The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Jimmy and friends, who are in probably fifth or sixth grade, are given incredibly free rein, often making trips to space, Egypt, and the depths of the ocean with minimum interference from parents. There are a few instances where Jimmy is prevented from flying in his homemade rocket into space (without a space helmet even!) before finishing his chores, but still, that is incredibly free rein. On a typical day, the kids will go down to the local fast food joint to hang out, and their parents are nowhere in sight. Subverted in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius where the plot revolved around the kids feeling annoyed about the restrictions their parents keep placing on them. But really, the only thing they kept him from doing was going to a theme park on a school night, which really isn't that bad.
The Amazing World of Gumball: Most of the time, the Watterson children travel outside of Elmore without their parents, but apparently not allowed to be left alone inside vehicles.
Gumball: WE CAN STAY IN THE CAR WHILE YOU GO IN! Nicole: No! You should never leave kids in cars. Gumball: We'll be fine! Nicole: I'm not worried about you, I'm worried about other parents judging me.
Arthur: Many scenes in many episodes involve the main elementary school-aged cast biking around the town (which is relatively large) by themselves, and eating out at the local ice cream parlor, with no parents in tow. Looking at these kids, they seemed more like middle schoolers/early high schoolers than elementary schoolers.
American Dad!: 14-year-old Steve and his gang are generally shown on their own with no adult supervision, even once having travelled to Los Angeles without his parents. The only adult who is shown accompanying him most of the time is Roger, who constantly endangers his life for whatever scheme he comes up with.
Deconstructed in the first series, where a bunch of kids can travel around the world because, with the exception of a few characters, all of their parents are either dead or busy fighting the war. It doesn't help that every one of the kids is essentially a Child Soldier. There's also some Deliberate Values Dissonance involved; 16-year-olds are considered full adults, and many of the villains have high military ranks despite being in the same age range as the heroes.
In The Legend of Korra, Korra is implied to have never been this, because, unlike Aang, she has been watched over and protected by her parents and the White Lotus for her entire life; even as an older teenager, adults object to her running around Republic City willy-nilly. Mako and Bolin, by contrast, were orphaned as children and so were basically nothing but free-range.
Beavis And Butthead: Beavis and Butt-Head live in a house without parents or guardians. They also hate school and their jobs, but for some reason, they continue going to both. They sometimes mention their mothers, but they are never seen. It's likely their mothers are almost never around, as seen by how their home has electricity, water, and phone service. It's easy to assume their mothers would be the ones to handle the bills, as the boys can't even handle schoolwork and rarely have any money.
Ben 10: In both the original and 2016 series, part of 10-year-old cousins Ben and Gwen's free rein comes from their elderly grandfather Max, who is driving them around the United States for their summer camping trip and is not as physically fit as he was in his younger days. The original series has less justification, as that continuity had Max as part of an interstellar police/counter-terrorist organization for most of his adult life, which you'd think would give him the common sense to keep better watch around Ben, who happens to have one of the most powerful pieces of technology in the galaxy but repeatedly disregards caution and attacks alien evildoers with no concern for the consequences. In both versions, but especially the original, Gwen's maturity in assessing dangerous situations somewhat justifies the lack of supervision.
Big City Greens: In addition to the family traversing Big City, Cricket, Tilly, and their other kid friends are allowed to traverse themselves without adult supervision.
Caillou: The episode "Caillou Walks Around the Block" involves 4-year-old Caillou getting out of the house on his own and walking around town. It is a Banned Episode on PBS precisely because Caillou is unattended while outdoors.
Captain Planet and the Planeteers: A few of the main characters are not adults yet run all about saving the Earth, but we never hear any complaints from any of the moms and dads about what their kids are doing (the one or two that are still alive, that is). They have powers but that isn't much better.
Clarence and his friends and classmates, who are all nine, wander around their town completely unsupervised at all times of the day and night with their parents either being unconcerned or unaware. One episode even shows Clarence sneaks out of the house in the early morning and has all kinds of adventures every single day with his mom and father figure being none the wiser.
The main students from Class of 3000 seem to be able to travel around Atlanta with no issues despite all being in the 12/13 age bracket, or in the Christmas Episode, flying to the North Pole. In some cases, this is justified by it being a class exercise and they're with Sunny.
This trope may be an understatement in Codename: Kids Next Door. The child-based organization's operatives get their training in an Arctic Base built in the coldest part of Antarctica, they are brought to the Moon (toward the KND Moonbase, natch) to be submitted into the KND when training's finished, and while they're KND Operative, usually depending on their job within the KND, may be sent anywhere in the world, all with their parents taking little to no notice. In some cases their parents notice, and often even approve. In fact, Numbuh 5 points out to Numbuh 4 that the KND only fight evil adults — while their parents may be kind of strict and perhaps embarrassing at times, they aren't necessarily "evil" and only want what's best for their children.
The main premise of Craig of the Creek is that all the kids in the neighborhood play unsupervised in the creek, building a whole secret civilization there. The parents are vaguely aware that they go there to play but don't seem to know the extent of it, and the kids are aware that any problem that arises in the creek has to be solved there because the parents would ban them from going there if they found out.
Creative Galaxy: Show star Arty often travels into outer space and other planets accompanied by nobody but his small shape-shifting blob friend Epiphany.
The Crumpets: King, a lion-costumed boy who is one of the three youngest of the 142 Crumpet children, learns that the captive exotic animals owned by his adult brother Grownboy are endangered by his sister Caprice, their Evil Uncle Hurried and Granny. Offscreen, he travels from the family's house to Grownboy's house on a high-rise in the middle of the city, arriving with facial bruises and his costume slightly worn out.
Curious George: All the child characters, in both the city and country, are allowed to wander about their communities freely. The oldest of the children, Bill, is a young teen or nearly a teen but the others are all elementary age, with the youngest, Allie, being a kindergartener. This applies to George as well, who is often referred to as a "little monkey" and is essentially a child; The Man with the Yellow Hat trusts him to travel about both the city and country with no supervision.
Daria: The high-school-aged kids walk around Lawndale without a driver's license until later on.
Dinosaur Train plays this straight with Elmer Elasmosaurus, whose parents are shown but let him go on the Dinosaur Train on his own.
Dora the Explorer and her cousins in Go, Diego, Go!. Dora is a little girl let run around the rain forest with her equally young monkey friend, while Diego and his sister aren't even high schoolers yet go on animal rescue missions on their own. In Dora and Friends: Into the City! Dora is a preteen with a group of similarly aged friends yet they are allowed full range of the city.
Doug: The sixth-graders seem to be much more like high schoolers, even though it is stated that Doug is only about 11. The gang runs about their town with little concern from Mom and Dad, although Doug sometimes needs his older sister to drive him places. A particularly egregious example is in "Doug's Hot Ticket", where he and Skeeter travel to a town more than 60 miles away... in a bus full of complete strangers. Granted, it is Doug's former hometown that they're traveling to (Bloatsburg), but still...
DuckTales (2017): The triplets and Webby are hit with cases of Disappeared Dad and Missing Mom, leaving them free to go off on their own adventures. Helping this case is the fact that Great-Uncle Scrooge and Grandma Beakley are totally fine with letting the kids go off on their own, as long as they let the adults know. And as for Uncle Donald, well, he's tied up trying to find a job to support his nephews, and by the end of the pilot episode, has accepted the fact that the nephews have inherited the family's adventuring genes too.
Ed, Edd n Eddy is usually a subversion, as the action is typically restricted to the cul-de-sac and adjacent areas, like in plenty other suburban areas. For the Big Damn Movie, however, the characters travel across the country without supervision (justified with the Eds, who are essentially on the lam, not so much for the others), crossing sweltering deserts, festering swamps, and abandoned factories. The Eds are even "driving" a car at one point (meaning that Ed is running through the bottom of the car, Flintstones style).
Emily and the Baba Yaga: The adults send Emily off alone into the forest, and her father doesn't seem to worry.
Ewoks: In the episode, "The Land of the Gupins," Wicket and his friends agree to help the Gupins almost at the drop of a hood. However, there is also an apparent last-minute comment by Teebo, depicted in the distance as an imposed voice-over line, that they intend to speak to their Elders first, and the scene changes to the characters on their way with permission to go apparently granted.
The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy and the other kids will be seen wandering the town on their own when the plot calls for it. One episode had Timmy biking through the desert and at a fast-food restaurant at night without his parents. He also tends to spend extended amounts of time in Fairy World without his parents noticing. As in South Park, 99% of the adults in the show aren't exactly the brightest bulbs on the tree.
Family Guy: Stewie Griffin is a 1-year-old who is able to get his hands on the parts to construct superscientific devices and weapons and is frequently far from home, with little concern from Lois (lack of concern from Peter is expected). However, he's still working on how to use the toilet (Stewie, that is). But Brian the dog does serve as a guardian for Stewie.
Fanboy and Chum Chum apparently take care of themselves; in fact, their parents are unmentioned. The same with Kyle. They still do attend school, though.
Four Eyes! has fifth graders who may not be older than 10 or 12. Justified since the setting is in a boarding school and the students can go wherever they please. Particularly for the three characters who get into rather dangerous situations at times.
Goldie & Bear: Goldie, Bear, and the others pretty much have the run of Fairytale Forest on their own. Their parents are apparently entirely unconcerned about there being any real danger within it that could trouble unsupervised children.
The Mystery Twins in Gravity Falls are given fairly free range of the town whenever they don't have to work in the Mystery Shack. While the other employees of the shack do often hang out with them, Soos is essentially a manchild and Wendy is only a few years older than the twins herself. Increasingly Subverted in Season 2, when their grunklenote great-uncles; yes, plural begin to spend more time with them. Played straight by Lil' Gideon, whose parents simply can't control him, and he does whatever he wants whether they like it or not.
Harriet the Spy: The main characters are eleven, and they can go wherever they want in New York City, even to the Empire State Building's observation deck, without any parents knowing!
Hailey's On It!: The wide-ranging activities of Hailey and her friends (completing items on Hailey's list among other schemes) usually don't have any noticeable interference by parents or other adult authority figures, except in the rare instances when somebody (like Hailey's mom) saying "No" to something (like attending a K-Pop concert when she had already agreed to babysit her twin brothers that night, or adopting a flamingo as a pet) is necessary to the plot, and in the end they usually end up getting to do the thing anyway without getting in serious trouble for it.
The kids in the story are about 9 years old and in fourth grade, but they run about the city with little concern from their parents. Their maturity level also seems to suggest middle/high schoolers as opposed to elementary schoolers.
In a flashback this is Played for Drama with Helga's parents. When Helga was five at oldest, she had to walk to her first day of preschool by herself because her parents were too busy fawning over her older sister Olga. To make it worse, it was raining. This Parental Neglect badly affected Helga.
Inspector Gadget doesn't seem to keep that close an eye on Penny, although she does seem to fly around often with the family dog Brain. Then again, maybe that's for the best because the inspector is seen as a bumbling idiot and sometimes ends up in a situation where he could lose his life and make Penny a possible foster child. Episodes sometimes start in places where the bulk of the action takes place. Examples include the circus, New York, and the Arctic.
Invader Zim: None of the parents seem to pay any attention to their kids, but Dib and Gaz have extra free range on account of their dad being a CloudcuckoolanderMad Scientist. One episode seems to lampshade the trope when Zim himself gets lost by trying to go to a different part of town on his own.
A "Superstar" segment of Jem features 8-year-old Ba Nee walking home with two kids. The blonde girl, who is even younger than Ba Nee, somehow went to the pharmacy and picked up her dad's prescription pain medicine all by herself. Granted, it used to be extremely common to send children on errands like these, including buying cigarettes. You gave them an extra nickel to buy something for themselves as well.
Kaeloo: None of the characters are more than 13 years old, yet they do random things like going to outer space, fighting aliens, buying weapons, drinking alcohol, etc. and nobody has any problem with it. Though it's somewhat justified since There Are No Adults in Smileyland, and especially in Mr. Cat and Quack Quack's cases since the former is a runaway and the latter is an orphan.
Kim Possible is only a teenager, but her parents have no problem with her traveling the world and defeating evil masterminds, just as long as she doesn't go out with any boys. Still, she's somehow managed to build a global network of contacts that she's done favors for and can get a ride to anywhere on Earth.
Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Lilo is about seven years old and yet she and Stitch run about Hawaii finding Stitch's cousins with little older supervision. Mertle, who says she's the best hula dancer in the 7-year-old division in Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, also seems to have a bit more freedom than most children as she travels with her friends. It is kind of justified that Lilo's allowed some freedom after Stitch joins the ʻohana, though. Do you want to imagine what would happen to a normal person who tried to harm or kidnap the girl while her super-strong and rather protective alien "dog" was there? She was also being left alone like this in the original movie even before Stitch came into the picture. It explains a lot about why Social Services had their eye on Nani.
In both The Lion King (1994) and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride this is averted as cubs get scolded for wandering too far away from Pride Rock. In The Lion Guard, Kion and his friends seem barely older than Simba was in the first half of the original film yet are allowed to run around everywhere, even into the Outlands. They are at least partiallyjustified due to being Kid Heroes; however, Kion's only slightly older sister Kiara and her friends can do the same despite not having any powers.
In the animated series of The Little Rascals, Darla and the boys often travel and have adventures with little, if any, adult supervision.
The Loud House and its spinoff The Casagrandeszig-zag this: Lincoln and most of the kids his age are allowed to traverse town themselves without any adult supervision. However, little kids like Lily, Lisa, Lola, and Lana tend to be the exception.
Maggie and the Ferocious Beast: Maggie wanders around Nowhere Land with her Beast, completely unsupervised — except for maybe Hamilton — despite being only six. However, she's also pretty responsible for a 6-year-old.
Maisy is a highly odd example. Not only is There Are No Adults in effect, but the characters, a cute female mouse and her friends go where they want, do what they want, drive cars, fly planes, take their own baths, etc. Really, there's nothing explicitly indicating that they aren't adults, other than their very childlike appearance, childlike babble speech, and tendency to play with toys and stuffed animals (not that adults don't ever do that last one, of course.)
Max and Ruby features an older kid sister who seems to care for her younger brother 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with only sporadic intervention by their grandmother. The two regularly go shopping across town via bus, among other things. Supposedly the parents are offscreen but nothing suggests this in-series. At least until the 2016 Retool, which added on-screen parents.
Moral Oreldeconstructs this trope. While Orel and his friends often run around town without adult supervision, this is shown to be because his and most of the other kids' parents are incredibly neglectful. This usually leads to them causing havoc in town, such as raising the dead and causing a Zombie Apocalypse, impregnating women with bags of semen in the middle of the night, or destroying a manger scene in front of the Church, and only stopping them when it's too late, and hardly doing anything to remedy the situation. In "Beforel Orel" it’s shown that Orel's parents have been letting him run around a playground next to an electric tower since he was 4-YEARS-OLD.
Out of all the main characters of My Life as a Teenage Robot, Jenny is the only one who has an onscreen parent. Parents of others such as Brad and Tuck, Sheldon, and the Crust Cousins are never seen nor mentioned. Of course, most of them are teenagers, meaning they'd be old enough to get around on their own. While Tuck is still a kid, he usually has Brad with him, who could be trusted to look after him.
This also applies to the main characters in My Little Pony Tales as well. They're all quite young yet go on adventures around anywhere they please with little issue.
There are the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who are able to wander all over town and the overlying regions with no supervision, even into the local Eldritch Location on occasion. Sweetie Belle's parents only appear once; otherwise, she's in the care of her older sister Rarity. It's eventually revealed in Season 7 that the Apple Bloom had parents, but it's all but outright stated that they died. According to a licensed book (and later confirmed in the show), Scootaloo is mainly raised by her aunts because her parents are busy with work (which turns out to be exploring far-off territories for scientific work). It's debatable exactly how old the CMC are, however. If one views Cutie Marks as an analogy to puberty the trio could very well be the equivalent of 9 or 10 in human years (possibly even older) which is plenty old enough to be wandering around a sleepy rural village on their own.
Subverted in the episode "Dragon Quest", where the girls let Spike go alone on a quest to join migrating dragons, but it turns out they were planning to follow him all along anyway.
In "Just for Sidekicks", nobody apparently bats an eye at them being missing while they head off with Spike on a train ride to the Crystal Empire.
In early episodes of PAW Patrol, the pups of the titular organization were often seen in other locations (often the pup-park) alone. This was phased out in later episodes, likely because it made their owner Ryder look neglectful.
While a staple of the Peanuts franchise as stated above, it's taken to an extreme in Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown. Here the children, while in summer camp, embark on a multi-day raft race through a mountainous river without any adult supervision. They encounter dangerous rapids. They are apparently high enough in the mountains that it snows in the summer. They luck out and find a warm cabin to spend the night. All the while, they have to deal with "bullies" who are actually a group of psychopaths who actually try to kill them by sending them down a dangerous fork in the river.
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is pushing it even by 1960s standards. Linus is allowed to sit in a pumpkin patch all alone on a dark night and he even falls asleep outside. It's his sister (not his parents) who decides to bring him home.
Taken to its natural conclusion in Phineas and Ferb. The titular characters frequently build amazing inventions in their backyard, and doing so often takes them all across the town of Danville. Certain episodes have them traveling around the world or to the north pole. Whenever they get questioned (which is frequent, especially in early seasons), they agree that yes, theyAREa little young to be doing the activity in question. Naturally, their mom never finds out about any of their schemes.
Ready Jet Go!: the children are always doing stuff on their own, such as building a treehouse. Craig Bartlett even stated that the kids' adventures are supposed to be similar to his childhood adventures where the kids would just run around without adult supervision. Although, the kids do have adult supervision in space. One Small Step marks the first time that the kids go to space by themselves. However, they got Carrot and Celery's permission to do this.
Rocket Powerzig-zags this trope. The late elementary school cast runs all about Ocean Shores with little concern from their parents. Most episodes happen in areas such as the Pier, the beach, their cul-de-sac, school (which is within walking distance), and occasionally some things like another street or the library. However, when they go to different areas of the town (especially areas they are not familiar with), the kids either have to ask permission or sneak out — and get in trouble for it. The "Secret spot" in particular is an area that is not too far from where the gang lives, but they have to get permission from their parents.
The Rugrats franchise often has a problem with this:
In Rugrats, the parents keep the babies in a playpen, but they just walk away from them after they are put away, allowing them to escape and roam about with no interference. This gets ridiculous in one episode, in which the parents are visiting a store. They put the kids down, and literally walk away like it is nobody's business.
All Grown Up!: One particular episode involved the 11-year-olds Tommy and Chuckie going down to a warehouse in another part of town at night where two possible criminals could have been working, in order to protect Kimi.
On Rupert, Rupert and his friends travel around the world and back, consort with all sorts of mythological creatures... and then are told by their parents that they're too young to go camping out without parental supervision.
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Gang's parents are mentioned and even shown a few times, yet they hardly ever give the kids any restrictions, allowing them to run freely around Coolsville, running from creeps and unmasking them.
Their traditional selves are canonically high school age (the oldest two being seventeen and Velma being fourteen) but can travel cross country and get into serious situations without adults. The original premise handwaved this since they were musicians on tour but the actual series says nothing about it. Averted in many later incarnations where they're age lifted into adults.
The heroes in SheZow are able to go to far-off places thanks to the Shehicle.
As they tiptoe down the hall, Bart can't resist looking into the detention room. It's now set up with small cages in which children are given some sort of IV. Martin looks haggard in his cage and he shakes convulsively, bringing an admonishment from Skinner: "Easy there, young man, you'll only make yourself tired and stringy. Now, to check on the free-range children," he continues, looking out the window at a pasture of children running around.
South Park: The kids are the same age as those from Arthur and have even more "adult" adventures, with little interference from their parents. There was one episode where Stan goes to New York to return a margarita maker, and you never see Randy or Sharon questioning where their son has gone, despite the fact he's on the other side of the country by himself. In "Night of the Living Homeless," they go so far as to applaud the fact that the boys are driving a bus cross-country by themselves, as it spares them the trouble of stopping the homeless problem. On the very rare occasions when their parents are aware that they're missing, the approach they take to getting them back is... less than effective, to say the least. The kids have also been to Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Peru, Costa Rica, Imaginationland, at least two other solar systems, andCanada. In the episode "Child Abduction is Not Funny", this was done deliberately by the parents as their final solution to the child abduction crisis, as they have become too paranoid to even trust themselves to actually protect their children. The kids end up living with the Mongolians that have been attacking the wall surrounding the town.
Steven Universe: The titular protagonist moved out of his father's van and into virtually his own house so he could focus more on training with the Crystal Gems when he was still very young (the gems have an adjoining temple they live in). Additionally, he roams around the beach and the boardwalk unsupervised with nary an eye batted by the other adults in the town.
Gary and Joel are Unsupervised; they have no parents with them and are left to figure everything out by themselves.
The Wild Thornberrys: 12-year-old Eliza wanders around the jungle with no parental supervision, avoiding crises and conversing with the local wildlife with the aid of her foreign language-speaking monkey and her Raised by Wolves little brother. To be fair, Mr. and Mrs. Thornberry's biggest failing as parents is that they seem to put too much trust in their teenage daughter Debbie to keep an eye on things while they're away studying said local wildlife. In the Big Damn Movie, when they discover that Eliza's managed to chase after a poacher despite having been sent to a London boarding school, they're horrified that Eliza would put herself in that much danger.
All the kids in Molly of Denali seem to be able to wander freely about Qyah with no adult supervision. Justified since Qyah is a small village where everybody is acquainted with each other.
The kids of Martha Speaks, who range in age from 7 through 13, are shown walking around their town unsupervised all the time. Though they often bring Martha and/or Skips with them, and they could probably protect the kids in case of danger.
The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald: Tika and Franklin are children who accompany Ronald and friends, but the former is never seen with her parents and the latter's father is only seen at the end of "Scared Silly" and "Have Time, Will Travel" after the respective video's adventure has already ended.
◊ as a child.
