Basic Trope: A character's age is left unclear.
- Straight: Alice appears to be somewhere in her teens, but her exact age is never made clear.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is an immortal who frequently speaks about historical events as if she was involved in them. Just how far back her knowledge goes is unknown.
- Alice has the body of a preschooler, but is a veteran of the American Revolution.
- Downplayed: It's obvious that Alice is an underclassman in high school, but it's never specified whether she's a freshmen or a sophomore.
- Justified:
- Alice is an amnesic shapeshifter who appears to subtly grow younger and older based on circumstances, not even she knows her true age.
- Alice is a time traveller, and all her time warping made her forget when she was born.
- Alice is insecure about her age, leading her to keep it secret.
- Alice was found in a basket.note
- Alice was born into an isolated tribe deep in the jungle, so no official documentation of her birth date exists.
- Inverted:
- Everyone's age is seen above the heads of everyone thanks to Alice's powers.
- When Alice is introduced, she is stated to be exactly fifteen years, eight months, twelve days, six hours, seventeen minutes old... and eight seconds.
- Subverted: Alice appears to be somewhere in her teens, but her exact age is never made clear. Until, halfway through the series, she tells Bob she's sixteen.
- Double Subverted: Alice said she was sixteen, but it's implied that she was lying.
- Parodied:
- Alice goes to get her driver's license and gets rejected for being too young. Frustrated, she goes to an American bar, shows her ID and orders a drink.
- Not even Alice knows how old she is.
- Anyone who attempts to figure out Alice's age either dies or goes insane.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice has reincarnated and kept her memories several times although it is uncertain how long the other lives were. When asked she explicitly says, "You'll have to be more specific."
- Averted: The character's age is explicitly stated.
- Enforced:
- "The marketers wouldn't let us say that Alice is thirteen out of fear of losing one demographic or another."
- The creators leave Alice's age open to interpretation in order to increase the number of stories she can star in and so that more audience members can relate to her.
- The author was unsure of what age the character was and went with this to help broad audiences identify.
- Alice is only a background character, the author didn't put much thought into her beyond her (limited) role.
- Lampshaded Bob asks Charlie how old Alice is, and he responds: "Weird, I've known her for five months and nobody's ever told me how old she was.
- Invoked: Alice gives everyone conflicting details on her age and birthdate just to mess with them.
- Exploited: Alice is an infiltrator who uses her ability to plausibly pass as different ages to shift through varied identities and make following the trail harder.
- Defied: Bob steals Alice's ID card to find out her age.
- Discussed: "I'm not sure if Alice really is a teenager or just an adult with serious issues."
- Conversed: "Isn't Jake a bit young to be leading an army?" "I thought he was too old!"
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice appears to be college-aged, but it's stated she's in high school. She's also a ditzy comic relief character, implying that she got held back.
- Very frequently dialogue appears to being leading in to Alice's age but the topic is always changed.
- Played For Drama: Alice makes her age deliberately vague, because she's got an older, abusive boyfriend and people are trying to break them up through age-of-consent laws.
Back to Vague Age
