Basic Trope: An adult hero will have an incredibly young sidekick.
- Straight: Meet Trope Man and his 12-year-old sidekick, Wiki Lad.
- Exaggerated: Meet Trope Man and his 3-month-old sidekick, the Troping Toddler.
- Downplayed: Meet Trope Man and his 17-year-old sidekick, Wiki Lad.
- Justified:
- Despite his age, Wiki Lad is incredibly talented and Trope Man has decided to make himself his mentor.
- Or Trope Man is his babysitter or other guardian and he can't leave him alone on adventures.
- Trope Man is fighting villains with standards, and took advantage of that to get a sidekick that's effectively immortal.
- Wiki Lad would have taken up the fight against crime anyway, and at least as Trope Man's sidekick, he at least has a more experienced vigilante watching his back.
- Inverted: Older Sidekick
- Subverted: Trope Man introduces his new sidekick, Wiki Lad, who actually appears to be the same age as Trope Man.
- Double Subverted: But Wiki Lad is wearing a disguise to make himself appear older so that the foes will take him seriously. He's actually 8.
- Parodied: The sidekick in question is unborn: Trope Man's wife is pregnant, and the fetus has powerful psychic abilities it can already use effortlessly, so Trope Man brings her along with him.
- Zig Zagged: Wiki Lad has actual superpowers (albeit at times unreliable) and is naive while Trope Man is a Bad Ass Normal who tends to act as the leader. Depending upon the point in the series Trope Man may have Wiki Lad as a sidekick, or he may effectively be the Older Side Kick. Sometimes who is the actual leader changes depending upon circumstances and one of them being completely out of their depths.
- Averted:
- Kids are not used as sidekicks.
- The kid *is* the star-in his civilian identity, Trope Man is an Ordinary High-School Student.
- Enforced: "We need to introduce a young character to the team to appeal to our younger audiences. Let's give Trope Man a kid sidekick.
- Lampshaded: "Dude, you just got your ass kicked by a ten-year-old in spandex." "Shut up, Bob..."
- Invoked: Trope Man specifically looks for a child to become his sidekick because he secretly always wanted to be a father.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz outright kills Wiki Lad to prove that he Would Hurt a Child.
- Defied: Trope Man will not allow a child to fight crime, and hires someone older instead.
- Discussed: "Is that a kid fighting alongside Trope Man?" "Yep." "Aren't there child labor laws against that sort of thing?" "You want to tell him that?"
- Conversed: "Why are superheroes always choosing kids to be their sidekicks? That isn't very smart."
- Deconstructed: Despite being skilled, Wiki Lad is still just a kid being forced to act like an adult. This causes him to lose his childhood and he never really grows up. This causes psychological problems down the road.
- Reconstructed: But who cares? He's young and kicking crime's ass, how cool is that?
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