Basic Trope: An adult, who usually isn't a Manchild, suddenly thinks/behaves childishly.
- Straight: Alice starts behaving like a little girl; calling her father "Daddy", throwing tantrums, and talking about having to go to school.
- Exaggerated: Alice starts behaving like a baby.
- Downplayed: Alice starts behaving like a college student.
- Justified:
- Alice is in shock.
- Alice is under strain and wants to revert to a time when she felt safer.
- Alice wants to be a child again to make up for a bad childhood.
- Alice is delusional and actually believes she's a little girl.
- Inverted:
- Alice, a little girl, begins behaving like a grown woman — drinking coffee, using logic perfectly, and wanting to go to work.
- Alice starts behaving like a senior — walking with a cane, going on When I Was Your Age... rants, and acting hard of hearing.
- Subverted:
- Double Subverted:
- Parodied:
- Zigzagged: Alice fluctuates between acting like herself, like a little girl, like a baby, like a teenager, and like an old lady.
- Averted: Alice acts her age.
- Enforced:
- Lampshaded: "That's stopped being normal for you about thirty years ago."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz drugs Alice with a formula that makes her think she's a kid.
- Exploited:
- Defied: "I may be dealing with a lot, but I won't regress!"
- Discussed: "What are the symptoms of emotional regression?"
- Conversed: "That was so creepy that episode where Alice went into shock and thought she was a kid!"
- Implied:
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: Alice has to have Dinner with the Boss, but she thinks she's a little girl due to a head injury, leading to her husband Bob trying to save her career.
- Played for Drama: Alice is having a grief-induced Sanity Slippage.
- Played for Horror: Alice's Face–Heel Turn turns her into a psychopathic womanchild.
Back to Emotional Regression.
