Basic Trope: A character is mistaken for being older or younger than they actually are.
- Straight: Bob is at the grocery store and notices Claire, helping Alice, a little girl, looking for her aunt. He and Claire discover that Alice is a young woman at one of the registers.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Claire are much older than they look. They maintain their youthful appearances by drinking and bathing in water channeled from the Fountain of Youth beneath their home.
- Downplayed: Bob finds Alice and she is just a bit younger than he expected.
- Justified: Alice is adopted by Claire's grandmother shortly before Claire's birth, explaining the large age gap between Alice and Claire's birth mother, Donna.
- Inverted: Claire's aunt is a middle-aged woman who has worked at the register for twenty years.
- Subverted: Alice looks young, but it turns out Claire's aunt is the Alice working in Line 17, not 4.
- Double Subverted: However, the Alice working on line 4 looks even younger than the previous one.
- Parodied: Bob finds out that Alice is really an infant who is adopted by Claire's grandmother, who is being carted around in the same registry line as Cashier Alice.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice is Claire's middle-aged aunt.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice acts, dresses, and often practices with her make-up in an attempt to make herself look older.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Claire and Bob find out that Alice suffers from a rare genetic disorder that causes her to physically age much slower than the average woman.
- Played For Drama: Alice is actually Claire's older sister. Claire's mother was pregnant with Alice when she was a teenager, and soon after revealing she was pregnant, the father-to-be left her. When Alice was born, Claire's grandmother raised Alice like a second daughter.
Back to Mistaken Age.
