History Main / SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'': Amy Rose was intially eight years old in her debut game, ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD''. Come ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'', she was given her current design and aged up to a twelve-year old. As of the RetCon established in ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'', the entire cast of characters from the classic games could technically qualify as it is implied that they aged four years between the Classic Era and ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure''.

There's also the fact that [[NeverWorkWithChildrenOrAnimals toddlers are notoriously difficult to work with as actors]]. They're old enough to assert themselves, but too young to understand the concept of acting, meaning they'll basically just do whatever comes naturally to them. A four-year-old, on the other hand, can be expected to remember simple lines and stage direction.

* ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' [[LampshadeHanging 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 former 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!" (Will also does a double-take when he sees "older" Nicky for the first time and Jazz enters the scene asking if Aunt Viv has been [[TheOtherDarrin recast again]]) This of course, is the same show where Will once asks why the house doesn't have a ceiling ([[NoFourthWall followed by a camera {{pan}} upwards to show the studio lights]]).

*** 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. Stewie, however, [[NotAllowedToGrowUp remains approximately 1 year old.]]

* Sean and Michael Brody of ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' are little kids in the first film. In [[Film/{{Jaws2}} 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.

* On ''Series/AmericanHorrorStory'', the character of {{antichrist}} Michael Langdon is born at the end of the show's first season ''[[Series/AmericanHorrorStoryMurderHouse Murder House]]'', with a brief epilogue in the finale showing him as a toddler. He appears seven years later in ''[[Series/AmericanHorrorStoryApocalypse Apocalypse]]'' —which is set in 2019— but has somehow rapidly aged into an adult by then. It is later shown in a flashback episode that he literally aged ten years in one night, presumably to prepare for his role in the apocalypse.

** Probably the most extreme example was Holly Hoyland, who was born onscreen in 2007 but managed to be 15 by 2018, which again would require her to be conceived before her mother Isabelle was even living in the street and had met Karl..

* ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'' [[LampshadeHanging 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 former 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!" (Will also does a double-take when he sees "older" Nicky for the first time and Jazz enters the scene asking if Aunt Viv has been [[TheOtherDarrin recast again]]) This of course, is the same show where Will once asks why the house doesn't have a ceiling ([[NoFourthWall followed by a camera pan upwards to show the studio lights]]).

* Quentin Kelly went from being around eleven to about fifteen on ''Series/GraceUnderFire'' when Jon Paul Steuer left the show [[note]]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]][[/note]].

Different from PlotRelevantAgeUp in that the latter is at least explained via magic[=/=]AppliedPhlebotinum[=/=]BizarreAlienBiology, or the transformation is actually shown on-screen. Do not confuse the two when adding examples.

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