If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite movie or television character would have been like when they were a kid, it’s honestly very likely that there is a TV show about exactly that. It’s an odd yet pretty common phenomenon: once someone, usually fictional, becomes a household name, chances are there will be a piece of media about their youthful origins that sets the stage for whoever they will become as adults.

The purpose these shows have is twofold. They keep some piece of well-known but possibly dormant IP alive in a new and unique way, and they grab the interest of younger viewers, priming them to go back and watch or read the older stuff as adults in an endless feedback loop that guarantees a character will stay relevant for any age group. It’s also just kind of a funny concept. What was someone like Kermit or Carrie Bradshaw like as a kid?? We never would have considered asking that question before, but now we need to know.

Some of these shows are no-brainers. Everyone wants to know what it was like for a young Clark Kent to grow up in his small Kansas town before he was the man of steel. We were all dying to know what hijinks theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper got up to when he was a precocious youngster. Okay, maybe we weren’t all wondering that, but aren’t you curious? Some of these spinoffs were received better than others, but all of them provided fans with a fascinating look at how you build an already-iconic character from the ground up.

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