[[quoteright:300:[[Manga/CaptainHarlock https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/harlocktoshiro_36.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Captain Harlock and his best friend.]]

AliceAndBob are your ordinary action cartoon protagonists, drawn perhaps between five and seven heads high: not quite a HeroicBuild, but roughly approximating real life proportions. The audience is meant to empathize with them, so their appearance is pretty typical as humans go, and so is that of most of their friends.

But here comes their good pal Charlie, and something's off about him. He's not quite a {{Gonk}}, but his looks are totally at odds with the style in which Alice and Bob are drawn -- he's anywhere from just a single head shorter than the "normal" characters, to a mere one head tall. His face is drawn in a more comical style, with some features exaggerated beyond the norm, with a GagNose or [[BeadyEyedLoser beady eyes]] where other characters have petite noses and wide eyes. Although he stands out at first, there are other characters here and there who match his design standards, so he's not an example of NonStandardCharacterDesign, especially since Alice and Bob don't seem to see anything unusual about his appearance. In [[{{Pun}} short]], Charlie is a Cartoonish Companion.

Cartoonish Companions are distinct from SuperDeformed types and other FunSize characters in that they are rarely deliberately cute, and although some gags may play on their diminutive stature, their looks are rarely noted as anything unusual within their world.

They are often {{Sidekick}}s or PluckyComicRelief. MiniatureSeniorCitizens is a subtrope.

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!!Examples:

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[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* ''Manga/GetterRobo'':
** Musashi, the first Getter 3 pilot was [[{{Gonk}} gonkier]] and shorter than the other pilots, looking pretty out-of-place, although later adaptations tend to draw him less cartoony and more stout.
** Benkei's just a little less shorter and stouter than Ryoma and Hayato, and Gai towers over all the others.
** Even Benkei Musashibo, the CompositeCharacter from ''New Getter Robo'', which is quite a feat since '''everyone''' in that series (Benkei included) looks halfway between badass and AxCrazy at all times.
* Chitan of ''Manga/KatteNiKaizo'' is a perfect/totally straight example of this.
* Creator/LeijiMatsumoto: Tetsuro from ''Manga/GalaxyExpress999'', Tochiro from ''Manga/CaptainHarlock'', and Baryl from ''Anime/Interstella5555'' are broad-mouthed, beady-eyed, plump, and half the height of their otherwise tall, slender, and fine-featured comrades.
* ''Anime/OhEdoRocket'': Roughly half the main cast stands less than half the height of the remaining cast.
* Creator/OsamuTezuka: Leaving aside how he [[AuthorAvatar drew himself]], Tezuka's [[ReusedCharacterDesign star system]] is littered with characters of this sort, especially Professor Ochanomizu and Shunsaku Ban.
* In ''Manga/EvenAMonkeyCanDrawManga'', it is "recommended" ([[FauxToGuide all of the "rules" in the work are actually cliches that the authors think shouldn't be done]]) that the shonen hero's comic sidekick be one of these.
* In Tetsuya Hasegawa's ''Napoleon'' manga, in stark contrast with the HeroicBuild everyone else sports (including real-life lightweights such as Talleyrand or Masséna), Berthier is depicted as extremely short (admittedly, the real Berthier was short as well, but certainly not two heads shorter than Napoleon) and his facial expressions are even more exaggerated than those of other characters.
* Dino & Mite, the henchman of Petra Fina Dagmar from ''Anime/FlintTheTimeDetective'', are neither "normal" nor SuperDeformed like the rest of the cast is. This is a bit of a plot point, as it's revealed in the final episodes that they are actually an eel and frog freed from a lab and made humanoid by Petra. Nonetheless, before this reveal no one questioned why they look like they do. Even their human disguises as school personnel never raised any eyebrows and those disguises are little more than a palette swap!
* In ''Anime/TheMysteriousCitiesOfGold'', Tao, Sancho, and Pedro are drawn in such a way that they don't quite fit the "normal" art style of the show.
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[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''ComicBook/{{Bone}}'': The three Bone cousins are blobby cartoon characters who obey cartoon logic (like Fone Bone's head assuming the shape of a pie when Phoney shoves it into his mouth). Everybody else is drawn in a more realistic, though stylized, fashion. This is due to the influence of classic comic strips like ''ComicStrip/{{Pogo}}'' and ''ComicStrip/LilAbner'' on Creator/JeffSmith.
* ''DC Comics'' writers and artists like to [[PlayingWith play with]] this in the appearance of [[GreatGazoo Fifth Dimension imps]] like ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'''s Bat-Mite and Mister Mxyzptlk of ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''. How strange they appear to ordinary humans varies from writer to writer.
* ComicBook/GreenLantern: [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] Green Lantern Alan Scott's frequent companion Doiby Dickles was so much shorter than the ordinarily proportioned villains that he had to jump up to properly place his fists when getting into a brawl.
* Of the ComicBook/MetalMen, Gold and Platinum are the closest to humans in terms of design. {{Justified|Trope}} in that they are all robots.
* ComicBook/PlasticMan: Woozy Winks lived up to his role as the PluckyComicRelief to a PluckyComicRelief superhero by having an even more absurdly cartoonish appearance than a [[RubberMan man made of living rubber]].
* In the old ''ComicBook/TheSpirit'' comics, The Spirit's sidekick was a very cartoonish, minstrel-looking black kid named Ebony White.
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[[folder:Films -- Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast'': Belle and Gaston are realistically designed, while the other villagers are slightly more cartoony, emphasizing the former two characters' attractiveness. However, Gaston's lackey Lefou takes the cake; he can only reach to Gaston's waist, has huge googly eyes, a pink bulbous nose, and buck teeth that would look more reasonable on WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}}.
* ''WesternAnimation/EightCrazyNights'': Whitey is about half the size of any other adult.
* In the Fleischer's ''WesternAnimation/GulliversTravels'' (1939), Gulliver is drawn hyperrealistically through rotoscoping, the Prince and Princess are drawn fairly realistically from models, and the rest are drawn in cartoony styles.
* In ''WesternAnimation/SnowWhiteAndTheSevenDwarfs'', Snow White, the Prince, the Queen, and the Huntsman are drawn in a serious, "realistic" style, and have five fingers. The dwarfs--well, they are dwarfs, but they hardly come up past Snow White's knees, and are drawn in a more comical, cartoony style with FourFingeredHands.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'', most of the cast are fairly realistically proportioned, with the exception of the FatAndSkinny Egyptian priests Hotep and Huy.
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[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/ProfessorLayton'': the recurring cast and major characters for the game are normal enough, but the random [[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]] (the ones with the primary purpose of giving puzzles) tend to be much more strangely shaped for the benefit of CastOfSnowflakes. Justified in Curious Village by [[spoiler:being robots, with the few that aren't oddly shaped being based on existing humans]], it doesn't explain the kid-sized "explorer" you encounter a few times [[spoiler:as he explicitly is human]].
** Taken further in ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonVsAceAttorney'' where all the major original characters are done in the style of Phoenix Wright characters while the minor characters are done in that of Layton's.
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[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'': Many of the characters, including Slick, Semyor, Lil' E, Squig, and Criminy are of somewhat... diminutive stature, but most of the other characters have normal proportions, proportions which even these characters gain when they enter the Reality Zone (Except Squig, of course)
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[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' has the Plas/Woozy thing but then there's also Bat-Mite.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Teen Titans|2003}}'': Larry takes the mischievous GreatGazoo relationship between Bat-Mite and Batman and brings it to the world of animation as Robin's cartoonish imp -- {{exaggerat|edTrope}}ing this trope, since it isn't in a realistic style to start with, and Larry ''still'' manages to look more cartoony than anyone else. Even Beast Boy.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpartakusAndTheSunBeneathTheSea'': The Pirates have a much more rotund, cartoonish and caricatured style, standing out sharply in comparison with all the other, more realistic characters.
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