Basic Trope: A character who is larger than their parent(s).
- Straight: Carl is 6'5" to his parents Alice, who's 5'3" and Bob, who's 5'7".
- Exaggerated:
- Alice and Bob are below 5'0", but Carl is over 7 feet tall.
- Everyone in the story is larger than their parents.
- Carl was born that large.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is so short, Carl being one head taller than her simply places him at average height.
- Carl is the product of a Huge Guy, Tiny Girl or Huge Girl, Tiny Guy pairing. He is significantly taller than one parent but the same size or shorter than the other.
- Justified:
- Can be Truth in Television, especially if Alice and/or Bob carry an allele for taller height despite not actually showing it.
- Childhood malnutrition (that Carl, thankfully, didn't suffer from) stunted Alice and Bob's growth, leaving them as Miniature Senior Citizens.
- Carl follows some sort of fitness routine that makes him much more muscular than his parents are.
- Interspecies Adoption is at play, and Carl is of a species that's much larger than Alice and Bob's.
- Carl and his parents are from a species in which the infants grow bigger than their parents and get smaller as they get older.
- Carl is a robot or other artificial being, and was built to be very large.
- Inverted: Carl has parents well past the 7'0" mark, but he's barely 5 feet tall.
- Subverted: Carl is introduced with a couple who are shown to be much smaller than him, but they turn out to not be his parents.
- Double Subverted: His real parents are even smaller.
- Parodied: Carl is a baby, but he's already larger than both of his parents, who treat it as something mundane.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Carl is taller than his mom, but still shorter than his dad.
- Carl and/or his parents can shapeshift. Their size depends on which form they're currently in.
- Averted:
- Carl is not much larger than his parents.
- Carl's parents are never mentioned.
- Enforced: The actor who plays Carl happened to be taller than the people playing Alice and Bob, so they decided to work it into the story.
- Lampshaded: "Wow, Carl, how are you so tall when your parents are such short little things?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Carl's parents are The Ghost, but there is mention that he's taller than them.
Back to Small Parent, Huge Child
