Kid From the Future

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If I could time-travel, I'd go back to the night my parents conceived me. I would just run into the room and smack my dad on the ass -- Wham! "I'm your son from the future!!" Aahhh-hahahaha!!! —Dane Cook

Surprise! Two of the main characters have just had a child! I bet you are surprised, since they didn't go through pregnancy or anything, might not even be dating, and the kid is already 14!

It must be the Kid From the Future here to Set Right What Once Went Wrong! A child the characters have yet to have has traveled back in time to save their parents for some reason. Great for pairing up characters who have yet to even show any interest in each other since now they must get together Because Destiny Says So. Also a way of working in a Distant Finale into the plot of what has already come along.

If the series involves a Love Triangle, or, worse yet, an Unwanted Harem, expect all hell to break loose as those involved try to figure out who the child's mother or father is.

This trope is also used in Fan Fiction (especially Fix Fics), often to push together the author's OTP, pair the Mary Sue with her chosen love interest, or even as the origin for the self-insert or Mary Sue.

An extreme form of Plot-Relevant Age-Up. Can develop into a full-blown Spin Offspring.

Examples of Kid From the Future include:

Anime and Manga

• Trunks from Dragon Ball. In his case, his parents might have had two scenes together at that point and his mother had been with a different guy for about ten years. Goku's reaction is shock and disbelief. Neither of his parents actually know who Future Trunks really is until after they've gotten together, as neither Goku nor Piccolo (who overheard due to his superior hearing) said anything.
• Chibi-Usa and Diana from Sailor Moon. As a result, this trope is sometimes referred to as "pulling a Chibi-usa".
• Sheena to Damos from the thirteenth Pokémon Arceus and The Jewel of Life. Well, she's more like his Distant Descendant from the Future.
• The entire plot of the manga/anime series Mother Is A Fourth Grader - a ten-year-old having to deal with taking care of her infant child who has fallen through a time-warp from the future.
• Chao Lingshen in Mahou Sensei Negima, although she's a little further down the family tree.
  • She also fulfills the harem-anime version of this trope by pulling out a book detailing her ancestry to deliberately (and successfully) spark total mayhem among Negi's Unwanted Harem.
  • Side Joke: Two chapters before we find out their relationship, one of the scanlators released a joke image with her doing a Luke, I Am Your Father.
• Possible Twist: The manga series Little Jumper features a high school student who suddenly meets a girl who illegally time-traveled from the future to cure her ailing mother via genetic manipulation - and he is her (future) father. Two complications: 1) she hates her father (him), and 2) neither of them have any idea who her mother could (will?) be. A surprisingly widely agreed-on theory is that she could very well be her own future mother, which would effectively create both a Stable Time Loop and a decent amount of fan-discomfort.
  • Let's just put it this way: with how blatant the manga has been, if she's NOT her mother, then there is one hell of a twist in the works.
    • He's not her father, that is certain.
  • Recently it's been reviled that her mother might be one of the Time Police agents sent to apprehend her.
• In Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love, Tenchi Masaki himself goes back in time to rescue his parents from Kain.
  • Subverted in the second movie, Tenchi the Movie 2: The Daughter of Darkness; Mayuka shows all the symptoms (and some of the characters just accept that she must be from the future, despite the bizarre (and scientifically impossible) means used to prevent Washu from identifying the mother through DNA analysis), but turns out to be an Artificial Human Laser Guided Tykebomb.
• Urusei Yatsura uses a variation of this in chapter 11. Ataru tries to avoid arriving late to school by using time travel, but he ends up 12 years in the future and meets up with his son.
• Nanami in Soul Link, the Half-Human Hybrid daughter of Nao and Shuuhei. As it turns out, she and she alone holds the key to defeating the Big Bad. Even though Nao and Shuuhei only had sex once (and both of them are still high school age), they have no problem taking responsibility as parents for Nanami, who apparently came into being even with Aries being a Building of Adventure.
• An episode of Ojamajo Doremi had Doremi's granddaughter from the future travel to the present.
• Nobita from Doraemon basically does Dane Cook's stand up joke from above in an early 90's episode to his parents, who had just had him as a baby, except with less twisted intentions. But hey, might as well warn them their kid's going to grow up into a (ten-year-old) loser, right? Though of course he might've cursed himself this way...
  • Sewachi, Nobita's great-great-whatever grandson, is the one who sent Doraemon to his ancestor in the first place. He also spoiled all of Nobita's failure future. Nobita's fate would have been so bad his descendant didn't care of any effect he causes from screwing destiny, since he believes he can be born nevertheless.
• Suzune of Kamichama Karin came back to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and prevent the eventual death of his father, though he doesn't know that part.
• Aura of Mythic Quest is more an AI daughter from another dimension who suddenly introduces herself to her "father," but she plays about the same role in her parents' relationship.
• NSFW Manga Yomeiro Choice has three (and counting, up to four and a cybernetic assistant/daughter!) daughters from the future, each trying to get the protagonist to impregnate her mother so she doesn't cease to exist.
• In Steins;Gate Suzuha is this to Daru although, neither know at first.

Comic Books

• Multiple instances with variation in the Summers Family Tree of X-Men fame.
  • Rachel Summers (Phoenix/Marvel Girl) is this trope played absolutely straight: she's the daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey in the "Days of Future Past" timeline's future, who goes back in time and joins various X-Teams.
  • Cable is a variation on this. He's the son of Scott Summers and Madeline Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey). He was actually born in the present (now past), but was taken to the future by the Mother Askani (actually future-future Rachel, his half-sister/genetic full sister). No, not the future she came from, another further distant future. There he gets cloned and grows up, later coming back as Cable to a period not long after he was born (but before he was taken to the future). His clone Stryfe follows him back.
  • Nate Grey (a.k.a. X-Man) looks like this, but is not from the future: he's from the present of an alternate timeline, where he was genetically engineered from Scott and Jean's genetic material and given a Plot-Relevant Age-Up. He eventually wound up in the main timeline.
  • If you've followed all of this, you may have noticed that Scott Summers and Jean Grey effectively have had four children running around even though Jean was never pregnant.
• Other X-Men babies not tied future kids not tide to both of the above parents: Cyclops had a daughter with Emma Frost, in the form of X-Factor's Ruby Summers.
  • Another alternate-universe twist on this trope from X-Continuity is Nocturne, Nightcrawler's daughter with the Scarlet Witch, of all people.
  • Minor case: Bishop of the X-Men is from the future, and turns out to be the grandson of minor character Gateway.
• For a non-X-Men example in the Marvel Universe, this has also happened in Fantastic Four with Valeria Von Doom, daughter of Sue Richards and Doctor Doom (or Reed Richards, though she certainly thought Doom was her father). Like Rachel Summers, she's a creation of Chris Claremont, and they've even both used the Code Name "Marvel Girl" (though in all fairness, Rachel had yet to use that name at the time of Valeria's creation). Clearly, Claremont loves this trope.
• Then, Hyperstorm came. Who is Hyperstorm? Child of Franklin Richards and Rachel Summers in the Days of the Future Past alternate future. Yes, The two families who did it most in the Marvel Universe are now mixed together!
• Impulse, Bart Allen, was the Flash's cousin from the future—and the grandson of Barry Allen, the greatest Flash of the DC Universe.
  • Also, Impulse's half-brother, Captain Boomerang Jr.
• Another case of the lead being the child is the current Booster Gold series, in which his distant ancestors are recurring characters. Booster explicitly references Marty McFly at one point.
  • In addition to this, Rip Hunter, who's playing mentor to Booster, has been revealed as Booster's son. The mother remains a mystery thus far. He deliberately keeps his parentage a secret so that other time travelers can't Ret-Gone him by targeting them.
• In one Astro City plotline, several versions of Jack-In-The-Box's son from the future appear (The Box, The Jackson, and Jerome Johnson). They grew up without a father because, in their timelines, Jack-In-The-Box died before his son's birth. One turned out to be a bloodthirsty vigilante, another ended up totally insane, and the third, 'normal' one was clearly emotionally wounded. This convinces Jack-In-The-Box to hand off his identity to a younger protege and concentrate on his family.
• Lara-Su, the daughter of Knuckles and Julie-Su from two different possible futures in Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The first version of Lara-Su to appear, also known by the alias "Jani-Ca", first showed up in the early 100's issues. She came from a Bad Future (a very bad future recently dubbed "Dark Mobius" by Word of God), and attempted to avert it by preventing Knuckles' assassination. Except, when she got back to her time, not only did she find out that she had gone back into the wrong timeline, but that her mother had lied to her to protect her - Knuckles hadn't died, he'd pulled a Face Heel Turn and was responsible for that bad future.
  • The second version of Lara-Su was from the much nicer "Mobius: X Years Later" timeline. She was one of the few people not affected by the Cosmic Retcon and helped Future Sonic depose King Shadow, and a while after that became a member of the Future Freedom Fighters.
• Done in the final issue of Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book, where the two main characters are visited by their grown-up children from the future.

Fan Works

• This is the whole point of the Haruhi Suzumiya fic The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi. Notably, it is much more of a Mind Screw than it seems at first, due to ridiculous amounts of time-travel-related Anachronic Order.
• In the Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic Tea With Destiny, Iroh travels to the Spirit World following the death of his son and intends to stay there forever. His son, however, doesn't think that's a good idea and takes him to visit with a very wise old man who turns out to be future!Zuko (Iroh isn't aware of this, as Zuko is currently ten years old in the real world). Future!Zuko advises Iroh to go back to the mortal world and be his mentor, because he's really going to need it.
• Codename: Kids Next Door has inspired many fanfics that use this trope, such as KND Operation Meet. These fanfics tend to involve future KND Operatives meeting the present-day KND via time travel, or the present-day KND time-traveling and meeting future KND Operatives.
• Glee - It's become a Brittana fandom meme that Sugar Motta is actually Brittany and Santana's time-traveling daughter. Variations include whether she ended up in the past on purpose or by accident. Vanessa Lengies thinks it's hilarious.
  • Other fanfics include Rory as the adopted son of Kurt and Blaine, and Harmony as the daughter of either Rachel and Quinn, or Rachel and Jesse St.James
• This Sailor Moon R-esque Danny Phantom fan fic features Serena, Danny and Sam's future daughter.

Film

• Wilbur Robinson from the film Meet the Robinsons. It wasn't really the plan, but his actions do end up connecting Lewis with his family.
• In the movie Back to The Future, Marty McFly is the kid from the future. He's also the main character and accidentally nearly prevents his own parents from getting together in the first place.
  • And in the sequel, Marty travels back to 1955 again.
  • And in the second sequel, Marty travels even further into the past and meets his ancestors, thus making him a Great-Great-Grandkid from the Future.
• Lampshaded in Guest From the Future when Alisa jokes to Yulia "Maybe I'm your granddaughter."
• The 2011 film, Enter Nowhere has a child from the future, grandchild from the future, and a great-grandchild from the future. Tom is Jody's son, Jody is Samantha's daughter, and Samantha is Hans's daughter.

Literature

• Alba from The Time Traveler's Wife (approximately—she appears after Henry and Clare are married but when they think they can't have kids, and Henry comes forward in time to see her about as much as she goes back to see him).
  • In one of the final scenes in the book, Alba visits Henry before he meets Clare. Even after she says she was looking for her father but was apparently too early, he still fails to understand who she is.
• Done weirdly in the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Father Time. Neither the Doctor nor his Kid From the Future, Miranda, knows that he's her biological father, despite the fact they look decidedly alike (when she grows up, they're even about the same height) and she's the only other member of his species he remembers meeting. He adopts her and raises her like his own, not realizing that she actually is.
• In Bones of the Earth, some time-traveling paleontologists get stranded in the Mesozoic for months. Once rescued, they're welcomed home by hordes of media and friends from many different times ... including an adult version of the baby one of their group gave birth to in the Mesozoic. He doesn't save them, but he gets to hold his infant self.

Live-Action TV

• Wyatt and Chris on Charmed, the children of Piper and Leo. Future Wyatt only shows up after Baby Wyatt has been born, but Future Chris preceded Baby Chris and his identity was an object of speculation.
  • Chris almost causes himself not to exist the same way Marty McFly did, by breaking up his parents. Except he did it on purpose, apparently not ever bothering to do the math and figure out when he was conceived. This was due to Real Life Writes the Plot. Chris was always going to be their son, and that reveal had already happened, but Piper's actress got pregnant halfway through the season, while Chris was deliberately keeping Leo away so Leo wouldn't figure out who Chris was and what he was doing. So the writers had to scrabble to get in a one-night Leo-Piper hookup arranged by Chris to explain the pregnancy, and Chris looks like a complete idiot for almost erasing himself from existence.
• Alexander Rojenko does this in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. 'What went wrong' was him growing up to be a pacifist; his solution is to kill himself. Good thing Worf comes up with an alternative.
  • Two other Star Trek episodes, namely the Deep Space Nine episode Childen of Time and the Enterprise episode E², had a variant of this trope, in which the descendants of the crew (of the Defiant and the NX-01 respectively) ended up in the present due to the ship's imminent travel into the past, with no way back. In both episodes, the time travel eventually gets prevented, but not without paying the high price of the "future" children's existence.
• Supernatural: Dean in the episode "In the Beginning".
  • And both Sam and Dean in the episode "The Song Remains the Same".
• Wataru becomes one to Otoya in Kamen Rider Kiva when he decides to travel back in time both in-series and in-movie. Given the strong Generation Xerox Kiva has, Wataru's son from 22 years in the future appears in the finale, along with Kivat the 4th, who gives him the power to become New Kiva.
• Kamen Rider Den-O is a natural candidate for this, given its plot. The series proper has Hana, who as the child of Yuto and Airi, is Ryotaro's future niece, which makes all that Ship Tease turn a little sour in retrospect.... The Movie Final Countdown features Kotaro, Ryotaro's grandson, who is also New Den-O.
• Power Rangers Ninja Storm - Cam's journey to become Sixth Ranger involves using a magic scroll to travel back in time. He witnesses his parents' first meeting (his mom kicking his dad's ass in front of their entire Ninja School), and "inherits" his morpher from her before returning to the present.
• Claire Bennet plays this role in a season 3 episode of Heroes, as does Hiro Nakamura.
• On Lost, time travel begins playing a role in the fifth season. After being transported back to the 1970s:
  • Miles interacts with his parents and sees himself as an infant. Miles wishes to have no relationship with his father because he allegedly abandoned Miles and his mother. Through predestination paradox, it is revealed Miles' friend Daniel Faraday was responsible for this: Miles' father didn't abandon his son, he forcibly made them leave the island to survive a catastrophic incident that would happen hours later, having been told of this by Daniel.
  • Daniel himself believes he can stop said incident by finding his mother, Eloise Hawking, a member of the Others, then having her help him detonate a hydrogen bomb that he told her to bury when he time travelled to 1954. However, when he arrives at camp, she shoots him in the back when he holds up Richard Alpert, and as he dies he tells her he is her son. She is forced to live the rest of her life knowing her son will grow up, go back in time, and be shot dead by her unknowing past self.
    • And then she sends him to the Island in the first place, knowing too well what's going to happen. It is all really tragic, but she must have really disliked time paradoxes to allow all this to happen.
• On the soap opera One Life to Live, a one-month story arc in 1988 sent Clint Buchanan back to 1888, where he nearly married his wife's great-grandmother. Thankfully, she manages to follow him back in time just in time to stop the wedding.
• The ending of the last ep of Lois and Clark was a setup for this trope.
  • Even though the same episode had DNA testing establish that Clark could never have a child with a human woman. Of course, it's not entirely unlikely that an advanced species like the Kryptonians could have devised a way to make such a pairing work.
• The Doctor Who episode "Father's Day" has companion Rose meet her mother, father, and infant self.

Jackie: Her dad? How are you her dad? How old were you, twelve? Pete: Jacks - listen. This is Rose. Jackie: Rose? How sick is that? You give my daughter a second hand name? How many are there? Do you call them ALL Rose? Pete: Oh, for God's sake, look! It's the SAME Rose!

• • The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith" uses the same plot, incorporating both Kid and Grandkid From The Future.
  • In the 2011 series, we learn that River is Amy and Rory's. One has to wonder what they think of the Doctor hooking up with their kid at some point...
    • This example is notable, much like the Charmed one above, in that River was introduced onto the show -- and killed off! -- two years before her parents.

Video Games

• Tales of Destiny 2 has Kyle, the protagonist, meeting his parents in the past. Stahn even jokes that he'll name his son after Kyle. He never reveals that he's their son, though.
• Arguably, Silver from Sonic the Hedgehog. It's implied that he's the descendant of either Sonic or Shadow, but it's never specified which.
  • Both of them, if a good portion of the fandom has anything to say about it.
  • Given the series's parallels to '"DBZ... Shadow and Amy?
• The main plot of the best-forgotten game Time Diver.
• In Space Quest IV, Roger is saved by his future son. Roger meets the mother in Part V and will cease to be if she gets killed.
• Baby from Super Monkey Ball.
• In Chrono Trigger, Marle warps back a few centuries and is mistaken for her great-great-etc.-grandmother.
• In the Ambitions expansion pack for The Sims 3, it is possible to end up with one of these when using the time machine.
• Inazuma Eleven 3: the Orge features Endou Kanon, a kid from the future who try to stop an evil organization that tries to get rid of Kanon's great great grandfather, Endou Mamoru, and his Japanese international soccer team.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny, Nanoha and Fate meet their (adoptive) daughter Vivio from the future. The real kicker is that all three of them are about the same age (that is, ten years old). Oh, and to make the matters worse, Vivio brings her own girlfriend Einhalt along for the ride.
• Achron has a partial example. It's possible for a factory (parent) to produce a unit (child) which then gets sent back to before it was built (born) to defend the factory.
• All over the place in Fire Emblem: Awakening. When a male and female reach S support level, you recruit their kid in a side chapter later.

Web Comics

• It's Walky! has Bobby 'Machete' Walkerton [1].
• In Narbonic, Dave and Helen's child abuses her parents' Universe-consuming time machine ("We siphon it from universes where they probably don't want to exist as much") to spy on her parents before they got married -- and arguably creates a Stable Time Loop by convincing Dave to get back with Helen, a decision without which she wouldn't have been conceived.
  • Similarly, in Umlaut House, Rhonda goes into the past to settle an argument with Pierce, who follows her to keep her from meddling in the past (as it happens, he shouldn't have bothered).
• J.J. from Casey and Andy.
• Todd from General Protection Fault.
• Vivio in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Fan Web Comic by Q-Ice, who mostly did it to screw around with her mothers.
• John Taylor from Coga Suro, in a direct homage to Trunks
• In Homestuck, Jade's 'penpal' claims to be her future grandson. What this truly means remains to be seen. Parentage is a strange thing in Homestuck.
  • We later meet him in Act 6, where it turns out Jade is his grandmother - except it's an Alternate Universe version of Jade. And J's counterpart in the original universe was Jade's grandfather.
• In Sore Thumbs, Fairbanks' son had come from the future in this strip.
• Gastrophobia: Philia is revealed to be this, and a member of the Time Police, to boot.
• Arthur, King of Time and Space's space arc has a variation: Morgan has been brought forward in time to serve as Merlin's apprentice. While there, she and Arthur conceive a child, not realizing that they're half-siblings. When Merlin finds out, he returns Morgan to the past and she gives birth to Mordred... who in the present day is already serving aboard the Excalibur and doesn't know any of this.
  • A second, more straightforward example: Nimue, also a time traveler, brings Galahad from the future to meet Lancelot.
• Brady "Honey" Smith from Sailor Sun is a parody of this trope, and specifically Chibi-Usa.

Web Original

• Cassandra Cain from Cass Cult is on fairly good terms with the Legion of Cass Daughters, which includes her daughters from every possible timeline.
• In Red Panda Adventures, The Red Squirrel reveals in her first appearance that The Flying Squirrel was her great-grandmother, but it's not until later that she also confirms that The Red Panda was her great-grandfather, since she didn't want to affect the timeline by interfering in the Will They or Won't They?.

Western Animation

• Warhawk in the animated version of Justice League was Green Lantern (John Stewart) and Hawkgirl's Kid From The Future—which came as a surprise because they had stopped dating quite some time before traveling to the future and running into him.
  • Technically there was two such cases in that episode, as a later episode tells us that Terry Mcginnis (Batman II) is Batman's biological son created by Amanda Waller.
    • These two are actually inversions, given that, as mentioned above, their parent came to them. This actually causes John to attempt a Screw Destiny by not getting back together with Hawkgirl over the course of the series just so he doesn't feel pressured to do so just by Warhawk's existence. Word of God says that's okay, given that Warhawk is still only in his twenties by the Beyond time period, which is still a good forty years off.
• In Time Warp Trio, the original trio of Joe, Sam and Fred sometimes cross paths with their great-granddaughters from the future: Jodie, Samantha and Freddi.
• Jake becomes this in one episode of American Dragon: Jake Long when he travels back to 1986 and accidentally causes his parents to split up. He then has to strive to get them back together in order to ensure his own birth.
• Destructicus, son of Hector and Dr. Ghastly, from Evil Con Carne. This raises questions on how this happned however as Hector is a brain (and stomach) in a Jar attached to a circus bear....
  • This is addressed. The given explanation is that "love finds a way".
• A unique case in Danny Phantom. The main character doesn't meet any future kids of his own—he meets a future child of his enemies! Box Lunch (daughter of the Box Ghost and Lunch Lady) who is sent by Clockwork to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. That is, killing Danny to prevent his future self from destroying the world.
  • Danny himself does this when he travels back in time and prevents the accident that gave Vlad ghost powers. His mother ends up marrying Vlad instead, and they have no children. Danny has to convince her to help him fix things so he can go back to his own timeline.
• The version of Impulse in Young Justice is Flash's grandson from the future. Which technically he is in most versions, but this version follows the trope by surprising Barry and his wife, who just found out she's pregnant and didn't get to tell Barry yet.