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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Gunn''': Couple of weeks ago he was wearing diapers. [[Plot-Relevant Age-Up|Now he's a teenager?]]
'''Cordelia''': [[Lampshade Hanging|Tell me]] we don't live in a soap opera.
|''[[Angel]]'', "A New World"}}
On daytime soaps, pregnancy is a staple storyline. However, the resulting child is rarely seen after his paternity and/or baby switch has been resolved. When a few years have passed, he returns as a teenager old enough to have a summer romance.
Different from [[Plot-Relevant Age-Up]] in that the latter is at least explained via magic/[[Applied Phlebotinum]]/[[Bizarre Alien Biology]], or the transformation is actually shown on-screen. [[I Thought It Meant|Do not confuse the two]] when adding examples.▼
Stephen King referred to this as the "Kid Trick" in ''Danse Macabre'', his text on American horror media in the 20th century.
▲
Contrast with [[Not Allowed to Grow Up]] and [[Comic Book Time]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Subverted by Himawari from ''[[Crayon Shin-chan]]'': She goes overnight from being a normal 0-year old baby to acting like a 2-3 year old toddler that goes in all fours and uses [[Baby Talk]], but [[Running Gag|she's still 0-years old]].
== [[Film]] ==▼
* Gordon's kids in the Nolan films. In ''[[Batman Begins]]'', a scene where Batman goes to talk to then Sergeant Gordon briefly shows Gordon's wife feeding two little kids in high chairs, one a toddler boy and the other a baby. Only about one or two years are supposed to have passed between ''[[Batman Begins]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', but the kids now look to be a lot
▲== Film ==
** [[Word of God]] states that ''Dark Knight'' begins six months after the end of ''Batman Begins''.▼
▲* Gordon's kids in the Nolan films. In ''[[Batman Begins]]'', a scene where Batman goes to talk to then Sergeant Gordon briefly shows Gordon's wife feeding two little kids in high chairs, one a toddler boy and the other a baby. Only about one or two years are supposed to have passed between ''[[Batman Begins]]'' and ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', but the kids now look to be a lot older -- their actors were seven and ten at the time of the film's release. This was apparently done so that Gordon could have a deeper relationship with the son but it causes a headache trying to figure out exactly what the timeline for the two films was.
*** To make it worse, in their brief appearance at the end of ''The Dark Knight Rises'' his daughter appears to be twelve-ish and the ''older'' of the siblings.
▲** [[Word of God]] states that Dark Knight begins six months after the end of Batman Begins.
* Sean and Michael Brody of ''[[Jaws (film)|Jaws]]'' are little kids in the first film. In the second, Sean's still a kid while Michael is a teenager. The following two films got around the issue by making them both adults.
* ''[[Rocky (film)|Rocky]]'': Rocky Jr (Robert). was nine in ''Rocky IV'' when Rocky went to Russia to fight Drago. When he and Adrian return home at the beginning of ''Rocky V'', his son is now in early adolescence. How long were they in Russia?!
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* [[Older Than Feudalism]], amazingly enough: In book three of ''[[The Aeneid]]'', Ascanius, Aeneas' son, is young enough for Dido to hold him on her lap. By the next book, which takes place no more than a year later, he's old enough to ride a horse and command the respect of the other Trojans. (Virgil originally wrote Ascanius as being old enough to command men, then began a rewrite where Ascanius was younger and managed to get the first three books done, before suffering a case of [[Author Existence Failure]].)
* In "Twenty Years After," the sequel to "The Three Musketeers," King Louis XIV is underage and thus being manipulated by the regents, his mother and her lover. In some scenes he seems like a precocious ten-year-old (i.e. when the people demand to see that he is asleep in bed, and not fleeing the city), and he is referred to as a child. However, towards the end the queen remarks that in a year he will be of age-making him a young man in his late teens. It's possible that Dumas just called him a child because he wasn't an adult yet, but his actions don't quite seem to match up.
* Deliberately invoked by the witches in ''[[
* In the novel ''[[The Amorous Umbrella]]'' (sequeal to ''[[The Incredible Umbrella]]''), Our Hero ends up in a universe based in 1950's soap opera tropes, where he is trapped for several years. Being a dimensional outsider, he ''notices'' the SORAS cases, but nobody else does, even when it's pointed out to them. It worries him that a stepson he acquired, now an infant, will be an adult in five or six years and may - in an ''[[Oedipus Rex]]''-inspired plotline common with
* In Robert Heinlein's ''
* In the ''[[Adrian Mole]]'' series, Glenn is born in 1990, but is already twelve years old in 1997 (when Adrian discovers he is Glenn's father) and then becomes a soldier in 2002 at age seventeen.
* In ''[[Rome]]'', the teenage Octavius goes off to war for a year or two and returns as a man, played by a new, older actor. Several characters note how different he looks, with one blaming military rations. The physical change coincides with a change in Octavius' character from the clever child Octavius to the [[Magnificent Bastard]] Caesar Agustus.
* Andrew from ''[[Family Ties]]''.▼
* A ''[[Star Trek]]'' example that is not a Plot-Relevant Age-Up: ''[[Deep Space Nine]]''{{'}}s Tora Ziyal. Yes, she's an adult when we meet her, but she's played by three actresses: first the then-21 Cyia Batten, followed by 26-year-old Tracy Middendorf, and finally, when [[Word of God|the writers decided she was going to be romantically involved with Garak]], 33-year-old Melanie Smith. That's 12 years of aging in one season's worth of episodes (Batten's last appearance is in 4.14, Smith's first is 5.14.) Though the ''character'' technically didn't age (super-rapidly, at any rate), the constant actor switching led to some confusion about just how old Ziyal was supposed to be.▼
** Molly O'Brien is less drastic, going from infancy to four-ish between seasons.▼
*** Note that this is actually how she aged in real time; she was born on-screen in 1991 and was four years old in 1995, and thus was not a victim of SORAS. ▼
** The ones that ''were'' [[Plot-Relevant Age-Up]] situations were less "someone becomes older as a plot point" and more "Textbook SORAS with a one-line [[Hand Wave]]." For completeness sake... Alexander's [[The Other Darrin]]-ing in TNG, and Naomi from Voyager's sudden skipping of a few years. Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, even refers to Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome by name in both these cases. It's especially glaring when aliens who live twice as long as humans grow up in one-third the time.▼
* ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|called attention to this]] when it replaced the newborn Nicky Banks with a six-year-old actor (Ross Bagley): Nicky walked in the room while Jazz was talking to Will, prompting the latter to ask who he was. Will says "That's baby Nicky!" while mugging to the camera and making a "growing" gesture with his hands. A frustrated Jazz shouts "Man, I'm going back to the streets where things make sense!"▼
* ''[[Step by Step]]'' featured the young baby of the family aging from an infant in one season, to a speaking toddler of pre-school age in the next.▼
* ''[[Growing Pains]]'' also featured this trope with Chrissy, though they didn't implement it for until a season after the actual birth.▼
* Catherine Willows' daughter Lindsey on [[CSI]] seemed to age jump a year or so several times during the series.▼
* In ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', four-year-old Morgan Matthews [[Brother Chuck|disappeared]] for a season or so, then unexpectedly reappeared significantly older. This was lampshaded when one character commented on her long absence and she said, "That was the longest time-out I've ever had."▼
** Cory, Shawn and Topanga also age an extra two years; Mr. Feeny says in an early episode that they're part of the Class of 2000, but they graduate from high school in 1998.▼
* Why wait until the child is even ''born?'' In ''[[Stargate Atlantis]],'' Teyla goes from not visibly pregnant at all and still trying to undertake semi-dangerous missions to ''hugely'' pregnant between episodes. A conversation from the previous episode is referenced in a way that makes a [[Time Skip]] seem unlikely. Possibly explainable by [[Bizarre Alien Biology]], but as the [[Stargate Verse]]'s [[Human Aliens]] are descended from actual humans, that, too, is unlikely.▼
* In ''[[Ghost Whisperer]]'', Delia's son Ned aged from a boy just celebrating his 13th birthday (actually was a part of the plot in one episode), to a high school Junior (at ''least'') in less than six months. ▼
* On the first season of ''[[Degrassi High]]'' several of the freshman were only in seventh grade the season before, on ''Degrassi Junior High'', the most obvious being Arthur's younger cousin Dorothy, who's now in the same grade as him.▼
* In the first season of ''[[The OC]]'', Kaitlin Cooper is referred to as a fifth-grader. Two seasons later, she's fourteen, which means an extra year has been added on somewhere.▼
* Quentin Kelly went from being around eleven to about fifteen on ''[[Grace Under Fire]]'' when Jon Paul Steuer left the show.<ref>Allegedly his mother pulled him out due to Rhett Butler's increasingly erratic off camera behavior, the last straw being an incident where Butler decided to "show off" her new breast implants by flashing the cast and crew ''[[Squick|including (12 year old) Steuer]]''</ref>
* ''[[Full House]]'' was a little bit more subtle about this. Jesse and Rebecca's twin boys Nicky and Alex go from infants in season 5 to pre-verbal, long haired toddlers in season 6. Not as egregious as most examples, but a bit noticeable.▼
** Completely averted with Michelle, who starts off about 1 year old and grows at normal speed.▼
* Part of the plotting for what would have been the fifth season of ''[[Farscape]]'' was compressed into ''The Peacekeeper Wars''; specifically, Aeryn being pregnant (which had actually happened toward the end of the third season). Since the miniseries was only four hours long, the creators [[Handwaved]] this by saying that Aeryn, from being born into a Peacekeeper battle regiment, had been genetically modified so that her pregnancy would only last a week or so. She goes from completely flat to big-belly pregnant almost in-between scenes. They also use the explanation that [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] (and presumably [[Applied Phlebotinum]]) allow Peacekeeper females to hold pregnancies in stasis for up to 7 years (to prevent complications due to female soldiers becoming untimely pregnant) makes the [[Hand Wave]] that pregnancies progress rapidly once released plausible.▼
* ''[[My Family]]'' appears to take place in real-world time with a year between each series (judging by in-show references and the Christmas specials) but Kenzo, born in series four, is mentioned as being nine years old in series ten. Also extends to Janey, who is fifteen years old in the first series and claims to be "almost 30" in the tenth.▼
* Lily on ''[[Modern Family]]''. The twins who originally played her became increasingly difficult to work with during season two, and were replaced by four year old Aubrey Anderson-Emmons for the next season, also making it an example of [[The Other Darrin]].▼
* Tabitha Stevens in ''[[Tabitha]]'', a short-lived [[Spin-Off]] of ''[[Bewitched]]'' broadcast in 1977. The character was born in 1965-1966 season of ''Bewitched'' and should have been only 12 in 1977, but was played by then 21-year-old [[Lisa Hartman Black|Lisa Hartman]] as an adult making her way in the world for the first time. She wasn't the only one -- younger brother Adam was aged up so much he became the ''older'' of the two siblings.
=== Soap
* Victoria Newman on ''[[The Young and The Restless]]'' aged from 8 or so to 15 in a single winter in 1991, after aging more or less in real time up to that point. Then three years later, the same thing happened to her younger brother Nicholas. And it has since happened to Nick's children and various other assorted younger characters.
* The cumulative effect of this led to Tom Horton and his great-great-grandson Scotty Banning both working as doctors in the same hospital ''at the same time'' on ''[[Days of Our Lives]]''.
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**** GH also contains one of the more notable aversions in American daytime: Robin Scorpio, who's been played by the same actress (Kimberly McCullough) since 1985, when both were six years old.
**** Both an example and an aversion, also on ABC, is the character of Starr Manning on ''[[One Life to Live]]''. The character was born in 1996, and aged to six when Kristen Alderson started playing the character several months before her seventh birthday in 1998. Since then, the character and actress have aged at the same rate.
*** Also on [[General Hospital]], Sonny Corinthos' son Michael was put into a coma that lasted for a year. When he awoke, he was at least
* Luke Snyder, from ''[[As the World Turns]]'' , was originally born in 1995. Since then, his character has been SORAS-ed two times; in 2001, when nine-year-old Christopher Tavani took over the role, and 2005, when fifteen-year-old Jake Weary played the part.
** Chris Hughes who was born on-screen in 1986 is now a doctor.
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*** However, it should be noted that the show otherwise averts this, with Sally Fletcher being the most obvious example.
* Thank you [[Guiding Light]], for giving us Leah Bauer. Sending her to boarding school when she was about a year old was one thing, but when she came back a year later she was 14, twelve years older than her ''older brother.''
** Phillip Spaulding on [[Guiding Light]] was introduced in 1977 as being approximately eight years old; after leaving for a time in 1980, he was recast and returned in 1982, now played by 22-year old Grant Aleksander. The character's age progression, from 1982 on, paralleled that or Aleksander, who would continue to play Phillip, off and on, through Guiding Light's 2009
* New Zealand's ''[[Shortland Street]]'' does this to Tuesday Warner, played by Olivia Tennet. Although born in 1995, she comes back to Ferndale in 2007 at fourteen years old.
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==▼
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* Andrew from ''[[Family Ties]]''.
▲* A ''[[Star Trek]]'' example that is not a Plot-Relevant Age-Up: ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'''s Tora Ziyal. Yes, she's an adult when we meet her, but she's played by three actresses: first the then-21 Cyia Batten, followed by 26-year-old Tracy Middendorf, and finally, when [[Word of God|the writers decided she was going to be romantically involved with Garak]], 33-year-old Melanie Smith. That's 12 years of aging in one season's worth of episodes (Batten's last appearance is in 4.14, Smith's first is 5.14.) Though the ''character'' technically didn't age (super-rapidly, at any rate), the constant actor switching led to some confusion about just how old Ziyal was supposed to be.
▲** Molly O'Brien is less drastic, going from infancy to four-ish between seasons.
▲*** Note that this is actually how she aged in real time; she was born on-screen in 1991 and was four years old in 1995, and thus was not a victim of SORAS.
▲** The ones that ''were'' [[Plot-Relevant Age-Up]] situations were less "someone becomes older as a plot point" and more "Textbook SORAS with a one-line [[Hand Wave]]." For completeness sake... Alexander's [[The Other Darrin]]-ing in TNG, and Naomi from Voyager's sudden skipping of a few years. Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, even refers to Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome by name in both these cases. It's especially glaring when aliens who live twice as long as humans grow up in one-third the time.
▲* ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|called attention to this]] when it replaced the newborn Nicky Banks with a six-year-old actor (Ross Bagley): Nicky walked in the room while Jazz was talking to Will, prompting the latter to ask who he was. Will says "That's baby Nicky!" while mugging to the camera and making a "growing" gesture with his hands. A frustrated Jazz shouts "Man, I'm going back to the streets where things make sense!"
▲* ''[[Step by Step]]'' featured the young baby of the family aging from an infant in one season, to a speaking toddler of pre-school age in the next.
▲* ''[[Growing Pains]]'' also featured this trope with Chrissy, though they didn't implement it for until a season after the actual birth.
▲* Catherine Willows' daughter Lindsey on [[CSI]] seemed to age jump a year or so several times during the series.
▲* In ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', four-year-old Morgan Matthews [[Brother Chuck|disappeared]] for a season or so, then unexpectedly reappeared significantly older. This was lampshaded when one character commented on her long absence and she said, "That was the longest time-out I've ever had."
▲** Cory, Shawn and Topanga also age an extra two years; Mr. Feeny says in an early episode that they're part of the Class of 2000, but they graduate from high school in 1998.
▲* Why wait until the child is even ''born?'' In ''[[Stargate Atlantis]],'' Teyla goes from not visibly pregnant at all and still trying to undertake semi-dangerous missions to ''hugely'' pregnant between episodes. A conversation from the previous episode is referenced in a way that makes a [[Time Skip]] seem unlikely. Possibly explainable by [[Bizarre Alien Biology]], but as the [[Stargate Verse]]'s [[Human Aliens]] are descended from actual humans, that, too, is unlikely.
▲* In ''[[Ghost Whisperer]]'', Delia's son Ned aged from a boy just celebrating his 13th birthday (actually was a part of the plot in one episode), to a high school Junior (at ''least'') in less than six months.
▲* On the first season of ''[[Degrassi High]]'' several of the freshman were only in seventh grade the season before, on ''Degrassi Junior High'', the most obvious being Arthur's younger cousin Dorothy, who's now in the same grade as him.
▲* In the first season of ''[[The OC]]'', Kaitlin Cooper is referred to as a fifth-grader. Two seasons later, she's fourteen, which means an extra year has been added on somewhere.
▲* Quentin Kelly went from being around eleven to about fifteen on ''[[Grace Under Fire]]'' when Jon Paul Steuer left the show<ref>Allegedly his mother pulled him out due to Rhett Butler's increasingly erratic off camera behavior, the last straw being an incident where Butler decided to "show off" her new breast implants by flashing the cast and crew ''[[Squick|including (12 year old) Steuer]]''</ref>.
▲* ''[[Full House]]'' was a little bit more subtle about this. Jesse and Rebecca's twin boys Nicky and Alex go from infants in season 5 to pre-verbal, long haired toddlers in season 6. Not as egregious as most examples, but a bit noticeable.
▲** Completely averted with Michelle, who starts off about 1 year old and grows at normal speed.
▲* Part of the plotting for what would have been the fifth season of ''[[Farscape]]'' was compressed into ''The Peacekeeper Wars''; specifically, Aeryn being pregnant (which had actually happened toward the end of the third season). Since the miniseries was only four hours long, the creators [[Handwaved]] this by saying that Aeryn, from being born into a Peacekeeper battle regiment, had been genetically modified so that her pregnancy would only last a week or so. She goes from completely flat to big-belly pregnant almost in-between scenes. They also use the explanation that [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] (and presumably [[Applied Phlebotinum]]) allow Peacekeeper females to hold pregnancies in stasis for up to 7 years (to prevent complications due to female soldiers becoming untimely pregnant) makes the [[Hand Wave]] that pregnancies progress rapidly once released plausible.
▲* ''[[My Family]]'' appears to take place in real-world time with a year between each series (judging by in-show references and the Christmas specials) but Kenzo, born in series four, is mentioned as being nine years old in series ten. Also extends to Janey, who is fifteen years old in the first series and claims to be "almost 30" in the tenth.
▲* Lily on ''[[Modern Family]]''. The twins who originally played her became increasingly difficult to work with during season two, and were replaced by four year old Aubrey Anderson-Emmons for the next season, also making it an example of [[The Other Darrin]].
▲== Newspaper Comics ==
* In the first decade of ''[[Peanuts]]'', some characters aged far more rapidly than others. Notably:
** Schroeder, introduced in early 1951 as an infant, within a year became first a toddler piano prodigy, and then not only fully verbal but apparently the same age as Charlie Brown, Shermy and friends.
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** Also happened later on. Sally Brown was the first character born into the strip, in 1961 (Snoopy mentions waiting "until her eyes are open" to go visit her). Theoretically, this should make her at least several years younger than the rest of the cast. But by the early 70s she was more or less the same age as Linus. Similarly, almost overnight in the 90s, Rerun Van Pelt went from a toddler to kindergarten age.
** Of course, [[Comic Book Time|the characters are still kids]] when the comic ended in 2000.
* In ''[[Doonesbury]]'' JJ is born in 1973, and marries Mike in .
** More or less averted with Kim, who was adopted by the Rosenthals in 1975, and who aged normally off-screen for twenty-some years before reappearing to meet and marry Mike.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==▼
▲== Tabletop Games ==
* Weird variant not involving actors: In the original ''[[Ravenloft]]'' boxed set, a family tree of the d'Honaire bloodline includes the notation of a Gerard d'Honaire, born 726, died 733. Fourteen real-world years later, the sourcebook ''Legacy of the Blood: Great Families of the Core'' depicts this same Gerard as still dying in 733 ... but as a teenager ''applying for medical school''.
** Than it's most likely a [[Retcon]]. those things happen very often between D&D editions.
== [[Theatre]] ==
* Curiously, this happens to the Princes in the Tower in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Richard III]],'' if one assumes continuity with ''Henry VI Part III.'' In the final scene of the latter play, Henry VI has just been murdered and Edward IV has just become the father of a son. Then, in the early scenes of ''[[Richard III]],'' Henry's recently-deceased corpse is brought onstage, indicating that not much time has passed between plays (Richard has a line that suggests it's three months, but that is its own set of problems); a few scenes later, we meet Edward's son, now a pre-teen with a younger brother. This is all the result of Shakespeare's condensation of the historical timeline.
* This
== [[Video Games]] ==
* ''[[The Sims 2]]'' suffers from this. It's entirely possible for one family to go through several generations in the same time period it takes another family to have breakfast.
* ''[[Fable]]''. 'Congratulations, you've just spent 10 years in a depressing evil fortress! Your child is no longer an infant, but a regular child now! Oh, and your wife's still the same as ever. As well as all the other NPC children'.
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*** The Guildmaster from the first game is an old man when you're a child, and is STILL an old man when the player is.
* ''[[Diddy Kong Racing]]'' [[Updated Rerelease|DS]] introduced the current design for Tiny Kong, who now looks considerably more developed than her older sister Dixie Kong.
* In the various ''[[Harvest Moon]]'' games, the aging of your child is rarely consistent with reality. But the most [[Egregious]] example is probably in ''Animal Parade'', with the rival children. Two weeks after they're born,
* Bipin and Blossom's son in ''[[The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games]]'' grows from a baby to a child during the course of the first game you play, then into a teenager during a linked game.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Parodied in ''[[Killroy And Tina]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20120508191936/http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/killroyandtina.php?name=killroyandtina&view=single&ID=4904 "Yes (she had her baby), on Tuesday. It is now 16 years of age.]▼
▲* Parodied in ''[[Killroy And Tina]]'': [http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/killroyandtina.php?name=killroyandtina&view=single&ID=4904 "Yes (she had her baby), on Tuesday. It is now 16 years of age.]
* Referenced in ''[[Elf Only Inn]]''. [http://www.elfonlyinn.net/d/20020527.html "Come my lady, let us go have three kids who will be grown up in a week."]
** Seems more like a dig at the usual way the results of these relationships are terribly roleplayed out - that is ''[[Elf Only Inn]]'''s schtick, after all.
* Angie Levens dies two hours after being ''born''. By ''[[Ciem
** Handwaved in [[Our Ghosts Are Different|how spirits work]]. Plus, [[The Sims|babies are hard to puppeteer]].
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
▲== Western Animation ==
* In a somewhat rare animated example, the 1951 [[Donald Duck]] [[Classic Disney Shorts|cartoon]] "Lucky Numbers" made Huey, Dewey, and Louie into teenagers for just one short, as the plot required the trio to be able to drive a car.
* On ''[[Family Guy]]'', Cleveland Jr. was a child between the age of 7-10; on the spinoff ''[[The Cleveland Show]]'', he is now 14 and looks completely different even though no one else has aged. Peter comments on this in the pilot episode.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:This Index Happened Offscreen]]
[[Category:Aging Tropes]]
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[[Category:Plot Time]]
[[Category:Characters and Casting]]
[[Category:
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