Not Allowed to Grow Up: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
[[File:AshPokemon_NotAllowedGrowUp_2766.png|link=Pokémon (Animeanime)|frame|He's still 10 and his [[Hot Mom]]'s still 28. [[Family Guy|Giggity]].]]
 
{{quote|''"Look how long it's taken me to be six years old! [[Lampshade Hanging|Practically forever!]]"''|'''Calvin''', ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''}}
 
AKA "perpetual childhood." An old (and in live action, [[Discredited Trope|discredited]]) trope which was implicit in many early [[Sit ComSitcom|sitcoms]] that focused on the standard American [[Nuclear Family]] of father, mother and 2.4 children -- the Situation necessary for the Comedy to exist was so rigidly defined that the children could not be allowed to grow up, lest the program dynamic change unrecognizably.
 
This later became the staple of animated series, in which it is possible to keep a character the same age year after year without major psychological harm to the actor (who, on a cartoon, [[Dawson Casting|is usually an adult anyway]]). Since animation doesn't require actual actors, it's much easier to keep it up in works where the creator can control the physical aspects of the characters.
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* In ''[[Animal Yokocho]]'', the main character, Ami, is five years old when she has a birthday... turning five years old. [[Lampshade Hanging|The other characters are a bit baffled by this,]] but it is, after all, a [[Gag Series]].
* Ash from ''[[Pokémon (Animeanime)|Pokémon]]'' seems to have fallen foul of this trope, having been declared as still being 10 years old at the start of ''Best Wishes!'' (''Black and White'', Season 14 outside Japan).
** Former storyboard artist Masamitsu Hidaka [[Word of God|explicitly said]] [http://pokebeach.com/2008/07/second-pokemon-interview-with-masamitsu-hidaka-many-interesting-points in this interview] that Ash and his friends will remain their respective ages for as long as the show is on, however many years that may be.
** To make things more confusing, Ash once celebrated the anniversary of him and Pikachu meeting. And even more confusing in both the English and Japanese versions, where Ash's voice has deepened in later seasons.
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** The anime was especially bad about this. There's been at least one time where it's mentioned that Ranma has been living with the Tendous for at least a year or two -- yet he's ''still'' sixteen.
** ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'' is a example of the same. Lum, Ataru, Shinobu, Mendou and the rest were 17 years old and on the cusp of high-school graduation for years on end... And ''how'' many summer vacations and Christmases did they have? Although Ataru did have one birthday during the run of both manga and TV aseries (the setup for a plot where he feared Lum had forgotten) which is one more than the Ranma cast got.
* ''[[DragonballDragon Ball]]'' originally had this. From the series beginning through the King Piccolo saga, three years have passed and by then Goku must be 15 years old, and Krilin 16, yet both of them look identical to when they debuted (at the ages 12 and 13 respectively). It took one more time skip for them to turn into teenagers (at ages 18 and 19) and another one to finally become "young" adults (23 and 24 years old). That said, Goku's children averted this big time.
* The original ''[[Astro Boy]]'' had this in spades. Though the title character is a robot & is thus justified in not growing up over the course of several decades, his human classmates have no such excuse. What makes this especially odd, is that Astro's "little sister" Uran, also a robot, ''actually did grow up!'' She went from being a short, chubby preschooler in her first appearance, to being able to impersonate Astro with a simple costume change, to the point where she looked more grown up than her "big brother", as a slender young woman in the later stories, complete with superfluous (though modest) artificial breasts(!). Tezuka also experimented with drawing Astro looking more like the teenage adventure heroes that were popular at the time, but apparently his readers didn't go for it. They didn't complain about Uran nearly as much, though. Then there's the ''Astro's Been Stolen'' story, where an attempt is made to give Astro an adult body, but it turns out to be a piece of junk that only has the same power level as his original despite being much bigger. The story ends with him musing that [[Growing Up Sucks]] & if you can avoid it you probably should.
* ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'' lampshades this; the narration in the manga occasionally draws attention to the absurdity of time essentially standing still.
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* The characters in ''[[Kochikame]]'' never age when the present date goes along with real life and being a [[Long Runner]] manga series for over 30 years. Kankichi Ryotsu's flashbacks always takes place 30 years in the past in the 1950s. [[Da Chief|Daijiro Ohara's]] grandson is the only character appear to age who was a toddler to now about ten years old.
* ''[[Mitsudomoe]]'' will always be in the sixth grade, no matter how long it runs. Which is why so many Christmases have passed.
* The characters from ''[[Ah! My Goddess (Manga)|Ah My Goddess]]'' have been college age for nearly 23 years now. Their surroundings keep getting adjusted to match the times. Even though Skuld has remained a kid for that whole time (except [[Overnight Age-Up|that one time]]), she [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|doesn't count]].
* A bit of a supernatural one occurs in ''[[Spirited Away]]'' where it's implied that Yubaba's overly coddling of her son Boh made him stay physically and mentally a baby.
 
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* Crimebuster, a [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] non-powered hero, started off as a teenager in his 1942 debut and remained a teenager well into the early 1960s, only to suddenly and inexplicably start aging in real time when he stopped fighting crime and started going to college (as part of a post-Comic Code revamp). This was especially noticeable when his [[World War II]] era arch-nemesis reappeared in the 1950s and their WWII past was explicitly acknowledged.
* None of the characters in ''[[Archie Comics]]'' age. The teenagers have been in high school for decades, with the exact same teachers and principal. In fact, the publication commonly tout Archie as the world's oldest teenager.
* In ''[[Ultimate Spider -Man]]'', Peter has been roughly 15 or 16 since the beginning. In 2000. [[Word of God|Brian Michael Bendis]] even invoked this trope: "''The Simpsons'' have kept their ages for more than a decade, we can do that too."
** He plans to have 100 issues equal 1 year, and if spider-man lives that long he will eventually be old enough to drink.
* The original Robin (Dick Grayson) was twelve years old for something like forty years. It was really only after ''[[Crisis Onon Infinite Earths]]'' that DC characters started aging, and even then characters often stay around the same age for a very long time. (Tim Drake was generically fourteen or so for much of his ongoing series, which ran from 1993 to 2009, for example.)
** There was some aging going on at DC before the Crisis. Dick had changed his name to Nightwing and was college age by the time the Crisis rolled around. [[Jack Kirby]] had officially aged [[Superman|Jimmy Olsen]] to 21 in the 1970's. And [[Supergirl]] had gone from a little teenybopper to a full-grown young woman by the 80's. After the Crisis, though, [[Double Standard|Jimmy got turned back into a kid,]] [[Sidekick Graduations Stick|while Dick got to stay an adult,]] [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|and poor Kara got erased from existence.]]
** Jimmy is now an adult again, albeit a [[Man Child|rather childish one]]. He got ''very'' offended when Toyman assumed he was a kid: "I'm ''twenty-two'', you jerk!"
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** Averted in a short-lived series in the mid-1990s which aged them a few years: Joe was in college and Frank had a job at a newspaper(?). As it was only one season, though, we'll never know if they would have continued aging. Also, a script is underway for ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963174/ The Hardy Men]'' in which they would finally be adults.
* In the original [[Nancy Drew]] books, Nancy was always 16. In the revised versions, she's always 18. Either way, Nancy must have solved approximately 175 mysteries in the span of one year. If the multiple spin-off series are added in, it's even more mind-boggling.
* Three words: ''[[The Boxcar Children (Literature)|The Boxcar Children]]''. Over a hundred books, most of which take place over a whole summer, and not a one of them is past college age...
** They age in the first 19 books, written by Gertrude Chandler Warner; Henry actually makes it to college age, and Jessie, Violet and Ben all have summer jobs... but the publishing company punched the [[Reset Button]] so hard that the characters were all slammed back to their original ages from book one when the series was turned into a [[Franchise Zombie]] after Warner's death.
* The girls in the ''[[Babysitters Club]]'' series aged normally for the first 10 books (during which they all had their 13th birthdays) but were afterward frozen in time, although they often acted much older than 13-year-olds. This may have been a product of the series being ghostwritten after book 35. They were allowed to age again at the end of the series and graduate to high school.
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* In Richmal Crompton's ''Just William'' series, William Brown lives through the twenties, thirties, second world war and up to the first moon landings, all the while remaining 11.
* [[Jennings]] is introduced at the age of 10 years 2 months, and thereafter remains permanently 11. There are few indications of precise external time, but he has ''far'' too many ends-of-terms for this to be plausible.
* This is a prevalent trope in many children's series books. Prior to the 20th century, series-book characters aged in real time: witness the Rover Boys, who grew up, married, and eventually had to hand the adventuring off to the next generation of Rover Boys. The first set of children's-book characters who were [[Not Allowed to Grow Up]] (as distinguished from being ''prevented'' from growing up, as was the case with [[Land of Oz (Literature)|Dorothy Gale]]) were the [[Bobbsey Twins]]. In the original editions of their first several volumes, they aged in real time; but the editors at the [[Stratemeyer Syndicate]] soon realized the characters would age beyond their readership. So they, and their fellows [[Nancy Drew]], the [[Hardy Boys]], the Happy Hollisters, and many others, got caught in a chronological stasis, never aging beyond where the series began.
* In [[John Varley]]'s ''The Golden Globe'', the narrator, Kenneth Valentine, is an actor who had played the same child role for ''decades''.
* According to the books, [[James Bond]] was born in 1924. His last movie appearance was in 2008, where he most definitely did not look 84. His inability to age beyond early middle age is considered proof of the theory in that 'James Bond' is an alias assigned along with the designation 007, and there have been several people using that name/number combination over the decades.
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* The trope still affects some contemporary "teen dramas", forcing characters to remain teenaged and in high school for ridiculous periods of time, even as their actors age into and through their twenties. See also [[Dawson Casting]].
* Emmanuel Lewis, the star of ''[[Webster]]'' was twelve when he started playing the title role and seventeen when the show ended. His character aged only three years during the show's six-year run, from age five to eight.
* Similarly, Gary Coleman's character Arnold on ''[[DiffrentDiff'rent Strokes]]'' aged much slower than the rest of the cast. Coleman's kidney disorder meant that the actor never grew above 4' 8''.
* The producers of ''[[Malcolm in Thethe Middle]]'' were quite concerned about Frankie Muniz growing up, to the point where they filmed as many episodes as humanly possible in a very short period of time and then showed them on a regular schedule, so that Malcolm would appear to age more slowly. They are also preparing an animated version of ''[[Malcolm in Thethe Middle]]'' that appears to be designed to avoid the characters' aging.
** Later seasons, however, avert this to some degree; you can see Malcolm graduating from high school, applying for colleges, and Francis gets married.
* ''[[SCTV]]'' featured a bittersweet parody: Martin Short portrayed a (former) child actor who has been in the same role for thirty years with the character on the show never aging, even though the actor did.
* ''[[Lost]]'' similarly removed Walt from on-screen appearances for two seasons when the actor playing him began to age more visibly, but brought him back once the progress of puberty had slowed somewhat. See [[Put Onon a Bus]].
** Though it was for different reasons than most shows. Where most shows that do this hold to a nebulous frozen time frame, Lost was on a strict timeline with the first four seasons covering a span of roughly 100 days during which Walt's puberty would have been implausible. He returned when the show's timeline jumped forward a few years catching up with his age.
* During its short tenure, ''[[Century City]]'' explored two aspects of this trope: first, a child actor suing his parents over the right to take growth suppressant hormones to continue his acting career, and second, an elderly member of a Backstreet Boys-esque boy band suing his former band over a contractual dispute that forces all members to take gene therapy and other surgery to keep them perpetually boi-ish. Incidentally, both cases averted this trope: the child actor was convinced not to take the pills through an appeal to the wonders of growing up, and the boy band case was dropped after one of the members who went through the procedure died of old age.
* ''[[Lazy TownLazyTown]]'' provides a rare modern live action example. Julianna Rose Mauriello was 13 when she took the role of 8-year-old Stephanie, and was relatively believable as that age. She was 15 when the second season was shot, and is clearly a young woman rather than a little girl in those episodes (she doesn't even appear to have bound breasts, at least not consistently), yet no narrative time appears to have passed, and in one episode she is shown to be in the same grade school class as her young puppet friends. Fan theories on what happens next range from bringing in a [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]] or [[The Other Darrin]] to doing an animated version, though many fans are emotionally attached to Julianna and hope that the show continues to use ''this'' trope, going so far as to suggest that she's already basically physically adult, and so not going to get much less childlike.
** She was a month from 17 when the first season of ''LazyTown Extra'' was shot, so they're still using this trope for now.
*** And if rumors are to be believed, [[Lazy TownLazyTown]] is returning in 2011 and might even have Julianna reprise her role as Stephanie...despite the fact that she is now 20 years old and will still be playing an 9 year old.
* After ''[[Punky Brewster]]'' moved from NBC, Soleil Moon Frye started developing early and went through a massive growth spurt. At first, producers dealt with the situation by binding her breasts while still playing the character off as, physically, a prepubescent child. When the premise became too unbelievable, Punky was finally allowed to have her puberty. The first episode that admitted Punky was growing up begins with Punky marching in on her caretaker at breakfast and announcing proudly ''[[Refuge in Audacity|"Henry, guess what? I'm getting boobs."]]''
** Made even more obvious by the fact that Soleil Moon Frye would eventually have to have breast reduction surgery at 16 because of [[wikipedia:Gigantomastia|gigantomastia]].
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* Appears for reasons unknown on ''[[Rome]]'' with Vorena the Younger and little Lucius. Vorena is at least eight years old when she first appears in the second episode, and Lucius is an infant. When the series ends roughly 20 years later Vorena is still played by the same actress and Lucius seems to be no older than five or six. Especially odd considering the fact that Octavian ages from twelve in the pilot to being in his thirties when the show ends, and Caesarion (who isn't even born until Lucius is around four years old) shows up being somewhere around ten years old in the last episodes.
** Since they editors stated that they 'compressed the timeline of events' somewhat (i. e. didn't overly worry about historical accuracy), Octavian may be younger at the end of the series than he was when he actually came into power.
* Inverted by long-running show ''[[Seventh Heaven|7th Heaven]]'', in which seven-year-old Mackenzie Rosman was cast as five-year-old Ruthie Camden. By the very end of season 11, she'd matured so quickly that the character had been aged up to 18 -- actually skipping over 2 years somewhere along the line.
* Averted and played straight at the same time in ''[[Sesame Street]]'': Both Gabi (Maria and Luis' daughter) and Miles (Gordon and Susan's adopted son) grew up in real time, while the Muppets depicted as kids, like Elmo and Big Bird, stayed the same. For example, in an anniversary episode, Elmo asks Grover about the thing what happened when he ''wasn't'' there. In the scene of Maria and Luis' wedding, Elmo talks like he wasn't there, but he's visible holding the ring in the wedding.
* [[Archie Comics]] enforced this on ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]''. Not on the characters, but on ''the show title itself'', not allowing the show's producers to change the name to simply "Sabrina", even though Sabrina herself wasn't a teenager for the last couple of seasons. (Sabrina's actress, Melissa Joan Hart, was 27 when the show ended).
** And boy did it start to show. She went from looking young enough to be late teens, early twenties, to the first episode of the penultimate season, where she and her college friends film a video with a genuine Vampire, the light strikes her, and wow, she suddenly looks much older.
* Parodied in an episode of ''[[You Can't Do That Onon Television]]'' where the kids found out the network was secretly feeding them shrinking hormone to keep them from looking older.
* While most of the kids on ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' were allowed to age with their actors, the character of Cindy was forced to continue to wear her hair in pigtails far beyond what is normal for her age. Possibly this was done so as not to change the theme song, although technically her hair was braided, not curled in later seasons.
* ''[[Greys Anatomy|Grey's Anatomy]]'' has this but with adults. The first season only had nine episodes, so them still being Interns in season 2 was [[Justified Trope|justified]]. There is, however, no excuse for them to be Interns for the entirety of season 3. Especially bad was their first year is established as starting on July 1st and the second season ended with a Prom ([[Frozen in Time|mid April at best, early June at worst]]). The fourth season began their second year, and they are currently third year Residents.
** It helps though that the third season doesn't have any holiday specific episodes.
*** But the Ferry Boat incident that took place in the middle of Season 3 showed Winter weather, which is ridiculous.
* Subverted in ''[[Ghostwriter]]''. When Mayteana Morales hit her growth spurt, Gaby's personality changed accordingly, but during the (short-lived) third season, Morales was replaced by Melissa Gonzalez, and Gaby reverted to her former personality.
* Disney tried to enforce this on the ''[[Mickey Mouse Club]]'' via [[Suppressed Mammaries]]; The female Mouseketeers resorted to subversion (slicing the hated "foundation garments" with razor blades) when their protests proved unavailing.
* This was one of the reasons cited for the cancellation of ''[[The Adventures of Shirley Holmes (TV)|The Adventures of Shirley Holmes]]'', according to the producers.
* The entire cast of That 70s Show. Eric turned 17 in the second episode (despite telling Red that he was 17 in the pilot). He then turns 18 in the third episode of season six.
* ''[[Round the Twist]]'' starts in 1989, and finishes in 2000. The three Twist kids more or less stay the same - the two twins manage to de-age from 14 to thirteen, and Bronson is still in the same primary school class. To be fair, this is because the series was rebooted twice - first in 1992 (for one season) then in 1999 (for two seasons).
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* ''Nancy'' in all its incarnations (starting back when the comic was called 'Fritzi Ritz') has been 8 years old since 1933! This makes Dagwood look like he has progeria.
* ''[[Dennis the Menace US|Dennis the Menace]]'' has had a sixth birthday -- before returning to age 5.5 the next day -- many times. Like children in ''[[The Family Circus]]'' and ''[[Peanuts]]'', he has remained the same age. It has gone on so long that in the early 1990s, a rumor began on the Internet that the Dennis of the 1950s/1960s had grown up to become the inspiration for the dad in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. Also like the others, Dennis has changed with the times, to where the family entered the computer age and got other new gadgets when they came out. However, his love of [[Western|Westerns]], which seemed oddly out of place in the 1970s and 1980s, can now be explained by cable TV.
** The [[Dennis the Menace (TV series)|late '50s live-action TV series]] ran into this problem toward the end of its run.
** The UK ''[[Dennis the Menace UK|Dennis the Menace]]'' (from the Beano comic) subverted this in one issue in 2001 where Dennis was celebrating his 50th birthday (the 50th anniversary of his first appearance in the Beano comic), while the character still remained physically 10.
*** Dennis' sister Bea grew to the age of about 1 and got her own spin-off comic. Dennis didn't age though.
* Both kept and subverted in the strip ''[[Blondie]]''. Blondie and Dagwood have not aged significantly since their first appearance in 1930, 78 years ago. (If real aging were used, they'd both be hitting their century mark.) But they've had kids who have matured to college age -- then stayed there. Daisy the Dog's puppies are perpetually half-grown, and have been for decades. The characters have ''evolved,'' though, as have the storylines. The original strip was about the relationship between the upper-class heir-to-millions Dagwood and the lower-class party-girl Blondie, with lots of [[Christie Era]] class-conscious humor. Now it's about two working parents in the suburbs and their life. At some point another "growth spurt" may hit and they might be grandparents -- but Blondie will still have her 1930 style hairdo.
* ''[[Zbeng]]!'' is an Israeli newspaper comic about a high school class - the same characters since 1987. And of course it's always about the present day.
* ''[[Little Orphan Annie (Comic Strip)|Little Orphan Annie]]'' seems never to age beyond about eleven. In a 1941 strip Daddy Warbucks recalls events from a 1931 story arc, saying, "I had Eonite ten years ago and lost it", and does not notice that his daughter has not aged significantly in those ten years.
** The ''[[Hellsing]]'' [[Crossover]] fancomic ''[[And Shine Heaven Now (Webcomic)|And Shine Heaven Now]]'' semi-lampshades this by Annie (by now in her thirties in 1998) claiming that she ages at the quarter of a rate of a normal human, due to being born on February 29th.
* In ''[[Luann]]'', the title character and her friends were approximately 15 years old when the strip began in 1985; in the ensuing <s>decade and a half</s> quarter-century they've advanced to roughly 16 or 17.
* ''[[Mark Trail]]'' ''used'' to be allowed to age, but is now caught in a time freeze so powerful that even he can't punch his way out of it. He even occasionally revisits old storylines, trapped in an eternal loop where everything is the same except where censored to match the values of the outside world.
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== Theater ==
* Used in-story in ''Gypsy'', where vaudeville child stars June and Louise have their real ages kept secret by their mother. Louise can't be sure how old she really is, having had tenth birthday parties several years in a row. (Given that ''Gypsy'' is a biography, and Mama Rose allegedly ''was'' that bad, this may also be a case of [[Truth in Television]].)
* Used very often in ''[[Annie (Theatre)|Annie]]'', where the shuffling of orphans was usually done due to the onset of puberty (though some younger girls would move up to older girl roles). Thus, literally hundreds of girls played roles in the musical through its original Broadway run and four national tours. The documentary ''Life After Tomorrow'' interviews quite a few of the women who appeared in the original run, many of whom cited their last show as the worst day of their lives.
 
 
== Video Games ==
* [[World of Warcraft|Anduin Wrynn]], as seen in the quotes, was ten for quite a while. He finally got his age up(new character model) with the release of ''Cataclysm''.
* Both used and averted by the ''[[Donkey Kong Country]]'' series. While the original [[Donkey Kong]] grew old to become [[Cool Old Guy|Cranky Kong]], his wife Wrinkly passed away (though she [[Back From the Dead|returned]] [[Death Is a Slap Onon The Wrist|as a ghost]]) and Tiny Kong grew up from a little kid to being in her late teens, Diddy and Dixie Kong are still kids after 13 years. Since all the Kongs except DK himself were [[Put Onon a Bus]] after Rareware [[Orphaned Series|left for Microsoft]], it is possible that not as much time has passed in the ''Donkey Kong'' universe as in [[Real Life]]. Kiddy Kong, the baby character from ''Donkey Kong Country 3'', has not yet gotten off the bus.
** It appears that Rare attempted to have Diddy age slightly in ''Diddy Kong Racing DS'', in which his voice was deeper and appeared to have broken.
* ''[[Drakengard]]'' has Seere, a six-year old boy who made a pact with a golem creature. The price for the pact was being unable to grow up. In ''Drakengard 2'', he is now 24 years old, but still looks like a little boy.
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** Athena is a ''goddess'', though. Common mortals' rules may not apply to her entirely, and some characters do lampshade how she seems to not have aged at all.
* Despite six years passing between the sixth and twelfth ''[[Touhou]]'' game, Reimu and Marisa remain the same age. [[Vague Age|As far as we can tell]].
* While ''[[Assassin's Creed II (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed II]]'' and ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'' detail the life of the titular character, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, from 1476 to 1507, Claudia Auditore, his little sister, barely fifteen in 1476, looks exactly the same when she's shown in her early forties, in 1503.
** Lampshaded and justified: since the whole ''[[Assassin's Creed (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed]]'' saga is actually a re-enacting of memories taken from selected individuals in the past, the player gets to see how Ezio remembers his life. And Claudia Auditore really often is seen complaining that, no matter how old she became, Ezio seemingly can't stop to act as she was still the bratty kid he grew with. Instead, characters like Leonardo da Vinci, in Ezio's mindscape, seem to age in a more realistic way (in fact, Leonardo da Vinci ages quite badly).
* [[Sonic the Hedgehog]] had a birthday in Sonic Generations. He's still fifteen years old.
 
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Batman: theThe Animated Series]]'' had Baby Doll, a villain who was the living incarnation of this trope. She was a [[White Dwarf Starlet|former child star]], Mary Dahl, who quit the show that made her famous to try a more dramatic acting career. This failed, partly because she had a disease that kept her looking like a child. She had a [[Freak-Out]] and because obsessed with wanting to revive the show that made her famous and happy, by kidnapping her former colleagues to relive the show. She got better, though... apart from that thing with Killer Croc.
** This may have been inspired by the movie ''[[What Ever Happened to Baby Jane|What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?]]'' starring Bette Davis as a former childhood star who, despite being on the wrong side of 50, still dresses and acts the way she did when she was famous.
* Mordred, the spoiled immortal son of Morgan le'Fay in ''[[Justice League]]'', is kept an eternal child by his mother's magic, who's only willing to let him grow up once he has his perfect kingdom. Being a child for millenia has made him an [[Enfant Terrible]] of nightmarish proportions. He ended up breaking the spell, though, which caused him to become a helpless elderly man that his mother now has to take care of.
* This concept is parodied in an episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', where in a "documentary" about the show featuring the cast as [[Animated Actors]], Lisa complains how she was forced to take anti-growth hormones in order to prolong the series. Homer dismisses the idea, noting, "That's ridiculous. [[Suspiciously Specific Denial|How could I even get all five necessary drops into her cereal?]] ...What?"
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** This is actually to be averted, however, as a [[Live Action Adaptation]] of ''FOP'' is in production with Timmy as a 23-year-old. However, he's still in 5th grade, but must face the choice of whether to grow up or not.
** There's actually been a new episode where it is revealed {{spoiler|Timmy actually wished that he--and everyone around him--would never age, and they've been living the same year for 50 years.}} However, everything at the end of the episode is [[Status Quo Is God|reversed]] {{spoiler|and people go back to aging,}} which makes the [[Live Action Adaptation]] possible.
** There is also a TV special where Timmy [[Leaning Onon the Fourth Wall|discusses]] how TV characters stay the same age, and this is his motivation for wishing for a magical remote that takes him "[[Trapped in TV Land|into the TV]]"
* ''[[Liberty's Kids]]'' takes place in the years 1773 through 1788. The main characters do not age even one year throughout the entire series. This is especially odd as notably several of the adult characters (especially Benjamin Franklin) get more and more aged as time goes on.
* ''[[Daria]]'' has this trope to an extent. Time ''does'' pass in the show, season one through three was Daria's tenth grade, season four and five are 11 and 12 respectively. But characters' physical appearances never change, neither do their clothes, thanks to the [[Limited Wardrobe]].
** Quinn gets a new shirt at some point - it's near identical to her old one.
*** The other members of the Fashion Club change outfits every season of the show.
* The core, [[Classic Disney Shorts|classic stars]] of the Disney canon are forever the same age, while technology blooms and evolves around them with each passing decade. Mickey and Minnie Mouse are eighty years old, and yet still forever dating, living in separate houses, and working minimum wage jobs like young adults... with their co-stars not too far behind. Curiously, Goofy's son Max is the only one who seems to age: appearing as a child in ''[[Goof Troop]]'', a teenager in ''[[A Goofy Movie]]'', and then acting as a college kid in subsequent appearances. Donald's nephews seem to have only aged once in the show ''[[Quack Pack (Animation)|Quack Pack]]'', but then quickly reverted back to their original ages everywhere else.
** The comics are usually no different, but in a subversion, [[Don Rosa]]'s Donald/Scrooge McDuck comics almost always take place in the late 50s, with small, subtle liberties taken with space technology and the like. It's understandable, as his crown jewel ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck]]'' has a very set timeline that stays consistent with the rest of his stories ([http://stp.ling.uu.se/~starback/dcml/creators/rosa-on-himself.html#dates Don Rosa has even mapped out when his version of the characters were born/will die]). It must be noted, however, that his predecessor and faithfully-followed inspiration [[Carl Barks]] did not feel this way, and like all interpretations of [[Donald Duck]] and Scrooge McDuck, froze the character's ages and let the environment around them roll with the times.
** All Disney characters mentioned above are adults, but what do you think of Huey, Dewey and Louie? They've been kids for 73 years now! Same goes for Monty and Ferdie (Mickey's nephews), who have been kids since FRIGGIN 1932. Funny thing to point out here is that Huey, Dewey and Louie are actually 15 years older than their great uncle Scrooge. Oh, and they're 57 years older than their uncle Rumpus McFowl. Basically any [[Classic Disney Shorts]] character qualifies.
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== Real Life ==
* Film studios had a particular aversion to child stars growing up to a large extent -- how to manage a smooth upshift from "adorable child star" to "hawt teen star" wasn't really figured out until [[The Seventies]]. The most famous example was [[Judy Garland]], who in ''[[The Wizard of Oz (Filmfilm)|The Wizard of Oz]]'' had her breasts strapped down so Dorothy Gale would be more childlike. Since most people [[Adaptation Displacement|haven't read the book(s)]], most modern viewers think Dorothy's ''supposed'' to be a teenager.
** To put it in perspective, the initial casting for Dorothy was [[Shirley Temple]], who fits the book description much better than [[Judy Garland]]. It worked out better.
* Gary Coleman and Emmanuel Lewis were also cast because they were ''incapable'' of "growing up", due to their medical conditions. The former didn't have a happy ending.
* June Havoc got this treatment from her mother, as seen in ''[[Gypsy (Theatretheatre)|Gypsy]]''.
* [[Shirley Temple]] was cast as an eight-year-old until she was well into her teens. In fact, it was only once she ''got married'' (at [[Values Dissonance|age seventeen]], to a man who turned out to be a violently abusive [[Gold Digger]]) that Louis B. Mayer allowed her to appear in adult roles. She left show business completely after divorcing the [[Gold Digger]] and escaping Mayer's slimy clutches. Her last job? America's last Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
* Averted, to the surprise of many, by [[Disney]] with Annette Funicello, on the original [[Mickey Mouse Club]].
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