Basic Trope: An adult with a childlike personality.
- Straight: Bob is a grown man in his 30s, who acts like a preteen boy by being very excitable and playing with toys.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is a centuries-old immortal who behaves like a small toddler.
- The entire adult cast act like young children. This means that offices, factories, and even the government seem to be run like elementary schools with no adult supervision.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is a young man in his 20s, who is actually quite competent, intelligent, and self-reliant in most circumstances; he just has some emotional immaturity, so he acts like a moody teenager in social situations.
- Bob is a man who acts mature, but is afraid of change, and self-sabotages any chance he has at growing up and learning how to take responsibility.
- Bob has childlike interests, but they don’t interfere with his adult life because he keeps them under control.
- Kiddie Kid: Bob is a teenager or kid who acts younger than he really is.
- Bob is a grown man in his 30s, who acts like he's undergoing a Teen Rebellion.
- Justified:
- Bob was raised by very immature or irresponsible parents; who had either abused, neglected, overbeared, or spoiled him without bothering to teach him any real-life lessons or proper social skills.
- Bob suffers from a severe mental illness or developmental disability, which may or may not be accompanied by intellectual impairment; thus, permanently arresting his mental age at early childhood.
- Bob still enjoys many things from his childhood and sees no reason to drop them as long as they don't cause significant problems with his adulthood.
- Bob had a Dark and Troubled Past and never got to have fun or enjoy the things most kids do. Now that he's an adult and can do whatever he wants, he's making up for lost time.
- Bob spent most of his childhood in a coma and wakes up in his adult years.
- Bob Really Was Born Yesterday, with insufficient time to develop emotionally.
- Bob is a victim of Rapid Aging and is stuck in an adult's body.
- Inverted: Bob is an Adorably Precocious Child who is Wise Beyond His Years. In fact, he's probably more levelheaded and mature than most people who are twice his age.
- Subverted:
- Bob starts acting his age.
- Bob seems to be a man in his 30s acting like a preteen. Then it's revealed that he actually is a preteen, either by being far Younger Than He Looks or due to "Bob" actually being an Older Alter Ego.
- Bob does still live at home, but it's because the cost of living where he lives is prohibitively high (even with roommates), and he doesn't have the means to relocate, either. For what it's worth, he does have a job, and he does do things like help his parents out with chores, errands, and cooking, and he does pay rent and/or help out with household bills.
- Bob is still a virgin at 35 but that's mainly because the opportunity never came up. In his teens and twenties, he was kind of dorky-looking (gangly, pimply, wore Nerd Glasses and the Braces of Orthodontic Overkill), and now that he's in his 30s, he just assumes that no woman will ever want to be with him because he is (or thinks he is) such a Straw Loser.
- Bob plays a Manchild character on TV, but in Real Life, he has a steady job, a hobby (or two), he owns a home (maybe even more than one home), he helps out with chores, and has a wife and kids.
- Bob lives with his mother, but only because his house burned down.
- Bob lives with his mother, but that's so that he can take care of her, because she's elderly and she needs some extra help.
- Double Subverted:
- He was only acting like that for a job interview.
- He still acts like this when he gets older.
- He has a large collection of action figures and comics, and spends a large amount of time playing video games when he isn't working.
- He really, really wants a girlfriend, and wishes for a real-life, aged-up version of the anime girl on his poster, someone who wants only him, rather than actually going out and finding real women.
- He gets angry at women in general, because he was always taught that being nice and doing heroic deeds would get him the girl of his dreams... but the real world doesn't work that way.
- He eventually becomes Lost in Character as the Manchild.
- He only does things around the house when his wife asks him to, often more than once. He'd much rather play fantasy football. His wife ends up parenting him as much as their children.
- Because he left the oven on while he went to the movies.
- He dumps most of the responsibility for caring for his mother onto his wife. And he didn't ask her if his mother could move into their spare bedroom. Nor does he help out when Alice's parents need extra care, or offer to take them in.
- Parodied: Bob gets mistaken for a 10-year-old.
- Zig Zagged: Bob starts acting his age. But that was just for a job interview. But even after he gets the job, he starts acting more mature...for the first couple weeks during probation. He gets too comfortable in his position and reverts to his usual behaviour, causing complaints and making his boss not want to keep him at the end.
- Averted: Bob acts his age the whole time.
- Enforced:
- "We need a grownup who acts like a little kid. This is a comedy show, after all."
- An Aesop describing how growing older is mandatory, but growing up is optional.
- An Aesop about how adults should not be acting like overgrown children.
- The story is written by a child who portrays adults how he thinks they act.
- He is a Token Adult best friend in the show for young children, so the creator makes him act like One of the Kids to help him relate with the target audience and to avoid risk of complaints from Moral Guardians.
- Lampshaded: "How old are you?" "Physically 30, psychologically 10."
- Invoked: Bob is thinking back to his childhood and remembers how unpleasant it was. Then he gets some ideas...
- Exploited: Alice wins all arguments with Bob by acting like a stern parent.
- Defied: Bob decides that even though his childhood was unhappy, he'll just work harder to have a pleasant adult life.
- Discussed: "I don't want him around our children. He's giving them the wrong idea... in more ways than one."
- Conversed: "Oh, geez, another adult who keeps acting like a kid. Oldest trick in the book."
- Implied: Alice talks about her Uncle Bob who is never seen by the audience and mentions how much he loved playing with toys and making fart sounds.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's attempts to relive his childhood indicate some serious psychological problems on his behalf. He's never able to mentally "grow up", and remains distrusted by both adults and children alike.
- Because Bob is mentally immature, he is unable to comprehend the seriousness of adult life to the point where he cannot be relied on to handle big responsibilities, and depends on someone else to do it for him.
- Bob is still living with his parents because of his inability (or refusal) to take care of himself. Because his parents will eventually die someday, he has no choice but to move out of the house and fend for himself somehow, or worse.
- Bob has a severe developmental disability and deals with ableism every day, from others and from himself, which drives him to depression.
- Reconstructed:
- Even though Bob is trying to relive his childhood, he still knows when to act like an adult, so there are no problems.
- Growing older is mandatory, but growing up is optional, and people are still able to accept him for who he is.
- Bob is provided a caregiver even when he decided to live on his own, who takes care of all his adult responsibilities without complaint until Bob is ready to do things for himself.
- Bob grieves deeply for his parents, but he eventually manages to bond with other people in his community.
- Bob has a support network to help him take on as much adult responsibility as possible. Plus when others mock him, he points out their hypocrisy, since bullying makes them more childish than he is.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is a character in a zany comedy, and his antics are meant to be funny and endearing.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob's childish behavior stems from having an unhappy childhood and/or an unhappy adulthood. Bob desperately clings onto nostalgic memories of his youth, to the point of suffering severe depression, and being unable to actually live in the present.
- Bob's personality means he is unable to make or keep friends, or have a deep relationship with anyone; and since he has no ability to resolve his emotional problems on his own, he regresses even farther into his manchild state out of loneliness.
- Bob’s parents intentionally stunted his mental development, giving Bob numerous psychological problems along with his childish personality.
- Played For Horror: Bob is childish and immature to the point of being very creepy, mentally unstable, or even violent.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I can't wait to go back to Manchild!
