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Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Difference between revisions

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Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome (view source)

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== Anime & Manga ==
* Subverted by Himawari from ''[[Crayon Shin Chan-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]].
 
 
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* 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.
** [[Word of God]] states that Dark Knight begins six months after the end of Batman Begins.
* Sean and Michael Brody of ''[[Jaws (Filmfilm)|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 (Filmfilm)|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 ==
* [[Older Than Feudalism]], amazingly enough: In book three of ''[[The Aeneid (Literature)|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 ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Wyrd Sisters|Wyrd Sisters]]'' when the witches realize their Hero is only 3 years old. Instead of waiting for him to grow older, they {{spoiler|move the entire kingdom of Lancre 15 years into the future}}
* 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 1950's soap operas - attempt to kill him.
* In Robert Heinlein's ''TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE'', when Lazarus Long saves Dora from her parents' burning house, she seems to age several years over at most a few weeks. When her father tosses her out the window and Lazarus catches her, she seems to be a toddler (he identifies her at first sight as a "baby"). On the ride into town, she talks well enough to be three years old or so. When he takes her to visit her parents' grave not long afterward, she acts kindergarten age at least. Of course, Heinlein's later fiction has a sentimental preoccupation with what he calls "baby girls," by which he can mean any human female who hasn't reached puberty, so maybe he wasn't sure himself how old Dora was when Lazarus adopted her.
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*** 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 Byby 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 (TV)|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.
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* ''[[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 (TV)|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]].
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== Theater ==
* 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 happenes to Wednesday Addams in ''[[The Addams Family (TV)|The Addams Family]]'' musical. In Charles Addams' original cartoons and all the adaptations, she is a little girl. In the musical, she got boosted to 18 and engaged to be married. [[Expository Hairstyle Change|Even her signature braids are gone]].
 
 
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== Webcomics ==
* 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 (Webcomic)|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 (Webcomic)|Elf Only Inn]]'''s schtick, after all.
* Angie Levens dies two hours after being ''born''. By ''[[Ciem Webcomic Series|Ciem 2]]'', her ghost is a six-year-old even though only two years went by in Candi's world.
** Handwaved in [[Our Ghosts Are Different|how spirits work]]. Plus, [[The Sims|babies are hard to puppeteer]].
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** In one episode, Peter donates sperm, which results in a lesbian couple giving birth to Bertram, the same kid Stewie met when he went into Peter to prevent them from having more kids. In the course of apparently no time at all, Bertram ages to about Stewie's age (about age 1). Either that, or a year passed and nobody but Bertram changed.
*** While the character's models haven't changed, the characters have aged about 2 years. Meg goes from 16 and learning to drive during the first season to 18 and "legal" over the course of the series. Chris also goes from middle school to high school.
* ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'' made this concept even weirder by having Apu's children age from newborn babies to kids old enough to walk and talk in the same time it took Bart and Lisa and especially Maggie to... remain exactly the same age.
** Of course, the problem seems worse to casual viewers, as it is easy to confuse Sanjay's kids for aged-up versions of Apu's kids, and it is rare for it to be pointed out that the older children are Sanjay's (since they stopped appearing before Apu had any children).
** Characters remaining the same age is pretty-much a running gag in the show. "Kids, let me tell you about a wonderful time called... the 90s!"
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