Basic Trope: A goofy & fun-loving adult has a serious-minded child.
- Straight: Bob is a cheerful goofball who likes to joke around and is a bit scatterbrained. His son, Eric, on the other hand, is more mature and brooding.
- Exaggerated: Bob is an outright Cloud Cuckoo Lander who would be considered "quirky" by even the quirkiest teenager. His son Eric is a stoic and highly capable ace who can pretty much do everything on his own.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is only slightly more cheerful and fun-loving than Eric.
- Bob is an otherwise serious man who simply does not realize Eric is growing out of the fun times they had together.
- Wacky Parental Substitute, Serious Child
- Just because Eric is a Serious Child doesn't mean he can't crack a joke like his dad every once in a while, especially if it's genetic.
- Justified:
- Bob's own father was very strict, so he decided that he didn't want to take after him and became a more fun loving parent.
- Eric tends to take after his more serious minded mother rather than Bob.
- Bob has a developmental disorder that stunts his maturity.
- Bob works as a children's entertainer or a circus clown—jobs that have "wacky" written all over them. The career has influenced his mannerisms, for better or worse.
- Eric has reached an age where children take things more seriously; school work, making a good impression for house guests, etc.
- Inverted: Bob is straight laced and serious while Eric is the fun loving one.
- Subverted:
- Bob comes across as a silly, immature, free-spirited person to most, but Bob is a salesman, and his supposed immaturity is actually part of the character he plays to sell himself and other things. In private and with Eric, he is very serious.
- Eric rolls his eyes at Bob's antics, because Bob is doing them as a mocking caricature of the "fun dad" that Eric really wants to have.
- Double Subverted: Bob is normally fun-loving and immature while Eric takes things seriously all the time, but when a big problem shows up, Bob puts on a serious face...and realizes he really has no idea how to solve the problem so he defaults to Eric while working to keep his spirit up.
- Parodied: Bob's silliness gets to the point where Eric threatens to ground his father if he doesn't stop being a pest.
- Averted: Neither Bob nor Eric is particularly more fun loving or serious than the other.
- Lampshaded:
- "At first I wondered why Eric was so serious for a 14 year old, and then I met you...it's hard to be the clown when you have to run the circus, Mr. Smith."
- Alice: "Your dad is very weird, Eric."Eric: "You have no idea."
- Bob and Eric purchase a pair of tickets that have discounts available for children, so one adult and one child ticket. Bob and Eric absent-mindedly reach for the child and adult tickets, respectively, before one of them realizes what they're doing: "Heh, my mind went on autopilot there for a moment."
- Zig-Zagged:
- Bob can be a goofball, but knows when to cut the jokes and get serious when the situation calls for it (i.e. his son is in danger, there's a death in the family, etc.). But as soon as the seriousness of the situation disperses, he's back to all jokes and humor. Eric is usually pretty brooding and mature, but does know when to let loose and act like a kid when it's something he finds fun (i.e. video games, amusement parks, etc.). And once that's over, he's back to being brooding and mature again.
- As a young child Bob and Eric would happily engage in wacky antics together. Once Eric grows older he begins to tire of his father's antics, despite Bob's encouragement for him to lighten up. As a teenager Eric grows more unruly, getting himself in trouble with teachers and the law, and Bob finally has to put his foot down. Once Eric grows up to be more mature, Bob can finally relax lighten up again, while still providing support for Eric.
- Enforced: Bob's original character template was different, and as a side effect, more mature, but the publisher thought it made him too much a social commentary, so our author had to rewrite Bob into a more fun-loving character.
- Defied: Bob was always a free-spirit, but when he sees that his nature is putting too much responsibility on Eric and robbing him of his childhood, Bob works hard to straighten out and be a serious, responsible parent.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Because Bob is so immature and ditzy, Eric is forced to be the adult in the house and carry all the weight which made him have to sacrifice having a normal childhood...
- Reconstructed: ...but because of that, Eric stands out as a capable leader, thinker, and planner, which employers and schoolteachers take note of and he quickly becomes a favorite over his more childish by comparison rivals. Bob admits his own faults and warns Eric to never be like him, but Eric thanks Bob, telling his father that he wouldn't be the man he is today without Bob.
- Played For Laughs: The standard plot structure of the "Why Couldn't You Be Different?" Fantasy-Forbidding Father is played... except that it's the "Fantasy-Forbidding Child". The vision of a five-year-old giving a thirty-year-old the "get you head out of the clouds, Santa doesn't exists, sit down and study!" speech is funny (even in a dark context).
- Played for Drama:
- Bob is a single dad who's been struggling to make ends meet for his son Eric and himself ever since his wife Alice died. As his son's only role-model, he tries to keep a smile on his face to encourage his son to maintain a positive outlook on life and not be overcome by hopelessness and grief. Eric, however, feels that his father doesn't understand how much he still misses his mother, so he hardens further as a result.
- Eric has clinical depression, so his father, Bob, acts silly to try to make him feel better. This, however, only makes Eric's depression worse because he feels like his father is mocking him with his cheerful demeanor.
- Despite Eric being more serious minded than his father, he has a deep seated fear that one day his father will find him too exhausting to deal with, and will send him away to let him be someone else's problem.
- Played for Horror: Bob is a full-blown optimist and doesn't aware at all that Eric, his psychopath son is going to kill him.
Back to Wacky Parent, Serious Child.
