Teen Genius

""Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, I shall be brief, as I have rather unfortunately become Prime Minister right in the middle of my exams.""

- Pitt the Younger, Blackadder the Third

As the title suggests, the Teen Genius is just that: a genius who happens to be a teenager. This character is responsible for coming up with the magical answer to any given episode's problem, while at the same time being generally angsty and teen-like. May be exposed to discrimination by those that don't know him, because he's Just a Kid.

Oddly, the Teen Genius will not normally have any of the odd behavioral quirks of the TV Genius, even if the series lasts long enough to let him mature into an adult.

On a show with an ensemble cast, the teen genius is usually included as a (generally misguided) attempt to appeal to a teen audience. On a show with a teenaged Competence Zone, this is about the only way for the Five-Man Band to include the requisite Smart Guy.

A Teen Genius may sometimes also be Book Dumb, despite the apparent contradiction. A female Teen Genius may be a Genius Ditz. A younger version is the Child Prodigy.

Anime and Manga

 * Theresa "Tessa" Testarossa, Sagara Sōsuke, and Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic!.
 * Mizuno Ami/Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon, she's always at the top of the ranking in tests and is rumored by other students to have an IQ of 300 (The musicals treat the latter as fact, not a rumor)
 * The Pretty Cure franchise has at least two of these: Yukishiro Honoka from Futari wa Pretty Cure and Minazuki Karen from Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
 * Shirogane Ryou from Tokyo Mew Mew.
 * All the main characters in Death Note, though you could argue Misa's case since she's a Genius Ditz. Especially Light. Words can't describe his level of thinking.
 * Not quite all of them -- though he most certainly would have been a teen genius, L is in his twenties when the events of the series take place.
 * Naruto has Shikamaru Nara who has an IQ over 200. He's so smart that everything seems boring to him. Also Itachi Uchiha who had done everything from reaching the very top of his career (Anbu Captain), to joining the most powerful criminal organization as a spy by the time he was only 13 years old. Kakashi Hatake and Minato Namikaze (who would later on become the Fourth Hokage) were also teen geniuses when they were young.
 * Orochimaru, too. The ninja world has a lot of geniuses, which is to say prodigies. Over 50% of them go violently bananas.
 * Code Geass has Lelouch Lamperouge, who planned on toppling a continent-spanning empire even before he gained Hypnotic Eyes. Much maligned Nina Einstein also qualifies for inventing and
 * Lelouch is also a subversion in that at the the start of the series, he is bored to death and extremely pessimistic.
 * Mariel from the Alternate Continuity manga Suzaku of the Counterattack has a PHD and is described as being only a year older than Suzaku.
 * Kotomi in Clannad
 * Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh!!.
 * Both Miki and Mikage in Revolutionary Girl Utena.
 * While it is not mentioned very often in the anime, Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion has already graduated from college at the age of fourteen, making her a candidate for this trope. She's only in highschool in Japan to improve her Japanese due to how bad she is at writing/reading it. While Asuka never really uses these skills in the plot itself, they are quite important for her Character Development (c.f. the whole of "Magma Diver"); they don't affect the plot because all the brains in the world won't help you stop the apocalypse.
 * In Rebuild, she's a different kind of genius. Instead of college she joined the military becoming the "Pride of the Euro Airforce" and reaching the rank of Captain by age 14. Which might be a little more useful against apolocapses.
 * Akagi Shigeru in Akagi.
 * Thomas/Touma Norstein in Digimon Savers, and, to a (much) lesser extent, Koushirou "Izzy" Izumi and Ken Ichijouji in Digimon Adventure 02. (With Koushirou as a former Child Prodigy, even.)
 * 17-year-old Shin'ichi Kudo and Heiji Hattori in Detective Conan both have vast amounts of knowledge and mental abilities superior to most of the adults around them. Shiho Miyano, on the other hand, led The Syndicate's lab before she's 18. This trope tends to be somewhat obscured in Shin'ichi and Shiho's cases by the fact that they spends most of the series in even younger bodies, thus giving them the appearance of Child Prodigies.
 * Chiyo-chan from Azumanga Daioh, though a Child Prodigy who starts 10th grade at the age of 10, technically becomes a Teen Genius when she graduates from high school at 13.
 * Fuu Hououji from Magic Knight Rayearth.
 * Irina Woods from Mai-Otome. In addition to her normal Otome duties, she also studies engineering and computers, and is very good friends with Professor Youko.
 * Ryu Amakusa, Megu Minami, and Kyuu  (though he's more of a Genius Ditz) from Detective Academy Q. Their other teammates, Kazuma Narusawa and Kintarou Touyama, are respectively the Child Prodigy and the Badass Normal.
 * Trowa "No Name" Barton of Gundam Wing. The other guerilla Gundam pilots also probably qualify, but he's the only one who, probably because unlike the other four boys he doesn't have a massive case of Chronic Hero Syndrome to screw things up for him.
 * Wu Fei, oddly enough, is apparently their intellectual, followed by Quatre, who's the best military mind among them. Heero has a flair for tactics, although he also acts dumb as a post sometimes. In terms of practical knowledge, they're all extraordinary.
 * Don't forget Relena Peacecraft. She's mostly an Ordinary High School Student at first, but with some more prodding she
 * Actually, the Gundam metaseries has several of these. Amuro Ray and Kamille Vidan were gifted Gadgeteer Geniuses at age 15 and 17, with Kamille even being well-known as an amateur engineer  Judau Ashta piloted his mecha at age 14 (a little younger than the Wing boys), and Usso Ebin straddles the line between this and Child Prodigy got his's at age 13 (Justified Trope: he was trained by his parents beforehand).
 * In Starship Operators, even you're a veteran tactician, you do not mess with Shinon Kouzuki. Trust us, it's a very bad idea fighting her.
 * Yue in Mahou Sensei Negima, a philosopher whose strategic abilities have allowed her to even be a threat to magically over-powered foes in the magic world. Chao and Hakase certainly qualify as well. Negi is more of a Child Prodigy, tho.
 * Tony Tony Chopper in One Piece is only 15 at his introduction, yet is an experienced doctor trained by one of the best doctors in the world.
 * Thanks to a life time of Training From Hell, Ranma Saotome is a Teen Genius in the area of Martial Arts.
 * Considering that he spent most of that time traveling and only a few years in school, to be able to be in the same class as his peers is rather impressive.
 * Edward Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist became the youngest State Alchemist ever at the age of twelve; his younger brother Alphonse is no slouch either.
 * To put this into perspective, that's when most alchemists begin studying their craft; Ed and Al first successfully performed alchemy when Ed was four. And they learned how entirely from books.
 * Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, to a degree. He's only 15 years old and yet can take on shinigami and Espadas who are well over a hundred.
 * Ichigo is a freak. Mentally, metaphysically, and biologically. Also, some of the Espada aren't very old at all, at least as their present consciousnesses.
 * What about Uryuu Ishida? Not only he's top of his class, but a prodigy Quincy. I'm sure even Mayuri called him a genius, just before they had that giant fight where Mayuri's Bankai gets epically cut in half by Uryuu in a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * Hitsugaya Toushirou is (in Shinigami terms) 15-16 years old and looks around 10-11, while being around 40-50 (actual age), but has achieved Bankai (which usually takes around a century to achieve) and is the youngest Shinigami to ever become a captain.
 * Subverted, though: the guy's got a pretty bad record streak when it comes it actual fighting. More understandable when we recall that he's much younger than the other captains, and while he presumably has roughly equivalent power he has far less experience in how to use it effectively. If anything, this portrayal is more reasonable than were he the inexperienced prodigy who had the power, the skill, and the flawless winning streak.
 * Don't forget Inoue Orihime. She may act like a total ditz, and say ridiculous things, she is third overall in school and is a pretty decent healer/BarrierWarrior at age 15-16. Not bad for a scatterbrain.
 * In GetBackers, most of the major characters are this. Though two extreme examples that have been countlessly Lampshaded are Ban Midou and Makubex. Ban has been called a brilliant genius in fighting (though, according to his witch grandmother, "worthless in everything else") ever since he was a kid, and is currently pretty much the strongest character in the entire series. And Makubex is a 13 year old computer genius that other characters constantly claim is a Teen Genius.
 * Hiruma Youichi, who first learned poker from American soldiers stationed in Japan. After losing the first hand, he figured out the rules without anyone telling him and proceeded to gamble his way to taking all of the soliders' money. By high school, he can count cards in blackjack and earn a ridiculous profit. Has managed to figure out a way to get blackmail material on nearly everyone in the country, and many outside the country.
 * Subverted in the World Cup arc when it's made clear that even with all their abilities, most of the talented players in the series still aren't quite at the NFL level yet (though they're still incredibly talented for the high school and possibly college level).
 * Rakugo Tennyo Oyui's Suzu Koishikawa. She's already got a university-level degree when we see her at the start of the series, and as such her only friend is a scientist at least twice her age.
 * All members of Spartoi in Soul Eater (not just Maka's group, but Ox's) most of which are in their mid-teens. Both random Shibusen members and senior staff acknowledge them as 'elite', though this status is certainly helped by the number of unusual powers they possess.
 * While several characters of Hayate the Combat Butler are 13 and thus between this trope and Child Prodigy Hinagiku is 16 and thus qualifies for this one, as does Athena (supposedly).
 * Maria is 17 at the time of the series, so she also falls here, though during her time at the school she was a Child Prodigy, having graduated at the age of 13, setting a school-wide record that has yet to be borken.
 * The school the story takes on thrives on this trope, it's year-end exam is given in German.
 * Huey Laforet of Baccano! was a Teen Genius in 1705.
 * Zera from Litchi Hikari Club is a certified genius at the age of 13. His sanity may be questioned but he came up with a thinking machine that somehow runs on litchi fruits, his chess skills are superb. More, the prequel shows that in elementary school he constructed a robot all by himself which makes him a Child Prodigy too. Dentaku is also very smart, he programmed Litchi.
 * Bulma from Dragon Ball.
 * Gohan from the sequel Dragonball Z counts too.
 * In Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon, despite being a Book Dumb archetype, solves many problems that involves supernaturalities and practically omnipotent organizations, only with his wit and social skill. Even he doesn't hold a candle to, however,.
 * Keima Katsuragi, hero of The World God Only Knows, who only wants to play his his gal-games, and starts the series only putting the bare minimum of effort needed into anything else. But even then, he typically gets perfect scores on his tests (because he has a deal with his teachers that lets him play games in class) and once he gets dragged into the plot, he proves to be incredibly competent.
 * Homura Akemi, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica initially appears as this trope, being able to complete all sorts of difficult classwork despite just transferring from the hospital..
 * Ciel in Black Butler solves crimes and runs a successful toy and candy company at the age of 12, and that wasn't when he started. His genius is much more obvious in the manga. There at the age of 13 he has expanded his company to areas like rainwear and perfumes, and he shows impressive cunning when he has to deal with a murder mystery in his manor, where he starts out as the prime suspect. He also plays a difficult Bach's chaconne on the violin and apparently does it very well.

Comics

 * Dilton Doily from Archie Comics.
 * Brainiac 5 from The Legion of Super Heroes. All Coluans are smarter than humans, and his family moreso than everyone else.
 * The first Invisible Kid was said to be a genius by human standards as well and created his own invisibility serum.
 * Kitty Pryde of the X-Men was introduced as this. So was her friend Doug Ramsey of the New Mutants -- his powers had to do with languages and he was unfortunately incapable of contributing anything else to the team.
 * There's a ludicrous number of teen geniuses in Marvel right now. Amadeus Cho is probably the smartest, but there's also David Alleyne/Prodigy of the Young X-Men, Victor Mancha of the Runaways and Jonas/Vision II and Kate Bishop/Hawkeye II of the Young Avengers. And that's even without including the ghost of Alex Wilder (Runaways again) and the currently MIA Kristoff Vernard von Doom.
 * Mr. Fantastic, who not only is the biggest nerd in the world and a Rubber Man Badass Bookworm, but was attending university at age 14 and by the time he turned 20 had several science degrees under his belt.
 * Hiro Okamura from The DCU. He builds a composite robot to save the world from a kryptonite meteor, and even Batman states that Hiro's smarter than him.
 * This is made even more evident in the movie Superman/Batman: Public Enemies.
 * Peter Parker, a/k/a Spider-Man.
 * Although, after 40 years and with all his smarts, Peter's still taking pictures for the Daily Bugle.
 * Actually he's stopped doing that and is now working for Horizon Labs, putting that brain of his to work
 * Tim Drake the third Robin, and current Red Robin is regarded as the smartest of Batman's proteges, and even Batman had stated that Tim could potentially be smarter than himself.
 * Tekno in Sonic the Comic seems to be this, but due to the Vague Age principal of the comics it's unknown if she is a teenager or if she's currently one.
 * Jack B. Quick, youthful Insufferable Genius of the short-lived Tomorrow Stories, published by the equally short-lived America's Best Comics by the incomparable Alan Moore. A poor man's tounge-in-cheek Tom Swift.
 * Tony Stark: While all comic stories featuring him show him as an adult, it's said he graduated from MIT at the age of 17.

Films

 * All the main characters in Real Genius apply, even though half of them are over 19. The main character is only 15, and Jordan (at 19) is also a Genius Ditz.
 * Lex and Tim Murphy in "Jurassic Park" combined were the Teen Genius. She was the computers; he was the dinosaurs.
 * Chekov in the 2009 Star Trek movie.
 * Donnie Darko. His test scores were "intimidating".
 * Josh from And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird.
 * The Iron Man movie confirms that Tony Stark was already a genius back when he was a teenager.
 * Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon. He's also good at building things and likes learning about dragons.

Literature

 * Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. Though never directly shown, Snape, Dumbledore, Voldemort, and Grindelwald are all implied to have been Teen Geniuses as well in their own times.
 * There's also James Potter and Sirius Black, described as being intelligent and very gifted at magic. They managed to become Animagi by their 5th year at Hogwarts! There's also Remus Lupin. Sirius and Lupin are adults by the time the series starts though, and James is dead.
 * Slughorn also states (repeatedly) that Lily Evans (later Potter) was also very intelligent and gifted at magic.
 * Fred and George Weasley may have earned three OWLs each, but they are capable of advanced magic and become successful businessmen after dropping out of Hogwarts... at 18 years old. While Percy is a pompous Jerkass, he had to have been pretty smart to have become Junior Assistant to the Minister of Magic... also at 18 years old.
 * That whole 18 years old thing may be justified, as we never read even a single mention in the series about any Wizarding Colleges.
 * Artemis Fowl. Technically not a teen in the first book, since he was twelve then, though he gets older later on. And he is smart, to say in the least.
 * Lilly Moscovitz from The Princess Diaries. She has an IQ of 170.
 * Frank Hardy from The Hardy Boys.
 * Practically every single character in the Ender's Game series of novels. Spooky geniuses.
 * Definitely justified, because that's what the Battleschool program was specifically looking for.
 * In the Garrett, P.I. series, Kip Prose is a teen inventor, with a head full of ideas for things that hadn't yet been developed in his world (pencils, tricycles). Subverted in that he got his first batch of ideas from aliens sky elves, rather than dreaming them up from scratch.
 * Telzey Amberdon, from James H. Schmitz's Federation of the Hub, starts out as Star Honor student at the planet's top law school at age 15, before she is Touched by Vorlons.
 * Then again, the student body of Pehanron College seemingly isn't much older than Telzey is; her roommate Gonwil is 19, but she's in her last year, while Telzey still has several years to go. Its either a prep academy for nothing but Teen Geniuses, or the Hub's education system is a tad accelerated. Telzey is still the top student in her year, that's true.
 * In Millicent Min, Girl Genius, the title character is eleven and already taking college courses. For fun.
 * In The Baby Sitters Club, Claudia's older sister Janine has an IQ of 196.
 * All the Gladers in The Maze Runner, to varying degrees.
 * Tom Swift.
 * Frank Reade, Jr.
 * Johnny Brainerd and The Steam Man of the Prairies. Most likely the Ur Example, predating even Frank Reade and Tom Swift, circa 1868. Earliest example of an "Edisonade," which predates Steampunk.
 * Aaron Stampler from Primal Fear.
 * All Enid Blyton's Boarding School novels seem to have a handful of these characters. St. Clare's has Felicity's musical genius and the almost Sue-ish Lucy Oriell who is perfect at everything, especially art. Malory Towers has even more - even in-story Irene's talent for maths and music is called "genius", Mavis has the voice of an opera singer at the age of fourteen or fifteen, and no-one can match Belinda's drawing skills.

Live Action TV

 * Lizze Sutton from Lincoln Heights
 * Doogie Howser from Doogie Howser, M.D.. The show is unusual in that it completely centers on a Teen Genius.
 * Bryce Lynch from Max Headroom.
 * Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
 * Later on, Dawn, who is established as a good student and decent chess player in her first appearance, a couple of seasons later translating mystical texts from Ukrainian and ancient Sumerian.
 * Mac from Veronica Mars.
 * Quite possibly Veronica herself, as well.
 * Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle, as well as his brother, Dewey, and his classmates Lloyd, Dabney, and Stevie.
 * Lucas Wolenczak from SeaQuest DSV. A rather successful example of the trope; where the character and the actor became a hit, from an otherwise flop show.
 * Wesley Crusher from Star Trek the Next Generation, an example of what can go wrong with this trope.
 * Doctor Zee from Galactica 1980 was not only a Teen Genius, he was weird and fey enough to qualify as an Oracular Urchin.
 * Adric from Doctor Who. And Luke Rattigan from the latest series.
 * Luke Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures appears to be this, subverted in that he was created with a body on the onset of puberty.
 * A less common example would be Quinn Mallory from Sliders, who, although not a teen at the time of the series, falls under the category by virtue of being young, brilliant, and angsty.
 * The show Smart Guy was centered around this type of character, although he's a ten-year-old in high school.
 * River Tam from Firefly, who is seventeen years old and who makes her brother Simon (who was in the top three percent of his class at an elite medical school) look like an "idiot child" by comparison -- or so Simon says. Also, she can read minds. The angst factor comes from the fact that she's crazy as a result of cruel medical experimentation done to her at the Academy.
 * Billy from the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers team.
 * Rose from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive was this in the backstory, but by 18 years old, she was already out of Harvard and working in a university in London. Of course, if she's 18, she's technically still a teenager.
 * Also Dr. K in Power Rangers RPM. She starts with "abducted into government think tank by age 6" and goes from there (she's about 18 at the time of the series).
 * Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties.
 * Steve Urkel of Family Matters.
 * The twelve-year-old Micah Sanders from Heroes is shown as being gifted in Season One. His first appearance has him building a new motherboard for his computer.
 * Didn't he turn out to be a Technopath?
 * Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter from The Chosen. Especially Danny.
 * Lost contains a former Teen Genius: Daniel Faraday was a professor at Oxford and doing time travel experiments by the time he was 19 and he had already graduated sometime in his early to mid teens-explicitly said to be the youngest ever graduate. Then he did said experiments on his own girlfriend, something that went so badly that Oxford wiped any record of him ever having taught there-and by the time we meet him, he's 27 and has memory problems so bad he needs a constant caretaker.
 * NCIS has an episode with a whole group of teen "analysts" who are practically playing Ender's Game in real life.
 * Zoe Graystone (and her Posthumous Digital Avatar) is this in Caprica.
 * Claudia from Warehouse 13, and painfully aware of it too.
 * Her brother Joshua is her role model for this behavior.
 * Dr. Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds is a former Teen Genius and Child Prodigy. He graduated high school when he was 12 and graduated college when he was 16. He was 23 (turned 24 in the fourth episode) when the series began and Hotch mentioned that he was already working at the FBI for three years. In season six he complained about not being allowed to drive when he was in college.
 * Allison Baldwin from Kratts' Creatures.

Music

 * Lady Gaga wrote her first ballad at thirteen and has been writing music for other artists since the age of fifteen, after having been a piano prodigy.
 * Tyler, the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt became cult figures at ages 16 and 18 respectively.
 * Aphex Twin first started making music by tinkering with his ZX81 home computer at the age of 11, and if the title Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is telling the truth he was already creating his first album by 14.

Tabletop Games

 * Ertai, from the "Weatherlight Saga" of Magic: The Gathering; subverted when he's captured and transformed into a half-mechanical monstrosity who hates his former friends. Squee (not that Squee), the young goblin cabin boy, is also a genius by goblin standards, though by human standards that amounts to "merely functioning".

Video Games

 * Ciel of Mega Man Zero created, a near-perfect duplicate of Thomas Light's greatest work, when she was six years old and devised a completely new energy source before she'd finished her teenage years. ZX's backstory indicates she also created the biometals sometime after the Zero series, and on top of everything else she's a Hot Scientist to boot. Girl gets around, doesn't she?
 * Tron Bonne certainly counts. Aside from the fact that she created the 40 Servbots, most of the machines she makes are made from spare parts, such as an entire train and even Bruno in the first game. She was 13 in the first game (and her spinoff) and 14 in the second.
 * Jeff Andonuts and Apple Kid in Earthbound.
 * MOTHER 1 has Loid.
 * Genis Sage in Tales of Symphonia. Somehow he is the best friend of Book Dumb Lloyd Irving and is 12 years old. In the Japanese version his name was very obvious ("Genius").
 * Franziska von Karma from the Phoenix Wright games became a prosecutor at age 13 and went undefeated for five years.
 * Klavier Gavin too, although he's no longer in his teens by his first appearance.
 * Lucca from Chrono Trigger.
 * Evil loli Kira Daidouji from Arcana Heart is only 11 years old, but already has a PhD. in elemental science, and has since constructed her own sentient ball of slime that can do anything she wants it to. Don't ask.
 * Coco Bandicoot from Crash Bandicoot was a tech-genius well before her teenage years.
 * Rebecca Chambers from Resident Evil had graduated from college and joined up with the elite S.T.A.R.S. police force as a medic by the time she was eighteen, William Birkin became Umbrella Corp's top scientist at sixteen, and finally, Alexia Ashford took it a step beyond this trope by also becoming a top Umbrella scientist at age ten.
 * Dmitri and Reese of Backyard Sports are younger than teenagers, but they fit the trope.
 * Shinra from Final Fantasy X-2, though his age is not specified (as far as I know).
 * Sion Eltnam Atlasia from Melty Blood, talking about a beautiful young teenage girl who can quickly think, she has a mind processing skill equal to that of a supercomputer and can even predict your moves hours or even days before you move. Wow! A super teen genius.
 * Rita from Tales of Vesperia, occasionally to a ludicrous extent. Despite her age she's probably the most intelligent person in the world by a fair margin; her response to a request for a device that would break most known natural laws is essentially, "It'll take until breakfast at least."
 * Sachi, one of the heroines of Sharin no Kuni, is explicitly said to have an IQ of 140, is a prodigy-level painter, and something of a math wiz. She pales in comparison to the protagonist, Kenichi, who's in the final stages of what amounts to government sponsored Ubermensch training, which means he has a college level education already, as well as having a resume of accomplishments that'd be impressive for a person of any age. He can expound on complicated concepts at the drop of a hat and has to consciously tone himself down so as not to be an Insufferable Genius.
 * Brigid Tenenbaum's backstory in BioShock (series) has her going from young girl in a concentration camp to helping the scientists improve on their work.
 * Mad Scientist Mao from Disgaea 3. Despite being several centuries old, he's around fifteen by demon standards.
 * In Fallout 3, player character (a 19-year-old) can be this if you use XP right.
 * Quistis Trepe in Final Fantasy VIII is, like Franziska von Karma, an eighteen-year old whip-wielding female genius. She's the youngest instructor in Balamb Garden, having become a SeeD at the age of 15. She now lectures students her own age.

Web Comics

 * Tedd in El Goonish Shive is a Teen Genius overlapping with Mad Scientist. As time has passed, most of his wacky inventions have been retconned to no longer be his own, edging him out of this trope, but he's still the smartest member of the cast.
 * He's still managed to adapt the technology a lot and the Aliens who gave it to him in the first place couldn't even begin to fix it, so his genius title remains.
 * Molly & Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob are both child geniuses, able to perform technological wonders with minimal effort. Considering that they are artificial life forms less than a year old, they are in fact very young. Molly's personality is overtly and unapologetically childlike. Galatea's speech patterns are much more adult-sounding and pretentious, but her naivete still displays her extreme youth.
 * Ventura in Schlock Mercenary, a nineteen-year-old expert in robotics and AI growpramming. She also has a moment of Cute Bruiser-dom thanks to her company's standard-issue Powered Armor giving her Super Strength.
 * Felicia Whitewind is only sixteen years old, and already she has mastered six of eight Elemental Powers, and is going to become a mentor. Words cannot describe the sheer awesome that exists around her.
 * Just a year out of being a Child Prodigy, Kat Donlan of Gunnerkrigg Court is a thirteen year old Gadgeteer Genius who designed an anti-gravity device at the age of twelve... which she didn't even find that remarkable, instead getting annoyed when the practical purpose of the device was ignored at the school science fair for the anti-grav device itself.
 * Fernando in Drive is a subversion despite being the head engineer of his ship at 14. He didn't get the job because of an exceptional intellect, but because he's a member of the Royal Family. Only the Familia can service the ship's drive, and they're badly in need of more men.
 * Dubious Company's Future High Priestess Sal. She is in her late teens and is easily one of the smartest characters in the comic's universe.
 * Also, to a lesser extent, her bodyguard Leeroy. He branched into more physical training after realizing he Can't Catch Up.
 * Walter and Izor might have been in their youth.
 * Agatha Heterodyne of Girl Genius is a spark, who are basically super Mad Scientists. She is eighteen the first time the reader meets her.

Web Original

 * The most notable example from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is The Evil Mastermind, leader of Evil Mensa. He's only twelve years old. He is also the third smartest person on the planet, and has already put together his own Criminal Conspiracy that's about an inch away from controlling all crime in Manhattan.
 * A lot of the devisers and gadgeteers at Super-Hero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe.
 * A good number of the exemplar kids also qualify, due to that nifty "exemplar mental package;" Stopwatch (a Crazy Prepared Clock King type) comes to mind, as does Diamondback, who has been alluded to as having one of the highest IQ's in the freshman class, if not the whole school. Also Ayla, naturally; he's a teen financial genius, having been learning the ways of business and high finance roughly since he was able to talk.
 * Several in Homestuck, considering most of the cast are thirteen years old. Equius builds robots. Terezi is a skilled manipulator. Jade is a prophet pulling through several StableTimeLoops. And Dave manages to keep track of several said time loops in his head. (Granted, he does have help from Terezi.)
 * While the Alpha kids are about 16, they still count. Dirk is an accomplished roboticist who designed an AI that very nearly passes the Turing Test. Roxy is a hacker and possibly the only protaganist to come close to Nannasprite's knowledge about . Jake built  . Jane hasn't quite shown her credentials yet, but she is the heiress to a multi-global empire.

Western Animation

 * Maxine "Max" Gibson
 * Jeremie from Code Lyoko (though angst is more Ulrich's department). Aelita certainly also qualifies in this area (but she's older than she looks).
 * She's only chronologically older. Being a Sealed Good in a Can made her not age past 11-13, and she was in stasis for ten years, which pretty much makes one assume that she wasn't aging in any sense.
 * In Transformers Animated, Sari became one of these in Season Three.
 * Noah from Total Drama Island.
 * Cyborg from Teen Titans, most of his angst derived from his cybernetic limbs.
 * Actually all of the Teen Titans are teen geniuses in some way, but Robin, who angsts over everything, is a pretty straightforward example.
 * Johnny's twin older sisters, Mary and Susan, in Johnny Test.
 * Velma from Scooby Doo.
 * Cody and Starlee from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward.
 * Donatello himself. TEENAGE Mutant Ninja Turtles, remember?
 * Cosmo fromThe Magician
 * Alan and Tom Chan in The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan; Alan of the mechanical sort, Tom of the intellectual sort.
 * Heloise from Jimmy Two-Shoes, who works for a Mega Corp at 14ish
 * Moonrock from The Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm Show.
 * Valerie from Josie and the Pussy Cats comes with some intellectual chops.
 * Futurama's Cubert Farnsworth. Possibly Dwight Conrad also, as he/Cubert were smart enough to run their fathers out of business.
 * Iron Man: Armored Adventures is focused on Tony Stark's teenage life. In this incarnation, he's already developed Iron Man armors.
 * Dotty from Hanna-Barbera's Clue Club. A forensics expert at age 13.

Real Life

 * John Stuart Mill was raised by his economist father John Mill and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (each of whom was a genius in his own right) as an experiment for Bentham's ideas on education and to create the genius they needed to carry on their work in utilitarianism and ethics. J. S. Mill could read Greek by the age of three, and he was so well-versed in economics and political theory that he was editing and writing his father's textbooks by the age of eleven. He had a nervous breakdown by the age of twenty, but eventually recovered.
 * Scottish mathematician Colin Maclaurin was in the University of Glasgow by 11, and had his master's degree at 15.
 * George Hotz - aka, geohot - unlocked the iPhone during his summer vacation.
 * Growing up in the Caribbean, Alexander Hamilton was so brilliant that his employer trusted him to run his import-export business for months at a stretch. He was either 15 or 17 at the time, depending on whether or not he'd lied about his age to improve his employment prospects.
 * William James Sidis could read the New York Times at 18 months and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Harvard University, cum laude, at age 16.
 * Later popularly reported as suffering a "burnout", the evidence points to his just getting fed up with being put on public exhibition all the time. After his death a friend wrote that he "had one great cause -- the right of an individual in this country to follow his chosen way of life".
 * Kim Ung-Yong of Korea was said to have a Terman IQ of 210. He started out as a Child Prodigy. He was hired by NASA at age twelve and worked for them until he was eighteen, in a job he later called incredibly boring. Returning to Korea he now teaches civil engineering.
 * French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal started to manifest his talents when he was 9 years old, and grew to be an accomplished scientist by the age of 19.
 * Benjamin Franklin.
 * In the Philippines, there are high schools specifically designed for geniuses in science and technology. In Metro Manila, there's one in almost every city, but there's also the Philippine Science High School, which spans nationwide. And every high school graduates in the country enter college at 16, at least until the K-12 program is implemented nationwide.