Basic Trope: An adult villain (or a brutal Anti-Hero) has the personality traits of a child.
- Straight: Psycho for Hire Kent is an avid fan of cartoons and tends to resort to childish insults.
- Exaggerated:
- Jerkass God Kent plays with toys, hires a woman to act as his "mom", and generally acts as though he's a 10-year-old despite being really more than 9000 years old.
- Kent is an Almighty Idiot with the mind of a toddler, complete with the temper. Every time something doesn’t go his way, no matter what it may be, he lashes out with all the power of a Physical God, wiping out entire civilisations to the last man in his senseless tantrums.
- Downplayed:
- Kent is charismatic and clever, but his goal is very childish.
- Kent plays with toys and acts like a child in private, but in public he tries to act his age.
- Kent, The Brute, is normally good natured but dim, but can throw deadly punches if enraged.
- Kent is an Anti-Hero who does childish things from time to time.
- Kent is The Fake Cutie Affably Evil with childish interests and goals.
- Kent's personality is mostly serious and mature, but his villainy stems from a childish, disproportionate grudge.
- Justified:
- Kent had a very unhappy childhood; It’s what influenced him to become an assassin and he never got to mentally grow past the age in which he was traumatized.
- Kent never received a formal education because of his villainy.
- Kent is suffering from severe memory loss, giving him the life experience of a child in the body of a grown man.
- Inverted:
- Kent is a young boy who plots evil schemes, but also acts very adult-like for his age.
- Kent is very childish yet heroic. Bonus Points if his child-like nature is meant to emphasize his (non-ambiguous) innocence and good nature.
- Kent is a Kid Hero.
- Subverted: The heroes find a well-used action figure in Kent's base and a television turned to a cartoon... because he has a young son, and those are his.
- Double Subverted: His son is also creeped out by his dad, on the basis he correctly suspects he's more mature.
- Parodied:
- When the hero disarms Kent, Kent throws a tantrum and acts as if the hero confiscated a toy he was playing with.
- Kent shows up to the council meeting sucking on a pacifier, and wearing nothing but a diaper, a bonnet, and bandoliers. Nobody else comments on it.
- Kent's psycho-yet-childish antics frequently frustrate his boss, who is forced to act like a surrogate father (or mother) to him, and punishes or rewards Kent as they see fit.
- Zig Zagged: Kent acts like a adult sometimes, and like a child at other times, depending on his mood.
- Averted: Kent acts his age.
- Enforced: As per the producer's will, Kent's characterisation is changed from a suave villain to a tantrum-throwing one.
- Lampshaded: "...Is it just me, or does Kent seem like a disturbed preteen wearing an adult suit?"
- Invoked: Kent become a villain because knowing they can freely do kids stuff.
- Exploited:
- Kent pretends to be a Manchild to scare the hero.
- The hero defeats Kent with income taxes and broccoli.
- Defied: Kent considers childish behaviour immature and unfitting for someone of his age, and is careful to act like an adult at all times.
- Discussed: "Doesn't Kent seem really immature for an evil mastermind?"
- Conversed: "How come so many of these villains have the maturity of a preteen?"
- Implied:
- Kent is mainly a Generic Doomsday Villain, but a background shot reveals he owns many action figures.
- Kent is mostly a Silent Antagonist. Except the giggling.
- Kent looks like a diabolical mastermind on the surface, but his actions reveal that his plans are needlessly complex given the simplicity of his desired outcomes, and he is an enormously reactive, petty, vindictive, and spiteful man who, more often than not, is setting up elaborate schemes to destroy the lives of others over minor slights.
- Kent is a debauched, depraved man whose life revolves around all sorts of base pleasures, and his usual response to someone refusing to give him what he wants or providing consequences for his behavior is to violently take it anyways or seek revenge.
- Deconstructed: Kent's immaturity is a psychological shield; he knows fully well that what he does is wrong, and takes no pleasure in it. Over time, his emotional growth regressed to a state of Ambiguous Innocence, allowing him to avoid the moral implications of what he does. When he was forced to confront the fallout, his mind broke, and he convinced himself he was "playing" with his targets, with a side of Black-and-White Insanity (a child's view on morality).
- Reconstructed: This doesn't help in the slightest, as he now views himself through that lens, and he eventually collapses into a suicidal depression, which the heroes help him out of. He performs a Heel–Face Turn and becomes a much happier person thanks to effectively "re"-maturing.
- Played for Laughs: Kent's childishness makes him a completely ridiculous and ineffective villain.
- Played for Drama: Kent embodies the the selfishness and cruelty of a child, with the intelligence and drive of an adult.
- Played for Horror: Kent does not only act really childish, but he also sees putting others under a Cold-Blooded Torture or Cruel and Unusual Death as a way of playing, par on the course like an Enfant Terrible.
Please don't wake up Kent from his nap-time while you go back to the main article. He gets... grouchy if you wake him up...
