dr. Steel Show, Episode 2. Doctor Steel begins to excitedly scream "It's working!" as his doll-robot experiment begins to walk around - only to have it stop when he runs out of quarters.

Western Animation

Rudy Tabootie of ChalkZone makes it a rule not to use his magic chalk to create any living creatures in the Zone unless in the most dire of circumstances.

Adventure Time The episode "Too Young" focused on the kingdom being taken over by Princess Bubblegum's first failed experiment—Lemongrab, a mentally disturbed manchild. The second was Goliad. Although Goliad was made properly, she was corrupted after getting the wrong idea about power, and believed in using her vast psychic abilities to maintain order. However, a third creation, Stormo, didn't seem to have any issues physically, mentally, or morally. Funnily enough, Goliad also may serve as something of a clone to Bubblegum as her DNA was derived from a baby tooth from the Princess. Stormo on the other hand was made from a lock of Finn's hair and it appeared he managed to inherited Finn's heroic nature as he locked himself in eternal psychic combat with Goliad to keep her from harming anyone. Aside from those mistakes, Bubblegum actually has a pretty good track record. Her creations populate the Candy Kingdom, which, while not exactly normal, is pretty nice overall. On the other hand, leaving her candy life formula where Lemongrab could find it was not a wise move In the eyes of the Lemongrabs, this trope is averted, as they think that Creating Life Is Awesome. When Princess Bubblegum actually starts being nice to them, they begin referring to her as "Mother Princess" and "Mommy," and actually enjoy the fact that she made them and gave them life. The earls also see themselves as being dads to the strange-looking lemon creatures they create, and are overjoyed to finally have "more family." The Lemon Children appear to be hideous abominations, but the Lemongrabs think of them as their adorable toddler-aged children. Played with in "Slumber Party Panic". PB attempts to resurrect some candy people and accidentally creates zombies, but after the zombie outbreak is dealt with she discovers the correct resurrection formula anyway and brings the zombies back to life.

In The Simpsons episode "HOMR", the scientists say they can't play God with Homer's intelligence. Homer: You do nothing but play God, and I think your octo-parrot would agree.

Octo-Parrot: Rawk! Polly shouldn't be!

Real Life