Basic Trope: A child plays detective, snoops around for clues and solves a case.
- Straight: 10-years-old Billy snoops around the school solving various cases like who's been writing on the bathroom walls.
- Exaggerated: 5-years-old Billy snoops around the city and uncovers several bank heists and attempted murders.
- Downplayed: Billy's dad is a detective, and Billy likes hearing about cases and sometimes provides help, whether by setting up a "Eureka!" Moment or by actually having heard something from a source Dad didn't know or suspect was connected to the case.
- Justified: Billy is raised by detectives to be naturally curious and concerned about upholding the law.
- Inverted: A child becomes a criminal.
- Subverted: A painting from the local museum has gone missing and Billy plans to figure out who took it, but is told by his parents to stay out of the way and let the police handle it, and he does.
- Double Subverted: It seems as though he will do as told, and even does so, only to change his mind later.
- Parodied: All kids are detectives and are all naturally better at solving crimes than the adult detectives. Regardless, the adult detectives never listen to any of them.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Billy is a good kid and never gets involved in the criminal investigation.
- Enforced: "We want to make a mystery story for kids, and they need a protagonist they can relate to."
- Lampshaded: "You can't be a detective. You're Just a Kid."
- Invoked: Billy can't wait ten years to solve crimes.
- Exploited: Billy's father asks him for help in some of his cases, figuring that a little kid could be helpful without anyone noticing.
- Defied: The criminals kidnap/kill all Snooping Little Kids and keep them out of the way.
- Discussed: "He may not have gone through puberty yet, but that kid is the best detective I've ever seen."
- Conversed: "Kids can't be detectives."
- Deconstructed:
- Billy snoops around trying to solve a crime. Along the way, he misses all of the obvious clues, jumps to all the wrong conclusions, and have become a hindrance in the police's investigation. By sheer dumb luck, he eventually discovers the bad guys' hideout and decides to snoop around inside and see what he can find. But he's not very stealthy and gets caught by the criminals and is killed.
- Billy tries to solve the case and thinks he’s found the culprit...only for them to be completely innocent because Billy only relied on the clues he could see and wasn’t actually trained on proper procedure. The police chief is later fired for handing off such a high-profile case to a little boy.
- Reconstructed: Billy is raised by detectives and has been trained by them about proper procedure, deductive thinking, among other things. He uses these skills to find clues where the police never think to look and snoop around places before the police are able to get the warrants for them. Billy eventually unravels the mystery.
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