Precocious Crush

"Just thinkin' about someone special..."

Charlie Brown: I think our teacher is in love.
Linus: I was afraid of that. I've always hoped that she'd wait until I grew up, and then marry me.
Charlie Brown: How would you support her?
Linus: We could live off her retirement pay.

— Peanuts, March 21, 1989

Children having "crushes" on one another isn't uncommon. To most children, loving someone just means liking them a lot. They have no notions of sexual—and sometimes even romantic—love. Their crushes are, for the most part, innocent. They may make a Childhood Marriage Promise with their best friend just because, and even pretend to get "married." Older kids generally have a basic idea of the birds and the bees, but still have to deal with raging hormones and lots of confusion.

What happens when kids get crushes on adults?

In some cases, Squick happens. In most instances, you have an ordinary kid who has to deal with the ordinary awkwardness of having a crush on someone way out of their league.

The Precocious Crush is any instance of a child (usually pre-teen or younger, though young teenagers are sometimes susceptible) having a crush on someone considered at least one age level older than them. Teachers are common targets, as are other, non-related caretakers. While having this kind of crush is more often associated with girls, it is also common to portray boys as having this kind of crush. Usually, nothing ever comes of it—at least not until the character in question is much older, and even then, it still might seem a bit Squicky to some. In animation, the trope can be invoked without fully using it in the case of teenagers, where one character is only a few years younger than their crush, but differing rates of physical development makes the crush look a lot older than them.

This trope is Truth in Television. Lots of kids get crushes on their teachers or on their older neighbors, or friends of their older siblings—and older siblings of their friends, or even celebrities. (One resolution is for differences between the older and the same-age siblings to be mostly maturity; when the kid and the same-age sibling grow up, Settle for Sibling can be a happy ending.)

See also Puppy Love, where two little kids crush on each other, and Father, I Want to Marry My Brother, which relies on an innocent inability to distinguish between different types of love. If the interest is clearly sexual, then it's Dirty Kid.

If the object of the crush happens to be a hot single mom (commonly known as a MILF), see Stacy's Mom. Should anything actually happen in the relationship, see Wife Husbandry, Jail Bait Wait, Teacher/Student Romance, and May–December Romance. See also Likes Older Men, Likes Older Women, Fille Fatale and Kidanova. Possible ways this crush can work out is if the kid becomes older or their crush becomes their age.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Skuld's special episode at the end of Ah! My Goddess, she begins exhibiting this trope towards Keichi, but Urd tried to sabotage it and deliberately create a Snap Back—commenting to herself that it was for Skuld's own good. As it turned out, however, Skuld was only getting emotional as a part of Goddess puberty, and her full powers were kicking in. Once that settled, she mostly dropped said crush. In the manga version of the story, she merely suspects that she has a crush on Keiichi and sets out to prove that she doesn't.
• Baby Love is about a girl who fell for an older boy as a little kid and promised herself that she would marry him. Four years later they meet again but he doesn't remember her. There's only a four year age difference but Seara is an elementary schooler while her crush is ending middle school and looks older.
• Berserk:
  • Cute Witch Schierke: Intelligent, talented, and crushing furiously on Guts, who's twice her age.
  • And then there was Jill (during the Fairy Arc), who looks to be around Schierke's age, and was likewise crushing furiously on Guts. To the point where she persistently followed him around, trying to get him to agree to allow her to stay by his side. In fact, he was pretty much her main reason for not agreeing to become one of Rosine's faeries when given the chance—her hesitation was shown to be mainly because of her crush on him.
  • Likewise, in the Hawks camp, young Sonia is head over heels for Griffith.
• Black Butler:
  • Angelina aka Madame Red was revealed to have harbored a deep Precocious Crush on Earl Vincent Phantomhive, Ciel's father. At the time, she was quite a bit younger than him. Unfortunately for her, he ended up marrying her older sister Rachel, Ciel's mother. And some years later, both Vincent and Rachel were messily killed.
  • In the anime, the teenaged Finny also has one on Angela.
• Eve (who is assumed to be around 11) from Black Cat has a crush on Sven (30 years old), to the point where she actually feels a rivalry towards Train, wanting to replace him as Sven's partner.
• Pinoko, from Black Jack. Not only does she know things someone her age shouldn't, she's really the only person who can assist Black Jack in surgery, gets jealous when he pays any attention at all to other women (well, women, at least), and tends to get around just fine in areas Black Jack doesn't want her around. This is played with, because Pinoko is actually 18 years old at least. She was originally a sentient tumor (and possible parasitic twin) in the body of a teenage girl, and Black Jack extracted her from her sister's body and gave her an artificial body of her own, shaped as a little girl. She went to live with him after her "twin sister" freaked out and rejected her.
• Garcia Lovelace (no older than 13) from Black Lagoon has a crush on his Mama Bear maid Roberta (mid-to-late 20s). Confirmed in El Baile de la Muerte, where he kisses her.◊
• Bleach:
  • Arguably, Neliel. "Arguably" because Neliel isn't exactly a little kid. She's a full grown adult Action Girl who ended up stuck in a Sleep-Mode Size after a serious injury. However, she still shows affection to Ichigo like a child does.
  • Momo clearly has a crush on Aizen, but she's around Hitsugaya's age so looks about fourteen while Aizen looks quite a bit older.Even after Aizen proved to be quite the Manipulative Bastard and only saw her as a pawn, Momo sadly still believes he's not evil.
• When Shura Kirigakure from Blue Exorcist first met Shiro Fujimoto when she was a child, she immediately declared her love for him and that she wanted to marry him.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • Sakura Kinomoto initially has a crush on the teenaged Yukito, though they give it a plot-related propping up towards the end and the two of them ultimately end up with other people (Sakura falls for Syaoran; Yukito, for Sakura's brother Touya. Both of them are around their love interests' same ages).
  • Then there's Rika Sasaki's huge crush on her adult teacher, Yoshiyuki Terada, which is a point of contention with fans since in the manga he apparently accepts and reciprocates it (though he tells her to wait until she's of age). In the anime, he remains oblivious and she's way too shy to let anyone know.
  • Played with in Syaoran's case, since he spent over half of the anime seemingly crushing on Yukito, but it was then revealed that he was subconsciously attracted to Yue's magical energy. He learned this when he started to fall in love with Sakura.
• Played with in Case Closed chapters 925 through 927. Ai Haibara takes it badly when she learns her favorite athlete, Ryusuke Higo (in his early-to-mid 20s), is rumored to be dating local idol Yoko Okino (around his same age). She refuses to listen to Yoko's songs anymore and even hires Kogoro, a fan of Yoko's, to investigate the affair. When they all inevitably get involved in a murder case, Haibara's interaction with the pair include things like instantly agreeing to whatever Ryusuke says and disagreeing with Yoko, even if they're saying essentially the same thing. After everything is resolved, we learn the rumors are fake and Ryusuke personally thanks Haibara for her help in the case and even makes an offhand remark about putting her on his team. The final panel shows Haibara insisting on playing soccer despite stormy weather and singing Yoko's newest song. The twist that plays with the trope is that Haibara is actually an 18-year-old physically regressed to about age 7 and is typically a Little Miss Snarker on top of that... yet her behavior throughout these chapters ends up matching almost exactly what one would expect of her grade-schooler appearance.
• ChocoMimi: Misaki, an eighth-grader, has a crush on Mr. Take, who is in his mid-forties. This attraction is frequently Played for Laughs.
• Code Geass:
  • Kaguya Sumeragi is 14 when she proclaims herself Zero's future wife and proceeds to become the show's Token Mini-Moe. She even proposes the polyamory when someone else tries to tease her about the other women in Zero's life. It's worth noting that Lelouch himself is 16/17 years (although everyone assumes the masked vigilante Zero is much older under the mask), so the age difference is quite small, and both are Wise Beyond Their Years, though Kaguya prefers to act younger than she is, most of the time. And also looks younger than she is for that matter. Nothing becomes of it, regardless. She's promised to Zero, not Lelouch, so the only thing Lelouch's death and Suzaku taking the name does is add Kissing Cousins to the mix, and that ignores that she was originally supposed to marry Suzaku in the first place.
  • Also, some people interpret Empress Tianzi's thoughts towards her guardian Li Xingke that way. The squick is greater since Tianzi is 13 and Xingke is 24, and she's known him for half her life.
  • Mao apparently developed one for C.C. at an early age when they lived alone in the wild together, eventually developing into full fledged Yandere love when he gets older. He even takes it to Stalker with a Crush and Love Martyr proportions.
• Played for Laughs in Crayon Shin-chan: Shin, who is in kindergarten, falls in love with college student Nanako Oohara; meanwhile his classmate Ai Suotome has a crush on him.
• Dragon Ball Super's Future Trunks Arc featured both Present Trunks and Mai crushing on each other's alternate future selves.
• Durarara!!:
  • Shinra Kishitani has been harboring an intense and very vocal crush on his Dullahan housemate, Celty, for the last 20 years. He's only 24. Do the math.
  • His friend Shizuo Heiwajima, as a child, had a huge crush on a cute shopkeeper from his neighborhood. She got seriously injured when Shizuo had a psychotic breakdown while trying to protect her from thugs, and several years after that, he still considers the terrible incident as his greatest failure.
• The Electric Tale of Pikachu: Ten year old Ash has a crush on Blue's teenage sister May.
• Naota Nandaba develops a crush on Haruko Haruhara in FLCL. It's implied that he's around 12, and she's at least 19. An interesting case, in that he only decides he loves her after she spends several episodes flirting with him and teasing him and basically doing everything short of molesting him to get him to notice her. Then when he finally responds to her advances she plays this trope straight, saying that he's too young for her and leaving him behind when she leaves Earth. But not before he plants a kiss on her. By the end of the series, after Haruko leaves, he appears to be getting away from the trope and instead developing a relationship with his classmate Eri Ninamori.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has May Chang, who at first has a crush on Ed… and then she actually meets him. From there her crush shifts to Ed's much more polite brother Al, who's around her same age. It is heavily implied that they end up together years later.
• In Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, 16-year-old Takiko has had a crush on her father's assistant Takao ever since she was a little girl. Said assistant is at least 10 years older than she is… and Happily Married with a daughter named Suzuno.
  • In the 3rd OVA to the original Fushigi Yuugi series, Mayo falls in love with the 20-something Taka at an ice cream parlor while she is in Junior High. Her unrequited feelings become a major plot point as she tries to rewrite the Universe of the Four Gods so that she becomes Taka's wife instead of Miaka.
• In Gakuen Babysitters, Inui, a high school student, has a crush on Yukari who is the school's secretary and Happily Married with a young child. His middle-school aged sister Mika likes Hayato, a high school student like her brother.
• While not as major as some, Game×Rush has Sayako, a 13-year-old Teen Genius, crushing on 19-year-old Memori who doesn't seem to notice. (Granted, he's a little preoccupied.) This continues 3 years into the future, when Sayako is 16 and Memori 22.
• In GaoGaiGar, nine-year-old Mamoru's classmate Reiko has fallen for the "long-haired hunk" aka the twenty-year-old Guy Shishioh who never notices her crush. She is highly annoyed to discover he is already taken. Another episode has her ogling soldiers at a military base, so she may just be a Dirty Kid in general.
• In The Garden of Words, 15-year-old Takao slowly develops a crush on the mysterious (to him) 27-year-old Yukari Yukino. Although Takao wouldn't call it a crush, he is mature enough to admit it might be of that nature. This is incredibly awkward for Yukino, she having been forced out of her job as a teacher at Takao's school as a result of malicious false rumours about her reciprocating a crush from a different student.
• Mika from Gungrave (who is about 14) develops one for Grave, who's saved her on numerous occasions and is also not just her bodyguard, he's also her mother's former sweetheart. However, Grave's also undead and is way older than her (he was about 29-30 at time of death and reanimation stopped his aging but still). It doesn't go much further than that, as Grave specifically tells her that all he can do for her is to serve as her Guardian.
• Gunslinger Girl:
  • Henrietta seems to have quite a crush on her handler Jose. This is never really built on, but remains Henrietta's most notable character trait, and is contrasted with Elsa's fatally disabling crush towards her handler.
  • Triela has a crush on her handler Hilshire. She refuses to reveal her feelings as she's well-aware that at least a part of her feelings are conditioned by the treatment that made her a Tyke Bomb, and also knows that he's not much more likely to be romantically interested in a girl half his age.
  • Hasta is just as old as Nyarko and Cuuko (they went to Space Kindergarten together). Everyone just treats him like a kid.
• Hanamaru Kindergarten is about a 5-year-old little girl's adorably bungled attempts to get her kindergarten teacher to love her. She's convinced he has a crush on her, since… he called her "Little Lady." Unlike Kodomo no Jikan, this plays its subject matter for laughs and d'aawwws.
• Nagi (13) in Hayate the Combat Butler has a crush on Hayate (16). He cares deeply for her, but not that way.
• In a Filler episode of Heat Guy J, a girl named Hime ("Princess") decides that she likes Daisuke's older brother Shun. Hilarity Ensues.
• Hell Teacher Nube:
  • Fifth-grader Kyoko has a harmless, unrequited crush on her 25 year-old teacher, Nube, due to a combination of Rescue Romance from several years ago, and a Bodyguard Crush from a previous life (in which they were the same age.) However, both Kyoko and Nube have other love interests (Hiroshi, for Kyoko; Yukime and Ritsuko , for Nube, so it never goes any further than that (despite Minki's teasing).
  • To a degree, high school-aged Yukime's crush on Nube counts too. She fell in love with Nube when she was 11 and he was in his very early 20s, and he saved her from being shot to death by a Jerkass hunter who feared her ice powers. She actually does get together with him, though. After much struggling and misfortune.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, Little Romano (South Italy) develops one of these on resident Cool Big Sis Belgium. Even if he does back away when she cheerfully indulges him.
• Inuyasha: Happens to Miroku (of course) and a young girl named Koharu, although we only see the second half of it.
• In Jewelpet Twinkle☆, Labra the toddler Jewelpet develops a crush on Akari's 6th grader friend, Yuuma.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • The Official Doujin spin-off turns Kaguya and Shirogane's mutual attraction into this in a Kindergarten A.U.. Notably, Toddler!Kaguya is far more open about her crush on Teacher!Shirogane than her main series counterpart.
  • Within the main series, Moeha is revealed to have a crush on Shirogane during the culture festival. While the gap between them is only three years (she's 14 and he's 17), it's large enough that Kaguya is comfortable enough using it to write her off as a threat.
  • According to supplemental material, Shirogane was tutored by Fujiwara's older sister Toyomi when they were in elementary school and middle school respectively, though his crush was never anything serious and for all intents and purposes Kaguya is his First Love.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Subverted in the The Legend of Zelda manga created by Yuu Mishouzaki. It appears that the prepubescent-looking Link has this sort of crush towards the teenaged Zelda, however Zelda is actually younger than Link. As Link is half-elf, he ages slower than humans. Link is older than Zelda and is in fact her older brother.
  • The Legend of Zelda (Akira Himekawa): In the adaptation of Oracle of Ages, Roperi has one on Sir Raven, and later shifts focus to Link.
• In Love Hina, one of the first girls to start crushing on Keitaro is Shinobu, who is only thirteen at the story's beginning while Keitaro is nineteen.
• In Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, 12-year-old Sasshi has the hots for Mune-Mune, which is ironic considering she's really his grandmother, who looks perpetually like her 19-year-old self, thanks to a time paradox!
• In the Alma Torran flashback in Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, Solomon was 5 years older than the 12-year-old Sheba when he saved her. After a few years, she developed feelings for him but he didn't take her seriously as he saw himself as a Parental Substitute for her. However he eventually reciprocated and they became a couple.
• Early in Maison Ikkoku, Kentaro Ichinose (the little boy) announces that when he grows up he's going to marry Kyoko, so Godai better back off. Kyoko is amused by it. Later he falls even harder for Kyoko's niece Ikuko, so it wasn't an issue for long. Ibuki gets a big crush on Godai; she's 7 years younger but at least she's in high school.
• Martian Successor Nadesico: It's heavily implied that Ruri harbors a crush on Akito, although she doesn't chase after him like the others do. Subtle signs for it include her believing in his Gekiganger 3 knowledge to save Omoikane, picking him as her first choice for her knight when she was called a princess, and the biggest example, the lyrics (and the title) of "I Want to be your Number One", her Image Song from the beauty contest episode are implied to be for him.
• Rita in Michiko & Hatchin is a 10-year-old foundling with a Precocious Crush for the man who discovered her and adopted her into the circus he worked in. Since the object of her affections is about to settle down with a woman, she's intensely jealous. However, she gets over it.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has an Arranged Marriage set up between McGillis Fareed (20s) and Almiria Bauduin (9). While McGillis is generally shown to be somewhat uncomfortable whenever this is brought up (probably due to the age difference), Almiria could not be happier with the arrangement.
• Tomoe Marguerite from My-Otome develops a crush on a teen-aged Shizuru as a pre-teen girl, even going so far as to sneak onto campus to get a look at her. Several years later when Tomoe is 15 and a student in Garderobe, it becomes very Squicky when she sexually manipulates an adult, captive Shizuru (who is now a staff member at the school Tomoe attends) and basically rapes her..
• Nanaka 6/17: Kuriko, a kindergartener, gets a crush on high-schooler Nenji because he saves her from some bullies and looks like her older brother, who is abroad.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Asuna Kagurazaka (14) is crushing on Takamichi (mid to late 30s). May be subverted as Asuna is older than she looks and may very well be as old or older than Takamichi. She just doesn't remember it. However, Asuna getting turned down also has nothing to do with her age, oddly enough. Takamichi simply feels unworthy of love, especially from royalty.
  • Asuna also has a similar attraction to the mid-to-late-40s Eishun Konoe, the father of her best friend Konoka, and had a bit of a similar reaction the first time she saw Nagi in a dream. Given that they, also, adventured with her and had a hand in, basically, raising her, this may be feeling for them as parents (except Takamichi), misplaced due to amnesia.
  • As a kid no older than 15, Kurt Godel used to have a huge crush on Negi's mother, Queen Arika. Now that he's in his 30s, he's still in love with her even though she's very likely dead by that point.
  • Evangeline, who has the body of a 10-year-old, had a crush on Nagi, Negi's father. He only treated her as an annoying kid because he wasn't into little girls. When she pointed out she's Really 700 Years Old, he turned it around that she was far too old for him and that it was still creepy.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Asuka has an obvious and vocal crush on Kaji, her guardian. She's 13/14 (her birthday is partway through the series), he's somewhere in his late 20s. To Kaji's credit, despite his womanizing habits, he always rebuffs Asuka's advances, having no intention whatsoever of starting anything with her. This being Evangelion, Asuka handles rejection badly since it feeds her complex of being "unwanted".
  • In the Evangelion world, the guardians get all the love. Shinji fantasizes about his own guardian, Misato, who is around Kaji's age. But, in marked contrast with Asuka, Shinji is thoroughly disgusted with himself for these feelings, which he never admits to anyone. And toward the end of the series, when a distraught and lonesome Misato suggests to an even more distraught and lonesome Shinji what seems to be an offer of 'comfort sex', he not only balks but soon thereafter runs away for good. In the show's Geodesic Cast, semi-official couple Misato and Kaji are the respective adult parallels of semi-official couple Asuka and Shinji.
  • Jerkass guardians get love, too. As horrible as Gendou is to pretty much everyone, his ward Rei included (if not most of all), at the start of the series, Gendou seems to be the only character to whom Rei has developed any sort of emotional attachment. As the series progresses, Rei's feelings gradually transfer from Gendou to his son Shinji, and intensify enormously in the process. This alters rather than alleviates the Squickiness, since she's the clone of Gendou's wife/Shinji's mother, Yui, with Lilith's DNA mixed in... making her Shinji's sort-of half-sister.
• Nobunaga no Chef: 5-year-old Ranmaru Mori is smitten with Natsu, the protagonist's Love Interest.
• Isami in Noein has a rather obvious crush on his teacher Ms. Yukie, which his friends tease him endlessly over. Several future timelines show him eventually getting into a real relationship with his childhood friend Ai.
• Ririka's friend Karin from Nurse Angel Ririka SOS falls for a cookie shop owner who ends up being a member of Dark Joker. When he disappears after being defeated, she falls for a hamburger shop owner. Apparently she falls for men often, usually men from various food venues.
• In Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!, Hasta falls in love with Mahiro after he shows him kindness and even repeatedly asks if they can be lovers. Mahiro refuses because Hasta's a child, they're both boys, and he's really the avatar of Hastur, The King in Yellow.
• One Piece:
  • 8-year-old Momonosuke has a crush on 20-year-old Nami, who, true to the trope, remains oblivious and lets him sleep in her bed. After Momonosuke is aged to 28-years old, he still tries to hit on Nami, to which the woman is clearly less than pleased.
  • Justified during the Egghead arc with S-Snake, a Modified Clone of Boa Hancock who inherited her original's massive crush on Luffy due to her Lineage Factor. This fascinates her creator, Dr Vegapunk, since she wasn't programed for such things.
• Penguindrum has Ringo, who falls for Keiju Tabuki when she's a little girl. He's old enough to be her schoolteacher, and is in fact the teacher of the Takakura brothers Kanba and Shoma. And he was the boyfriend of Momoka, Ringo's dead older sister.
• Poor, poor Masato (Max) from Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire (who is not old enough to be a Pokémon trainer) developed such a crush on the youngest Kachinuki (Winstrate). She is more naive than he and ends up breaking his heart.
• Pretty Cure is brimming with these:
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure: Nagisa's younger brother Ryouta has a crush on her best friend Honoka. Unfortunately for Nagisa, he's much nicer to Honoka than to herself.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star: Saki (14) has a crush on her best friend's older brother Kazuya who is around 2 to 3 years older than her.
  • Yes! Pretty Cure 5: Nozomi (14) and Komachi (15) have a crush on Coco and Natts, respectively, who are both adults. Fortunately, these guys have feelings for them, too. Bizarrely enough, Coco and Natts are fairy mascots (and princes) who can transform into humans.
    • Rin (14) has a few crushes on older guys. In the sequel, she and Karen (15) had both a crush on the villain Mucardia who used his human form as a disguise.
  • HeartCatch Pretty Cure!: A young boy named Hayato is revealed to have a crush on Yuri (17), and Tsubomi, Erika and Itsuki set out to help him reveal it. He's temporarily shot down (and turned into a Desertian) when Yuri says she considers him like a little brother, but when he recovers and she learns how he feels, he realizes he should start small and decides he'd be there to protect her which he does—he's one of the few survivors when the world becomes a desert and is there to help the Precures out of their Darkest Hour.
    • Tsubomi herself had a crush on the "handsome young man" who is later revealed to be her grandmother's fairy mascot Coupe who transformed into Tsubomi's grandfather.
  • Doki Doki! PreCure: Raquel (around 10) has a crush on his Cure partner Rikka (14). He can transform into a human now, unfortunately, only into a child instead into someone in Rikka's age.
• Marie has a crush on the older Ageha in Psyren. Things get a bit complicated when Ageha travels to the future and discovers that, along with her Plot-Relevant Age-Up, she is still crushing on him.
• Ranma ½ begins with Akane Tendo having a one-sided crush on Dr. Tofu, a chiropractor who has apparently been something of the family physician for many years, having been responsible for treating Akane's sprains and bruises since she was a little girl. He is completely oblivious to her feelings for her, though, and this coupled with his freakish obsession with her elder sister Kasumi helps her to get over it. She eventually grows out of it some time after Ranma's arrival.
• In Rising Impact there are at least 2 cases like that:
  • The main character (who is a 9-year-old boy) and this 21-year-old pro-golf player lady who took care of him for some time. Well they did get along quite well, so it's no wonder that they actually got married years later.
  • One of the students at the golf school in America had a really strong crush on his female teacher. It all started when he was brought to the school as a small boy and cried a lot. Said teacher tried to replace his mother (with whom he had little contact while in school), but the boy developed feelings for her which very different from those one has for his parent. In the end nothing came out of this crush.
• Princess Adele in The Royal Tutor has a crush on the titular character Heine. She is three years old, the youngest out of King Viktor's children, while Heine's age has yet to be revealed but he reminds others that he is an adult and at one point, muses to himself that Adele is young enough to be his daughter. It also doesn't help that Heine physically appears only a few years older than Adele.
• In Rurouni Kenshin, a girl named Tsubaki (who's at most 13/14) is a bit of a Tsundere to Anji (early-to-mid 20s), the gentle and peaceful Buddhist monk who took her and a bunch of other orphaned children in. The younger kids swear by this trope and actively ship them together. Too bad Tsubaki and the other children are killed by their greedy townspeople, which makes poor Anji cross the Despair Event Horizon and have a Face–Heel Turn. Interestingly, the anime studio saw potential in that (and even the manga's author, Nobuhiro Watsuki, admitted that they could have some sort of relationship), therefore the anime added some more heartwarming scenes of the two of them interacting. Including one that happens in the snow.
• Sailor Moon:
  • In the anime Usagi's little brother Shingo develops a crush on Ami. This really isn't all that unreasonable given that the age difference between them is just about 4 years (Shingo's around 11, Ami is 15) exactly the same for his older sister and Mamoru, in fact the Ami/Shingo pairing isn't even all that uncommon in fan fiction. It helps that Shingo is often presented as more mature than his sister.
  • Chibiusa has a precocious crush on Mamoru, despite knowing that he's her future father.
  • Chibiusa also thinks Shingo (who, for the record, is her uncle and goes from pre-teen to young teenager in the series itself) is pretty cute.
• Kyouko Kadokura, the sensei of Sensei Lock On has had a tendency to attract these, with boys in the elementary school she teaches at actively trying to flirt with her or otherwise vie for her attention. The very first of these boys, Kazuki Yamato, fell for her on her first day teaching his class. He re-enters her life when he turns twenty and convinces the now thirty-three year old Kyouko to become his girlfriend.
• Spy X Family: Anya's classmate Becky has a crush on Anya's adoptive father Loid, and one chapter focuses on her (extremely unsuccessful) attempts to seduce him. While she's convinced that she knows all about romance thanks to the TV dramas she's watched, it's made clear that she's too young to really know what she's doing and the manga's narration notes that she's detached from reality.
• The short The Structural Formula of First Love is about a woman whose best friend and unrequited love became pregnant in high school 13 years ago and dropped out. Her friend's daughter is absolutely in love with the protagonist and the protagonist worries it's due to a "curse" she stated—that her friend's child would fall in love with her. The manga ends with implications of the two dating when Chisato finishes high school.
• In Sword Art Online, 12-year-old Silica develops a crush on the 15-year-old Kirito after he helps her resurrect her dragon familiar Pina and protects her from Titan's Hand. Unfortunately for her, he sees her as a little sister and, by the time he and Silica meet up again, he's already in a relationship with Asuna.
• Tenchi Muyo!:
  • Sasami has occasionally expressed some interest in Tenchi (but who hasn't?) but it is double subverted by her age. She's really over 700… but by Juraian standards, she's still considered a little girl.
  • Played straight with Ryo-Ohki, who is shown to dream of being with Tenchi, where they are picking carrots together. Technically, she's a child, but she's also a centuries-old living warship that was reborn after its destruction.
• Tiger & Bunny:
  • Protagonist Kotetsu's 10/11-year-old daughter Kaede develops a crush on her dad's 24-year-old partner Barnaby after he saves her life in the second episode. Kotetsu's a bit annoyed about it.
  • Blue Rose/Karina is in her teens and harbours a massive crush on Kotetsu who is in his late 30s. When she discovers he is widowed and has a young daughter, she goes into a state of shock but by episode 25, she seems to have recovered and is intent on making Kotetsu fall for her.
• In Tsukigasa, one of Azuma's young students tries to disrupt Kuroe's lessons because he has a crush on Azuma and sees Kuroe as his rival. It's Played for Laughs considering how worked up Kuroe gets over it.
• Wandering Son:
  • Kaneda is an attractive young teacher who attracts the attention of a lot of his middle school students. Out of the main cast Maho, Makoto, Chizuru, and possibly Takatsuki have all crushed on him. Saisho doesn't get much attention but there is a minor character who keeps on hitting on him, to his discomfort.
  • Subverted with Takatsuki and Yuki. Takatsuki was awfully excited when Yuki flirted with her however it was because she was excited that she was passing for a boy. Though Yuki was Mistaken for Pedophile by her boyfriend when he met Takatsuki, the two have a platonic Intergenerational Friendship where Yuki is a Cool Big Sis.
  • Doi has a crush on Yuki for a few chapters and gets Nitori to let him meet her. The crush goes away once he learns that she is a trans woman.
• You and Me:
  • In preschool Kaname had a crush on his teacher. As a teenager he still Likes Older Women and when they meet again he still likes her.
  • When the boys volunteer at a kindergarten several of the girls fall for the twins Yuuta and Yuki.
• You Like Me, Not My Daughter?!: Takkun has had a crush on Ayako since he was a kid, but now that He Is All Grown Up it's blossomed into real love.
• 8-year-old Rebecca Hopkins from Yu-Gi-Oh! has one of 15-year-old Yuugi. It's less Squicky in the Japanese version, where she's 12.
• When stuck in a hidden village Disguised in Drag Taichi from Yuureitou catches the eye of a boy. Taichi isn't the most attractive crossdresser and it's stated that the boy is only attracted to Taichi because he is the only young female he's met.

Comic Books

• In A-Force, the child-like Singularity is very fond of her teammate Nico, to the point that fans wondered if they might become a couple. The creators have said that Singularity does, in fact, have a crush on Nico, but Nico sees her as a little sister.
• In Peter Milligan's run on Animal Man, Lucinda Angel is a young girl who has a crush on Buddy Baker and doesn't seem to care much that Buddy is a married man in addition to being old enough to be her father.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise introduces Penga, one of Toph's students at the Metalbending Academy. As soon as Penga meets Sokka she is obviously smitten with the adolescent boy. Sokka responds with amusement and kindness, but of course no similar infatuation.
  Sokka: How old are you, Penga?
  Penga: Almost sixteen.
  Sokka: And by "almost," you mean...
  Penga: Nine.
  Sokka: I see.
• In Batman, Damian Wayne, who is at best, biologically 12 (New 52 Damian definitely has accelerated growth, and 5 years old chronologically, at best) has several: Cassandra Cain, Katana, Stephanie Brown and Supergirl.
• The 2005 graphic novel of The Dead Boy Detectives by Jill Thompson has Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland help the students of an all-girls school investigate the disappearance of their friend Elizabeth. The youngest of the girls is a five-year-old named Frederika, who takes a liking to 12-year-old Edwin and refers to him as her "husband". Edwin plays along.
• Fantastic Four: Frequently forgotten is that Susan Storm knew and had a thing for Reed Richards since he was a college undergrad… and she was 13. At least one writer since then has retconned this in their version of the Four's backstory, explicitly ditching this element and establishing their first meeting as occurring when the two of them are both in college and at around the same age.
• Green Lantern:
  • Arisia was a 13-year-old member of the Green Lantern Corps with an unrequited crush on Hal Jordan. After a Plot-Relevant Age-Up, the two hooked up, but the whole thing was so creepy that Geoff Johns later Retconned it by saying that 13 on Arisia's planet is around 240 on Earth.
  • During Judd Winick's run, Kyle Rayner learns that the 16-year-old Terry Berg is gay and has a crush on him. After helping Terry come to terms with his sexuality, Kyle tactfully explains to Terry that he can't reciprocate his feelings because he's straight and because the age gap is too wide.
• A late 70s issue of Josie and the Pussycats centered around a little boy who appeared to be stalking Josie and Melody. When Alexander finally apprehends him, the young stalker tearfully admits he had a crush on Melody, who is so flattered she kisses the boy smack on the lips. The kid launches off into space.
• Cypher of New Mutants nursed an unrequited crush on Psylocke.
• Molly from Runaways has a crush on Wolverine, until she finds out what a jerk he is. (To be fair to Logan, she was shrieking at an unbearable level and asking to touch his hair.)
• Shazam!:
  • In Jeff Smith's Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil, Billy Batson has a crush on beautiful reporter, Helen Fidelity (a blonde expy of Lois Lane). Helen likes Captain Marvel (who is a separate personality in this version). This dynamic continues into the sequel series, Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam.
  • This is also what the other heroes believed when he and Stargirl started dating since they looked like a teenage girl and a late-20s man instead of two teenagers. The eventually broke up to maintain Billy's secret.
• Sin City: John Hartigan, 60, saves Nancy Callahan, 11, from a pedophile. When he is set up as a scapegoat and sent to jail she confesses her love and promises to wait. When he is released 8 years later he discovers that she kept her promise. While she is technically legal, he still refuses to make a move on her because of the age difference and their history.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Amy Rose, is an 8-year-old who has a huge crush on Sonic, who is 16. Later after a half-retcon-half-timeskip in the series they are 12 and 15 respectively.
• In Supergirl story arc Bizarrogirl, the titular Bizarro character -who looks like a teenager but is only six-weeks-old- has an one-sided crush on Bizarro!Luthor -who looks like a middle-aged man, albeit he's months old-, much to the real Kara's disgust.
  • Kara herself had a crush on Dick Grayson, expressing attraction to him several times in her 2005 run. She grows out of it.
• Wonder Woman: Warbringer: When Alia was younger she sent a love letter to her older brother's best friend Theo, who thought it was cute and was genuinely surprised by the nice things she said about him even if she was younger and he didn't reciprocate. She never fully got over the crush and by the end of the tale, where their age gap means much less as fellow young adults, they go on a double date with Nim and Nim's new love interest.
• A variation of this occurs in X-Factor. Waif Prophet Layla Miller doesn't act like she has a crush on Jamie Madrox, but several times told him that they were eventually going to get married. They did get together and eventually married after she received a Plot-Relevant Age-Up.
• X-Men:
  • The young X-Girl Megan Gwynn/Pixie developed a crush on team leader Cyclops during her earlier appearances, and it occasionally pops back up from time-to-time. Scott meanwhile seems to view her as a daughter (something his X-Men: Destiny self outright states when she dies), and given the age gap there's little-to-no chance of them going anywhere... but her and the Young!Scott that came to the present following Avengers vs. X-Men seems to be a slowly growing Fan-Preferred Couple in some circles.
  • Tempus, a teenage mutant, also developed a crush on Cyke, pretty much the moment she met him. She didn't hide it particularly well, and everyone knew how she felt about him. However, even with her Plot-Relevant Age-Up, Scott still appears to be in his forties (this is outright stated), while Tempus is at best in her very early 20s.
  • Young!Jean also starts to have a crush on Cyke since he's the man she hoped Young!Scott would grow up to be. Cyke shuts this down immediately since he knows it's inappropriate on so many levels.
  • It's been implied on occasion that X23 may also be attracted to Cyclops, which is awkward for multiple reasons. Hellverine tried to seduce her by assuming his form, and during her brief stint with the All-New X-Men, she and Young!Scott spent a not insignificant amount of time hugging and comforting each other.
  • During a BDSM session with the Red Queen, Empath admitted to having a crush on Emma Frost while she was his teacher.
  • The first X-Force (1991) annual had a story centered on how Wiz Kid had a crush on his teacher, to the point of being jealous and distrustful of her boyfriend. As it turned out, said boyfriend was part of a group of anti-mutant extremists and was only dating her to gain access to files on the school's mutant kids; after the group's arrest, Wiz Kid offers himself up as an option "if [she's] willing to wait a few years", which manages to cheer her up a bit.

Comic Strips

• The Boondocks shows Michael Caesar having a crush on Jennifer Lopez, though according to his horoscope he may have moved on to Beyoncé.
• One Cow and Boy strip showed that Billy's friend Martin had a crush on Billy's older sister, Stacy. However, when Martin went to see Stacy, he sees that Stacy already has a boyfriend, so he goes up to the older boy and kicks him in the leg, much to Stacy's shock.
• Crabgrass: In a story arc that started with this comic, Kevin develops a crush on Miles' mother.
• In Peanuts, Linus' crush on his teacher Miss Othmar.

Fan Works

• In All-American Girl (Shinzakura), Sam Martinez reveals that he has had a crush on Princess Celestia since he first saw her at age 11. He gets the chance to act on it 20 years later.
• The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Teacher," Penny falls for the new Hot Teacher at school despite their notable age difference. He rejects her advances, though.
• In Cardcaptor Rad, Alexis has one on Rachel.
• After Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman physically and mentally regress into children in Change, they gain a crush on Tim Drake after he spends the afternoon taking care of them.
• In Comedy of Errors, a Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction, Toph, who is somewhere in her midteens, has a crush on Iroh, who is about 70. The twist comes when he returns her affection.
• In Daisy Ring, 5-year-old Harry decides he's going to marry his teacher and kisses her on the cheek before leaving for the summer.
• The Heroes/The Twilight Saga crossover "Dark Days" briefly teases this when Jasper and Peter half-jokingly comment to Bella that Micah seems to be particularly attached to her, even though he's only twelve and Bella is physically early twenties and a vampire.
• The The Dark Knight Trilogy fanfic "What No One Else Had Seen" implies that 9-year-old Harley may have a little crush on Jonathan, who is 16. The fic, being about the pair finding a dead body, manages to be sweet and macabre at the same time.
• Fate/Harem Antics: Subverted. When Shirou meets his adoptive sister Illya for the first time, she makes her massive crush on him perfectly obvious (partly by trying to kill the girls standing too close to him). Shirou ignores her crush without too much trouble, since she's just a kid. Except later, she explains that her aging was stunted, and she is in fact his older sister. At which point Shirou realizes he's being straddled by an eighteen year-old woman who knows exactly what she's doing.
  Shirou: I... would you please get off me before we keep talking?
  Illya: [grinning] Is there something wrong onii-chan?
• Played With in The Gender Bend Omake: Sting's Crush. Prior to the 7-year timeskip, Sting Eucliff, age 11 to 12, had a crush and admiration for Natsu Dragneel. During the Grand Magic Games, he is 19 while Natsu hasn't age, and he thinks he has a chance for her. Natsu herself is uninterested, because one, she likes Luca Heartfilia, and two, she dislikes Sting for bragging about murdering his foster father and laughing when Minerva was torturing Luca.
• In the Stōked/Ben 10 fanfiction Hanging Ten, 10 year old Briana gains a crush on 15 year old Ben Tennyson after seeing how much of a Nice Guy he is (him being handsome certainly helps).
• Deconstructed in the Ben 10s fanfic Hero High Sphinx Academy. Lord is able to detect the old scars in Gwen's heart when she had feelings for her cousin Ben back when they were kids. It is revealed that due to her disgust to these feelings she hurt him in response when he was just trying to cheer her up after a bad day at school, which is the reason why they have not gotten along for nearly a decade after. Lord nearly cripples Gwen mentally revealing this fact to her.
• This Jojos Bizarre Adventure fan comic is about Jotaro asking the high-schooler Josuke to watch over his 7-years-old daughter Joylne while he's hunting a Stand User. While Josuke is unsure and Jolyne is shy at first, the two soon get along. After Jotaro picks Jolyne up, she asks him if she can marry Josuke when she is older, which nearly knocks out Jotaro.
• Linked in Life and Love: Blake's crush on old family friend Adam was originally this, as he was ten or so years older than her. Blake's mother Kali wasn't particularly concerned and figured it would go away on its own, but Blake's father Ghira took Adam aside and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to encourage Blake's attraction. Adam promised he wouldn't do anything. Kali is therefore pissed when she finds out that Adam tried to Mate with her daughter, and that's before she finds out that Blake ran away from the White Fang because of what she saw in Adam's soul.
• The Lion, The Witch, and The Fairy's Tail: In Return to Narnia, 13-years-old Prince Caspian has one on Erza Scarlet, who's not only 6 years older than him biologically but was one of Narnia's Four Rulers after defeating the White Witch over a thousand years before Caspian was born.
• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Agent Tower's grandfather wishes he was born a few years earlier so he could have a chance to be with Maria. Maria died fifty years ago.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: Inverted. Some of the girls are older than Danny yet he manages to win them over.
• In My Dream Is Yours, both Olympia and Oona, who are in the 10-12 age range, have crushes on the band members of Soundcheck, with Oona being in love with Danny T. while Olympia is in love with Tony D. Oona's love for Danny T. goes far beyond Olympia's love for Tony D., however, as Oona's recurring dream involves Danny T. serenading her while the pair ride a gondola.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Beneath your feet, what Treasures is about Spike dealing with the fact that he is not going to get Rarity.
  • Friendship Is Magic: The Adventures of Spike: Spike apparently had one on Cadance when he was younger, but got over it.
  • Life in Manehattan: Since Twilight and Spike never went to Ponyville, they never met Rarity, so Octavia instead becomes the object of Spike's affections.
  • My Choices: Twisted Tales Through Time: As a filly, Trixie develops a crush on Shining Armor while visiting at Twilight's house, and is horrified to learn that he already has a marefriend.
  • Rainbooms and Royalty: A recurring plot point is that when filly Rainbow Dash moved to Canterlot to become Celestia's student, she met Shining Armor when he became a member of the Royal Guard and started crushing on him. Hard. And obviously. At the end of the story, Shining finally talks to Dash about it, and gets her to accept that he only cares for her like a sister, and she seems to move on. Until the second sequel, Hot Heads, Cold Hearts, and Nerves of Steel, reveals that she still has lingering feelings for him. This becomes a serious source of tension due to the Mane Six being accompanied by him and Cadance on their mission.
  • "Seeds of Magic", a recursive Alternate Universe spinoff of the Pony POV Series, has something similar happen to that universe's version of Applejack — she meets Shining Armor due to befriending Twilight in school and develops a crush on him. She claims to have long since gotten over it, however.
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: Sweetie Belle has a crush on Cheerilee, her teacher, at one point.
• In My Wish Order Brother, Kiba gains a crush on Deidara (who he thinks is a girl, no one bothers correcting him) because he's really cool and really pretty. When he does find out Deidara is male, he's at first shocked, but he still decides to fanboy over him.
• Deconstructed in the Magical Girl Lyrical NanohaxPersona 5 crossover Of Magical Girls and Phantom Thieves. Because both Nanoha and Fate are Wise Beyond Their Years, Ren is unable to dismiss their romantic attraction to him as a simple crush. However, in the end they are still children while he's nearly eighteen leaving him with no choice but to deal with an admittedly "half-assed" Jailbait Wait promise.
• In The Pirate's Soldier, Sasami's crush is directed towards Heero's friend and fellow Gundam Pilot Trowa Barton. Like in canon, it's played around since she's a Juraian and thus centuries older than him, but by her species standards she's still a pre-teen girl.
• A sidestory of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines reveals that Ash, when he was younger, had a crush on Daisy Oak, Gary's older sister. The latter wasn't amused.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom: Danny has a crush on Shego, who is probably a decade older than him. She's flattered but not interested in a hero younger than even her usual teen nemesis.
• Precocious Crush. A Kick-Ass fanfic that's primary plot point is that Hit-Girl, who at the start of the fic is 11, wants Kick-Ass, who is 6 years older.
• Razputin Vodello AU:
  • After Lizzie gives him a kiss as part of some light teasing, Raz winds up developing a crush on her. After a quick heart to heart, the two of them manage to diffuse it before it escalates.
  • Gisu tells Raz that she had a crush on a much older teenager. She spent years without telling him, only to suffer heartbreak when she found out that he was gay.
  • Lizzie confesses to Raz that she can relate to Raz's crush on her because she had a crush on Milla Vodello.
• In The Stalking Zuko Series, Katara had a crush on her father's friend Bato when she was 12, a mere 2 years before the start of the story. She got over it quickly, and as such, hopes that the 12-year-old Aang will get over his crush on her. The author also points out that she doesn't think much of this trope, saying that people don't wind up with those they're interested in when they're 12.
• In Tales of Fairies Asuka, Alzack and Bisca's six-year-old daughter, tells her father that she's in love with Pantherlily, the sullen and tall Exceed who while not having his age revealed is at least older than Mystogan. Alzack doesn't take it well, and tells Lily to stay away from Asuka, much to the latter's befuddlement.
• Time Fixers: Nicktoons of the Future:
  • Timmy Turner's daughter, Tammy (who is 10), has a huge crush on Jimmy Neutron (who is in his 30s) and is even the president of his fan-club. At the start of Season 2, she starts to get over her feelings for him after he marries Cindy, but she still tends to fangirl over him.
  • Kida (a 6-year-old) has a crush on Darry Fenton (a 14-year-old). He either doesn't seem to notice or even care.
• There'll Be Another Time: Stephanie has a huge crush on Sportacus.
• A downright horrifying example from The Very Secret Diary. Ginny is, of course, mooning over Harry, but she also seems to be developing feelings for her new friend, a handsome sixteen year old boy that acts as her only confidant. She comments on how good-looking he is, and even kisses him at one point. (Out of gratitude, allegedly.) This boy's name? Tom Marvolo Riddle. Yep.

Films — Animation

• The Lorax (2012) has 12-year-old Ted crushing for high school girl Audrey.
• Disney's Robin Hood (1973) has Skippy's sister remarking how handsome Robin is. Robin never addresses it and it's only brought up in that one scene.
• The little penguin Arnold in Surf's Up has one for local lifeguard Lani, to the point where he routinely attempts to drown himself, just so she can rescue him.
• Played with in Turning Red. Ming gets angry when she finds out that Meilin has a crush on Devon, the clerk of Daisy Mart, and publicly confronts him for corrupting her "innocent little daughter." Except Meilin and Devon are only four years apart (she is 13 while he is 17, although Ming mistakes him for a 30-year-old at first), and Meilin is undergoing puberty so having a fickle crush like that is perfectly normal for her age.

Films — Live-Action

• In Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros), 12-year-old Maxi, a boy from a family of petty criminals in the Manila slums, falls in love with a handsome rookie cop. They become friends and the cop, whose sexuality is left ambiguous, grows quite fond of Maxi, but nothing happens between them except the cop telling Maxi he's pretty and stroking his hair and Maxi stealing a quick peck on the cheek.
• Natalie Portman plays another adolescent with a crush in Beautiful Girls, where Marty, her character, develops feelings for Willie (Timothy Hutton), her neighbor.
• Jenny in the movie Big Fish. When she meets Edward Bloom, she's 8 and he's 18. She tells him that once she gets older, the age difference won't matter as much. Years later he meets her again, him now married and her divorced.
  Jenny: I was 18, he was 28. Turns out it was a big difference.
• Blank Check has a Squick-ish moment in that the young boy actually gets a brief on-the-mouth kiss from the adult woman at the end, who tells him to look her up when he's older.
• Bridge to Terabithia: Jesse has a crush on his music teacher, Ms. Edmunds.
• Crazy, Stupid, Love: Robbie has a longstanding crush on Jessica, his babysitter. He's in middle school (so about 12) and she's about 17.
• Nick, the main character and focus of the titular The Crush, thinks of Darien's infatuation with him this way… at first. His coworker/girlfriend is the first one to realize that Darien is Ax-Crazy and dangerous, though Nick gets there soon after.
• There's an Irish short film called The Crush about a little boy who has one on his teacher. Turns into Serious Business when he challenges her boyfriend to a duel.
• Desperados (2020): A kid at the hotel ends up getting a crush on Wesley after she has a bunch of Accidental Pervert run-ins with him. It's played more for Cringe Comedy than adorableness and it gets Wesley Mistaken for Pedophile by the boy's mother and the hotel staff.
• In The Devil's Backbone, one of the students has a wholesome crush on a teacher. The teacher's boyfriend, when he was a student, was engaged in a less wholesome relationship with the principal.
• The Fall: It's hinted that Alexandria develops one on Roy during their time together. She draws a picture of them together with a heart on it and kisses his face several times when he passes out during his suicide attempt. She also pictures him as the Black Bandit in their story and gives the Love Interest some of her characteristics (favorite food, eye color etc.). On the other hand she inserts herself into the story as the Bandit's daughter, so her exact feelings for him remain unclear.
• The Fast and the Furious: According to Mia, Letty fell in love with Dom when she was a child, and there is at least a ten-year age gap between the two. Dom only started noticing her when she turned 16.
• A very disturbing example in The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Dodger is a 15-year-old boy who falls in love with Tangerine, a 20-year-old woman who uses seduction tactics to manipulate him. It is noteworthy that in real life, the actress was only a year older than the actor (they even dated in real life), but you would never believe it for the appearances of the duo in the movie.
• The Hunt (2012): Klara develops a strange crush on Lucas, a teacher at her daycare (and a friend of her father's). He (rightly) refuses to return these feelings. This does not end well for him.
• A rare meta example: Apparently, during the filming of The Huntsman: Winter's War Charlize Theron's son developed a mad crush on Emily Blunt, who plays Freya. Have a look.
• Also in Jack when the titular character gets a crush on his school teacher. Played with and justified since he suffers from a disorder that speeds up his aging four-fold (so he looks and appears 40 when he's actually 10 at heart), he sees it as OK because he looks like a grown-up (which eliminates girls his own actual age). The teacher understands this, but still turns him down, because he is 10 at heart and it would still be wrong regardless of what he looks like.
• Jojo Rabbit: The 10 year old Jojo slowly develops a crush on Elsa, the teenage Jewish girl hidden by his mother.
• In the film version of Jurassic Park, Tomboy hacker Lex Murphy clearly has a crush on paleontologist Alan Grant, even before he saves her life. In the novel, Lex is much younger, so this subtext is absent.
• Disney's The Kid has an interesting case in which an 8-year-old kid asks a grown woman to marry him, but he's not actually asking for himself, he's asking for his future 40-year-old self who's been in love with her for some time and is just starting to realize it.
• The Indian girl from Legends of the Fall started like this, and then she won.
• K. Roth from The Living Wake had a crush on his nanny as a child. When he discovers he's terminally ill as an adult, he decides to finally ask her out, despite her being ninety and married. She goes with it, but her husband is not happy and tags along, leaving K. Roth's best friend Mills to try and distract him. At K. Roth's wake at the end, he gives her a kiss... and then lays one on her irritated husband, too.
• German classic Mädchen in Uniform is about a 14-year-old girl who falls for her female teacher.
• In Malèna, 12-year-old Renato becomes obsessed with the titular Malena, a woman whose husband has gone to fight in the military overseas and is presumed dead. It becomes at least a little disturbing when he develops Stalker with a Crush tendencies, and even has sex with a local prostitute while fantasizing about Malena.
• In My Girl, Vada has a crush on her teacher, Mr. Bixler. She confesses to him while breaking down after Thomas J.'s funeral, and he tries to gently let her down and informs her he is getting married. This makes her feel even worse.
• Neil in Mysterious Skin. It's not so much a crush as it is an instant 'sledgehammer' of desire he feels upon seeing his baseball coach for the first time. And unlike most other examples of this trope, it does not go unrequited. Horrible, horrible, horrible events ensue.
• Teenage girl Megan has a crush on the at least 30-something Preacher in Pale Rider.
• Anakin Skywalker towards Padmé Amidala in The Phantom Menace. She likes the kid well enough, but doesn't really return the feelings until He Is All Grown Up in Attack of the Clones.
• In The Professional, the adolescent Mathilda has a crush on her savior and mentor, Leon. The original cut of the film makes her crush less innocent, and she actually propositions him for sex.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark:
  • Used for a throwaway joke. One of Indy's female students has penned "LOVE YOU" on her eyelids so that they're visible when she oh-so-fetchingly bats her eyelashes at him. Indy loses his train of thought in mid-lecture and is visibly unsettled.
  • There's also a less lighthearted treatment of it in the film. Marion was the daughter of one of Indy's mentors, and had such a crush on him, which apparently led to the two becoming involved. The fallout from that resulted in the destruction of Indy's relationship with Marion's father and quite a fair bit of bitterness on Marion's part, hence why when Marion sees Indy one of the first things she does is hit him and scream "I was a child! I was in love! It was wrong and you knew it!" Word of God is that she was definitely underage at the time.
• In The Sandlot, Michael "Squints" has a crush on the lifegaurd at the swimming pool, knockout blonde Wendy Peffercorn. Actually, all of the boys do, but Squints is the only one who acts on it. He can't swim, so he jumps into the deep end of the pool so she'll perform CPR. It works. The kids all get banished from the pool forever. Once they're grown up, Squints and Wendy get married and have 9 kids.
• While a borderline example due to the ages involved, this trope is the main plot point of 1979 movie Sooner or Later.
• Edison has one of these in Valentine's Day, recognized and redirected near the end by the target of his crush.
• The World of Henry Orient is about two 14-year-old girls who follow a third-rate concert pianist around because one of them has a crush on him. He in turn knows something's going on, but mostly because they keep turning up whenever he's trying to have an affair with a married woman.
• In the first two parts of the X-Men Film Series, the teenage Rogue has a crush on the Really 700 Years Old Logan. This seems to vanish by X-Men: The Last Stand, where she's in a steady relationship with Bobby.

Literature

• Robert A. Heinlein:
  • The Door into Summer. An adult male time traveler is friend/honorary uncle to an 11-year-old girl, who falls in love with him. He goes into cold sleep twice into the future. The girl waits until she's 21, then enters cold sleep herself, to awake when he returns.
  • In Podkayne of Mars, Podkayne's younger brother develops a crush on a lady traveling with them on the space voyage to Venus.
  • A similar situation happens in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, except she joins a time-and-dimension-traveling agency and works for them until she ages up enough. From her crush's perspective, it was only a few days.
• 15-year old Lydia in After Alice has a crush on the 20-something year old Mr. Winter.
• Bazil Broketail: Relkin has one towards Lagdalen in the first novel. He helps her when she's in trouble and even invites her on a date. However, it doesn't work out for obvious reasons — he is just a poor, uneducated orphan and lowly dragonboy, while she is a noblewoman and personal assistant to one of the most important people in Argonath. In the end, Lagdalen rejects his advances since she sees him only as a friend (also because he's "too young and too stupid" for her). She eventually falls in love with and marries Captain Hollein Kesepton, but she and Relkin remain good friends for the rest of the series.
• In Connie Willis's Blackout, the adolescent Colin explains to Polly that he hopes through some Time Travel tricks to end up her own age. At the end of All Clear, he's done it, not for the crush, but in a desperate attempt to save her and another time traveler from death.
• Jesse has a crush on his music teacher in Bridge to Terabithia.
• In A Brother's Price, Jerin mentions having had a crush on his teacher, and recognizing the early signs of the same in his brother, Doric. As she's the only non-related woman they see on a regular basis, it is not surprising. Jerin is apparently over it; when the teacher points out that he needs to wear a veil because his beauty could attract kidnappers, he doesn't feel flattered, more surprised.
• In Hilary McKay's third book in the popular Casson Family Series, the implication in Permanent Rose is that Rose (who is only 8/9 at the time) has a crush on Tom Levin, who is at least 12/13 at the time, but she isn't aware of it herself that she has a crush on him, whereas everyone else in her family is cognizant of it.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: Linna developed a crush on Tasia when she was fourteen while the latter was then a young woman about six years older, but it soon faded. She knew Tasia loved Joslyn, her mentor, and even if Linna had been older would never think of her that way.
• Zigzagged in the fifth book of the Dutch children's horror series De Griezelbus (The Spooky Bus). Villain Protagonist Paul Onnoval, an immortal combination between a werewolf and vampire has a crush on the mortal school teacher Liselore, making this a Mayfly–December Romance. However, after defeating Ferluci, Onnoval asks Ferluci to allow him to become a mortal human again, so he can spend time with his love Liselore. Ferluci does so, but reincarnates Onnoval into the body of a child and one of Liselore's pupils, essentially making it a strange version of this trope.
• In The Dresden Files, Molly Carpenter had this for Harry. Harry is fully aware of the reason for it, and provides the current page quote on Like Parent, Like Spouse when he gently tries to explain the situation to her. Unfortunately, rather than growing out of the crush, it changes into definite sexual feelings when she's a teenager and it eventually becomes genuine unrequited love when she's in her 20s. By this point she has matured enough to let her relationship with Harry stay platonic, and consequently Harry assumed that she had gotten over her childish crush and was surprised and saddened to discover the depths of her feelings, since he knew he could not reciprocate them. (Though with the shift in power dynamic between the two as of Cold Days, Harry himself doesn't rule out the eventual possibility of something happening between them. The fact that her own father has come to the mistaken conclusion that they're already in one but hasn't taken his head off helps).
• Played for massive tragedy in the Chilean novel El niño que enloqueció de amor ("The boy who lost it for love"). An unnamed boy no older than 12 falls in love with his beautiful neighbor Angélica and becomes obsessed with her… When it turns out she has a fiancè named Jorge and the kid catches them kissing, he has a MASSIVE Freak Out and, from then on, he completely loses his mind.
• Although she's not seen in the actual story until she's an adult and the Queen of Elenia, The Elenium trilogy by David Eddings indicates that Ehlana had one of these for Sparhawk from the age of 7 onward, sparked because he was one of the few people she could truly trust. Of course, they end up married despite the 20-odd-year age difference, so it was a bit different from most crushes of this sort.
  • Of course, when they later have a daughter, she announces by age 4 who she's going to marry. Considering what she is, she probably will.
• A literal example exists in Eludoran between Malachi and Marissa. Since he's a wolf and she's a bear, she's not only an older teenager but also easily 3 times his size.
• Similar to the above example, Glokta's backstory in The First Law makes mention of him, the dashing war hero, visiting the home of his subordinate and friend, Collem West. Little sister Ardee West was just a child at the time, but thought Glokta was the man of her dreams. When they meet again some 10 years later, the child he vaguely recalls has grown up beautiful, he starts falling for her, and she… well… 2 years of torture make a man somewhat less dreamy, and she's more interested in Jezal than a girlhood crush. Jezal kicks her to the curb in the end, though, and Glokta gets the girl. Kind of.
• In The Girl With All the Gifts, Melanie has a hero-worshipping crush on her teacher, Miss Justineau.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 12-year-old Hermione has a crush on Professor Lockhart, but then, so do most of the girls in Hogwarts (not to mention Molly Weasley and the other mothers.)
  • And in Order of the Phoenix most of the girls (but not Hermione) have a crush on Firenze.
  • Fleur's sister Gabrielle has a crush on Harry. They met when he was 14 and she was about 8.
• In Linnea Sinclair's Hope's Folly, Rya was 10 when her father brought one of his subordinate officers home for dinner. While Philip vaguely remembers her as an obnoxious little girl hellbent on bothering him, she remembers him as the ultra-cool friend of her father who took the time to teach her how to shoot properly. When they meet up, in her mid-20s and his late-40s, Rya's crush reignites and she pursues a May–December Romance with him.
• The narrator of Jacob Have I Loved, at the age of 14 develops a crush on Captain Wallace, a man who, at 70, is older than her grandmother.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • Raki Bladi has a crush on the lieutenant of her squad, Aegis. She regularly calls him "old man" despite his protests that he's only 28. Her own age isn't specified but as the elder sister of Mia she's likely in the upper teenage range. He acts more like her Big Brother Mentor.
  • Zettai quickly falls for Eric after he rescues from the gallows and then immediately becomes her personal magic tutor. He doesn't notice because of unrelated magical things like With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
• The main plot of Joy School by Elizabeth Berg. Jimmy takes it extraordinarily well, all things considered.
• 9-year-old Phaedra has one of these on 18-year-old bull-leaping star Theseus in Mary Renault's The King Must Die—especially unfortunate because by the sequel she has grown up to be a full-fledged Femme Fatale.
• In Christpher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, the titular Biff confesses to growing up with a crush on Jesus's mom Mary.
• In Ronald Frame's The Lantern Bearers, a 14-year-old boy soprano spends the summer singing for a young composer and becomes attracted to him. When the boy's voice suddenly breaks he is summarily kicked out—shades of Benjamin Britten's boys—and in revenge falsely accuses the composer of having "touched" him, with tragic results.
• Legacy of the Dragokin: Benji is 10 and has a crush on the 15-year-old Lydia, who is functionally an adult because she's an officer in her country's military.
• 14-year-old Evelyne, from Malevil, has a severe infatuation with Emmanuel. Unfortunately, she gets possessive, Emmanuel bows out of his Apocalypse-induced Polyamory relationship, and he becomes accused of being a paedophile.
• In the My Weird School book, "Miss Cooney is Looney", A.J. tells his friends, Ryan and Michael, about his crush on the school nurse, Miss Cooney. Sure enough, they make fun of him.
• In the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series:
  • Annabeth Chase first met Luke Castellan when she was 7 and he was 15, and has never stopped loving him since.
  • Nico di Angelo's crush on Percy Jackson started out as this, with Nico being about 10 or 11 and Percy being 14. By the time they're both teenagers, this doesn't really apply.
• In the Petaybee series, 'Cita, who was raised by a cult and married off at the age of 12, develops a thing for Matthew Luzon. She probably isn't the only one, but still.
• In Rachel Griffin, the eponymous Rachel has a short-lived crush on the apparently very good-looking gym teacher, Mr. Chanson. Rather realistically, it lasts for about half a chapter, before she meets someone her own age.
• In Rebuild World, it's all but stated that Akira (a boy in his early teens) has significant feelings for Sara and Elena, veteran hunters who are many years his senior, for both their beauty and for being so kind to him. He reacts differently to them than any other girl, his words and actions more resembling an innocent child's than his usual bluntness, and he immediately rushes over to help when he gets a call from them.
• In The Roman Mysteries, Flavia, at the age of 10, has a crush on Publius Pollius Felix, who is in his 30s, married, has a daughter her age, and is later found out to have slept with most of his slave-girls and a good deal of other women, causing his wife to try and poison herself. Eventually she sees him for what he really is and gets over him.
• In Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days, Davina Marr mentions Valkyrie's crush on Skulduggery. Marr mocks Valkyrie's crush on her much, much older mentor and best friend again in Mortal Coil. Valkyrie doesn't confirm it, but neither does she deny it.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Bran crushes on Meera. She only has about 4 or 5 years on him, but since he is only 9, a few years makes a very big difference. In any case, his crush has the archetypal innocence and Moeness of this trope.
  • Depending on how much you consider her a child (she is 12 but the Medieval Fantasy setting makes this old enough to marry,) Sansa could be said to have one for Ser Loras. Possibly, you could say she has a Precocious Crush on Ser Loras, (since she thinks of him in childish fairy-tale terms.) Her friend, Jeyne Poole has a similar crush on Beric Dondarrion.
  • Cersei Lannister was smitten with Prince Rhaegar Targaryen when she was 10 and he was 17. She never forgave her father for failing to get her betrothed to Rhaegar and hated Robert Baratheon for killing him in battle. (After the war when her father made a political marriage between Cersei and Robert, that relationship worked out just about as well as you'd expect.)
• In the novelization of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Saavik is a tutor to Scotty's nephew Peter Preston. She herself does not realize this until Spock asks why Scotty wants Peter to discontinue their tutorial, she explains what Peter said to her the last time they had a session, and he pointed out what a crush was, what Peter was probably feeling, and that she would have to be careful how she handled it.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • There's a form of this in Starfighers of Adumar, where dueling champion Cheriss gets a crush on New Republic hero Wedge Antilles. Compared to Adumari pilots, he's practically a god. He considers her to be somewhat younger than what he'd call adult, although she is risking her life in blastsword duels. It's never stated how old she is; in a previous book Wedge treated 16-year-old Gavin Darklighter like an inexperienced adult, but he called Gavin "kid", and he never does that to Cheriss. He's embarrassed by the crush and tries to ignore it. She sees Wedge's Old Flame as competition of sorts, and when Wedge actually hooks up with his old lover again, Cheriss tries to commit suicide by honorable combat. Wedge talks her out of it while finally getting out his dislike for this Proud Warrior Race society.
  • In Galaxy of Fear, 13-year-old Tash Arranda meets 19/20-year-old Luke Skywalker and takes an immediate liking to him. He carries a lightsaber like the Jedi Knights she so idolizes, he's kind to her and doesn't dismiss the weird feelings she gets like everyone else she's ever met, and she feels like she's been waiting all her life to meet someone like him. Of course, it's not a crush; she's too old for those. When he leaves, this happens.
    An electric tingle rose up Tash's hand as Luke shook it. The tingle lasted long after the Millennium Falcon had blasted into the sky.
  • In Star Wars: Kenobi, after Ben Kenobi saves her in a Big Damn Heroes moment, seventeen-year-old Kallie Calwell can't get enough of the man (who has about 20 years on her), going so far as to sneak out to his place and eavesdrop on his meditations. Ben's actual Love Interest is Kallie's mother Annileen, a widow.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Firestar was barely an apprentince when he fell for Spottedleaf, who was already an adult and had been working as a medicine cat for a while. Spottedleaf was 4 years old when she died while Firepaw wasn't even 1 at the time.
  • The plot of Spottedleaf's Heart revolves around Spottedpaw's crush on Thistleclaw.
• Dameon in Wayside School gets one for Mrs. Jewls, but fears being teased by his friends, so he plays pranks on her. When he admits the truth, Mrs. Jewls replies that she loves him and everybody, but loves Mr. Jewls in a more specific way.
• Julian Desjardin's novel White Lightning has this as part of Detective Andrews' backstory, Played for Drama. He apparently spent a year pining over his sixth grade teacher, and when not very gently turned down, came to the conclusion it was because he 'looked wrong'. Thus began his lifelong obsession with passing for white, including a name change taken from a book she'd assigned him to read. 20 years later, in 1927, she meets him again, and realizes the damage she's done when she addresses him by his Korean birth name and he legitimately doesn't react to it.
• While the age difference is not that huge, in the Wind on Fire series, 8-year-old Pinto has a crush on Mumpo, who is 15 (legally able to be married in the world the two live in) and in love with her older sister Kestrel. She gets him in the end after Kestrel "dies", though.

Live-Action TV

• Let's just say Disney Channel loves this trope when they get a chance to use it for all its worth. To list:
  • Hannah Montana: The first episode of Season 2 has Rico crushing on Miley, even going so far to manipulate her into going out with him because he knew Miley was scared that "He knows her secret and will spill it out" (she thought that the "secret" was being Hannah Montana). In the end, turns out that the secret was She still has her teddy bear with her, despite being in high school.
  • Lizzie McGuire: The episode "Working Girl" had this in effect when Matt was depressed, then Miranda gave him advice, and then he starts falling for her. This went as far as asking her on a date.
  • A.N.T. Farm has Fletcher immediately liking Paisley whenever the latter notices him. Examples are in the episodes "TransplANTed" and "ManagemANT", but luckily, Chyna doesn't seem to mind. Doubles as a "just for his adorableness" pedophilia in Paisley's part.
  • That's So Raven: Cory towards Chelsea in early episodes. Later, Stanley towards Raven.
  • The Suite Life of Zack & Cody has this with Zack over Maddie throughout the show. By On Deck, he got his kiss from her. One of the most memorable moments is in the episode "A Prom Story" where they shared a prom dance.
    • Also from On Deck, the 8-year-old prince of Liechtenstamp crushing on Maddie. He even was near to marrying her, too! On this same same episode, Zack still had feelings for Maddie, but it evolved into a Likes Older Women situation.
  • Shake it Up had this in one episode's B-plot, where Ty is teaching Flynn how to attract the girl he likes. The said girl is older than him and is portrayed by the same actress who plays Paisley in the A.N.T. Farm example above (Allie DeBerry).
  • Luke is this to Jessie… sometimes. He also did this with Shaylee Michaels in "Jessie's Big Break".
  • Crash & Bernstein has Pesto, about age 12 is this towards Amanda who is 16 and clearly older than him.
  • Liv and Maddie has this one time with Parker having it towards Liv's BFF South in "BFF-A-Rooney", complete with jealousy with he sees South flirting with Diggie.
  • Jonas has Frankie falling for Macy in "Direct To Video", but only for awhile, because the moment Frankie tasted her baked cookies, it was over.
• On 3rd Rock from the Sun, Tommy got a crush on his music teacher Miss Frost, with the aliens not realizing how inappropriate a relationship between them would be.
  Tommy: Well, I met this woman that I really like and I think she likes me, but she's a little older. 31.
  Dick: Tommy, do you really think a woman of that age would be interested in you?
  Tommy: Sure.
  Dick: Wow, good job!
  • Later on, Tommy, operating under the delusion that Miss Frost will soon return his affections, decides to gracefully break up with August and tell her that he'll be with Miss Frost now. August, who can barely contain her laughter, says that it's all right because she'll be with Val Kilmer, but he misses the sarcasm. (Tommy and August are back together in the next episode.)
  • This example is complicated by Tommy technically being older than Miss Frost since he's the senior member of the crew.
• In The Americans, one of Phillip's assignments is to befriend Kimmy, the lonely teenage daughter of a CIA operative so that he will have a pretense to visit her house and plant bugs in her dad's office. Much to Phillip's disgust, Kimmy develops a very obvious crush on him, which the Centre encourages him to exploit.
  • Meanwhile, his son Henry tells their neighbor Stan about a teacher he has a crush on.
• British satire show Big City (a satire of american preteen shows) features Liam Youngs, an 8-year-old kid who has a huge crush on his older sister's friend, Mia Sanders who's 16. In one episode, Liam tricks Mia into going on a date with him.
• The Brady Bunch: for one episode Marcia wanted to become "Mrs. Marcia Dentist", having a crush on her dentist at the time (and not knowing his last name!).
  • In another episode, Greg's grades start dropping, and his parents discover it's because he's in love with someone named Linda. Turns out Linda is his teacher.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as part of the false memories created by the Monks, Dawn has had a crush on Xander for years (it likely started in Season 1 or 2 where she would have been 10 or 11). And they're together as of Season 8.
  • Also, when she was 14, Dawn seemed to have a brief crush on Spike, whom she seemed to view as a Draco in Leather Pants. (Xander is offended.) However, she's also acutely aware that Spike is in love with Buffy, a fact which she hasn't realized yet.
• In an episode of Clarissa Explains It All, Clarissa develops a major crush on local weatherman, Flip Fontana, and spends the entire episode obsessing over him. She eventually gets a chance to meet him, only for her crush to fizzle out as quickly as it came upon discovering the guy has an ego the size of Texas.
• Doctor Who: Given respective ages, almost any female (and at least one male) companion for the Doctor. In the literal sense, Amelia Pond and Mels for the Doctor.
• In the Swedish kids' TV series Ebba och Didrik, 12-year-old hopeless romantic Didrik falls hard for 23-year-old Yrla. They become friends, but she's definitely not interested in him that way, and may not even be fully aware of his crush.
• In many an episode of Frasier, Frasier's 8-year-old son Frederick exhibits a huge crush on Daphne, much to Niles' chagrin.
• Glee: Rachel spent an episode infatuated with Mr. Schuester. It didn't last past that one episode. Suzie Pepper, on the other hand…
• In the H₂O: Just Add Water episode "Young Love", Emma's younger brother Elliot develops a mad crush on Rikki after she saves him from drowning, something which Rikki does not take very well. Despite her best efforts to turn him down gently, he continues to annoy her to the point where she loses it and angrily tells him to leave her alone with some Brutal Honesty, unintentionally hurting his feelings in the process, and getting her at risk for her mermaid secret to get blown off after she finds him.
• In season 3 of Happy Days, Joanie develops a short-lived crush on Potsie after, during a performance rehearsal, he sings "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" to her.
• House:
  • The 8-year-old brother of one of House's child patients gets an enormous crush on Cameron. It starts with him stealing flowers for her, then he grabs her butt, and later he attacks Chase. This eventually leads to House solving the case, as he is wont to do.
  • There's the little girl with cancer who convinces Chase to kiss her.
• Samantha Puckett on iCarly revealed her crush on Spencer in the episode iGet Pranky. Although she's seriously close to the age where the "precocious" part doesn't apply any more.
• Kenan's sister Kyra was comically interested in Kel in Kenan & Kel.
• In Kim's Convenience, old childhood/teenage letters from Janet that Nayoung kept reveal that Janet used to have crushes on all of her older brother Jung's friends, including Kimchee. Janet is embarrassed about the last one and goes out of her way to avoid revealing this to Jung and Kimchee until Nayoung spills.
• Leave It to Beaver:
  • An episode had Beaver having a crush on his 2nd grade teacher.
  • A later episode has Beaver hit puberty, only to find the girl he's crushing on has a thing for Wally instead.
• Lizzie develops a crush on her soccer coach in one episode of Life with Derek.
• Neighbor boy Glen in Mad Men develops a crush on Betty Draper. This winds up greatly embarrassing Betty when she humors the crush a little bit. Years later, after he's turned 18, he tries to come on to Betty, who politely turns him down.
• In the Married... with Children episode "Life's a Beach", the Bundys go to the beach and Bud makes a bet with Kelly, that he will "get a squeeze" before her. As usual, he's rebuffed by women, but a little girl becomes enamored with him after he fixes her bucket, and calls him her boyfriend; thus he technically wins the bet.
• In the first episode of Modern Family, 10-year-old Manny writes a love poem to a 17-year-old girl.
  • Another Season 1 episode sees Manny feeling romantic connection with a woman in her 20s, due to both of their love of vampire fiction.
  • Manny also has a crush on 16/17-year-old Haley Dunphy, at least in the first few seasons. No, the fact that they're uncle and niece (by marriage) doesn't bother him.
    • An early episode suggests that he also has a crush on Haley's sister Alex, who is 13 at the time.
  • In yet another episode, Cam and Mitchell think that 7-year-old Lily has a crush on a boy in her grade. Turns out her crush is actually for the boy's DAD.
• Mortified: In "The Talk", Taylor develops a crush on a teenage martial arts instructor and signs up for classes just to see him. She is not pleased when he starts dating her big sister.
• MST3K episode "Tormented (1960)", with the jazz protagonist and little Sandie, baby sister of his fiancee.
• In New Girl, Jess babysits her boyfriend's daughter, who falls in love with Nick, though she gets over it by the end of the episode. There's also an episode where the gang helps Jess chaperone a school dance, and Winston (to his chagrin) turns out to be strangely popular with middle school girls.
• JJ Powell from No Ordinary Family has had one on Katie since episode 7. At least, this is the first time it's mentioned.
• Parks and Recreation: In early seasons, April's crush on Andy was treated this way. It still got referenced in later seasons on occasion, even after she grew out of it and into another trope.
  Andy: Oh, babe, you had a crush on me? That's embarrassing.
  April: We're married.
  Andy: Still.
• Photon has an episode where Chris has to deal with a young princess who hits on him. But she's just a jerk, it wouldn't work even if she was older.
• Punky Brewster was an established tomboy, and in season three (first syndicated season) she developed a crush on a boy some 7 years older than her.
• Sam of Quantum Leap was attracted to his piano teacher as a young teenager. In the episode "Catch A Falling Star", he leaps into an actor working on a production with her, and attempts to use the opportunity as a second chance for himself. In other episodes, he also mentions having had crushes on his kindergarten and first grade teachers.
• Search: Ten-year-old Su-yeong has a crush on twenty-eight-year-old Dong-jin. In their very first meeting she tells him she wants to marry him, so he'd better make a lot of money, and laments he wasn't born later.
• Seinfeld:
  • In "The Comeback," Elaine falls in love sight unseen with a video store employee named Vincent after he begins calling her up when she repeatedly rents his staff picks. Entranced by his taste in movies and his enigmatic, moody personality (he's never at the store because he sets his own hours), she figures out where he lives and ends up arriving to surprise him at the same time as his mother, who's horrified to find a grown woman carrying a gift of vodka and cigarettes to her 15-year-old son.
  • "The Serenity Now" has Elaine rejecting the advances of a 13-year-old after he gives her a Forceful Kiss at his Bar Mitzvah. It's noted that after he bragged to his friends about it, she got invited to six more Bar Mitzvahs.
    Jerry: Well, this kid's not just a man; he's a man's man.
• Sesame Street:
  • One story concerns Elmo naively wanting to marry Gina. On learning this, she explains to him that she does love him very much, but that the relationship they have is "a 'friend' kind of love."
  • Among Maria's admirers were Big Bird and Snuffy, who are supposed to be read as children.
  • In Sesame English, a video series intended for ESL learners, Tingo has a crush on his teacher Ms. Huong.
• Smallville:
  • Played for Drama in "Heat", where then-16-year-old Clark (so he's just barely passing for this trope) develops a crush on the new Hot Teacher, who's currently engaged to his best friend, Lex Luthor. However, it turns out the teacher is a Gold Digger with the power to make men fall so much in love with her they do whatever they can to please her, which she usually uses to make boys that fall into this trope try and bump off the rich man she's just tricked into marrying so she can make off with their millions, leaving them to take the fall.
  • In "Infamous", a little girl deliberately jumps off a building so Clark will catch her, then kisses him on the cheek.
• Stargate SG-1: In "Birthright", Ny'sa, a young, female Jaffa on the cusp of puberty, develops "quite an affection" for Daniel, in the words of her older sister. Who doesn't have a crush on Daniel, though?
• Stargate Atlantis: In "Harmony", the titular 13-year-old queen develops a crush on Sheppard, like many other alien women before her. She even suggests that he should be her king. He is squicked, of course, but she doesn't seem to realize anything is wrong with her suggestion.
• Starsky & Hutch: Joey Carston, an adolescent girl, develops a crush on Starsky when he busts her for shoplifting, leading her to stow away in the back of the Torino. She returns a season later and tries to hit on Starsky while he's undercover, blowing his cover and almost getting him killed.
• In the first episode of Stranger Things, it's implied Dustin has a crush on Nancy, Mike's older sister.
• In Supergirl, Cat's son, who is around 12, has a crush on supergirl, who's in her 20s.
• The Wonder Years:
  • In one episode, Paul had a crush on Kevin's mom Norma.
  • Kevin had an ongoing crush on his teacher, Miss White/Mrs. Heimer.

Manhwa

• In Demon Diary, Leeche (about 8) manages to kiss Raenef (15 or so), after their near-Accidental Marriage was effectively annulled, and makes him promise to wait 10 years for her and not just go ahead and marry some other girl. He seems to be even more clueless than she is.

Music

• Conway Twitty's top 10 hit from 1975, "Don't Cry, Joni," a duet with his daughter, Joni Lee Jenkins, is about a 15-year-old girl (Joni, sung by Joni Lee) who develops a huge crush on her 22-year-old neighbor: the "boy next door"—Jimmy, whose part is sung by Twitty. She goes so far as to mail letters to him pledging her undying love and commitment to him and, well aware of their age differences and that she is still below the age of consent, asks him to make the same pledge to wait until she's 18 so they can be married and live happily ever after. Jimmy eventually explains the age differences and that he needs to find love from someone his own age and that they will never be married. Jimmy moves away but is unable to forget Joni's plea… and 5 years later, he returns, realizing that Joni may be the woman for him after all. However, the now 20-year-old Joni has gotten married (and in a cruel twist of irony, to Jimmy's best friend, John).
• Rufus Wainwright's "The Art Teacher" is about a woman who fell in love with her art teacher, and has "never loved a man since then."
  He was not that much older than I was
  He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
  He asked us what our favorite work of art was,
  But never could I tell it was him
  Oh, I wish I could tell him —
  Oh, I wish I could have told him
• Steve Wariner's "I'm Already Taken" uses 3 adaptations of the title phrase, the first relating to the narrator pursuing a woman who is "already taken" by another. By the time they get married in the third verse, their son says "mommy, will you marry me?" in an innocent context, and she repeats the title to him.
• This is the Tomato Surprise of "Go Home Girl" by Gaelic Storm: the girl following the singer around is only eight years old.
• "Penelope" by Zak Waters is about a man who fell for his teenage babysitter as a kid and wants to find her so he can ask her out.

Mythology and Legends

• In the Arthurian Legend, Mordred has a crush on and later proposes to Guinevere who is old enough to be his mother.

Pinball

• In WHO dunnit (1995), 8-year-old Trixie develops a crush on her father's business partner, Tony, after they enter a deal to open a hotel-casino together.

Print Media

• A bit older, but [1] The Onion article covers it.

Theme Parks

• Play a Disney Princess at a Disney Theme Park, and at some point this will happen to you.

Video Games

• Tiny Tina of Borderlands 2, explicitly said to be 13, displays a certain amount of interest in Maya (27) and Moxxi (age unknown, but she has adult children).
• In Breath of Fire III, Ryu's crush on Deis (AKA Bleu). Although not stated outright, it's made very obvious when he turns beet red when he first sees her naked, and the player is later shown to be given one of the few choices of saying something, wherein both answers make him express great romantic interest in her. Unfortunately for him, it's pretty impossible, as she's hundreds (if not thousands) of years old, while he's a young teenager.
• Disgaea has 2 examples:
  • In the first game, flashbacks and diary entries reveal that Etna developed one as a child on the first person to show her kindness, King Krichevskoy. As such, she absolutely hated his wife, and when Laharl was born, she had no idea what to think of him.
  • In the sequel, Adell's younger sibling Taro really likes Rozalin—to the point that he asks to be to be her slave. She accepts, and the game titles his class "Rozy's slave".
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Little Priscilla develops a crush on Cloud after he saves her life.
    • To some extent, Yuffie's crush could also be considered this. She's 16, Cloud's 21. Their date scene is very awkward because it's glaringly obvious that he's not interested.
  • Eiko in Final Fantasy IX has a crush on Zidane. He's 16, and she's six. A plot-mandated mini-game even involves Eiko trying to woo Zidane Through His Stomach. Eiko even tells Zidane she loves him right before he goes to rescue Kuja after beating the final boss. But, by that point, it's obvious that Zidane's heart really belongs to Dagger.
• Fire Emblem:
  • This can potentially happen in Fire Emblem: Awakening, if either Ricken or Donnel (both in their very early teens) develop feelings for any girl older than them. (Including a Female Avatar with Build 1 or 3, which make her look like in either her late teens/very early 20s or mid/late 20s respectively.)
    • And if you make Lissa (also in her early teens) and probably Maribelle (early-to-mid teens) support romantically with an old enough guy. (Again, including a Male Avatar with Build 2 and specially 3.)
    • Toyed with if any Avatar hooks up with any second generation character, since said charas are in the teen spectrum but save for Lucina, they aren't even born yet. Even more—Nah is the one who looks the youngest, but she's a half-manakete, so…
  • In New Mystery of the Emblem, Mallesia, who looks to be around her early to mid teens, has a comically over-the-top crush on Marth, who is 19 and already engaged.
  • In the localization of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, 13-year-old Delthea crushes furiously on 27-year-old Clive, who is Sickeningly Sweethearts with the local Lady of War Mathilda.
• Golden Sun:
  • In the first Golden Sun, a young girl NPC in the town of Altin would try to kiss Isaac if you talked to her after defeating the Living Statues plaguing the town.
    You defeated the monsters? Let me thank you… with a kiss!
    Hey, you're turning beet-red!
  • In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a later cutscene mentions that Rief's sister Nowell is off pursuing a crush on Piers, about whom the least we can assume is that he's older than her mother, if not much more so. The youthful design of Golden Sun characters does mean that Nowell kind of pushes the "child" aspect of this trope, but it fits otherwise.
• Harvest Moon:
  • The unnamed Church Boy from the SNES original has a crush on Maria. There is a girl his age though that likes him but he insists she isn't his girlfriend. He can fall for her though.
  • Lumina, the local sad little rich girl, from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life has a crush on the protagonist. In the PS2 version she is 18 (16 in Japan) and is a potential bride. When you get married she ends up running away crying. Lumina in her own right can end up being the recipient of a Precocious Crush herself: Your son can fall for her, even though she's over 15 years his senior at minimum.
  • May, granddaughter of the local animal rancher in Back To Nature and Friends Of Mineral Town has her crush object, Pete—the player character.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Beth is one of the kids from Ordon Village and said to be 14. She nurses a crush on Link near the beginning of the game, but shifts her affections to Ralis after finding out he's the prince of the Zoras.
  • An NPC child in Lynna Village admires Ralph in Oracle of Ages. The linked game climaxes of Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons also feature some young boys with crushes on Princess Zelda.
• Mass Effect: Liara's feelings for Shepard (age 29 in the first game) can be interpreted this way. While she is 106, she is "barely more than a child" by Asari standards. In human terms that would make her roughly between 19-23.
  • Speaking of whom, the final DLC story implies Grunt has a minor crush on Liara. Grunt is a krogan designer-baby who was "born" as a teenager or young adult, with his memories and vocabulary already implanted. Also complicating the matter, Krogan are one of the few species who can match the Asari in terms of lifespan (both species can reach 1,000 years barring unnatural causes).
• Word of God has confirmed that Emil from NieR has a crush on the eponymous protagonist (who is canonically in his mid-teens to early 20s, though there is the alternate version of him where he's in his 40s). This is an odd one; Emil is physically around 12 or so, yet he's also an ancient weapon, created before humanity was wiped out by white chlorination syndrome, and seems to be incapable of physically aging as a result.
• Persona:
  • Persona 3:
    • The subject of the Hanged Man Social Link is a troubled-yet-adorable 8-year-old girl whose parents are going through a divorce. Once you reach a certain stage, she decides that she's going to get married to the protagonist when she's old enough. Neither you nor the protagonist have much say in the matter, but when her father finds out about this "marriage promise" in the epilogue of the game, he's none too pleased about the matter and tells you to stay away from his daughter.
    • In Persona 3 Portable, should you choose to play as a female, the Justice Social Link is changed to be Ken Amada. And over the course of the social link, Ken develops a crush on the main character, which the player can choose to reciprocate.
  • Persona 4:
    • If you max her Social Link, 7-year-old Nanako will attempt to make a Childhood Marriage Promise to her 17-year-old cousin (the protagonist), to which her father has differing opinions on depending on if his own Social Link was completed.
    • In Sayoko's Social Link, she reveals that one of her old patients was a little boy who wanted to marry her. You only find this out after she learns he's passed away.
  • Persona 5: Caroline and Justine, the twin Velvet Room attendents who are this game's Strength confidant, start acting this way toward Joker as he completes their Confidant route. Played with given that they're Metaverse beings rather than human.
• Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon: Shellmet, who is school-aged, has a crush on Audino, the school nurse.
• Sakura Wars's Token Mini Moes all fit into this category: Iris (9), who wants Ogami (19) to be her boyfriend; Coquelicot (11), also with a crush on Ogami; and Rika/Rosita (11), who's in love with Shinjiro (19).
• Star Ocean:
  • Cute catboy Leon has a crush on all of the girls in Star Ocean: The Second Story. How it gets resolved depends on who you have him talk with.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: Because Roger's a Menodix^note he's only 3½ ft. tall, just about any girl is taller than he is. But it doesn't stop him from hitting on them, especially older women like Nel:
    • If she's in your party, when you rescue him from the Thieves Hideout, you'll get an extra bit of dialog where he tries hitting on her. But she completely ignores him.
    • The manga takes it further by having Roger latch onto her butt the moment he's released from his cage. He also addresses her as, "Onee-sama" and does whatever she says without question. Depending on the scene, Nel's reaction ranges from indifference, to exasperation.
• Latooni's crush on Ryusei seems to invoke this in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation at times, but the fact that she's only 3 years younger than him (14 and 17 respectively) means it may not be like that forever (see also Mai, age 16, but actually shorter than Latooni). Shine's crush on Rai, however, is played fairly straight.
• Genis' crush on Presea in Tales of Symphonia is half this. It starts when he thinks she's the same age, but his feelings don't change after he discovers that she's older. It's also downplayed due to an event in the plot. Presea's aging was suspended and she lived like an automaton in the interim, so she didn't age mentally either.
• In Undertale, the young player character can flirt with a very wide variety of monster citizens. Toriel, an elderly goat lady, gets pretty disturbed if they flirt with her after asking to call her "Mom".
• WarioWare:
  • Mona is a high school student who has a crush on the adult Wario despite him being a greedy cheapskate. She gushes about him and his sense of fashion in her Gold stage's intro, and per the manual of the GameCube game she even wanted to take him out for some banana parfaits at one point.
  • WarioWare Gold: Lulu, a young girl, becomes infatuated with the teenage Young Cricket, clinging onto his arm at the end of his level and Cricket just sees her as a lost child.

Visual Novels

• During Prince Keith Alford's sequel route in Be My Princess, one of the boys at the orphanage where Keith and the protagonist are doing volunteer work develops a crush on the protagonist, who is in her early 20s. To the protagonist's bemusement, Keith insists on taking it seriously, arguing that to do otherwise would be an insult to the boy's feelings.
• On the beach trip in Daughter for Dessert, Amanda mentions that her attraction to the protagonist started as one of these (when he saved her from drowning), and never went away.
• A subversion from Fate/stay night. Ilya looks like this at first, appearing to be perhaps 10 and obviously displaying a good deal of affection for 18-year-old Shirou. However, she turns out be slightly older than he is… and her idea of "affection" is seriously messed up. Plus, her completely genuine affection stems from Shirou's foster father Kiritsugu being Ilya's biological father, though she has no intention of telling him that.
  • On the other hand, he appears to know in Fate/hollow ataraxia at least about the way they're linked, though he still treats her as a little kid. Which is okay because she definitely acts like one. However, there's a genuine example of the trope in that Taiga used to have a huge crush on Kiritsugu which caused her to initially get along poorly with Shirou. Given that she's only 24 now, he died 5 years ago and she had that crush for a pretty lengthy amount of time, you can guess that the crush started when she was no older than middle school age.
• Galaxy Angel: In the first game, Shiva (10) can potentially develop this on Tact (20) if you complete the sub-route that reveals she's actually a girl disguised as a boy, as she talks in her sleep about wanting to marry him and later even confesses her love for him.
• In In Your Arms Tonight, some laughs are had at Koichi's expense thanks to the prepubescent son of one of the protagonist's close friend, who is bold enough to consider himself a rival for the affection of Koichi's 32-year-old wife. The lady in question and the boy's mother laugh it off; Koichi is considerably less amused.

Web Animation

• Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures: Kuromi has one on Badtz-Maru, complete with Say It Wirh Hearts.

Webcomics

• In Captain SNES: The Game Masta, Relm has such a crush on Sabin. The implications of this are heavily lampshaded, but Sabin is freaked out by Relm (due to the Sketch Glitch, he thinks she's a Reality Warper). When another young girl (who turns out to be a genuine Reality Warper) responds with more interest to Sabin being a prince than Edgar being a king, Sabin is not pleased.
• The title character of Contemplating Reiko has a harmless kiddie crush on an older fellow. That fellow being The Grim Reaper.
• Evil Diva: Michelle on the mystery dude.
• Forestdale: Racheal Kendricks, Kyle's little sister, has a massive crush on Jake Noel. Downplayed in that both of them are kids with a two year age gap between them, Racheal being eight and Jake being ten.
• Life of Maid (a Touhou Project comic where most of the characters are child versions of themselves) demonstrates the Unfortunate Implications of the trope with its Spinoff Babies (where the ages are reversed). Chibi Alice and Patchouli competing for adult Marisa's attention? Adorable. Two grown women stalking a young girl? Creepy as fuck.
• In this strip of Loserz, Ben's little brother on Jodie.
• The next-door neighbor's son in the webcomic Out at Home has a crush on Katie's best friend. He's 10; she's 17.
• According to Roommates, Goblin King Jareth (as a child) traveled to the future and managed to get a crush on a woman he met there, Sarah. He then waited for her to be born, grow up; helped her to become the very woman he fell for. Sarah still isn't impressed... and this is more than obsession.
• In True Villains, Cheerful Child Mia has shades of this with Bayn. Complicated by the fact that she sees him as just a kid like her, while he's an 88-year-old Evil Sorcerer trapped in a de-aged body.
• Welcome to Doomtlis: A weird platonic variant occurs with this trope. Skigin, a young boy, wants to be the teenaged Khiome's moirail, but Khiome thinks of him as a regular old friend.
• Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid: That young girl Nokju wants to marry Haesu, who is much older than her, is initially treated as an endearing quirk before it's explained that the two of them are survivors of a tragedy that struck their hometown.

Web Animation

• Karekore the Half Blood: A elementary-school kid falls in love with high schooler Hisame. When he confessed his feelings to her, she let him down gently. He didn't take it well but soon thought that Hisame meant for him to figure it out on his own and is now determined to get her love.

Web Original

• Googlebrains once pretended to have a crush on Pan-Pizza from RebelTaxi for comedic purposes.
• This little boy on Not Always Right is smitten with the professional photographer taking his picture. She plays along, teasing him about his name and jokingly promising to call him in 20 years.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, Finn (initially 12) was crazy about Princess Bubblegum (looks 18, but later revealed to be Really 700 Years Old). When Bubblegum is temporarily aged down she appears to reciprocate, but when she turns back to normal Finn is back in the Friend Zone. By the end of the series, the two are (physically) the same age, though by this point, Finn has moved on from his crush on Bubblegum and is implied to have gotten together with Huntress Wizard, while Bubblegum gets together with Marceline.
• Jimmy's friend Carl Wheezer on The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius has a crush on Jimmy's mother Judy to the point where he has a picture of her and "him" where he's pasted a cut-out of his own face over Hugh Neutron, Judy's actual husband and Jimmy's dad.
• One episode of ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks, "Principal Interest", shows that Alvin has a crush on the principal.
• Animaniacs: The Warner siblings, who, despite being canonically created in 1929, are kids, tend to be Abhorrent Admirers to any attractive adult of the opposite gender, most notably Hello Nurse for Yakko & Wakko and Mel Gibson for Dot.
• Arthur: Arthur Read is a preteen boy with a crush on his teenage babysitter.
• In an episode of As Told by Ginger, Ginger (12-ish) attempts to ask her teacher on a date with her. While competing in a school quiz competition. Which is being televised. Yikes.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Aang's (12) feelings for Katara (14) in Avatar: The Last Airbender are so close to the border limit for this trope that they actually cross it over the course of the series. A childlike fondness soon becomes a crush that grows as he matures over the course of his journey.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Meelo (who is 5) has a crush on Asami (who is 18). Mako (Asami's then-boyfriend) really gets a kick out of it:
      Meelo: You're pretty, can I have some of your hair?
      Mako: Looks like I have some competition.
    • In "The Calling" the now-8-year-old Meelo is clearly trying to flirt with a girl several years older than him; when his sister drags him away, he says that she "drove away the love of my life."
    • Kind of a downplayed example, but Ikki (one of Meelo's older sisters) is implied to have a crush on Opal's older brother, Huan—for example, in the series finale, Ikki ends up dragging Huan out onto the dance floor on Varrick and Zhu Li's wedding.
• A mild example in Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, in which 12-year-old Kunac shows some signs of crushing on college-aged Barbara Gordon when she's been kidnapped by Kunac's guardian Mr. Freeze. Barbara clearly picks up on this, and makes a point of throwing in a compliment on his maturity when trying to get him on her side.
• In Birdz, Eddie Storkowitz has one of these on his teacher, Miss Finch.
• In the ChalkZone episode "The Crush", Rudy (who's 10) gets a chance to see Queen Rapsheeba's creator, Trina (who appears to be around 14), and instantly develops a crush on her. Because of that, he joins the same theater group as her (even though he had made fun of one of their productions earlier in the episode), and asks Rapsheeba what she likes in a guy, hoping that what she likes would apply to her creator as well. After many attempts to get her to fall in love with him, she realizes that he has a crush on her. His crush wears off at the end of the episode when she tells him that while he's a sweet kid, she's too old for him and he should be doing all the things he did for her for a girl his own age.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • Numbuh Four started to get a crush on his fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Thompson. Unfortunately, that turned out kind of weird later, when it turned out she was the Were-Dog Queen, cursed with lycanthropy by her jealous ex-husband. (He was able to break the curse in the end.)
  • Likewise, Numbuh Two also had a crush on Numbuh Five's older sister, Cree, which created a lot of problems since Cree was a teenager and didn't return his feelings for her.
• Daria has a teenager-and-adult example in its first three seasons, when Daria had a crush on her best friend's brother, Trent, who is 5 years older than her. She's smart enough to realize that it would never work out, for their personalities if not the age difference, but it still takes a while to shake off.
• The Deep (2015): In "Lonesome Jim", it is revealed that Ant has a crush on Fontaine's best friend Jess Gorman (who is Fontaine's age or slightly older).
• Dexter's Laboratory: Dexter has a crush on his teenage babysitter in one episode, and it doesn't end well when he ages up, making the result... not so great, and a punch to the face by her boyfriend!
• In the DreamWorks Dragons episode "Gone Gustav Gone", Gustav Larson (16) develops a crush on Astrid (19) the same way Snotlout does, which in a way also grosses her out.
• In one episode of The Fairly OddParents!, while on a vacation in Hawaii with his parents, Timmy grows a crush on a hula girl.
• Family Guy
  • In "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", Stewie has a crush on his new babysitter, but when he finds out she has a boyfriend, he tries to kill him.
  • In one episode, Chris has a crush on his substitute teacher who is very buxom.
    Peter: Our son...would like to plow you.
• The Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "Lice Lice Baby" is about the two prepubescent main characters having crushes on the school nurse Pam. They fight each other over her before they eventually learn that Pam is Man-Arctica's girlfriend.
• In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Mac (8) and Bloo (chronologically 5) and some random imaginary friend and a pizza delivery guy develop a crush on Frankie (22). Mac and Bloo's 'feelings' for her are referenced a couple more times in later episodes.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Dipper (12) has a crush on Wendy (15). He finally confesses it in the second season and Wendy reveals she already knew (as it was pretty damn obvious to everyone) and gently lets him down. During a time travel episode later that season, the 12-year-old Dipper meets a 5-year-old Wendy and she crushes on him, something Dipper finds a little uncomfortable and awkward about addressing, which sparks an epiphany over how Wendy probably felt.
  • Likewise Mabel (also 12) crushes on older boys, such as sock puppeteer Gabe in the episode "Sock Opera". Her reaction to one of her crushes (that she actually gets her first kiss from) having managed to grow a very precocious mustache is to pretty much squee, and judging from Dipper's complete non-reaction to her dating a teenager in the first episode this is not a new thing for her.
• In Hey Arnold!, Arnold develops a crush on a substitute teacher. Hilarity Ensues when he overhears her talking about planning a romantic evening with "Arnold," since that happens to also be her fiancé's name.
  • He also crushes on Ruth McDougall, a sixth-grader, early on. In the Valentine's Day episode he actually talks to her and realizes that she's not anything like he expected, so he moves on. And then there was that one Beach Episode with one-time love interest two-timing him...
  • This may or may not count but that one episode where Gerald's little sister Timberly (who's about 5 or 6) had a crush on Arnold (who's 9). The age difference is small but Arnold acts much more mature than Timberly.
  • Alongside Arnold, Gerald had one too in the episode "Sixth Grade Girls". He also has another one in "Gerald vs. Jamie-O" with his new neighbor Chloe (who was middle-school aged). But she was only agreeing to hang out with him because she had a crush on his brother Jamie-O (who is high school aged).
• In Home Movies, Jason develops a crush on the school nurse.
• In Johnny Bravo, a young neighbor girl named Suzy is said to have a crush on the titular character, who (while his age is never revealed or confirmed) is probably roughly a decade older than her. Suzy clings to Johnny at every possible, and he usually must go to great lengths to get rid of her.
  • Though soon after the art style shift happened in the show, her implications of having a crush on him disappeared. Likely as it would be mildly creepy to have a girl infatuated with the town lecher.
• Kaeloo: Violasse, a toddler, seemingly has a crush on Quack-Quack, who is roughly around the pre-teen age range. Quack-Quack obviously does not reciprocate and has a girlfriend who is around the pre-teen age range as well.
• In A Kind of Magic Tom has a crush on his teacher Miss Tinker. By the second season he's over it and moved on to his sister's friend Sophia.
• The Lion Guard has Bunga, a preteen Honey Badger who has a crush on Dhahabu, an adult Golden Zebra.
• In The Loud House, Lincoln Loud's best friend, Clyde McBride, had a crush on Lincoln's oldest sister, Lori, in the first two seasons of the show — Lori's at least six years older than Clyde and she made it clear to Clyde that she wasn't interested in him (especially since she already has a boyfriend). Likewise, Bobby's 8-year-old cousin, Carl, also has a crush on Lori.
  • In the episode "Study Muffin", Lincoln brings home a tutor from a local college to help him pass his exams, all of his sisters (minus Lily, the baby) fall head over heels for him, with the youngest sisters being 8, 6, and 4. It's later revealed that the reason Lincoln keeps failing his exams is because he, along with the entire male student body, all have crushes on the new teacher.
• Moral Orel: 11-year-old Orel develops a crush on Stephanie, who works at the town's only sex shop. She turns him down nicely at the end of the episode and they retain an Intergenerational Friendship. Even if there weren't an age gap, Incompatible Orientation would have set in. In the second season, Doughy develops a crush on his teacher Miss Sculptham, who ends up taking advantage of him so he'll (and later by extension, Mr. Creepler) keep buying her expensive gifts.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Spike, who is basically an adopted younger brother to Twilight Sparkle, and in personality is much like a preteen. He gained a major crush on Rarity, who is at least an older teen, if not a young adult, the moment he saw her. She (and everyone in town) knows about the crush and Rarity has gently brushed him off, but she's not above exploiting it for her own benefit; to the point where a season nine episode involves her panicking when Spike begins hanging out with a girl around his own age, as she's come to rely on his labor a lot over the years.
• In OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, it's implied that the reason why Fink insists on referring to her adoptive father-figure Professor Venomous as "Boss" rather than "Dad"—even firmly correcting Darrell when he calls Venomous "[your] daddy"—is because she has this sort of crush on him. This is also heavily hinted to be the reason she dislikes Boxman (who becomes Venomous's Love Interest) for such a long time before he finally manages to win her over and get her to warm up to him. Since she's very subtle about it and acts far more like a Bratty Teenage Daughter than a Smitten Teenage Girl, he never seems to catch on, always loving her like his daughter and very much treating her like one.
• In the Peanuts cartoon, Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, Linus' crush for Miss Othmar is seen, but then cooled off quickly when he sees his teacher ride off with her boyfriend. Cue Linus chucking every chocolate from a big heart-shaped candy box over the bridge… and Snoopy and Woodstock getting a free treat for every toss!
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Ferb ("less than 15", probably about 10) has a crush on Vanessa Doofenshmirtz (16). She's dating someone else and doesn't seem to notice his crush, but he's saved her life and given her helpful advice, and Word of God actually supports the idea of them getting together "when the age thing won't matter as much." In the flash-forward episode "Act Your Age", Ferb and Vanessa end up getting together.
  • Irving hits on Candace and/or Stacy, though this was probably just meant as a single one-off joke in this show's perpetual Ship Tease.
  • Thanks to his voice actor Bobby Gaylor, we now know that Buford (same age as Ferb) has a crush on Candace (15). As evidenced by his sneaking his number into her cellphone, and being very upset when she won't abide by the Bully Code and serve him for his having saved her life. This might also explain why he refused to let Candace and Jeremy into the restaurant in "Chez Platypus"; he wanted to ruin their date out of jealousy.
• Buttercup in The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Buttercrush." She has a crush on Gangreen Gang leader Ace, which lasts up until she sees the Gang about to kill Blossom and Bubbles. The short-lived crush is even lampshaded in a comic book story ("Five Green Vandals," issue #16). They're full-on dating in the game FusionFall, though she doesn't seem much older than 13.
• Ready Jet Go!: It's really easy to think that Jet has a crush on Sean's mom as of "Visit to Mom's Office". When he first sees her, he immediately gives her a big hug (Sean's mom looks surprised, Sean looks annoyed, and Sydney looks sad, since she has frequent ship tease with Jet and possibly likes him), and even calls her "Dr. Sean's Mom" even though he knows that their last name is Rafferty. He is later seen smiling widely at her and raising his eyebrows trying to catch her attention, which also made Sydney upset. To top it off, he seemed all too excited to tell her that he is from Bortron 7. This crush can also be seen in other episodes. In "Ice Moon Enceladus", when Dr. Rafferty is passing by Sean's snow cone stand, Jet immediately greets her, even though she ignores him, and in "Mindy's Meteorite Stand", when Dr. Rafferty was inspecting Mindy's "meteorite", Jet also looked through a magnifying glass to impress her. In "Asteroid Patrol", Sean's telescope needs adjusting and Jet happily offers to go to Sean's house to get some items. Of course, when he sees Sean's mom, he acts awkward around her. However, in later episodes, the crush is no longer apparent.
• The Recess episode "The Voice" has Mikey (9) developing a crush on his music teacher (24). His friends explain to him that they won't be able to get together due to the age difference. As Mikey's about to prove them wrong, he ends up walking in on his teacher's boyfriend proposing to her.
• The Secret Saturdays: The 11-year-old Zak has a crush on Abbey Grey who used to be his babysitter. This causes some serious jealousy issues when she starts dating his uncle Doyle.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Lisa's Substitute", Lisa gets a crush on the (substitute) teacher Mr. Bergstrom. (Voiced by Dustin Hoffman, who just can't seem to find a happy medium with respect to the ages of women who fall for him.)
  • In earlier seasons, Lisa is obsessed with Corey magazine and its hotline, all full of boys who were at least in their teens. One example in the "Brother from the Same Planet" subplot, when Marge found out about Lisa's phone calls to the hotline, she revealed to Lisa that she was in the same situation in her childhood when she had a crush on Bobby Sherman:
    Marge Simpson: Oh, honey, I know how you feel. When I was a girl, I had a crush on Bobby Sherman…
    [Lisa bursts out laughing]
    Marge Simpson: [annoyed] The point is, I want you to stop making these calls!
  • In "New Kid on the Block", Bart develops a crush on new neighbor Laura Powers, who was in her mid teens. When he found out she was going out with Jimbo, one of the bullies who picks on him, he arranged a plan to break them up. It was successful — by the end of the episode, Laura had broken up with Jimbo and even told Bart that she would date him if he were older. The character was never seen again.
  • In "The Fabulous Faker Boy", Bart falls for his piano teacher, Zhenya.
  • In one episode, in regards to Marge, Milhouse says "She's HOT! ...sorry that just slipped out."
  • Also happens in "The Devil Wears Nada" with Nelson and Milhouse looking at a pin-up calender featuring Marge.
  • Lisa's other older crushes include teenaged environmental activist Jesse Grass from "Lisa the Tree Hugger" and 13-year-old ranch hand Luke from "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"
• Many of the South Park boys fell for a cute substitute teacher in an early episode. Aside from the age difference, there was also a case of Incompatible Orientation.
  • Not a "crush" per se, but apparently all the sixth-graders, and Butters, are attracted to Stan's mom's large breasts. (Note that, in the show's style, she looks completely flat.)
  • Butters also has a crush on Kim Kardashian.
• Superfriends: Ronnie Raymond, one half of Firestorm, is a teenager who is demonstrated as having a crush on Wonder Woman in his debut on the franchise's penultimate iteration Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show.
• In season 1 of Tangled: The Series, the fourteen-year-old Varian is shown to have one of these on 22-year-old Cassandra, to the point of naming an element after her.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
  • In the 2003-series, Donatello (who, along with his brothers, is 15) is implied to have a crush on April, who, according to some sources, is 23 at the start of the series (making her at least eight years older than the turtles). But in the 2012-series, Donnie's confirmed to have a crush on April, who's 16 (and a high school student), instead of being a woman in her twenties.
  • In the original cartoon from the 1980s, all four of the turtles have obvious crushes on April (who, according to some sources, is supposed to be 28). However, other than the fact that they're simply "teenagers," it's never said how old the turtles are (and in contrast to most continuities, this version had the Turtles be full-grown upon mutation rather than still being infants and growing to adolescence).
• Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race: The 13-year-old Dwayne Jr. develops a crush on Carrie (who looks about 18 years old) and was planning to ask her out until her friend Devin informed him that she doesn't date "younger men".
  Devin: But hey, give it a couple years. She might change her mind.

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