Basic Trope: For some reason, a character goes to school with people significantly older than he/she is.
- Straight: Bob is ten, but is starting high school.
- Exaggerated: Despite being an infant, Bob has a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard.
- Downplayed: Bob is one year ahead in school because his parents felt he was ready to start kindergarten early.
- Justified: Bob is two grades ahead in school because he had tested out of second grade into fourth.
- Inverted: Bob is Held Back in School.
- Subverted:
- Bob scored 200 on an IQ test, but he still struggles in his grade and is not moved up.
- Bob is older than he looks.
- Bob is the only one who isn't redoing the class.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob scores 200 on an IQ test, but he's failing multiple classes. Despite that, he is accelerated in school.
- Bob is older than he looks, but still skipped one grade (even though it looks like he skipped four).
- Parodied: Bob gets Grade Skipped because the high school wanted his premature abilities at football.
- Zig Zagged: Bob gets Grade Skipped, but then, years later, is Held Back in School.
- Averted: Bob is seventeen and entering his senior year of high school.
- Enforced: The need for a Kid-Appeal Character adds twelve-year-old Bob to the main cast of high-schoolers.
- Lampshaded: "Isn't it strange that we're all sixteen but we hang around with a kid half that age? He should be in elementary school."
- Invoked: A character applies this trope to his or her child after learning that his or her test scores are far above the other children's scores.
- Exploited: Due to his grade acceleration, Bob acts much older than he is and tries to get people to treat him as if he really is older.
- Defied:
- A school administrator says, "I know they move all the smart kids ahead in fiction, but all children should have peers their own age."
- Bob resists any and all attempts to get himself skipped a grade because he enjoys the fun and innocence of childhood.
- Discussed: "I know that Bob's still a kid, it doesn't necessarily make him the smartest person in the whole school."
- Conversed: "There's always an annoying kid in every show set at college."
- Implied: Despite the fact that it's never stated that Bob is a Grade Skipper, the actor playing Bob looks like he's ten years old, and it's canon that Bob still plays with Legos.
- Deconstructed: Bob becomes depressed after realizing that he is unable to make friends with anyone else at school.
- Reconstructed: Despite having no friends, Bob isn't interested in socializing, and continues his academic studies normally.
- Played For Laughs: The series focuses on Bob's lack of knowledge about teenage and adult life.
- Played For Drama: The series focuses on the isolating elements of it, or Bob's struggles to keep up with his older peers.
Back to Grade Skipper
