Older Than They Look/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Someone looks younger than they really are.

  • Straight: Bob is fourteen but looks ten/eleven.
  • Exaggerated: Really Seven Hundred Years Old
    • Bob even acts the age he looks.
  • Downplayed: Characters assume Bob is 12, but he's really 13.
  • Justified: When he got a tumor removed from his brain once, it also removed that part that makes him look older.
  • Inverted: Younger Than They Look
  • Subverted: He appears to be in the same class as Charlie, as well as Danny and Eli, who are in sixth grade.
  • Double Subverted: He's repeating grades.
  • Parodied: Bob looks like a baby, but is really middle aged.
  • Deconstructed: He can't buy M-Rated games or go into PG-13 movies without an adult.
  • Reconstructed: ...But the law states that age requirements are only based on mental or psychological ages, not physical ages.
  • Played for Laughs: Bob goes to get his drivers license and gets rejected for being too young. Frustrated he goes to an American bar, shows his ID and orders a drink.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Bob is really as old as he looks.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Older Than They Look