History Main / MerlinSickness

!!Examples

** A note on the author's website [[WordOfGod indicates]] that [[spoiler:Tamonina and Nightingale actually began reverse-aging on the same date, August Bank Holiday 1969, and that although Tamonina realized something was happening immediately, it took Nightingale much longer to truly acknowledge or realize that it was happening.]]

* In Gabrielle Zevin's book ''Literature/{{Elsewhere}}'', this is what happens after you die; then you are sent back to Earth as a baby to be reincarnated.

* Happens to a whole universe in the ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' episode "As Time Goes By". The sliders experience time in waves of semi-normality with backwards jumps in between, like a skipping record. Unfortunately [[spoiler:Quinn's attempt to prevent a tragedy leads to a paradox that probably destroys that world eventually]].

* Herne in the ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' novel ''Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark''. When they "first" meet, he warns the Doctor that in the future he's going to blame the Doctor for his condition, but he doesn't any more.

* ''Series/{{Best Friends Whenever}}'': This happened to Shelby and Cyd when they traveled back to kindergarden in "When Shelby Met Cyd".

[[folder:Web Comics]]

** The Doctor was originally played by a fifty-five-year-old actor who [[YoungerThanTheyLook looked somewhat older]]. Their incarnations gradually got younger-looking from them on, with Matt Smith being the youngest to date. The casting of fifty-five-year-old Peter Capaldi seems to have [[HistoryRepeats brought things full circle]]. Very appropriate, given that in-series the Doctor is scheduled to ''[[YouWillBeBeethoven be]]'' Merlin at some point.[[note]]Unless he's done so already offscreen.[[/note]]

* Avoided with the titular character in ''Series/{{Merlin}}'', though there are hints that this might be the case for the character of Taliesin.

* In the Chinese film ''LeagueOfGods'' (based on the novel ''Film/FengshenYanyi''), the fox demon Daji curses Jiang Jiya with a spell that makes him younger whenever he uses his magic. At the end of the movie, he has regressed into being a baby.

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->''"Ah, but I was so much older then,'' \\
''I'm younger than that now."''
-->-- '''Music/BobDylan''', "My Back Pages"

Characters with Merlin Sickness live or age backwards in time. What happens to their memory is highly variable; some options include:

* The character remembers the past, but ages backwards (so they remember what happened when they were "older").
* The character remembers the future, and is exceedingly confusing. This can be a form of CursedWithAwesome--it allows the character to serve as a [[{{Seers}} seer]], but if taken seriously more or less precludes them from developing much of a connection with anyone (as just about any event carries the opposite sort of emotional resonance for them as for anyone else). Sometimes a character like this may come off as a MadOracle or TheCassandra.
* The character remembers the past, but remembers successively less of it as they get younger. Usually this occurs when Merlin Sickness is contracted partway through life, while the other two options are more associated with characters who are "born" (that is to say, who die) with it.

Merlin Sickness is generally associated with fantasy and works that are on the soft end of MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness.

When used as a framing device, see BackToFront.

Not to be confused with FountainOfYouth, where a character is aged backwards instantly and more drastically. Compare with NonLinearCharacter. Contrast UnstuckInTime. Often runs in tandem with TimeTravelRomance.

----
!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In the manga version of ''LightNovel/{{Dokkoida}}'', the [[KnightOfCerebus enemy]] Sweet Pea is like this.
* Lin-Fa in the manga ''Zombie Fairy''. She's from a race of people that age extremely slowly anyway, but became dismayed when the first tiny sign of aging really showed up (a single wrinkle). Her friend tried to help by casting a spell on her, unfortunately -permanently- reversing the aging process. By the time the manga starts, Lin-Fa has regressed from being a full-grown adult into the series' TokenMiniMoe.
* Kurama gets hit with a weaponized version of this in the Dark Tournament arc of ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''. The gas takes him to childhood, then infancy, then pre-natal, and then shifts him to his previous incarnation, Youko Kurama, who proceeds to torture the man who did this for information as to how.
* PlayedForDrama in ''Sakuranbo Syndrome'', where young college student Rena Amami suffers from a strange disease that causes her to regress in age. In three months, she goes from being 19 years old to looking like a middle schooler. The only thing that can stop the disease from making her younger is, strangely enough, being kissed regularly by a young man named Munenori Agawa. This leads to a lot of conflict and drama between the two of them and Agawa's girlfriend.
* In ''Manga/PandoraHearts'', [[spoiler:[[TragicVillain Jack Vessalius]]]] is afflicted with this as a result of [[spoiler:the Abyss rejecting his corrupted soul and excluding him from the hundred-year cycle of rebirth]]. His body is cursed to perpetually age up to [[spoiler:twenty-four years, his age at the Tragedy of Sablier, when his soul was rejected]], and then regress back to infancy. Additionally, each time he completes this cycle, [[spoiler:a piece of what's left of his soul is destroyed, essentially making him a [[TheSociopath sociopath]] by the time he first appears in the story]]. To make matters even ''worse'', [[spoiler:[[BrokenHero Oz]] now inhabits Jack's body, effectively dooming him to the same fate unless he can find a way out of it]].
* In ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'', Torunka, who is better known as the Dark Sage (the 1000 years older form of the Dark Magician), is cursed by [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys Zeman the Ape King]] with the Minus Curse, resulting that he becomes younger when the time progresses. When Torunka meets Ruca, he's already a small child and still gets younger. He reverts back to his old age after Zeman is killed by [[PantheraAwesome Regulus]].
* Part of the price [[BigBad Ganossa Maximilian]] from ''Manga/SilentMobius'' paid for power in his [[DealWithTheDevil deal with Nemesis]] in addition to his soul was to have his "time" taken from him, which made him younger as time progressed. Ultimately, everything he did in the series was due to his desire to have his "time" returned to him, even though he knew it would mean his own death. The power he received was nothing compared to being able to live and die as a normal person.
* Viktor from ''Chronos Ruler'' suffers from this. Demons named horologues feed off humans' time, [[FountainOfYouth making them younger until they usually vanish]], but Viktor managed to survive by having a time covenant relic lodged in the wound the horologue gave him. As a result, he gets younger by a day every day, and slowly loses his memories, so he resorts to using a diary to keep them intact. By the time the series starts, he looks like a teenager no older than his son. The two of them team up to find the horologue who attacked him, so his lost time can be restored. They also come across a young girl who claims to be Viktor's wife who suffered the same fate, aside from memory loss.
* This is what happens to [[spoiler:Walter]] in ''{{Manga/Hellsing}}'', after becoming an artificial vampire. Because the surgery was rushed, he's constantly deteriorating and can't properly regenerate; instead, his body "heals" damage by morphing itself into a healthy but younger form.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* One of Creator/AlanMoore's ''[[ComicBook/ThargsFutureShocks Future Shocks]]'' [[http://againwiththecomics.blogspot.com/2009/05/man-reversible-moores-alan.html strips]] was about a man aging backwards: he started lying in the street undying of a heart attack, got better, he started a job and got demoted until he was the teaboy, his kids moved into his house and finally vanished (would have been more unpleasant for their mother), split up with his wife, moved home, went to school to forget things... Bonus points for a [[DeathIsDramatic dramatic]] [[InvertedTrope birth.]]
* The vampires and other undead of the French graphic novel series ''ComicBook/RequiemVampireKnight'' age in reverse in the world of Resurrection.
* ''80 Jours'', a Belgian bande dessinée by Nicolas Vadot and Olivier Guéret. A rich 80-year-old man, nursed at home, begins to grew a year younger every day without explanation. [[spoiler: He "dies" with her nurse watching over him until the end, after having had an affair together half-course. DistantFinale shows her giving birth to a boy named after him.]]
* A minor {{Creator/Marvel}} villain called [[http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix4/drombackwardsmansm.htm Drom the Backwards Man]] has this problem. His solution? Drain the LifeEnergy of others to arrest his de-aging.
* Another extremely minor Marvel character (so minor she only showed up in like three issues) was a fur bikini-wearing spear-wielding warrior called Spat, who physically looks about 14. According to her partner Grovel (who looked like a giant iguana), she's aging in reverse due to some mysterious incident that Gambit was involved in.
* In an old story in the original Franchise/SpiderMan comics, the villain Silvermane (with the help of Doctor Connors/The Lizard) decodes a tablet that has the secret to eternal youth on it. Silvermane makes the potion and drinks it. However, in a cruel twist of fate, he promptly becomes a teenager, then a child, then an infant, then dies. Until he returns.
* In the comic ''ComicBook/{{Invincible}}'', Monster Girl is really thirty years old but ages in reverse every time she uses her superpower to turn into a monster. She's unfortunately reduced to about a ten-year-old body by this point.
* Adam One in Creator/PaulCornell's ''ComicBook/{{Stormwatch}}'' was [[TimeAbyss an old man at the beginning of the universe]], and ages both backwards and very slowly. He currently looks like he's in his thirties. (As revealed in ''ComicBook/DemonKnights'' he's also [[spoiler: actually Merlin]]).
* The daughter of Sally Floyd, Minnie, who appeared in flashback in the [[Comicbook/XMen Generation M]] mini series was a {{mutant}} whose power was backwards aging at normal speed. It manifested at about the age of two, and before the age of five she had regressed past the point when not even the incubators and life support in the maternity ward could keep her alive. To pile on the tragedy, this was a few months before the [[BroughtDownToNormal Decimation]] event that depowered over 99% of the earth's mutants.
* ''[[Creator/ECComics Tales From the Crypt]]'': In "A-Corny Story", a man who was fired for being too old sends his youth-obsessed boss a hexed oak tree. As the tree ages backwards, so does its owner... until the tree has ended up as an acorn and the boss has de-aged out of existence.
* This happened to ComicBook/LoisLane in ''The Cry-Baby of Metropolis''. Lois is worried about her wrinkles and steps into a youth machine even after Superman told her not to touch anything. After it seemingly doesn't work she sees the professor demonstrate that this trope is in effect with a chicken test subject (which turns into an egg and will soon turn into nothingness) and that only Superman's XRayVision can reverse the process. The next day this happens to Lois too and as she gets younger, not wanting Superman to be angry at her for her disobedience, she tries several times to trick Superman into use his XRayVision on her. But every time, Superman uses some other method to fulfill Lois's request, like "super mathematics" to count the jelly beans in a jar. When Lois is a baby, she gives up, but she is unable to admit to Superman because when she tries to talk it comes out as BabyLanguage. Superman takes her to ComicBook/LanaLang's house to take care of her, which of course makes her angry. Eventually Superman admits that he knew what Lois did the whole time and was just screwing with her to teach her a lesson. And the XRayVision actually doesn't have any effect, it was also just Superman and the professor screwing with her. Superman subsequently humiliates Lois by bottle-feeding her the antidote, in front of Lana. Website/{{Superdickery}} had a field day with this one.
* One ''ComicBook/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' story starts with Merlin- yes, that Merlin - visiting the Spellman family. Rather than the traditional wizard Whitebeard look, this Merlin resembles a young man, an appearance he explains with this trope.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* Professor Moriarty experiences reverse-aging in ''Fanfic/ChildrenOfTime'' -- falling through two temporal rifts really messes with your anatomy. By the time he appears in the series, he's been aging in reverse for ''twenty-five years'', and he's willing to ''freeze Time over'' to keep himself from getting any younger.
* In the ''Series/MorkAndMindy'' fanfic ''FanFic/MorkAndMindysTwentyFifthAnniversary'', Mork's backward aging becomes part of the plot given that he keeps looking younger as Mindy is growing older.
* In the ''Videogame/KingdomHearts'' fanfic "Dear Sora", which chronicles Kairi and Lea training under Merlin, the wizard himself mentions that he "experiences time differently". Later on, Lea explains this comment more to Kairi, elaborating on the fact that Merlin ages backward and therefore remembers the future. During said explanation, Lea does not shirk the MindScrew implications of Merlin's attribute, and Kairi herself wonders if it explains Merlin's often odd mannerisms.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]
* According to ''Clarence'', angels age in reverse. Which might explain a few things about the greeting card portrayals...
* ''Film/TheCuriousCaseOfBenjaminButton'', where it is milked for every ounce of romantic tension and general drama they can wring out of it.
%%* An oddly dramatic Creator/RobinWilliams film, ''Film/TheFinalCut'', briefly touches on this.
* One of the leads in the Japanese movie ''[[Film/MyTomorrowYourYesterday My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday]]'' has a variation of this. [[spoiler:Because Emi's timeline moves in the opposite direction relative to Takatoshi's, her memories are of his future, but she doesn't share any of ''his'' memories. To get around this, she has a notebook containing the details of each day in their relationship, which was written on his last day (which would be her first)]].
* Subverted in an ImagineSpot in ''Film/TheSecretLifeOfWalterMitty'', where Mitty claims to have the disease Benjamin Button had, but has never seen the film: he becomes a proper old man the size of an infant.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Gamebooks]]
* This is a bad ending that awaits you and an alien (?) pal in ''Literature/ChooseYourOwnAdventure'' book ''UFO 54-40''. The book is at least merciful enough not to carry it to its expected end (it stops when said companion is carried away in an incubator), and comments your only hope is that you'll be born again sometime in the future so your life will start again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* Provos from Creator/PiersAnthony's first two Mode books remembers the future but not the past; in fact, everyone from the Mode or planet or whatever she's from is like that.
* Swedish author Per Nilsson's novel ''Baklängeslivet'' (the backwards life) starts with the protagonist as an old man at a retirement home. Divine agents Soneson and Anderson (compare the Swedish word ande = spirit) explain to him that there's been a mistake and he'll have to live his life backwards, until he's young enough to go "home to mother, [[{{Squick}} and into her]]."
* In ''Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator'', Charlie's grandparents consume pills that take twenty years off your life a pop. Grandma Georgina takes too much, so Wonka has to spray her with a reversal of that. Then more youth pills. As she de-ages, she remembers being present at the news of the ''Titanic''[='s=] sinking, then Lincoln being shot...
* The main character in Andrew Sean Greer's ''The Confessions of Max Tivoli'' is born looking like an elderly man and ages backward to childhood.
* Philip K. Dick's ''Counter-Clock World'' has ''all of Earth'' doing this.
* The title character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Literature/TheCuriousCaseOfBenjaminButton" suffers from this.
* In [[Creator/DaveDuncan Dave Duncan's]] novel ''The Cursed'', there's a disease that gives those that survive it one of several different kinds of supernatural abilities, all of which tend to be [[BlessedWithSuck far more trouble than they're worth]]. One of these is the ability to remember the future but not the past. They ''can'' change the future by doing something that contradicts their memories, but if they do, they lose the ability to remember ''anything at all'', leaving them with the mind of a newborn infant.
%%* Explored in [[http://dailysciencefiction.com/story/caroline-m-yoachim/deathbed this short story]], "Deathbed" by Caroline M Yoachim. A man living backwards is preparing to die %%Cut off. Finish example before uncommenting.%%
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}:''
** Trolls ''believe'' they live their lives backwards, basing this on the fact that "the past is in front of you, so you can see it, while the future is behind you and therefore invisible." This is the RealLife viewpoint of at least one American Indian nation: the Ho'chunk (known to outsiders, for some reason, as the Winnebago).
** The Discworld is also home to reannual plants, which are planted next year and harvested this year. Forgetting to plant them causes a TimeParadox, and is very embarrassing. Drinking wines made from these plants results in a [[strike:hangover]] ''hangunder'' the day before.
** The Pork Futures Warehouse, which is home to pork yet unborn traveling backwards in time, gaining reality every day.
* In Gabrielle Zevin's book ''Literature/{{Elsewhere}}'', this is what happens after you die; then you are sent back to Earth as a baby to be reincarnated.
%%* Michael in ''[[Literature/GooseBumps The Cuckoo Clock of Doom]]''.
* The ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' by Dan Simmons.
** Rachel Weintraub is the less obvious TropeNamer. After an encounter on Hyperion when she's in her mid-20s, she starts aging backward, growing younger every day, and each night she loses two days worth of memories, for a net loss of a day. Each morning when she wakes, she finds that "yesterday was years ago," until finally she asks her father to stop reminding her.
** ''Hyperion'' actually [[TimeyWimeyBall played with the concept of temporal disruption]] quite frequently. There were multiple characters, [[spoiler:including several [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impaled on metal trees]] ]], and entire pyramids traveling backward through time. To say nothing of the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Shrike]].
* Chronos, the AnthropomorphicPersonification of Time from the ''Literature/IncarnationsOfImmortality'' series. Each holder of the office, when chosen, begins living backwards in time, temporarily going forward to communicate with others, until the day of their birth/conception, when they have to choose a successor/predecessor.
* One example that uses the T.H.White type is ''Knight Life'' by Peter David, in which Merlin is a child in the modern day but remembers the past. This is explained as being the result of a spell he cast on himself; apparently children have more magical power than adults, and he wants to be a child when he has the knowledge to take advantage of this. The ''Literature/KnightLifeSeries'' trilogy deconstructs this by having the TropeNamer in the modern day... as an 8-year-old kid, who has to magically turn water into alcohol...
* ''Literature/ManifoldSpace'' briefly features sentient lunar flowers. They even proliferate backwards, with seed pods converging until eventually there's only one plant left. It's... odd.
* In Creator/FritzLeiber's short story "The Man Who Never Grew Young", it happens to ''everyone'' — except the immortal title character — and history itself runs backwards.
* In the hilarious USSR-parody Sci-Fi/Sci Magic novel ''Literature/MondayBeginsOnSaturday'' (by the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers), the director of the [[ExtranormalInstitute Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry]], Janus Poluektovich Nevstruev, is known to be one man with two bodies (Janus-A and Janus-U, respectively). Janus-U is visibly older than Janus-A, and there are subtle personality differences, but for the most part they are identical. No-one ''really'' understands what this means, until the characters learn that [[spoiler: Janus-U ''is'' Janus-A, who began living backwards through time as the result of a magical experiment at some point in the future.]] Oh, and the book also has a parrot with Merlin Sickness. And when the younger researchers figure out why it keeps getting resurrected, HilarityEnsues.
* Merlyn from ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing'' by T. H. White. He remembers the future, and as such serves as partial excuse for the book's AnachronismStew. More recent adaptations of Arthurian legend often use this detail in some form.\\
Pay enough attention to ''The Sword in the Stone'' and a pretty powerful effect of this comes into play when Wart (Arthur) meets Merlyn for the first time. After Merlyn has figured out that it really is the first time they've met, tears come to his eyes for no apparent reason. It's not elaborated on as such, but if you think about it, Merlyn just realized that from his perspective, this is the very ''last'' time he and Arthur will ever see each other.
* Macros the Black, in Raymond E. Feist's ''[[Literature/TheRiftwarCycle Riftwar Saga]]'', is another who remembers the future instead of the past. Though he was born and aged normally until he stopped aging. He inherited this immortality from his father, hinted to be the Wandering Jew.
* ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'':
** DCI Thomas Nightingale was born in 1900, and began aging in reverse in the 1970s. His memory is unaffected, and no one including Nightingale has the first idea why it's happening.
** In book 4, ''Broken Homes'', we meet former Soviet Night Witch Varvara Tamonina, who was born in the 1920s and began reverse-aging in the late '60s.
* In ''Literature/{{Roadmarks}}'' by Creator/RogerZelazny there are creatures who appear on the Road[[note]]a highway that allows to travel to any time as well as to alternate histories of Earth[[/note]] as old humans, live so long they forget their past and slowly keep getting younger. When they are killed [[spoiler:they become dragons]], but it's never mentioned how young they may get if they live long enough. Their children age normally, but [[spoiler:at least some of them become dragons when killed]]. The Road may or may not have been created solely as a playground for [[spoiler:those infant dragons]]. Figuring this all out is central to the plot.
* Gerald Morris' Arthurian novel ''[[Literature/TheSquiresTales The Squire's Tale]]'' uses this not for Merlin but for the hermit Trevisant. He ages normally but remembers less of the past and more of the future as time goes by, until [[spoiler:at his death]] he sees only the future. Later in the series it's revealed that [[spoiler:he wasn't born that way; he voluntarily had a spell cast on him so he could forget a traumatic event in his past.]]
* The White Queen from ''Literature/ThroughTheLookingGlass'' remembers the future because she is "living backwards". This has the strange effect of having her imprison a man before he commits a crime, effectively causing a TimeParadox. She doesn't care though, she's TheDitz.
* ''Literature/TimesArrow'' by Martin Amis is written from from the perspective of a separate consciousness living inside the mind of a dying German Holocaust doctor, telling his life backwards.
* The novel ''Turnabout'' by Creator/MargaretPetersonHaddix is about two girls who, as old women, underwent an experimental treatment which caused them to age backwards, losing their memories as they go: at each birthday aging in reverse, they lose all memories of that year of age.
* For a very old example, see Roman "historian" (they had different standards) Claudius Aelianus' ''Varia Historia''. The island Anostus has trees that, among other things, produce fruit that makes the eater age backwards until (s)he dies as a newborn.
%%* There is a short story somewhere about a story about the Devil and a cheerleader where time goes backwards. May not be an example, as everyone ages backwards in the story within a story.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' had a villain with this (who also looked like Sauron) in one episode.
* ''Series/{{Best Friends Whenever}}'': This happened to Shelby and Cyd when they traveled back to kindergarden in "When Shelby Met Cyd".
* ''Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury'' also had a one-off appearance by a golden-skinned race who aged backwards. They had the intrinsic power to transmute elements, but this weakened as they aged (i.e., became more childlike).
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The Doctor was originally played by a fifty-five-year-old actor who [[YoungerThanTheyLook looked somewhat older]]. Their incarnations gradually got younger-looking from them on, with Matt Smith being the youngest to date. The casting of fifty-five-year-old Peter Capaldi seems to have [[HistoryRepeats brought things full circle]]. Very appropriate, given that in-series the Doctor is scheduled to ''[[YouWillBeBeethoven be]]'' Merlin at some point.[[note]]Unless he's done so already offscreen.[[/note]]
** The Doctor and River Song's relationship has elements of this — they keep meeting in the wrong order, so that the first time the Doctor meets her, she has known him for years. Almost every time he sees her after that, she knows less and less about him, although the pattern isn't absolute. There's a reason they have to co-ordinate their diaries.
*** Even stranger when River is "first" introduced to the Doctor in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler "Let's Kill Hitler"]] (from her perspective). She outright says that she'll age herself backwards, just to mess with people's heads (a fourth-wall-knocking joke about the fact we meet River as she becomes successively younger, but Alex Kingston is getting older).
* A throwaway ContinuityNod in ''{{Series/Eureka}}'' reveals that this happened to Walter after his accident in the pilot, letting him be TheNthDoctor for his next appearance.
* The Creator/StephenKing-penned miniseries ''Golden Years'' centers around a janitor at a research lab who begins to undergo this after an explosion.
* Avoided with the titular character in ''Series/{{Merlin}}'', though there are hints that this might be the case for the character of Taliesin.
* All the members of Mork's species from ''Series/MorkAndMindy'' age backwards. The original lamp shading was that it happened this way so the children would be treated with respect from day one, and the elderly would be cute and cuddly, thus more likely to be willingly cared for.
* The ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "Backwards" was set in a backwards universe. Kryten and Rimmer became a magic act for doing things forwards; there was a "[[BarBrawl bar-room tidy]]". The SpinOff novel ''Better Than Life'' ends with an aged Lister growing younger this way.
* Mike's cousin in ''Series/{{Spaced}}'', apparently.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'':
** Kes gets it briefly in "Before And After" when she finds herself traveling backwards through time from the point of her death to her birth and even conception. Unfortunately, it happens even faster than her normal aging, which is already pretty fast.
** Tuvok also encounters a race of beings who -- unbeknownst to him and the audience -- become cute little cherubs as they grow old, which coupled with a serious case of alien Alzheimer's renders them indistinguishable from the children of practically any other species you'd care to name. HilarityEnsues.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''
** Non-living example in the series finale where an anti-time anomaly is created when the Enterprise uses the same Phlebotinum Wave in three separate points in time. The anomaly becomes larger in the past until it eventually consumes a large chunk of the galaxy, preventing life on Earth from getting past the primordial soup. Fortunately, Picard fixes it.[[spoiler: He should, [[TimeyWimeyBall he caused it to happen,]] courtesy of Q's meddling.]]
** Another episode had someone who needed to engage in negotiations with rebels. So, he took a lot of a reverse aging drug to be youthful and strong for the talks. The drug reversed him to around age 25 (he was over 60), but caused him immense pain and physical trauma as his organs could not take the strain. Eventually, he dies as a result of the drug.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* The song ''Start with the Ending'' by Music/DavidWilcox is about Merlin Sickness, and how it would make more sense to live backwards than forwards.
* Music/PDQBach (1807-1742?).
* ASP's ''Sack und Asche'':
-->Heute bist du schon ein Junge,
-->gestern warst du noch zu alt.
** Translation:
-->Today you already are a boy
-->Yesterday you still were too old
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* Some cosmologists suggested in the past that in an universe that was contracting to end in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Crunch Big Crunch]], this would happen (the current understanding is that in such an Universe time would keep going forward). Curiously enough, people living in such a place would find it as completely normal and what is for us the norm would be considered by them as time going backwards.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]
* One of ''Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' radio plays produced post-AuthorExistenceFailure contains a throwaway joke about a race of beings called the Hrarf-Hrarf that begin life old, age backwards, and culminate their lives with the exciting event of being born. While other creatures have midlife crises, thes-e creatures have midlife celebrations. They also enjoy a hangover, because they know that it will soon be followed by a fabulous evening of drinking.
* On ''Radio/TheRickyGervaisShow'', one of Karl Pilkington's examples of something he would consider a worthwhile scientific achievement was an injection that would make this happen to people (proposed as an improvement on the "theory" that people should a kid inside them that would emerge fully formed at the moment they died). As ever, he had to have it explained to him that these are not workable ideas.
-->'''Karl:''' Forget it, then, we'll leave it as it is.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* In ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'', any moderately powerful Changeling can start aging in reverse: one sample character developed the condition spontaneously, while players can acquire it through the PointBuildSystem. Although it means the afflicted has a [[YourDaysAreNumbered definite expiry date]] and can't further [[LongLived extend their lifespan]] by strengthening their Wyrd, it restores the health and vigor of youth, making it CursedWithAwesome for some.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Issyl, the Lotus Clan Dean of the college of time, in ''VideoGame/BattleRealms''. He ages slowly backwards due to a magical mishap 70 years ago and is currently [[CreepyChild twelve years old physically]].
* The plot for ''EMIT'', a VisualNovel trilogy on the UsefulNotes/SuperFamicom, dealt with a parallel universe where time flowed contrary to our own; thus, anyone traveling from there to our world would begin to age backwards. But, [[EdutainmentGame since the whole thing was just a framing device for an English-language tutoring system]], [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot it didn't get explored in much depth]].
* ''VideoGame/TheSeventhGuest'' has a particular area of Stauf's mansion where one of the elder guests wished to be young again. She got that wish...[[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor and so much more.]]
* One of the main characters of the online puzzle story ''VideoGame/{{Planetarium}}'' is a girl who has foresight but not hindsight. This means that she can see the future but forgets it as soon as it comes to pass. Later on, [[spoiler:she is cured of this ability at the same time her mathemagician friend is cursed to travel backwards in time in a slightly different variant of this trope]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Braid}}''. "People like [[spoiler:Tim]] seem to live oppositely from the other residents of the city. Tide and riptide, flowing against each other."
* Flashbacks in VideoGame/{{Disgaea 4| A Promise Unforgotten}} of [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110721173823/disgaea/en/images/0/02/Valvatorez_Portrait.jpg Valvatorez]] during his [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110819234830/disgaea/en/images/a/ad/D4_Tyrant_Valvatorez_Cut-in.jpg Tyrant days]] show that, not only has [[VegetarianVampire abstinence from blood]] depleted his powers, but is also reducing his physical maturity.
* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, Orgnum, the King of the [[OurElvesAreBetter Maormer (Sea Elves)]], is said to be an "immortal wizard". Not only is he said to be immortal, he supposedly appears ''more youthful'' with each passing year. (The Altmer, [[ArchEnemy Arch Enemies]] to the Maormer, claim that Orgnum is not actually immortal and uses "foul" magics and sacrifices in order to maintain his youth.)
* ''VideoGame/MoshiMonsters'' has a species of Moshlings the Baby Tumteedums. Apparently they age in reverse, so baby ones are really hundreds of years old.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* In [[http://overcompensating.com/oc/index.php?comic=1536 this]] ''Webcomic/{{Overcompensating}}'' strip, Weedmaster P gets hit with a GypsyCurse and ages from a "monster truck wreck" victim all the way back to sex cells inside of two ''Film/FacesOfDeath'' fans.
-->'''Jeffrey:''' It's a living!
* The dread {{pirate}} Locke from ''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie''. He has a normal memory. At the time of the comics, he's a child. He's also [[spoiler:Millie's father]], and remembers doing some "really icky things" about ten years ago. Interestingly, the subject of what happens when he reaches the youngest possible point is touched upon- it turns out that, rather than "turning into a zygote, then disappearing", he swings around and ages the other way. It was never clarified in-comic, but WordOfGod states that when he starts aging forward and becomes too old to live, he'll start aging backwards again, in an infinite loop, though the writer never stated he is actually immortal.
* [[http://xkcd.com/270/ This]] ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'', strip which talks about what happens when [[Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing T. H. White's version of Merlin]] watches ''Film/{{Memento}}''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' has [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-411 SCP-411]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/DuckDodgers'': In "Duck Codgers", Dodgers and the Cadet get sprayed with a gas that causes them to grow older, but makes Martians age in reverse, like X-2.
* A few years back, there was an animated short on the Disney Channel called ''Flip-Flopped'' that featured an entire world of people like this. It was considered to be perfectly normal. There's a rumor going around that it's being considered for a series.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles", the result of [[FountainOfYouth youth tar]] is compounded when bacteria meant to eat it instead spread it throughout their bodies and continually making them younger. As Farnsworth put it "We'll face a FateWorseThanDeath: ''pre-life''. Then death." They reverse this with a fountain of ''aging''.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'', Billy, Mandy, Grim, and Irwin all age backwards when Billy turns the hourglasses representing their lives upside down. [[spoiler:They're unable to turn them back in time, and go from babies, to fetuses, to [[FamilyUnfriendlyDeath nothing]].]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries''. Happens to the crew when they get stuck in an AlternateUniverse with different physical laws in "The Counter-Clock Incident".
** The non-canon first captain of the Enterprise, Robert April, was on-board, on his way to his retirement ceremony. Due to the reverse aging, Kirk and company revert to children and April has to assume command of the Enterprise.
* Happens to Lion-O in the ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCats'' episode "Time Switch" after he is accidentally exposed to gasses from one of the [=ThunderCats=]' old suspension capsules. Despite knowing the risks involved, the other [=ThunderCats=] decide they should take Lion-O to the Cave of Time and put him in there until he regains his normal age.
[[/folder]]

----

** The Doctor was originally played by a fifty-five-year-old actor who [[YoungerThanTheyLook looked somewhat older]]. Their incarnations gradually got younger-looking from them on, with Matt Smith being the youngest to date. The casting of fifty-five-year-old Peter Capaldi seems to have [[HistoryRepeats brought things full circle]]. Very appropriate, given that in-series the Doctor is scheduled to ''[[YouWillBeBeethoven be]]'' Merlin at some point. [[note]]Unless he's done so already offscreen[[/note]].

* In the "Videogame/KingdomHearts" fanfic "Dear Sora", which chronicles Kairi and Lea training under Merlin, the wizard himself mentions that he "experiences time differently". Later on, Lea explains this comment more to Kairi, elaborating on the fact that Merlin ages backward and therefore remembers the future. During said explanation, Lea does not shirk the MindScrew implications of Merlin's attribute, and Kairi herself wonders if it explains Merlin's often odd mannerisms.

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

[[folder: Film -- Live Action]]

* An oddly dramatic Creator/RobinWilliams film, ''TheFinalCut'', briefly touches on this.

* One of the leads in the Japanese movie ''[[Film/MyTomorrowYourYesterday My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday]]'' has a variation of this. [[spoiler:Because Emi's timeline moves in the opposite direction relative to Takatoshi's, her memories are of his future, but she doesn't share any of ''his'' memories. To get around this, she has a notebook containing the details of each day in their relationship, which was written on his last day (which would be her first)]].

[[folder: Gamebooks]]

* Merlyn from ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing'' by T. H. White. He remembers the future, and as such serves as partial excuse for the book's AnachronismStew. More recent adaptations of Arthurian legend often use this detail in some form.\\
Pay enough attention to ''The Sword in the Stone'' and a pretty powerful effect of this comes into play when Wart (Arthur) meets Merlyn for the first time. After Merlyn has figured out that it really is the first time they've met, tears come to his eyes for no apparent reason. It's not elaborated on as such, but if you think about it, Merlyn just realized that from his perspective, this is the very ''last'' time he and Arthur will ever see each other.
* One example that uses the T.H.White type is ''Knight Life'' by Peter David, in which Merlin is a child in the modern day but remembers the past. This is explained as being the result of a spell he cast on himself; apparently children have more magical power than adults, and he wants to be a child when he has the knowledge to take advantage of this. The ''Literature/KnightLifeSeries'' trilogy deconstructs this by having the TropeNamer in the modern day...as an 8-year-old kid, who has to magically turn water into alcohol...
* The ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' by Dan Simmons.
** Rachel Weintraub is the less obvious TropeNamer. After an encounter on Hyperion when she's in her mid-20s, she starts aging backward, growing younger every day, and each night she loses two days worth of memories, for a net loss of a day. Each morning when she wakes, she finds that "yesterday was years ago," until finally she asks her father to stop reminding her.
** ''Hyperion'' actually [[TimeyWimeyBall played with the concept of temporal disruption]] quite frequently. There were multiple characters, [[spoiler:including several [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impaled on metal trees]] ]], and entire pyramids traveling backward through time. To say nothing of the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Shrike]].
* The White Queen from ''Literature/ThroughTheLookingGlass'' remembers the future because she is "living backwards". This has the strange effect of having her imprison a man before he commits a crime, effectively causing a TimeParadox. She doesn't care though, she's TheDitz.
* The novel ''Turnabout'' by Creator/MargaretPetersonHaddix is about two girls who, as old women, underwent an experimental treatment which caused them to age backwards, losing their memories as they go: at each birthday aging in reverse, they lose all memories of that year of age.

* Chronos, the AnthropomorphicPersonification of Time from the ''Literature/IncarnationsOfImmortality'' series. Each holder of the office, when chosen, begins living backwards in time, temporarily going forward to communicate with others, until the day of their birth/conception, when they have to choose a successor/predecessor.

* In Creator/FritzLeiber's short story "The Man Who Never Grew Young", it happens to ''everyone''--except the immortal title character--and history itself runs backwards.
* Gerald Morris' Arthurian novel ''[[Literature/TheSquiresTales The Squire's Tale]]'' uses this not for Merlin but for the hermit Trevisant. He ages normally but remembers less of the past and more of the future as time goes by, until [[spoiler:at his death]] he sees only the future. Later in the series it's revealed that [[spoiler: he wasn't born that way; he voluntarily had a spell cast on him so he could forget a traumatic event in his past.]]

* For a very old example, see Roman "historian" (they had different standards) Claudius Aelianus' ''Varia Historia''. The island Anostus has trees that, among other things, produce fruit that makes the eater age backwards until (s)he dies as a newborn.
* Philip K. Dick's ''Counter-Clock World'' has ''all of Earth'' doing this.
* In the hilarious USSR-parody Sci-Fi/Sci Magic novel ''Literature/MondayBeginsOnSaturday'' (by the Creator/StrugatskyBrothers), the director of the [[ExtranormalInstitute Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry]], Janus Poluektovich Nevstruev, is known to be one man with two bodies (Janus-A and Janus-U, respectively). Janus-U is visibly older than Janus-A, and there are subtle personality differences, but for the most part they are identical. No-one ''really'' understands what this means, until the characters learn that [[spoiler: Janus-U ''is'' Janus-A, who began living backwards through time as the result of a magical experiment at some point in the future.]] Oh, and the book also has a parrot with Merlin Sickness. And when the younger researchers figure out why it keeps getting resurrected, HilarityEnsues.
* Swedish author Per Nilsson's novel ''Baklängeslivet'' (the backwards life) starts with the protagonist as an old man at a retirement home. Divine agents Soneson and Anderson (compare the Swedish word ande = spirit) explain to him that there's been a mistake and he'll have to live his life backwards, until he's young enough to go "home to mother, [[{{Squick}} and into her]]."

* In [[Creator/DaveDuncan Dave Duncan's]] novel ''The Cursed'', there's a disease that gives those that survive it one of several different kinds of supernatural abilities, all of which tend to be [[BlessedWithSuck far more trouble than they're worth]]. One of these is the ability to remember the future but not the past. They ''can'' change the future by doing something that contradicts their memories, but if they do, they lose the ability to remember ''anything at all'', leaving them with the mind of a newborn infant.

%%* There is a short story somewhere about a story about the Devil and a cheerleader where time goes backwards. May not be an example, as everyone ages backwards in the story within a story.
* ''Literature/TimesArrow'' by Martin Amis is written from from the perspective of a separate consciousness living inside the mind of a dying German Holocaust doctor, telling his life backwards.
* Macros the Black, in Raymond E. Feist's ''[[Literature/TheRiftwarCycle Riftwar Saga]]'', is another who remembers the future instead of the past. Though he was born and aged normally until he stopped aging. He inherited this immortality from his father, hinted to be the Wandering Jew.
* Explored in [[http://dailysciencefiction.com/story/caroline-m-yoachim/deathbed this short story]], "Deathbed" by Caroline M Yoachim. A man living backwards is preparing to die

* In ''Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator'', Charlie's grandparents consume pills that take twenty years off your life a pop. Grandma Georgina takes too much, so Wonka has to spray her with a reversal of that. Then more youth pills. As she de-ages, she remembers being present at the news of the Titanic's sinking, then Lincoln being shot...
* DI Nightingale from the ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'' series was born in 1900, and began aging in reverse in the 1970s. His memory is unaffected, and no one including Nightingale has the first idea why it's happening.
* The main character in Andrew Sean Greer's ''The Confessions of Max Tivoli'' is born looking like an elderly man and ages backward to childhood.

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

** The Doctor was originally played by a fifty-five-year-old actor who [[YoungerThanTheyLook looked somewhat older]]. Their incarnations gradually got younger-looking from them on, with Matt Smith being the youngest to date. The casting of fifty-five-year-old Peter Capaldi seems to have [[HistoryRepeats brought things full circle.]] Very appropriate, given that in-series the Doctor is scheduled to ''[[YouWillBeBeethoven be]]'' Merlin at some point. [[note]]Unless he's done so already offscreen[[/note]].
** The Doctor and River Song's relationship has elements of this -- they keep meeting in the wrong order, so that the first time the Doctor meets her, she has known him for years. Almost every time he sees her after that, she knows less and less about him, although the pattern isn't absolute. There's a reason they have to co-ordinate their diaries.
** Even stranger when River is "first" introduced to the Doctor in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler "Let's Kill Hitler"]] (from her perspective). She outright says that she'll age herself backwards, just to mess with people's heads (a fourth-wall-knocking joke about the fact we meet River as she becomes successively younger, but Alex Kingston is getting older).

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]
* [[http://xkcd.com/270/ This]] Webcomic/{{xkcd}} strip which talks about what happens when [[Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing T. H. White's version of Merlin]] watches ''Film/{{Memento}}''.
* The dread {{pirate}} Locke from ''Webcomic/OzyAndMillie''. He has a normal memory. At the time of the comics, he's a child. He's also [[spoiler:Millie's father]], and remembers doing some "really icky things" about ten years ago. Interestingly, the subject of what happens when he reaches the youngest possible point is touched upon- it turns out that, rather than "turning into a zygote, then disappearing", he swings around and ages the other way. It was never clarified in-comic, but WordOfGod states that when he starts aging forward and becomes too old to live, he'll start aging backwards again, in an infinite loop, though the writer never stated he is actually immortal.

[[folder: Web Original ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'', Billy, Mandy, Grim, and Irwin all age backwards when Billy turns the hourglasses representing their lives upside down. [[spoiler:They're unable to turn them back in time, and go from babies, to fetuses, to [[FamilyUnfriendlyDeath nothing]].]]

** Kes gets it briefly. Unfortunately, it happens even faster than her normal aging, which is already pretty fast.

\\
Pay enough attention to ''The Sword in the Stone'' and a bit of [[TearJerker tear jerking]] FridgeBrilliance comes into play when Wart (Arthur) meets Merlyn for the first time. After Merlyn has figured out that it really is the first time they've met, tears come to his eyes for no apparent reason. It's not elaborated on as such, but if you think about it, Merlyn just realized that from his perspective, this is the very ''last'' time he and Arthur will ever see each other.

* The plot for ''EMIT'', a VisualNovel trilogy on the SuperFamicom, dealt with a parallel universe where time flowed contrary to our own; thus, anyone traveling from there to our world would begin to age backwards. But, [[EdutainmentGame since the whole thing was just a framing device for an English-language tutoring system]], [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot it didn't get explored in much depth]].

* ''ManifoldSpace'' briefly features sentient lunar flowers. They even proliferate backwards, with seed pods converging until eventually there's only one plant left. It's... odd.

* DI Nightingale from the Literature/RiversOfLondon series was born in 1900, and began aging in reverse in the 1970s. His memory is unaffected, and no one including Nightingale has the first idea why it's happening.

* In an old story in the original {{Spider-Man}} comics, the villain Silvermane (with the help of Doctor Connors/The Lizard) decodes a tablet that has the secret to eternal youth on it. Silvermane makes the potion and drinks it. However, in a cruel twist of fate, he promptly becomes a teenager, then a child, then an infant, then dies. Until he returns.