History Main / TotallyEighteen

* Ever since the infamous "pedophilia how-to guide" incident on Amazon.com late in 2010, Amazon.com has been rather squeamish about selling any erotic literature featuring underage sex and/or incest. This led to a number of erotic authors' stories [[http://teleread.com/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ being yanked from distribution with no warning and little to no explanation]]. Since then, many erotic authors such as Selena Kitt have lately reworked a lot of their stories to specify that everyone in them is ''totally'' eighteen or over; also that they're ''totally'' NotBloodRelated. Almost invariably, any stories about--for instance--"daddy's little girl" will have the girl saying something to her daddy about how she can decide things for herself since she's eighteen now, and will mention in passing or work into the plot some reason why [[DisappearedDad her biological father is gone]] and this guy is actually her ''step''-daddy. [[WebVideo/HonestTrailers So it's OK for them to pork.]]

* Parodied in ''VideoGame/{{Namco High}}'', whose legal page has very faint text at the bottom, reading "18 18 all characters 18 everyone 18" despite the fact that ''Namco High'' is entirely free of adult situations.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]
* It is not uncommon for {{Hentai}} and explicit {{Yaoi}} works that take place with teenage characters in a HighSchool setting to give a disclaimer that the characters are over 18, and they are either high school seniors (who turned 18 sometime during the schoolyear), or that they are actually ''college'' (or community college) students. This is especially true when said works are released overseas, in order to prevent any sort of legal trouble directed at either the creators, whoever imported and/or redubbed it, or consumers.
[[/folder]]

* It is not uncommon for {{Hentai}} and explicit {{Yaoi}} works that take place with teenage characters in a HighSchool setting to give a disclaimer that the characters are over 18, and they are either high school seniors (who turned 18 sometime during the schoolyear), or that they are actually ''college'' (or community college) students.

* In a rare ''under''-18 example, ''WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989'' makes a point of establishing Ariel as 16. Since King Triton (eventually) consents to her marriage to Prince Eric, this would (just barely) be legal in most places in the modern age; in vaguely-old-timey Denmark (or wherever; it's not clear if the setting is the same as Creator/HansChristianAndersen's [[Literature/TheLittleMermaid original story]]) it's presumably perfectly normal.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/totally21.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[WesternAnimation/CloneHigh I AM NOT 21!]]]]

* One magazine article quoted a manager overheard telling a cashier to always card women in addition to young people, "[[ChristmasCake because it makes them feel better about themselves]]".

* Parodied in ''VideoGame/DanganronpaAnotherEpisodeUltraDespairGirls'' where at the end of elementary-school girl Kotoko Utsugi's mini-boss with Genocide Jack (in which [[ClothingDamage she gets stripped down to her underwear]]) she will claim that it's upsetting, but it doesn't matter since [[BlatantLies she's eighteen]]. [[spoiler:Not helped by Kotoko's [[RapeAsBackstory horrific backstory]]]].

* The TorturePorn comic house ''Fansadox'' includes multiple disclaimers in its web and comics claiming that all characters are "at least 18 years old". If said comic "stars" TheIngenue and shows her in high school, the narration and dialogue will tell you several times that she just turned eighteen. [[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop So it is perfectly okay to rape, torture and often murder her, you know]].

[[folder: Web Original]]

[[folder: Western Animation]]

* ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife'', of all places. When Mary tells George she is 18, the implications weigh heavily on him.

* The "barely legal" genre of porn, where the stars are between the ages of 18 and 21 and look even younger.
* In ''Disney/{{Tangled}}'', [[OlderThanTheyLook Rapunzel could easily be mistaken for being much younger than she is]], but her eighteenth birthday is a plot point, presumably to avoid the issue of her finding her true love as a teenager.
* In a rare ''under''-18 example, ''Disney/TheLittleMermaid'' makes a point of establishing Ariel as 16. Since King Triton (eventually) consents to her marriage to Prince Eric, this would (just barely) be legal in most places in the modern age; in vaguely-old-timey Denmark (or wherever; it's not clear if the setting is the same as Creator/HansChristianAndersen's [[Literature/TheLittleMermaid original story]]) it's presumably perfectly normal.
* Subverted in ''Film/TheSocialNetwork'':
-->'''Amy:''' (''after discovering Sean, whom she just slept with, doesn't go to college'') Seriously, you're not like 15 years old or anything, are you?
-->'''Sean:''' (''chuckling'') No, I'm 22. ({{Beat}}) *You're* not like 15 years old-
-->'''Amy:''' No.
** Played straight later in the film, when the cops bust a party Sean is throwing. One of the girls at the party pretends she's 19, but when pressed, admits she's really 17.

* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' sometimes treats the fact that a certain character is over 18 as an annoying technicality that makes it harder to arrest people for having sex with them.

** Invoked in-universe in an episode where they find out their teenage witness for a case is actually an almost 30-year-old woman who's been successfully posing as a high schooler for over a decade. Throughout the episode, the detectives and ADA try to get her to admit the truth, especially when facing possible statutory rape charges, but she's still in denial of her actual age. [[spoiler: She eventually does when confronted with her first foster mother]].
* Meta-example in ''Series/{{That 70s Show}}''. When she first auditioned for the part of Jacky, Mila Kunis was fourteen. When the producers asked how old she was, she answered "I'll be eighteen on my birthday," and they failed to ask ''which'' birthday. Thankfully, the job didn't require her to do anything that would be illegal for a minor, so she dodged most of the problems that come up in this situation.

* Parodied in ''Franchise/DanganRonpa Another Episode: VideoGame/AbsoluteDespairGirls'' where at the end of elementary-school girl Kotoko Utsugi's mini-boss with Genocider Syo (in which [[ClothingDamage she gets stripped down to her underwear]]) she will claim that it's upsetting, but it doesn't matter since [[BlatantLies she's eighteen]]. [[spoiler:Not helped by the fact that Kotoko's [[RapeAsBackstory horrific backstory]]]].

->''"I'm sixteen years old. And I'm eighteen years old outside of Japan."''
-->-- '''Apricot''', ''Webcomic/ApricotCookies''

* In ''Webcomic/ApricotCookies'', the title character practices a lengthy ''Anime/SailorMoon''-esque monologue where she reveals her entire life story to the readers. She first mentions her real age as sixteen years old, adding a disclaimer immediately afterward that she should be seen by her non-Japanese fans as 18.

* In the ''Slave World'' kingdom of England, you have to be at least eighteen before you can become a slave or own a slave. The first part is merely mentioned (especially in connection with those few slaves who are exactly eighteen - most are significantly older). Non-noble characters younger than eighteen simply doesn't exist in the story. The rule against underage slaveowners eventually does becomes a plot point, however. A prelude to this is given in the second book. It is mentioned that some teenage nobles are frustrated and annoyed over not being allowed to own slaves yet, and a few sixteen years old nobles fondle the protagonist while she happens to be [[BoundAndGagged helpless]]. Around the same time a young adult noblewoman is scolded for being immature and reckless, not taking proper care of her slaves. In the last few books, a young prince join the cast as the LoveInterest of an enslaved journalist. He is sixteen, she is in her thirties, but because of the social power dynamic he's the one with all the power. The queen eventually punish him for covertly taking a slave before he's old enough... by sending him off to France... Where sixteen years old nobles are allowed to own slaves... [[{{Unishment}} And yes, he gets to bring the former journalist with him.]]

* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' sometimes treats the fact that a certain character is over 18 as an annoying technicality that make it harder to arrest people for having sex with them.

** In another episode, a girl is raped at gunpoint. She looks very young, and throughout the episode she is is consistently portrayed as a teenager who is not yet fully adult - neither intellectually nor emotionally. This is not held against her, instead it simply underscores how vulnerable she is. However, she happens to be 19, so the prosecution must prove that she didn't consent. And of course, the defense has BlatantLies about the gun as one of their top priorities.
** Invoked in-universe in an episode where they find out their teenage witness for a case is actually an almost 30 year-old woman who's been successfully posing as a high schooler for over a decade. Throughout the episode, the detectives and ADA try to get her to admit the truth, especially when facing possible statutory rape charges, but she's still in denial of her actual age. [[spoiler: She eventually does when confronted with her first foster mother]].

* In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', the spring festival Noble Garden includes an achievcement where you are supposed to put bunny ears on one female character of each race, and it has to be a character that is at least level 18. Some complaints about this achievement made it into the newspapers - some female player who felt like it was sexual harassment - other achievements about putting hats or whatever on other characters was not a problem, but the "level 18" requirement made this one sexualized in her eyes. The actual reason it was added was to prevent players from trivializing the achievement by making level 1 alts, as some had done with an earlier event (that it was 18 specifically was probably just RuleOfFunny).
* The game ''[[http://www.pown.it/4498 Bear Gunner]]'' is technically about hunting bears. However, the protagonist is a 8-years old girl armed with a machine gun, and the bears she's gunning down are all the pedobear logotype and busy chasing little girls (including you). When you kill one, he sometimes moan some dying words, such as "Argh!", "I see a bright light", "why me?", "I'm just a guy in a suit" or "I swear she was eighteen".

* In the first few ''VideoGame/DeadOrAlive'' games, several characters didn't have their ages listed in the American releases because they were underage but still delivered just as much (if not more) {{Fanservice}} as the adult women. ''DOA 4'' had a TimeSkip that put the entire cast at 18 or older, meaning suddenly it was okay to print their ages in the American versions. Plenty of fans suspected that this trope would be in effect with Marie Rose thanks to her ElegantGothicLolita design and her having the least [[BuxomIsBetter developed]] figure out of the franchise's women, but she actually is 18 years old.

* In ''[[VideoGame/MaxPayne Max Payne-3]]'' following a shootout in a strip bar/brothel, an American tourists hiding from the mayhem tells Max that he likes this place because it has the cheapest hot women he's ever seen, including some who insisted on being eighteen years old. In a later level, as Max shoots his way out of jail, he sees the same tourists who keeps insisting that they told him they were eighteen.

* Despite being obstenably set in a high school, the main cast of ''VisualNovel/MonsterProm'' is somewhere in their 20s or older, with the youngest character being 19 at the least. Normally, this might be attributed to monsters aging slower than regular humans, but then Liam specifically mentions age shipping discourse brought up in ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'' fandom,[[note]]Namely, that after Marco spent decades having an adventure in another dimension, being in his original body again possibly makes him mentally older than anyone he knows[[/note]] then notes they don't have to go through that discourse since they're above legal age. And given the high amounts of horniness and sex that happens in the game, this in-universe disclaimer might have been in the developers' best interests.

* Those who have very recently turned eighteen (or their country, state, or province's age of majority) will often be very eager to point it out as well as take advantage of the new privileges and rights they have. It's justified because since their becoming of the age of majority, people around them will most likely see them as "just a kid" and they therefore have to do some work to actually remake their images into those of adults. Meanwhile, any establishment that has an age requirement for its patrons tends to make it a policy to card anyone who doesn't look 30, just to be sure.

** Of course, in real life a girl who lied about her age and seduced him would not have much legal ground to stand on. A point which is raised when [[spoiler: the thing actually does become public. This makes a lot of the panic of the earlier seasons seem a bit redundant.]]
*** In many U.S. jurisdictions statutory rape is a "strict liability" crime, meaning that ignorance of the underage person's true age is legally no defense.

* Ever since the infamous "pedophilia how-to guide" incident on Amazon.com late in 2010, Amazon.com has been rather squeamish about selling any erotic literature featuring underage sex and/or incest. This led to a number of erotic authors' stories [[http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/ being yanked from distribution with no warning and little to no explanation]]. Since then, many erotic authors such as Selena Kitt have lately reworked a lot of their stories to specify that everyone in them is ''totally'' eighteen or over; also that they're ''totally'' NotBloodRelated. Almost invariably, any stories about--for instance--"daddy's little girl" will have the girl saying something to her daddy about how she can decide things for herself since she's eighteen now, and will mention in passing or work into the plot some reason why [[DisappearedDad her biological father is gone]] and this guy is actually her ''step''-daddy. [[WebVideo/HonestTrailers So it's OK for them to pork.]]