Child Prodigy - TV Tropes

While you were still learning how to SPELL YOUR NAME, he was composing HIS OWN SYMPHONIES!

"I rocked harder than you when I was five years old!"

— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Skrillex, Epic Rap Battles of History

A young genius — in their pre-teen year. Any genius below 13 and above 3 is eligible for the title of a Child Prodigy. Sometimes ignored or discriminated against by those who consider them Just a Kid. Tends to be an Innocent Prodigy at times due to their age.

In a setting with a mostly older cast, a Child Prodigy Grade Skipper might be introduced to appeal to a younger demographic.

Very often The Smart Guy on The Team, particularly in Super Robot Genre shows.

Note that though the Child Prodigy may also be Wise Beyond Their Years, they are really two distinct tropes because intelligence and wisdom are entirely different things. They can also overlap with Adorably Precocious Child or Innocent Prodigy, and are often seen enjoying something that goes over other kids' heads, which could be Entertainment Above Their Age if it's a work of fiction. This character is also prone to using Little Professor Dialog.

For the record, despite some Real Life uses of the term, a high school-aged character in college (13–19 years old) would be a Teen Genius, not this trope. See also Brainy Baby, which is the even younger counterpart (3 years old and below).

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

Asian Animation

Balala the Fairies: While Meixue is a decent student, Xiao Qian far surpasses her despite being 9 to 10. It surprises people in how a young girl like her can attend middle school. Justified by how she’s the future Queen, so she’s destined to learn far faster than the others. It's also deconstructed early in the series; many teachers and the sisters see her as a problematic child who fails to learn anything in class. However, that’s because she learns too quickly in class that schools can’t keep up with her learning curve. She easily becomes bored since they never gave her any new content.
Doctor H. of Happy Friends was quite the inventor even as a child. In the first episode of Season 9, he's shown building a working Time Machine out of cardboard in an unsuccessful attempt to save his father from an Alien Abduction.
Lamput: In "Boss'stache", the docs' Boss is shown to have been quite good at building an invention and making a potion to give himself a mustache when he was a kid.

Comic Books

The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius: Actually, calling Barry Ween a child prodigy is kind of like calling Damien a naughty kid; Barry has invented dimension travel devices, working lightsabers, time machines, jetpacks, and ray guns. He secretly runs several multinational corporations in order to finance his experiments, and he can plan and execute a break-in of a top-secret (and heavily guarded) government facility in the space of an afternoon. He's ten.
Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Newton Gearloose is the nephew of Gyro Gearloose and is a brillant Gadgeteer Genius such as his famous uncle.
Fantastic Four: Valerie "Val" Richards, the toddler daughter of Reed Richards and Sue Storm; she has exhibited an aptitude with science and technology rivaling that of her father and that of Doctor Doom.
Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: Gilbert, Goofy's nephew. While Goofy is best-known to be a Cloudcuckoolander, his nephew is a TV Genius who knows anything about everything.
Omega the Unknown: James-Michael from Steve Gerber's comic, thanks to having been raised by robots.
Robin (1993): Tim Drake started out as a Playful Hacker amateur photographer who had figured out Batman and Robin's secret identities by accident when he was nine and is expected to eventually surpass Bruce as the World's Greatest Detective. Tim also takes after Bruce in regards to being a Crazy-Prepared Science Hero who relies on Batman Gambits against foes he knows he can't take in a fair fight.
Spider-Man: Subverted in Spider-Man (2022). Bailey uses web fluid dissolver to get out of Peter's webbing when Peter tries to ditch him. Peter's first assumption is that Bailey made the dissolver. Bailey balks at the notion. He's only ten years old and wouldn't have the know-how to make something like that on his own. He shows the dissolver's capsule to Peter to prove that it's Peter's handiwork as evidence of their previous partnership after Bailey was Ret-Gone from memory and record.
Dog Man (Dav Pilkey): As a clone of Petey, Lil' Petey shares his massive intellect, capable of putting 80-HD back together and installing different parts in him without altering his core functions, among other feats.
Tomorrow Stories: Jack B. Quick is a rural Black Comedy version of this.
Ultimate Fantastic Four: Reed Richards built a teleporter when he was a child. It's how the Baxter Building found him.
Wonder Woman Vol 1: Gerta von Gunther is something of a Mad Scientist prodigy, whose youthful inventions include shark mermaids.
Zipi y Zape: Sapientín.

Comic Strips

Eda and Amos’ twin daughters Polly and Loly from 9 Chickweed Lane have been aged up to be about four or five years old, but they have very advanced vocabularies and have knowledge of things most kids their ages wouldn’t understand like politics and people’s relationships.
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes counts; even though he performs badly in school and misbehaves, he has an amazing vocabulary, an endless imagination, and is amazingly aware for a 6-year-old kid.
Calvin: I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report?
Hobbes (reading Calvin's report): "The dynamics of interbeing and monological imperatives in Dick and Jane: a study in psychic transrelational gender modes."
Calvin: Academia, here I come!
FoxTrot: Jason Fox is only ten years old, but he builds model rockets that provoke diplomatic incidents with China, can write viruses that crash the Internet, does math equations (involving integrations) for fun, and apparently built a "miniature warp engine" when he was at science camp. That said, he's also rather lacking in common sense and tends to cook up unneccesarily complex solutions to various problems.

Fan Works

In Forgiveness is the Attribute of the Strong, a My Hero Academia fanfiction, the eleven-year-old version of All for One who travels forward in time is a child genius. In some cases, he's just smart enough to get himself into trouble.
In Custody Battle (MHA), a My Hero Academia fanfiction, Izuku uses his genius to use One for All early after receiving the quirk in elementary school.
In Heir to the Bruce Quest, Rhiannon's sister is a math prodigy So much so she ends up inventing a version of double heat sinks at age fourteen.
In Midnight In Lumiouse: Clemont has graduated from college at seven, and is already a Gym Leader despite being the same age as Ash.
In the Pony POV Series:
- The Nameless Filly was incredibly brilliant in both magic and tactics, being said to have the potential to surpass Starswirl the Bearded and possibly become an Alicorn one day. Unfortunately, she ended up developing a psychopathic obsession with killing love itself due to her inability to form a relationship. As a result, she put her incredible intelligence to the task of making the Concept Killing Spear, a weapon capable of erasing whomever it kills from existence, resulting in one of the single most cataclysmic events in the history of creation when she killed Cupid with it.
- Sunset Shimmer, who was incredibly talented in magic as a filly. In fact, Elements of Magic in general seem to be this trope.
The Triptych Continuum: Diamond Tiara evidently came into her magic quite a bit before the norm for earth pony foals, as she's capable of what is implied to be a rather advanced maneuver. Word Of Fanfic Author is that her field dexterity score is rather high: in essence, she's very good at micromanaging.
The Scootertrix the Abridged versions of the Cutie Mark Crusaders are secretly generals in charge of the entire Equestrian Military, who somehow got into a military school^note and graduated while still at elementary school. Though this is likely largely due to Celestia's... questionable philosophy on leadership. Hilariously enough, despite being generals who can quote The Art Of War by heart, they somehow still struggle with even the most basic math to the point of being both scared and confused about the thought of negative numbers.
Having been trained by Carnelian and the other Quartzes since he was five, Steven/Rhodonite in Gift of A Diamond has become a well-trained and condecorated Quartz officer who has succeeded at a number of daring and dangerous missions and has influenced Homeworld politics so much that he was able to convince all three Diamonds not to shatter gems and give second chances into his teens. He was even able to defeat Garnet and Pearl easily, two gems with thousands of years of fighting experience.
In Master Potter of Kamar-Taj, after saving Hamir from an invading Mordo, Stephen decides to teach Harry sorcery, where he manages to master it despite being far too young to be learning their ways.
Of Siblings and Masks: Siblings Lelouch and Nunnally were both prodigious as children. Their friend Suzaku didn't mind Nunnally's intelligence much, but Lelouch annoyed him because he seemed so intellectually superior to Suzaku.
In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the youngest of three daughters of Wizard Ponder Stibbons and Assassin Johanna Smith-Rhodes is set to go this way. With one older sister a witch and magic-user, and the middle sister a student Assassin who is graded "one to watch", the youngest daughter is developing a talent for art and music, and creativity in general. An outside observer asks "Are you sure she's not related in any way to Leonard of Quirm?".
In Danganronpa: Hushed Whispers this is the case for Momo Chiisa, the Ultimate Vetenarian.
The Devil's in the details: At a young age Peter was a technological and scientific genius, being able to properly comprehend advanced theories and Stark's technology. When Peter starts applying his scientific expertise toward magic, he becomes a natural as a Child Mage (or Teen Mage).
Between the Lines (MrQuestionMark): Chapter 15 calls Nunotaba Shinobu a child prodigy.
Ships Ahoy!:
- Oprah began her fruit stand when she was eight years old, alongside her friend Yucks Shmumbers, who was four. While Oprah was already incredibly smart in the realm of mathematics and entrepreneurship, Yucks had the organizational and managerial know-how — Oprah told her to organize all the fruit in stock and left, and Yucks organized them not just in alphabetical order, but also priced by the kilogram, and sorted by color, size and amount. Put together, the two girls made a dream team, and their juice business gained a lot of traction very quickly.
- Both Opal and Oscar are qualified to fill Head of Department roles due to their smarts. Oscar in particular was enrolled in, and graduated from, the Odd Squad Academy in only six months, whereas Opal graduated from the Academy in four years' time due to the Head of Department position in the Medical department requiring four more years of working in Precinct 13579 before she can get the job instead of spending eight years at the Academy. Opal also manages to pass all three exams in the Odd-ology Finals with flying colors.
- Otto, a "lost-cause student" who has trouble focusing in school, gets a 140 on an IQ test that he takes when he's nine years old. The school faculty are so taken aback by this that the principal immediately calls a board meeting to discuss the next course of action for him, and he is eventually sent to the Odd Squad Academy to attend as a student there rather than at a regular elementary school.
Oversaturated World: Oversaturation: "Tones": Barely Teen Genius Twilight Sparkle is called a "prodigy" and she likely started being prodigial at a younger age, so she'd be a child prodigy.
Too Much Too Much: Vallea Endrizzi is a young girl who is already quite an accomplished Adventurer Archaeologist.
Oni Ga Shiku Series:
- Hisashi Midoriya was incredibly intelligent since he was a young child, which is one of the reasons why his father Musashi did not want him to be in the Yakuza like he was. Nowadays he's a head researched in I-Island.
- Discussed in regards to Izuku. He has Awesomeness by Analysis skills in combat and Photographic Memory, but his intelligence and emotional maturity do not match. During the Akatani arc, Izuku bitterly remarks that for all he's supposed to be so smart, he keeps falling for schemes that should be obvious. When he's a teenager, All Might says that Izuku is impressive, but not a genius.
- Katsuki learned how to perfectly read at four, cook at seven, and was always on top of his class in all subjects from eight years old to thirteen. His position starts being challenged after Izuku re-enters his life.
Queens of Mewni: Helia the Light of Power showed an aptitude for magic at the age of four, and by six already mastered levitation spells (with no wand!) and used magic to map the universe, terrifying her mother. When tested she turned out to be the most powerful of the queens.
The Pixie of the Hidden Leaf: Tanya was five years old when she graduated from the academy, becoming the youngest person to ever create an original ninjutsu when she was seven years old, going on to reach the rank of Jonin at the age of thirteen, becoming one of the youngest shinobi in world and the youngest kunoichi to ever reach the rank.
Insomnia (Undertale): Implied to be the case with Sans. He was somewhat shorter when he was an intern under Gaster than he is now as an adult, which implies that he was in his teens when he got an internship with the most brilliant scientist in the Underground.
Of The Earthling Saiyan:
- At age nine, Karot can keep pace with Tarble and Kauli when it comes to researching and is considered a genius. He's also the most talented at hacking and other computer skills among the Saiyans.
- The Forgotten Past of The Earthling Saiyan: At as young as three years old, Ice was considered a prodigy in martial arts.

Films — Animation

In Ralph Bakshi's Generational Saga American Pop all of the main characters sans Tony are described as musical geniuses: Zalmie is called one by Louie when he sees a boy performing for first time, Benny is introduced as a miraculously talented pianist, and Pete shows great talent in everything even as a child, causing his father to suspect he takes in after Benny. Granted, Tony still might be one too as the movie just skip through his childhood to his late teens and adulthood. He is shown to be really great at songwriting in his adulthood, but he is the laziest and most messed-up family member and is specifically told to be terrible at vocals and playing instruments.
In The Book of Life, even at the age of 9, Manolo showed a natural talent for bullfighting.
Coco: Miguel is an excellent performer, guitar player, and singer despite having few opportunities to practice due to his family's traditions, making a crowd go wild in his first live (well, not live as in living) performance after getting over his initial stage fright. Frida Kahlo is soon asking him for musical advice, which Miguel provides, much to her delight. Lee Unkrich also says that the finale song, "Proud Corazón", was written In-Universe by Miguel.

Films — Live-Action

In Amadeus, a biopic about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he is shown as a child who is composing and performing harpsichord at an advanced level.
Antonia's Line: Danielle's daughter Therese says "I'm a child prodigy," and she is, having been able to do arithmetic since she was three and being able to figure out squares and square roots of four-digit numbers while she's in grade school.
Army of Frankensteins: Igor, Finski's assistant, looks to be about twelve, and is already Creating Life.
The title character of August Rush has savant-like musical abilities as a composer and performer that get him admitted into Juilliard by age 11, although most of his achievements are well into Artistic License – Music territory.
The Book of Henry: Henry is just 11, but smart enough that he manages his own mother's finances and has detailed knowledge of high-level topics. The only reason he isn't enrolled with a gifted school was since Henry's sure an ordinary school is best for his psychosocial development.
Colombiana: Cataleya is only 9, but she can outsmart her parent's murderer, Marco. And even greater, she shows a parkour escape capability beyond her age and runs faster than adults (including the parkour experts who work for Marco) without gasping or even breaking a sweat, despite the fact that she hasn't had special training from her uncle, Emilio, yet.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps: The Stinger implies that four-year-old Franklin Richards is able to read on an adult level, given that one of his favourite books is Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (the other is The Very Hungry Caterpillar).
Gifted (2017): Mary is 7 years old and fully able to work out advanced calculus problems, even noticing where the problems are deliberately written incorrectly. Non-trivial zeroes are used as an example of the level of mathematical concepts she understands.
Harry and the Butler: "Heisenberg", a 10-year-old boy who ransacks the junkyard where Harry lives, ransacking car parts for use in his homemade rockets. He eventually succeeds in launching a rocket. Earlier in the film, Harry asks him to calculate 3300 divided by 286 (Harry has 3300 kroner to hire a butler who gets 286 kroner per week). Heisenberg answers immediately, to three decimal places (it's about 11.5) and then asks if Harry needs more decimals.
In Humoresque, Leon, who is about 12, can instantly play a violin the moment he's given one. Sure enough, he becomes a concert violinist.
In Iron Man 1, one of the first things we learn about Tony Stark is that he built his first circuit board when he was 4, his first engine when he was 6, the world's most advanced A.I. (at the time) when he was 7, and at some point in his childhood designed and built his mechanical lab assistant DUM-E. He later matured into a Teen Genius when he graduated top of his class at MIT when he was 17.
Near in L: change the WorLd is a mathematical genius and solves Maki's homework for her, which turns out to be the secret of the antidote to the virus she carries.
In "The Kindergarten Teacher", five-year-old James Roy, has the instinctive ability to create profound, evocative poetry well beyond his years.
From Little Man Tate, Jodie Foster's directorial debut, Fred Tate (played by Adam Hann-Byrd, also known for The Ice Storm) reads at age two without having been taught, and in second grade paints with a mature grasp of art history.
The title character of Matilda. At the beginning of the film, she starts school and, due to her voracious appetite for books, is already able to multiply large numbers in her head and has an extensive knowledge of literature.
No Other Choice: According to her cello teacher, Ri-one is a genius cellist. This comes as a surprise to her parents, since the little girl never plays very much at home, but they support the hobby because Ri-one is neurodivergent and music could help her be independent. In the end Mi-ri hears Ri-one play a full piece and becomes emotional.
Liu Kwok-pin from I Not Stupid, at age 12, is an excellent artist who displays impressive photographic memory. Shown doodling on sketchbooks and notepads several times throughout the film (despite being forbidden and repeatedly scolded by his over-bearing and borderline abusive mother for failing his studies due to being overly interested in art), Liu's artistic skills are finally put to test when his friends Terry and Boon Hock were abducted by a pair of kidnappers. Having seen the abductor's faces for mere seconds, Liu procures his sketchpad... and produces drawings of the kidnappers' faces◊ that puts most adult sketch artists to shame.
Real Genius is about a school full of these, including the main character Mitch, his friend Chris, and Lazlo, the guy in the closet.
That kid from Revenge of the Nerds attending college (and joining a frat!) at age 10, his name was Wormser.
All the children in School of Rock has some exceptional talent that Dewey (played by Jack Black) utilized to help the band out (e.g. Billy with costume design, Tomika with singing) but Gordon and Summer are traditional examples. Gordon with computers and Summer with organizational skills. Also Reality Subtext applied to the kids in the band. The actors and actress who play bass, guitar, and drums all started musical training at an early age.
Josh Waitzkin in Searching for Bobby Fischer is a small child and a chess genius.
Star Wars:
- Anakin Skywalker, thanks to his robotics and piloting skills — which are themselves considerably empowered by the Force. He constructs a protocol droid from scrap and is already an Ace Pilot at age 9.
- Most of the Old Republic Jedi probably count as they were trained from birth (or not long after).
Willie from Where's Willie? is an 8-year-old who invented a computer.
Charlie: He has an IQ of 180. His hobby is calculus. He's building a bionic rabbit, and all by himself, he tied up every car in Kerrville in a traffic jam!"

Literature

Bertie Pollock, 5-year-old, Italian-speaking saxophonist in the Forty Four Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith. He Just Wants To Be Normal, but has a Beloved Smother who, despite being an amateur child psychologist, cannot understand this (and also sees an actual child psychologist who's even worse).
Artemis Fowl: The titular character counts, being an evil criminal mastermind at age 12. He began his schemes at the age of 10. He also struggles to relate to people and spends most of his time tracking down his missing father from his mansion with only his bodyguard for company. As the preface to the second book wryly remarks, his adventures were good for getting him outside and meeting new people, even if most of them wanted to kill him.
Prince Gareth from Beka Cooper: Mastiff is far more articulate and intelligent than Beka thinks a four year old should be. He can already read and write and think about some ramifications of the future. Of course, as the heir to the throne he's been the beneficiary of a degree of attention, favor, and tutelage that Beka, who grew up in grinding poverty, is completely unfamiliar with, plus the circumstances in which she encounters him have put him in a very serious state of mind.
Garrett Durrell from Boot Camp was reading at two and solving square roots at six. His parents and teachers lavished praise on him until he was eight, when he started using his intelligence in ways his parents disapproved of. He couldn't connect with his classmates because Intelligence Equals Isolation, and when he was twelve he started Skipping School because he could get good grades with very little effort. His problems ultimately lead to his parents sending him to Lake Harmony, an abusive boot camp, when he's fifteen.
Sophie from Child of the Hive is shown at the age of seven capable of speaking near-perfect German after only three lessons. She also has knowledge of Latin by that age and is later shown reading a book in the original French. As a teenager, she is acknowledged as being a mathematical genius and being extraordinarily good at computer programming.
The Chosen opens when Danny is already a Teen Genius, but we're told that he already had his Photographic Memory by age four, when he read a Hasidic story and then recited it back perfectly. This actually scared his father, because Danny had absorbed the words of the story without any concern for their tragic meaning. Rebbe Saunder's own brother had been a cold-hearted genius, and he feared that Danny would also grow up to be "all mind, but no soul." His questionable parenting methods were meant to make sure that Danny learned empathy.
Richard "Clever Dick" Cleaver in "Clubland Heroes" by Kim Newman is an 11-year-old genius who made his fortune as an Inventor of the Mundane at age 7 and graduated from Oxford at age 10. He's a Kid Detective and The Smart Guy of a superhero team. He's also a humorless, arrogant, sexist, racist jerk who suffers a karmic set-down when The Great Depression wipes out his investments and the humiliations of puberty force him to retire from public life. He has a cameo in The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School as the leader of an entire team of child prodigies, the Brain-Boxes, who seem to spend most of their time devising unnecessarily elaborate mechanisms and squabbling with each other. A sequel, "Cold Snap", revisits him as a bitter adult who's become an unimpressive supervillain.
Sam Wilson from Counting to D is a math prodigy who passed algebra in fourth grade.
Cradle Series: Larian of the Eight Man Empire reached Gold stage (which most people reach in their late teens or early twenties) at age six. How? Her father told her she couldn't play with the other kids until she did.
Jon Masters from Dale Brown's books was a child prodigy in the past who's retained his genius in adulthood. In Wings of Fire it turns out that Dr. Kelsey Duffield is actually a 9-ear-old girl.
DFZ: Opal is an attempt at invoking this. Her parents genetically engineered her to be the greatest mage alive, and then brought in the best teachers in the world when she was 6 years old — most children don't even find out they're magical until they're teenagers. Unfortunately, this all backfired; a child that young simply doesn't have a brain developed enough to handle magic, the teachers weren't used to teaching children so young, and Opal kept blowing up the spellwork because she was more powerful than the spellwork could handle. By the time of the series, she's in her twenties and has accepted that she will always be a failure of a mage. She ends up with a shaman teaching her, who first chance she gets tears into Opal's father for expecting so much from a child and not noticing that her teachers were bashing her against a brick wall with no success.
Egil's Saga: At age three, Egil is "as big and strong as other boys of six and seven" and already "clever with words". When his father Skallagrim does not want to take him to a feast at Egil's maternal grandfather Yngvar's, Egil rides to the feast all alone. At the same feast, he recites his first poems.
The Ender's Game series. Half the IF is commanded by a bunch of prepubescent kids. Judging from Alai, puberty wreaks havoc with your political and military judgment.
Ernest from Eye of a Fly taught himself calculus when he was eight.
Flight to the Lonesome Place: While 12-year-old Ronnie's Photographic Memory allows him to learn quickly, he also is shown doing advanced physics equations to disprove the concept of parallel universes.
Fortune on the Spectrum: At age ten, Denny discovers a gift for trading stocks. He makes thousands of dollars by secretly day trading on a school computer. At this point, he still can't speak in sentences or dress himself without help.
The title character of Franny K. Stein is a 7-year-old girl who is a Mad Scientist. Quite often, she tries to conduct experiments that will revolutionize the world, only to have to find a way to fix them when things go awry.
A disturbingly large percentage of the Remillard clan of the Galactic Milieu trilogy start out at this — and that's not even counting their incredible psychic powers.
The Gates of Sleep: A minor character is a child chess prodigy who was driven into a mental breakdown by his father (who was living off the fees he charged for the kid's exhibition games).
Gemini Game: Ariel has been helping her father create advanced computer software since her childhood.
Annie Bellis in George's Secret Key to the Universe is definitely this. It helps that her dad Eric is a scientist who also owns the world’s most intelligent supercomputer, Cosmos.
Ghostbusters: A Paranormal Picture Book: Egon is only about eight in this story, but he still manages to invent a bunch of technology.
In The Giver, Benjamin, a classmate of Jonas', spent so much time volunteering (between the ages of eight and eleven) at the Rehabilitation Center that he came up with machines to facilitate the rehab and knew almost as much as the directors.
Computer Jack from the GONE series could hack into a complex police-computer by the age of nine and was only six when he became his school's official tech support. He's so adept in computer science, that in HUNGER he managed to operate and turn off the ENTIRE town's electricity permanently via the 60-year-old power plant computer in less than two hours with a bullet in his leg!. He hasn't even hit puberty yet.
Older Than They Think: one of the first novels to feature a Child Prodigy was The Hampdenshire Wonder in 1911. The protagonist is not only a genius, but a truly superintelligent little kid who judges the whole human culture an "elementary, inchoate, disjunctive patchwork"... at age four and a half. He's right, and TV Tropes proves it.
Otto of the H.I.V.E. Series was tinkering with the phones at his orphanage at the ripe old age of four. He asks to be homeschooled because his teachers are too slow for him. He can program a fully functioning robot by the age of twelve.
Hoshi from Hoshi and the Red City Circuit memorized the names of all 4000 of Red City's original settlers when she was two.
Hours (2012): Although all the children at Bethel Woods Orphanage are above average, Seth takes the cake. By age 9 he had to purposefully dumb down his algebra schoolwork so as not to destroy the bell curve, and by age 11 he invented a machine that defied known physics (out of duct tape and spare parts, no less).
The classic psychological science fiction novel In Hiding by Wilmer Shiras is all about this. Following a vaguely described nuclear accident, many hyper-intelligent kids are born. The narrator first encounters a Teen Genius, but then finds younger ones. Like Star Holmes in Star Bright, they are Innocent Prodigy types. Rightly fearing both They Would Cut You Up and Torches and Pitchforks, they employ pseudonyms, misdirection, and mail drops to publish their authoritative works in a variety of fields.
Ollie of In the Keep of Time was a very precocious reader for her age; after her jaunt into the past, this has to be re-taught to her.
Journey to Chaos: Zettai has an affinity for magecraft. In the course of a day-long walk, she learned everything Eric knew on the subject and he had been studying for months. Her age is vague but Eric guesses that she couldn't possibly be older than ten.
Legend Series:
- June Iparis. Though not a child at the time the story is told, being this is her most notable trait. It's even the title of the second book in the series.
- Eden, Day's younger brother, is a straighter example. In one particular instance, Day reminisces about asking him for help fixing an old radio. Eden was four at the time.
In the final book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, Tavore Paran, whose motives are anything but clear for most of the series, is said to have been a prodigy in military strategy. By the age of five, she was able to recreate historic battles with toys based on books. By the age of seven, she was able to defeat current military commanders in mock battles, and shortly thereafter went on to be able to take the losing side in her recreation of historic battles and win.
The Blue Children from Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time, transformed through the influence of a civilization in the distant future. "Prodigy" doesn't even begin to describe how frighteningly advanced (and creepy) they are.
The titular character in Matilda is so smart, she can multiply large numbers in her head and develops psychic powers.
Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee is about an 11-year-old high school senior who is forced to tutor her archenemy who flunked the 6th grade and play volleyball over the summer in order to socialize with normal people her age.
Nathaniel from Mindblind graduated high school at eleven. He's now a Teen Genius college graduate.
The Mysterious Benedict Society: All four members of the Mysterious Benedict Society (with the possible exception of Kate, who is less book smart, but has plenty of skills and general intelligence to make up for it) were chosen specifically because they were some version of this trope. Constance, however, takes the cake. Sure, she's stubborn, sleepy, and slightly bratty — she's also 2-YEARS-OLD.
The Outside: As a child, Yasira Shien threw herself into dusty physics texts and ran around the house in excitement when she solved a problem.
Leonard Stecyk in The Pale King. At 11 years old, he participates in the Meals on Wheels charity, volunteers as a crosswalk guard and hall monitor, donates his ice cream money to UNICEF, has been to origami camp twice, writes letters to publishers about textbook errors, fields all calls and inquiries with regards to his mother's hospitalization, attempts to reorganize his homeroom's seating structure for maximum efficiency, and writes individualized letters of apologies to his bullies. He also intentionally gets a few Bs on his report card solely to ensure he never gets too prideful of being an overachiever.
The Saga Of Ragnar Lothbrok: At the age of three, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye composes his first impromptu poem and joins his brothers in their attack on King Eystein, and goes with them to raid Southern Europe right after that.
The Ship Who...'s shellpeople, as some result of the enshellment process, tend to be highly independent and intellectual starting at very young ages and "graduate" at sixteen, decidedly earlier than "softshells" of the same age. Helva of The Ship Who Sang can clearly remember things that happened when she was less than a year old and was "walking" (wheeling) and talking by then.
- Tia of The Ship Who Searched regarded any attempts to treat her like a child as Condescending Compassion. Her large vocabulary and impressive test scores help convince Child Services that her situation is actually fine; she's left alone constantly with a library, after all. At one point, after Parental Neglect leads to her paralysis, she bitterly thinks, "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?", which is a bizarre thought for a girl of less than ten. All this means that at the age of seven, older than any other candidates, she's put into the shellperson program.
- Joat of The City Who Fought acts and talks a lot more like the child she is, but is extremely good with machines and improvises a number of very useful pieces of technology.
Star Holmes, in the novella Star Bright Mark Clifton. At three, she constructed a Moebius Strip and while she didn't know what it was called, she knew what it did. By age five she was an accomplished time traveler. Clifton wrote many stories and novels but is remembered for this one. It became an X Minus One radio play.
A spinoff of Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note features Aya's little sister, Nako. At that timeline, she's a fifth grader of IQ 260.
Tarzan of the Apes makes it clear that the young Lord Greystoke was one; with no help (or indeed contact) with any other human, between ages 10-18, he teaches himself to read and write English, and invents his own system of pronunciation for the letters!
Terra Ignota: Although Mycroft's birth bash' was only the one responsible for maintaining the premises of the bash'es chosen as an experiment to raise especially bright and capable young people, the Emperor reveals that he was the one to choose Mycroft's bash' because the children therein showed promise despite being only the children of 'janitors'. He turned out to be right and before his crime spree, Mycroft was being groomed to become a high-ranking government official based on his intellect. He also was the first to deduce the current Anonymous's real identity while he was still a teenager.
In The Terrible Truth About Third Grade, Babette constantly slacks off on her homework because she finds the third-grade-level reading she's expected to do utterly boring and prefers to read full-length novels like Murder on the Orient Express instead. When her teacher finds out about this, she excuses Babette from having to do regular homework and gives her the alternative assignment of writing her own story and presenting it to the class.
Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: In "The Last Lesson", at twelve years old, Magdelene could already see through a spell her master Adar used to disguise himself that several fully qualified wizards could not.
Universal Monsters:
- In book 1, when Captain Bob asks Dr. Dunn how a 23-year-old is a fully licensed dentist, Dunn claims to have been one of these who finished high school when he was twelve.
- Book 4 has Hannah Tucker, one of Professor Tovar's graduate assistants — only twelve, but she's already earned two degrees, in ancient languages and anthropology. Unfortunately, she's also obnoxious.
An Unkindness of Ghosts: At age twelve, Theophilus Smith reinvented the polio vaccine, becoming ill himself and losing part of his leg in the process. At age thirteen, he invented a better artificial heart than the one that already existed, saving Sovereign Nicolaeus's life.
Whateley Universe: While the series features several Teen Geniuses, flashbacks and exposition show that a few were already standing out before they hit twelve:
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant and walking Alice Allusion Ecila Mason was reading advanced mathematics and philosophy at the age of six. Since this is a Lovecraft Lite series, this led her to go on adventures far beyond the mortal world... playing amongst the Alien Geometries of far-flung dimensions and holding tea parties with the likes of Nyarlathotep.
- Jobe Wilkins is said to have gotten his first US patent at age nine. Not bad for a kid who didn't even live in the US.
- Trevor Goodkind, Jadis Diabliku, and Tansy Walcutt were all reading - and astutely criticising - major literary works while in grade school.
Marcus from When You Reach Me reads Einstein's General relativity for fun at age 11. He also debated temporal paradoxes from the book A Wrinkle in Time in second grade with his teacher.
Charles Wallace Murray in the Madeline L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time is this, though only his family knows it. Since he refused to talk until age four and refuses to talk to those who aren't family, he is labeled as "dumb" by the townsfolk. In reality, he's incredibly bright. His mother reads him medical journals as bedtime reading, and he is also able to decipher people's emotions. As a result, he has a hard time relating to his peers. When he does display his intelligence, he is told he is a liar or to stop showing off. He also has a problem with being bullied. However, he still shows signs of being a child; he is incredibly proud of his intelligence and thinks himself, at times, infallible. He is warned against it by the Ladies, though it eventually leads to his possession by IT.
Dairine from the Young Wizards series. At age 3 she decided that she was going to learn everything, by age 4 she taught herself to read, and by age 5 was reading from encyclopedias all by herself.

Live-Action TV

Alphas: Zoe, the daughter of Gadgeteer Genius Skylar, is the only second-generation Alpha seen, and she manifested a distinct ability when she was a toddler without any obvious downsides. Specifically, she's a mathematical savant capable of writing an encryption code that the greatest espionage agencies in the world can't crack. Her room is covered in childhood doodles of mathematical fractals drawn perfectly by hand in crayon, and her mother complains that she seems to wake her up every night with stories about discovering new prime numbers or solving differential equations.
A.N.T. Farm is all about 11-year-old child prodigies who are allowed to skip to high school. A.N.T. stands for "Advanced Natural Talents".
Better Call Saul: In his obituary, it's revealed that Chuck McGill graduated from high school at the age of 14 and attended the University of Pennsylvania right after, then graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center.
The Big Bang Theory:
- The backstory for Sheldon Cooper as he went off to college at 11. Another Teen Genius turned Omnidisciplinary Scientist when he went to Germany at age 15, he was a visiting professor, not a student, and he got his first PhD (he has two at present) at age 16. May possibly be seen as a Deconstructed adult version of this trope. His early successes have fueled his large ego, making him quite insufferable to those around him. He's around 30 but still has the emotional capacity of a kid since he didn't have a normal childhood. And his vast intelligence alienated him from his own family.
- The single-camera spinoff Young Sheldon follows Sheldon in his Child Prodigy years, already well-versed in advanced scientific methods and history, and splitting time between normal high school and college. The show notably flips the premise of The Big Bang Theory; where that show was about a normal person surrounded by genius geeks, Young Sheldon has Sheldon as the odd man out in an average-intelligence family, and mines comedy and drama from that. Sheldon is an Insufferable Genius prone to talking down to his parents and teachers, with no qualms pointing out being above their intellectual level, while his parents fret about his social abilities and mental health, and his siblings sometimes feel insecure for not being as bright as Sheldon.
Bones has two examples of the child Prodigy all grown up.
- Zack Addy, Brennan's former assistant is mentioned to have an IQ of 163. It also stated in one episode that he graduated from college at age 16.
- Lance Sweets is the show's other example; in an episode it is revealed that he is a Chess Prodigy, even starting as one of the youngest chess masters in the world.
Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter from The Chosen. Especially Danny.
The Chosen (TV series): Matthew knows less of the Hebrew scriptures than the other male disciples because he was skipped ahead in school and apprenticed out to a bookkeeper when he was 8. By 13, he had been employed by the Romans as a tax collector and was subsequently kicked out of the house by his father due to his new position.
This is Reid's Backstory in Criminal Minds; currently he's a twenty-something (triple) Ph.D. (making him an Omnidisciplinary Scientist). Definitely suffered a bit of the Intelligence Equals Isolation (or at least bullying), as seen in at least one episode where he explains that he was "a 12-year-old child prodigy at a Las Vegas public school", which is how he knows that Team Mom Hotchner "kicks like a 9-year-old girl" (It Makes Sense in Context). This is also why at least Gideon, the team's Papa Wolf, insists on calling him Dr. Reid in front of people meeting the team so they won't see him as Just a Kid.
CSI features a rather twisted example: when a teenage boy named Marlon West is on trial for killing the Alpha Bitch of his school, his sister Hannah West, a 12-year-old who's skipped grades and attends the same high school with him, confesses that she really did it. Unfortunately for CSI, she's not just book-smart; she's also The Chessmaster and manages to manipulate all the facts and people involved in the case. She finally tells Sara that her brother did do it all along after her brother's been acquitted. The siblings are involved again in the episode "Goodbye and Good Luck" at a university crime scene where Marlon is a student and Hannah is a grad student and Teacher's Assistant. This time it's Hannah who killed Marlon's girlfriend but on her own accord, and frames him for it because his imprisonment means he can't have other girls in his life. CSI Sara points out that while Marlon's life was actively changing growing up, Hannah's life didn't, as even with her prestige, she was still viewed as some anomaly.
The Doctor from Doctor Who is implied to have been one, even by Time Lord standards. He's mentioned as having sealed the Medusa Cascade by himself when he was "just a kid" at the age of 90, which factoring in the natural Time Lord lifespan lasting anything from hundreds to thousands of years, was probably equivalent to a Teen Genius. However, a flashback during Twelve's tenure showed that his father tried to encourage him to join the military, not thinking he was smart enough for college.
Doogie Howser, M.D.: The titular character in his backstory. In the present, he's a Teen Genius instead. Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. gives the pseudo-titular character, Lahela, a virtually identical backstory as Doogie. Both characters received perfect scores on the SAT at age 6, completed high school in nine weeks, graduated college at 10 (Doogie from Princeton University, and Lahela from the University of Hawaii), became the youngest licensed doctors in the country at 14, and both series begin with the leads as second-year residents at 16.
River Tam from Firefly. In the show's present and the R. Tam Sessions, she's a Teen Genius. She was definitely a Child Prodigy when she was younger, but the only time this shows up on-screen is the flashback at the beginning of "Safe".
Game of Thrones: On the one hand, Jaime's dyslexia made him a slow learner in some aspects, but on the other hand, he was already a brilliant swordsman during his childhood. He tells Bronn that he hasn't used sparring swords since he was nine. He became the youngest Kingsguard in history, joining the order at the age of 16.
Goodness Gracious Me has an utterly hilarious take on a child prodigy in this video.
Hannah Montana: Rico was a side character, till he joined high school at the same time as the core cast.
Janice in Head of the Class.
Micah Sanders from Heroes shows incredible political prowess and was able to lead the resistance against a Government Conspiracy at the age of eleven. Oddly enough, his actor Noah Gray-Cabey is somewhat of a prodigy in real life too. By the time he was 4, he was on Ripley's Believe It Or Not for his amazing piano skills — notably being the youngest soloist to perform with an orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. By the time he was 9 years old, he was in a 9th grade math class.
Major Nelson had to babysit a kid with a 153 IQ once on I Dream of Jeannie.
Gary Coleman's character in the TV movie, The Kid With The 200 IQ.
Will Robinson of Lost in Space was an electronics prodigy.
Subverted in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. A young boy appears to be a prodigy, but it's eventually revealed that while he did have above-average intelligence, he wasn't a true academic prodigy in the way everyone thought he was. His father had become convinced his son was a genius when he was little and had basically forced him to pretend to be one for years (albeit unwittingly, as he still believed it was true). Played straight with some of the other kids in the advanced academic program the boy was attending; it's comparing their work with the boy's that leads Goren to realize the boy isn't on the same level as the others.
One episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit had the detectives investigating the death of a 14-year-old math prodigy. It turns out the killer was another prodigy, a fellow student from the elite school the victim had attended.
Malcolm in the Middle:
- Malcolm in the earlier episodes, also his younger brother Dewey (though he plays dumb so he doesn't get the same harsh treatment as Malcolm). Stevie, Lloyd, Dabney, and Cynthia also fit.
- In one episode, Malcolm has to work with another child genius who's so smart, he makes Malcolm feel inadequate.
  "The way my brain works is like a beehive. And every one of the bees is like your brain."
Howie from Max & Shred is 9-years-old and is a helpful assistant to Teen Genius Alvin. She even installed an incredibly complex home security system at the Ackermanns' house.
The backstory of Charlie of NUMB3RS is that he is a math child prodigy. When he was three or four, he was able to multiply four-digit numbers in his head.
John LaMarr from The Orville was a prodigy who grew up in an agrarian colony where intellectuals weren't appreciated. As a result, he used Obfuscating Stupidity as a coping mechanism.
Power Rangers:
- Justin Stewart from Power Rangers Turbo.
- Dr. K from Power Rangers RPM starts out as this. In fact, her drawing scientific equations on the sidewalk was what attracted Alphabet Soup agents to kidnap her and raise her in their think tank to develop weapons — at age five. It gets worse, a lot worse, from there.
The Queen's Gambit: Beth displays her genius at chess when she is only 8 years old. When she starts playing in tournaments as a teen, she's still referred to as a child prodigy.
The backstory of Walter O'Brien on Scorpion has him as one of these. The opening scene of the first episode (and used in the opening monologue of each episode since) had him being arrested at the age of 11 for hacking into NASA's computers to get their blueprints for the space shuttle (he wanted a copy for his bedroom wall). In the present, Paige's 10-year-old son, Ralph, is shown to be one as well.
The show Smart Guy was centered around this type of character, a 10-year-old in high school.
In the episode of The '50s Science Fiction series Tales Of Tomorrow "A Child Is Crying", Lily is a 9-year-old genius who is also an Emotionless Girl. She is so smart she can make predictions with stunning accuracy based on calculations and the US government takes her from her parents to devise defense strategies against a nuclear attack by the Russians. Unfortunately she predicts the world will be destroyed by a nuclear war and that it is unavoidable.
Odd Squad: Most any agent of Odd Squad could qualify as a prodigy to some extent or another, but there are some that stand out from the rest.
- Olympia is an Odd Squad historian who knows anything and everything about the organization up to the very second. Prior to being picked by Oprah as Otto's replacement, she studied every single case Odd Squad has ever solved and even inquires about cases before time even began when she frets about being ready to become an agent. She's also gotten straight O's (the show's equivalent to A's) on every single test she's ever taken. If she weren't on the heroes' side, she'd be a genuine Distaff Counterpart to Odd Todd.
- Dr. O, the Odd Squad Doctor of Precinct 13579, claims that she went through eight years of medical school just to become an Odd Squad Doctor. Going by the events of Odd Squad: The Movie and how she ends up working as a doctor at an actual hospital after getting laid off from Odd Squad, the claim has quite a bit of merit attached to it.
- Odd Todd was Precinct 13579's best agent for a good reason — he was exceptionally Good with Numbers to such an extent that it only took him a couple seconds to solve a math problem that others took a couple minutes to solve, and could solve any case thrown his way with ease whether he was with his partner or not. Unfortunately, he was a Jerkass and a Smug Snake who eventually underwent a Face–Heel Turn and began to develop a love for causing oddness instead of eradicating it, but his smarts and knowledge of Odd Squad make him one of the organization's toughest foes.

Music

Gabriel Garcia, vocalist and lead guitarist of Black Tide was just 11 years old when he and his band (then called Radio) recorded these demos.
Noodle of the Gorillaz arrived in the UK in a Fed-Ex crate at age ten, with nothing but the clothes on her back and speaking no English. She promptly stepped out and began playing guitar like a virtuoso, and instantly won her position in the soon-to-be-famous band. Despite technically being an underage illegal immigrant living with a bunch of dysfunctional rockers.
Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick revolves around a fictional child prodigy named Gerald "Little Milton" Bostock, an 8-year-old boy who, according to the album cover, wrote the lyrics for a poetry contest.
Lady Gaga taught herself how to play piano by ear at the age of four. She went on to become classically trained and wrote her first ballad at thirteen (after prodigy age, but still)
She taught herself piano at 4, wrote her first song by 13, and was playing in bars and nightclubs by 15. While that seems illegal, she had breasts, so no one cared. —Cracked
Stevie Wonder started singing when he was four, playing harmonica for audiences before he was ten, and was signed to Motown at 11 based on his original songwriting. He still holds the record for youngest-ever artist to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Fingertips", recorded live when he was 12 and hitting the top not long after his thirteenth birthday in 1963. And all this on top of being born blind, mind you!
Liberace reportedly started playing the piano at age 3 and was performing complicated pieces by age 7.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the most famous examples of all (more information is below under Real Life).
Yoshiki Hayashi of X Japan began writing for piano while still in his single digits, and composed the song "Tears" upon his father's death at age ten. Listen to this song. A 10-year-old wrote that.
Alma Deutscher is an English composer, pianist, violinist, and child prodigy. At age six she composed her first piano sonata. At age seven, she completed a short opera The Sweeper of Dreams. Aged nine, she wrote a concerto for violin and orchestra. At the age of ten, she wrote her first full-length opera, Cinderella, which had its European premiere in Vienna in 2016 under the patronage of conductor Zubin Mehta.
Michael Jackson was a very skilled dancer from a young age, having learned how to perfectly imitate James Brown's footwork just by watching him on television, as seen in the audition tapes (at age 9) for Motown with The Jackson 5. Not to mention he was a very soulful, powerful, and controlled vocalist for his age, impressing many of his adult Motown labelmates like Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. He was also known to dabble in songwriting during this time, though he wouldn't be able to release any of his written songs until he and his brothers departed Motown for Epic. By the time Michael released his first adult solo album, Off the Wall, he was already a seasoned musical professional at just age 20. Coincidentally, he is third cousins with Stevie Wonder, himself another child R&B prodigy.

Roleplay

This is common among the Technocracy in Mage: The Ascension. In Panopticon Quest, Serafina Awakened at age nine — and was a little bit put out to find that Henriette had beaten her by Awakening at five. The Damien Academy is a high-stress hothouse school designed to encourage the children of high-ranking Technocrats who go there to Awaken.

Tabletop Games

KULT suggests this as an archetype for a Player Character.

Theatre

Ollantay: Yma Súmac is surprisingly eloquent for a 10-year-old child. She then later stages a way to free her mother from her imprisonment at the Acllahuasi by pulling the strings on her uncle's (the reigning Inca) heart.

Video Games

ANNO: Mutationem: Ann's friend, Ayane, is an incredibly skilled Playful Hacker who can perform all manner of hacking and finding information. Her character bio mentions that she won an illustrious hacking competition at the age of ten.
Kira Daidouji from Arcana Heart is only 11-years-old, but already has a PhD. In elemental science, and has since constructed her own sentient ball of slime that can do anything she wants it to. Don't ask.
Commander Keen:
- Commander Keen himself is an 8-year-old genius. He's already built a rocketship capable of interstellar travel (Dubbed the 'Beans-with-Bacon-Megarocket!) According to the first game, the thing runs on (Dad's) everclear, gets power from (Mom's) car battery, and uses (Mom's) vacuum cleaner (modified) for ion propulsion. Other things Keen built include an interstellar transceiver (the reception was bad, but it did get a signal worth investigating) and a fully-functioning wrist computer (complete with a Pong clone!).
- Keen's archenemy Mortimer McMire. The final boss in the original trilogy; Keen's got an IQ of 314, Mortimer has an IQ of 315.
- His spiritual successor, Andy of Heart of Darkness, one-ups him by building an INTERDIMENSIONAL craft... and a plasma-cannon. (Keen's zap-gun is not his own invention — he "borrowed" it from the Vorticon base on Mars.)
Jennifer of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is said to have been a child prodigy and quite a technology genius, but by the time the plot happens she's no longer a child.
Jeff Andonuts and Apple Kid in EarthBound (1994), who are both inventors. Jeff has no psychic abilities, but he's a tech whiz who can fix broken items if you stop to rest at hotels. Apple Kid is a legitimately good inventor who later helps Dr. Andonuts build a time machine so the Chosen Four can challenge Gigyas in the past.
In The Elder Scrolls series' backstory, Reman Cyrodiil, founder of the Second Cyrodiilic Empire, was a child when coronated. According to the heavily stylized in-game book Remanada, Reman was still an infant. (Other, more realistic, sources still state that he was no older than 13 at the oldest.) In any case, this proves well-justified. Reman was very much a child prodigy who, along with his status as The Chosen One (having been born possessing the Amulet of Kings), quickly brought both halves of Cyrodiil back together (Colovia and Nibenay) and then the other kingdoms of Men, High Rock, and Skyrim.
EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Ivan, brilliant enough to have already graduated gymnasium and become the team mechanic for the SPICA mercenary team, all while still an innocent young boy.
Ryoko Kano from Fighter's History is a judo user who started doing it when she was 3 years old.
Relm from Final Fantasy VI. She's so good at painting that Owzer, the world's biggest art collector, wants a painting from her. She's also the best Magic user of the game, but to many, this doesn't make up for her otherwise useless attributes in battle.
Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, we meet Prince Innes as an adult in his early-to-mid 20s, but Moulder's supports with Vanessa explain that he was one of these. At age 10-12, he was already defeating famous adult archers with ease and doing so via his own efforts. (i.e., he refused help or advantages when he was offered., etc.)
- Nino from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is a 13-year-old Black Magician Girl who, by the time we meet her, has a foot here and another on Teen Genius. This is because, despite being illiterate, she taught herself magic almost completely on her own through the prior years, via watching and memorising her Lady of Black Magic abusive mother's spells.
Genshin Impact:
- Xingqiu is well-learned and prodigious, with not just school subjects but also martial arts. His father was surprised that he would turn out to be talented in the Guhua Clan's martial art style when the former first tried admitting his son there. He even struck the Guhua Clan's head with awe when he wrote his view on martial arts; on how the Vision is an extension of its owner's body, and the weapon that they wield is an extension of the Vision.
- Aino is a little girl who runs the Clink-Clank Krumkake Craftshop, and has created many inventions. This includes Ineffa, a Robot Maid who helps clean up after Aino and acts as her Parental Substitute, a laser cannon in Nasha Town designed to prevent nearby Wild Hunt attacks, as well as the countless cubical work bots found throughout Nod Krai.
Halo: Though it doesn't come up much, the children who were kidnapped to become Spartan-II super soldiers were selected not just because of their physical capabilities but also because they were already among humanity's brightest. The IIs' creator, Dr. Catherine Halsey, was herself a child prodigy.
In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, it's possible for Sol to recalibrate the Strato shields at only 10 and find the Shimmer cure as early as 12 thanks to the knowledge they've accrued in previous timelines. However, they keep this a secret from the others because they wouldn't believe where they got it from.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has Ienzo, an orphaned child who's taken in by Ansem the Wise and becomes one of his apprentices.
Ezreal in League of Legends was named Grandmaster Explorer of Piltover at the age of eight, after mapping out his hometown's supposedly unmappable Absurdly Spacious Sewer. His title in-game is "The Prodigal Explorer."
The Legend of Zelda:
- Link from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was incredibly skilled with a sword from a young age. Reading through Mipha's diary in "The Champions' Ballad" DLC reveals that he was already able to best grown men in single combat by the time he was four.
- The sequel The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has two:
  - Tulin, Teba's son. Despite still being a kid, Tulin was able to develop his own gusts of wind and quickly managed to be far more reliable than any other Rito adult (even his dad) as a Rito warrior. It really helps that Teba's side of the family turns out to be the descendant family to the Rito Sage of Wind, whose title Tulin inherits.
  - Josha is a young Sheikah girl who is in charge of the team researching the ruins and other artifacts in the Depths. She had been mentored by Purah and Robbie, who are both over a century old and thus have many years of experience, yet her brilliance lets her lead a team of adults.
LEGO Stunt Rally: The manual says that Barney was so smart that he left school at the age of five to pursue a career in mechanics.
Mari and the Black Tower: Sera is a child with a lot of potential in magic, since she can use a short-range teleportation spell and a spell that can reveal an invisible enemy. In the endgame, she creates a warp stone that can activate the west portal in Halonia's castle.
Dr. Liara T'Soni in Mass Effect was one of these, having gotten her doctorate in archaeology and spent over fifty years uncovering Prothean ruins, becoming one of the foremost experts in the galaxy when it comes to all things Prothean. Unfortunately, her theories and research are often dismissed by her peers, since as the asari can live for over a thousand years, being only 106 makes her "little more than a child" in their eyes. An inverse of the same issue comes up when Mordin mentions his nephew; while he is a brilliant scientist, for the short-lived salarians, being a tenured professor at 16 isn't unusually young.
Sunny from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a computer prodigy. She was raised by a computer for most of her developmental years. In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, she's an engineer who has designed and overseen the construction of an aircraft capable of travel at Mach 23. Revengeance takes place in 2018. She is ten.
No Straight Roads: One of the bosses, Yinu, is a 9-year-old piano prodigy, known as "The Golden Maestro of Vinyl City". Her talent is encouraged by her well-meaning but overbearing (and prone to Hulking Out) Stage Mom.
In No Umbrellas Allowed, you can buy and sell one of Deok Gong's violin compositions from when he was 6 years old, which you can confirm by using the Year Estimator on it.
The protagonist is apparently a battling prodigy in Pokémon. S/he begins their journey years before most other people, at age 10-14 (11 in Pokémon Red and Blue and their remakes). You not only beat everyone in your region (two for GSC and HGSS) with ease, including the Elite Four and Champion but take down a gang of terrorists (two gangs in Emerald). There are also various Gym Leaders who seem to be barely older than the protagonists, or even younger in the case of Tate and Liza from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Iris in Pokémon Black and White (who has become the Unova Champion two years later in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2) and Allister in Pokémon Shield. One particularly ridiculous example is Poppy in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, who's an Elite Four member at the age of nine (while looking and acting much younger).
Professor Layton:
- Luke Triton is a bit of a puzzle master for his age.
- It is assumed that Clive was a Child Prodigy, as well, as after his adoptive mother died, he went straight into business with a newspaper and then used the woman's money to create an underground London.
- Also in Azran Legacy Hershel i.e. Descole was mentioned to be one.
Raz from Psychonauts is often considered one, what with all of that "one in a million" talk from Oleander, and Sasha's willingness to work with him. He is only ten when he becomes a Psychonaut. To make it even more obvious, he only snuck into camp a few days prior while other kids have been going for years and aren't half as good with handling their psychic abilities as Raz is.
Resident Evil:
- Albert Wesker is eventually revealed to have been one of these.
- Alexia Ashford became a top Umbrella scientist at the impressively young age of ten.
The Sims:
- In The Sims 2, the highest aspiration ranking^note for child Sims is "Child Prodigy". However, the game's not programmed to let children do things like go to college or write novels, so it's not really possible to make a legitimate Child Prodigy without using mods.
- Sim children in The Sims 3 can write novels, become a chess master and build time machines.
Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. At only 8, he is able to pilot and maintain his own biplane (which can also transform into a Mini-Mecha) as well as create several inventions, like an alien translator.
Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion reveals that prior to leaving Octo Valley and becoming an Idol Singer, Marina was an engineer for the Octarian military. She graduated from training at the age of nine after skipping several grades and was designing war machines by the time she was ten. Inklings and Octolings don't even physically mature enough to shift forms at will until they're 14.
Leon Gheste from Star Ocean: The Second Story is a prime example of this trope. Aside from being a doctor at age 12, he is also the sharpest mind in the largest country on the planet and the creator of the Lancour Hope.
The Jedi Consular in Star Wars: The Old Republic was one of these according to their master, who comments on their being stronger and more adept at using the Force at six than she had been until her late teens. Their lifelong affinity for the Force is implied to be the reason why in cutscenes, they occasionally don't even bother using their lightsaber when being rushed by attackers, preferring to simply use the Force to casually blast them clean across the room.
Genis from Tales of Symphonia is right on the border between this and Teen Genius. Somehow he is the best friend of Book Dumb Lloyd Irving and is 12 years old. In the Japanese version, his name was very obvious ("Genius").
Rita from Tales of Vesperia is a Teen Genius, but she started researching blastia technology and magic when she was ten.
Mechanic Puck from Vanguard Bandits. He works faster than the best engineers in a nation and is small enough to fit under the seat of one of the ATACs he works on.

Visual Novels

This is something of a trademark of the Ace Attorney series, especially the games written by the series' creator Shu Takumi.
- Pearl "Pearly" Fey. Her cousin Maya has said that she's the most powerful medium ever in the Fey clan, and she's 9. Too bad her mother Morgan is a total Evil Matriarch/Stage Mom who tries to use Pearl as her ticket to take leadership of the clan...
- Franziska von Karma became a prosecutor at the age of just 13 and didn't lose a case once during the next five years. And from a flashback case in the first Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth game, it's clear that she was almost as talented a prosecutor as her older adoptive brother, only being brought down by her more impetuous nature.
- Trucy Wright from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney was already an incredibly talented magician at just 8-years-old. It's implied that she had a lot of help from her birth parents and grandfather, all of whom were famous magicians in their own right, but she also clearly had a lot of natural talent even at a young age and continues to develop as a magician even after being adopted by Phoenix, who has no magical talents.
- Also from Apollo Justice, Klavier Gavin, who becomes a prosecutor at the age of just 18, and it's implied so utterly humiliated and discredited Phoenix in his debut trial that it resulted in the latter being disbarred. This ends up subverted later on however since we see in a flashback that Klavier was actually quite prone to making hasty guesses and missing obvious contradictions during his first trial, and his getting Phoenix disbarred was actually the result of him being the Unwitting Pawn of his older and far more experienced brother, Kristoph.
- Athena Cykes, first introduced in Dual Destinies, is a bit more of a deconstruction of this. We see in flashback that at just 11 years old she has incredibly sensitive hearing and the ability to find a person's emotional state... but can't put what she finds with her abilities into terms people can understand, meaning they aren't terribly useful. Like Klavier, she becomes an attorney at the age of just 18... but her inexperience and lack of confidence result in her first trial nearly ending in an instant guilty verdict until Apollo bails her out, and she later freezes up in what would have been her second trial, forcing Phoenix to take over.
- The Great Ace Attorney: Iris Wilson is a fully-qualified medical doctor, an infinitely more competent investigator than Herlock Sholmes himself, and a successful author who wrote up all of Sholmes' stories, all at the age of 10 years old.
Ciconia: When They Cry: The GK raising system deliberately invokes this, selecting a handful of children that show promise and pitting them against low-performing opponents in order to build up their confidence and convince them that they're incredibly talented.
The Fruit of Grisaia: Kazuki and Makina. Kazuki was always a genius, but after realising that this alienates her from her peers, she starts toning down her talents. Makina was also considered this in the past before traumatic experiences halted her development. In the present, she considers herself an idiot, but that is far from the case.
In Majikoi! Love Me Seriously!, Monshiro has skipped grades to enter Kawakami High. She also accepts challenges from, and bests, everybody in her class (1-S, so no pushovers) at everything from running a race to a cooking duel. The only thing she's no good at is fighting, for which she has her overwhelmingly powerful bodyguard to cover for.
In Tavern Talk, Melli, a 10-year-old cat Vukakin, doesn't go to school because she thinks she's smart enough for her age. She's also an aspiring Kid Detective.

Web Animation

Sudoku in Banana-nana-Ninja! is a Gadgeteer Genius who fights with a Transformation Ray. In later episodes, he might be a Teen Genius since the voice actor sounds like he's hitting puberty.
Manga Soprano: Haru is a genius girl who invented an app that is used by the Soprano company. She humiliated Casino by solving a math problem that he couldn't. He tried to get Haru and her mother ejected from a restaurant. In response, Haru cut off the contract with the Soprano company, which his father Baccarat runs.
Mani Mani People: Sakuya is a genius that can memorize everything he learns and knows a lot of languages. He was able to even run a business with his father after he got fired because his boss's daughter stole his work and pull all the employees from said company.
RWBY: Professor Ozpin is famous for having been a child prodigy, which enabled him to become one of the youngest headmasters ever appointed to a Huntsman Academy. He was a child when the immortal Ozma became paired with him. Whenever Ozma's physical body dies, his soul migrates to a new person, merging with the new host's soul. This allows his memories, abilities, and powers to travel with him, imbuing each new host with thousands of years worth of experiences, knowledge, power, and combat prowess. At the end of Volume 3, Ozpin merges with Oscar's soul; although the baby of the group, Oscar is 14 years old and therefore enters Teen Genius territory instead.
Toon Turf: Riggy's brother Jordan has been a brain surgeon since he was 11, saving "hundreds [of lives] a week since the fifth grade", and is going to medical school at the start of the series.

Webcomics

The Adventurous Scarlet Carolus and the Machine of Eternal Summer: Scarlet devours school books like other children devour chocolate.
Felix from Cloudscratcher in regards to machines, to the point where Cool Old Guy Scotty is his apprentice.
Five Nights at Freddy's: Lost Souls: Downplayed with Bridget. In a conversation with Cody she mentions she got As in all of her classes, but she's a very regular little girl otherwise and doesn't display any extraordinary talents, apart from her penchant for sewing.
Girl Genius has Gil. When most Sparks (AKA Mad Scientists) break through as teenagers, he manifested his powers as a young boy. Agatha originally started breaking through as a 5-year-old girl, but her uncle put a Power Limiter on her, stopping her from acting like a Spark. She lost it thirteen years later resulting in a Teen Genius instead.
Mage & Demon Queen: Malori has power way beyond what she should for a student who isn't actually a licensed adventurer yet. This is because a masochistic demon captured her and made her fry him with fire magic repeatedly just so he could get off on it. After two weeks of this, she was massively overpowered from all the experience gain.
Sergio in the Narbonic Spin-Off Babies strip "Li'l Mell". Ironically, he initially has no idea he's gifted; he assumes reading Shakespeare and Dante at the age of six isn't just normal but possibly backward. After all, a look round the bus on his first day of school confirms that all the other kids are doing much more complicated things, like socialising.
Precocious revolves around a neighborhood where most of the local children are this.
Rosebuds: Maricela excels in her classes to where she gets into high school at eight years old.
In Sluggy Freelance Bun-Bun is initially reluctant to let little girl Jaya onto the pirate crew he's setting up, 'til he finds out about her hereditary knack for it.
Bun-Bun: Little girls can't be pirates! What do you know about robbing and plundering?
Jaya: Well, my dad's an investment banker and my mom's a lawyer...
Bun-Bun: Welcome aboard, First Mate!
Scarlett from +EV, who's following in her father's footsteps as a professional poker player.
Zokusho Comics: Jack is awfully young to be throwing around so many powerful combat spells. Especially when one character has already been assassinated for having access to combat magic.

Web Original

The Autobiography of Jane Eyre: Jane's student Adele is 8 years old, and she has these classes as her post-curricular activities: ballet, opera, intermediate Latin, advanced marine zoology, and she went to applied physics boot camp. She's bilingual in English/French, though that might not be that special for a Canadian child. She also likes analysing art and she draws beautifully.
In Brennus, there's a rather heartwarming relationship between two Child Prodigies, the Gadgeteer Genius Macian and the artistic Reality Warper Ember. They're both incredibly powerful metahumans and together, they fight crime. Less heartwarmingly, they're fighting a group of merciless psychopaths called the Savage Six.
Much like the original anime, Gohan of Dragon Ball Z Abridged is one of these. He's already studying theoretical physics at age ten (although, since Future Trunks' presence demonstrates its application, he supposes it's just physics now) and correctly explains multiverse theory (or at least, The Earth-Prime Theory).
In the prequel comic to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, it's established that Dr. Horrible skipped at least three grades in school when he was 8 and is still considered smart relative to his classmates.
Epic Rap Battles of History's "Mozart vs Skrillex" has Mozart boasting to Skrillex about how he's a musical prodigy, finally topping his verses with the final line as seen on the page quote.
Mozart: I'm a prodigy, Sonny, and I'm about to smack a bitch up!
I Love Bees (a Halo 2 ARG): Yasmine Zaman was a 6-year-old prodigy who never lost at backgammon because she could gauge the way the dice came out of her hand and roll anything she wanted. There's a reason why she was kidnapped by the government to become a Spartan, after all.
Scott Manley's daughter Skye, who has made several EVE Online videos.

Western Animation

Anais Watterson, the younger sister of the title character in The Amazing World of Gumball, is only four but attends junior high with her 12- and 10-year-old brothers (in fact, she's their upperclasswoman and they're too dumb and self-centered to know that for most of their lives, as shown in the episode "The Others"). She's one of the smartest characters in the world of Gumball (more often than not, the only character who has any sense at all), known for being a physics club member, even though she's still playful and childish, and she at first struggles to stoop down to enjoy hanging out with her idiotic father and brothers. There are a couple of episodes in which she fools the whole family into fighting each other, while she's at home reaping the benefits that everyone else is too oblivious to realize and a flashback in "The Choices" even shows her correcting a spelling mistake on her armband as a newborn, much to family’s astonishment.
Amphibia: Mere weeks after ending up on Earth because her family just had to flee there from Newtopia Castle, Polly Plantar, a tadpole who only just grew legs and has only previously been exposed to Earth culture through her adoptive big sister Anne, is fluent in Thai just from watching Mrs Boonchuy's romantic comedies and, motivated by wanting the wrecked Frobo back and with guidance from internet tutorials and eventually those tutorials' creators, has become proficient in robotics.
In Arthur all the kids act like the Brain is a super-genius, and he uses big words his parents have to look up, but he's really just much more knowledgable than average for his age.
Avatar: The Last Airbender has Aang, Toph, Katara, Azula, and debatably Zuko, each of whom is shown to be extremely talented in their respective superpowered martial arts. All of them become Teen Geniuses as the series progresses.
- Aang is the youngest Master Airbender in history and a Physical God who mastered all three remaining bending arts within a span of twelve months, a feat that took many years for the previous Avatars.
- Toph is 12 years old and already the self-proclaimed “Best earthbender in the world”. She backs this talk up by beating the crap out of people twice her size and who have much more experience. She is also the inventor of metalbending, a skill previously thought to be impossible. And to top it all off, she's blind and uses Earthbending as a way for her to "see".
- The only thing that was holding Katara's waterbending skill back was lacking any sort of tutelage. Every single waterbender in the Southern Tribe was wiped out by a war of attrition, leaving only her; she wasn't surrounded by Earthbenders like Toph, she literally had no one but herself to teach her. Once she traveled the world and had to improve her bending to keep up with various opponents, she became a rather strong Waterbender, and when she overcame endemic male chauvinism in the Northern Tribe and properly studied under the tutelage of Master Pakku, she became his favorite student in a very short time and was even entrusted by Master Pakku to complete Aang's waterbending training once Team Avatar departed the North Pole.
- At a very young age, Azula was shown easily pulling off firebending techniques her older and relatively skilled brother, Zuko, struggled with. She is also one of three characters in the original series who know how to use lightning and the only one known to generate hotter, blue fire. This is in addition to being a genius strategist and tactician.
- Zuko isn't quite the prodigy his sister is — a fact his father makes sure he greatly laments — but by the end of the series, he is still one of the best Firebenders in the world at the tender age of sixteen, comparatively making him more of a late bloomer than anything else. He is also a brilliant swordsman, able to take on swarms of groups without using any bending whatsoever due to his knowledge of dual-wielding broadswords, to the point that even his father recognized he would have no chance against him purely on that level.
- The sequel series The Legend of Korra episode "Welcome to Republic City" shows us Aang's successor, young Avatar Korra of the Water Tribe. She is introduced having taught herself rudimentary Waterbending, Earthbending and Firebending by the tender age of four, in a universe where an Avatar is traditionally not notified of their status and multiple Elemental Powers until their Dangerous 16th Birthday. By the age of sixteen, she has already mastered three of the four elements — although airbending proves to be a rather significant hurdle for her to overcome.
- Aang's grandchildren Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo are also airbending prodigies despite starting the series being respectively 10, 7, and 5 years old. Jinora in particular is a skilled airbender and very smart for her age, to the point that in the Book 3 finale, she was anointed an airbending master at the age of 11, becoming the new youngest master airbender in known history, beating her grandfather by a year. It's even more impressive considering that Jinora isn't the Avatar like Aang was.
- Amon is considered to be one of the most powerful water benders ever. He mastered traditional waterbending around the age of 11. He mastered his father's forbidden bloodbending technique by the age of 14.
The subject of the Camp Lazlo episode "Prodigious Clamus" is about how Clam is a child prodigy who can play symphonies on a bottle and paint masterpieces in a few seconds. Naturally, the opportunistic Scoutmaster Lumpus tries to cash in on Clam's hidden intelligence.
Lotta from Carl the Collector is very skilled at producing electronic music for her young age.
Cyberchase: Inez. Case in point: this 9-year-old girl knew the scientific family that hawks belong to.
Cybersix: José has an intellect far beyond anyone would expect from a kid his age. He can create mutant creatures by himself, or enhance Von Reichter's creations in order to destroy Cybersix.
PeeBee Kappa from Dennis the Menace (1986) is one of Dennis' friends, and is very smart for his age. Among the things he's invented are a brain wave scanner, a super growth formula, an extremely polite fly swatter, a solar-powered race car, a Shrink Ray, and a robotic goose.
Detentionaire has Ruby Kwee, Tina's 11-year-old sister who's intelligent enough to have skipped to the eleventh grade. However, her intellect has led to her parents putting a lot of pressure on her to do something with it when she just wants to be a normal kid; in fact, in her debut appearance, she willingly takes the blame for the huge prank Lee was framed for to keep them from sending her to a prestigious university.
Dexter of Dexter's Laboratory along with his rival Mandark. And Dee Dee, for all her kookiness, is a really good dancer. She can dodge lasers while doing ballet!
Lincoln Clark and Fenwick in Dogstar are both scientific geniuses.
Gabi from Doki is the wisest member of the team.
Edd in Ed, Edd n Eddy is a preteen who is highly intelligent and even has the ability to make complex inventions out of simple junk.
A.J. of The Fairly OddParents!. He is in fifth grade and only 10 years old and not only does he have the highest I.Q. in his school and his town of Dimmsdale, he frequently invents items that are futuristic such as a suspended animation tube in one movie. He also can make several clones of himself and is apparently an adviser to the government concerning technology issues, and can be an Insufferable Genius at times.
Poindexter, the nephew of the Professor in the 1950s Felix the Cat TV cartoons.
Mac from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is a very loose example as he's not a total brainiac, though there is a reason why despite being only 8 years old he is often relied on for both planning and the voice of reason.
Dipper Pines from Gravity Falls is very intelligent for his age and loves math equations and solving mysteries. This is something he has in common with his great uncle Ford, who is a certified genius.
Hey Arnold! gives us both of the Pataki sisters.
- Older sister Olga was this as a little girl, as a piano prodigy and a straight A+ student. Since the Patakis turned out to be stage parents, she became extremely emotionally stunted because of it — though being a Stepford Smiler, she has only told Helga about this.
- Younger sister Helga is a much more subtle version of this trope (and it's never really ventured on). It's only revealed in bits in pieces such as being the only one (other than Olga) to score a 100 on the school's aptitude test, learning a Shakespeare play in one night (though not seeming particularly interested in anything he's written earlier on), winning poetry contests several times and having her shrink bring up her above average knowledge.
  Dr Bliss: "That's very astute for a 4th grader."
Inspector Gadget: Inspector Gadget's niece Penny, so much so that she and their dog Brain are the ones who actually do most of the work.
Jelly Jamm: Mina, who is no older than ten, runs a successful lab and has built many inventions, including an invisibility ray and a miniature robot version of herself.
Elroy from The Jetsons, who is 6 1/2-years-old, and an expert at all space sciences, studying space history, astrophysics, and star geometry at the elementary school level, no less. He invents a dog training device, an evolution accelerator that turns Astro into a genius, and develops a program to fix R.U.D.I.'s malfunctioning short circuits.
Jimmy Neutron from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.
The titular character from Julius Jr.. He appears to have mastered space compression, cross-dimension traveling, teleportation, artificial intelligence, the laws of physics, and much more. Did we mention that he's the age of an average pre-schooler?
Kaeloo:
- Quack Quack. While he's otherwise a complete moron, he has very impressive skills in science and math, and can even solve a complex math problem in seconds inside his head, despite being a baby who still wears a diaper.
- Mr. Cat. He's less than 13 years old, though his exact age is unclear, and he can build robots and gadgets, repair broken machines, and possesses a great wealth of scientific and historical knowledge.
Wade and the Tweebs in Kim Possible.
The show isn't called Little Einsteins for nothing when it comes to this group of kids.
Egghead Jr. in the Foghorn Leghorn Looney Tunes shorts.
Lisa Loud from The Loud House is only four and is mentioned to have already finished school up through getting a PhD (a type of doctorate degree). She still goes to kindergarten however, seemingly for no other reason than because she enjoys the nap times and snacks available.
Molly of Denali: Oscar is 11, and is an Academic Athlete, expert fiddler, and quite levelheaded despite his age.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In the episode "the Cutie Mark Chronicles", Twilight Sparkle was shown to be one, after a loud explosion caused her to have a major case of Power Incontinence. She was so magically powerful that Princess Celestia decided to take her on as her personal student. Presumably, the first thing Celestia taught her was how to keep her powers under control.
- The Cutie Mark Crusaders are shown to be this in "One Bad Apple". Not only do they build a motorized parade float from scratch AND rig it with a timer-activated booby trap to send it careening off of a cliff at exactly the right time, they also are able to manipulate Babs Seed into stealing it so perfectly that when she shoves them from it, they land on a mattress they placed earlier to cushion their fall.
Gus from The Owl House is noted at multiple points to be incredibly gifted when it comes to illusion magic despite only being 12 years old and has already skipped two grades by the start of the story. "Labyrinth Runners" shows just how powerful he is when he manages to both cover almost all of Hexside in a highly realistic illusion and put the head of the Illusion coven out of commission by accident.
The Patrick Star Show: Squidina, despite being eight years old and still in elementary school, has a job producing a television show. She is singlehandedly responsible for budgeting it, ordering props, and contacting people to be on it, and is exceedingly competent at it.
Squidina: Yeah, being a witch might be cool and all, but I realized I'm much happier producing our television show. Like a normal kid.
Peppa Pig: Edmond Elephant is around George's age, but can easily correct adults when they get various facts wrong (for example, pointing out an example of Artistic License – Paleontology in Mr. Potato's theme park).
In Phineas and Ferb, perhaps due to the show rule that nobody is "a jerk or an idiot", all the kids are shown to be gifted in some way. Even Buford, whose theme song claims that "he's got the IQ of gum", is shown to have a fondness for Voltaire and existentialism. Considering that gum in this universe is the thing that comes with existentialist trading cards ("I'll give you two Satres for a Nietzsche!"), perhaps the comparison makes sense...
Blossom is the brains of The Powerpuff Girls. This becomes subverted in "Him Diddle Riddle" when the villain makes the girls take their SATs (as part of a series of real-time challenges to find the Professor), and Blossom scores a measly 10 while Bubbles aces it with a 1075 score.
Velma on Scooby-Doo is pegged as the brains of Mystery Inc., but this is amplified with her as an 8-year-old on A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. She carries a whole computer system on her person which she whips out to deduce clues and is usually the one to explain whodunnit and how.
The Raccoons has Bentley Raccoon, who is a master of computing at the age of eight.
Ready Jet Go!:
- Almost every kid in the show. They are all very smart for their age, especially Sean. However, this is because all the parents in Boxwood Terrace are scientists who work at the Deep Space Array, so it's possible that they could've passed down their knowledge to the children at a young age.
- Jet himself also deserves a mention. He has repaired a satellite, named all the moons of Jupiter, quickly calculated how many Earths could fit inside the sun, built his own flying saucer, and has even built a working time machine! He's also only around 10.
Gretchen Grundler from Recess.
Edwin Carmichael, Susie's 6-year-old brother from Rugrats is the brains of the Carmichael family. His room is designed from the idea of a wealthy man's library, as he is an avid reader. Although he is the most quiet of the Carmichael siblings, he is extremely intelligent, as he is known for wearing Einstein pajamas, playing computer games, and he once built a laser with his friends at his birthday party.
Saving Me: Bennett Bramble is an 11-year-old kid genius who has already constructed his first robot and develops many more inventions over the course of the series, with his future self even being the world's most influential tech mogul. But in a tragic deconstruction of the trope, Bennett lacks the skills and wisdom needed to maintain relationships, being so fixated on his dream of becoming a great inventor that he frequently treats his friends and family in a dismissive, inconsiderate manner. As a result, his future self, for all his success, is miserable and Lonely at the Top., having burned bridges with all his loved ones in achieving his goals This in turn forms the basis for the show's premise, as Future Bennett goes back in time to guide his younger self and prevent him from making the same mistakes that he did.
Star Trek: Prodigy, natch. Rok-Tahk in particular is The Baby of the Bunch who develops into The Smart Guy, coming into her own as the ship’s science officer and eventually deciding to specialize in xenobiology.
The Simpsons: Lisa Simpson is extremely intelligent and a talented saxophone player. She has a great interest in science and the environment.
South Park:
- The Broflovski brothers. Ike moreso and more blatant than his older brother. Ike's entered kindergarten 2 years early, watches conservative political commentary, makes a macaroni replica of The Last Supper, has been hired to help cover up a massive jewel heist, and is a knight in Canada. As of Seasons 15ish, he's only 4.
- Kyle's also no slouch. He's regularly portrayed as the top student in his class, has the highest capabilities with the computer, including photoshopping a photo to fool the Japanese government to stop whaling and get his best friend out of trouble and single-handedly thwarting a terrorist attack with some inspired Google-fu. He's also shown more than a slight capability with philosophy and managed to remove himself from reality.
- Eric Cartman is something like a fatter, sociopathic Calvin - under most circumstances he's a racist Fat Idiot and a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who drags down South Park Elementary just by his own stupidity and laziness. However, he's also capable of extremely creative and imaginative plans when properly motivated, which unfortunately only ever seems to happen when he's inspired by greed, spite, anger or a combination of the three. Among other things, he invented functional Mental Time Travel to get out of studying for a history assignment, formed a successfull Christian rock band despite having no prior skills in writing or performing music just to win a bet, and managed to tame Cthulhu through sheer manipulation!
Team Galaxy has Brett, a serious boy genius. Unlike his partners, he actually enjoys homework and mental exercises, and is often annoyed at the lack of intellect the other marshalls possess. Early on, he also detested being called a "kid", although that aspect was later dropped.
Transformers: Prime: Rafael "Raf" Jorge Gonzales Esquivel is a master computer programmer and hacker. He's been able to understand code since he was three.
In The Venture Bros., there is Master Billy Quizboy, who is a Quiz Boy, that being an underrated branch of Boy Genius. It is revealed in one episode that "Master Billy Quizboy" is actually over 30 and was this during his youth.
Chloe from We Bare Bears is 12-years-old and is admitted into a university. She hates being known as "the prodigy" though.
WordGirl:
- Gadgeteer Genius Tobey, the self-proclaimed "world's most formidable boy genius".
- Wordgirl herself counts, too. In a bookish sort of way.
- Victoria Best as well. She's insanely

Real Life

This dude. Jacob Barnett, age 12 in 2011, reportedly has a higher IQ than Einstein and has developed his own theory of relativity.
In 1955, the poet Minou Drouet rocked France with her semi-surreal poems. She became a world-renowned celebrity, and objectified into fairytale nymphet status. Her early childhood was heavily mythologized to add to her mystique. Controversy raged around her and she was repeatedly tested to ascertain that she, not her overbearing stage mother, had written the poems. The constant demands for proof wore her out. From "My Friend the Tree" and "White road, where do you go?" she started writing stuff like "My heart has become nothing but a stupid little mayonnaise whisk". To a friend, she confided: "Our street is vomiting journalists nonstop. It feels like the whole world is after me. I wish I were dead. They keep on and on at me with their questions. I think the only words I can utter are fear, pain, death." She was 9-years-old. Today she lives in complete hermitage in the house where she was born.
Barbara Newhall Follett (born March 4, 1914 to literary parents) who at four demanded her own typewriter and at eight had nearly completed her first novel, The House Without Windows, about a little Nature Hero girl who finally becomes a Nature Spirit and disappears in a cloud of butterflies. When the manuscript was destroyed in a fire she rewrote it from memory and it was published when she was twelve.^note Also at eight she began creating a Constructed World, Farksolia, with a Conlang to express feelings and experiences in nature. She became an apprentice sailor on a schooner and wrote Voyage of the Norman D at fourteen, along with a series of travelogues. When her father deserted the family, Country Mouse Barbara moved to New York City and became a clerk-typist. She married at 18, tried to make it work, and failed. Her novel Lost Island, written when she was 20, concerns an adventurous clerk who is shipwrecked with a friend on a Deserted Island; they're subsequently "rescued" when a big fuck-you corporation arrives to bulldoze paradise and put up luxury condos, and by the end she's back in NYC, restless and miserable. On the evening of December 7, 1939, Barbara left her home and was never seen again. Nobody really knows what happened that night.
Composer Jay Greenberg (b. 1991) has been compared to Mozart and other musical prodigies. He entered the Juilliard Conservatory at age 11 and had written five symphonies by the time he was 13.
Marvin Hamlisch had shown musical aptitude at a young age, enrolling in what is now the Julliard School Pre-College Division at age 7. One of his earliest songs written in his teens was sung by Liza Minnelli on her debut album.
Yōko Honna, who was around 10 when she started her career.
Somerset Hughes of London was cited along with Ung-Yong in the Guinness World Record Book as having an IQ above 200.
Seiyuu Hiroko Kasahara debuted in a lead role when she was 12 years old.
Akiane Kramarik, the daughter of atheist parents (who sent her to parochial school), began painting religious visions as young as age 8, often in a realistically photographic style. Her art has a restful quality reminiscent of Thomas Kinkade, especially the way she uses light effects. Allegedly completely self-taught, she revealed that her mother actually trained her as an artist, partly to raise money. Her paintings routinely fetch hundreds of dollars. (She is considered a commercial artist rather than a fine artist like Teen Genius Amanda Dunbar, who started painting at 13.)
John Stuart Mill had one of those Make Your Child A Genius dads. He was crammed from an early age and while he enjoyed a lot of his studies, his emotional health suffered and he had a nervous breakdown at twenty. It took him years to recover, but eventually he became one of the preeminent philosophers of the 19th century.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If not the outright Trope Codifier, he's certainly the most famous example. He started playing piano at age 3, was composing by age 5, and wrote his first symphony at age 8. He was also known to have been challenged by famous musicians during his youth in improvisation contests, where the performer would compose on the spot and try to outperform his rival in this manner. He disposed of all of them. It's said that after they gave up, he would say, "any more?"
Jacques Offenbach started playing the violin at six and was a composer and had learned the cello by age nine. He quickly got too big for his home town and when he was 14 his father sent him to Paris to study cello. Offenbach was such a jokester and goofball he could never really focus on his studies, although he was widely recognized as a truly virtuoso cellist. He was booted out of the conservatory at 15 and the next year found a permanent appointment at the Opéra-Comique. This eventually led him to the career he wanted: writing the raunchy satirical comic operettas that made him famous.
Blaise Pascal started his mathematician career when he was nine.
Srinivasa Ramanujan. He made theorems at age 12 that you could get a PhD for proving today. He was an unparalleled mathematical genius. Especially considering that he started out working alone, using a little old reference book listing 6000 theorems with no discussion. And he flunked his school exams because his English wasn't good enough.
Everett Ruess was an artist, diarist, poet and printmaker beginning at age 5. You can see some of his work here. In his teen years he took to Walking the Earth in the American Southwest just to see what was there and paint/write about it. [Cue Robert Stack voice:] On November 20, 1934, Ruess set out alone into the Utah desert, taking two donkeys as pack animals. He was never seen again. He was just 20 years old.^Update
Actress Alicia Roanne Witt started out this way. Her high-IQ exploits were covered in several newspaper articles and she appeared in several variety shows starting when she was five.
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns displayed perfect pitch and could pick out tunes on the piano by age three, was playing piano recitals by age five, and made his concert debut at age ten, performing concertos by Mozart and Beethoven. For an encore, he offered to play any of Ludwig van Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas from memory. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 13.
Masako Ichijou aka Empress Haruko aka Empress Dowager Shoken, wife of Emperor Mutsuhito aka Meiji. She learned to read complicated poetry at age 4, started writing at age five, started reading Chinese at age 7, and by age 12 she was an expert koto player.
While undoubtedly gifted, William James Sidis had a Make Your Child A Genius dad as well. No one knows how intelligent he really was because his parents tended to exaggerate. He entered Harvard at age 11, graduated at age 16, and later taught math there. His much-publicized "mental breakdown" may actually have been his parents' coverup for his Socialist activism, which had gotten him arrested on May Day 1919. Sidis' friend said "had one great cause — the right of an individual in this country to follow his chosen way of life".
Terence Tao started taking college-level math classes at 9 and received his bachelor's and master's degrees at 16. Breaking the mold of the burnt-out prodigy, he is still an active and notable mathematician in his forties and appears to have a happy family life.
Jazz pianist Art Tatum learned to play church hymns and piano rolls at 3. Rumors would circulate that he played piano rolls meant for two people (and he was blind).
Georg Philipp Telemann: Despite being discouraged from music by his family (because music was then considered neither a really honorable trade nor a lucrative one), he taught himself to play the violin, recorder, and piano as a child. Composed his first pieces of music as a 10-year-old, at which age he already started to substitute for the cantor teaching the upper classes of his school. Composed his first opera, Sigismundus, at age twelve, after which his mother confiscated his musical instruments and sent him to a school in another town in a vain attempt to stop him from "wasting his time" on music. "Unfortunately" young Telemann was encouraged in his musical endeavours there by the local church superintendent.
Kim Ung-Yong of South Korea was reported with an IQ of 210 in the mid-1960s. He was a guest student in physics at Hangyang University at three (both his parents were professors there) and appeared on Japan's "World Surprise Show" at four composing poetry, speaking four languages, and solving integral calculus problems. He describes himself as having an eidetic memory and using the "memory palace" technique. Although the story of his having studied for a master's degree at Colorado State is not true according to his father, NASA hired him at age 11. He worked there until he was about 17, later saying it was monumentally boring and he missed his mother. He went home and changed fields entirely. Today he is a professor of civil engineering at a college near his hometown. His wife Cho Kyung-ja is a researcher and they have two children.
Religious visions are how Sulamith Wulfing got started. She began at four and went to art school as a teenager. She was considered so gifted that the school interceded with German authorities to let her off mandatory World War I-related service as a telephone switchboard operator so she could focus on her art.
Sho Yano, who started university by age 9 and was in medical school and studying for a PhD on the side by age 12. According to news reports, he was (deep breath....) reading by age 2, writing by age 3, composing music at age 5, scored 1500 on his SATs (out of 1600) at age 8, entered college at age 9, entered medical school at age 12, finished his Ph.D. in three years, and in 2012 got his M.D. from the University of Chicago at age 21. His IQ is estimated at over 200. Oh, and he's also a concert pianist who's played at the Ravinia festival. And has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Do you have an inferiority complex yet?
Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger referred to the autistic children in his practice as "Little Professors".
Educator Howard Spicker believed child geniuses, what he called "bright" children, were actually relatively common, but went unrecognized because they don't fit the profile of what people think a child prodigy should be like.
A few Chess grandmasters, specially world champions. Small example: Jose Raul Capablanca learned to play chess at the age of 4 and had beaten the Cuban national champion by the age of 12!
The German word for this is of course Wunderkind ("miracle or wonder child"), which also entered the English language as a loanword. It was coined by philosopher Immanuel Kant with reference to Christian Heinrich Heineken of Lübeck (1721-1725), who had mastered French and Latin at age two and at age three wrote a history of Denmark, and for years lived mostly on the milk of his wetnurse. His death at age four is attributed to the then-unknown Coeliac disease (he died when his diet switched to grain products like bread etc)
Schoolteacher Benjamin Heath Malkin (1769-1842) of the Suffolk village of Bury St. Edmunds, an acquaintance of William Blake, was accused of force-educating his children when his 5-year-old son Thomas died in 1806. Malkin homeschooled all his kids and by his account was less of a teacher than a referee. Thomas was your standard child prodigy who ran an imaginary country, Allestone (with maps) on the side. His death was prolonged and unpleasant. A doctor visited the day after he died to give Malkin a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about Thomas having died of "brain fever" from overstudy, citing Thomas' "large head" as proof. Malkin actually had to request an autopsy to prove the cause of death was inflammatory bowel disease.^note As if to bear this out, Malkin's other kids were also child geniuses and had fine adult careers.^noteCraik admits this in a postscript Thomas' brother Frederic wrote several history textbooks that were admired and imitated by Teen Genius Margaret Emily Shore.
Actress Amy Rutberg, best known for her role as Marci Stahl in Daredevil (2015), entered college at age 13 and transferred to UCLA as a Junior when she was just 15.
Daniel Liu started helping college students with their organic chemistry homework to attending to Achem, and is now a researcher at the University of Toledo at 11.
American R&B singer Tevin Campbell was a singing prodigy as a child. He became a gospel soloist at a very young age and had an impressive vocal range for someone his age. His talents eventually got the attention of Quincy Jones, who gave him his mainstream debut at 12 years old with the single "Tomorrow (A Better You, A Better Me)" in 1989. Tevin would soon become a successful recording artist as a teen, with multiple Platinum and Gold certifications to his name.
Elijah Muhammad is attending college at the age of 12 and is majoring in cybersecurity. He made history by being the youngest Black student to attend an Oklahoma college.
5-year-old Alberto Cartuccia Cingolani performing some Mozart.
Violin prodigy Karolina Protsenko.
Rayssa Leal, 13-year-old Brazilian skateboarder, is now a silver medal winner of the first Olympic women’s street skateboarding event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Four girls created a generator that produced electricity for 6 hours using a single liter of urine.
Quinn Callander, a 12-year-old Boy Scout from Vancouver, 3D-printed ingenious ear guards to help take the pressure off healthcare workers’ ears from wearing masks all day. He also made the 3D printing patterns available to everyone.
8-year-old Xóchitl Guadalupe Cruz created a solar-powered device to heat water entirely out of recycled materials.
Sugar Chile Robinson was widely known as a child prodigy in piano playing.
An 8-year-old skateboarding prodigy.
11-year-old from Côte d’Ivoire created a charging station from recycled goods that is able to charge phones and fans.
12-year-old Chika Ofili discovered a new mathematical formula.
11-year-old from Nigeria built a model of football stadium.
10-year-old chess prodigy from Nigeria.
Caleb Anderson and his various feats.
Twelve-year-old Clovis Hung graduating his university with 5 degrees.
Professional Gambler Stu Ungar, widely regarded as one of the best poker, blackjack and gin rummy players of all time, won his first gin tournament at age 10, and after his father died, he dropped out of school to pursue gambling full-time, becoming the sole provider for his house at age 13. Prior to this, he had skipped a grade and was noted for his Photographic Memory.
Jascha Heifetz, widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists to ever live, got started early. The first time he played publicly, legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler is recorded as saying, "We may as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees."

Child Prodigy
25 Following

Examples:

Video Example(s):

Cube's Cold

Alternative Title(s): Child Prodigies

Previous

Index

Next

Cube's Cold

Child Prodigy 25 Following

Examples:

Video Example(s):

Cube's Cold

Alternative Title(s): Child Prodigies

Previous

Index

Next

Cube's Cold

Child Prodigy
25 Following