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" Where are these kids' parents?! I mean, seriously, do they ever show up?! Are they so inattentive they don't even know their kids are on another planet fighting giant black chickens?!"
In storylines involving children or teenagers, the issues raised by the Adults Are Useless trope sometimes are handled more dramatically. Adults become rare to non-existent, occurring primarily as off-screen background. The adults might continue to set the contextual rules of the story, but they are not individuals to whom the children can appeal.
See also: Invisible Parents, Teenage Wasteland, World Of No Grandparents, and Parental Abandonment. Sometimes caused by a catastrophe of some sort that was Only Fatal To Adults.
Examples
Film
- With very minor exceptions, the movie Brick.
- A number of teen movies, such as Dazed and Confused.
- This Troper is surprised that the 1969 cult classic movie Bugsy Malone hasn't been mentioned yet; a musical comedy about 1920s gangsters — played entirely by children. It launched the careers of Scott Baio and Jodie Foster.
- Logan's Run, anyone?
- Specifically the book had lastday be the 21st birthday. The Movie pushed this up (and avoided Dawson Casting by having lastday become the 30th.
- This trope becomes literal in The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron movie, where the entire adult population of Retroville is abducted by aliens.
- Very deliberate in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, there are teachers, but no parents.
- The MST3K-featured City Limits took place in a future where nearly all adults had been wiped out by a plague.
Literature
- Marc Laidlaw's awesomely weird cyberpunk short story 400 Boys features street gangs of psychic teenagers battling posthuman giants after the classic adults-only pandemic, topped off with 'World War Last'.
- Lord of the Flies.
- The Girl Who Owned A City is a post-apocalyptic story after a Only Fatal to Adults plague, where children are trying to survive on their own and dealing with issues of suddenly having to watch for infants, etc.
- The young adult series Countdown began with all adults — and all children, sparing only teenagers — vaporizing into puddles of black goo. The result is a world run by teenagers as ancient prophecies come to life.
- This is also the plot of the young adult novel The Girl Who Owned a City, wherein a virus kills off everyone over 14 (12 in some versions). (This troper is still at times dismayed.)
- Just wait until you're on the other side of Logan'sRun
- This troper has that same feeling about Shade's Children, although she knew it was coming years before she actually crossed the line; the occasional clues to the pre-apocalyptic tech level indicate that it was Twenty Minutes Into The Future (at minimum) even before the Change.
- There literally are no adults in Shade's Children, with one highly technical exception. The kids are forced to wage their guerrilla war in a post-apocalyptic world alone.
Live Action TV
- The Odyssey (a Canadian kids drama) took this to a very literal level. A main character who after receiving a concussion, found himself in a world where there were no adults. This is the start of a journey he makes through this strange land where he encounters weird societies and places while he searches for his Dad (long story; don't ask).
- With the exception of one episode which ended with a couple of parental arms reaching into view from the edge of the screen and dragging two of the trio away.
- This was more or less the whole premise of Party Of Five at the outset.
- The Canadian teen drama Edgemont (Kristin Kreuk, anyone?).
Newspaper Comics
- Peanuts, which generally did not even show adults in the panels. The kids are often shown REACTING to adults, but they are always shown talking to someone who is off-panel. Anything the adults do or say has to be inferred by the actions of the kids.
- Charles Schulz is on record saying that the moment he did introduce adults — in the background of a tennis court — was a big mistake.
- The cartoons substitute the famous gibberish horn sound for adult speech. The animators' original plan was for adults to have no presence whatsoever like in the comic. This idea was abandoned when it turned out that without some indicator of their existence, all the kids seemed like they were talking to themselves.
- One animation exception: This Is America, Charlie Brown! The kids experience historical milestones by, among other things, interacting with the Wright Brothers. (To the best of this troper's memory, no explanation was given for their displacement in time.)
- Other animation exceptions include the movies Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown and its "this is a sequel?" What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, both of which feature talking adults, though not always seen.
- Also the original reason was they "literally would not fit" in the close up style of the strip; children would just be at most a half panel instead of being focused on.
Other
- RPG Example: During a mission in a Stargate SG 1 based RPG, this troper's team went to an Adventure Town planet with no adults. Lampshaded by the Cunning Linguist wondering how kids managed to function as a working society. Then 3/4 of the team became children. And it turned out that The kids of the planet were the adults, aged down through Applied Phlebotinum that allowed the troper's team to return to adulthood.
- Star Trek Original Series episode Miri uses this. Beware the grups!
Video Games
- Possible in Fable, if you kill every adult in a town. And you can then buy back the affections of the children whose parents you've killed with gifts.
- The Sonic The Hedgehog games and cartoons technically have adults, but we never see Sonic's parents in them, or indeed anybody's parents in them. Owing to the majority of the cast being under 18, this begs the question, what the hell is the government doing, letting 8-year-old kids like Tails live on their own?
- Animals mature faster than humans, I guess. Plus, his IQ is over 200.
- In the SatAM Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, it's implied that the parents of the main cast were roboticized, with the exception of Sally's father the King, who was sent to the Void by Robotnik. The only roboticized adult relative shown, however, is Sonic's Uncle Chuck, so the rest are unconfirmed.
- In an interesting twist, the Sonic The Hedgehog comic series not only shows people's parents but makes loads of story arcs about them.
- Backyard Skateboarding
Western Animation
- In the TV show Max & Ruby, the parents of Max and Ruby are never shown, though their grandma sometimes makes an appearance.
- No adults ever appeared in Ed Edd N Eddy.
- One episode of South Park had the children all accuse their parents of molestation, getting all of them arrested at once. Naturally the town goes to hell in a few hours.
- Strawberry Shortcake, especially in the 2003 version, where the characters are designed and act more like real kids than the other versions. In this version, Strawberry Shortcake and Apple Dumpling are sisters, yet no parents are seen or mentioned.
- Charlie and Lola. Though they TALK about "Mum" and "Dad," there's never any sign of them, not even Charlie or Lola reacting to them. This troper wonders if Charlie, age 8, was raising his little sister and has instructed her to talk about their parents (and grandparents), so that the authorities won't separate the children. However, someone must be driving on the rare car rides.
- Justice League episode "Kid Stuff" had the heros become 8 years olds in order to exist in a world were adults were magically removed.
- In The Simpsons when Homer and Grampa distribute their "re-vitalizer" to Springfield, adults excuse themselves to their bedrooms, leaving the town children wondering if the grown-ups have become reverse-vampires.
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