Basic Trope: In a story about children or teens, no adults seem to be present.
- Straight: All visible characters — heroes, villains, and background characters — are under 18.
- Exaggerated: All visible characters are under 12.
- Downplayed: All the main characters are children, but a few adults are shown in the background.
- Justified:
- A group of children are left to fend for themselves.
- All the adults are dead, perhaps killed by children.
- No one ages.
- The Big Bad kidnapped all the adults, and it's up to the children to rescue them.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: A Token Adult shows up and decides to accompany the Kid Heroes.
- Double Subverted:
- The Token Adult dies or goes missing.
- The "adult" was really two children disguised as an adult or a very large child.
- Parodied: Only older adults (those over 50) have been wiped out, and the survivors are worried that it's The End of the World as We Know It, just as if all the adults had died.
- Zig-Zagged: The Kid Heroes find no adults in most places, but they do meet a handful of adults, but the adults turn out to be Red Shirts.
- Averted: Characters of all ages coexist.
- Enforced: "We want the show to appeal to children. Let's make all the characters Free-Range Children and show as few adults as possible."
- Lampshaded: "Why aren't there any adults present? And why is it that none of us remembers our own parents?"
- Invoked: The villains release a toxin that is Only Fatal to Adults.
- Exploited: Teenagers start doing horrible things in a now lawless world.
- Defied: Alice and Bob learn that adults are dying, escape the threat, and then come back once it's passed.
- Discussed: "What would you do if all the grownups went missing?"
- Conversed: "It's strange how this show never depicts any adults. Do these kids live alone or what?"
- Deconstructed: Society is falling apart due to the lack of adults.
- Reconstructed: Laws are made and enforced by robots, Teen Geniuses, or both.
- Implied: All the characters seen are children and they never refer even obliquely to any adults.
- Played for Laughs: The children do dumb things because they are too young to know better.
- Played for Drama: What is left of society makes a turn for the worse.
Let's go back to There Are No Adults. Maybe we'll find adults there.
