Child of the Prophecy (予言の子, Yogen no Ko) is a title originally conceived by the Great Toad Sage when he had a vision about Jiraiya of the Sannin. The Child of Prophecy is said to be a shinobi that would bring a great revolution to the world of the ninja. This child would have the power to either make this revolution end in peace for the world, or utterly destroy it. Jiraiya would take on this child as his pupil and train him. Then, a time would come when his choices and actions would decide whether the world will be saved or destroyed. Jiraiya believed that the following characters could be the Child of the Prophecy:
During the Second Great Shinobi World War, Jiraiya came across a group of orphans in the war-torn Amegakure. One of these orphans, Nagato, activated a Dōjutsu when shinobi attacked them, the mythical Rinnegan. Because of the Rinnegan's connection with the fabled Sage of the Six Paths, a figure who had been said to had saved the world in the past, Jiraiya believed at the time that Nagato was the Child of Prophecy.
Later, when he returned to Konoha and took a genin team consisting of two unknown genin and Minato Namikaze. Jiraiya took special interest in Minato and took him as an apprentice. At some point, he would mention to Minato that perhaps that he was the Child of Prophecy. Later, when the Nine-Tails attacked Konoha, Minato came to the conclusion that his newborn son, Naruto, was the true Child of Prophecy. Thus Minato sealing the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox into Naruto, giving him a power that would help him stop the coming disaster fore-told in the prophecy.
Jiraiya, several years later, would sneak into Amegakure and fight his former student Nagato and his Six Paths of Pain. At first, he believed this was the time to decide his actions that would change the world, to stop Nagato before he could bring destruction to it. However, he was defeated. Before his death, he came to believe that his current student, Naruto, was truly the child foretold, and used the last of his strength to give Naruto and Konoha a message of how to defeat Nagato. Jiraiya believed that it was this choice to not give up, even after his heart had stopped beating, that would alter the fate of the world. At the end of the Invasion of Pain on Konoha, the Toad Sage was surprised, coming to the conclusion that both Nagato and Naruto are the children of prophecy, instead of it being just a single individual.