Two Kids In a Trenchcoat

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About

Two Kids In a Trenchcoat refers to a pop culture cliche in which two or more children attempt to fool others into believing they're one adult by having one child sit on another's shoulders, then cover themselves in an oversized coat. In the trope, this is usually done in order to gain access to adult-only material, such as tickets to an R-rated movie or alcohol. It has been seen in numerous forms of media and recreated in real life.

Origin

One of the earliest and most famous examples of this came in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), in which the dwarf Dopey gets on top of Sneezy in order to dance with Snow White at her height (shown below).

Spread

The trope, referred to as the "Totem Pole Trench"^[1] gag on TV Tropes, has continued throughout media in the 20th and 21st centuries, appearing in films, comics, video games, and more. One of the most famous modern examples is Vincent Adultman from Bojack Horseman, a recurring character who is very clearly several kids on top of each other in a trench coat yet only Bojack can tell their true identity (shown below, left top). Variations of the gag have also appeared on Scrubs (shown below, right), The Eric Andre Show (shown below, bottom left), and Austin Powers: Goldmember (shown below, bottom right).

There have been several reports of people attempting the stunt in real life. On February 16th, 2018, Twitter user @stevelikescups posted a video of himself and a friend attempting the stunt to get a deal to see Black Panther, gaining over 175,000 retweets and 434,00 likes (shown below). On April 2nd, SFGate^[2] reported that two children tried the stunt, attempted to buy beer, and claimed to be a detective.

We tried getting the two for one special at black panther. The manager was not having it. pic.twitter.com/Ktqsuh7s3m
— Pillsbury (@stevelikescups) February 16, 2018

On April 15th, 2019, Twitter user @Roysenotes^[3] posted pictures of children attempting the prank, gaining over 88,000 retweets and 417,000 likes (shown below).

royse @Roysenotes Follow my sister saw two unaccompanied little children in a trench coat giggling amongst themselves yesterday and i am absolutely howling 7:09 PM -15 Apr 2019

Twitter users played along with the gag by writing tweets sarcastically agreeing that the children were in fact one adult. For example, user @elboneman wrote "That's one adult, see it's tall," gaining over 2,500 likes (shown below, left). User ErinEllen1 joked "I would sell that person a ticket to an R rated movie," gaining over 1,700 likes (shown below, right).