Sometimes, TV shows cast the perfect younger version of a character.
But other times, they just...use the same actor. And most of the time, it's a little weird.
1. Like when The Vampire Diaries flashed back to Stefan and Damon's childhood and had a little kid play Stefan, but had the 36-year-old Ian Somerhalder play teenage Damon.
2. Or similarly, when Once Upon a Time flashed back to Regina as a teenager (and had Snow played by a little kid), but they still used 35-year-old Lana Parilla as Regina.
3. Or when Brooklyn Nine-Nine flashed back to the '70s and Hitchcock and Scully didn't seem any younger.
4. Remember the New Girl "Virgins" episode, which had a young teen version of Nick played by Jake Johnson?
5. And Winston was still played by Lamorne Morris?
6. At least New Girl did this for every character that episode.
7. Unlike the similar losing virginity stories episode of How I Met Your Mother — the teenage version of Robin was played by a younger actor, but teenage Ted was still played by Josh Radnor.
8. Sorry to Florence Pugh, but there is absolutely no way she passes as the 12-year-old Amy in the earliest Little Women flashbacks.
9. The actors of Glee already looked too old to be high schoolers when the show started. Six years later, when they did a flashback episode, they looked even older.
10. And ditto for having 23-year-old Blake Lively play 15-year-old Serena during a flashback episode of Gossip Girl, though that wasn't quite as bad.
11. No amount of prosthetics could make Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox look like high schoolers in the Friends prom video episode, even in the '90s.
12. Again, I know this was probably for comedy's sake, but did they really have to use 37-year-old Ali Wong as Sasha's teenage self in Always Be My Maybe?
13. And, even worse, 45-year-old Randall Park as Marcus's teen self?
14. I appreciate the new 'do they gave Jessica Walters here, but I don't really buy that this was Lucille 30 years prior to the events of Arrested Development.
15. I always found it strange that they had Emily VanCamp play her young teen self in juvie flashbacks on Revenge.
16. And that they had Caity Loitz play her teen self in that Legends of Tomorrow episode when everyone meets their younger self, especially because younger actors were used for the other characters.
17. I just personally think it would've been cuter to have a young Channing Tatum lookalike play the younger version of Jenko in the beginning of 21 Jump Street.
18. Ditto to Jonah Hill's Schmidt.
19. And finally, maybe there was some freaky witch magic going on here, but did anyone notice that in the flashback to Myrtle and Fiona being teenagers in American Horror Story: Coven, Spalding was played by the same guy??
