Improbable Age/Playing With
Basic Trope: A character has an extraordinary talent or skill despite their (usually extremely young) age.
- Straight: A ten year old kid can fly a plane and best adults in combat.
- Exaggerated: A three year old kid can fly a plane, best adults in combat, and is an expert on literature from the Romantic period.
- Justified: A 30-year old surgeon is also an expert in other fields of medicine because of his extreme OCD-disorder that forces him to study day and night
- Inverted: The ten year old is actually much more unintelligent than he should be (cannot spell his own name/has the grammar of a four year old).
- Alternatively, an retired, 78-year-old man with no training in the military suddenly becomes a samurai Giant Mecha pilot when his grandkids are threatened.
- Subverted: The ten year old can fly a plane and best adults in combat because he's actually sharing his body with the spirit of a genius.
- Or he's older than he looks.
- Double Subverted: The ten year old can fly a plane and best adults in combat... but wait, he's Really Seven Hundred Years Old, some kind of mystical entity. Oops, wait, he's the latest incarnation of that entity, with only a few memories of what he is, I guess he really is a kid.
- Parodied: The infant sidekick is basically smarter than the entire adult cast and is more capable than them in combat as well.
- Deconstructed: The child's early ability and the fame it brings screw up his ability to interact with others and ruin his life, as he lacks the experience and maturity to bear the attendant burdens of talent.
- Reconstructed: The show is about a special institute for talented kids, but no break from reality is forced.
- Zig Zagged: The ten year old can fly a plane and best adults in combat... but wait, he's Really Seven Hundred Years Old, some kind of mystical entity. Oops, wait, he's the latest incarnation of that entity, with only a few memories of what he is, I guess he really is a kid. No, wait, he doesn't keep memories but he does keep knowledge and reflexes. Except it turns out that even when drugged to avoid this, he can still best them. Except among past skills was an immunity to the drug...
- Averted: The ten year old cannot do anything special and is just a normal kid.
- Enforced: "We need a pilot to get them to the Big Bad's fortress in episode thirteen, but we also need a character who can appeal to this age group...Let's make Kate's ten year old brother a genius so he can fly a plane! Yeah, that'll work..."
- Lampshaded: "Why is it that my little brother can drive this plane and we, the young adults, can't?"
- Invoked: "Someone must operate a computer. Give me a list of every person with less than 14 years we can call"
- Defied: Underaged are not allowed to go on mission or access restricted areas. So there is no way they can show their unprobable talents.
- Discussed: "God! I hate my brother! He's so useless!" "Too bad we aren't in one of those shows where the second grader can fly us to Paris in his plane made from scratch."
- Conversed: "This kid is ten and can drive a plane! My little brother's the exact same age and can't tell a plane from a helicopter!"
Aren't you a little young to be clicking the link back to Improbable Age?