Same Clothes, Different Year



""I guess our clothes are magic fabric, they grow with us."

"No, our moms just made bigger ones as we got older. 'I want one just like this only longer!'""

- Commentary on the dub of Soul Eater, episode 23

Limited Wardrobe taken to its logical extreme. This is when a character flashes back to their childhood (or even just their "younger days"), or the program shows a scene from the character's future, and they're wearing the exact same (or almost exact) style of clothes that they wear in the present.

Anime & Manga

 * In Hidamari Sketch, Yuno's parents show a photo of her from kindergarten and she has the same crisscrossed Bobby pins in her hair.
 * In Pokémon Special, if there is a flashback of any of the main characters, s/he will be wearing an outfit similar to his/her first outfit provided by the games.
 * Though, Sapphire had a different outfit as a child as a plot point.
 * A flashback shows that White wore a dress as a child, though this is probably due to the fact that she was attending a musical at that particular moment.
 * Maya in Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin has apparently had the exact same white dress ever since she was a kid. If it wasn't for the fact that the titular school required her to wear its uniform, she probably wouldn't wear anything else.
 * Yusei apparently hasn't changed his outfit much. Once during a flashback, even though the other characters were wearing different clothes with a similar color scheme (Jack's white hoodie and Crow's yellow T-shirt) Yusei was wearing the exact same outfit as his usual attire, minus the orange 'bubble' guards. Though where he got exact replicas of his outfit in a child's size in a literal wasteland is beyond me.
 * In Soul Eater, Stein and Spirit had similar clothing in their youth as they do in the present. Their dub actors provide the page quote.

Film

 * The movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs opens with A Minor Kidroduction, showing the main character, Flint, wearing clothes that are similar to the ones he wears in the rest of the film (including gaining the spray-on shoes and lab coat that he wears from then on). Played straighter with young Brent, who wears the exact same kind of monogrammed tracksuit and flipflops that he wears as an adult.
 * In Half Baked, when Thurgood has a Flash Back to the first time he and his friends got high (many years ago), they are all dressed in the same style as in the present day.
 * The Flash Back opening of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back features an infant Jay and an infant Silent Bob who are both dressed in baby-versions of their usual wardrobes.

Live Action TV

 * Three promos done for series 13 of Top Gear show the presenters as children; they all have hairstyles and outfits conspicuously similar to their adult selves. There is also a mini white-clad Stig.

Newspaper Comics
"Jason: It's high time someone asked you a question...
 * Peter from FoxTrot got this twice, due to his having the unchanging outfit of the cast. An example most in line with this trope was when Andy and Roger were sorting baby photos and Peter was wearing his usual hat even then. A similar take has Jason wearing Peter's clothes from fifth grade, which are exactly the same as his current clothes.

Peter: Lookin' good!"

Video Games

 * Mario and Luigi Partners In Time, as well as most sports spin-offs that feature the characters' younger selves
 * Kingdom Hearts has Sora notice in the sequel that his clothes have shrunk.  He gets new duds, though.

Webcomics

 * Something Positive has a few examples, like Davan's shirt with the red dot (though apparently he just has several copies of the shirt) and Aubrey and her choker-and-blouse outfits.
 * Lampshaded in Concerned, where Gordon is seen wearing the default male jumpsuit of the second game in his flashback during the time of the original Half-Life. He quips that he expects it to to become fashionable.

Western Animation

 * When the 9-year-olds on South Park flashback to when they were 4, they're wearing the same style parkas.
 * Also invoked in the episode "My Future Self 'n' Me," where actors are hired to portray older versions of kids, usually wearing the same kind of clothes.
 * The cast of A Pup Named Scooby Doo are wearing little kid-sized versions of what the teen cast of the original Scooby Doo wear.
 * The Flintstone Kids: They stayed together as kids, they remaind friends as adults ... and all through the years the main foursome -- 10-year-olds Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty -- wear the same outfits as as adults. Fred in his orange and black diamond-spotted shirt with blue tie, Barney in his dark brown pullover, Wilma in her white dress with pearls and bow-tied Betty in her light blue dress.
 * Not only did Dexter from Dexters Laboratory have an entire wardrobe filled with black boots, lab coats and purple gloves, it was shown in the Made-for-TV-Movie original series finale Ego Trip that he would continue to wear this attire for the rest of his life.
 * Subverted in Totally Spies: When Jerry was younger, he wore loud shirts and a ginormous afro, whereas these days he's always in a suit.
 * During the song "Little Brothers" from Phineas and Ferb, Candace flashes back to her younger days and is wearing the exact same outfit, as do her parents. Phineas and Ferb themselves are more subtle: when shown as babies both wear overalls the same color as the pants they wear in the present (blue for Phineas, purple for Ferb). Both wear plain white shirts, though, while Phineas' present shirt has orange stripes.
 * Danny Phantom episode "Maternal Instincts" shows a picture of younger Danny wearing the exact same clothes as his present self, only with shorter pants. However, this is completely subverted in the Christmas Episode where he gets a number of different outfits (Jazz, however has a slightly altered outfit version of her current counterpart's wear).
 * In the third Toy Story film, the garbage man featured is actually Sid Phillips, the main villain of the first Toy Story film (you can easily tell that it's him because of the skull on his shirt).
 * In the 2001 animated Disney movie Atlantis the Lost Empire, the outfit Kida wore as an adult is actually a Stripperific version of the very same outfit she wore as a little girl at the very beginning of the film. Averted at the end, however, where she actually ended up wearing a long, flowing dress (as a queen, she is not allowed to wear skimpy clothing), which is colored like her princess outfit, but with the color arrangments reversed (the bodice and train is now colored light blue instead of dark blue with pink and gold stripes like her sarong, and vice versa for the sash, which was originally the same color as her bikini).
 * 's future self is actually revealed to be wearing the exact same outfit as his younger self near the end of Meet the Robinsons.
 * Doug wore the exact same thing he does now when he was a little kid.
 * Used with some characters in Recess when they were younger (the flashbacks show them from kindergarten to second grade). T.J. wore the same thing, though he used to wear his hat forwards in his early kindergarten days and also didn't have a jacket, Vince wore the same thing in second gade, and wore a slightly altered version of his shirt in kindergarten, Gretchen wore the exact same thing in kindergarten, but wore a pink sweater with it in the second gade, Spinelli wore a completely different outfit in kindergarten and didn't wear her jacket in second grade, and Mikey used to have buttons on his shirt in kindergarten.