Elderly Future Fantasy

Characters may have some kind of conflict in one way or another. It could be any kind of bad habit or worse. Whatever the case, more than likely it will be a sustained conflict with both parties at each other's throats, with neither willing to back down from having their way. Meanwhile, one character falls asleep and dreams (or just simply has a fantasy) about the future, where decades have passed and the characters are now elderly. They may be older (and not necessarily wiser), but one thing hasn't changed: the problems from a long time ago still haven't been resolved.

Whether still living in their own homes or in a retirement home, there will still be some resentment at best and outright fighting at worst. The issues still linger on all these years. And sometimes, one of the characters involved in the conflict will die, more often than not leaving the other character feeling remorseful, regretting how they haven't made up with them. Afterwards it cuts back to the present, with the characters finally making peace with each other and resolving their conflicts.

Something that's often Played for Laughs, with the characters becoming crazier and more senile versions of themselves. Also, some characters will age better than others, with the ones who end up on the short side of aging gracefully often looking all wrinkly and feeble and sometimes even being fatter than in the past, and sometimes even being bald (or wearing a toupee).

Can pop up in an Imagine Spot if the character has a fantasy about what if the conflict lasts life-long.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• In the French comic Litteul Kevin, the titular Kevin (a ten-year-old boy) imagines himself in the future, which is essentially the same as the present except that he and his friends are all grown up (and allowed to drive motorcycles), still living in the same place, while his parents and their social circle are still the same age.

Comic Strips

• Garfield:
  • This strip has Jon talking to Garfield saying as someone gets older, their ears and nose grow in size. Both Jon and Garfield then fantasize over their much older versions of themselves and being horrified by their bigger noses and ears before agreeing they will never grow old.
  • This strip has Garfield and Odie as older versions of themselves. Odie sneezes, making him lose his teeth. Garfield laughs at him, only for his own teeth to fall out as well. Both put each other's teeth in their mouths and spit them out after realizing they both have the wrong choppers. It's then shown that it was a dream Garfield is having. He then checks Odie's teeth, much to his relief that it was just a dream.

Films — Animation

• The Boss Baby: At one point, the Boss Baby warns Tim that if he doesn't help him with his mission, he will turn into a real baby and live him with him forever as his brother. This triggers a vision of the two of them going gray with wrinkly faces, then facing each other down on scooters on a barren plain, before colliding in a mushroom cloud.
• Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted: After being stuck in Africa for some time with the penguins still haven't come back for them, Alex has a nightmare in which he, Marty, Melman and Gloria have turned old and gray.
  Marty: That same nightmare, huh?
  Alex: We were stuck here in Africa, and were were all super-old and wrinkly and... Well, I aged well, but the rest of you looked terrible!

Live-Action TV

• Cheers: In "I Do, Adieu", Shelley Long's last episode. As Diane is caught on the horns of a Career Versus Man dilemma on the eve of her wedding to Sam, Sam has an extended fantasy of them as an elderly married couple. (They're Happily Married and he's too decrepit to move.). After Sam decides the Career Versus Man dilemma for Diane by insisting she chase her dreams of a writing career, the episode ends with a second fantasy sequence in which an elderly Sam and Diane are dancing together in their home.
• Drake & Josh: At the end of "Foam Finger", the stepbrothers consider how their true first meeting was back when they were children, and how even back then all they did was argue. This cues an Imagine Spot where they're both old men, still living in the same room, still bickering. Then an elderly Megan appears and throws a cookie at them, which started the original fight when they were kids, leading them to awkwardly fight again.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: In the episode "Grumpy Young Men", Will has a double date with his crush Valerie, alongside Carlton and Valerie's cousin. After getting fed up with Will, Valerie tells him to go on a walk. Valerie then thanks Carlton for being a perfect gentleman and both share a kiss, which Will happens to see, leading to their conflict of the episode. Later on, both Will and Carlton have a fight, with Carlton knocking Will unconscious. Will has a dream, with both of them being old men living in a retirement home, still in a bitter feud. They both get into a fight, with Carlton having a heart attack and dying, but not before Carlton tells Will he hates him. A remorseful Will laments how he never said he was sorry. When Will recovers, both he and Carlton make up.
• Full House: In the episode "Those Better Not Be the Days", Danny, Jesse, and Joey have to deal with DJ and Stephanie taking them for granted; the girls having the dads doing things for them and not once receiving a "thank you". The dads try to give them a taste of their own medicine by playing the "kids" and the girls being the "parents". But it backfires when the girls get fed up with the dads and send them to their rooms (missing the point of the lesson). The dads then have a fantasy about them being much older and the girls still use them without saying "thank you", even beginning to resent the girls. Back to the present, the girls catch the dads and lecture them on not expressing gratitude before it dawns on them that they were guilty of the same thing and they agree to start saying "thanks".
• The George Lopez Show: In "George Thinks Max's Future Is on the Line", George puts Max to work at the factory to teach him a lesson about hard work, but it backfires when Max enjoys it and decides wants to work there forever. While Angie is against the idea, George supports it, since Max is finally doing something that makes him happy. He then has a dream where, 30 years in the future, the entire workforce gets laid off and replaced with robots, leaving an adult Max not knowing what to do now since he has no other acquired skills. After waking up, George goes and tells Max that he needs options and that he should stay in school.
• Gilligan's Island: The episode "Meet the Meteor" features a meteor that rapidly speeds up the aging process crash landing on the island. The last third of the episode focuses on Gilligan's dream of all the island inhabitants as elderly.
• Home Improvement: In the episode "Future Shock", Jill feels strained by Tim's morning routine of exercise, breakfast, and shower time when it interferes with Jill's school days. Jill has a nightmare where both her and Tim being elderly and Tim thoughtlessly ruining Jill's paperwork, which would have gotten her psychology degree (and on top of this, the boys still live with them and haven't aged beyond teenagers). Afterwards, Tim has his own elderly dream where his exercise left him in very good physical shape, but Al and Heidi quit Tool Time and Wilson runs out of advice for Tim. Jill dies after trying to exercise so she can be like Tim. Tim wakes up and realizes he needs to be more flexible for Jill.
• In an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, Reese is close to flunking out of high school and is unemployed, Lois has a nightmare where she and Hal, who are senior citizens, are being terrorized by a middle-aged Reese who demands they cook his meals and do his chores, which leads to Lois demanding that he get a job and graduate high school. When he ignores her demands, she kicks him out, and he lives in the backyard with a hobo, but when she gets hurt trying to evict him, Reese tends to her, and Lois says he can stay but pleads with him to at least look for work and help with expenses if he's not taking his education seriously, and Reese considers it. Reese then has a nightmare, where he's a middle-aged man, being terrorized by an elderly, morbidly obese Lois who demands he does everything around the house. Reese then tells Lois that as soon she recovers she will have to fend for herself because as soon as he starts earning enough money, he'll move out of the house and live his own life.
• Our Miss Brooks: In "The Dream", Miss Brooks dreams she has finally married Mr. Boynton. They had a daughter named Cleo. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Conklin have a son, Osgood Junior. Walter Denton marries Harriet Conklin, they have several children but Walter takes about twenty years to finish high school. Ultimately, many years later, the now elderly Mr. and Mrs. Boynton nee Brooks are still happily married. And still living with Miss Brooks friendly landlady Mrs. Davis, who is well over a hundred years old. The only problem is Cleo, who is running around with the wild Osgood Conklin Junior. Mr. Boynton finds to his horror that Cleo is secretly married to Osgood Junior and they have a child named Osgood Junior Junior. In The Movie Grand Finale Miss Brooks finally gets to marry Mr. Boynton for real.
• Shake it Up: "Reunion It Up" features a double version, with both Rocky and CeCe imagining what their life could be like if their friendship broke up. In Rocky's fantasy, she imagines CeCe went on to be a rich successful dancer (who due to plastic surgery still looks young) whilst due to never having CeCe to push her into doing things outside her comfort zone, she never amounted to anything and is still a background dancer on Shake It Up Chicago. In CeCe's fantasy she imagines that Rocky went on to have an important professional career and become a wealthy businesswoman, whilst without Rocky to be her common sense, she failed at everything she ever tried and is now an elderly homeless woman with no prospects.

Video Games

• In Tomodachi Life, one of the dreams a Mii can have features an elderly version of themself telling the player that they haven't seen each other in fifty years, followed by a short statement about their age or the passage of time.

Webcomics

• Arthur, King of Time and Space had two Sunday strips which were one huge panel showing a contemporary arc character imagining the future. In the first it was Arthur, imagining himself and Guenivere, white-haired, singing "Still the One". The second was a bit more unexpected, even knowing how the story goes, since it showed the generally upstanding Lancelot imagining himself hitting on Guenivere at his best friend's funeral.

Web Videos

• Game Grumps
  • One Game Grumps Animated video animates a scene where Arin thinks "E-Y-E" spells "ewe" and Dan keeps teasing him about it. In the animation, Dan teases Arin and Arin keeps defending himself through the birth of Arin's first child, the Grumps growing up into old men, and even when they're both dead.
  • During their Pokémon FireRed playthrough, Dan and Arin think about what their show will be like in the future, where they're crotchety old men, their show is now available in liquid form, and Dan and Arin fight over how Arin talks to Suzy. Then a normally-aged Barry walks in and asks why they all talk like old men because they're only three years into the future — Dan and Arin just got jaded really quickly.
• An episode of Potter Puppet Pals has Harry sharing some of his strangest dreams and nightmares with the audience. One of his nightmares was simply that he was middled-aged, which he found an absolutely disgusting experience.

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • In "Buster Makes the Grade", Buster is at risk of having to repeat third grade unless he passes an upcoming test. He first imagines himself as a middle-aged man still in Mr. Ratburn's class, with the now-elderly teacher lamenting that "there's always next year." Later, when his friends' attempts to help him study fail, Buster has another fantasy about going to see Arthur, who's become the principal of the school. Principal Arthur tells Buster that they're going to permanently demote him to preschool, which scares him enough to take his classwork seriously and pass the exam.
  • In "Buster's Growing Grudge", Buster gets mad at Binky for stealing a joke he planned to open his history report with, and Arthur worries that he'll never let it go. He then imagines Buster still holding his grudge on his first day of college, as President of the United States, and as an old man.
  • In "Arthur and the Big Riddle", Arthur wins an opportunity to compete in a Jeopardy!-esque game show, and ties with the undefeated champion. When the final question appears, Arthur realizes the answer, but then starts to wonder if winning will doom him to keep appearing on the show forever, imagining himself as an old man still competing. This fantasy costs him the time to answer, giving the champion the win instead.
  • In "Mr. Alwaysright", Buster is infuriated by the Brain being right all the time and imagines himself and the Brain as old men at a retirement home. In his fantasy, the Brain incorrectly guesses it would rain that day, and Buster smugly rubs it in his face that he was finally wrong, only for it to immediately start raining. Buster then wonders if it's possible the Brain will never make a mistake for as long as he lives.
  • In "The Feud", Arthur and D.W. argue over salad dressing. He imagines them as seniors still arguing about the salad dressing, with two robots joining in.
• Big City Greens: In "Fast Foodie", after gaining a lot of weight from a steady diet of fast food, Cricket gets stuck in Burger Clown’s kiddie slide, and pictures himself spending the rest of his life there, ending up as an old man (with a long white beard on his butt, somehow).
• Big Mouth: In "Poop Madness," Nick's anxiety mosquitos instill in him a vision of being mocked for the rest of his life, including an image of Nick as an old man whose penis shrivels into dust because he never got laid.
• Camp Lazlo: In "Float Trippers", the Jelly Beans are hanging precariously over a waterfall after Raj's missing retainer goes over it, and Raj announces that he's going to let go of it. A horrified Lazlo asks Raj if a stinky old retainer is more important than his friends, resulting in him imagining himself on his 100th birthday, with the retainer being his only "friend" at the party.
• The CatDog episode "Shriek on Ice" has The Greaser Dogs imagining themselves continuing their usual daily beatings of CatDog while they're all old and grey.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: "Take This Ed and Shove It" takes place 90 years into the future, where Eddy dreams of becoming old and attempts to return to the past again. Incidentally, this episode was originally meant to be the series finale.
• The Flintstones: In "Rip Van Flintstone", the Flintstones and Rubbles go to Mr. Slate's company picnic, and Fred is in no mood to spend his Sunday there, instead opting to find a secluded spot and sleep. He then has a dream where he wakes up after a 20-year nap to find that everything's changed; Barney's now a millionaire, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm are married, and Wilma barely recognizes him. After Wilma wakes him up, an enlightened Fred vows to make the most of his time and spends the rest of the day having fun at the picnic games.
  Betty: I wonder what got into Fred. He's the life of the party!
  Wilma: I'm not sure, but I'm gonna have him take naps more often.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • In "Mac Daddy", Mac believes Cheese, who is later revealed to be Louise's imaginary friend, to be his second imaginary friend and Bloo's brother. When Mac has Cheese stay at Foster's with Bloo, Bloo is horrified at the aspect of him and Cheese staying at Foster's together forever. One of the nightmares Bloo has depicts him and Mac as old men sitting in rocking chairs as an equally-elderly Cheese says "Look what I made!" and shows them a telephone with a sock taped to it.
  • In "Say it Isn't Sew", Bloo goes with Madame Foster while Mac and the rest of the imaginary friends go to the fair on the Foster's bus, in the hopes that he will get to the fair quicker. Madame Foster takes a very long time at the craft store, and Bloo has to stay in the daycare with Chauncey, a middle-aged man who has been waiting decades for his own mother to finish her errands. Eventually, Bloo falls asleep and has a dream where he's elderly and asks Madame Foster, who is now a living skeleton, if they can leave now. Madame Foster tells him that they won't be leaving ever again.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • After he and Gerald get into a fight in the episode "Part Time Friends", Arnold has a dream where they run into each other on the bus as old men and get onto another fight about what caused the fight that ended their friendship in the first place.
  • In "Stuck In a Tree", Arnold, Eugene, and Harold get stuck in a tree and Harold starts to lose hope of ever getting rescued. Arnold then imagines that it's 70 years in the future and they're still stuck in the tree as old men.
• Inner Workings: Throughout Paul's day, Paul's Brain constantly stymies Paul's Heart from engaging in exciting activities, due to imagining worst-case scenarios that always end in violent death. When the Brain realizes that Paul and the rest of his body aren't happy, it imagines a scenario where they keep taking the safe boring path for the rest of Paul's life, ending with an elderly Paul crawling into his grave without having ever accomplished anything.
• Looney Tunes: In "The Old Grey Hare", Elmer Fudd, frustrated with his inability to catch Bugs Bunny, sits under a tree and is transported into the then-distant year of 2000. Now an old man armed with a laser gun, he goes after an equally aged Bugs Bunny and upon managing to succeed, Bugs sets up a flashback to when they were young children and how it all began. As Bugs feigns his death and digs his own grave, he manages to trick Elmer inside and bury him alive.
• Marinette and Adrien, the two protagonists of Miraculous Ladybug, are victim to a Two Person Love Square. Their Muggle friends are Locked Out of the Loop, however. To them it seems they are in love with each other and just can’t seem to get together. So, at one point they imagine what the lives of the protagonists will be like at old age, long after having settled down. It includes having had at least three children, a dog, and a hamster whose name is arguably the biggest Unreveal in the entire show.
• In one episode of Muppet Babies, "Eight Take Away One Equals Panic," the babies mistakenly think Nanny is going to get rid of one of them. Gonzo imagines what he'll do if it's him, and pictures himself going to live in a garbage dump. He then flashes forward to a hundred years later, when all his friends have been thrown out by Nanny too and come to the dump to join him. In this fantasy, they still look like toddlers, except that they all have long gray beards, even the girls. (It is Gonzo's fantasy, after all.)
• In one episode of Pinky and the Brain, Brain creates a machine that can look into the future, hoping to find out how he becomes ruler of the Earth. To his dismay, he finds his elderly self still at Acme Labs with Pinky, still unsuccessfully trying to take over the world. This prompts a 10-Minute Retirement.
• Recess:
  • In "The Pest," Gretchen has Anxiety Dreams of being pestered by Jeffrey, who has a crush on her, and imagines herself being forced to marry him, having his baby, and finally still being stuck with him in their old age, chained to a rocking chair and trying desperately to escape.
  • In "The Lost Ball," Gus dreams of having died as an old man and approaching The Pearly Gates, only for St. Peter to ban him from heaven because of the ball he lost back in fourth grade.
  • In "A Career to Remember," the Recess Gang attends a career day assembly and are pressured to choosing what job they want when they grow up. Spinelli fears that she doesn't have any work skills and has a dream wherein she's an elderly homeless woman ostracized by all of her friends because she never had a career. Thankfully, one of the would-be assembly speakers (who ran off the stage rather than speak) gives her a pep talk, assuring her that he didn't know what he wanted to do when he was her age, either. Spinelli takes the advice to heart and decides to enjoy being a kid while she can.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart Gets an 'F'", a downplayed version with Bart being an adult with a son, Bart Jr., and the only person who became an elder was Mrs. Krabappel. Bart is held back in the 4th grade well into adulthood with his own son, with both getting in trouble with Krabappel when the son gives Bart the answer to the assignment.
  • In "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie", Homer punishes Bart from seeing the titular film due to Bart neglecting to watch Maggie, causing Maggie to take Homer's car for a joyride and crash it into the Springfield Penitentiary. The episode ends 40 years in the future, where Bart has now become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as a result of Homer's discipline. When Bart sees that The Itchy and Scratchy Movie is playing at the Aztec Theater, he asks the elderly Homer if he can see it, and Homer decides that he can since he seems to have learned his lesson.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Patty Hype", SpongeBob starts his own food stand where he sells Pretty Patties, to no success. As he waits for customers, he falls asleep and dreams that he's still waiting as a middle-aged man, then an old man, and finally dead and buried under a gravestone.
  • In "Squid on Strike", Squidward strikes his job at the Krusty Krab, and SpongeBob joins him, but constantly misinterprets his demands. SpongeBob eventually declares they'll stay on strike "even if it takes forever!", and a horrified Squidward imagines the two of them as old men, still protesting. As a result, he changes his mind and decides to beg Mr. Krabs for his job back.
    Elderly SpongeBob: I bet old man Krabs is gonna break any day! Nyeh, Squidward? Nyeh, Squidward? Nyeh, Squidward? Nyeh, Squidward?
  • "The Secret Box" combines this with a flashback. When SpongeBob mentions how he and Patrick are supposed to be best friends forever, a montage is shown first of Sponge and Pat playing as babies, then as children, then as adults, then as old men, and finally their graves are shown next to each other with their spirits still laughing together.
• The Taz-Mania episode "Bushlad's Lament" is set 62 years in the future, where a now 75-year-old Francis X. Bushlad, still having not completed his manhood ritual, has to capture an equally elderly Taz in order to take his father's place as the Chief of the Mudpeople. When he finally succeeds, the episode's events are revealed to be All Just a Dream of the present-day Francis, who berates the writers for this ending, and points out the unfired Chekhov's Gun of the 16-ton weight that had been dangling over the characters' heads for most of the episode. The writers retaliate by dropping it on him repeatedly.

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