"So let me recap: Amy is evidently a millionaire, dresses up in a fancy dinner dress, she's a globetrotter, high school drop out, ex-terrorist, highly ranked military official, ghost hunter, a potential gold medal winner in 3 different Olympics of at least 4 disciples each... and not one parent or child service agent in sight. Look at this list. Is there ONE part of Amy's character that makes you point and go, 'Yup! That's a 12-year-old girl alright!'?"
— Luke the Fox, Sonic Dissected Episode 6
A character whose age seems inappropriate with their occupation or position given the amount of experience they would need, whether or not their age is actually important within the storyline. Tends to lean to the younger side, resulting in the Teen Genius, Kid Hero. Sometimes, a disproportionate amount of the (especially female) cast is inexplicably under thirty. In benign cases, it's because the writers assume the audience better identifies with characters their own age.
In some cases, an age that is improbable at first glance may actually be Truth in Television. In ages past, life expectancy was shorter and people needed to be capable at a younger age; in fact, studies seem to indicate that adolescence is a modern creation. This has produced a very curious effect where the longer humans live, the longer the age gap of competence tends to widen. It also must be noted that many of the examples below occur in violent settings; people growing up in a warlike environment have no choice but to adapt and learn to survive, and the faster the better. It's a common problem in societies with inherited positions of authority, although usually some adult regent would be appointed until the heir comes of age.
Although in the past, competence, skills, and abilities were more necessary at a younger age (as opposed to the modern convention of serious training starting only at age 18 or so), this convention is often abused for fields where expertise is implausible without years of formal training at a more mature level — for example, a teen already being an expert in modern disciplines that require formal university education as well as graduate level education. There is only so much a kid could learn from his local library. This is often the result of casting actors in their twenties playing full professors when in reality most people are at least 25 when they first get a PhD.
More rarely this trope works at the opposite end of the scale with characters seemingly inexplicably old for their positions, often as a function of being played by a 'name' actor whose recognition or prestige factor outweighs other concerns. This can be especially obvious in fields that require extensive physical fitness; in real life relatively few frontline soldiers or beat cops will be of retirement age.
For characters whose age seems inappropriate given their maturity (rather than competence), see Wise Beyond Their Years. If the people running a society are improbably young, see Teenage Wasteland, though if only one is, it's A Child Shall Lead Them. If the character is of an appropriate age but the actor is too young, it's Underage Casting. Can be easily handwaved by making a character Older Than They Look, or even Really 700 Years Old. May lead to Child Soldiers. Contrast Competence Zone.
See also Underage Casting.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- This Internet ad for the anti-socialist book series The Tuttle Twins has a preteen boy (who goes by the name of "Vlad") reading the works of Karl Marx, which implies a very high reading level for someone so young.
Anime and Manga
- In Assassination Classroom, the students are surprised to discover that their teacher, Irina Jelavić, is only twenty, since she's already considered one of the world's best assassins with a specialty in seduction. In this case we actually do address the Fridge Logic of that, revealing the Dark and Troubled Past that led to this.
- Azumanga Daioh's Chiyo Mihama is a Child Prodigy who's smart enough to start her first year of high school at age ten, and graduates when she's 13 at the end of the series.
- Berserk takes place in a harsh medieval-esque world where one needs to be pretty sharp from an early age to survive until adulthood, but even considering that there are many youths who reach improbable positions.
- The Protagonist, Guts, is probably the most Egregious example because of how early he started as a mercenary. His adoptive father Gambino made him a Child Soldier by forcing him to accompany him into battle as his page and practice fencing with live blades at age six. Guts's first battle as a combatant was at age nine, in which he killed his first man, more by luck than anything else. By age eleven, however, he was a bona fide warrior, even managing to single-handedly kill a noble enemy commander, and since he was driven out of his former mercenary camp this was also the age when he effectively became responsible for himself. At 15 years old, he was showing signs of Charles Atlas Superpower, being far stronger and faster than any grown mercenary and managing to defeat the dreaded knight Bazuso, thereby catching the attention of the equally prodigious young mercenary captain Griffith. At the age of eighteen, just three years after Griffith roped him into the Band of the Hawk, he had attained the rank of Captain of the Hawk's Raiders division, effectively answering only to Griffith and having authority over at least a couple hundred men. He made his name as a One-Man Army in the Hundred Year War by single-handedly defeating a force of no fewer than one hundred Tudor mercenaries, and became a hero of the war by slaying the undefeated General Boscogn in the Battle of Doldrey. And those are just the things he did before he got branded as a demon sacrifice, and had to spend practically every minute of his life fighting against hungry spirits and gargantuan monsters. At the start of the Fantasia Arc, by which time he has fought enough battles to last a lifetime, he is still only 24 years old according to the official guide book. Eventually Guts' status as a warrior prodigy is Deconstructed with clear symptoms of Dented Iron from having gone through so much physical and mental torture by his early twenties, to the point where his entire body is Covered with Scars and burns and he looks a good ten to twenty years older than he actually is, especially since putting on the cursed Berserker Armor for the first time caused a patch of his hair to turn white.
- We don't learn as much of the early backstory and circumstances of the (eventual) antagonist, Griffith — but according to official sources he's the same age as Guts is, and around the time Guts was kicked out of his first mercenary group, Griffith was already a leader of the bandit gang that would grow to be the Band of the Hawk. Guts lampshades this when he first meets the band, noting that everyone there seems exceptionally young.
- In Black Butler, Ciel is the head of the Phantomhive noble family and Funtom company. It does help that his parents were killed, but he is pretty intelligent for someone who is only 12 years old. Though considering how fast he was forced to grow up and the literal Training from Hell he was forced into to gain those abilities, combined with the fact children were allowed to get away with more in the time period its set in, the things he can do are more justified.
- Black Lagoon:
- Deconstructed where 17-year-old Yakuza Princess Yukio Washimine becomes a mafia boss because the yakuza council will only recognize a blood relative as head of the clan. The first obstacle once she obtains the title? A war with war veteran Balalaika and her ex-special forces henchmen. The show goes into detail of showing just how strained both the newly minted boss and the mafiosi are about the whole arrangement, and the stress of having to take on all the responsibility. In the end, her clan disbanded and her second-in-command and only confidant killed by the war, Yukio commits suicide.
- The show also has extremely implausibly young professional assassins Hansel and Gretel. Even given the incredible amounts of Rule of Cool the two operate under (in order to ensure they're not killed two seconds after they're introduced), the show goes into detail showing just how incredibly messed up someone would have to be to have a career like that at that age.
- Bleach:
- Ichigo Kurosaki managed to become one of the strongest shinigami in the series at age 15 (whereas most of the other shinigami have been training for decades, if not centuries).
- Uryuu Ishida is the same age as Ichigo. At the age of 15, he fought Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi and displayed Quincy skills beyond anything Mayurinote had ever seen, to the extent that he kicked Mayuri's ass upon unleashing his ultimate ability. Although Mayuri lampshaded how improbable it was for a child to possess such high level Quincy ability, Uryuu's father has stated that Uryuu's power is still under-developed and immature; thus the power he used against Mayuri was not the true extent of his abilities. At the age of 17, he's revealed to possess abilities that the 1000-year-old Quincy King — who handily defeated Yamamoto — considers threatening enough to need surveillance.
- Toshiro Hitsugaya, a Child Prodigy who is the youngest captain in Soul Society history. He's approximately 12-13 in terms of biological age. His youth becomes a major weakness that Aizen can exploit but his talent is so great even a shinigami as experienced as Kyouraku believes Hitsugaya can surpass in him around a hundred years or so. Which is a fairly short amount of time by shinigami standards.
- Gin Ichimaru went through academy training at a very young age, and it only took him a year to complete a six-year programme. He became third seat almost immediately after graduating by easily killing the current third seat.
- Ryuuken Ishida is extremely young for his job as the Director of Karakura General Hospital. In a flashback set 20 years before the manga begins (and 5 years before his son is born), he's a high schooler (so under 18). That means he's no older than 40 even after the series' Time Skip. While he's been shown to be so intelligent he can keep up with Urahara, this is still ridiculously young for the level of responsibility involved. Japanese medical education assumes a minimum of 6 years student training, then 2 years of general clinical practice training, followed by 5-6 years of training in a speciality field. If he entered college at 18, he shouldn't have even become a fully qualified surgeon for at least 13 years, let alone become director of a major urban hospital in less than 20. What's more, Uryuu's elementary school flashbacks indicate Ryuuken may have been director for several years now, further straining the limits of probability.
- Yachiru is a vice-captain who appears to have a biological age of around 7 to 8 years old. She's immensely strong and fast and seems to have no trouble holding the position of second-in-command to the overpowered Captain Zaraki This is a subversion that is revealed only in the final stages of the manga. When Captain Zaraki first uses his sword's first-stage Shikai power in battle, Yachiru mysteriously disappears. Yachiru later returns inside Zaraki's inner world when he's in a fight that requires his second-stage Bankai power, revealing that she is the manifestation of his Bankai sword. The spirits of Shinigami swords usually only manifest in a Shinigami's inner world; it's rare for them to manifest in the physical world but not unheard of. Zaraki had no idea, but his sword spirit had been travelling by his side for decades.
- Bungo Stray Dogs gives us Dazai Osamu, a Port Mafia executive and candidate for the next boss in his late teens. Also from the Port Mafia is Q, who became a big enough threat that he had to be sealed away before he was even 10.
- Case Closed:
- In the Non-Serial Movie Detective Conan Film 06: The Phantom of Baker Street Hiroki Sawada is already a grad student at MIT at the age of... ten, written a commercial genomic genealogy tracker and then an AI system (to which he practically coded himself in). This is not to say, if the Backstory is read correctly, he finished what others would take 15-16 years of schooling in 2 years. Well, the side effect: not only he couldn't play with the other kids, he has to choose not being recognized at all or being kept in work all day... One won't be surprised about what's going on with that.
- The case of the major character Ai Haibara was a deconstruction... and then reconstructed. Her parent worked for the Black Organization and after their accidental death, she was also separated with her sister Akemi as the Organization sent him abroad for education more fit for a Child Prodigy, ending up heading her parent's lab at age of 18 at the latest which deprived her childhood, as she said, not to say that her position and her closeness to Akemi, who became a Red Shirt, provoked a series of events that ended up with her taking the poison she developed — and shrunk into a 6-year-old.. This is why she wasn't interested in taking the Antidote herself; she liked her life (i.e. re-enacting a normal childhood) as it is now.
- Code Geass loves this trope.
- The main protagonist, Lelouch Lamperouge/Lelouch vi Britannia poses as the mysterious Zero, head of The Black Knights, a rebellion that grows to become one of the most powerful factions in the world... at 17 (18 after the Time Skip). Later, he becomes the ruler of Britannia at that same age!.
- His opposite, Suzaku Kururugi, is the best pilot in the Britannian Empire. Also age 17/18. Compare this to other characters, who have to train for decades to become that good.
- Zero's right-hand and The Rival, Kallen Kozuki becomes possibly the best Knightmare pilot in the world. Also in her late teens. Beginning to notice a pattern here?
- Overall, The Black Knights' top brass is much younger than other real world military would be. The age ranges from their teens to their early thirties. Compare this in real life, where leaders are typically much older. Of course, this can be justified. After all, they're a rebellion faction formed by younger people and they can't afford to be picky about their members.
- In the end, the world of Code Geass becomes run by three teenage girls. Nunnally vi Britannia as the head of The Britannian Empire, Kaguya Sumeragi as the leader of Japan, and Empress Tianzi as the ruler of China. None of them are older than 15.
- Not quite so unbelievable in The Daughter of Twenty Faces as main character Chiko's physical accomplishments tend to be gymnastic, and tween-to-early-teen girls are noted for their flexibility and are a staple of the Olympics, and her powers of insight are not out of place for a smart, curious girl; that said, she still seems a little young to be dodging armed men, bluffing her way out of incredible danger and making off with artifacts of incalculable value. Much of the rest of the cast does comment on this, however, and part of her training is proving that she can be of value.
- Death Note:
- Light Yagami starts the series at 17, yet he manages to take on the best detective in the world (who himself is only 24), and even out-gambit him. This example is particularly striking because both characters can predict human behaviour near-perfectly — which takes experience that they're just not old enough to have yet.
- Later on, Mello and Near take on the investigation and also both out-gambit Light, who are both even younger than Light.
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, to show how much of a singular prodigy Muichiro is, the setting made sure to state he breezed through all ranks in the Demon Slayer Corps in just a few months after he enrolled, becoming a Hashira by the ripe age of 12 years old; none of Muichiro’s colleagues became a Hashira that young.
- The main characters of Digimon Data Squad are all stated to be between 15-18, and are all the SOLE FIELD OFFICERS (at least onscreen) in a "The Men in Black" style operation to prevent Digimon-related disasters in the real world. This would fall neatly into Competence Zone, until you start hearing more about the exploits of Touma/Thomas — at age fifteen, he's already graduated from university and is a fully trained doctor.
- Doraemon: Many times in the franchise, Nobita and his friends meet children around their age who hold high ranking jobs such as law enforcements, national football players and even king or president.
- Dragon Ball:
- Son Goku. Master martial artist, breaking rocks in one punch that are about the size of his head by his mid-late teens. Goes off on a wild adventure with the 16-year-old Bulma at the age of 12. And less than a year later, he took on and completely destroyed an entire terrorist organization that was feared world-wide! Then three years later he effectively destroys a Demon King that threatened to cause The End Of The World Aswe Know It, and then defeated his even more powerful son three years later! Somewhat justified in that he's a member of a Proud Warrior Race.
- Gohan, Goku's oldest son, reaches and surpasses his father's power level at no less than age five. And at age ten, he had effectively destroyed a being capable of destroying entire Solar Systems!
- Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Deconstructed. Just because an ordinary 10-year-old girl is chosen by a clingy Transformation Trinket to be Magical Girl Warrior does not mean she'll have the emotional strength and maturity to risk her life fighting corrupted copies of Heroic Spirits. On the other end of the spectrum, when there's a different 10-year-old girl thrust into the same situation who instead does her job with brutal efficiency, it's a sign that there's off about that child. The fact that children are being used does not go ignored in-story. As an added note, the strength of a Magical Girl is drawn from their potential as a Magus. This is a setting where being an untrained Magus can be very dangerous, both for the individual and for those around them. Illya has the genetic predisposition to be a talented Magus in addition to her sealed power as a lesser Grail, but lacks the training to control either. As a result, when the latter is awakened, she loses control and ends up nearly harming or possibly killing her allies.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Ed and Al are noted child prodigies and were able to perform human transmutation before they were ten. Ed is thus recruited as a teenager as a State Alchemist, a position that automatically confers the rank of Major in their military as well.
- Winry became an accomplished automail surgeon in her early teens at the latest.
- The Amestrian military as a whole has a ton of people who are improbably young. Some of the most blatant are Roy Mustang who is in his late 20s and is a Colonel, Hughes who was the same age was a Lt. Colonel, and Olivia Milla Armstrong who is in her late 30s is a Major General. It's justified by showing that killing a superior officer is a great way to get promoted in the Amestrian government. And as an alchemist, Mustang also started out as a Major, so he could have anywhere between 7-16 years to be promoted two ranks, without breaking canon. It probably helps that Mustang is something of an Ace, too. Plus, Mustang distinguished himself in the Ishbalan Rebellion, and so was likely promoted to Colonel for that. Given that Amestris has been in a constant state of war for over three hundred years, being a high-ranking officer at the age of 20-something is justified even without killing one's commanding officer. Constant war, after all, means a constant need to replace dead superiors, and thus anybody skilled enough to stay alive is likely to be promoted to very high ranks.
- In Future Diary the two main characters, and their friends, who are all 14 years old, often have to fight for their lives in a survival game in order to become God. Yuno in particular has the highest kill count in the series, and is seen as horrific by most fans, at least on some level. However most of the other characters are adults so this trope is Played With. The really odd one is Reisuke, a 5-year-old boy who is disturbingly well-versed in creative ways of killing people.
- Yuki is also seen driving a car frighteningly well enough to have a car chase scene after his Sanity Slippage starting point. The minimum age to drive in Japan is 18.
- Ghost Hunt:
- John is an ordained Catholic priest at the age of 19.
- Naru, who is head of a successful paranormal investigation company at the age of 17, comments on the improbability. However, in Naru's case, this was subverted, as it was revealed that Shibuya Psychic Research is only a code name for the Society for Psychical Research, and that his adopted father Martin Davis is the real head.
- In-Universe in Ghost in the Shell, when someone is reading Motoko's resume and realises it's a fabrication as there's no way she could have done all those things. It's also implied that Motoko is older than she looks because she's wearing a younger cyborg body.
- Gundam:
- Amuro Ray from Mobile Suit Gundam was an ace mecha pilot at the age of 16. This was a hold over from Super Robot series where the pilots of Humongous Mecha were sometimes teenagers. Somewhat justified in that, despite his age, he has as much time in the cockpit as anyone on his side, since he's literally the only one who ever took the original prototype of the weapon into combat.
- Kamille Bidan of Zeta Gundam is even crazier: he designed the eponymous hyper-advanced mobile suit he ends up piloting. It's handwaved that he's been an amateur mobile suit designer for years... but a Gundam?
- Usso Ewin of Victory Gundam was an expert mecha pilot at the age of 13. Handwaved by the fact that he grew up playing Mobile Suit simulators for an arcade. It's also Lampshaded repeatedly by almost everyone he meets: both his allies and enemies simply cannot believe the pilot of the Victory is a kid.
- There is, in the Universal Century timeline, exactly one Gundam protagonist over the age of twenty. Shiro Amada (24).
- Now also Hughes Courand (32) and Cherie Allison (24), from the oncoming Gundam 0081. Erik Blanke from the same show is a borderline case, as he's 20.Other older pilots would be Bork Cry(28) from Cross Dimensions:0079, Luce Kassel(30) from Space: To the End of a Flash and Travis Kirkland(39) from the Missing Link. There's also a number of older characters in the spinoffs like MS IGLOO..
- In Tomino's own novels, that arguably represent his vision of UC more authentically (read: without Executive Meddling), Amuro is 18, and a military cadet, sent to train with the first Federation Mobile Suits. He still falls into the cockpit, but at least he's officially sanctioned to do so.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing's OAV Endless Waltz is especially inexplicable, with Mariemaia Khushrenada leading a rebellion despite being 7 years old. (Granted, she was a figurehead for the most part, chosen entirely for her parentage, but the Man Behind the Man was seeing that she got some in-field experience, too. The age of her father Treize would seem to imply he became a father at 17.)
- The manga prequel, Episode Zero, goes wild with the trope. Treize was commanding soldiers way back then, one of whom was a 12-year-old Lucrezia Noin.
- The main series is also entirely guilty. Zech Marquise is a respected colonel within OZ and an master mobile suit pilot at the age of 19, and his equally skilled Love Interest Lucrezia Noin is in charge of OZ's elite pilot training academy at the same age. Treize Khushrenada is the leader of the entire organization at 24. Even the fact that they're all high-ranking nobility in an organization that places immense value on heredity isn't really enough to explain it away. The Gundam pilots, who were only 15 during were stealing mobile suits, fighting in skirmishes, and beating trained mercenaries around that same time; in this case, however, it's a bit more believable, as they are stated to have been trained as fighters since they were in nappies. Vaguely more palatable by the fact they have about as much experience in mobile suits as anyone else; the MS itself is supposedly only about 20 years old in Wing.
- Still, by the age of fifteen Wufei is already a widower.
- Most of these unusually young characters look about 5-10 years older than they actually are, so it's only when their ages are pointed out that it seems strange.
- Lampshaded in Episode 40 by Duke Dermail after Relena pulled her epic Reassignment Backfire making her essentially 'Queen of the Earth Sphere' both in title and in practice. At 15 years old.
Duke Dermail: Who would have thought [Relena] would be a top leader at her age...
- After War Gundam X justifies it by having literally 99% of the human race having died, so anyone who can prove they have the necessary skills will be put to work. Garrod is 15 and already an established mercenary and saboteur, and no one bats an eye at him becoming a combat pilot once it's clear he knows how to operate a Mobile Suit. Kid Sasamille is chief mechanic of the Freeden despite only being 11 (he is explicitly noted to be a child genius when it comes to engineering).
- In Jewelpet Sunshine, the Jewelpets and their human companions are in Sunshine Academy for their last year of high school. One of the Jewelpets who is a high school student in this academy is Labra, a toddler.
- Saki Amano in Kanamemo is the chief of a local newspaper office and commands absolute authority (to some extent) over the entire cast. She's in elementary school.
- The Time-Space Administration Bureau of Lyrical Nanoha doesn't seem to have any minimum age requirement to join its Armed Forces. Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate became Contract Mages at nine. Chrono was already an officer at fourteen (and while the Admiral who's his commanding officer is also his mother, no indication of nepotism is made). No one bats an eyelash at being ordered around by Vita, who despite being several centuries old, has the outward appearance of a 6-year-old child; Hayate notes in the first Sound Stage that she would be in first grade if she were going to school. Despite her apparent age, Vita considers herself an adult, even if she doesn't always act like one.
- Also notable are the character's appearances after a Time Skip between seasons. Chrono's vaguely-forties mother is the only normal character who doesn't appear older.
- Yuuno, who's approximately the same age as Nanoha, was the one who originally excavated the Jewel Seeds. Alone. He was also appointed chief librarian of the Infinite Library at age 15.
- Vivio, while still in third grade, holds the title of librarian at the Infinity Library. Otto lampshades this when Vivio suggests that she should address her as a normal third grader.
Otto: If I may say so, I do not believe there are any other normal third graders with the title librarian at the Infinite Library.
- According to Sound Stage M2, Fate became an Enforcer at age 12 (and she probably would have done so even sooner had it not been for Nanoha's Near-Death Experience).
- It also appears to be something of a sticking point for non-magical military personal; during a discussion between Hayate and an officer whom she outranks (and is probably in at least her thirties), who is herself aide to her father (a general in his mid fifties), the woman makes a slight snide reference to the idea of magical talent letting one shoot through the ranks.
- Possibly the most ridiculous example of all is Chrono, who became an Admiral by the age of twenty.
- Reinforce Zwei held the rank of Sergeant Major at the age of eight, though this can partially be excused by the fact that she was Born as an Adult (relatively speaking). There's actually a moment in StrikerS where Alto and Lucino start squeeing over how cute she is before they find out that she outranks them.
- Mahoromatic pulls a similar thing, where Suguru's teacher, a comedically-perverted teacher nearing Old Maid status, appears in a Distant Finale yet looks exactly the same.
- Make the Exorcist Fall in Love: At 16 years old, Father is a "Grand Priest" and is thus referred to as "Father" even though the canonical age for priesthood is 25 years old. He's constantly referred to as "Little Father", "Mr. Priest", or "Father-kun" in a cutesy way because of this.
- The titular Marine Boy seems to be a full agent for the Ocean Patrol even if he's barely pubescent.
- Played with in Martian Successor Nadesico when the 12-year-old science officer explains the "recent trend" in "young, attractive captains" to the 20-year-old Genius Ditz heroine using obvious expies of Anime spaceship captains.
- In the anime version of Megaman NT Warrior, Preteen Genius Enzan Ijuuin (Chaud, stateside) is the vice president of IPC, a major computer hardware company. He's also about 12 years old.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 also has a little bit of this in its first season, although it gets justified in-show; protagonist Setsuna F. Seiei begins the show at 16 years old but the very prologue to the show shows us that Soran Ibrahim, who Setsuna really is, was conscripted into a Child mujahideen as early as 10 years old, which is an all too common story in the real world and leaves Soran with very real emotional scars. Allelujah Haptism is similarly 19 but is an artificial supersoldier who escaped from his research laboratory under absolutely tragic circumstances. Soma Peires is in a similar situation to Allelujah. Feldt Grace is a Bridge Bunny at 14, with her justification (mostly only brought up in side material) being that as her deceased parents were part of the previous generation of Gundam Meisters, she has essentially grown up with Celestial Being.
- This also basically disappears by the season of the show; four years pass, this after the first season takes nearly a year, so by then just about the entire cast is at least in their early to mid 20s, which is still slightly young but not at all unheard of for a real-life combat pilot (with a now-huge majority of the cast being near, at or older than 30 years). The only prominent teens even left on-cast are Feldt (who's now 19) and 14-year-old Mileina Vashti, who's the daughter of the chief engineer of the Cool Ship and has ostensibly been around this stuff all her life and ardently wants to help out as a Bridge Bunny. All the characters had their appearances suitably altered to reflect their aging.
- Mobile Suit Gundam AGE looks set to continue the trend, with 14-year-old protagonist Flit Asuno having built the Gundam.
- And then he gets one-upped by Desil Galette, 7-year-old Humongous Mecha Ace Pilot. Helps that he has Psychic Powers, but even so...
- And the cute captain of the Diva in the third generation, Natora Einus.
- Kio Asuno of the third generation gets a similar excuse to Usso: he grew up playing Mobile Suit simulators, so at 13 he can pilot the Gundam very well. He also has his grandfather Flit, a highly skilled and experienced pilot, as a co-pilot.
- Umetaro Nozaki of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun became a published mangaka at 16, which enabled him to pay for his own apartment.
- Muhyo of Muhyo and Roji, officially the youngest executor ever in the MLS, doesn't look older than 10. Biko who's a skilled artificer, looks around the same age.
- In My-HiME, nobody except Mai finds it odd that Mashiro, the Fuka Academy director, is only 11 years old. Well, officially. Actually more than 300. And the avatar body is probably even older, if Childs indeed pass from carnival to carnival as implied. In the manga, she really is as young as she looks.
- Naruto:
- Pretty much everyone in Naruto is a superhuman fighter when they are just out of their teens. Most of the examples mentioned here were a Child Prodigy, but it's also a case of the Shinobi villages utilizing children to fight for them; it's suggested they were just that desperate for more soldiers that even children had to be recruited. Those who were particularly talented were for once at a disadvantage.
- Kakashi is noted to have become a Genin at age 5, a Chunin at age 6, Jonin at 12, and ANBU at 13.
- Itachi needs a mention here too. ANBU Captain at 13. The whole reason he did what he did was because he witnessed war at an incredibly young age, and was so put off by it that he was willing to kill his family to prevent it.
- Deidara joined Akatsuki, a group of S-ranked terrorists, at around 14.
- Most examples fall under the general rules of the series, but, apart from Kakashi, Naruto and Sasuke take the cake; At the age of 16, they are among the top 10 fighters in the entire series, and rising fast. (And speaking of fast, Naruto has gone from being held back by his average speed to the fastest man alive.)
- Hanabi deserves mention on account of apparently having made Genin by age 10 in peacetime, when most don't graduate the Academy until age 12.
- Gaara becomes the Kazekage of the Hidden Sand by the time he's 15.
- In addition to being a fully-trained mage (stronger than professionals in their 40s), Negi Springfield of Negima! Magister Negi Magi has been assigned to be the English teacher of a diverse group of 31 teenage girls. He was not quite ten when he was assigned to the latter post, but that's okay since he somehow also managed to master Japanese. In his class are martial arts masters, genius inventors, retired mercenaries and entrepreneurs, so perhaps it's to be expected that they'd get such an odd teacher. His father was also a celebrated war hero and considered the strongest man in the world by the age of fifteen.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- Neon Genesis Evangelion features the typical teenager mecha pilots, though the organizations combating the Angels are working on other plans that do not depend on child pilots, who they don't take very seriously and have serious doubts about, for good reason.
- Played straight with Ritsuko Akagi and Misato Katsuragi: respectively the Evangelion program's head of all things sciency and its field commander, despite both being in their twenties. Gendo may also apply, as he's only 48 despite being the head of the most powerful military organization on Earth. He must have carried out quite a scheme for that.
- In Rebuild, Asuka's a captain. This is plausible with the practice of making civilians officers when they have rare and important skills such as piloting Humongous Mecha.
- Maya from Occult Academy takes over as principal at her fathers school after his death despite being a 17-year-old high schooler herself.
- One Piece:
- Monkey D. Luffy and Roronoa Zoro are in an exclusive group of pirates (eleven members total) with bounties over 100,000,000. At the ages of seventeen and nineteen, respectively.
- As of the end of the Dressrosa arc, Luffy (19) and Zoro (21) have bounties of 500,000,000 and 320,000,000.
- Luffy completely blows everyone out of the water after the Whole Cake Island arc, which sees his bounty increase to 1,500,000,000, making it the fifth-highest active bounty in the world and high enough for the public to declare him "The Fifth Emperor", equal to the established Four Emperors, the four most powerful pirates of all the seas. All while at the tender age of nineteen. Note that Luffy's older brother Ace has a bounty of 550,000,000 at the age of twenty and is a division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates, which is impressive in its own right, but now only serves to highlight and enhance Luffy's own feats as a pirate.
- Nico Robin was forced to become a fugitive at the age of eight, and managed to survive multiple betrayals by the adults who took her in and successfully escaping the marines for twenty years. She is said to have destroyed six Marine battleships, but this is actually a lie. It was actually her friend Jaguar D. Saul who destroyed the ships, but blaming Robin gave the World Government a convenient excuse for her large bounty while concealing their much darker reasons from the public and sparing them the embarrassment of admitting that Vice Admiral Saul had turned traitor (since he was killed shortly after sinking those Marine ships, they could just pretend he never existed).
- Tony Tony Chopper is a fairly skilled doctor at the age of fifteen.
- The Straw Hat crew as a whole qualifies, given how renowned and powerful has come to be, with most of the members being teenagers or young adults, and the oldest members still being fairly young: Robin is 28/30, Franky is 34/36, and Brook died at age 38, which isn't terribly old.
- Rob Lucci single-handedly killed 500 soldiers who had been taken hostage and took the head of a pirate captain at the age of thirteen, becoming the youngest member of the elite assassin group CP9 in the process. The twenty-three-year-old Kaku has been in CP9 for at least five years, making him eighteen or younger at the time of his joining.
- Trafalgar Law joined the Donquixote pirates at the age of ten. Other recruits Baby 5 and Buffalo seemed to be even younger than him, and Dellinger was already in the crew as a toddler. Deconstructed, as it's revealed Doflamingo liked recruiting messed-up kids as it was easy to mold them and control them, and the Marines even decided that a major objective of a covert agent in the crew should be to try and get as many kids to not join as possible, but Law was the only success on that front.
- In addition, Law was in the same exclusive group of eleven as Zoro and Luffy at age twenty-four, and a Warlord of the Sea by twenty-six. The Zou arc implied he started his own crew when he was just sixteen.
- Koby went from a timid cabin boy on Alvida's ship, to a badass and renowned young Marine captain, despite only being 18 post-timeskip. It's lampshaded by Kyros when they meet, as he's surprised Koby is a young man instead of the older, seasoned veteran he was expecting.
- Monkey D. Luffy and Roronoa Zoro are in an exclusive group of pirates (eleven members total) with bounties over 100,000,000. At the ages of seventeen and nineteen, respectively.
- Parodied in the first episode of Osomatsu-san. In an attempt to reinvent the series for modern audiences, the Matsuno brothers reimagine themselves as Bishōnen School Idols. Choromatsu is a Teen Genius who is already a professor at Harvard despite being a high school student. He also wears glasses.
- Kyoya Ootori of Ouran High School Host Club buying out his father's company despite not even being out of high school.
- Rebecca Miyamoto of Pani Poni Dash!, who graduated from MIT at 11 and is now a high school teacher. She's like an exaggerated Distaff Counterpart of Negi without his magical abilities. Oh, and for some reasons, a group of eccentric aliens have taken to monitoring her, because the world kind of sort of depends on her for unstated reasons. The show's weird like that.
- Pokémon: The Series: Ash or possibly any other Trainer who starts his/her quest at age 10. This involves leaving their parents and families to travel across the world on foot, facing off against as-yet-untamed monsters with potentially deadly Elemental Powers, and camping without a tent in the woods like old pros. And Ash's mother sends him off cheerfully with nothing but a backpack full of gear and a reminder to keep his underwear washed. However, Pokémon Centers tend to be excellently run rest stops with practically all the comforts of a hotel, and free care for your Pokémon.
- The Darker and Edgier Light Novel Pocket Monsters: The Animation expands on this, explaining that A) 10 years old is considered the age of adulthood in the Pokémon world — with all of the legal implications that entails — and B) Ash's mom was a young mother who wanted her son out of her life as soon as possible so she could re-capture her youth. However, this isn't canon to the anime.
- The loose adaptation of the anime The Electric Tale of Pikachu mentions in the second chapter that Ash only has a short leave of absence from school while he goes on his journey as he laments how unproductive the first hours of his quest have been.
- Pokémon Adventures:
- White owns her own company despite probably only being around 14.
- In an earlier volume, Falkner is portrayed as a policeman despite most likely being under 18.
- The most egregious example is Blake (who is based on Nate), who is only 12 years old but is a high-ranking and extremely competent Interpol Special Agent.
- Every single player in The Prince of Tennis. They're supposedly in junior high (7th, 8th, 9th grade), although none of ninth graders look that way; one is often mistaken for a teacher. Not to mention how the 12-year-old main character can cream professional adult players without even breaking a sweat. But he can't beat his father, though.
- 2nd Lt. Alice L. Malvin from Pumpkin Scissors. Justified as she's a noble out of officer school (in the prologue). She's still in her teens in the series proper, but younger people have fought in World War I, which the series is a blatant fantasy analogue of.
- Ranma Saotome of Ranma ½ is a world-class martial artist capable of feats impossible for a mere 7th-dan black belt, and he's only 16 at the end of the series. (This is explained by his father Genma's slave-driver-esque training regimen and spending Ranma's early childhood Walking the Earth as part of the regimen.) He STARTED the series at 16 as well, so that was a busy year.
- Reborn! (2004):
- Tsuna, the main character, and several of his classmates and friends are recruited into The Mafia while they are still in middle school. Not to mention, Tsuna is expected become the Tenth boss...
- Add the Arcobaleno, seven (eight if you count Lal Mirch) infants who are considered to be the strongest fighters in the mafia world. Of course, you find out that they are in fact, Older Than They Look later on, but it's still amazing what they are capable of doing with their incredibly small physical bodies.
- There's also Squalo, who, after defeating the Sword Emperor Tyr, was supposed to take over the Varia, the most feared assassination squad in the Mafia at age 14. The Varia went to Xanxus who was only 2 years older.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena tends to be a bit of a shock when we hear Utena is only about 13 or 14 years old, with some other characters not much older, considering what they get up to...
- The Astronauts in Rocket Girls are justified as having been chosen because they are 16-year-old girls and much lighter than adults. Girls have already done most of their growing by age sixteen. You'd be much better off finding adult women with small bones.
- A Prequel Manga of Sakigake!! Otokojuku shows that Edajima is specially admitted in the Tokyo Imperial University at the age of eleven, and he passed the test in such a short time, complete with saying the test is far too easy.
- The sequel manga occasionally shows what has become of Otokojuku students some 18 years after their graduation. J is now Chief of Staff of the US Armed Forces, and thus a four-star general, in his early 30s.
- Ryuu from Snow White with the Red Hair is a fully accredited pharmacist at the age of twelve. He's noted to be a Child Prodigy and to be fully capable at his job but he has a lot of trouble dealing with patients even when they don't question or mistrust him and has trouble connecting with people even outside of his work in addition to not having had many of the usual child experiences due to his studies. When he's thirteen he decides he needs to work on these shortcomings after Kirito forces Ryuu to befriend him and a patient tells him he is surprised Ryuu's actually a pharmacist since he always lets others talk to patients for him if he can avoid it himself.
- It's something of a stretch for the audience to believe that the now 18 years old Christopher Thorndyke in Sonic X constructed a fully functioning portal that allowed him to transfer between worlds, gained his pilot's licence and became a black belt in Karate in six years between the end of one series and the beginning of the next. They're all possible, but accomplishing all of them in the same time span (when he was previously little more than an annoying 12-year-old) is somewhat more incredible.
- Most of the main cast in Soul Eater are 13 to 16 years old. It's pretty impressive for 13-year-old Maka to be so good at slicing through pre-Kishins that she nearly turned her partner into a Death Scythe at the start of the series, the strongest position a weapon can get to (And later on, she really does manage this.) and later (in the anime at least) takes out the world's most powerfully evil being, the Kishin, with a single punch to the face.
- With Spartoi demonstrating just how 'elite' these teenagers are, Kid's the only questionable example, in that he is not human and a 'fragment' of Lord Death.
- Shoutout to Justin Law, who did become a Death Scythe at age 13, the youngest in history. And he did it alone, without a partner. By the time we see him he's 17 and the coordinator of Western Europe.
- This also applies to Space Runaway Ideon to an even greater degree!
- And then we have Spriggan, where Yu Ominae appears to be starting high school: he's not only an elite super soldier, he's a hardened, proven veteran who's seen so much action thanks to being abducted by the US military and trained as a super soldier assassin.
- Tea Flatte is one too, due to her being immortal thanks to Merlin's magic.
- Pretty much everyone who starts out in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is less than 20 years old, with Simon and Yoko being around 14 and Kamina at most being 17. The other members are not much older, except for maybe Leeron. How a 14-year-old kid managed to defeat a millennium-old powerhouse of a man nearing the status of a deity, and then an entire race of beings much stronger than the original opponent seven years later, no one knows. Saving the universe at age 21 shouldn't naturally occur...
- There's also Yoko's shapely body. It should not be possible to be Ms. Fanservice to such an extent at 14 years of age...
- In Valvrave the Liberator, for Valvrave pilots, there is an Ordinary High-School Student, a former Idol Singer, a Casnova friend who lost the girl he truly loved, a Japanese Delinquent, and a Hikikomori.
- When New JIOR declares its independence, their government ramps it up as there are only two adult members and the rest are all high school students. Prime Minister? The daughter of the surrendered JIOR nation. Minister of Cultures and Sciences? An Otaku. Minister of Internal Affairs? A young, black-haired Anya Expy. Cheif Cabinet Secretary? The Student Council President. Minister of Foreign Affairs? A Lovable Alpha Bitch. Minister of Health and Welfare? One of the only two adults on the Module. Defense Minister? The same Ordinary Highschool Student. And it was formed partly thanks to a Child Soldier who recently defected with plans to overthrow the Dorssian regime.
- Border agents in World Trigger are almost entirely in their teens and early twenties regardless of rank. They are a military force, but as one centered on defense and diplomacy, Border is a comparatively safe one with few deaths, so it's a mystery where all these agents go once they hit their mid-twenties. It is suggested, though never explicitly mentioned, that Trion, the source of power for Border agents, no longer function after a certain age, meaning the handful of older adults handle administrative jobs, though it doesn't explain how so many of these agents have maturity and strategic intellect far beyond what's expected of their age.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Seto Kaiba is a 16-year-old inventor, pilot, and sole owner of a successful billion-dollar gaming empire (still a stretch even at his dub-raised age of 18); however, how he managed to attain this was a major plot point of the 'Virtual World' arc. Much like Ranma, the hellish schooling forced on him by his adoptive father may have something to do with it.
- Duke Devlin is also a 16-year-old inventor and the owner of a huge gaming store. Not quite on Kaiba's level, but still. Downplayed a fair bit in the manga, where the store is owned by his dad and the game he created is a fair bit lower-tech, but even then, he still seems to have mostly designed and created it by himself.
- Ishizu Ishtar is the Egyptian Minister of Archaeology (not that it's mentioned often). She's also 20 years old.
- Pegasus's motivation is that when his lover died of illness, he spent years traveling the world and looking for a purpose, when he made his way to Egypt and obtained the Millennium Eye and the secrets of the old Egyptian Shadow Games, from which he used to build a massive gaming corporation. He's clearly older than the other protagonists... and not by a whole lot. In the manga, it's said that his Lost Lenore died at age seventeen, and they were the same age, and that happened seven years ago — meaning Pegasus at the time of Duelist Kingdom is around 24. This also applies to Duel Monsters itself, the game Pegasus invented, since this timeline means it can't be more than 7 years old, either (and by all likelihood, it's probably a few years younger).
Comic Books
- Hunter Rose Of Grendel, who is depicted as near super-humanly gifted. World-class fencer in his early youth. Becomes a best selling novelist and socialite while at the same time the crime lord Grendel, and later the adoptive father of the daughter of one of his victims, all before the age of eighteen.
- This trope appears when DC writers change Harley Quinn from her original occupation as a psychologist and make her a psychiatrist. The latter job requires years of medical school. Despite this, Harley doesn't seem much older than her mid-20s. While it is possible to graduate by that age, it's difficult and that doesn't match Harley's character. Other writers have tried to explain this away by having her seduce her professors for good grades, but again that doesn't fly since a career in psychiatry requires rigorous demonstrations of mental and emotional maturity as well as raw intelligence.
- Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass is an 11-year-old badass with Charles Atlas Superpowers? If it wasn't so awesome it would have really stretched the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
- Derek Dynamo from Super Dinosaur fits this to a 'T'. No more than 13 yet he does battle with powerful Dino Men.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though it can justified that as Uplifted Animals (the mutation made them antropomorphic) they're not exactly human.
- Tintin can fly planes, drive tanks, operate weaponry, navigate harsh terrain, carve a working trumpet out of a tree branch with a pen-knife, build cars out of discarded spare parts, learn elephant language in a matter of weeks, etc.
- The Comedian in Alan Moore's Watchmen apparently joined the Minutemen at age 16, having already established a reputation as being particularly brutal and vicious while acting as a vigilante in the city's waterfront area. Clearly a precocious little scamp.
- Before Watchmen also applies this to Ozymandias, who was apparently already a successful businessman with his own corporate building before he hit 20. Since this one wasn't written by Moore, however, its canonicity is debatable; Watchmen proper only indicates that he was active as a superhero by 19, which is more plausible.
Fan Works
- Harry (and by extension, the rest of the student characters) in A Very Potter Musical claims to be "just a 12-year-old kid," despite the rather mature romantic subplots and advanced spellwork present in the musical. This is played for humor.
- In Time Gate X, a science fiction The Land Before Time fan fiction, one of the main characters, Tanner Colvin, is a military scientist who is 14 to 15 years old.
- In the legendary satirical fanfic A Trekkie's Tale, the heroine Mary Sue is fifteen and a half years old and a Starfleet lieutenant.
- Marissa Picard's title character has her beat. She was captain at age 9!
- A milder, lampshaded example. Bait and Switch's Captain Kanril Eleya is well aware that at 29 years old she's very young to be commanding a Galaxy-class starship. She puts it down at least in part to bloody wars and sickly seasons: as the fic is set in the Star Trek Online time period, Starfleet is having to replace a lot of combat losses and anyone who shows even slightly above-average promise is getting to skip a grade or two. It also helps that she's been in the military since she was seventeen, albeit originally as an enlisted crewman in the Bajoran Militia.
- The point of the Oreimo fanfic My Life Can't Lose Its Normality is to make the main character of the series, Kousaka Kyousuke, cooler than he is in canon. It goes about this by having him and several other characters be part of a team of vigilantes who are just as badass as most special operatives, if not more. They're in high school.
- In Boys Do Tankary, in the flashbacks, characters who are even younger than the teenage protagonists of Girls und Panzer are shown crewing and commanding tanks, this time in actual war, rather than tankery matches. In particular, Vincent joins the army at the age of six, and he and Gage become leaders of their own platoons at the age of seven. Disturbingly enough, the horrific implications of this are never explicitly commented on. In a less extreme example, Iris, "the Captain" is only eighteen.
- Defied in All-American Girl (Shinzakura). When a number of human soldiers are conducting an interrogation of armed terrorists, Princess Celestia transforms herself into a human female soldier to secretly participate in the interrogation. The other soldiers point out that her human form is a little too young for her chosen rank (Lieutenant Commander) and advise her to transmogrify her uniform into that of an Ensign.
- In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Alexis Lois "Lexi" Luthor graduated from Metropolis University at the age of five and earned a doctorate in nanoengineering at seven. She's surprised at how easy it was for her to get into U.A.'s Support course and declares that she could have easily finished it when she was three.
- In Unstable Equilibrium, Asami took over her deceased father's business at any only fifteen.
- In Sonic and Donna, Donna works at a waitress at thirteen.
Films — Animation
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire has the teenage Audrey as the ship's engineer. Milo even lampshades how someone of her age ended up on their expedition. Turns out she was that much of a Child Prodigy. Given that Rourke was recruiting people who would be expected to steal the Heart of Atlantis, it's likely he wanted someone young and easier to manipulate.
- Similar to Ginga Nagareboshi Gin's "puppy as pack leader" complex, Balto II: Wolf Quest, the first of the two Balto sequels, took this to the next level. Not only was Aleu leading an entire wolf pack when she was barely more than a year old, she was only a quarter wolf, and the rest was dog. Not to mention it's highly unlikely that some outsider can just show up and suddenly become Alpha (especially as 'Alphas' are just the parents of the pack). But of course the only justification for this is that cartoon animals are typically more civilized and accepting than the real thing.
- Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman: Dr. Roxanne "Rocky" Ballantine is this. According to the stats on the Batcomputer, she is 20 years old during the events of the film. She has a doctorate at an age where most people are only halfway towards getting their four-year degrees (for the record, most people don't get their doctorates until their mid-to-late twenties at the absolute youngest). The best explanation is that she was some kind of Child Prodigy who started college early, though it could also be an animation/translation error, since Kathy Duquesne's surname is misspelled on the same screen.
Films — Live-Action
- Annihilation (2018) Has the main character Lena (played by Natalie Portman) as a PhD teaching Microbiology in a university in her early to mid 30s. While this is not unreasonable (the average age of a PhD grad is 33 years old), she also spent about 6 years as a grunt in the Army before starting to go to school.
- Batman Forever: While Dr Chase Meridian's age isn't stated, she looks to be in her twenties (Nicole Kidman was 27 when she made the film). Considering it takes around ten to twelve years to become a clinical psychologist (especially taking into account Chase holds a doctorate), she comes off as implausibly young to have not only qualified as a psychologist but to be so established in her field the Gotham Police Department brought her in as a consultant.note
- Black Narcissus deconstructs this. Sister Clodagh is put in charge of the new convent. If she's the same age as her actress Deborah Kerr — she's twenty-five. Numerous other characters react with surprise that such a young nun is the Sister Superior, and Clodagh soon loses control of everything. Although it's more to do with the environment than her age, it's likely that an older and more responsible nun would have been able to keep things running.
- The Radio Rock DJs in The Boat That Rocked are on average rather older than most of their real-life Sixties counterparts. Bob in particular is pushing it, but even The Count and Gavin are at least ten years older than they should be.
- The Bourne Series:
- Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) is one of Jason Bourne's field handlers on an extremely sensitive mission and apparently has beyond Top Secret clearance given what she is involved in (monitoring all of the Treadstone field agents). In other words, significantly more dangerous to the Agency than Bourne is if she screws up, or if something was missed in her vetting and she is less than 100% loyal. When The Bourne Identity was filmed, Julia Stiles was a very young looking twenty-one. There's an attempted Hand Wave in The Bourne Supremacy when Nicky explains her cover was an exchange student studying in Paris.
- In Jason Bourne, unless Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) is older than she is, the audience is being forced to believe that a 27-year-old could have a high-ranking position in the CIA. Her demands at the end of the film to be put in an even higher ranked position highlight this.
- A criticism of A Bridge Too Far was that Ryan O'Neal, at thirty-five, was too young to be believable as an Army General. It's actually a case of Reality Is Unrealistic because his real-life counterpart, James Gavin, was the same age and was the youngest general commanding a division during World War II.
- The Dark Knight Trilogy
- Rachel Dawes (played by then-late twentysomethings Katie Holmes and Maggie Gyllenhaal) looks way too young for her prominent position as assistant district attorney of Gotham.
- 28-year-old Cillian Murphy plays Jonathan Crane, who holds a doctorate in psychopharmacology and is the chief administrator of Arkham Asylum.
- Darling Lili has a similar example. Bill Larrabee is an Ace Pilot in his prime, played by the mid-40s Rock Hudson.
- Flashdance: Many reviewers found it highly implausible that an 18-year-old girl would be allowed to work full-time as a welder. This was another thing pointed out by MAD!
- In The Ghost Writer, 56-year-old Pierce Brosnan plays a former prime minister. 41-year-old Olivia Williams, looking younger than that, plays his wife. We could assume that the character married a significantly younger woman, if it weren't specifically stated in the story that they went to college together. Neither is exactly an improbable age for the role, but they're definitely not believable as contemporaries. Tilda Swinton, seven years younger than Brosnan, was originally cast and would have been more believable as being within a few years of his age.
- Greta Garbo felt she was too old at twenty-seven to play a prima ballerina in Grand Hotel.
- Lampshaded in In the Loop. The British bureaucrats comment that American White House staffers all look way too young for their level of authority. One Brit comments, "It's like Bugsy Malone but with real guns." In another scene, Malcolm Tucker is horrified to realize that the government agent he'd been scheduled to meet barely looks out of his teens. He storms out, saying, "No offense, son, but you look like you should still be at school with your head down a fucking toilet."
- James Bond:
- The third James Bond, Roger Moore, fell into this trope, especially in the later films. It was somewhat disconcerting seeing him, at age 58 performing an Unnecessary Combat Roll here and there in A View to a Kill, which gave him the label "Geezer Bond" in an Esquire article.
- The World Is Not Enough has Denise Richards playing Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist leading a major project — at the ripe old age of 28. Not only is that barely old enough to have finished a PhD to begin with, let alone be made a project lead at a nucear facility, but Richards often looks and sounds even younger than that; in two concurrent films, Wild Things and Drop Dead Gorgeous, she'd convincingly played a teenager.
- In Casino Royale (2006), Eva Green was 26 when she played Vesper Lynd, a high-ranking British Treasury agent, with her gravestone in No Time to Die revealing that she was born in 1983, meaning that Vesper was 23 years old in Casino Royale.
- Last Action Hero, where most of the action occurs inside a fictional action-adventure movie, naturally lampshades this when Danny Madigan, a young boy who gets partnered with mature police officer Jack Slater, uses the fact that he is too young for this post to try persuading Slater that they are inside a movie.
- It's a running joke among fans that Jennifer Lawrence plays this up in every David O'Russell film she's in:
- Silver Linings Playbook — Tiffany has already been married for several years and been in and out of the mental hospital. Her book counterpart was in her thirties, and Bradley Cooper (at 37) plays her love interest. She was 21 at the time. The part was originally for Anne Hathaway, who was 28 at the time, making it slightly more believable.
- American Hustle has her as a depressed housewife with an 8-year-old son. Rosalyn's real life counterpart was in her 40s when the ABSCAM took place, while Jennifer was 23. She's implied to have been something of a trophy wife but it still raises eyebrows.
- Joy (2015) is loosely based on the life of Joy Mangano who didn't start inventing until she was 30 and spent about four years getting her designs sold. This time Jennifer was 25, making it rather surprising to see her as a divorcee with two children.
- The title character in The Librarian movies managed to earn 22 academic degrees (including 4 Ph.D.'s) by the age of 31. In the second film, he meets a female archaeologist about his age who holds 27 degrees.
- Henry Fonda was 49 during the filming of Mister Roberts which quite old for the character's rank Naval Lieutenant Junior Grade, even in wartime. As a note, Fonda's colleague and friend, James Stewart was considered old for pilot training in the actual war at the age of 33 and had to fight tooth and nail to be assigned combat duty.
- The Mummy (1999) has an 'improbably old' version. Capt. Winston Havelock is a retired Ace Pilot from the First World War. However the first film is set in 1926, less than a decade after that war ended and Capt. Winston is visibly over sixty (his actor Bernard Fox was seventy one at time of filming.) Even assuming he joined the Royal Flying Corps at the outbreak of war in 1914 he'd still have been deep into middle age during his combat career.
- Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Righteous Kill, which was by most accounts only noteworthy as it was the first movie since Heat to star both actors, and the only one to have them both in more than one scene together. They played Homicide detectives at age 65 and 68 respectively. Not a particularly egregious use of the trope, but it seems more likely that anyone pushing 70 in the NYPD would have at most a desk job and not be pursuing drug dealers and serial killers.
- RoboCop 2: Cain has a pubescent boy in his gang who is treated as an equal member of the crew. Once Cain is captured, the kid actually seizes control of the gang, becoming the biggest ganglord of the city.
- Spy Kids: Carla Gugino looks old enough to be the parent of two pre-teen children, but not old enough to have spent several years as one of the world's top spies before retiring to have them.
- Star Trek: Pavel Chekov, the chief navigator aboard the Federation's flagship is seventeen (his actor was 18). He's also apparently an expert in advanced theoretical physics. By the end of the film, Kirk is made Captain at twenty-five (his actor was 27). In comparison, his counterpart was the youngest captain in Starfleet at thirty-one. Quickly deconstructed in Star Trek Into Darkness: Kirk's arrogance and inexperience led to him making a series of bad calls, culminating in a serious Prime Directive violation for which Starfleet relieves him of command.
- Star Wars:
- The Phantom Menace: Word of God says Queen Amidala was 14 during the events of the film. In the sequel, she's a Galactic Senator at 24 and seems to pass down the trait to her daughter, who held the same position at 19. According to Darth Plagueis, the reason for her early success was because Palpatine and his master arranged the whole thing as they knew a young teen would be easier to manipulate (which makes her reign even more impressive as Naboo was an elective monarchy). Anakin and Luke would be examples if they they weren't The Chosen One and his son respectively.
- In Anakin's case, he was one of the youngest Jedi to ever receive the rank of Knight. This is justified, however, as the Jedi's numbers were rapidly diminishing due to the Clone Wars, causing them to promote Anakin earlier than they otherwise would have due to his great skill and status as The Chosen One. The fact that he wasn't emotionally ready to be severed from his mentor also likely played a part in his eventual corruption. Anakin's Teen Genius apprentice Ahsoka would've beaten his record had she not been pushed out of The Order by the Council.
- In Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin is mad about the Council refusing to promote him to the rank of Master, Obi-Wan points out that he's still by far the youngest Jedi to ever be on the Jedi Council in any way but this does little to assuage his Inferiority Superiority Complex.
- In The Force Awakens, General Hux is in his early 30s, but is among the most prominent leaders in The First Order. This is justified by the First Order being a military dictatorship where his father was a high-ranking Imperial officer, and it's strongly implied that he climbed to the top rather ruthlessly. Unlike many examples of it, General Hux does try to live up to the responsibility of the station. Plus the First Order needed lots of new blood after the Empire collapsed, as shown with Kylo Ren, who's around the same age as him.
- Realistically, Rick Flag would have to be in his 40s to be a Colonel, and given Harley Quinn was a psychiatrist and the Enchantress's host, June Moone, has a PhD, both would be in their 30s. In Suicide Squad (2016), Flag, Harley, and Moone are respectively played by (at the time of filming) 36-year-old Joel Kinnaman, 25-year-old Margot Robbie, and 23-year-old Cara Delevingne. Documents in the film show that Harley was born in 1990 and working with the Joker in 2009, meaning she was an active psychiatrist at only 18.
- In Superman Returns, 23-year-old Kate Bosworth plays Lois Lane, who already has a Pulitzer and over five years of tenure at the Daily Planet (Superman/Clark was away from Earth for five years, and when he first started working there, Lois was a veteran, so the number is certainly closer to ten years), in addition to a kid. In contrast, Margot Kidder was 30 when she first played Lois Lane.
Gamebooks
- In one of the Lone Wolf Newsletters, Joe Dever provided a list of Kai and Magnakai ranks and the average ages the Kai Lords reached them. A raw recruit entered at the age of 7, made Initiate (the rank Lone Wolf has at the beginning of his first adventure) at 16, and completed his training and became a Master at 28. The Grand Master, at the time the highest rank, was anywhere from 56 to 60. Of course, that was the old Order; Lone Wolf would radically shake things up, becoming an Initiate at 15, making Master before 18, and reaching Grand Master at the shockingly young age of 35 (even more shocking when you consider that due to his time in the Daziarn, physically he was just a lick over 23). And even that pales in comparison to his successor in the New Grand Master books, who reached the rank of Grand Master at 14. Although to be totally fair, those previous Grand Masters rose through the ranks by training under other Kai; Lone Wolf did it by finding magic gems invested with the lore of the higher Kai teachings shaped by the hand of Crystal Dragon Jesus.
Literature
- Over the course of the self-published German sci-fi adventure novel The Adventures of Stefón Rudel, the Author Avatar Stefan enrolls in the "Mars Centauri", picks up numerous military ranks both on Earth and in space, and falls in love with several girls - all while only six years old.
- Baccano!:
- Firo Prochainezo becomes an executive member of a Camorra organization at the age of eighteen. While this may not be as impressive as some of the examples above, it's enough for another character to immediately disbelieve it and then subsequently accuse him of sleeping his way up the ranks.
- Meanwhile, Firo's old friend Luck Gandor was acting as an executive of the Gandor family business at fifteen, if not younger. Luck didn't get the position because he was spectacularly gifted, but because he's the son of a Mafia boss and (along with his two older brothers) inherited the turf when his father died — and he's very aware of it. A good deal of his ruthless Magnificent Bastard persona is a front that he puts up in fear of not being taken seriously in his position (and thus targeted).
- In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Nathaniel is barely 14 when he is put in charge of the Internal Affairs division of the British government, and is held single-handedly responsible for matters of national security. He also buys himself a luxurious townhouse at the same age, and lives on his own.
- In the same series, Kitty is a part of the resistance against the magical government from the age of 13 onwards. At the same age, she appears as the plaintiff in a court case by herself, with her parents explicitly refusing to have anything to do with the case. By the age of 16, she's living on her own. The last one is justified in that commoners like her are encouraged to finish their (limited) schooling and join the workforce as soon as possible.
- By the end of the First World War, the title character of the Biggles stories is 19 years old, and a Major in the Royal Flying Corps. This is because he A) lied about his age to join up at age 16, B) was promoted from Second Lieutenant to Acting Captain mostly on the basis of having survived two and a half years of constant combat, and thereby become the kind of veteran you needed commanding the newbie pilots and C) was finally promoted into a training post (one day before the end of the war) because PTSD had left him alcoholic and possibly suicidal, and his commanding officer needed an excuse to send him back to Britain.
- The short story Built Down Logically by Howard Schoenfeld opens with a lecture being delivered to an auditorium of students — by a genius Ph.D. of the ripe old age of two. When two students sitting at the back discuss the unlikelihood of this and decide the infant lecturer can't possibly be real, he promptly disappears in a Puff of Logic.
- Niko Leandros may be Wise Beyond His Years, he may have raised himself to take many levels in badass, with little or no help/schooling whatsoever in his childhood, but it's incredibly implausible to believe that as a 4-year-old, he was capable of taking care of a newborn baby.
- In the Irish epic The Cattle Raid of Cooley, Cú Chulainn is a magnificent warrior trained in superhuman feats and able to overcome each and every one of Connaught's champion warriors, at about 16-17 years. One opponent calls him out on it, refusing to fight a beardless child. Cu Chulainn runs off to find a goat, trim some of its hair, and make a fake beard for himself to challenge the warrior again.
- A Certain Magical Index has quite a bit of this, much of which is justified in one way or another.
- On the science side, every single esper is under the age of twenty. It is strongly implied that the power development program (at least in its most recent, most effective form) is only about a decade old, so it makes perfect sense that there are no adult espers. The fact that most of the non-esper Badass Normals on the science side are also teenagers is less justified, but there also only a handful of them, so it's not something to worry about too much.
- On the magic side, it appears that the leader of every single magic cabal, cult, and secret organization is a 12-year-old loli, but it's implied that most of them are significantly older, and just using magic to decrease their age. There are ones who are genuinely young, though; Stiyl Magnus is a veteran fire mage at age 14, and Tsuchimikado was Necessarius' feng shui master at the ripe old age of 15. Kanzaki is the magical equivalent of a nuke at age 16, but then she's a Saint, and was born with her power.
- The Chronicles of Narnia:
- At the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the four Pevensies become kings and queens of Narnia. Peter is the High King as the oldest, but he's still just a teenager. And they're preferable to the evil 100-year-old sorceress who ruled Narnia before them. Lucy likewise is Wise Beyond Her Years and she's only eight.
- Aslan seems determined to call quite young children for missions that will save Narnia, although he does at least ensure that older and wiser characters like Trumpkin, Puddleglum, King Tirian and the Dawn Treader crew help them. He appears to summon them so they can learn lessons in Narnia they'll need in adulthood later in life.
- In Prince Caspian's titular prince also ascends the throne at an extremely young age. He's just said to be the same age as Peter, who is still a teenager at this point. The BBC adaptation made him even younger (the actor, Jean Marc Perret, was 14), but the film version aged him up to be vaguely late teens or twenty-something (Ben Barnes was 26).
- In Landish's Club X series, Lynn — a woman in her thirties — runs a highly successful business catering to the wealthy, can effortlessly intimidate mafia goons, and gives invariably correct advice to the protagonists in her spare time. None of them understand how she does it.
- Jules Verne lesser-known novel Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen, which is rather self-explanatory.
- Discworld's Tiffany Aching, who defeats the Queen of The Fair Folk and stares down Granny Weatherwax, at the age of nine.
- Divergent has Four and Eric in prominent positions within Dauntless at the age of eighteen. Four is said to be something of a Child Prodigy but was in fact offered an even bigger position and turned it down. His prequel POV novella shows that Eric got his position in exchange for being a spy for Jeanine. By Allegiant, some characters expect Tris to assume control of Dauntless when she's only sixteen. The film adaptations seem to combat this by having Four and Eric played by actors in their mid-twenties, making it a little more plausible.
- In Duumvirate, genetically engineered Northberg children become Illuminati at eight. Taking advantage of their inexperience is generally a bad idea.
- Laurence E. Dahners Ell Donsaii — Ell herself. Many people initially think that NO WAY this young girl can be CEO of D 5 R. Until they told it's Ell herself. It's worse if if it's Ell video-calling person who didn't knew her before. Her son Zage. Nobody, except parents and Ell's security team knew WHO Gordito actually is. Everybody thinks Gordito is either really good biomedical scientist or nickname of team. He is. He is also 6 y/o at time of book 14.
- In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game:
- Ender Wiggin's older brother Peter basically becomes President of Earth at age 13, due to his online debating skills. In the subsequent Ender's Shadow series, Card puts his age nearing his twenties. Peter is only elected due to multiple countries seeing him as the least amount of threat to their sovereignty, and the decentralization of the power of the office. He also defuses a war and calls several countries out with controversial information on their activities.
- There's also Ender and every kid at the Battle School. Ender destroys an entire alien race by the age of 9 or so, and then shortly after, he writes a book and starts a new religion. Not bad for someone who hasn't hit puberty yet. This trope is also basically the whole point of the Battle School.
- Valentine Wiggin is also instrumental in Peter's rise as Hegemon, and at the age of around 11, she becomes a powerful demagogue who directly influences current events and shortly after, becomes a very influential historian.
- Qing Jao in Xenocide, who is the sole person to discover Jane's existence, and she's only around 18 or so, with Wang Mu, her even younger assistant, who's just as brilliant, if not more so (those two are justified in that they're genetically modified to be super intelligent, though).
- Bean is also a genius and in Ender's Shadow is revealed to be a facilitator of many of the events in the previous books.
- Full Metal Panic!:
- Sousuke Sagara is 16 at the beginning of the series, but he's already a fearsomely skilled sergeant in a paramilitary organization, although this is explained by a history as a Child Soldier in Afghanistan; its also a way to logically hang around the schoolgirl-aged Chidori. The series milks a lot of both comedy and drama from the fact that Sousuke has no skills whatsoever beyond what is necessary to survive in a warzone, and is completely out of his depth in any non-combat situation. The series also pulls no punches in showing exactly what kind of childhood makes someone a fully trained bodyguard and mech pilot at age 16.
- His commander, Teletha "Tessa" Testarossa, is about the same age and has her position almost solely by virtue of the bizarre racial memory gift possessed by those called The Whispered, which meant that she designed the submarine.
- Sousuke's colleague Kurz Weber also qualifies, though not to quite the same extreme as Sousuke and Tessa; he's only nineteen at the start of the series and the Light Novels eventually reveal that he began training as a sniper at the age of about fifteen.
- In Hugh Laurie's novel The Gun Seller, the narrator (presumably sarcastically) describes his lawyer as a 9-year-old. There's also a 12-year-old banking exec.
- Haganai has Maria and Kate, who are both teachers and nuns at the age of 10 and 15 respectively. Maria not officially, though she's capable of the teacher part — but the characters have been expected to buy her in both roles for seven books before they find this out.
- Harry Potter:
- This is the premise of Harry Potter; he's famous because he survived the killing curse, which is supposed to be impossible, when he was a baby, in the process defeating Voldemort. The only other person to stand up to Voldemort so successfully is the very old Albus Dumbledore who is regarded as the greatest wizard living.
- Harry's parents, Lily and James Potter, were canonically only 21 when they died. It's not impossible, but it is a little strange — by that age, they'd been married, had a kid, were core members of the Order of the Phoenix actively fighting against Voldemort, and had amassed a large fortune (Word of God is they inherited it from James' parents, but this isn't clear in the books) despite barely being out of the equivalent of high school. It also raises questions about Harry's grandparents. Presumably they're all dead, but going by their kids' ages they were probably no older than sixty and could have easily been in their forties when their children died, which is pretty young for them all to have died naturally even without factoring in James' parents extended lifespan and magical healthcare. In the films, they are played by actors who are obviously middle-aged, despite their graves in the seventh film giving their canon ages. Rowling herself has admitted she probably should have made them older.
- Subverted when Tom Riddle asked to become a teacher as soon as his education was over. As he was only eighteen, he was turned down.
- According to Word of God, Harry and Ron become Aurors later in life without finishing school — since their reputations help them rise through the ranks. Hermione however does go back to school, finishes her exams and doesn't become Minister for Magic in The Cursed Child until she's in her forties.
- Lampshaded in the third book, where Hermione is given charge of a time travel device at only thirteen. She says that Professor McGonagall had to write plenty of letters to vouch for Hermione's character, letting the Ministry of Magic know that she was a model student who would use the device sensibly.
- Key To Conflict: Gillian Key, an American, is a psychologist, Marine officer veteran and experienced vampire hunter at age twenty-five. This is basically impossible in the US Marine Corps, and probably explains why she could not deal with the stress of a vampire ambush.
- Kindling Ashes: Giselle is a teenager and yet she is the leader of the Firesouls because she is host to the Alpha Dragon. He's the one they're truly following with Giselle as his interperter of sorts. For the same reason, she becomes the Alpha Flier.
- Legacy of the Dragokin: Lydia is 15 years old and the sole general of the Baalarian army. This does not go unaddressed; she has critics accussing her of nepotism because her grandfather's The Emperor and she does her best to act like an adult so her subordinates will take her seriously.
- In Galactic Patrol, Kinnison is given command of the superbattleship Britannia as his first assignment out of the academy. Kinnison notes that it normally takes ten years of proven accomplishment to rate command of a first-class vessel, and that he is only getting this command because Britannia is a new and dangerously experimental design.
- The Seguleh named Senu from the Malazan Book of the Fallen is all of 14 years old and an Eleventh Level Initiate in the Seguleh hierarchy, which is based on fighting prowess and where the first one thousand or so ranks can only be taken up by one person each. Not too young to join of a punitive army against a cannibalistic empire, apparently.
- Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest uses it in universe: Prince Rupert's extreme youth for his military accomplishments is commented on by his captor.
- Nathaniel from Mindblind graduated high school at eleven and college at fourteen.
- Used in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell's The Mote in God's Eye. The way FTL jumps work affects the nerves of the crew, with older crew taking much longer to recover. So the military is organized such that most ship commanders tend to be mid to late twenties to trade off the youthful ability to function versus the experience issues.
- At the end of The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Reveal takes place that Constance is 3 years old, or rather, that she is becoming it at the end of the book. To be fair, she is much weaker than any of the other characters, but still.
- Virtually every book Tamora Pierce has ever written, though it's most highlighted in The Circle Opens, where each of the four protagonists is a fully qualified mage at the age of 14, much to the dismay of 18-year-old trainees who won't get their credentials for another couple of years. The Tortall Universe has this in general. It's justified due to the medieval setting when the age of adulthood was younger, so it's quite common to see a 16-year-old cop.
- The Saga of Tanya the Evil has the titular character 2nd Lt. Tanya Degurechaff, an extremely powerful Military Mage, ruthless Magnificent Bastard, and all aroundOne Girl Army who volunteered and later graduated from the imperial officer academy and started to make a name for herself as a gifted and fierce soldier at around the age of 10 years old. By the time the series begins, about a year later, Tanya has already earned herself the nickname The Devil of The Rhine, is rapidly moving up the ranks to Lt. Colonel, and is in command of her own personnel elite battalion of mages who's first mission ended with them pretty much defeating an entire country, has severely demoralized another enemy country in their next two missions, and her ideas and philosophies about war are starting to influence the policy of The Empire itself. All at around the age of 10 years old. Though this is somewhat justified, by her being the reincarnation of a Japanese Salaryman who was born with all her prior memories and knowledge intact.
- Slayers has the four main protagonists. Lina in particular is possibly the only sorceress in the world able to manifest the power of the world's Guardian of the Multiverse, the one being above God and Satanic figures Ciefeed and Shabranigdo respectively, the Lord of Nightmares, and utilize it effectively. Her magical level is also noted to be much higher than average. At the start of the series, she's a tender fifteen.
- Zelgadis the chimera sticks out even more, depending on the adaptation. He's a hyper-intelligent chimera, able to strategize like a general, utilize effective swordplay and magic, and use a nautical sextant with ease. Throw in the ability to play the guitar in the anime, and you have an ace of a sorcerer at nineteen (or sixteen, in the anime).
- Princess Amelia is a well-rounded priestess and an effective healer, not as powerful as Lina, but being a 14- (anime)/15-(novels)-year-old diplomat is nothing to sneeze at.
- Gourry is a phenomenal swordsman, but is twenty-two at the start of the series, and Word of God stated that he was a mercenary/soldier since seventeen. Depending on where you live, that's actually not uncommon in Real Life, so he averts this trope to a degree.
- Deconstructed in A Song of Ice and Fire. Assuming adult responsibilities at a young age is one of the many, many reasons why the entire cast is Royally Screwed Up.
- Robb Stark, who declares himself king of a breakaway country at the age of 16. Although he does well militarily, he has a tendency to misplace his trust and recklessly breaks an oath without considering the political implications. This ends up costing him his life.
- Daenerys Targaryen manages to become queen regnant of the nomadic Dothraki ("The Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea"), liberator of the slave cities of Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen ("Breaker of Shackles"), queen consort of one of them ("Queen of Meereen"), a Dragonrider ("Mother of Dragons"), aspiring ruler of the Seven Kingdoms ("Queen of Andals and the First Men", "Protector of the Realm" etc. etc.), and a potential messianic figure ("The Prince That Was Promised") all before she turns 17. She is an idealist, but her young age and inexperience have hindered her progress, especially since she is headstrong and refuses to negotiate on issues that, pragmatically, are best to be handled with a compromise.
- Jon Snow is elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at 17 years old.
- In general a lot of ages in the series are slightly off when considering their characterization; Ned acts so much like a wise and stoic older man it's a shock to some that he's only 35. King Aerys looked and acted like a senile old man yet was just 39 when he died. Stannis was apparently a dour and dutiful man aged 19.
- Space Voyages: The basic premise of the series is that three Teen Geniuses are sent on a space mission by themselves. Needless to say things don't quite go according to plan.
- The Stormlight Archive:
- In the backstory, Kaladin was the youngest squadleader in Amaram's army at 20 years old. In the second book, he becomes the first darkeyed captain ever at just twenty-one.
- Also in Words of Radiance, it is revealed that Shallan became a full-fledged Knight Radiant when she was eleven, to the point that she was able to summon her Shardblade when her mother tried to kill her.
- In The Story of Saiunkoku, To Eigetsu not only becomes the youngest person ever to pass the Imperial Examinations and qualify for court office at the age of thirteen, he earns the highest score and is almost immediately appointed co-Governor of an entire province (alongside 17-year-old Kou Shuurei). Similarly, by the time he was taken in by the Kou family at the age of fourteen, Seiran had already spent a year infiltrating and destroying a band of criminal mercenaries.
- In Fiona Patton's Tales of the Branion Realm medieval fantasy series, the oldest protagonist out of four books is twenty-four. Children commonly go to war, and in one book two boys, ages eleven and twelve, end a siege by poisoning the defenders. Another is leading sieges at sixteen (justified by his being Crown Prince and over the age of majority in this universe).
- Temeraire: Hammond becomes Britain's chief ambassador to China in his 20s through a combination of self-avowed Insufferable Genius, single-minded dedication to his work, and the good luck of getting caught up in the protagonist's wake during a major diplomatic crisis.
- In The Traitor Son Cycle, the Red Knight is 20 years old and has been leading his mercenary company for the last four years. While this is a world where 13-year-old kids fight, it's still a pretty early start, considering that at the age of sixteen, Michael is still Red Knight's squire.
- Justified in the short story by Harry Harrison, War With The Robots. The command staff are all teenagers as anyone older lacks the reflexes and flexibility of mind needed to plot strategy in the fast-paced war. They retire after four or five years.
- Robert Jordan loved this and used it constantly in The Wheel of Time, the main character Rand al'Thor becomes the leader of several countries by his early 20s, Mat Cauthon is hailed as one of the greatest military leaders of all time, and Perrin Aybara leads his people in ridding his town of Trollocs and Whitecloaks, and has also become a great military leader, both being born weeks only weeks after Rand. Egwene al'Vere is about 20 and is leading three hundred Aes Sedai in revolt of the White Tower, and has essentially conquered the White Tower, something not even legendary general Artur Hawkwing accomplished, by the time you meet Tuon, the 20-year-old heir of the Seanchan Empire and Magnificent Bastard you're not the least bit shocked.
Live-Action TV
- The 4400: In "The Wrath of Graham", the 30-year-old Meghan Doyle is placed in command of the Seattle branch of NTAC.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Fitz and Simmons are both in their 20s with multiple PhDs. They allude to needing a PhD to get into the Science branch at the Academy (which they entered as teenagers); and in later seasons Simmons refers to herself when a new cadet as (paraphrased) "a 17-year-old girl with two PhDs and no direction in life", meaning she didn't pick up her second PhD at the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy as was originally implied.
- Angel: Has an example, though one that people will only notice in a Fridge Logic type of way. The gang rescued Fred from Pylea where she had supposedly been stuck there for five years. She was a pretty girl in her mid-20s. Yet she was also said to be a very accomplished grad student before being sent there. At the age she was sent there, she could've been only a college junior at best.
- Arrow has Felicity Smoak, who holds a graduate degree in computer sciences and cybersecurity, and was a part-time hacker, at 23 years old. And this is in-universe; her actress, Emily Bett Rickards, was barely 21 when she first appeared in the show.
- Austin & Ally: Ally, whose dad runs a music store, is president of the mall merchants' association at age 15/16. Granted, this essentially means she acts as moderator at their meetings, could happen if nobody else wanted the job, and involves no pay but would look great on a college application.
- Band of Brothers:
- The series subtly tweaks this, presumably to avoid Reality Is Unrealistic. Many of the early-twenties soldiers who became officers were played by actors in their thirties. Men that young did actually rise through the ranks.
- Lampshaded with Lt Jones — an incredibly young graduate who goes straight from West Point to war-torn Germany. He's in command of men who are visibly older than him (and annoyed at taking orders from someone so young).
- The Big Bang Theory: Teen Genius Sheldon started college at the age of eleven and received a Ph.D within five years. He also became a researcher at Caltech before he was 25.
- Bones:
- Many characters have this problem. Most of the scientists are in their mid-thirties and yet have been at the Jeffersonian for at least four years, have more than two degrees, and a high amount of volunteer work in other countries. One character has several psychology degrees, was a Rhodes Scholar, is an experienced FBI profiler and has time for video games. He's 23. It is a bit unrealistic, even for geniuses.
- Ironically, Brennan's level of education appears to be a toned down version of what Kathy Reichs had done by that age.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- All potential slayers are between the ages of about 15 and 18 when, or if, they are activated. A line from Kennedy says something to the extent of "the younger, the better".
- Willow becomes the most powerful witch in the Western hemisphere at the age of 21 (after learning magic was real at 16), and in the Season 8 comics Buffy is one of the leaders of the Slayer Organization at 23, Xander, who is mission control is also 23, and Dawn (who's now in a relationship with him) is 18. These people could take over the world if they wanted to.
- Cagney & Lacey: Sidney Clute, who played the supporting role of Detective La Guardia, was 66 (and looked it) when C&L began. He played the role for three years, until his death at age 69. At the time the show was filmed, NYC police personnel qualified for a very generous full pension and health insurance benefits after 20 years of service — meaning most NYC cops retired before they turned 50 (and a third of them retired before they were 45.) In real life, active NYC police detectives in their late 60s simply did not exist.
- Castle: Kate Beckett is established to be 27 or 28 at the start of the series. While it's possible to be commissioned straight to detective on your 21st birthday, Beckett mentioned she went to patrol first which requires 18 months before promotion to the lowest grade of detective. This means she got to leading a mid-town Manhattan precinct homicide squad in 4-5 years. There's simply no feasible career path for that to happen.
- Charmed:
- Prue is only mid-twenties in the first season and has already been a successful museum curator and prominent auctioneer. The second one is a little more feasible since the two people who hired her were demons that wanted to kill her — and after they've been dealt with, she's in constant clashes with senior people in the auction house. After leaving that job, she becomes a photographer instead, which she already has experience with (having done it in high school) and does so as a freelancer.
- Piper straddles the line. In the pilot episode she gets a job at a nice restaurant only a few months after leaving her job as a bank teller. She also quickly becomes a successful nightclub owner before she's even in her thirties — and with the first place she buys too. There is a slight justification with the restaurant job — where the chef who hires her in the first episode abruptly leaves, and she's forced to try and take over his position.
- Phoebe is something of a slacker in her early life and there are mentions of her studying psychology in college in the first three seasons. She gets a job as an advice columnist purely on a fluke in Season 4 and quickly becomes a local celebrity within a year (helped slightly by having a romance with the paper's new owner).
- Paige by contrast is a subversion. She's only just out of college and working as an intern social worker (with mentions that she's still paying off student loans). She's promoted to social worker but has to quickly leave the job because she can't handle it.
- Billie is only twenty (if we take a line where Piper says she's not old enough to drink) and yet has already learned she's a witch, mastered her powers and discovered a hi-tech scrying system with a computer. It's lampshaded when Piper wonders if Billie got help from demons. But she didn't, so the trope still fits. It turns out she's the sisters' greatest enemy, but she didn't know this.
- This is lampshaded in the Season 1 finale when Piper meets an old classmate, who is the segment producer of a highly rated cooking show and has a wealthy fiancee.
Phoebe: No one is that successful at 26. - Cory in the House: The episode "Get Smarter" had Newt fall in love with a new student, dubbed "Little Genius Jessica" by his teacher, who was a concert pianist at two and graduated college at nine. Partially subverted in that she legally can't perform brain surgery until she's 18.
- Criminal Minds:
- Dr. Spencer Reid: Three PhDs, FBI profiler, turns 24 in the show's first season. Needless to say, he has a hard time getting taken seriously by people who don't know him very well (which fact he has been known to turn to his own advantage).
- It's made clear that he's been brilliant his whole life, which can shave decades off schooling.
- He did graduate high school at age 12. He even mentions that when he was in college, he wasn't even old enough to drive.
- The writers of the show think "Ph.D" and "doctorate" are interchangeable terms, though, as Reid is said to have earned several "Ph.Ds" before the first season, which is to say, by the time he was 23, at the oldest. Unless his years have more days than other people's, it isn't possible, because Ph.Ds require original research projects, and written dissertations, which must be defended before committees, and each one requires coursework, which no university is going to schedule just for one student's convenience, and which must be done before the research project is begun. I don't care how brilliant someone is, you can't make plants grow faster, or rats learn the mazes faster, and there is a physical limit to how long it takes someone to type 300 pages, not to mention a committee of several people each to read those pages. Maybe he has more than one doctorate, an advanced degree that does not require a dissertation, but he does not have multiple Ph.Ds.
- Dollhouse:
- The Dollhouse is filled with people who are far too young to actually be masters of the jobs they are sent on. Strangely, no one ever calls them out on this.
- Well, except in the very first episode, where everyone comments on the fact that Echo is far too young and pretty to be a competent hostage negotiator. Eventually contributing to her partial breakdown.
- Not to mention Topher, who supposedly is one of the world's best experts on neurotechnology when visibly he is at most in his late 20s. This put him actually as too young to be even a normal neurosurgeon, which requires four years of college, four years of med school and seven years of residency to achieve. Yet somehow Topher manages this super-secret and revolutionary technology despite being a guy who could only be a few years out of grad school at best.
- Although given what the Dollhouse does there might be an explanation.
- Doogie Howser, M.D.: The premise revolves around a 16-year-old doctor.
- A minor one on Friends: Ross, aged 27 in the first season, already has a doctorate in paleontology and has been working at a museum for an unspecified period of time. It's unlikely he'd have finished his doctorate that quickly.
- Game of Thrones: Arya becomes a master assassin, capable of matching anyone in a duel and shape-shifting — even killing the Night King thanks to her stealth at a vaguely teen age. Her actress Maisie Williams was twenty when the last season was filmed, but the character is possibly a bit younger. She completes her Faceless Man training in what can only be a year at most.
- Gossip Girl:
- Fashion-related example: Jenny Humphrey. Somehow, some way, at age fifteen, she's a mini-couturier, able to rival nearly all of New York Fashion Week's regular fixtures.
- As of mid-Season 2, Chuck Bass fits this trope. The guy took over his father's company at age seventeen, albeit briefly. As of Season 3 he runs his own hotel, hosts political election parties and has a grand opening of his new club... and the guy has only just turned eighteen. The club opening episode revolved a lot around acquiring a liquor license, yet the fact that the club owner was not legally allowed to purchase alcohol was never brought up.
- Grey's Anatomy: In a rare case of characters being implausibly old for their positions the characters that start as interns in the first episode are nearly all a little on the mature side. A normal intern would be roughly 26 years old but except for Katherine Heigl the other actors were 7-10 years older. Cristina was stated to have had a PhD as well as her MD, so she could have been a bit older but this is mostly a case of the actors playing characters younger than they are.
- Addison Montgomery, however, is a straighter example. She's a board-certified OB/GYN (which is a four-year residency) subspecializing in maternal-fetal medicine (three year fellowship). Since she attended school with Derek Shepherd and was mentored by Richard Webber, she likely completed a general surgery residency (five years) and at least a two-year pediatrics residency, and fans are still divided on the order in which she did all that. She's also extremely well-regarded in her field, referred to as "The Meryl Streep of Maternal-Fetal Medicine", indicating that she has been practicing for quite some time. She looks pretty damn good for somebody who, under the best circumstances, should be at least early forties.
- Season 3 of Haven introduces Claire Callahan as a psychiatrist. She's fully certified and has been running her own practice for at least a couple years. She is...28. The writers were savvy enough to know a psychiatrist needs an MD, since she reportedly went to UConn for medical school, but they were seemingly unaware that psychiatrists are still doctors and go through residency and fellowships just like any other doctor. Claire should still be in her residency, realistically speaking.
- Head of the Class: While all the students in Fillmore High's IHP program are gifted, young Janice is particularly off-the-charts bright. At the beginning of the series, she's in the advanced high school class at the age of ten, and is already being offered admissions and scholarships by various universities — her parents keep Janice enrolled in high school only to help foster her social development. Midway through the series (when the character is about 12) Janice departs, having accepted an offer from Harvard to begin studies as a sophomore. She makes a cameo at the conclusion of the series, having been gone for about a year in-universe (the final two seasons took place over a single nine-month school year). By that point, age about 13, Janice has graduated from Harvard and is lining up a job at IBM.
- Homicide: Life on the Street: Colonel Barnfather is Captain and then Colonel of the Homicide unit despite being around the same age as the Homicide Detectives, and much younger than Giardello, the shift Lieutenant. This is somewhat mitigated in-universe when it's shown in multiple episodes that the Baltimore Police Department frequently promotes personnel for political reasons.
- House:
- The "ducklings". Given that Cameron and Chase are both stated as 26 in Season 1 and Foreman is 30, they're a bunch of medical prodigies alright. Cameron, an immunologist, would have had to graduate high school roughly at age 14. Foreman, the neurologist, could have gotten that far in his career by 30, but he's also shown as being a neurosurgeon meaning he also would have graduated high school early. Chase is the one who stands out the most though, since aside from being a Trauma specialist and having some form of expertise in pediatrics (meaning he would have graduated high school around age 13) he also spent a few years in seminary training, back when he wanted to be a priest. He must have graduated high school around age 10. However, in Season 2, he is aged up to 30.
- Then add the fact that all three of them have had enough training to not only be capable of performing every medical test known to man, they are also qualified to do them. They must have all graduated high school in the womb.
- Chase is Australian, and fans have pointed out that he might have been able to get his specific qualifications in a shorter period of time than American doctors, due to the way the Australian medical board is set up.
- In a late season-five episode Cuddy states that she is thirty-eight, meaning she was head of the hospital at the beginning of the series at thirty-three or so, which seems pretty unlikely.
- Law & Order:
- Routinely occurs in these shows, particularly with replacement characters, where detectives and officers often seem far too young to have achieved their rank. It's common among not-quite-main protagonists, and particularly blatant in the case of female bosses, who are are routinely played by actresses in their late twenties and early thirties. Most often, they look like, well, actresses, thin, pretty, fragile, well made up and well dressed.
- Compare this to the bosses in Law & Order (S. Epatha Merkerson) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Dann Florek), both of whom are obviously middle-aged and carrying the gravitas of people who have seen it all in their decades of service. However both Cragen and Van Buren are noted to never recieve another promotion in twenty years of appearances when they should be climbing the promotion ladder. Somewhat justified with Cragen however as he has a backstory as a serious alcoholic with a relapse between his L&O and SVU stints and this may have ruined his promotion chances leading him to top out at Captain even around 70. Van Buren is heavily implied to be an a "Do not promote" list after her one attempt to get a promotion resulted in a failed attempt to sue the department for Sexual and Racial discrimination.
- Cragen on SVU also mentioned a L&O episode in which he helped expose the corruption of a senior officer. He said this nixed his promotion chances.
- Also Lennie Briscoe who is still only a beat detective in his early 60's during his final appearances. He freely admits Alcohol ruined his earlier career however so a justified trope.
- Lampshaded in Law & Order when Milena Govich joined the cast. Cassaday's youth and looks made it difficult for her to get taken seriously by anyone and caused people to suspect she only made detective as a PR stunt by the department.
- Lost:
- Ethan Rom, the only surgeon the Others had and apparently a very good one, was 27 when he died. Daniel Faraday is a tenured professor at Oxford when at the earliest he had to be born in 1977 and was probably born in 1978, but it is justified by him being explicitly said to be the youngest graduate in Oxford's history (meaning he graduated when he was 13 or less) and he screws up rather badly when he's a professor, putting his girlfriend in a permanent coma and gradually getting severe memory problems.
- Boone is mentioned as running a part of a large business despite being only twenty-two or so (Ian Somerhalder was twenty-five when the show started). However, he explicitly states that his mother is head of the company and it is quite obvious that he did not earn it through experience.
- Lost Girl has Dr. Lauren Lewis. She speaks at least 4 languages, has a medical degree, has served as a field medic in Afghanistan, researched diseases in the Congo for at least several months, has experience working in a lab, and has spent five years as a literal slave to super-human creatures called the fae. All before the pilot. Oh yeah, and she's 29 or 30 at the oldest. It's not so much impracticable as impossible, though the writers probably kept adding to her backstory as they needed things explained, leading to a resume that's downright heroic.
- NCIS:
- Ziva David is less Improbable Age and more Impossible Age. She joins the show in her early twenties, supposedly after she's graduated high school, served her two years in the IDF, attended college, applied for Mossad, become immediately tapped for inclusion into an elite and highly competitive special operations unit with a training period of several years, and still have enough time to become "an experienced agent" with multiple missions under her belt. And this is at an age the youngest CIA intelligence officers would be beginning training.
- In a less obvious and less egregious case: If you pay attention to the various backstory tidbits dropped for Tony along with his stated age (a little younger than his actor), it works out that he made detective at around age twenty-eight and this is after he most likely got a Masters. In context he must be a law-enforcement prodigy — though that does fit in with his characterisation some of the time.
- The Newsroom: Sloan has a double PhD and several years of post-doctoral work, but she's played by the 30-year-old Olivia Munn. It's also revealed in the backstory that Will became a lawyer at the age of 21.
- Once Upon a Time has some justified examples. Regina is the mayor of Storybrooke, played by Lana Parrilla at the age of 33. The Mother Superior is played by the late 30s Keegan Connor Tracy — when in most traditions a Mother Superior has to be at least forty. Dr Whale is the only physician in the town — played by late 20s David Anders. But they're all a result of the Dark Curse putting everyone in the respective positions. On top of that, the curse also has them frozen in time up until the protagonist arrives, so they also don’t age for 28 years. The second one in particular could also be justified by Blue (Mother Superior's Enchanted Forest counterpart) being Really 700 Years Old.
- One Tree Hill: Brooke went from relatively unremarkable teenager who had just graduated high school with a starting fashion line to an internationally famous multi-millionairess owner of a fashion company, magazine and television channel in under four years thanks to a Time Skip between Seasons 4 and 5. True it is later revealed that Brooke's mother is the business brains behind the empire, but the fact that Brooke personally became so famous and that her designs were so successful so quickly stretches credibility beyond breaking point.
- Perry Mason: A comparatively rare example of a character being improbably too old: Ray Collins was 67 (and looked even older — he could have passed for 77) when he began playing Perry's friendly police adversary Lt. Arthur Tragg. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson was completely aware of the improbability, but didn't care, stating "He was such a wonderful actor — beautiful voice, trained in radio's Mercury productions. We overlooked the fact that on an actual police force, he would probably be long retired." (The mean retirement age for police personnel at the time was 54.) Collins continued in the role of Tragg for 7 seasons, through the age of 74.
- Power Rangers:
- Tommy Oliver. Between the years of 1997 (when he graduated high school) and 2004, he managed to have a successful career as a professional racecar driver, go through college, get a doctorate in paleontology, become a mad scientist and create several varieties of incredibly advanced cyborg dinosaur thingies, and become a licensed teacher. Makes you feel like you've already wasted your life, doesn't it.
- We only ever saw Tommy participate in test runs with the race car, so he may never have actually had a pro career. Also, due to a lack of available science teachers some districts will hire based on education and experience without the specific teaching training. It doesn't help the timeline much, however, as he doctorate and mad scientist career still would have taken more than seven years.
- There is a bit of fridge brilliance here though, when you spend 4 years fighting monsters in a robot dino, driving giant cars, and teaming with Teen Genius Billy Cranston; some of that is going to rub off.
- In Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue, Dana is an 18-year-old paramedic. And by the time of her cameo appearance a year later, a licensed doctor.
- Power Rangers Operation Overdrive has Rose, a Teen Genius who is already a college professor.
- With Power Rangers RPM, we have Dr K who is that season's mentor, is no older than 19 and has been doing complex mathematical equations since she was 5.
- Then there's Spike in Power Rangers Samurai, whose dad Skull graduated or dropped out at about the same time Tommy did and was shown as single up to 1999, yet he has a 15-year-old son by 2011.
- Tommy Oliver. Between the years of 1997 (when he graduated high school) and 2004, he managed to have a successful career as a professional racecar driver, go through college, get a doctorate in paleontology, become a mad scientist and create several varieties of incredibly advanced cyborg dinosaur thingies, and become a licensed teacher. Makes you feel like you've already wasted your life, doesn't it.
- The Pretender: Jarod was a boy-genius who was kidnapped by an Evil Corporation at age four and exploited for his intelligence for over twenty years. He was designing airplanes, engineering buildings, and helping catch serial killers by about the age of twelve and developed a method for human cloning in his late teens.
- Primeval Season 4 introduces Jess, who is already in a prominent position with the ARC — and savvy on all their intricate computer systems. Her actress Ruth Kearney was just nineteen at the time — so Jess has to be early twenties at most. Fanon claims she must be Lester's niece and that he must have pulled some strings to get her hired.
- In Relic Hunter, Sydney Fox seems rather young for a full professor with her own secretary (Tia Carrere was 32 years old in the first season).
- Revolution: In the episode "The Stand", Danny Matheson uses a rocket launcher to blow a helicopter to oblivion. This is made more remarkable by the fact that he is only 18 or 19 years old, and has never had occasion to use a weapon like that in his life.
- The Rockford Files:
- Dr. Megan Daugherty (played by 28-year-old Kathryn Harrold) was introduced in a 1978 episode as a psychiatrist with a well-established, thriving practice. Normally, a psychiatrist would require about 12 years of post-secondary education, meaning they would graduate around the age of 29 before even being able to start their practice. Then, in the reunion movies, it was repeatedly mentioned (and shown in flashback) that Megan was 15 during the Easter weekend of 1971, at which point she was a high school student who had not yet lost her sight. This would have made her 22 in 1978 — and meant that between '71 and '78 she managed to finish at least two years of high school, then somehow cram 12 years of university into about four, and then establish a busy practice, all while making the adjustment to having unexpectedly gone blind. This utterly ludicrous timeline isn't even a case of multiple writers muddying up continuity; all of Megan's appearances were written by David Chase.
- Megan makes Rockford's lawyer Beth Davenport look like a comparative slacker, although Beth is still somewhat improbably young for her position. Though Beth's age wasn't explicitly stated, when she first appeared, Beth's portrayer Gretchen Corbett was a youthful-looking 27 years old. 27 is the average age of a freshly-minted law school graduate — but Beth was already a firmly established lawyer with a fancy office at a big, well-respected firm (though not a full partner).
- In the season four episode "Forced Retirement", Beth said she had been with the firm for SIX years.
- Dr. Megan Daugherty (played by 28-year-old Kathryn Harrold) was introduced in a 1978 episode as a psychiatrist with a well-established, thriving practice. Normally, a psychiatrist would require about 12 years of post-secondary education, meaning they would graduate around the age of 29 before even being able to start their practice. Then, in the reunion movies, it was repeatedly mentioned (and shown in flashback) that Megan was 15 during the Easter weekend of 1971, at which point she was a high school student who had not yet lost her sight. This would have made her 22 in 1978 — and meant that between '71 and '78 she managed to finish at least two years of high school, then somehow cram 12 years of university into about four, and then establish a busy practice, all while making the adjustment to having unexpectedly gone blind. This utterly ludicrous timeline isn't even a case of multiple writers muddying up continuity; all of Megan's appearances were written by David Chase.
- Played for Laughs in Sabrina the Teenage Witch:
- The Other Realm has Dr Brickman, who's a ten year old child and yet the best doctor in the realm. He claims he even supervised his own birth!
- Sabrina complains about her Quizmaster to who she assumes is a fellow teenage witch...only to find out that she's the Head Quizmaster. And over six hundred years old!
"Why does nobody age in this Realm!" - Saturday Night Live: Drew Barrymore was 7 years old when she hosted the show on November 20, 1982. She is, to date, the youngest person to host SNL.
- Saved by the Bell: The College Years straddles the line with Jeremiah Lasky. He's only 32 but is a qualified professor, has published two books and had time to be married and divorced with a child. The actor playing him was in his late 20s at the time, so the age appears to have been increased to make this slightly more plausible.
- Spaced: Daisy's employment agency boss in Series 2 seems about 12 years old. This isn't commented on in-show beyond Daisy's incredulous looks, but fits the ongoing theme that Tim and Daisy are starting to feel a little old as they approach their late twenties.
- Stargate SG-1: Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell's in-show age (younger than the actor's real age) is so low that in order to be a lieutenant colonel he would have to have received almost all of his ranks shortly after the legal mandated minimum time between ranks. Downplayed as it is implied he was promoted to Lt. Col. because of his action in Antarctica, and the SGC actively seeks out the best and brightest, especially if they're prodigies, so if there really was someone so good as to get all his promotions all the way up to Lt. Colonel in the legal minimum time, it is likely he'd end up working at the SGC.
- Stargate Atlantis: Called out with Doctor Keller, especially in the Episode Vegas where she replaced a coroner and there's no way she should be old enough. She does sometimes discuss the toll it took on her to become so successful at a young age.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Wesley Crusher, being allowed to pilot the ship and use Technobabble to save the day in his teens. This is even worse in "Yesterday's Enterprise", in which the Alternate Timeline has no families on the Enterprise, but still has Wesley on the bridge, wearing a full uniform. How old are kids joining the Academy in that universe?
- Sela, a (half-)Romulan commander who has been seen leading two very important operations with potentially galaxy-wide consequences at the ripe old age of 22. This becomes even more unbelievable when you consider that Romulans have about twice the lifespan of humans (though they reach adulthood at roughly the same rate).
- Strike Back's Colonel Alexander Coltrane's Tragic Backstory includes an especially traumatic mission as a lieutenant in the Balkans in 1992. At that time, his portrayer (Jamie Bamber) would only have been 19 and would be very unlikely to have been ranked that highnote .
- In Tek War Tek War, when main character Jake Cardigan is put on trial for murder, his lawyer, Eugene Leopold, is slightly too young to drive.
- Titans (2018). Barbara Gordon is Gotham's police commissioner despite being in her mid-30's, which is handwaved by the suggestion that no-one else wants the job.
- True Jackson, VP revolves around a 15-year-old being named the vice president of a major fashion company after the Eccentric Millionaire CEO recognizes her talent in fashion design and hires her on the spot. In the Series Finale she's promoted to CEO after her boss retires, and goes on to only hire minors.
- Warship: One episode of this BBC documentary series includes a brief visit to a cemetery in a foreign port where a number of British seamen are buried. One of the graves belongs to a lieutenant-commander of the Royal Navy note who was killed in action during the Second World War. He was twenty-four.
- Dana Scully of The X-Files is a mild case, but noticeable due to a combination of this and Underage Casting. Dana Scully is 28 in the pilot, played by 24-year-old Gillian Anderson (who looks really young here). She is a forensic pathologist, teaches at the Academy, and has been with the FBI for two years. The education required to become a forensic pathologist in the US is roughly 13-15 years, including obtaining a Bachelor's and completing medical school. On top of the two years she has already been with the Bureau, Scully should be in her mid-30s, not her late 20s.
- Yellowstone: Monica is a 26-year-old grade school teacher who gets courted by a local university to be a history professor. It's implied that her father-in-law pulled strings at the university to create a course specifically for her to teach. However, the dean seems to honestly believe that she's qualified to teach the course once it's created. Her improbable age is acknowledged a few times afterwards: one of her students mistakes her for a teacher's aide on the first day of class, and several police officers assume that she's a student rather than a teacher.
Music
- Dar Williams's "We Learned The Sea" features a skillful and stoic ship's captain who's A Mother To Her Men. She's also, apparently, 8 years old, and addresses a crewmember who's even youngernote :
I am the captain and I have been toldnoteBut I am not shaken, I am eight years oldAnd you are still young, but you'll understandThat the stars of the sea are the same for the land
- This seems to be a standard in Mothy's Evillious Chronicles:
- Banica Conchita, by the age of 20, was already renown for saving her country from a famine by introducing new foods and recipes.
- By the age of 6, Mariam Phutapie was already a professional assassin and was able to join the army. By nine, she was already a well-known general and by the age of 20, she was considered one of the Three Heroes of Lucifenia and known throughout Evillious. Justified a bit in her case, since she was trained as an assassin from birth, therefore having the skills she needed for her careers. Her adoptive mother being a high-ranking minister might have also helped.
- Before the age of 12, Leonhart Avadonia was already a skilled, well-known swordsman and a soldier in the army. By the age of 20, he was already well-known in Beelenzia for his militaristic campaigns and was known throughout Evillious as one of the Three Heroes of Lucifenia by his mid-20s.
- Leonhart's daughter, Germaine, became the leader of the Lucifenian Revolution at the age of 20.
- Irina was elected to the throne of the Magic Kingdom Leviantha at age 17. Subverted a bit, since she had to kill three other candidates to get there, but even becoming a candidate was no small feat, apparently.
- Aaliyah was signed to a record label at the age of twelve, released her first album at fourteen, and by the time of her sudden death at twenty-two, she was considered one of the defining artists of R&B — and in fact the Trope Codifier for modern R&B singers.
Podcasts
- Actors' Life Podcast:
- Discussed when Bobby was shocked to learn that Adam Kearney was only nineteen. He had set up AK Productions before he was even out of school, and had been working actively in the industry for nearly two years.
- Greg Young had also been acting for three years, produced several shorts and music videos, had extensive experience working on set and was already planning his debut feature — aged only nineteen!
- Rebecca Christina Flynn began acting from as early as four, and was already an experienced drama teacher when she turned twenty.
Professional Wrestling
- Defied to some extent by WWE. Their policy says that no wrestler under twenty one may be called up to the main roster. They have signed people under that age before but they remain in developmental until they come of age. They since amended that to not even signing people under twenty-one (Aliyah was the youngest person on the roster at the time, having been signed at only nineteen).
- Randy Orton became the youngest person in history to be World Heavyweight Champion at the age of twenty four, and only two years on the main roster.
- Depending on when a wrestler begins their training — it's quite common for some to start in their teens — they can have held multiple titles by the time they're in their early twenties. Paige for example started training when she was thirteen and won her first title at fifteen. Thus it can become quite jarring for someone of only their mid-twenties being considered a veteran, even if they've been in the business ten years. This ended up backfiring on her — as the injuries sustained from having started training so young led to her having to retire at the age of twenty-five.
- In the United States there are laws that vary from state to state of just when one can become a pro wrestler, and while few states seriously monitor the independent circuit, no one likes to draw attention to the fact they may be breaking the law, hence CZW putting the Briscoes in masks when touring between statesnote . In Mexico, there is an intricate system of height and weight limits that allows young boys to fight against people, if not their own age, then at least their own size as they grow up, Rey Mysterio Jr. easily being the most famous beneficiary but numerous other cases such as Virus exist. The Japanese independent circuit stands out in this regard as their seems to be no law and no weight classes beyond junior-not juniornote so it's not unheard of to see children as young as eight in the ring against full grown adults. In World Wonder RING STARDOM the 11-year-old Azumi/AZM was technically a "veteran" against comparative 29-year-old rookies like Hiromi Mimura. In fact, Ice Ribbon has had so many little girls in its rings it that it became less improbable in their context and more their calling card(training with Emi Sakura for a chance to team with Manami Toyota probably was a strong lure for the young fan).
- NXT UK's Jordan Devlin began his training at only twelve, and thus was considered a ten year veteran by the time he was twenty-two. He'd already been to Japan twice by that age!
- Another Irish wrestler LJ Cleary started training right before he turned fourteen, and won his first world championship at only seventeen!
- The Wood Brothers became tag team champions for the first time when they were still in school! Lewis was eighteen and Lorcan was sixteen.
Puppet Shows
- Joe 90: The whole point of this show. A child secret agent was thought to be less conspicuous than an adult one, and every week his scientist father would add knowledge into his mind that was only accessible when Joe wore the glasses.
Religion and Mythology
- Cú Chulainn of Celtic Mythology is a One-Man Army demigod armed with a powerful supernatural spear, can transform into a gigantic Eldritch Abomination when angered, has multiple affairs with women throughout his life despite being married, fathered at least one 7-year-old child and ultimately dies young on the battlefield at 17 years old. Which means, at the absolute minimum, he fathered a child when he was only ten.
- Achilles was an esteemed warrior and in some form of command position in the Trojan War...which went on for ten years, after starting at his parents' wedding. What makes this weird is, most sources agree that the couple had never even met before their wedding night, so the Greeks' dreaded hero was less than 10 years old by the time he had amassed that reputation and kill count.
- The Shahnameh uses this as a plot point in one of the most tragic stories: The Hero, Worlds Greatest Warrior Rostam has an affair with princess Tahmine, whose town is behind enemy lines. They say goodbye, he gives her a unique jewel as a parting gift and asks her to give it to their child, if they have happened to have conceived one and he leaves and never tells anyone about what went down. Meanwhile, she gives birth to a boy who seems to have inherited his father's Super-Strength. After only a month, the baby looks a year old. Sohrab eventually grows up, and despite being a true Mama's Boy he becomes obsessed with his father's legendary reputation. Thinking that his father would make a great ruler, he decides to invade Iran, overthrow the Shah Kaykavus and install his father on the throne, and then double back north and dispose of the barbarian warlord Afrasiab once and for all. Afrasiab, Manipulative Bastard as he is, believes that this suspiciously powerful random 10 year old bastard boy is probably the only person who could have a shot at actually killing Rostam in combat, so he forms an alliance with Sohrab and gives him control of the Turanian army so he can invade Iran, where he faces off with Rostam. Due to them being evenly matched, they end up fighting each other repeatedly, and neither of them realises who they're fighting because A) Rostam is Withholding Their Name and B) While it does occur to Rostam that his possible son or daughter with Tahmine could potentially have this much strength and talent, he dismisses the idea because even if they did get pregnant, that child would be waaay too young, right? Anyway, after a lot of cheating, Rostam eventually lands a fatal stab wound, and as Sohrab is laying down dying he finally reveals himself as "the son of Rostam". Rostam rips off the boy's armor and sees the jewel on his armband, and his Oh, Crap! reaction turns into a complete and total Heroic BSoD, while the narration goes all What the Hell, Hero?
Roleplay
- One flashforward in Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues shows Simon working as the head of an FBI division at the ripe young age of 22. This is lampshaded by one of the men working under him, who is terrified by the idea of what Simon did to get the job at such a young age.
- Open Blue:
- Führer Katrina Seran from v2 to v4 achieved the equivalent rank of Fleet Admiral in the Seranni Navy at the age of 20, and became ruler of her country a month later when her father, the Kaiser, "mysteriously" died. It helps that she's quite the Evil Genius.
- Another qualifier is Rhianna von Adolph, the equivalent of a Colonel and leader of the special forces division of Seran's intelligence agency at the age of 26.
- A third is Elysia Schneider from v2, a Vice Admiral at the age of 27. Her Back Story furthermore indicates that she has held this rank for a few years now. Apparently, being one of the Führer's classmates is a surefire way to end up with a lofty position within the Reich.
Tabletop Games
- Chronopia: Rodili Lysander ascended to the title of Lord in his sixties. This is impressive considering that city elves are usually not considered adults until the age of 200, and a 60-year-old is barely potty-trained by elven standards.
- Warhammer 40,000: Downplayed. Every Space Marine was recruited due to being an exceptional warrior, but the genetic engineering process only works with prepubescent males, so every Space Marine was once a Child Soldier with a particular emphasis on the soldier part. Planets wherein Everything Is Trying to Kill You are naturally a popular place to find these boys who Had to Be Sharp. That being said, their training (much of it actually taking place in battle) will take decades longer before they are being officially inducted as a full-fledged Space Marine, so even the most precocious recruit will still take a long time more to be truly seen as an Angel of Death.
Toys
- Barbie: Barbie doesn't look like she's even thirty but has done things like become president of the United States. Multiple times. This aspect of her character gets poked fun at in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse.
Video Games
- Advance Wars:
- Though never outright specified, many of the commanding officers look like kids, or teenagers at best. Fittingly, the series treats war more like a game than an armed struggle.
- Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict mostly averts this trope and justifies the few cases that come along: Will/Ed is a trained army cadet and is forced into a leadership position because the troops respect him more than they do Lin, while Penny/Lili, Tabitha/Larissa and Isabella/Cathleia are all tyke bombs designed to be army commanders.
- Fighters in Arcana Heart range in age from 5 to 16 (ignoring the robot), with most girls being around age 14. Two characters deserve special mention: Catherine Kyoubashi and Kira Daidouji are both on the younger side (12 and 11, respectively), and each holds a doctorate from a prestigious university. Kira, in particular, is considered a pioneer in her field; the fact that she's not exempt from mandatory elementary school in Japan after earning a doctorate in America is what pushes her toward world domination. Dorothy Albright is a somewhat less improbable version, having "merely" gained fame as a Las Vegas stage magician and an arrest warrant for being a masked Gentlewoman Thief by age 9.
- BioShock Infinite has main villain Zachary Comstock, who is Younger Than They Look, as extensive exposure to radiation made him look like Santa Claus. He is an Alternate Self of protagonist Booker DeWitt]. Booker's contract explicitly makes him born in 1874, which means at just 16 he was a part of the cavalry regiment who massacred natives at Wounded Knee. And worse, that in just three years, Comstock would get the support of the United States government to build the floating city of Columbia — thanks to being widely influential preacher and help ofthe scientists whose experiments led to his Rapid Aging — while being barely old enough to vote.
- Admiral Mikey, a character General Knoxx refers to several times in Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, is the admiral of the Crimson Lance 3rd Starborne Brigade. He's also five. Unlike other characters in this list who are usually Wise Beyond Their Years, Mikey is simply a 5-year-old boy appointed to the rank of admiral because of unchecked nepotism. Played for Laughs, like damn near everything else in the game.
- Both subverted in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, where Julius Belmont is over 50 years old and still a force to be reckoned with, and played straight, as he was 19 by the time he killed Dracula. The 19 years old thing is not unusual for the Belmont clan, considering Richter did it, and most Belmonts are only a few years older at most. If anything, Juste was YOUNGER, at 18. Julius is notable for being 50 years old by the time of the Sorrow titles, and yet still being able to kick ludicrious amounts of ass, impressive for a guy who hasn't been working out for three decades. Consider, each generation of the Belmont clan is stronger than the last. Besides Reinhardt Schneider, the last full-blood Belmont was Ritcher, and that was 202 years before Julius went into action in 1999. Think about it.
- The only two named doctors working on the project experimenting on God using Sera, Heat O'Brien and Serph Sheffield, in Digital Devil Saga were around 24 and 22. The 7-year-old Sera is a Badass Adorable warrior.
- Laharl, the ruler of the netherworld from Disgaea may be Really 700 Years Old, but he is mentally and physically around 13. Likewise, Jennifer built Thursday at the age of 10, and Fuka from the fourth game wanted to Take Over the World (Of course!) at the age of five! This is probably meant to be a parody of the concept, just like everything else.
- Flonne is over 1500, but physically and mentally about 15 (and seems significantly younger due to being a flat chested and The Ditz). She is appropriately a mere angel trainee at the start of the first game. However by the third game, which seems to take place no more than a few years later (human characters like Gordon and Jennifer look no older), she is the Archangel, second in command to the Seraph. Seems like absurdly quick career advancement by our standards, for creatures who are Really 700 Years Old it must feel like it happened overnight.
- Dragon Quest V starts off the protagonist as 6 years old. He gets treated as such, and it shows in other things such as being unable to read signs, but this obviously does not stop him from donning Plate Armor and wielding a Broadsword to considerable effect. His children, on the other hand, wait until the ripe old age of eight.
- While you might assume that Princess Crea is older than she looks in Duel Savior Destiny, it turns out that she really is about 10 to 12 years old.
- The Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games take this to a new level. Both games would feature one or two Loli characters, with Improbable Weapons to boot, and still have them go into battle fought by men in their thirties (The Two Qiaos, Oichi in Samurai Warriors 1 and Gracia, I'm looking at you all.)
- Especially blatant in the case of the Qiaos, who, historically, were older than Sun Shang Xiang.
- In EarthBound (1994), the younger sister of Ness (13) has a job. Part-time, but still.
- In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, at character creation you have an age slider that can make your character appear as young as your mid to late teens. The slider is purely cosmetic, meaning you can go on to be the simultaneous leader of every guild in Cyrodiil, a member of the Blades, and savior of the world without anyone mentioning that you're practically a child.
- Lampshaded in Escape from Monkey Island:
"I'm Captain Threepwood! I've been to Monkey Island four times, defeated the evil pirate Lechuck repeatedly, I uncovered the gates of Hell, I destroyed an Australian land developer and his Ultimate Insult, discovered the world's only talking monkey, and married the most beautiful governor in the world...and all before the age of 22!"
- In Eternal Sonata, one of the regular party members is Beat, a street kid who is... wait for it... only 8 years old. He seems to have little problem shooting and mercilessly beating enemies, but once expressed worry that he would wet his pants in fear while crossing a high bridge.
- In Fallout and Fallout 2, it's possible for your character to start out at as young as 16 (you can select your age to start; it affects pretty much nothing). Considering all the screwing, murdering, and driving the character can do, they probably figured sixteen was the absolute youngest they could go. Considering it's a post-apocalyptic setting where no one would probably care about things like mandatory education, minimal age for drinking, driving, weapon-handling, etc. because you need to learn how to survive, it's kind of justified.
- In Fallout 3, your character is 19 years old but your initial skills are explained by things like your father giving you a BB gun when you're 10, having to deal with a gang of bullies, your father teaching you medical skills, etc. Also, like above you're in a lawless wasteland, so the drugs and such make sense.
- Fallout: New Vegas has a purely cosmetic age slider that can make your character look between 20-ish and middle aged. This means that it's possible for the Courier to go from being a package courier to supreme ruler of the Mojave Wasteland in their mid 20s. And that's not counting the things you do in the four add-ons.
- The Final Fantasy series in general, as a whole. It should be noted that the emotional problems the characters face do seem tied to their actual ages in Final Fantasy, even if their accomplishments aren't. The moody, uncommunicative, trying-too-hard-to-be-a-grown-up Squall of VIII could be no other creature than a 17-year-old from an elite school; the 18-year-old Terra is an adult but still very confused about her identity; the twentysomethings Cloud and Bartz both need to be old enough that their childhood is a distant memory but not old enough to have got over it yet. The glaring exception is Cecil, who reads as way older than 20. Some examples include:
- The Light Warriors from Final Fantasy may get this, Depending on the Artist they range from "at least definitely adults" to "ambiguous chibis." The Warrior of Light in Dissidia Final Fantasy at least has the dignity of being one of the older-looking heroes, despite his lack of official age...
- In Final Fantasy II the most valuable soldiers of the rebel force fighting to stop the Evil Empire...are teenagers. Justified in that when the game started they were nobody refugees who had to fight even to enlist. There's also, though, the matter of Minwu. He's a courtly wizard. Look at his character art: there's no way he's over 35.
- In Final Fantasy III, every hero is a Kid Hero. The Updated Re-release turns the blank characters into 15-year-olds. Young-looking 15-year-olds.
- In Final Fantasy IV, Cecil and Kain lead the dark knights and the dragoons, respectively, at the ages of twenty and twenty-one, respectively. Even taking into account the fact that both of them were likely trained from early childhood (and in Cecil's case, was effectively the adopted son of the king of Baron), that's still very, very young for their positions. One wonders what the older soldiers think...
- Rydia starts the game at age seven (though she gets aged up offscreen).
- Palom and Porom are master mages, capable spies, possess enough resolve to turn themselves to stone to save the world...and they're all of five. In-universe, they're explicitly acknowledged as child prodigies and are meant to seem unusual. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years also reveals that this took something of a toll, with Palom expressing fears that he peaked early in life.
- In Final Fantasy V, main character Bartz is all of twenty, though at least he's nothing more than a vagabond. Faris, however, is the same age and master of a pirate ship (though it's implied that the pirates, who essentially raised her, are basically humoring her).
- Celes from Final Fantasy VI is an 18-year-old army general working for The Empire who burned down a resisting village shortly before the events of the game. The explanation given is that she's a genetically-engineered Super-Soldier. And apparently she's taken time off from soldier training to learn how to sing in an opera. Terra is the same age, and is also a frighteningly competent (if brainwashed) soldier-slash-biological-weapon. Although, she isn't human...
- In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is the oldest FF protagonist so far (which Dissidia Final Fantasy makes some mileage out of, treating him as the mature and experienced one of the group). Other characters react to him as an experienced elite veteran. He's 21. He joined the military at 14 years old, which appears to be accepted as normal.
- In Crisis Core, Zack becomes a hotshot SOLDIER First Class at age 17, while veteran uber-SOLDIERs Sephiroth, Angeal, and Genesis are all only in their early twenties during the majority of the events. The latter three are all genetically-modified super-soldiers, at least.
- SeeD from Final Fantasy VIII serves to deconstruct this somewhat, as most of the prominent positions are held by teenagers. There are many points in the game that stress how these characters are too young for their posts; Quistis is an instructor at age 18 and gets dismissed for lacking leadership qualities, Seifer is also 18 and put in charge of a combat mission where he ignores orders and goes vigilante, Irvine is the same age and set to assassinate a government official — and ends up cracking under the pressure. As the Gardens that trained these soldiers began as orphanages, most have been there since childhood (Quistis mentions training at age 12). There is also the refreshing aversion of Laguna — a soldier out on tour at the age of 27.
- Top of the list has to be Eiko from Final Fantasy IX — she's only 6 years old and knows how to cook and take care of herself. Zidane and Garnet are both 16 and Freya is 21. If you weren't told this, you would never know it. They act much older, and have histories and experiences that imply they can't be that young, for example Freya being a member of the Dragon Knights several years ago and Zidane having years of experience as a thief. May be justified in that both Freya and Zidane aren't human and hence may age and reach maturity differently. Vivi looks to be about 9, but the official ultimania guidebook confirms that he was activated SIX MONTHS before the start of the game! The age of 9 is likely a guess by his adoptive grandfather. Kuja is only slightly better in this regard, being a famed "weapons dealer", rich Treno personality, proprietor of a massive desert palace, and doing all his villain accomplishments at the tender age of 24. Beatrix thankfully is a little more plausible; she's captain of Alexandria's Amazon Brigade and a feared and respected soldier, aged about 27.
- In Final Fantasy X, the prospective High Summoner and saviour of the world is probably about 17 or 18. Her guardians aren't much older, and apparently one gets to be a Legendary Guardian by surviving one pilgrimage and reaching the ripe old age of 35. Lulu and Wakka have also been guardians before and they're only 23 and 24 respectively — Lulu has been a guardian twice. However there is a slight buzz about Seymour becoming the youngest Maester — at the rather more reasonable age of 28. Due to the Eldritch Abomination that's frequently popping up to destroy parts of the world at random, it's entirely possibly people are lucky to make it to their thirties.
- Final Fantasy X-2 has the factions of Spira led by men in their mid-twenties at the oldest. Gippal in fact is the leader of the Machine Faction at only 18. All three of them are war veterans, having been part of the Crimson Squad, so at least they have some form of experience. This is however averted with Isaaru and Tromell, who assume leadership of Bevelle and Guadosalam respectively. Isaaru is 30, and Tromell 56.
- Final Fantasy XII has Vaan and Penelo (both 17) and Larsa, age 12. On the other hand, Basch is 36 and Fran is at least 50. Balthier, despite his initial impressions, is only 22. This is somehow old enough for him to have become a Judge, ran away from being a Judge, and then become one of the most notorious sky pirates in the game world. Although his father made him a Judge and is implied to have pulled a lot of strings and bent some rules to do it, which makes things a bit more palatable. Ashe meanwhile is fighting for control of her kingdom at the age of 19 — though in this case her youth is acknowledged and she does struggle with the pressures that she faces even leading the resistance.
- Final Fantasy XIII-2: Hope is now the Director of the Academy and basically leader of the world at the young age of 24. The Fragments Before novel goes further and clarifies he took the position at the age of 19.
- Final Fantasy XIV: Alphinaud and Alisaie Leveilleur are 16 and are famous around Sharlayan, their home country, for having enrolled in university around the age of 11, and graduated a short time after. Though in their case it helps that their grandfather Louisoix was a well-respected scholar and their father Forchenault is a government official. Their egos from being prodigies color their actions throughout A Realm Reborn, and Alphinaud's in particular is a driving factor for the events that lead up to Heavensward.
- Dissidia Final Fantasy, where they put all the heroes from the first ten games together and the oldest character ends up being 21! Which makes it particularly odd to see 17-year-old Squall acting as Team Mom to Bartz and Zidane, when Bartz is older than Squall and Zidane is only a year or two behind him at most.
- The youngest of them all is cute little Onion Knight, he doesn't have a stated age, but the general consensus is the ripe old age of 12.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2, the protagonist are school kids, while the people who's in combat in Ivalice are older than them.
- Somewhat justified in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance — by reading the magic book, the kids, especially Mewt all played a part in creating the world of Ivalice by making it like a Final Fantasy game they all played, so it wouldn't be surprising that they are all able to participate in the game/world at their current ages, since they would be the protagonists. And Mewt has Reality Warper powers, so he would probably be a borderline Physical God in Ivalice. Besides, everyone aside from Cid and Remedi has a Vague Age anyway.
- Fire Emblem has done this very frequently. In the majority of games, there's some level of justification, with older characters boasting higher base levels than younger ones, but pretty much every plot involves a protagonist who can't be old enough to legally drink being handed command of an entire armed force. Sometimes this is even lampshaded. In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, for example, Ike protests that he's too inexperienced to lead a mission. Though he does end up leading the company rather well after his father dies. Then there's the Empress of Begnion who's 10 years old, much to other characters' surprise.
- Fuser has Bignums, a famous and talented hip-hop producer who runs the second stage of the game, despite being a 10-year-old boy who still has to listen to his mom.
- While her official age is never given, Lynne was a young girl ten years before the events of Ghost Trick and now she's a full-fledged detective. The only real explanation we get is that Cabanela took her under his wing (and fudged her exam scores), so he might have made the department take in a younger detective than usual. However, in the final timeline, she doesn't get her exam results fudged this time, and she still passes it, which makes it all even more unbelievable.
- In Golden Sun, most of the sanctums that raise KO'd characters and heal poisons or curses are operated by elderly bearded religious leaders, or by middle-aged acolytes. In Imil, it's apparently run by 16-year-old Mia, and when she joins your quest to save the world, her preteen students take over the sanctum and do just fine.
- Grandia: The protagonist Justin is 14, his best friend Sue is 8, and the experienced adventurer Feena is 16. Despite their age, they can pretty much defeat anything opposing with no sweat. There's also the Garlyle Forces, which has many officer positions held by 16-year-old girls.
- The antagonist Colonel Mullen is, well, a colonel and is second in command of the Garlyle military at only 23 years old. It's justified in this case, though, since Mullen's father, General Baal (who averts this trope by being a general at 48), is the army's founder and supreme commander, so you can expect Mullen to enjoy the privilege of nepotism.
- Halo:
- Miranda Keyes, who's a commander at age 27, although this is handwaved with the explanation that many high-ranked military people have been killed during the Human-Covenant War and had to be replaced. Even then, in Halo 2, she's only commanding a troop-carrying corvette or frigate (just look at its positively miniscule size compared to Covenant ships of the line), the equivalent of a modern-day Marine amphibious helicopter carrier. Which would be a reasonable position for a person of her rank and age. In Halo 3, she's one of the most senior officers in the UNSC navy by virtue of being one of the only surviving officers in the UNSC navy, the Covenant having almost entirely destroyed Earth and its defending fleet.
- The Spartan-IIs and IIIs are also like this. Master Chief and his fellow IIs were fourteen when they fought their first real battle, while the IIIs were mostly around ten to twelve when they were sent on suicide missions. The IIs in particular are explicitly stated to be recruited for physical and intellectual exceptionalism from a very young age before receiving their chemical, genetic, and bionic augmentations. Some selection also goes on with the IIIs, though not nearly to the same extent.
- Olympia Vale is an expert linguist/diplomat/xenoanthropologist and an elite Spartan-IV operative. In Halo 5: Guardians, she's only 22 years old. This is taken even further during her original pre-Spartan appearance in Halo: Hunters in the Dark, where at age 19 she's already a professional diplomat who gets to be part of an elite task force sent to the Ark.
- In Kingdom Hearts, the characters start at 14 or 15, but look even younger. They save worlds. Plural.
- Knights of the Old Republic. In the second game, 23-year-old Mira chides the male Exile for hitting on her and being too old.
- Bastila's Battle Meditation is the central power responsible for the Republic's ability to battle the Sith, but the most liberal estimates of her age place her in her early twenties. She is, however, the only Jedi alive with her ability. The game acknowledges her age in several ways: she's still a padawan and there are repeated comments to the effect that in peacetime they wouldn't let her outside the enclave without a Master to watch her back. Plus her other abilities kinda suck becuase her training emphasised her unique abilities ahead of combat skills.
- Averted in the second game in the series: Mira, the youngest member of the party, is commonly estimated to be around twenty. The Exile (the player) is a war hero[ine], and is generally agreed to be in his/her late thirties or early forties.
- Chris Avellone puts the ages of Visas, the Disciple and the Handmaiden at 25, and Mira at 23. Considering all the highly accomplished young people out there, the Star Wars universe must have a brutal learning curve.
- Liao Tian-ding, the titular character from The Legend of Tian-ding, is a Gentleman Thief and a Just Like Robin Hood mythical figure who leads the resistance, fights against tyranny of the Japanese, and is revealed to be only 26 in a cutscene. He's based on a real-life historical figure who's indeed that age.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Link is already a master of multiple weapons, including bows, bombs, boomerangs, and swordplay, as well as a few magic spells in some games, but then you take into account that in many games he's no older than 12 years old. Justified. Everything except the bow and sword are completely new or exceedingly rare weapons, so no one is a master, making Link's (limited) ability the best there is with none able to counter. His sword is explicitly stated to be magical (and sentient), and his frequent left-handedness likely gives him a considerable learning-curve advantage. His bow also fires magical arrows.
- There's also Tetra from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, who is the captain of a pirate ship despite being a preteen girl. This is lampshaded by one of her crew members, who jokes that she's actually 35.
- Link's skill is also justified in another way. In each game he is the latest reincarnation of the original hero, and with each generation he retains the skills of the former generations. Add that to how in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Link was a trainee in a knight academy (albeit one with no enemy nations or intense monster threats until the start of the game) it makes sense Link would be at least good enough in most weapons to do what he does in game. Tetra is also justified in the same way, being the latest Zelda, and so a natural leader
- The craziest example is Malo from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. He looks no older than two but talks in complete sentences, walks fine on his own, and runs a successful item shop in Kakariko village; official media pins his age between four and eight. Malo also manages to run a successful fundraising project to rebuild the East Bridge of Castle Town, (although he had help from the Goron elders with this one) and run a second fundraiser to buy the snooty overpriced store in Castle Town for only 200 rupees. For reference, the cheapest item there before the buyout is 10,000 rupees.
- The entire primary casts of the first and second Lunar games (Lucia excepted) are in their teens. In Silver Star, Alex and Luna are 15, Mia and Nash are 16, Jessica is 17, and Kyle is 18; in Eternal Blue, Hiro and Lemina (and NPC Mauri) are 16, Jean is 18, and Leo and Ronfar are 19. Their ages have not stopped Kyle from becoming leader of a group of thieves, Mia carrying rather a lot of responsibility for ensuring the smooth running of the Vane academy, and Leo and Mauri bearing the titles of White Dragon Knight and Red Dragon Priestess respectively.
- Oracle Overlord Pram from Makai Kingdom usurped her father's Netherworld when she was 2 years old.
- Mass Effect: Tali is 22 in the first game, but this is justified as her being a technological savant amongst a race of technological savants, as well as her father being a member of the Admiralty Board, a group of five people that guides their entire civilisation. It does get out of hand in the third game when she's made a member of the Admiralty Board, though. On the other hand, she's 26 or so by the time she's promoted to admiral, and she doesn't think she's really qualified. She never actually commands ships in battle, either; it's more of a political appointment and it's explicitly stated that she only got it because she was both the daughter of the previous admiral and had the most experience fighting geth (thanks to teaming up with Shepard in the previous two games) of any quarian in the fleet.
- Also Mordin Solus's nephew, who is a tenured professor at the age of 16. This is justified as his species has an average lifespan of about 40, making him the equivalent of a human in their mid-30s.
- Ciel from Mega Man Zero is a human who is leading the Reploid La Résistance at the age of 14, after she built Copy X, a near perfect replica of one of the (if not the) most powerful and advanced AIs in the world, at the age of 6. She may be a gene-boosted human, but that's still impressive.
- In the Mega Man Battle Network games, Enzan/Chaud may not be quite as accomplished as his anime counterpart, but he's still a high-ranking Official NetBattler who gets a lot of important missions... only to be shown up by the equally young Player Character Lan, of course. He also skips a lot of grades, to the point where he's starting college when Lan's in sixth grade.
- Metal Gear Solid 3 deliberately goes the opposite direction with 100+-year-old sniper "The End." In one of the series famous No Fourth Wall tricks, you can cause him to die of old age by adjusting your system clock.
- All of the Cobras are an inversion, if they were in their twenties and thirties during World War II, then they would have to be in their forties and fifties during the events of game. Of course, The Boss is a straight example as she was born in 1922. The Cobra Unit was formed in 1941, with her serving as its commander from its formation until the end of the war, meaning she started the war as a special ops commander at 19 and ended the war at 23. This of course has creepy connotations when you consider her relationship with The Sorrow...
- Ocelot, who was a GRU major at 20. (Not entirely implausible... if there was a war going on.) He was raised as a spy by the Philosophers, which makes it a bit more believable. And either way, this seems perfectly normal compared to most of the other examples on this page. Further justified by how he's the son of the Boss and the Sorrow, meaning he has an extremely strong legacy behind him pushing him further than he would get himself.
- While we're on the subject of Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake was mentioned to have been attached to the Green Berets during the Gulf War. As Snake was born in 1972 he would have at most been 19 years old during the war; the age requirement for even being eligible to join the US Special Forces is 20 years old, meaning that Snake would neither be a full member of the Green Berets nor would he even be past basic training. This isn't even getting into the fact that Snake later goes on to join FOXHOUND, which is an analogue for the Delta Force, and is noted to be the most advanced Special Forces Unit America has to offer, at age 23. Snake even defeats Big Boss, the most legendary soldier in the world at 23, and proceeds to defeat Big Boss again at 27. By the time of Shadow Moses Snake is a legendary special ops soldier who has gone on countless missions of extreme national security importance — by the time he was 33, and in fact by that point he had been in retirement for a few years. It says something very poignant and tragic about Snake's life that during a time in his life were most other people are going to college, getting married, or finding stable jobs, he was out saving the world in top secret black ops.
- Big Boss himself is a case of this. Though it should be noted that Big Boss's age has been retconned twice, so while his earlier backstories were not a case of this his current one is. Going by the current canon backstory set by Peace Walker Big Boss was born in 1935, making a great deal of his career improbable and close to outright impossible. He met The Boss (the aforementioned legendary World War II hero) at age 14 and was her apprentice for the next 10 years of his life (1949-1959). Joined the Army at 15 in order to fight in the Korean War, and joined the Green Berets during their formation as a unit in 1952 at 17. In 1964 Big Boss joins the highly elite and top secret unit known as FOX (the precursor to the FOXHOUND unit Solid Snake was a part of) as its original ace operative, at age 29. In the same year, Snake infiltrates Soviet territory to hunt down rogue Russian operatives to prevent a nuclear war, and in the aftermath of the mission's success is awarded the title of Big Boss in order to mark him as The Boss's successor. Additionally Big Boss is given command of the FOX Unit, which he would have to be a ranking officer akin to a Colonel or a General to even be able to touch the authority reigns of such an important unit. Founds the successor organization to FOX, known as FOXHOUND, and becomes its commanding officer at age 36, and please note that one would have to be extremely lucky to be at the appropriate military rank to lead such a unit at that age. Later on during the 80s, when Big Boss resumes his role as commander of FOXHOUND, when at this point Big Boss is in his 50s, his command role in relation to his age begins to become more plausible.
- The little girl Sunny trumps all of them. Introduced in Metal Gear Solid 4 the daughter of Olga is a genius level intellect capable of tinkering with advanced computer technology and robotics on par with the level of Otacon, Snake's resident technology expert, at 7 years old. Things are hardly much better in Metal Gear Rising, where at age 11 she is the employee manager of a space exploration corporation that designs highly advanced aircraft technology, and in addition she has made several aircraft designs of her own while working for the company. Raiden even gets to ride around in an experimental aircraft that she personally designed and helped build that can fly at Mach 30.
- The Metroid series has never specified how old Samus Aran is, but considering that looks like she's in her early 20s, it's a little dubious that she's ex-military and currently the most successful bounty hunter in the galaxy, even taking her superhuman abilities into account. The concept art gallery for Other M gives an age range of 15-17 for her military service.
- In No More Heroes, Henry and Sylvia were married and in college 10 years prior. Since Henry is Travis's twin brother, that would mean that Henry and Sylvia were attending college and got married at around 17.
- Overwatch: Mercy is 37 at the time the game takes place, which would put her at about 32 when Overwatch was originally disbanded. By that age, she'd completed multiple doctorates, rose to prominence working at a Swiss hospital, been recruited by Overwatch, rose to the top of their medical division, and pioneered revolutionary healing technology with her Valkyrie suit and staff. The timeline of Mercy's past is a bit of a Continuity Snarl, as Mercy was originally conceived as being part of the same generation as Soldier 76 and Reaper (which would have put her around 60) but appearing eternally young as a side-effect of her healing tech. This ended up being scrapped, and the developers decided to just make her the age she appeared, but they didn't update her history accordingly. As a result, Mercy apparently blitzed through her pre-Overwatch career in record time.
- Nanako from Persona 4 is 6 years old, and she's already doing all the cooking and laundry and grocery shopping by herself. She's forced to do it because her mother's dead and her father is always working late, and the game makes it clear her knowing all this stuff at such an age is rather strange.
- Chaz of Phantasy Star IV begins the game a fully-fledged hunter at sixteen and (except for Rika, who is 1 year old, being a genetically engineered Numan) the youngest member to join the party. Gryz is a hardened warrior at eighteen, and Kyra is a mysterious, powerful, and famous Esper at nineteen. Although the game says his age is unknown, for comparison's sake, Rune is twenty-four, though having the memories of the greatest of Espers lodged in his head does make judging his functional age a bit dodgy.
- Sienna in Phantom Brave was fighting Sulphur 30 years ago. She doesn't look a day over 27. Marona does it at age 13, so...
- Pokémon:
- Certainly Pokémon is famous for this, given that you generally take down a criminal syndicate as an 11-year-old, but they continue it in Gen. IV with Cyrus. He's the Big Bad of the Sinnoh region, has a legion of minions, uncovered legends and science that show how to ascend to godhood, solves one of the biggest questions the fanbase had (see his report about Poké Balls hampering power), has made more money than he knows what to do with, and did I mention he's stated directly to be 27 years old? And it gets better — an agent comments that they haven't gotten a promotion in five years. Barring an unspoken previous leader, Cyrus had the team up and running by the time he was TWENTY-TWO. Although there's an in-game reason given for this: he was pressured from a young age to be perfect, and it's said to have caused his mental breakdown. Think about that next time you battle 14-year-old Red, who's already become a hermit.
- The spin-off Pokémon Conquest actually lampshades this: Mori Motonari mentions the protagonist is much younger than he expected, and starts to wonder whether he's the old guard on his way out. (Judging by his looks, he's in his twenties at the very most).
- As mentioned, the protagonist is this. Trainers spend decades becoming powerful trainers yet the protagonist, who is eleven at youngest and never over eighteen, defeats criminal organizations and becomes champion despite just receiving their Pokémon. A few other powerful trainers are similarly young, like Iris or your rivals.
- A particularly extreme example is Poppy in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, who's a member of the Elite Four despite the fact that she looks and acts like a pre-schooler.
- In Princess Maker 2, when statting your own viewpoint character, you can set his age as low as eleven, just one year older than his adoptive daughter at the start of the game. He's a hero who defeated Lucifer and his horde and saved the kingdom all by himself, potentially before hitting puberty. (This also makes the option to marry your own adoptive daughter much less questionable.) And then there's also the things your daughter can accomplish before hitting eighteen, and the various endings (court mage, queen, queen of Hell)...
- [PROTOTYPE]'s Director McMullen had his doctorate in genetics at age 20, and founded Gentek the following year. However, while he could have been a prodigy, his age is only mentioned once in the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot, so it's entirely possible that the writers simply screwed up the math on his birth date, and the editors neglected to call them on it.
- Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale: Recette is maybe 13 years old at oldest and opens up her own item shop. Justified though due to her Disappeared Dad leaving her no real choice and having Tear to guide her.
- In Renowned Explorers, two of the daring, globe-trotting adventurers are Hildegard, a 14-year-old magician who acts it, and Min-Jeong, a 12-year-old bureaucrat's daughter who is as serious as any adult. They still get into the same dangerous scrapes and adventures as the adult crew members, and nobody holds back against them. They can even be made expedition captain, though more serious characters will take a debuff due to the sheer absurdity of it all. (One such serious character is Min-Jeong herself; while she's perfectly content to be captain, she complains about having to "babysit" Hildegard, a girl two years her senior, if Hildegard is captain.)
- Many have commented that every main character in the original Resident Evil title is about ten years too young for the palette of skills at their disposal. Chris Redfield is an ex-Air Force fighter pilot and member of a crack police unit at 25. Jill Valentine is ex-Delta Force (a unit which does not admit women) at 23. Rebecca Chambers graduated from college, having specialized in pharmacy, which is a graduate-level program, at 18. By the second game, the main characters' backstories seemed to mesh a little bit better with their given ages; Claire is a 19-year-old college student and Leon a 21-year-old rookie cop.
- The Umbrella Corporation also tended to hire people at ridiculously young ages to work on their super-secret bioweapons program: Wesker was seventeen, Birkin was fifteen, and Alexia Ashford was ten. They had all, apparently, graduated from college with advanced degrees by this time (at least Wesker gets a built-in Hand Wave, being engineered from birth to have capabilities far above those of a normal human).
- Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love has Cheiron/Sagitta, who is a 21-year-old lawyer. (She's also black in the year 1928. And somehow also has time to be a famous actress, the leader of a biker gang and a soldier in an elite military unit. One wonders how she manages to fit sleeping into that schedule.)
- Rosita is an actor and bounty hunter at age 11.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Charmy and Espio are a 6-year-old and a 16-year-old who work as detectives together.
- Shadow is physically and mentally in his teens (he was born a little over 50 years ago, but spent most of his life cryogenically frozen) while his partner Rouge is eighteen. The two are part-time GUN agents who work for the government (and Rouge is a seasoned jewel thief as well).
- 8-year-old Tails is a Child Prodigy scientist and inventor. He has no know parents, lives alone, and has been living along prior to meeting Sonic.
- Indeed, barring Eggman (an old man) and Shadow (who as mentioned above was in stasis for a few decades), most of the characters in the games are almost all in their mid-to-late teens, and a few are even younger. In fact, assume they're around 15 if you don't see them here: Charmy and Cream (6), Marine (7), Tails (8), Amy (12), Sonic (15), Knuckles (16), Rouge and Big (18), Vector (20), and Vanilla (unknown, mother of Cream). And almost every last one of these guys has contributed to saving the world at least twice, with the exception of Marine, who only showed up in Sonic Rush Adventure, and Vanilla, who doesn't really do much. Especially Tails, who has been absent from a grand total of two games since his first appearance. Most of these ages at least make some sense in the context of their first appearances, but the idea that they haven't aged at all over the course of the series is, er... questionable.
- Soulcalibur:
- Seung Mina is sixteen when she goes on her quest in the first game (although her Tomboyish personality is meant to show that she's immature) and it's said she's refused into the military because of her gender rather than age. Her father runs a dojo, and she has trained there since she was a child, explaining how she got her battle prowess.
- Sophitia was likewise only eighteen in the first game when she was chosen by the Greek Gods to destroy the Soul Edge. As of the Soul Calibur game, it's canon that she made it further than most of the other characters.
- Talim is only fifteen when she's introduced in the third game, and is already a priestess in her village, not to mention wielding lots of power over the winds. Her personality is a mixture of Wise Beyond Her Years and The Ingenue.
- In the SSX games, many of the competitors are just teenagers, with Kaori Nishidake at only 17 in SSX 3... but Griff Simmons takes the cake by only being 11 years old. To be fair, this seems slightly less unlikely when you realize he was based on Ryan Sheckler, who won gold at the X-Games in real life when he was only 14.
- Fox McCloud is an ace Airwing pilot despite being only 18 years old in Star Fox 64 (and not sounding or looking anything like his age). Same for his teammates Falco Lombardi and Slippy Toad, who are respectively 19 and 18 years old — although Slippy actually manages to look and sound twelve at most. This was only after the series reboot though; their official age in the first game made more sense (Fox was 25, Falco was 28 and Slippy was 19).
- Star Trek: Armada: Sela, who is in her 20s, is made admiral in spite of her failures in the TV series.
- Super Mario Bros.: Not only are the Mario bros much younger than their moustaches let on, but they've also have had many accomplishments and a life full of careers than someone of their age ranges typically should.
- Not only is Mario a plumber, but he's also has been an accomplished carpenter, construction worker, referee, go-kart racer, tennis player, fighter, physician, pilot, painter, Olympian, and certified MD all at the age of 26 (or in some cases, manages to be a Jackof All Trades at 24)! The same can be said for Luigi who has also done just as much, if not all the things on the aforementioned list. That said, in our universe it takes about two-five years for plumbing apprenticeship training; as for being a certified doctor, it takes up to four years to earn a medical degree. In the Mushroom Kingdom universe, the vast majority of "medical practice" that Mario does is throw pills at viruses via Tetris style and make sure the colors match up. By those standards you could probably get a degree in that in less than four years!
- There hasn't been any specific source on just how old Princess Peach may be, but from her appearance she seems to be in her early-mid 20s. And yet she's running an entire kingdom (or supposingly, anyways).
- Super Robot Wars: Original Generation: the only underage regular pilots in the EFA are those children, all other pilots are at least 18.There are some other underage pilot. The platoon leaders get they positions after superior officers defect or refuse the command responsibility. With the ship captains, Lefina received Hiryu Kai on "training basis" with Sean as an XO who has experience and authority to take command when he see fit. Tetsuya is the only person who has enough experience to command a Space Noah after the defection of Lee and Daitetsu's death. He even proved himself when temporarily take command Kurogane.
- In Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, the last chapter likely ends up with your character being the leader of a faction fighting for control of a country at age 17-18. Now it does make a little more sense in the context of the plot and what has led up to there, but still try imagining such a thing.
- Tales of the Abyss plays with this trope.
- Van Grants looks a lot older than 27, and yet he's The Leader Oracle Knights because he's powerful and charismatic . He got a lot of flak for it when he was first promoted, and so he grew a beard to make people think he was older than he really was.
- Jade Curtiss was capable of Fonic Artes (i.e. magic) that would take an adult decades to fully master at a young age and was adopted into a military family who noticed his talents, but despite this he's never stepped beyond Colonel (he's 35 at the time of the story). Dis Motivation is implied to have a role in this as he claims 'I have my hands full just being a colonel'.
- Luke, The Protagonist is 7 years old because he's a clone but looks more like seventeen and a skilled swordsman because he has nothing better to do than practice all day.
- The head of the most powerful organization (the Order of Lorelei) is 14 years old. And actually two due to being a replica like Luke. His guard is only thirteen as well. And Tear is 16 and yet a somewhat experienced sergeant in the order as well. Improbable Age seems to run rampant in Auldrant.
- Tales of Xillia does the same thing: the hero, Jude, is a medical student close to graduation...at age fifteen. Milla, an incredibly powerful magic swordsman is only 20. Gaius won a fighting tournament at age twelve and then went on to make a name for himself in a war soon after that and, discounting spoilers, managed to become king at age 22. Elize, who is only twelve, is an incredibly talented and powerful spirit artes user though she has the benefit of Teepo being a booster and thus increasing her output.
- The sequel continues the trend with Julius being a top agent for Spirius at age 28 and supplementary materials reveals he's been active since he was a preteen. Jude now has a medical degree and is the top researcher for spyrites...one whole year later from the first game.
- The Tiamat Sacrament: Az'uar, a baby dragon, is capable of becoming a powerful combatant not long after he hatches. While he does have the advantage of Blood Memory to make himself more skilled and intelligent, he's still somehow able to take down the strongest adult dragons with nothing but a few humans on his side. Xetoa acknowledges that if every dragon had Az'uar's growth rate, they probably would have won the war against Ry'jin. By the Final Boss fight, Az'uar is only a week old.
- Most of the plot-important doctors in Trauma Center are considered the best surgeons in their fields and are anywhere from in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
- Gary has been a vampire for approximately forty years. For most vampires, this is about the time when their seniors believe that they are mature enough to start acting independently and can be trusted to not screw up if their hands aren't held. Gary told that to go hang and became the leader of the Nosferatu in Los Angeles, and one of the major power-players in the city, instead.
- LaCroix is also young for a Camarilla prince (one hundred eighty is no spring chicken, but not Elder by any standard of the millennia-old Camarilla), especially given the size and potential power of his domain. In his case, it's possibly justified by the implication that he's been Kicked Upstairs and Reassigned to Antarctica by being given a 'princedom' with no actual power or influence attached.
- To a certain degree the PC (though that's likely for the sake of creating satisfying RPG progression). They're Embraced right at the beginning of the game, and even by the end, a few months at most have come to pass. That's practically being a newborn by vampiric standards, yet they have potentially mastered Disciplines that would usually take decades to master, and can earn the genuine respect of many of their elders. To boot, they can land themselves a cushy position as Sheriff (basically second-in-command to the Prince) for Strauss, should they side with him. Likewise, they can earn second-in-command to Nines (or at the very least, gaining some sort of figurehead status or Barony) within the LA Anarchs, should they side with them.
- Done in World of Warcraft depending on the player's race. While some are adults (and in the case of Draenei, likely thousands of years old), Tauren, Orcs, and Trolls player-characters are all explicitly stated as starting their adventures as soon as they come of age (which seems to be mid-teens). So, come Mists of Pandaria, Lorewalker Cho is right when he identifies the player as an old veteran in a young warrior's body. Your character is canonically in their early 20s at best but has already slain enough Eldritch Abominations that it's routine.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X: The "top, all-around fix-it gal for BLADE" is a 13-year-old girl. It quickly becomes clear that she's more than competent enough for her job, and given the situation New LA is in, they can't afford to not take advantage of every able engineer they can get. Played a little more realistically in that Lin is noted in-universe to be an exceptional genius (she is the only under-18 character in the entire city), and she's far from perfect, making a number of big mistakes in her primary project that almost cause the whole thing to get scrapped. Her emotional maturity is also rather lacking: she's the first to make impulsive, irrational decisions, and she doesn't keep a lid on her negative emotions and stress as well as most of the adult characters do.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Due to the fact that everyone is born at ten years old and dies ten years later, some of the character timelines end up looking a little improbable. Teach's tragic backstory sounds more like something you would expect from a forty year-old veteran, not a nineteen year-old man, even if he has been serving in active duty for nine years. Segiri is even worse, as she is physically twelve, but talks about how she's been part of the Secret Police and her sister disappeared a long time ago. Colony 0's timeline is so confusing that one common theory is that they are aware of the cycle of reincarnation, so they know they've been doing their jobs for centuries.
Visual Novels
- In real life, one can reasonably expect to start a career in law in their late twenties. In Ace Attorney, on the other hand?
- Only four of the attorneys in the original trilogy appear to be out of their twenties: Winston Payne, Marvin Grossberg, Godot, and Manfred von Karma.note Of course, considering all the other idiosyncrasies of the justice system as presented in the games, ridiculously young attorneys are pretty much par for the course. In some places it's possible to be a lawyer without going through grad school, but really, it's all just handwaved.
- In some characters' cases this is Hand Waved by saying they went were born/raised/went to school in Germany, that land of remarkably progressive laws and very easy bar exams. Miles Edgeworth debuted at 20, Franziska von Karma debuted at 13, and Klavier Gavin was a lawyer and a rockstar at age 17.
- Lana Skye was 29 and Chief Prosecutor. Two years before that, she was a highly ranked and very well respected detective who was only getting ready to become a prosecutor in the first place. Also, she is shown wearing 3 Prosecutor of the Year awards, despite being a prosecutor for only 2 years. Simon Blackquill had to have started prosecuting some time before he was twenty-one, when he was arrested, and since his courtroom tactics are so well-known even after seven years in prison, it's likely he started sooner rather than later.
- The defense attorneys get hit with this trope too. Mia Fey passed her bar exam by the time she was 23, and had her own law office by the time she was 27. Her protégé Phoenix joins her at 24. Apollo Justice himself is even younger than Phoenix when he becomes a lawyer (22), but Athena Cykes beats all of them by joining the Wright Anything Agency at 18. (Also Hand Waved by her studying in Europe.) Kristoph Gavin was also famous and well-established by 25. Calisto Yew was 22 when Edgeworth met her, and she'd been practicing law for at least a couple of years. Not that she was actually a lawyer, but nobody seemed to doubt she was one due to age or incompetence.
- This doesn't just apply to those with careers in law. Adrian Andrews is a 23-year-old manager, Ron DeLite, a 22-year-old Chief of Security, Valerie Hawthorne was a policeman at 18...
- Dual Destinies also reveals that there's a law school known as the Themis Legal Academy that teaches students to be attorneys, prosecutors, and judges at high-school ages. One of the students at Themis is actually 25, having been held back repeatedly for seven years. In our world, 25 would still be fairly young for a senior law student, but everyone in-universe is shocked by how old he is. Considering that Klavier and Sebastian Debeste from Investigations 2 are both confirmed alumni of Themis and both began prosecuting at age seventeen, lawyers and judges in their late teens may actually be the norm in the Ace Attorney universe.
- All of this is parodied in an Awkward Zombie strip.
- In The Great Ace Attorney prequel spin-off duology, we have our most ridiculous example yet in Iris Wilson,note a famed and prolific novelist and certified medical doctor... at the age of ten. In the Victorian Era. On the other hand, the lawyers themselves finally take a step towards avoiding the trope: while they're still in their early twenties, Ryunosuke and Kazuma are explicitly still university students getting on-field experience rather than fully-fledged professionals. They're still fairly improbable, Ryunosuke being an English major who got the job after mere weeks of studying law after Kazuma, the actual law student, is left for dead due to an unfortunate accident but that doesn't have anything to do with his age anymore.
- The trope is is occasionally deconstructed; Athena is skilled legally but her lack of emotional maturity means it's fairly easy to bully her into a breakdown in court, and Sebastian Debeste is something of a doofus who's in way over his head. And the only reason Sebastian passed his classes and the bar so young is because his father bribed his teachers to give him good grades.
- Danganronpa: This trope is pretty much central to the setting, as Hope's Peak Academy looks for students who are high-school aged and match or exceed adults in their area of expertise, with some talents being more ridiculous than others.
- In the first game: Byakuya Togami has made billions in day trading, just for side money. He implies that his family is so powerful that just being a Togami is enough to participate in the stock market as a teen. Chihiro Fujisaki is a programmer good enough to create a functional AI on an old laptop in a few days' time. Toko Fukawa is a bestselling romance author. Celestia Ludenberg makes most of her gambling money in underworld tournaments because she's too young to do it legally. And Sakura Oogami may look like she's in her thirties, but she is in fact a teenager who can defeat adult martial arts masters.
- In the second game, Teruteru is a chef with 3 Michelin stars (the youngest chef to earn his 3 stars in reality was Marco White at 33), and Peko Pekoyama acts as a bodyguard and hitman.
- The third game: Kaito Momota is a trainee astronaut, and had to fake a college degree to get into the space program. Ryoma Hoshi went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the mafia with his tennis skills. Korekiyo Shinguji has traveled the world as an anthropologist. Tsumugi Shirogane already enjoys corporate sponserships for her cosplay work. Kirumi Tojo is a hypercompetent maid and Team Mom, not to mention de facto Prime Minister of Japan. Maki Harukawa is an assassin. Miu Iruma is a reknowned inventor, and if Kokichi Oma is to be believed (and he probably shouldn't be), he's the leader of a Nebulous Evil Organization with world-spanning influence.
- The crowning examples of this trope would have to be the Ultimate Despair Sisters. Mukuro Ikusaba was a member of an elite Private Military Contractor group as a young teen, and was such a good fighter that she was never hurt in combat. Junko Enoshima ended up causing an Apocalypse How while still in her teens.
- In Everlasting Summer, the majority of the romanceable characters look, act, and are treated as if they are in their late teens. A disclaimer at the start of the game even claims that none of the heroines in the game are over the age of 18. Yet they are all members of a youth group called the Young Pioneers, note a group which has a membership age range from 10 — 15.
- In the May-be Soft comedy Patvessel, Hikari, a hopeless 18-year-old Genki Girl, is installed as the captain of a city patrolling(...) fully functional battleship because her father is the chief of police. At her age, much less her level of experience, she really shouldn't be doing that.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Tedd, a high school student, is being given a government funded lab to study the recent changes to magic.
- This is, understandably, a shock to Tedd himself and his friends when they find out but, as is explained, Tedd actually is the most qualified person available due to being a budding scientist who is also a seer (an extremely rare person who can literally see how magic works) and already having demonstrated an aptitude to study the relevant things.
- This is, understandably, a shock to Tedd himself
- Messenger: Akiara is a 17-year-old warrior. Justified given the Post-Apocalyptic setting.
- In morphE, the 19-year-old Amical is a Master-level mage and a high-ranking member of Magical Society with a huge manor house, lots of wealth, and some extremely valuable magical assets. Word of God reveals that it's a subversion: he's actually over 100 years old, thanks to a Deal with the Devil preserving his youth.
- Questionable Content: By age 19, Liz has been working at a prestigious research institute for two years, and had two doctorates when she started. Lampshaded and handwaved as "it shouldn't even be possible but she did it anyway". However, even Child Prodigies aren't immune to burnout, and she's spent those two years hiding in her office.
- In Strong Female Protagonist, Paladin — a.k.a. Professor Lisa Bradley — is 21. But since she's been designing cutting-edge technology since she was 15, the heads of the New School overlooked her lack of a doctorate in making her head of the new Robotics Department.
- The main protagonist of Teenage Mercenary, Ijin Yu, was found after a plane crash at 8 years old and turned into one of the world's best special forces operators. By the time he is returned to his family in South Korea at age 18, he is effectively as skilled and experienced as members of actual military special forces throughout the world and routinely beats adults much older than he is who usually underestimate his combat skills due to his age.
Web Original
- The crew of Galactiquest's Celestion-5 are making the first trip to Neptune despite at least half of the crew being under 20. Their eighth member takes this further, being 15 years old when he first joins.
- Teliha from Phaeton is not just an expert on the field of monsters, she is powerful enough to bind souls to machines, break the bonds of mind and body, and bound countless enigmoids to her will before she's even appeared, and when she did, she was 12. Justified since she's been fighting in such a world since three months of age.
- For Reddit, this has been commonly referenced as one of the (many) signs that a story might be fake. There seems to be an amazing amount of people writing in who are in their early 20s and yet drawing "six figures" (even typing that expression in might get you an automated bot response) and have established houses as a result of their hugely successful careers despite growing up in under-priveliged households. Despite being such amazing prodigies, these people decide to visit a website with a large teen audience to ask for advice. Ditto goes for people who are well into adulthood (30s, 40s, or sometimes much higher) who nonetheless "pitch a fit", "have a meltdown", or "burst into tears" at the slightest inconvenience or have something that doesn't go their way. While there are indeed a few people of this age that might react in such a way, they typically would have long-known personality disorders that would make the most recent occasion unremarkable.
Web Videos
- Jeremiah Arkham in The Joker Blogs looks too young to have even finished medical school, let alone be married and running his family's asylum.
- The Scootertrix the Abridged versions of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, are generals in the Equestrian military, despite still being in elementary school.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Benders such as Zuko, Toph, Azula, and Katara, as well as Badass Normals such as Sokka, the Kyoshi Warriors, the rest of Ozai's angels, Jet and his freedom fighters are all incredibly powerful and trained, but are still teenagers somehow capable of fighting on equal terms against adults who have years, if not decades, of experience over them.
- Most Avatars before Aang came along were informed of their status at 16 and spend the better part of a decade mastering their various abilities afterward. Aang was told he was the Avatar at twelve, put himself in deep freeze a few months later at most, then spent the next year after thawing out seeking instruction in bending, making up the rest as he went along.
- Sequel series The Legend of Korra has the main cast start out as slightly older, and Korra at least has had her life dedicated to training as the Avatar since she was 4. However, the Fire Ferrets Pro-Bending team become champions with a team of people who are 16, 17 and 18, and Mako (the 18-year-old) joins the police force during the six months between Seasons 1 and 2. Asami is also 18, is an expert driver that can outperform anyone (granted, automobiles are only about as old as SHE is) and goes from spoiled kid to savvy leader of her father's company, struggling to make up for the reputation his siding with the Equalists saddled them with.
- Season 4 averts this trope, as the three year time skip put the characters into their early 20s.
- Danny Phantom where 14-year-old Tucker becomes mayor of Amity Park in the Grand Finale. Plenty of "Whaaaa—?!" reactions were commonplace among the fandom, mostly due to the character never once stating any desire for any position remotely similar to that.
- Less Whaaaa—? inducing after the fifteen year old Mayor in the Middle East started making headlines.
- Inversion in DuckTales (2017): Scrooge is explicitly more than a century old, but remarkably active for someone that age, and his immediate relatives are far younger than makes sense for this to be true.note His life is explicitly artificially extended by supernatural means.
- Parodied on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, when the leader of the Dinobonoids on Billy's favorite cartoon is a boy about 12 years old, yet goes by the title of "Professor".
- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) featured Teela as the captain of the royal guard at age 16.
- Jane and the Dragon. The castle gardener, Rake, is 13. The cook, Pepper, is 12. The jester, Jester, and the blacksmith, Smithy, are 14. There's no suggestion they're apprentices or assistants (unlike Jane herself, who is a knight-in-training under an adult mentor); they're the entire castle staff.
- Jimmy Two-Shoes has 14-year-old Heloise working for Lucius Heinous VII at Misery Inc. as the company's leading product designer and developer. She's actually very good at it, since she is a Teen Genius Mad Scientist even more evil than her boss will ever be.
- At the age of 14, Kim Possible is already established as an international crimefighter. Her Mission Control Wade is 10 and a college graduate, and later, Ron's adopted sister can smack down ninjas at the age of 1 (though she's a Chosen One).
- Cotton Hill from King of the Hill he was 14 when he joined the army having lied to the recruiters telling them he was 18, and his many badass feats during World War II up to when his shins were blown off were accomplished when he was around 15 or 16.
- The Loud House:
- The lead character's second youngest sister, Lisa, is only four and is said to have finished school up through getting a PhD. Downplayed in later seasons, where she's retconned into attending kindergarten at the same school Lincoln attends as a 5th-grader, albeit still with a genius level IQ.
- Perhaps one of the more mundane examples on the list, due to it being a lifestyle instead of anything outright career related, but Lincoln and Lisa's sister, Lucy, is an 8-year-old Goth. Whereas how in Real Life, most people who are into the scene don't really get into the style until they enter adolescence and start actively trying to form an identity.
- Mike Chilton in Motorcity is 17, yet he's a Badass Driver despite only having been able to drive for a year (unless you assume he drove illegally in the past). Not only that, but he's also a very skilled fighter. As the leader of the Burners, he already has a reputation, yet most who have heard of him rarely comment on his young age. He apparently worked for Kane a year earlier, yet back then he was accomplishing alot, which makes you wonder how old he was when he joined.
- Phineas and Ferb invokes this trope in the name of comedy. Whenever someone asks the two titular characters Once an Episode whether they're too young to be doing whatever absurdly ambitious project they have planned this time, Phineas responds with a deadpan "Yes. Yes we are." Hey, Refuge in Audacity works.
- Lampshaded in one episode, where one of the delivery guys apologizes for the other delivery guy asking the question and states that the guy who asked is new to the job.
- Also used on the other end of the spectrum when a character is doing something they should have outgrown.
- Pound Puppies (1980s) has Holly owning a puppy pound despite being about 12. Averted in Season 2 where her aunt Katrina owns the pound.
- Parodied in Recess where Jared is a literal Mr Perfect and better than everyone else at anything. The end reveals that he needs to help the president again and pilots his own jet to get there. He's 9 years old.
- The Simpsons:
- "E Pluribus Wiggum" has Ralph Wiggum running for the US presidency even though the minimum age is 35 years and he never went to electoral college. Lazily explained with Bart explaining that under the Bush administration, the U.S. Constitution has been rendered meaningless.
- Deconstructed in "Springfield Up", which shows the origin story of Eleanor Abernathy aka the Crazy Cat Lady: at a young age, she aspired to be both a doctor and a lawyer, and by age 24, Eleanor already acquired her degrees and became both. However, by age 32, she was getting burned out from the stress of having both occupations, and we see her getting her first cat. Skipping ahead to age 40, and she's since become the Crazy Cat Lady.
- South Park thrives on this trope, especially in the later seasons.
- Tintin in The Adventures of Tintin (1991) but maybe he's an incredibly well preserved runt ...
- In the non-canonical novel, he has a genetic condition that keeps him as an early teen. When he considers the complexities of adult life, he considers this a blessing.
- Marissa Faireborn in The Transformers, commander of Earth Defence Command. While her age is never explicitly stated, certain details mean she cannot be older than 20 (though the Japanese continuity allows her to be as old as 25, and possibly a former Idol Singer).
- In Transformers: Animated one of the minor human villains is Professor Penny Princess, who rides a flying mechanical pony and uses girly-style high-tech weapons, yet doesn't seem to be any more then 8 to 10 years old.
- Work It Out Wombats!: In "Cafe Chaos," Duffy sprains her ankle and has to stay home from cooking at the Eat 'N Greet, leaving Kaya to try to cook and wait tables at the same time. Kaya hires Zeke and Louisa to wait tables, even though the both of them are only four years old. Justified, because there was no one else to do the job.
- The Team in Young Justice (2010) goes on covert missions involving delicate international politics and possible death, displaying expert skill at various martial arts and sciences, and that's when they're not fighting alongside superheroes on the side. Not a one was more than 16 when they joined,note and most began their careers even before that — Robin started at NINE.
Real Life
- Five people took down HBGary. The one who social engineered their admin was a 16-year-old girl. A 16-year-old girl was instrumental in taking down a security company that has contracts with the United States government. This is possibly not the real identity however as many of these individuals use fake identities.
- One interesting real fake example comes from the character Robin Sage invented for the purpose of testing how likely it was that people in the defense and intelligence communities actually checked the back stories of people on social networking sites. Her age was stated to be 25 yet she had 10 years of work experience in the cyber security community as well as a degree from MIT. Her name is also taken from the US Army Special Forces final training exercise. In addition her profile picture was taken from a porn website and chosen to look somewhat ambiguously foreign.
- Artur Rimbaud is one of the most acclaimed poets of the 19th century. His first poem was published when he was 15, and he completely gave up creative writing at the age of 20. Rimbaud went on to live for 17 more years, dying at 37, but he wrote no more poetry during those years.
- Brazilian writers Rachel de Queiroz and Clarice Lispector. The first published her novel O Quinze, one of the most important books on Brazilian literature, when she was 20. The latter, who had books published all over the world, including places such as China and Vietnam, and was once called "the Brazilian Franz Kafka" by translator Gregory Rabassa, published her first book, Near the Wild Heart, when she was 23...and wrote it when she was 19.
- It's surprising in Casanova's autobiography how young people started in The Enlightenment — leaving aside all the 13-year-olds he seduced, Casanova was a doctor and almost a priest by the age of 16.
- The French Revolution was a young person's revolution in general, with most of the leaders being in their early-to-middle 30s. The most striking example is Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, elected to the National Convention at the age of 25, having a political career of two years during which time he wrote the Constitution, administered the government with other members of the Committee of Public Safety and served as The Political Officer for the Army of the North taking it from defeat to victory after severe setbacks. He died at the age of 27!
- Napoleon was a subaltern officer at 16 and a Brigadier General at 24 (his studies at the École Militaire took only a bit longer than 1 year). During the Age of Enlightenment, skills and knowledge were held dear by the ruling elite, but they were still expensive to acquire for ordinary people, so anyone who rushed himself through school was needed and they would turn a blind eye to small faults like "he's too young". Napoleon initially didn't have opportunities in the French military because of his Corsican heritage but during the year of 1793-1794 when the Committee of Public Safety was aggressively reforming the army, he like many others found an opportunity thanks to the meritocratic policy of the army.
- Alexander the Great. Conquered most of the known world in his late teens and died just shy of 33.
- During the American Civil War, Colonel Charles R. Ellet at the age of 19 took command of the Cool Steam Ship his father built, the USS Queen of the West. He then wreaked havoc against confederate ships and shipping in the vicinity of Vicksburg.
- George Armstrong Custer started the American Civil War as a Second Lieutenant and was promoted to Major General of volunteers while only in his mid 20s.
- The youngest Civil War general was Galusha Pennypacker, who joined the US Army as a Sergeant at age 16, was promoted to Major a few months later, and was promoted to Brigadier General of volunteers at the age of 20. He became known as the only US general who wasn't even old enough to vote.
- During the American Revolution, French volunteer officer Marquis de Lafayette was 19 when he became a Brigadier General.
- Jimmy Page founded Led Zeppelin in 1968 at the age of 24. Before that, he was offered the role as a guitarist in The Yardbirds in 1964 (though for a variety of reasons, he didn't actually accept until 1966.) Before that he was a prolific session musician, and contributed to several songs which reached #1, and even played a song on a British television show at the age of 13.
- Richard Thompson has something similar in the folk-rock genre, joining Fairport Convention aged 18, recording three hugely influential albums in 1969-1970, and leaving for a solo career aged 21 in 1971.
- Ilya Svetlichnyi was a passable rock drummer at the age of three.
- Martial arts movie star Jet Li won his first gold medal in national wushu competition at the age of twelve, and retired from competition to work as a coach at the age of seventeen (although attaining a black belt only requires a minimum number of years and the hard yards).
- Arkady Gaidar, a Soviet writer, was a regiment commander in the Red Army of the Russian Civil War while he was 16. When the war was over, he became a writer.
- Child mujahideens and similar child "soldiers" are an all-too-common, and tragic, problem in Third World countries facing violent civil conflict.
- George Washington became a Colonel when he was 22. However, he got this post through connections rather than merit. And he botched an assignment so badly that it started a war between France and Britian that eventually became the Seven Years War.
- At 20, Augustus was already a triumvir, one of the three most powerful men in Rome.
- In his twenties Pompey gained the command of three legions, made successful campaigns in Sicily and Africa, and gained his first triumph. He also became consul when he was, by law, several years too young. It was amazingly impressive at the time.
- Scipio Africanus saved his father's life with a heroic charge at the age of 17, was given command of all Roman armies in Hispania at the age of 24, and became consul and defeated Hannibal (widely considered one of the greatest generals EVER) by the time he was 31.
- According to oral tradition, Sundiata Keita was only 18 when he founded the Mali Empire.
- Joan of Arc never got out of her teens at all; she was about sixteen or seventeen when she led the French to a series of victories against the English — and managed to do this without even the advantage of being of noble birth or male.
- Royal Navy Midshipmen did start off at age 12 or so. They could be expected to command men, men 20 years older, as needed, being in the chain of command. This hasn't changed that much in some ways. Officers in their early twenties nominally outrank senior NCOs probably old enough to be their fathers, or sometimes mothers these days, though for the first couple of years they're still considered to be in training and don't have much in the way of real authority. Alleviated somewhat in that officers are supposed to specialize in knowing what to do, and NCOs are supposed to specialize in knowing how. Hence the old saw about the three words that will make a lieutenant into a General being "Carry on, Sergeant."
- Speaking of the UK Armed Forces, they're one of the few countries who still accept 16-year-olds as enlisted recruits, though one has to be over eighteen to be deployed overseas. There's been some talk of raising these limits due to some worrying reports about younger soldiers being more vulnerable to PTSD.
- War tends to do this. The average age of the entire US Armed forces in WWII was 26, but there were entire units where no one (up to and including the CO and senior noncoms) was older than 30. Improbable age promotions mostly tended to happen in specialist units like the commandoes, paratroopers, and air forces where being young enough to withstand the physical demands was an asset; the youngest U.S. General in World War II was 36-year-old paratrooper James "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin. And sometimes Field Promotions just happen to stick after the battle.
- WWII editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin acknowleged this in "Uncle Willy", a cartoon showing a youthful Captain embracing his uncle, a middle-aged infantry private.
- Revolutions amplify this; while this happened from time to time under the ancien régime, with Rocroi being won by a 21-year-old duke of Enghien (a member of the house of Bourbon), Napoleon himself was 24 when he became a general, gained command of the Italian theater of war at 25 and was 27 by the time the Italian campaign ended. Some of his marshals were equally young when they became generals in the republic; about half of them were colonels in their 20s, general officers at 30 or so, and the youngest of the marshals, Davout, got the baton at 34.
- Towards the end of World War 1 boys as young as 13 were being enlisted into the army in the U.K because they were running short of draft-age men who could be spared from their civilian jobs. (To put it in perspective, out of approximately twenty million male British citizens at the time, five and a half million had been drafted and one million had been killed in action by the end of the war.) Offically the age limit was 18, but the recruiters didn't have the luxury of asking too many questions.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower is an interesting case: In WWI he was quickly promoted from Lieutenant to full Colonel and placed in command of the entire US Tank Corps. (His demotion after the war ended was even quicker but they gave him a capitaincy as a consolation prize.) He'd only just made his way back to Colonel by the time WWII broke out but once the US entered the war he was once again quickly promoted (over the heads of many more senior officers) to command Allied forces in Europe.
- Billy Connolly did a bit on about a 22-year-old Feng Shui expert; "When you're twenty-two you're not an expert on any-fucking-thing!"
- Not as incredibly young as most on this page, but Thomas Fairfax became the senior officer in command of the Parliamentarian army during the Three Kingdoms Wars (British Civil Wars) at the tender age of 33. Admittedly the war was conducted largely by people with no prior experience of warfare so anyone talented enough would rise high quickly. It helped that he was also politically acceptable and convenient, less politically minded and more malleable than his elder subordinates Henry Ireton and Oliver Cromwell.
- William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister of Britain at the age of 24. It probably helped that his father previously held the position, but this didn't stop him losing a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons on account of his age, and ignoring it. He would eventually stay Prime Minister for the next 18 years.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a virtuoso musician by the age of four, and was composing small pieces by the age of five. Though he zigzags the trope as he didn't write any of the pieces he is remembered for until well into adulthood.
- Fryderyk Chopin's pieces were being published when he was seven and he was being celebrated as a composer.
- Chess player Garry Kasparov became a master at 14, a Grandmaster at 17 and then the world champion at 22!
- Hou Yifan won the Women's World Chess Championship when she was 16 years old. She achieved the title of Woman FIDE Master at the age of nine.
- Many boxers and other fighters become professionals before they are eighteen.
- Mary Shelley, S.E. Hinton, Georgette Heyer, Gordon Korman and Christopher Paolini all had novels published while still in their late teens.
- Emily Grace Reaves started her own clothing line, the Emily Grace Collection, to be sold by Ooh! La La Couture, at the age of eight.
- Tavi Gevinson was 11 years old when she began her own fashion blog. By age 13, she designed shirts for a London label. The next year, she became a contributor to Vogue, and by 2011 she had launched Rookie, an online publication for teenage girls.
- Évariste Galois, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, started reading doctoral-level maths books like novels while at school, was rejected from France's top mathematical institution because the professors weren't clever enough to understand his work, invented a new and monumentally important branch of mathematics while in prison for revolutionary activity and died aged twenty in a duel over a girl.
- Cracked presents the "5 Shockingly Powerful Kids Who Make You Look Like a Coward." It begins with Johnny and Luther Htoo, twin Child Soldiers who successfully defended their village on their own from an invading army before quickly becoming the leaders of God's Army at the age of nine. It ends with Iqbal Masih, an 11-year-old who escaped slavery and became spokesman for the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (a group dedicated to freeing child slaves), liberating 3,000 children before he was assassinated at the age of thirteen because of his worldwide-renowned fight against child labour. Geez, they make the achievements of several fictional examples look puny in comparison.
- Friedrich Nietzsche at the age of 24 became the Chair of Classical Philology at Basel University. He did not have a Ph.D. and hadn't even completed his doctoral dissertation. He was given the chair almost solely on the recommendation of the philologist Friedrich Ritschl, who had never taught a more talented philologist than Nietzsche. Nietzsche is still the youngest person to have ever held this position.
- There's a belief that the great theorists (mainly in physics and mathematics) make their most ground-breaking discoveries before the age of 30, and work they do after is of lesser importance or merely an elaboration on their early work.
- The younger generation of English Romantics are somewhat renowned for their short, intense lives: John Keats died of tuberculosis at 25, Shelley was lost at sea a month before his thirtieth birthday and Byron made it all the way to 36 before contracting a fatal fever fighting in the Greek War of Independence. All three of them are firmly established as some of the greatest poets of the English language. This also applies to some famous German writers of that era, for instance Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836), Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827), and Georg Büchner (1813-1837).
- Carl von Clausewitz started his military career when he was 12 years old as a lance corporal, got on the first battlefield when not yet 13 and had it cut short by cholera 39 years later as a Major-General. When he began to write On War, he mused that out of 26 years of life by that point, he had spent more than 11 doing war and nothing more.
- Nazi Germany became so desperate for soldiers by the end of the war that they had children who hadn't yet reached puberty put on the front lines.
- Adolf Galland commanded Luftwaffe's fighter force at the age of 29.
- Rob Bottin became a movie special effects artist when he was 14.
- Buster Merryfield only began acting when he reached retirement age, and went on to become a main character in Only Fools and Horses.
- Orson Welles was 24 when he directed Citizen Kane, arguably the greatest movie of all time.
- Bob Clampett and Frank Tashlin were 23 when they became cartoon directors.
- Mikaila Ulmer started up her own brand of lemonade, BeeSweet Lemonade, based off of a family recipe that called for honey and flaxseed as sweetener. She appeared on Shark Tank, got a $60 000 investment, and got her lemonade sold at Whole Foods. She's 11 years old.
- Formula One driver Max Verstappen won his first race at the age of 18. The next youngest, Sebastian Vettel, was 21 when he won his first. Max also holds the record for the youngest driver to test a Formula One car in history. His first test came just three days after his 17th birthday.
- World Rally Championship driver Kalle Rovanperä won his first podium under the top-level WRC category at the age of 18, and if he manages to score his first rally win in the 2020 season, he would dethrone current record-holder Jari-Matti Latvala, who took his first WRC win at the age of 22.
- In many hereditary monarchies there have been instances where teenagers, children, and even infants ascended to the throne, although regents would actually govern in the underage monarch's name until they came of age.
- Poor John I of France lived for a mere five days after he was born (November 15–20, 1316), but he was still technically King of France during that time.
- Legend has it that Shapur II of Persia (309-379) was crowned while still in his mother's womb.
- King Tutankhamen, better known as King Tut, became pharaoh at the age of nine. He ruled for around nine more years before dying.
- Poor John I of France
- Jim Shooter sold his first stories to DC Comics when he was just 13 years old.
- Gerry Conway became the writer of The Amazing Spider-Man at the age of 19.
- Audie Murphy earned the Medal of Honor when he was 19.
- Figure skaters are generally this, starting training as small children and competing their way up from the juniors to senior-level skating, and retiring at an age when most people are thinking seriously about their career. However, from the men's singles discipline we have Yuzuru Hanyu as an extraordinary example: Since he began skating at the age of 4, he's racked up 12 gold medals (including 2 consecutive Olympic ones), 19 broken world records (many of which are his own), become the first skater to successfully land a quadruple loop in competition and is gunning for the quadruple axel (a highly difficult jump which no one has landed in competition) in addition to the quintuple jump, to the pride and exasperation of his coaches/fandom — as he's gotten enough injuries to make a physiotherapist cry, and been in surgery (during which he found out he's allergic to alcohol) after a crash with Yan Han. He's the first male singles skater to achieve a Super Slam, having won all major competitions in his senior and junior career. He's been awarded with medals and honors from the Japanese government as well. At the age of 25 (at this time of writing), he's considered one of the best, if not the best in figure skating history, a consummate skater who combines technique and artistry, and The Dreaded to his competitors (especially people who have to skate directly after him in a competition).
- The Olympic Games have a few sports that are bound to be full of teenagers, namely the ones demanding flexibility such as gymnastics and diving. And yet the debut of skateboarding in the 2020 edition had four of the six female medals won by 13-year-old girls (the other two were 16 and 19; by contrast, none of the male medalists were minors). On the opposite side, less physically demanding sports such as equestrianism and shooting can have very senior athletes, with Canadian rider Ian Millar, who appeared in a record 10 Olympics, winning his only medal at 61.
- Manchester actor Dan Jillings was previously a police officer, and was in fact the youngest policeman in the Greater Manchester Area at the time. He was eighteen.
- Swedish Greta Thunberg became one of the most influential environmental activist at 15 and the youngest Time Person of the Year at 17 and got two nominations for for Nobel Peace Prize.
- Huo Qu Bing was a famous general of the Western Han dynasty. He spent almost all his life battling the Xiongnu and winning decisive battles. By the time he died he was one of the most decorated military commanders in Chinese history. Oh, and did we mention he died when he was only 23?
- Another famous Chinese military leader was Princess Pingyang, also known as General Zhao. She raised and commanded her own army to capture Chang'an and help her father seize power. When she died she was given a grand military funeral, something no other woman had been given before. Her exact age is uncertain, but like Huo Qu Bing she died in her twenties.
- Princess Pingyang's brother Taizong of Tang was only in his late teens to early 20s when he consolidated Tang rule by taking part in several major campaigns to reunify China, and was the most highly honoured commander at 23.
- Gao Chang Gong was one of the greatest generals in all of Chinese history. His most famous feat was defeating an enemy army of 100,000 with his army of 500 — a feat he accomplished when he was 23,note and he was already a distinguished commander by that time.
- Ketevan Andronikashvili was only 24 when she personally led 300 cavalrymen in the Battle of Ghartiskari, won the battle, and was greeted with full military honours when she returned to Tbilisi.
