Adults Dressed as Children

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Totally not The Three Stooges in disguise.

Fictional grownups have been known to disguise themselves as some pretty silly things. Bushes and trees, two-person horses that don't look anything remotely like horses, oh—and did I mention children? That's right. From time to time, TV adults like to try and fool everyone by masquerading as gigantic children. Oh, and occasionally teenagers as well.

In an attempt to blend in with their supposed age group, Totally Radical speech patterns will nearly always be employed and the character will always end up looking like an idiot. At least to us, the viewers, that is. The other characters might not see through this odd-looking, strangely out-of-date-sounding kid's "clever" disguise. However, they usually do.

Depending on the realism of the show, the adult (or even teen) in question will either:

  • Type A) Be dressed in an exaggerated, stereotypical version of what all today's hip young teens or kids are wearing.
  • Type B) Fall back on cartoonish old classics such as beanies with propellers, Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits, sailor suits, and giant lollipops.

A Sub-Trope of Age-Inappropriate Dress (just a deliberate form).

Compare Sexy Schoolwoman.

Compare/Contrast Totem Pole Trench.

Not to be confused with Dawson Casting (actors portraying teenagers, typically with some level of Suspension of Disbelief on the part of the audience).

Examples of Adults Dressed as Children include:

Dressed as Modern Children

Literature

  • Ephraim Kishon did this once in one of his stories (on Purim).
  • Justified in Peter Pan in Scarlet—the now grown-up Wendy, John and the Lost Boys try on their kid's clothes, because doing so will make them young again.


Live-Action TV

  • In the German comedy show Switch! Bernhard Hoecker and Petra Nadolny do this regularly.
  • The actress Shirley Henderson (born 1965) seems to specialize in this. Apart from her role in the Harry Potter films, she recently appeared in a TV production called 'May Contain Nuts' where she dressed as her 11-year old daughter in order to pass a test to get the girl into a good school.
    • The ironic thing is that her character in Potter films, Myrtle, is actually older than her- but is a ghost, and thus still looks young.
  • As part of the husband-and-wife comedy duo "The Krankies," Janette Tough made a career out of dressing up as a young boy to play "Wee Jimmy Krankie."


Western Animation

  • Mr. Burns masqueraded as a Springfield Elementary student in an attempt to convince Principal Skinner to spend the school budget on the nuclear power plant. His garb looked strangely similar to Jimbo's. Nobody was fooled.
    • Homer tried this in "Hungry Hungry Homer" when he sneaked into Bart's class to try to get Sherri (one of the twins) to go out with Bart to the dance. Neither Krabappel nor the kids in the class pierced his disguise.
  • Also in an episode of King of the Hill where Dale attempts to apply for a job as paperboy for the Arlen Bystander (God knows why). He even uses the Totally Radical "jizzob" in place of the boring old "job." No one is fooled and Bobby instantly recognizes him.
  • An episode of Recess had a government inspector masquerading as a kid, who was later found out when TJ overhears a buzzing noise in the school toilets and discovers him shaving.
  • In the Wacky Races episode "Scout Scatter", the Ant Hill Mob fooled the sheriff by disguising themselves as Boy Scouts.


Real Life

  • In the nineties, some riot grrrl bands invented a style called kinderwhore. Courtney Love is the greatest example.
  • Youthful-looking adults can sometimes use this to enter Theme Parks for the children's price. For example, a woman hiding the shape of her body under overalls and a baggy T-shirt. The trick, of course, is not only looking like a kid, but remembering to act like one...
  • One of China's "Twenty-Four Acts of Piety" was a 70-something old man pretending to dress and act like a toddler so that his 90-something parents wouldn't feel old.


Dressed as Old-Fashioned Children

Anime and Manga

  • In one oneshot manga by Junji Ito, this is the final panel. As is natural, considering its creator, it definitely isn't Played for Laughs.


Comic Books

Disguise type B, with children:

  • The sailor suit/lollipop disguise was also employed by Bob[1] Dalton from the Lucky Luke comic books, in a scenario involving robbing a bank with a revolver hidden in a piggy bank


Film

  • The Three Stooges short All the World's a Stooge. As part of a weird plot by a rich guy to get his wife to stop with her goofy philanthropic projects, the Stooges are adopted by the couple as refugee children. Moe and Curly get the sailor-suit treatment—and Larry is done up as a little girl with a big hair bow and pinafore.
  • In V for Vendetta Evee dresses as a child prostitute to fool the minister as part of V's plan. It was made to be quite Uncanny Valley.
  • Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor, in which Ginger Rogers disguises herself as a minor in order to get a reduced train fare. Then she meets the Major. Hilarity Ensues...
  • The sort-of remake You're Never Too Young has Jerry Lewis impersonating a child (with sailor suit) to elude mobster Raymond Burr and bother Dean Martin.


Live Action TV

  • Not exactly a disguise, but one episode of Gilligan's Island had the Skipper regress back to childhood under hypnosis and he saw the other castaways as his old childhood playmates, dressed in old fashioned kiddie costumes.
  • The Goodies did this when they were asked by the organizers of military style camp for children to find children for the camp. When they can't get any kids, they end up doing this.
    • Also, in The New Office, they wanted to get the estate agent's sympathy, so Graeme dressed as an old worker, with Tim as his wife and Bill, with footed pajamas and oversized teddy bear, as his child.
  • Night Court had Dan's boss, the district attorney, try this to fool a suicidal children's show hero. Bonus points in that the adult is a little person. It still fails, although the costume's used as a joke later in the show.
  • That Mitchell and Webb Look featured a sketch detailing the origins of the Ku Klux Klan's uniform. In it, a tailor offers them the choice of looking scary by dressing up as pointy-headed ghosts or as little girls, because; "What could be scarier than a massive little girl?"
  • The Monkees take turns disguised as 11-13 year-olds in "Monkee vs. Machine", ultimately to throw a Spanner in the Works and disrupt a toy company's product testing session.

Magazines

  • There was also an old Mad Magazine parody of The Lone Ranger from its early days as a comic book, where Tonto disguised himself using the classic sailor suit/lollipop combination.


Newspaper Comics

  • Tumbleweeds, a comical Western strip, featured outlaw Snake Eye and his little brother Snookie - ostensibly twelve, he looks like a malicious hulking grown man with stubble and a moustache, wearing the classic Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit.


Western Animation

  • There was a Ren and Stimpy comic where an escaped zoo gorilla tried (and failed miserably, as Ren ended up Hanging A Lampshade on the whole thing by pointing out that "kids don't wear beanies") to blend into society by dressing up as a little kid. The tell-tale propeller beanie was indeed involved in the gorilla's disguise (the rest, if I remember correctly was just shorts and a t-shirt, but it's the beanie that was the important part).
  • A sight gag in Futurama had an extreme closeup of the Professor's face as he says that luckily there are enough lifeboats on the Titanic (yes, it was a spoof of the movie) so no one would have to dress as women and children, with a Reveal Shot zooming out so we see that he's wearing a propeller beanie and holding a lollipop.
  • Perpetual loser Oskar Kokoshka of Hey Arnold!! used this sort of disguise, complete with a huge lollipop, in an attempt to infiltrate an audition for Yahoo Soda. It didn't work.
  • An episode of Batman the Animated Series called "The Laughing Fish" featured two of Joker's henchmen dressed as 1950s-era children (one with a beanie, one with Girlish Pigtails) for Joker's commercial for "Joker Fish" - and they did not enjoy it. Harley played their mom.
  • In a brief gag on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, a "little kid" (of the sailor suit variety to go with the show's nautical theme) asks to play a "bathroom game" with Flapjack. After Flapjack tells him, "You need to grow up," the "kid" then replies in a raspy voice, "Grow up? I'm 38 years old!" followed by a closeup of the middle aged man's face.
    • The whole plot of another episode revolved around K'nuckles and Flapjack switching places to see whose life was harder. Throughout the episode, everyone mistook K'nuckles in his Flapjack costume for the real Flapjack and vice versa.
  • Bugs Bunny's done this a few times. Sometimes all the way back, as it were.
  • An episode of Goof Troop has Goofy going to school with Max in order to spend more time with him. He dresses in the typical sailor suit and everybody except Max and P.J. were fooled.
  • A Hypocritical Humor example on The Simpsons had the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing "Give It Away" on Krusty the Clown's show in just their white underpants, leading Krusty to wonder "What could be more degrading?" - just before the camera pulls back to reveal him dressed in a sailor suit and curly blond wig and with a lollipop for the next sketch.


Real Life

  • Lolita Fashion is inspired by Victorian era children's clothing.
    • Children's clothing in that era looked like shortened versions of adults' clothing. I guess that you could say that, though.


Dressed as Modern Teenagers

Anime and Manga

  • In a rare example of adults not successfully "passing" as teenagers, the two homunculi from the Busou Renkin manga, Tai and Chi, attempt to pass themselves off as high-schoolers and fail miserably in their attempt. Not only are they obviously too old, but they end up looking completely ridiculous and deformed-looking (and one of them is trying to pass himself off as a girl, too).
  • In a less serious context, Weda (and Ashio) in Haré+ Guu definitely does not pass as "Wendy, 17 years old". Probably because everybody in the class immediately recognizes her as a mother of their classmate Haré.


Film

  • The whole premise of the movie Never Been Kissed, in which, amazingly everyone is fooled and believes that Drew Barrymore is in fact a teenager. Probably because the other teenagers were Dawson Cast as well.
  • Something very similar happens with the early Eva Longoria film Snitch'd, in which a man in his 30s goes back to high school, pretending to be a teenager. Again, everyone is fooled.
  • This is also done in the 1987 movie Hiding Out. A stockbroker is testifying against a mob boss who was into some insider trading. There are death threats, so until the trial the stockbroker shaves off his beard, gives himself highlights and goes to high school. Once again, everyone is fooled, including his own family members.


Live Action TV

  • Psych had an episode with one of these guys as the perp.
  • CSI: NY had a darker version of this. It turns out that a teenage high school student who was accused of raping a fellow student was really in his 30s and his "father" was his similarly aged accomplice. They both gang-raped said girl and murdered a teacher in whom she confided. Unfortunately for them, their victim was the daughter of a minor character...
  • In Strangers with Candy, a cop in his thirties tries to infiltrate the school drug trade, mostly by wearing a t-shirt and a backpack and badgering the students about weed. No one is taken in, although for some reason they never pass comment on the main character, a high school student in her forties who never even attempts to dress like a teenager.
  • Law and Order Special Victims Unit had a rather serious case, with a teenage girl who two boys literally fought to the death over... only it turned out she was in her late 20s, and had been passing as a high-schooler for years in an effort to reclaim the childhood she'd been denied. Then again, that meant she had to deal with a lot of statutory rape charges...
    • The original Law and Order had a similar case where a woman was changing her name and resetting her age to 16, bringing statutory rape charges to block her attempted murder charge. the Investigation eventually revealed she had done thing at least four times and was actually at least 29!
      • And both cases were inspired by the one of Treva Throneberry, mentioned in Real Life.
  • Appears in an episode of How I Met Your Mother when Lily and Robin attempt to infiltrate a high school prom in order to see a band perform. Despite Barney's advice on how to pass as "today's kids" (i.e. dress as sluttily as possible), they don't fool anyone.
  • In Only Fools and Horses, Rodney Trotter has to pretend to be 14 years old to enjoy a Spanish holiday in "The Unlucky Winner Is...".
  • 21 Jump Street, an 80's police drama, was about a group of young-looking narcotics officers assigned undercover in high school, led by none other than Johnny Depp. It was a vehicle for and one of the earliest examples of Dawson Casting.
  • In one episode of Friends Joey attempts to get an acting job playing a 19-year-old. He wears his underpants pulled high up over his jeans and a backwards cap, and tells Chandler, "Sup with the whack PlayStation SUP". Unsurprisingly, he does not fool anyone.


Web Comics


Western Animation

  • In the pilot episode of Clone High, Principal Scudworth and Mr. Butlertron try to sneak into JFK's party—dressed as completely outdated teenagers. Surprisingly, they fool no one.
  • The toad licking episode of Family Guy where Peter goes undercover in Meg's school as teenager Lando Griffin, and not only fools everyone but becomes the most popular kid in school.
    • And then later inverted in a different episode, when Stewie, the 1-year-old baby of the Griffin family, does pretty much the exact same thing as Peter.
  • In Rockin' with Judy Jetson, George got arrested for doing this while looking for Judy.
  • The magazine editor Val in Daria, though this was more because she ran her own magazine supposedly appealing to teens - and never stopped trying to act like one despite clearly being at least thirty. Most people weren't fooled, though they tended to suck up to her anyway.


Real Life

  • Truth in Television: At least two adults were convicted for fraud after being being caught after months of pretending to be high school students.
    • Charles Daugherty aka Storme Shannon Aerison. A black man (born intersexed and assigned the gender male) pretended to be a white teenage girl... and actually got a modeling job.
    • Treva Throneberry, who used several aliases through almost 10 years. Each time she made herself pass as a teenage girl who was sexually abused and ran away from home, then threw tantrums when people started to suspect, and then disappeared.
  • Either Internet predators or the FBI agents trying to catch them posing as teenagers.
  • A lot of you know that one parent who tries to keep up with their teenage kids, or just never changed their teenage wardrobe after growing up.
  • Sometimes cops or FBI agents will disguise themselves as teenagers to infiltrate a school so they can catch and charge teenagers who sell or use drugs.
  1. ↑ yes, not Joe - it was the first appearance of the Daltons, and at the end Lucky Luke killed them, so the Powers That Be had to bring in their cousins instead
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