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Rapid Aging - TV Tropes
Short hero, shorter lifespan.
"Great, now time itself is trying to kill me."
A trope used when a character undergoes aging more quickly than normal. It can occur anywhere from a matter of seconds to a matter of weeks.
Sometimes as a result of using evil (or sometimes merely questionable) means to preserve youth, or from an encounter with a dark force that causes immediate aging and deterioration, usually resulting in death soon after. This also isn't unheard of when leaving a Year Outside, Hour Inside setting. Frequently caused by a villain's own mistake or overreaching. Sometimes it happens to the good guys, in which case their comrades must Find the Cure! before it's too late.
If this is used to age a character from infancy or childhood to adulthood, expect that more often than not the work in question will completely ignore the fact that they should have to consume food in order to gain body mass as they grow up or else be stunted; instead, aging will somehow make them grow in size, too, and the extra mass will come out of nowhere in violation of the laws of physics.
If someone was using a Fountain of Youth that was destroyed, expect this to happen as they immediately become whatever age they should be. Not to be confused with Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, a tragic affliction that affects hundreds of characters in daytime Soap Operas a year, usually so as to avoid the hassle of children in the cast or in the plot. Contrast We Are as Mayflies or Time Abyss. Compare Short-Lived Organism, where a being naturally has a short lifespan. Usually a result of Cast from Lifespan, sometimes a result of Clone Degeneration. See also Plot-Relevant Age-Up. Rapid Hair Growth might ensue.
Note that the effect tends to be hard to justify in a strictly science-fictional setting. Hair, in particular, is essentially dead tissue; the grey or fine white hair that we associate with aging appears as old hairs grow and fall out, and new hairs grow in.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- This appears to be what happens to titan shifters in Attack on Titan. They seem to be Younger Than They Look (at least in the cases of Uri, Zeke and arguably Reiner) and since they only have a 13-year lifespan, rapid aging could have something to do with that.
- Berserk features a mundane example of this, with the King of Midland. His actual age is uncertain (a questionably-canon guidebook claims him to be in his early fifties), but for most of the Golden Age arc, he is a fairly handsome man with a full head and beard of black hair and a face that, though lined and clearly on the older side, isn't particularly wrinkled. However, after he finds out that Griffith has slept with his daughter, and the aftermath of it goes horribly sour, it seems as if all the stress of decades of rulership hits him like a truck. Only a year later, he looks less like a man of fifty and more like a man of ninety, with his hair now lank and shock-white, his skin shriveled up, and his strength having completely left him.
- In Bleach, this is the core of Baraggan's power. Even in his unreleased state his touch can age his target enough to make their bones snap like twigs. When he unleashes his full power, anything that fails to get out of the way crumbles to dust in a matter of seconds. And by anything, we mean anything: whether it's people, buildings or even Kido, everything ages to non-existence in Baraggan's presence. Unfortunately for Baraggan, he's only immune to his own power from the outside; when Hacchi teleports his severed, rotting arm inside Baraggan's chest, the latter crumbles away within a minute.
- At the end of the Cowboy Bebop episode "Sympathy for the Devil", Spike shoots Wen with a crystal that contains the energy that prevented Wen from aging. This neutralizes the effect, and he quickly becomes his true age. Since said age is hundreds of years old, Wen dies almost immediately after he's been shot.
- Darker than Black:
- One female Contractor's power is to assume any human appearance, must as the price of using her power age faster than normal.
- Inverted with Amber, who appears to grow younger the more she uses her time-based powers.
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, during her arduous fight against Upper-6 Daki, Nezuko desperately makes herself stronger to counter the beatdown she's receiving, which results in Nezuko's body actually maturing instead of just turning bigger like at the beginning of the series. However, the first usage of this power makes Nezuko revert to a more feral state, visibly taking pleasure in hurting Daki and almost trying to devour humans again; in the Swordsmith Village arc, Nezuko seems to have learned how to control it.
- Doki Doki! PreCure: Mari originally found Aguri as a baby. After getting attacked by a Jikochuu, Aguri suddenly ages up to her current age of ten.
- Rem undergoes this in Dream Hunter Rem. She promptly gets better when the Victim of the Week revives her.
- Ultear in Fairy Tail suffers this as a consequence of using a Dangerous Forbidden Technique to turn back time. Made all the more interesting that she spent decades of her life to turn time back for a single minute. And, that it actually became the turning point in a critical event.
- Wrath suffers one of these after he dies in Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Used as a plot twist towards the end of one episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Section 9 are on an abandoned oil rig converted to a lawless base for a paramilitary group, pursuing a girl named Eka Tokura — recipient of one of the first cybernetic implants — who had been kidnapped by them years ago (the paramilitary group are Technophobes) and now appears to be their leader. There are several questions surrounding the mission, such as the fact the girl in the picture doesn't seem to have aged in the decade or so since her kidnapping. The Major eventually captures the leader and discovers she's not augmented. The old woman who is with her — apparently her mother — is Eka Tokura. Though not clearly explained, it seems her early implants caused this trope as a side-effect, a result of the lack of knowledge of man-machine interactions at the time.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Golden Wind:
- Giorno Giovanna can inflict this onto plants via his Stand infusing them with life energy, as seen when he causes a tree to age and wither away.
- The Grateful Dead, Prosciutto's Stand, unleashes a mist that causes those affected to age in mere seconds. In addition, its ability is heat based, meaning it affects men faster than it does women, as men have naturally higher body heats. However, this also means it's useless when used in cold areas, and ice cubes are an effective way of undoing the effects of the ability.
- In Steel Ball Run, Gyro Zeppeli, through use of the Super Spin, is able to use the Stand, Ball Breaker, which has the ability to rapidly age anything it hits.
- My Hero Academia: One For All causes this to happen to anyone with a Quirk who receives it, with them not living more than 20 years. They realized this as the one wielder who didn't die quickly in battle against All For One, a reclusive hermit named Shinomori Hakage, died of his body essentially reaching an elderly state at the age of 40. Meanwhile, the Quirkless Toshinori Yagi held it for far longer without suffering this side effect. As a result, Izuku Midoriya won't be able to pass One For All on to a 10th successor because it's grown so powerful that it would cause even worse rapid aging in anybody with a Quirk, and even if he can find another person who was born Quirkless like himself and All Might it's also become so powerful that their bodies might be torn apart (Midoriya himself was barely able to withstand the power at first, and One For All is constantly growing in power).
- One Piece:
- This happens to Hody Jones and his crew after the side effects of using E.S.S. take hold. Vander Decken also attempted to use it in the past on Shirahoshi, who was 8 years old at the time, to try to age her up to be physically old enough to marry (even if not chronologically so).
- It is revealed that Shinobu's Rot-Rot Fruit (which normally makes inanimate matter "mature" until it has rotten away) can work on people, making them grow older. Momonosuke asks her to use this power on him to make him into an adult so that he can help Luffy fight Kaido. After Momonosuke becomes 20 years older, his dragon form ages with him, allowing him to become as big as Kaido.
- Jewelry Bonney ate the Age-Age Fruit, which allows her to accelerate and reverse the ages of herself and anyone within her reach at will. She can even age people to death, but the effect reverses immediately while leaving her targets with mental scars from the experience. About the only catch is that it does not work on The Ageless.
- It's later revealed that the Five Elders' Complete Immortality is something Imu granted them by their own hand, and they can revoke it whenever they see fit — shown when Saturn is removed from his position and life as a whole by Imu doing exactly that. He has No Immortal Inertia and ages into a dessicated husk in a matter of seconds, and ends up as nothing but a dusty skeleton in less than a minute.
- In Persona 4: The Animation, Naoto's Shadow has an attack that causes its victims to rapidly age. Yu, Yosuke, and Teddie all fall victim to it before Teddie uses his Persona to restore their vigor and youth.
- In Rave Master, a Child Mage does this to himself via a Dangerous Forbidden Technique called Lost Ages to increase his magical power to fight against one of the most powerful villains in the series. It works, but he becomes an old man over the course of the battle. When he reappears in the epilogue though he's back to his child form.
- Happens to an unfortunate boy in an early chapter of Rosario + Vampire, after he is bitten by the mermaids and has his life energy sucked out.
- Played around in Sailor Moon SuperS with Queen Nehenelina. As the backstory reveals, the one thing she feared the most (as revealed by her Magic Mirror) is losing her beauty to age. Her Start of Darkness (and the corruption of her kingdom into what would become the Dead Moon) was her reaction to this. One of the effects of this was the creation of Zirconia: an "externalization" of her nightmares which allowed Nehelenia to maintain her youthful appearance. After Chibi-Moon undoes her magic with the Golden Crystal, Zirconia is forced back into Nehelenia, revealing that Nehenelia's true appearance is exactly like Zirconia's: an old, withered hag.
- In The Seven Deadly Sins, Gray Lord's special ability, Pacifism, makes it so anyone who kills another in her presence rapidly ages until death. As both Ban and Merlin are The Ageless, they are immune.
- Souji from Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, due to a side effect of his powers. Conversely, his older brother, Souichi, is de-aging.
- In the Space☆Dandy episode "We're All Fools, So Let's All Dance, Baby", several characters age rapidly into old age while dancing to the music from an old vinyl record.
- In the Time Bokan series Zenderman, after Nyaravolta (the real Big Bad, an immortal cat who in the past drank a magic elixir, gaining a long life) is defeated, the Akudaman trio then take his container away from him and drink the elixir. Shortly afterwards, his immortality wears off, and he instantly withers up and dies.
- In Tokyo Ghoul, a Half-Human Hybrid born of a Ghoul and a human being a One-eyed Ghoul (essentially a Ghoul with only one kakugan and implied stronger abilities) is actually extremely rare. The more likely outcome is a child who is more or less human that lacks a Ghoul's need to eat human flesh and has greater physical capabilities... and a sharply decreased lifespan due to their genetics. They internally age at a faster rate than normal humans or Ghouls — they apparently have a far lower Hayflick limit. Arima for example suffers conditions associated with the elderly like glaucoma even though he's only about thirty.
- In Trigun, this is Wolfwood's base state; the experimental treatments that give him a Healing Factor and abnormal strength and reflexes also cause him to age at an accelerated rate, so that when we take him for thirtyish he's actually in his late teens...and given when the treatments were administered, this means he's aged over fifteen years in the last five. Slower than most of these, but quite irreversible.
- In YⱯIBA, the Barrier Maiden Sayaka Mine survives being given a Kiss of Death by Princess Kaguya, but in exchange she gets drained of her Life Energy and is hit with this, along with many other women. She only recovers when Yaiba slays Kaguya in battle.
Asian Animation
- Happy Friends: The Adelians are a species of Energy Beings that age rapidly if they use excessive amounts of energy in one go, becoming noticeably wrinkled like a senior citizen.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The cast ages rapidly in the first episode of Joys of Seasons, where the Earth begins spinning uncontrollably fast when the aliens' spaceship gets caught in its orbit.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who: A possible consequence of being blasted by zigma radiation. In no time flat, one character goes from being 23 to being elderly enough, he soon dies of old age.
Comic Books
- The vast majority of clones in comic books are rapid-aged, usually to match the cloning subject as part of a villain's plot (such as attempting to fool the heroes with a duplicate). It's tied into Clone Angst and Clones Are People, Too since clones are often grown in test tubes, rapidly aged, and imprinted with personalities and memories. Exceptions (such as X-23) do exist, however these are indeed less common than the rapid-aged variety.
- Amulet: After being kept alive for fifty years thanks to his Amulet's Spirit, Max ends up letting himself rapidly age to death after a combination of turning on the Spirit, and being called out by the memory of his deceased best friend.
- Chronos: It's shown that the original Chronos' Deal with the Devil in Underworld Unleashed had nasty side effects. Namely, David looks like he is in his 80s despite being just 45. He can at least transfer that extra age to other people.
- Dark Nights: Metal: The Red Death can infect others with a corrupted version of the Speed Force that makes them age rapidly.
- Alias the Blur, an Anti-Villain from Doom Patrol, is a sentient mirror that eats time away from everyone who looks at it.
- In the EC Comics story "Death Must Come!" (The Crypt of Terror #17), this happens in the end to a man who has been using special transplants to prolong his youth for fifty years.
- The Flash:
- Griffen Grey, a Glory Hound superhero and rival of the Flash, found that his powers were causing him to age rapidly. He deliberately created a disaster so he could go out in one last burst of glory. Instead he died after learning his rival hero was his friend Bart Allen, and apologising to him.
- In contrast to how the Flash has the ability to steal a person's speed, Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, has the ability to steal a person's time. Stealing their time equates to him gaining a longer lifespan, while his target loses years of their life and becomes physically older and frailer in seconds.
- Xerek is a victim of this in The Incredibles (2009).
- Impulse: When Bart was born, his Speed Force connection did this to him. He was physically a teenager when he was chronologically two years old. His grandmother Iris later took him to the present day in order for Wally to "speed-steal" the source of his rapid aging.
- Invincible: The Flaxans age rapidly whenever they invade Earth due to the huge difference in temporal rate between their dimension and the human realm. They keep developing and improving their technology to counteract this drawback, making them a recurrent dimensional threat, exponentially stronger each time.
- Lands of Arran: Alyana reaches adulthood in the span of a few days after her birth.
- In the Legion of Super-Heroes storyline The Great Darkness Saga, the wizards of the Sorcerers' World summon a mysterious baby to help the Legion fight the Master of Darkness. In a matter of hours the newborn baby becomes a toddler, then a young child, and he doesn't stop growing fast until he has turned into a fully adult, white-haired Highfather.
- Lori Lovecraft: This is what happened to Raoul Reichmann's victims when he drains Life Energy from them in Into the Past. If he drains enough, they age to death.
- Lucky Luke: In "The bride of Lucky Luke", Luke is hired to escort a convoy of women to their long-distance husbands. This is explained to him by the organizer, while a decrepit, cackling old man in a rocking chair listens in. Luke:
What's so funny, old-timer?
Old man:
(angry) "Don't call me old-timer,
I'm only thirty!
" (dejected) "But this one time, I escorted a women's convoy..."
- And he kind of has a point, as Luke has to deal with Women Drivers, mice, an escaped convict masquerading as a woman, tornadoes, and Irish cooking.
- In Major Bummer, entering the time stream without protective equipment can cause this, as the protagonist finds out.
- Sandcastle: Everyone on the beach ages a few years every half hour, condensing an entire lifetime into just 24 hours.
- In Sasmira, Bertille starts aging faster as a result of traveling into the past.
- Shade, the Changing Man: The Peter Milligan series had an arc where Shade got back in touch with George, the son he had with his deceased lover Kathy, only to lose him in the end because of George aging at such a fast rate that he dies an old man when his chronological age is barely older than a month.
- Shazam!: The Marvel Family #1 (the first team-up of all the Marvels) features the origin story of Black Adam. He originally gained his powers from the wizard Shazam 5,000 years ago. After he gained his superpowers, he decided to conquer the world, and Shazam sent him into outer space 5,000 light years away. Black Adam spent the next 5,000 years traveling back to Earth at the speed of light, arriving in modern times. The Marvels trick him into saying the word "Shazam", which changes him back into his non-powered form. Unfortunately for him, his accumulated age catches up to him and he ages rapidly, turning into a skeleton.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Dimitri suffers this when stripped of his Enerjak powers, bringing him back to his true 300+ year age. He had to rely on cybernetics to keep him going, eventually being reduced to a cyborg head in a jar.
- In Sonic Super Special #8, Sonic falls victim to this. Snively zaps him with a ray that allows him to run even faster, but at the same time, ages him every time he uses his "Super-super speed". Also qualifies as a variant of Puff of Logic, as he doesn't start rapidly aging until Rotor informs the team of the ray's effects.
- Spider-Man: In Sins Past, it's stated that the Goblin serum the Stacy twins inherited from their father caused them to rapidly age to adulthood despite only being a few years old.
- In Spirou & Fantasio, the Count of Champignac has created a serum that makes people or animals injected with it age 70 years in an hour. Two thugs are tricked into taking it and end up as old men. The count tries to age them back, but decides to stop after turning them back into children.
- Superman:
- Thorgal: It happens several times — once through No Ontological Inertia, once through Reality Warping by the villain and once when a Timey-Wimey Ball (which allowed the villains to drink the same potion of youth over and over) gets broken. Most of the time the effects are utterly horrifying.
- The Warlord (DC Comics): Jennifer Morger cuts off the Vain Sorceress Motalla's access to magical energy. With no more power to keep her going, Motalla instantly ages into an old crone.
- The West Coast Avengers once fought a villain called Halflife, one of three superhumans recruited by Graviton as partners, along with Quantum and Zzzax. who could create an odd variation of it; if she touched a victim, the victim would age halfway to the point where he'd die of old age. Doing it several times in succession could age a victim such that he'd die within minutes. Fortunately, this effect had No Ontological Inertia, and a victim would regain his true age if Halflife was knocked out.
- Wonder Woman:
- Vol 1: In the possible future in which Diana and Etta find a way to derive the "L-3 Vitamin" from the spring water of the Amazon's Fountain of Youth which allows everyone who drinks it to regain and retain their physical youth, thus eliminating death from old age, Etta also develops an anti-L-3 formula which causes the effects of L-3 to rapidly reverse until the imbiber is their actual age.
- Vol 2: When Trevor Barnes sacrifices himself to defeat the shattered god, he ages to geriatric over the course of a sentence and then crumbles into dust.
- Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!: Extant used his powers to age most of the Justice Society members to their proper physical ages, some even to their deaths.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side: "Suddenly, on a national talk show in front of millions of viewers, Dick Clark ages 200 years in 30 seconds."
Fan Works
- In Angel of the Bat III: Da Pacem Domine, Big Bad Kedar has eternal youth granted by the residual remnants of The Spectre in his DNA. Since the Spear of Destiny is a source of Anti-Magic, he at one point exploits this, running himself through with the spear so his body will become more brittle and he can snap his hands out of a pair of shackles. Much later, when Sadie becomes the Spectre’s host, she rips the angel’s remnants from his body, rapidly aging him to one hundred five years old. He dies of fragility and a decaying mind a few months later.
- The Best Case Scenario, if you're being "realistic": Mirio ends up with One for All here, causing him to rapidly aging to death and prompting him to pull a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Codex Equus: Deities are a positive example. Because deities in the Codexverse get Stronger with Age, there are instances where a deity physically ages far past their designated age/rank as a result of certain factors. Said factors can range from absorbing huge amounts of magic (as what happened to Melody/Queen Aoide Mousikós and Rarity/Princess Arcus), to having their divine natures completely altered (as what happened to Moon Ray Vaughoof/Prince Canticum Lunae Cahaya; only by reaching an epiphany and coming to terms with himself was his condition stabilized), becoming divine Reincarnations (as what happened to Tranquil Harbor with Promes, Princess Magicum Ponyland with Plasmatio Equus, and Princess Twilight/Amicitia Sparkle Equestria, King Blue Suede Heartstrings/Caerulus Melodia Equestria-Corporatum, and Prince Bossa Nova Heartstrings/Rubeus Stella Equestria with Mana Equus) or becoming the divine avatar of a concept that the entire galaxy needs/believes in (as what happened to Diamond Tiara/Queen Elpis).
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: In An Awkward Talk, when it's discussed how a "necromantic withering spell" works:
The spell speeds up the organism's metabolism and supercharges its cells, causing them to divide at a vastly accelerated rate, but the influx of nutrients from the environment remains the same." Upon seeing the confused looks her explanation had earned her, she shifted mental gears and put it into words that Usagi would have understood, too. "The spell makes the plant age rapidly, but it doesn't get enough food to fuel its growth, so it dies."
- In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Smurfette's Inner Beauty", Smurfette undergoes rapid aging as Hogatha had cast the Spell Of Syphonia on her to transfer Smurfette's youth and beauty unto herself so she can go on a date with the real Harlequin. Near the end of the story, Empath's True Love's Kiss breaks the spell, restoring Smurfette and Hogatha to their normal appearances.
- A cutaway in Family Guy Fanon's version of "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High" reveals that when Peter and Randall Fargus did a Science Expo one year, the two brought a Time Clock (a machine Fargus made to control age) to it. Needless to say, it resulted in a crowd of old people walking out complaining and Peter and Fargus, who are now grotesquely old, walk out holding canes and trembling. With the obvious implications of how it went.
Old Fargus: [hoarsely] Oh, nelly. I didn't think it would go south that fast.
- In the Pony POV Series:
- In the Dark World Arc, it's revealed Apple Bloom was inflicted with the Sunny Town Curse by Discord and, while able to do a lot of good with immortality (including redeeming Sunny Town and allowing them to all pass on), eventually asked Applejack to break the curse as she couldn't bear the negative effects of it any longer. Applejack does so and she rapidly ages to dust as her true age catches up with her.
- This would happen to any of the Chaos Six in the same arc if they lost their Element of Chaos, as difficult as that is to happen. Twilight begins rapidly aging when Angry Pie takes her Element until Trixie's spirit gives her her own Element as a replacement, and the reformed Pinkie Pie begins aging rapidly, though much slower, after her Element is damaged and eventually dies from it, but not before using her remaining time to help as much as possible.
- Vow of Nudity:
- In a particularly bizarre case of Utility Magic, Fiora the Forest Witch bypasses a brew's fermentation period by using a water elemental for the solvent and casting bestow curse on it to instantly age it up by two weeks.
- In one adventure, Kay'la fights a tomb raider in an empty crypt supposedly housing the most valuable of treasures. She realizes its 'treasure' is time when the raider visibly grows old and dies of old age mid-duel, with her only escaping the same fate due to her elven longevity.
- Justified in you can only use your own. Since Chara never fully recovered from the buttercup poisoning, the years hit them really hard.
Films — Animation
- Ledina, the Vain Sorceress main antagonist from Doraemon: Nobita's the Legend of the Sun King, ages several decades within seconds after Nobita and friends botch her immortality ritual. Cue Doraemon and the others — and the entire Mayana army — gasping at Ledina's true face.
- Played for Laughs (albeit dark laughs) in Epic (2013): Grub:
What's it like, having such a
short life cycle
?
Fruit Fly: [little kid voice]
It's great, mister! When I grow up,
[man voice]
I'm going to
[old man voice]
wish I had done more with my life, sonny.
[dies]
- Hercules (1997): Near the end of the movie, Hercules jumps into the River Styx to get Meg's soul back, and being a river that only dead people are supposed to be in, it rapidly ages Hercules as he swims through it in a manner that could easily be Nightmare Fuel. However, this selfless act is what causes Hercules to get his godhood back, so he is unable to be killed when the Fates try to cut his thread of life, and he emerges from the River with his body restored to its prime, along with the divine light that gods have.
- Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle, as a result of an encounter with the Witch of the Waste.
- The villainess in The Hugga Bunch ages and dies in a matter of seconds when access to the "Young-Berry" tree is cut off. Aesop: You can't hold off death forever.
- In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Johnny Quick became a victim of this when he used his superspeed powers to create a portal for Batman to cross over into the Earth-Prime dimension in order to stop Owlman from destroying all reality. He ends up dying from old age soon after.
- Old Age from Legends of Valhalla: Thor gets her namesake because fighting her causes Thor to rapidly age.
- Princess Mononoke: Plants rapidly grow and die in the Forest Spirit's footsteps.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has an infamously creepy scene of the evil queen Humanshifting herself into a hag as a disguise.
- In Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam, Tawny shows up after Billy and Clark defeat Black Adam and tells him that as punishment for his crimes, he's going to be transported so far from Earth that it will take 10,000 years for him to fly back. Faced with this fate, Black Adam chooses to say "Shazam" and turn back to his powerless form, which instantly ages into a decrepit corpse.
- This happens in Tangled when Flynn cuts Rapunzel's hair, thus making its magic power disappear. Since the source for keeping Mother Gothel young is gone, she ages to the point where she becomes a pile of dust in less than a minute. Being wrapped in her cape during her fall serves as Gory Discretion Shot.
- In Yellow Submarine, this happens to The Beatles and Admiral Fred in the Sea of Time — more than strictly necessary to overcome that Fountain of Youth effect.
Films — Live-Action
- In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bowman undergoes this prior to his rebirth as the Star Child, as opposed to his age regression in the novel.
- Abbott and Costello Go to Mars: The Venusians have acquired immortality and eternal youth by unknown means. However, after being angered by the men's behavior and exiling them, Queen Allura places a curse on her citizens so they'll lose their youth if they kiss a man. When one woman then kisses Orville before he heads off-world, she rapidly assumes her true age, freaking him out.
- The clone troopers from Attack of the Clones are engineered to age twice as fast as normal humans. This way, they can be mass-produced as cannon fodder.
- In Bad Girls from Valley High, the three Alphalady Villain Protagonists suffer Rapid Aging. They believe that it's a curse wrought upon them by the ghost of a girl they murdered a year ago. It turns out the girl's grandmother did it using chocolates laced with a biological weapon. The Token Good Teammate who regretted the deed is the only one who avoids aging to death since she only ate two of the chocolates.
- Beetlejuice (1988): The Maitlands are summoned by Otho, but he accidentally casts an exorcism that causes them to quickly age to a dried-out mummy state.
- Ben 10: Race Against Time: Eon ages the Plumber guarding him in his Cryo-Prison to near-death, leaving him in a dissect green-greyish zombie-like state "in the blink of an eye".
- Curse of the Fly: Due to past experiments with teleportation, Martin has developed a condition that causes him age rapidly, which he holds back with special pills.
- The Dark Crystal:
- Whenever creatures are drained of their essence and free will by the Skeksis, they appear older than they really are.
- After getting some drops of her essence drained before the draining machine gets stopped thanks to the animals jumping at the Skeksis Scientist, Kira appears slightly older than before, being weakened and looking paler. She gets her essence back, but not all the effects are reversed. Her later resurrection by the urSkeks heals her back to normal.
- At the end of Doctor Strange (1978), the evil entity that Morgan le Fay works her punishes her for her failure to turn Doctor Strange to their side by aging her into an old hag on the spot. However, she's seen shortly afterwards on Earth, young again and no worse for wear.
- The Syfy Channel Original Movie Do Or Die 2003 features a world where a percentage of the population has RAD, or Rapid Aging Disease. It can be controlled and slowed with the drug Anzinol, and the 'clean' area infiltrators use Anzinol pumps. If a pump is destroyed, though, aging happens in seconds.
- In Excalibur (1981), Morgana uses the magic she stole from Merlin to keep her looking young and beautiful. However, on the eve of the final battle, Merlin (in dream form) tricks her into repeating The Charm of Making, which ages her to an ugly old hag, so much that her son, Mordred, kills her on sight.
- In The Fly II, a Half-Human Hybrid protagonist is a fully mature man at age of 5. He also has no need to sleep. And then he hatches.
- In Forever Young, the main character is cryogenically frozen for several decades. After he's thawed out, his age quickly catches up to him. It's all good, though; by the end of the film, he's the same age as, and reunited with, his love interest, whose apparent death 50 years ago triggered his decision to be frozen in the first place.
- In The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, this is the price Koura pays for using black magic. Every time he does so (and at least once when a creation of his is destroyed), he visibly ages by several years. When Sinbad first meets him, Koura looks to be in his early thirties. By the climax, he looks closer to seventy than sixty. Then he gets his youth back courtesy of the first golden tablet...
- In Hercules Against the Moon Men, when Hercules stops the resurrection of the queen of the Moon Men near the end of the film, her body rapidly ages and decays into dust. Joel: [imitating the Moon Queen]
This film has aged me...
Crow:
I know how she feels!
- In The Hunger, this is the fate of any human who is turned into a vampire by the immortal Miriam. Upon being turned, their bodies and beauty are unravaged by time so long as they feed once a week and get enough sleep, but once about 300 years have passed, the decay sets in no matter what they do to stave it off — and worse, they can't die. For her current lover John, it takes just two hours for him to age fifty years, and it just goes on from there...
- Happens to everyone on board in The Ice Pirates, as the ship passes through an area of warped time.
- In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Knight Templar who guards the Holy Grail warns that "As the true grail will bring you life, a false grail will take it from you." Donovan dramatically illustrates this when he drinks from the wrong Grail — he starts out looking like Emperor Palpatine, then starts to resemble a badly emaciated Doc Brown, then he goes the full mummy/zombie and Skeletor look, and at this point Indy puts him out of his misery by throwing him back against a wall and he disintegrates on impact. Even as the flesh on his bones is visibly rotting away and he loses his eyes, he's still aware of what's happening to him and screaming and groaning for someone, anyone, to help him.
- The Invitation (2022): After Evie stabs him, Deville's aged several decades physically as a result within moments.
- Jack (1996): The titular protagonist is a 10-year-old boy who has a disease causing him to age four times the normal human rate.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: This happens to Dorian Gray when he looks at his portrait.
- The 1945 film The Man in Half Moon Street and its 1959 Hammer remake The Man Who Could Cheat Death both feature a man using glandular transplants to extend his life. He ages rapidly when he can no longer get them.
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: Jane is pregnant all through the film, but as the credits roll not long after its climax, her son appears as a 4 or 5 year-old boy.
- Old is about a group of people getting trapped on a beach that causes people to rapidly age.
- Once Bitten: Once the Countess fails to get Mark's virginal blood in time, she rapidly ages, becoming a visibly elderly woman.
- In Snow White (1987), the Evil Queen's Magic Mirror starts breaking after she hurls a jar at it in a rage when seeing Snow White's still alive. With every crack in the glass, the Queen's dress falls apart and she gets progressively older. By the time she reaches Snow White and the prince, she's reduced to a toothless hag and laughed out of the wedding. As she leaves, the mirror finally explodes into pieces with the Queen's body shattering and reduced to dust.
- In Snow White & the Huntsman, Queen Ravenna has remained youthful long beyond her natural time, but when her magic power starts slipping, her age starts to catch up to her. She regains youth and magic by draining years from a young woman's life, causing extreme rapid aging to the victim.
- In Space Jam: A New Legacy, Chronos, a member of the Goon Squad who can manipulate time, gets subjected to this when Granny activates his time powers.
- Spock goes through this in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, as a consequence of being resurrected by the Genesis planet. Thankfully, his aging stops when he looks like Leonard Nimoy again.
- The Substance: 50-year-old Elisabeth takes the titular drug, creating a younger body, which she names Sue, for her to inhabit. The catch is that she can only inhabit that body every other week, as stated by one of the rules: "You switch every 7 days without exception." She soon discovers that the consequence for breaking that rule and staying in Sue's body longer is that her original body ages at a drastic rate. However Elisabeth's self-hatred is so strong that she can't help but stay as Sue longer and longer. In the later part of the movie, she stays as Sue for three uninterrupted months, resulting in her original body looking like that of a particularly decayed centenarian.
- Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl: Adele quickly ages into decrepitude at the end when Beth takes her youth, while her younger sister Dori starts taking care of her (just as Adele's done with her aunt prior).
- In The Thirsty Dead, anyone who had partaken of the Elixir of Life will start rapidly aging if they move more than a certain distance away from Raoul's head (known as the 'Circle of Age'). Once started, the process is irreversible.
- The Time Machine (2002) has an alternate means of accomplishing this. When using the titular machine, the occupant(s) are surrounded by a bubble of light which defines the limit if what travels with the machine, but nothing prevents anything from falling outside of it, in which case they become vulnerable to the time stream's influence. This is demonstrated early when Hartigan drops his locket of his fiancee and catches it outside the bubble, which causes it as well as his exposed hand to begin aging separate from the rest of his body. He later weaponizes it against the Uber-Morlock, essentially forcing his enemy to die by aging forward in real time with no way to escape.
- One of the unfortunate effects of too much time travels in Les Visiteurs: Bastille Day. 12th century knight Godefroy and his squire Jacquouille age when they're stuck during The French Revolution and tumors grow in Jacquouille's throat and Godefroy's nose. For a more practical behind-the-scenes explanation, Bastille Day came out 18 years after the second film, Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time, and the actors have aged visibly, hence why this trope is used.
- The Hong Kong film Wait 'Til You're Older, starring Andy Lau, featuring a child protagonist who desperately wishes to grow up, and getting his hands on a prototype experimental potion that causes him to grow up overnight into Andy Lau. (Said potion also spilled on a small shrub, which turns into a gigantic tree whose roots spills into the middle of the streets the next morning, much to the surprise of the public).
- The curse placed on Kassandra by the title villain of Warlock (1989) causes her to age twenty years each night. Since she was about twenty years old already, this gives her and the warlock-hunting hero only three or four days to find and defeat the Warlock before she dies of old age.
- Wendy: When a Lost Boy (or Girl) loses faith in the Mother, their youth is lost, causing them to age very quickly into old people.
- In When Evil Calls, Karen has has a crush on her teacher Mr. Dale, but he tells her that so long as she is his student, he will regard her as a child. She wishes to be older, and the wish ages her into decrepitude.
Gamebooks
- In the first Sorcery! book, The Shamutanti Hills, you come across an old man stuck in a tree, who gave you a page from a spell book in return for helping him, saying he got the page from a sorceress. Later in the adventure, you come across that very sorceress, whom you can return the page to — according to her, a young thief stole that page from her a week ago, but she managed to cast an aging spell on him as he flees.
- Vault of the Vampire: The final battle against Katarina Heydrich ends with Katarina aging several centuries in seconds upon defeat, where she goes from a drop-dead gorgeous vampire sorceress to a dried-up and plain dead old crone.
Literature
- A man uses the power of a demon to do this to Wesley in the first story of the Angel short story collection "The Longest Night". He was dying of an incurable illness and got desperate to see his son grow up. So, he'd been stealing victims' years for himself at first, so he could stay young, and then when Wes comes to investigate, his years are transferred into the man's son, who rapidly ages, allowing the father to see him briefly as an adult, and then de-ages, returning Wesley to his young state, once Angel arrives and breaks the spell.
- Animorphs: Due to Hork-Bajir biology, Toby Hamee is a few inches short of fully grown in the space of two years, and fully adult just a few years after that. And thanks to her seer genes, she is capable of speaking clearly just a few months after being born.
- In Maurice Dantec's Cyberpunk novel Babylon Babies (adapted as Babylon A.D.), a woman is secretly infected with a viral weapon that kills by attacking the genes that control the 'cellular clock'; within minutes hundreds are killed as their internal organs die of old age.
- Book of Swords: When the Sword named Soulcutter is drawn it causes its wielder to age at a highly accelerated rate.
- In one of the Captain Future books, a gang was selling water from a radioactive spring which made people young. Too long without the water, and the person died from rapid aging. There was actually an attempt to give a scientific explanation; the body no longer has the resources and regeneration of a young person, but continues expending them like one.
- In Changes, the entire Red Court is wiped out by a ritual. Those who were only half Red Court are cured... but time also catches up to them. Most of them age and die immediately, but some hadn't been infected for long, and survive.
- The Chronicles of Dorsa: The woman who's the host of Ty'Tsana the second time almost instantly ages to an ancient crone when she's exorcised. It also happens to other shadow-infected people like her when exorcised too.
- The Conjurer Princess: As a result of the ritual that gives her magic, Lylene ends up aging about fifty years in seven to eight hours. There's a way to undo it, but it requires making someone else age in her place.
- The Dark Artifices: Ash grew up twice as quickly in Faerie, where time is a mess, then spent five years in Thule, while three days only pass concurrently at present. At the end of the series, he looks like a fifteen-year-old, despite being chronologically a five-year-old child.
- Dorothy Must Die: This happens to Mombi in the Queen of Oz while trying to disguise Ozma.
- This happens to Eppon in Galaxy of Fear. He goes from baby to young adult to slavering monster in hours.
- In Gelsomino in the Land of Liars, Benvenuto ages rapidly every time he sits or lies down. He often sits down to help other people in need and, in the biggest Tear Jerker moment of the book, ends up dying at the age of ten while physically being in his late seventies.
- The Haunted Mask II: After Steve puts on an old man mask, he slowly starts turning into an old man, has a hard time getting around and has cravings for oatmeal.
- In Homecoming (Drizzt), Yvonnel Baenre II was infused with the memories of the original Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre. As a result, she was born a self-aware and powerful priestess and mage. Yvonnel II grew weary of her infanthood quickly and used an older version of the Haste spell with the side-effect of aging the caster one year with each use to become a beautiful young woman.
- The Last Continent: Under the unforgiving high background magical field of Fourecks, this happens to young Wizard Ponder Stibbons. He goes from (presumed) middle twenties to over ninety in seconds — and gets a taster of what it will be like to be one of the old men of the Faculty. He does not like it very much.
- In The Last Day of Creation by Wolfgang Jeschke, on arriving back in the past, the time travellers discover things have Gone Horribly Wrong and their expedition has been scattered across decades. This only sinks in for the protagonist when he encounters someone he knew a couple of days before who was in his thirties, who is now a senile old man.
- In the Left Behind book Glorious Appearing, Nicolae Carpathia ages into a decrepit corpse of a man whenever Lucifer leaves his body.
- In one Lord Darcy story, a character has a spell put on him that trades 'thirty years of life for thirty years of youth''; when the spell runs out, his years catch up to him.
- The Lord of the Rings:
- Bilbo didn't age at all between finding the One Ring at the age of 51 and giving it up at the age of 111. Even after that, Bilbo doesn't begin to age again until the Ring is destroyed; after he's passed it on to Frodo, he remains as he was when he parted with it, and may have stayed that way indefinitely so long as the Ring continued to exist (even Gandalf seems not to know for sure, since Bilbo's situation is unique); after its destruction he becomes, in Galadriel's words, "ancient now, according to his kind".
- It is believed that this would happen to all Ring-Bearers after the One Ring is destroyed, but it is never really proven, as apart from the Nazgûl all the Ring-Bearers still living when the One Ring is destroyed are either immortal or haven't held their Ring long enough for it to make a noticeable difference to their apparent age (With Hobbits becoming legal adults at 33, jumping to 52 would not be a significant age gap. The Nazgûl jumping from various ages to 3,000 would explain why they all disappeared with their master).
- For Gollum, the implication is far worse. Being a Fish out of Temporal Water by 600 years, he instinctively knows what will happen to him if the Ring passes. His last plea to Sam is actually for one more drop of life. He will become dust when the ring is gone.
- In Lost Horizon, it is implied that this happens to Lo-Tsen.
- Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: At the end of the first book, this happens to the Lord Ruler after his Immortality Inducers are removed, causing him to age a thousand years in a matter of seconds. The heroine puts him out of his misery. This is due to the method of immortality used and the Anatomy of the Soul in this universe. He survived by compounding his youth infinitely, keeping himself eternally young. But souls have an Identity, and part of that is age. His soul knew how old he was supposed to be, so he had to stretch less and less youth farther and farther. There are ways to manipulate Identity in this magic system, which result in a far more efficient and sustainable form of immortality, but unfortunately, he didn't seem to be aware of them.
- In No. 6, this is the fate of the hosts of mutated parasitic wasps. Whenever the wasp hatches, the unfortunate victim ages rapidly and dies after looking in horror at their old, wrinkled features.
- In Old Man Khottabych, the heroes release the titular genie's Jerkass brother, who states he will kill them, and tells them to choose the manner of their death. One of the boys tries to worm out by saying he wishes to die of old age... guess what spell the genie casts.
- Double-subverted in The Picture of Dorian Gray. At first, Dorian's portrait does all the aging for him, letting him live his life as a gallivanting charmer — but when he can't take the portrait's honesty anymore, he stabs it, which causes him to age instantaneously to his true age, and he dies as a decrepit, hideous old man.
- The witch in "Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun" grows up very fast and becomes an adult woman only six weeks after being born.
"Little Prince," says he, "today you have a sister, and a bad one at that. She has come because of your father's prayers and your mother's wishes. A witch she is, and she will grow like a seed of corn. In six weeks she'll be a grown witch, and with her iron teeth she will eat up your father, and eat up your mother, and eat up you too, if she gets the chance."
- Repairman Jack: In The Tomb, after Kolabati loses her anti-aging necklace, age starts catching up very quickly. Donning it again, however, return the wearer to youth.
- The Rising of the Shield Hero: Demihumans age differently from humans, growing as they become stronger and level up. Raphtalia, who begins the story looking like a ten-year-old girl, becomes a young woman in her early twenties after a few weeks of killing monsters.
- She has this happening to Ayesha at the end, when she tries to renew her immortality and instead undoes it; although she promises she'll come back. She does.
- The Ship Who...: In The Ship Who Searched, Moira was born with a form of progeria that rapidly aged her body. Her brain was well developed, making her a candidate for the shellperson program. Her parents held off for a time trying to find a cure, but agreed to have her encapsulated when she was about four.
- Slayers: Halcyform, a wizard who made a deal with Seigram for immortality, suffers this when Gourry manages to destroy the Pledge Stone that kept Halcyform immortal. Before he can age completely, he blows up himself, his dead lover Rubia, and his mansion to bits.
- In "The Sleeper and the Spindle", the villainess ages and crumbles into dust in seconds at the end, after the enchantment to restore her youth is broken.
- In Something Wicked This Way Comes, this happens to Mr. Cooger when Will causes the magical merry-go-round to spin forward so rapidly while he's on it that he can't get off in time to avoid aging to a nearly-dead mummified husk of a two-hundred-year-old man. The other carnival members manage to keep him alive by pumping him full of electricity, but he still disintegrates into dust close to the book's climax.
- In Son, Trademaster's bargain for transporting Claire to her son is taking her youth, which rapidly turns her into an old woman. She gets better when he is defeated.
- In Stardust, the witch assigned to pursue and kill a falling star (who are human-looking in this universe) eats the saved-up remnant of the heart of the last star she and her two sisters killed which restores her youth and beauty. However, this remnant gives her only a limited amount of magical power and the more magic she uses, the more her restored youth fades, and she ends up using so much magic that she winds up appearing even older than she was at the start of the book (though she doesn't die).
- In The Tale of Lost Time by Yevgeny Shvarts, four lazy children age about seventy years overnight after four wizards curse them and steal their life years. When they manage to reverse the curse, the wizards, in turn, turn from kids to decrepit old people in a minute. The Aesop is that you won't notice your own aging if you waste your time pointlessly.
- Happens to Thursday's former boyfriend, Filbert Snood, in the Thursday Next series. During his work for the Chronoguard, he accidentally got caught outside of time and space and rapidly aged sixty years in only a matter of minutes. Unable to face her, Filbert disappeared from Thursday's life, only for them to end up working on a case together, where he pretends to be his own father.
- The Time Police novels by Jodi Taylor have a couple of interesting variations.
- In Margaret Peterson Haddix's novel Turnabout, the protagonists are given a drug to reverse the aging process. A second drug is supposed to stop it altogether at a given age, but instead causes those who take it to age and die in seconds.
- The Twilight Saga: Renesmee begins aging rapidly as soon as she is born, looking like a little girl in a matter of months. Apparently, she will keep this up for about seven years, at which point she'll look about seventeen, then stay that way forever.
- Wizard of Yurt: King Haimeric is in fact much younger than he looks. However, he aged rapidly in a mere four years due to a spell. Daimbert's first task is to find out who's behind it.
Live-Action TV
- Half of the premise of the Canadian show 2030CE is that the world is afflicted with Progressive Aging Syndrome, a disease that causes aging to accelerate exponentially as one approaches their 30th birthday; they typically don't live much longer than that.
- The 4400: In "The New World", it is revealed that Isabelle's Plot-Relevant Age-Up (as seen at the end of the preceding episode "Mommy's Bosses") caused her mother Lily to age just as rapidly, going from 29 to about 75 overnight. Dr. Burkhoff discovers that mother and daughter are connected and that Lily grows weaker as Isabelle grows stronger. Lily develops arthritis, diabetes, emphysema and various other conditions that Shawn is able to heal but she is on borrowed time and she knows it. She dies shortly after she and Richard arrive at the cabin where they lived in the months leading up to Isabelle's birth.
- Alphas: One episode features a speedster whose ability causes everything about him to move rapidly all the time. Unfortunately, his includes his aging. Though only in his twenties, he appears to be about middle-aged.
- American Horror Story: Coven: In the first episode, Fiona Goode drains the life out of a doctor when he decides to resign and insults her age. This causes him to rapidly age to death, allowing Fiona to temporarily appear younger.
- Blake's 7: This happens to the villain in both "Rescue" and "Orbit". The former has a The Picture of Dorian Gray plot, so the villain ages and disintegrates to dust after his death. In the latter, exposure to Hoffal's radiation for a millionth of a second was enough to age a young research assistant into an old man, who later uses it to kill off his abusive partner in a Murder-Suicide.
- Birds of Prey (2002): In "Three Birds and a Baby", the Birds find a baby who turns out to be a vat-grown super-soldier prototype, designed to age into maturity (and beyond) over a series of days.
- Doctor Who:
- Earth: Final Conflict: Liam Kincaid grows from a baby to 30-some man in less than a day. Given that his father (one of them) is an Energy Being, it is possible this was intentional. Liam is also perfectly mature, although certain social facts (such as why women laugh when talking about sex) don't make sense to him.
- An episode of Eureka had Fargo's grandfather awaken from cryo-freeze and then at the end of the episode underwent Rapid Aging as his body suddenly tried to catch up. It was implied that this would eventually lead to his death if not stopped. They did manage to stop, but not reverse the process.
- Griffen Grey in The Flash (2014) has accelerated aging as a side effect of his superhuman strength, just like his comics counterpart.
- Fringe: Some years ago, as told in "The Same Old Story", a program was started to create test-tube soldiers. Part of the soldiers' design was rapidly increased growth. Unfortunately, they were unable to stop the aging process once the soldiers got old enough and the program was eventually shut down. Years later, it's discovered that one of the soldiers has been surviving by stealing people's pituitary glands. At one point, he inadvertently impregnates a woman and passes on his condition to the fetus. The child dies of old age within five hours.
- Gilligan's Island: In "Meet the Meteor", a Magic Meteor lands on the island. Anyone near the meteor ages at an accelerated rate.
- In Gotham, one of the Arkham inmates who Professor Strange experiments on develops the ability to inflict this. Among his victims is Ivy Pepper, who goes from a child to a young woman.
- This happens in Heroes to Adam Monroe when Arthur Petrelli steals his ability to instantly heal. As he's 400 years old, Adam ages into dust within seconds.
- Happens with Amber in House of Anubis as her hex from Senkhara.
- One Monster of the Week in Kamen Rider Double has the ability to cause rapid aging, resulting in Shotaro getting a few scenes as an old man.
- Killjoys: A newborn infant ages rapidly to his early teens before his condition is stabilized. In a nod to actual biology, he eats a ton of food rather than just gaining mass from an unknown source.
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker: In "The Youth Killer", a woman makes a bargain with the goddess Hecate. She sacrifices young, perfect people by magically causing them to age rapidly until they die of old age, and in return Hecate grants her eternal youth.
- Luna Nera: Antalia's spell to hide Valente causes her to rapidly age, and she becomes Natalia.
- An organism created by a scientist in MacGyver (1985) causes plants and animals to rapidly age. This isn't so bad for plants, since it just brings them to maturity faster, but isn't so good for animals since they die of old age in a few minutes.
- Mayfair Witches: Once he's reborn in a human body, Lasher ages from infant to a teenager after just a few days.
- Merlin (2008) has a magical version, with Merlin casting a spell on himself that transforms him into his 80-year-old self, known to everyone else as 'Dragoon'.
- Played with in a scam in Mission: Impossible, as the IMF team convinces a man that he's found a "fountain of youth". Casey claims to actually be over a century old to the mark and needs to drink from the water every 48 hours. They then give him makeup so he believes he's becoming younger. When the man's bosses naturally don't believe his story, he tries to prove it by denying Casey the water. Casey appears to collapse and secretly sprays her face to remove a mask which reveals another mask that makes her look like she's aged decades before "dying."
- Motherland: Fort Salem: Alder owes her youth to her entourage of biddies, witches who age in dog years to prolong their general's lifespan.
- The Orville: In "Old Wounds", scientists invent a device that fires a beam that accelerates time in the area it hits. One of the scientists is knocked into the beam and ages about 100 years in 10 seconds, which kills her.
- The Outer Limits (1963): In "The Guests", several people have been trapped for decades in a house without aging. If they leave the house they will quickly age until they are at their true age and die.
- Painkiller Jane: One Monster of the Week is a woman who drains the youth from others to maintain her own.
- Power Rangers Zeo: Billy ends up suffering from this as a delayed side-effect of the regenerator he used to restore himself to his teens in the previous season. He has to go to Aquitar for doses of water from their Fountain of Youth so that he won't die, and he winds up staying there.
- Stargate-verse:
- Stargate SG-1:
- In "Brief Candle", all of the inhabitants of a planet age at over 200 times that of normal humans as their life span is only 100 days. Goa'uld nanobots turn out to be responsible, and Jack gets infected with them causing him to age even faster, though he's back to normal by the next episode.
- Adria, the Dark Messiah of the Ori born to Vala, aged into an adult within a day, but then her aging resumed to normal after that.
- This happens to anyone the Wraith feed on in Stargate Atlantis. They can also reverse it, as demonstrated by Todd on Colonel Sheppard.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- In "The Deadly Years", several of the Enterprise crew (including Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty) come down with a form of radiation poisoning that causes them to age rapidly (about ten years per day).
- In "Wink of an Eye", when Compton is slightly hurt during his scuffle with Kirk and the Scalosians due to having been only recently accelerated, the cell damage causes rapid aging and death.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- "Unnatural Selection" recycles the script of "The Deadly Years". The Enterprise encounters starship USS Lantree with a crew that all died from old age, despite most of the crew being in their mid 30s or younger. Traveling to the genetic research station the Lantree just visited, Doctor Pulaski aged rapidly due to an accident that exposed her to a retrovirus that re-wrote not only her DNA but also the DNA of the Lantree crew. After figuring out how to reverse the effects of the retrovirus the Enterprise scuttles the Lantree to keep the retrovirus from spreading.
- In "Man of the People", Deanna Troi starts to age rapidly, and grow violently paranoid, when she's unknowingly used by a villain as a psychic receptacle of negative emotion. When the effect is turned back on the villain, he shrivels up and dies within a few seconds.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- This happens to Doctor Bashir in "Distant Voices", although it turns out that the whole aging thing is all in his mind (literally) because he was in a coma.
- Jem'Hadar soldiers have a very rapid "childhood", going from birth to combat-ready in three days. While it's never stated what constitutes death by natural causes for them, they're considered retirement-age by 20, with no Jem'Hadar living to 30.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Thaw", Harry Kim is trapped in a Circus of Fear and a Monster Clown quips that Harry doesn't know what's going on but the two people who'd been his (the clown's) prisoners for a while did, because "you're new and they're old", so he decides to make Harry "old" by literally turning him into an old man. It's only for a few seconds though.
- Supernatural:
- "The Curious Case of Dean Winchester" features an affable Irish witch named Patrick, a legendary gambler who plays cards for years. He doesn't always win, but he wins enough to have kept himself young and dapper for centuries, leaving prematurely aged corpses when people bet too high. Bobby Singer tracks him down and plays him in hopes of de-aging enough to fix his spinal injury and get out of the wheelchair but loses twenty-five years. Dean tries to help him and loses fifty note He bet fifty, but immediately sacrificed half to bring Bobby back to his natural age. He then gambled the remaining 25 in the hopes of winning and thus staying the same age, but lost., whereupon they switched actors and Dean for some reason developed a Great Depression-era accent.
- Sam wins it all back, although the syphilis he got for annoying Patrick had to be treated in the normal medical fashion. Notably, Patrick is one of the foes they don't begin to defeat, although in his case it's not because they couldn't contrive to, say shoot him in the face with a little stealth, but because they failed the first few times and any further attempts would feel like bad sportsmanship. Being Affably Evil can be useful.
- His girlfriend is apparently only about a hundred and twenty; and gets Patrick to beat her at poker and let her die because she had to watch her daughter reach a great age and die and has decided Who Wants to Live Forever?. Presumably said daughter declined Patrick's years, since he'd clearly have given them quite willingly.
- "The Slice Girls" focuses on the Amazons. These women find men to impregnate them, and then bear daughters who become full grown teenagers in a matter of days. Dean's Amazon daughter, Emma, doesn't survive the episode.
- The nephilim Jack goes from being an infant to a young man almost immediately after being born because he senses that he's vulnerable as an infant. He still retains childhood innocence for a long time, however, despite being a super-powered being.
- Swamp Thing (1990): In "The Living Image", Dr. Anton Arcane tries to get the bio-restorative formula from Swamp Thing by hiring a woman to impersonate Alec Holland's deceased wife Linda Holland in order to manipulate Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing turns out to see right through the deception and instead gives a different formula, which upon injection causes Arcane's spy to transform into an elderly crone within seconds.
- Torchwood: In "Dead Man Walking", Martha Jones is attacked by the Resurrection Gauntlet, which drains her life energy and ages her to the point that she is mistaken by doctors as being in her 80s when she isn't. Thankfully, she is reverted back to her normal age after Owen defeats Death.
- The Twilight Zone (1959):
- The title character of "Long Live Walter Jameson" has lived thousands of years due to an alchemical potion. When he's mortally wounded, the potion effect wears off. He is subject to accelerated aging and ends up being Reduced to Dust.
- In "Queen of the Nile", a woman uses a magical scarab beetle to drain the youth of men and give it to herself. As a result, the men age rapidly and die.
- The Twilight Zone (1985):
- In "Aqua Vita", the 40-year-old Christie Copperfield has the appearance of a woman in her 70s after she neglects to drink her daily glass of Aqua Vita.
- In "Our Selena is Dying", Debra Brockman, who is in her late 20s, has her Life Energy drained by her aunt Selena. Afterwards, she appears to be in her 70s. The same is true of her cousin Diane, whose youth was drained by her own mother Martha.
- In the UFO (1970) episode "Identified", after a UFO is shot down, one of the aliens aboard it is captured. After he's exposed to the Earth's atmosphere, he starts aging rapidly and quickly dies.
- The Vampire Diaries has a low-key example with Katherine, who was formerly Immortal and over five-hundred years old but is turned human by a serum. The serum doesn't age her rapidly, but having it drained by Silas causes her age to catch up with her, and she starts showing signs of old age and will die soon, although it is over a few months rather than instantly as in other examples.
- In the Warehouse 13 episode "Age Before Beauty", the Artifact of the Week induces Rapid Aging on fashion models, forcing Pete and Myka to go undercover in the industry.
- Wizards of Waverly Place: This happens to vampires when they get scratched by werewolves.
- The X-Files: In "Død Kalm", Mulder and Scully board an abandoned ship where people (themselves included) rapidly reach old age. Scully traces the effect to contaminants in the seawater.
Music
- The music video for Stone Sour's "Bother" features two copies of the singer Corey Taylor, one of them ages rapidly and disappears.
Myths & Religion
- A Japanese legend concerns a fisherman named Urashima Taro who visited the undersea Palace of the Dragon God. Before he left to return to the surface world, he was given a box and told not to open it. When he got back to his home village he learned 300 years had passed while he was gone. In his despair he forgot the warning, opened the box, immediately become his true age and died.
- A recurring theme in European folklore is that someone goes to the land of the Fairies and stays for what seems like a short time (perhaps only a night), but gets back to find centuries have passed. In some of these legends the person will instantly age once they get back.
- One version from Ireland even has a fairy wife try to avert this when her husband visits home: she has him ride a horse, since the aging will only activate if he actually touches the ground of the mortal world. Naturally he falls out by accident and dies anyway.
Podcasts
- Alice Isn't Dead: When the Character Narrator first meets Jacky in "The Factory by the Sea", he is no more than 18. After she follows him inside the factory, she finds he is in his 40s and says he is Jack, hasn't been called Jacky in a long time. Not long after on the beach he is older again, 60s or 70s. Then as he drifts out to sea in the coffin she helped him build, all she sees is a tiny, frail hand, suggesting he is now 90 or more. All this takes place over just a few hours.
- Welcome to Night Vale: After a couple of decades of being 19, Earl Harlan wakes up one day with a mortgage and a teenage son he doesn't remember.
Radio
Roleplays
- Dino Attack RPG:
- As a Stromling, Zachary Virchaus aged about a year in a matter of days, serving as a Mythology Gag regarding the Development Hell between Dino Attack RPG and At War's End.
- Between Baron Typhonus possessing his soulless body and Zachary forcibly turning the Maelstrom's destructive energies against itself, Rex's body rapidly aged and decayed until all that was left was dust. This was an intentional Shout-Out to the previously-mentioned scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Tabletop Games
- Adventures In Fantasy
- The Faerry spell "The Song of Forever" can be used to instantly increase a living being's age by 100 years, possibly aging them to death.
- Each day that passes in the Faerry realm, 100 years pass on the material plane. If a person spends a day or more in the Faerry realm and then returns to the material plane, the total passage of time catches up to them and they die of old age.
- Anathema. Shrouds with the dominion of Atrophy can make people age several decades in a few seconds.
- Arduin RPG
- Arduin Grimoire. The druidic spell "Chastarade's Spell of the Stone That Weeps in Silence" causes a creature to turn into a boulder. If the target makes its saving throw, it ages 20 years instead.
- The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources
- The spell Larissa's Conjuration of the Singing Sands of Time creates a whirlwind. Any creature that touches or is touched by the whirlwind immediately ages 1-10 years.
- After several minutes in direct sunlight a Vampyre will suffer Rapid Aging to its true age and will crumble into dust if it's older than its maximum lifespan.
- The Greater Demon Caphaoryn, The Death Angel/Beautiful Fiend. When a creature touches or is touched by Caphaoryn it will wither and age 11-20 years. Any creature that dies because of this aging will rise as a ghost under Caphaoryn's control 13 minutes later.
- Greater Demon Ralkul, the Lord of the Flies. Any living creature he touches ages 1-10 years.
- One of the random results of Table 81A Whimsy and Table 93 heck Spiral Transit Failure is to add the result of (maximum lifespan x 1-100%) to the creature's current age. E.g. Bob is 30 years old, has a maximum lifespan of 120 years and rolls a 50 on d100. He adds (.5 x 120) = 60 to his current age and instantly becomes 90 years old. If he had rolled a 75 or higher he would have added 90+ years to his current 30 years, thus exceeding his lifespan and immediately dying of old age.
- Ars Magica
- The Perdo Corporem spell "Bane of the Decrepit Body" instantly ages the victim 5-15 years.
- 3rd Edition adventure Twelfth Night. After the Burial Shroud of Christ is warped by Hermetic magic it gains the special power Circle of Decay, which affects all creatures within a half mile. Any creature less than 35 years old will age at a rate of 2.5 years per minute. Any creature 35 or more years old ages at a rate of 10 years per minute.
- 4th edition supplement The Wizard's Grimoire. When the spell "Eyes of Eternity" is cast, the target ages one year per 15 seconds (four years per minute) for as long as the spellcaster concnetrates on the spell.
- Call of Cthulhu
- The Steal Life spell causes the target to quickly age and die over a period of 1-3 minutes.
- Cthulhu Companion adventure "The Secret of Castronegro". Bernardo Diaz has lived for 300 years due to the ruby ring he wears. If it's removed from his finger, he will instantly die and his body will shrivel.
- The Fungi from Yuggoth adventure "By the Bay Part I". Lang Fu's Coat of Life has allowed him to live for centuries. If it is ever removed for more than a few minutes, his body will begin an irreversible aging process that will cause his rapid death.
- Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign, chapter 3 "Egypt". Omar Shakti, the high priest of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, is several thousand years old. If the investigators kill him, his body will immediately crumble to dust.
- Carcosa — Weird Science-Fantasy Horror Setting
- Performing any sorcerous ritual (except banishing) requires the sorcerer to save vs. magic or instantly age 1-5 years.
- Being paralyzed by the Spawn of Shub-Niggurath in hex 0712 will invoke the Tentacled One monster, which can cause the victim to age 3-15 years.
- In hex 2106 the fabric of time is warped and accelerated, causing anyone in it to age 1-5 years for each day spent in the hex.
- Hex 2215. Performing a ritual with a Serpent Man orb will cause the Sorcerer doing so to fall into a catatonic state. When he wakes up, he may be insane. If so, he will age 30 years in as many days, regaining his sanity at the end of that time.
- Champions supplement ''Champions Universe" (2002). The monks in the city of Shamballah are immortal, but only as long as they remain in the city. If they ever leave, they will immediately become their true age, leaving only crumbling skeletons.
- Changeling: The Dreaming: House Leanhaun has a particular frailty where its members will age rapidly unless they manage to reap deep bursts of Glamour. In keeping with their namesake, the best way to do so is to inflict Rhapsody on artists, which typically either kills them or burns out all their verve so they can never create again.
- Chronopia: One of the spells of a Chronomancer is Wither, which causes this until they are Reduced to Dust. Due to how powerful it is, the spell can only be used once a game.
- GDW's Dark Conspiracy main rules. The Dark Race known as the bleak feeds on human beings by draining their Life Energy. When they do so, the victims age by up to twenty years, depending on how successful the bleak's attack is.
- The Doctor Who Role Playing Game adventure The Warrior's Code. In the year 5148 A.D., Earth scientists develop time machines. When the machines go back in time, they work just fine. However, they have defects in their design. When they go forward in time, the people inside will instantly age one year for each year they go forward. If the passengers die as a result of this, they become mummy-like dried-out corpses.
- The Dragon Tree Spell Book. The spell Speed Growth causes the recipient to age one year per level of the caster. This aging will not increase the recipient's age to more than their maximum lifespan.
- Dungeons & Dragons
- 1st/2nd edition Advanced D&D
- The Longevity potion reduces the drinker's age by 1-10 years. However, each time one is drunk there is a 1% cumulative chance that the effect of all previous potions will be reversed. If a 150 year old human had drunk many such potions and was effectively 50 years old when this occurred, they would suddenly become their true age and possibly die immediately of old age.
- 2nd Edition Planescape setting supplement A Guide to the Astral Plane. While on the Astral Plane, creatures do not age. If they ever leave the Astral Plane all of the delayed aging catches up to them, causing them to become their true age. Returning to the Astral Plane doesn't reverse the aging.
- Being touched by a ghost will instantly age a character by 10-40 years.
- Casting certain powerful spells (Alter Reality, Gate, Limited Wish, Restoration, Resurrection and Wish) will automatically and immediately age the caster by a certain number of years.
- Being affected by a Haste spell or drinking a potion of Speed ages the recipient by one year.
- If the wielder of a Staff of Withering expends two charges from the staff while hitting a creature, the victim ages 10 years instantly.
- One of the possible Major Malevolent Effects of using an artifact or relic is to be aged 3-30 years: the longer the user's normal lifespan, the greater the aging.
- A noble time elemental can age a creature by 1-20 years once per day.
- Module G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, section "Temple of the Eye". If the altar is activated correctly and the glowing golden eye appears, one possible side effect of seeing the eye is to immediately age 1-20 years.
- Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium Appendix II. On the world of Athas, undead can have the power of Accelerated Aging, which ages any creature they touch by 5-30 years.
- The elven deity Labelas Enoreth can age any creature by up to 100 years.
- 1E Fiend Folio. The vision monster can cause aging in any creature that sees it, at a rate of 1-10 years per minute of observation.
- 2nd Edition The Complete Book of Necromancers. Both the caster and recipient of the Death Pact spell will age five years: the caster when the spell is cast, the recipient when it takes effect.
- 2nd Edition supplement Legends & Lore. The Chinese deity Shou Hsing has a walking stick that can cause anyone it touches to instantly age 5-50 years.
- The Greyhawk setting deity Iuz can take the form of an old man. While in that form he can spit at creatures within 10 feet. If the spittle hits, it causes the victim to age 1-6 years.
- The Complete Psionics Handbook. The psionic ability Aging can cause its victim to age up to 20 years. If it backfires, it cause the psionic using it to age up to 10 years.
- 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms supplement Elves of Evermeet. One of the possible side effects of an elven High Magic wizard casting a 9th level spell is the wizard aging up to 100 years.
- 1st Edition supplement Unearthed Arcana. The new spell Dream can only be safely used once per week. If it is used more often, the caster will age 1-10 years.
- Module I12 Egg of the Phoenix. While the Player Characters are on the demi-plane of Sepulchre, every thirty minutes they may be exposed to the gaze of the moon Hurlothrumbo for ten minutes. Its gaze causes the victim to age ten years per minute, for a total of 100 years over ten minutes.
- Dragon magazine
- Issue #5 article "Witchcraft Supplement for Dungeons and Dragons". The Secret Order witch spell Wither will cause any living plant or creature within a 50 foot radius of the spell's impact point to rapidly age and die.
- Issue #42 article "Demons, Devils and Spirits". The hamaculi is a horse-like demon. Any creature hit by its right front hoof will immediately age 3-30 years, with no saving throw.
- Issue #65 Timelord NPC class article. A Timelord can age a creature by 2.5 years for each level of experience the Timelord has. Higher level Timelords can superage a creature, causing it to disintegrate.
- Issue #179. One of the things that can be created by the magical Bag of Beans II is a variant basilisk with a gaze attack that instantly ages the victim 5-50 years.
- Issue #201 article "The City of Lofty Pillars", Al-Qadim campaign setting. For each year that a person spends inside the city of Iram, ten years pass outside in the land of Zakhara, the Land of Fate. When the person leaves Iram they immediately become their true "outside" age, which can cause death due to old age.
- Issue #210 article "Too Evil to Die". A hit by a keres' whip or a hit by a dark lord can age the target by 10-40 years if they fail a saving throw.
- Dungeon magazine
- Issue #30 adventure "Thiondar's Legacy". The Stone of Gul is a divine artifact of incredible power. One of its abilities is to stop its owner from aging. If the owner should ever be separated from the Stone by more than one mile for more than one day, the owner will become their true age, which may make them either very old or even dead from old age.
- Issue #36 adventure "The Sea of Sorrow". There is a ghost ship that haunts the Pirtel system. If anyone comes within 50 feet of the ghost ship, they must make a saving throw against spells or age ten years.
- Issue #42 adventure "The Lady of the Mists". When the "immortality" (actually delayed aging) potion wears off, the recuipient quickly ages to their true age, causing death from old age.
- Issue #50 adventure "The Vaka's Curse". The touch of the variant wraith named Vindr can instantly age the victim by 1-4 years. If done repeatedly, the victim could be aged to death in minutes.
- White Dwarf (1977) magazine
- Issue #24 adventure "The Lair of Maldred the Mighty". A magical mace created by Maldred can drain Life Energy from creatures it hits. If it drains 1 Character Level the wielder ages 1 year, if it drains two Character Levels the wielder ages two years.
- Issue #28 article "Fiend Factory". When a birch spirit grabs a target's heart, over a period of 1-4 minutes the target will age 10% of its initial age per minute. For example, if a creature 20 years old were affected for 3 minutes, it would age two years per minute for a total of six years.
- Issue #37 article "Bloodsuckers". One of the proposed alternate rules is that instead of draining two Character Levels, a vampire's kiss ages the victim by 10-40 years instead.
- Issue #59 article "Fiend Factory: The Great Hunt". One of the two most powerful reavers is Barbatos, High Reaver and Master of Hounds. When he uses his Mass Domination psionic ability on a living creature, that creature will age 2 years each ten minutes that it remains under his domination.
- Issue #69 adventure "Plague from the Past". The bite of a ghost spider causes the victim to age 2-12 years. A series of bites in combat could cause the target to suffer death from old age.
- Imagine magazine, adventure "The Guardian of the Key of Time". The Player Characters will encounter six magical mirrors that are doorways to the memories of the wizard Alquhol. After they pass through all of the mirrors, they will have aged a total of 7-19 years.
- Polyhedron magazine #82, article "Magnificent Magic". If someone who possesses one of the Roses of Ravenloft loses it or tries to get rid of it, they will age 1 year per minute the Rose is out of their possession. Only a Wish spell will allow the owner to be free of a Rose of Ravenloft without this effect.
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition supplement Kara-tur boxed set
- The Year Stealing spell ages the target by 2-12 years. If done multiple times, it could age the victim to death.
- The magic item Edu'Sascar is a set of cards with magical effects. Each time the card La (Bridges over the Depths) is used to heal, the person using the card ages 1-6 years. Since there is no limit to how often the card can be used, the user could age themselves to death if they're not careful.
- 2nd Edition supplement Tome of Magic
- The Age Creature spell ages the target creature by 1 year per level of the caster. The aging can be canceled by the spell's reverse, Restore Youth.
- When a creature passes through the gate created by a Dimensional Folding spell, there is a chance that it will instantly age up to ten years.
- Basic Dungeons & Dragons supplement The Book of Marvelous Magic
- Anyone who touches the Cane of Aging can be aged 20 years. If used as a weapon, any creature it hits can be aged 10 years.
- Shaking a Rattle of Youth normally reduces the user's age by 10 years. However, each use has a 10% chance of instantly doubling the user's age, which could possibly cause the user's death from old age.
- The Thread of Aging, which is normally found rolled up in a ball. The person holding it immediately ages one year for each inch of the thread they unroll from the ball. The aging and its effects can only be neutralized by a Remove Curse or Wish spell.
- BECMI (Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal) D&D
- Companion Set, "Dungeon Master's Companion: Book 2". The monsters known as Haunts can age a victim by hitting them in combat. The banshee and ghost age the target by 10-40 years per touch, the poltergeist ages the being touched by 10 years.
- Master Set, "Master DM's Book". One possible handicap/penalty for artifacts is Aging. The user (and possibly those nearby) are aged a number of years proportional to the Power Point cost of the artifact power used.
- Immortals Rules boxed set "DM's Guide". When a jumper monster attacks a mortal being, the mortal instantly ages 10-40 years. Repeated attacks can cause death by old age in seconds.
- Basic D&D module X2 Castle Amber. At the end of the module, after Stephen Amber's curse is broken the tremendous length of time the castle and its contents have been in stasis catch up to it. All of the creatures inside quickly become their true age and die, ending up as mummified skeletons and the castle itself crumbles into ruins.
- Mayfair Games' Role Aids supplement Dark Folk. Any creature that drinks from the Well of Life will cease aging for as long as the drinking continues. If 1 week passes without drinking, the creature will suddenly become its true age again, possibly resulting in death by old age.
- The Tome of Mighty Magic, a North Pole Productions supplement compatible with Dungeons & Dragons, has a number of spells that cause aging.
- The Age Spell causes the target to age 20-50 years.
- The Aging Gaze spell causes the targets to age 10 years per minute that the caster gazes upon them.
- The Summon the Dastardly Filingricerixersifed spell summons a powerful psionic monster to help out but ages the caster by one year.
- The Death's Speed spell allows the recipient to move at 10 times normal speed but also causes them to age four years.
- The Whole spell causes its caster to age 1 year.
- The spell For Your Benefit makes the recipient age 12 years.
- Casting the Petition spell ages the caster by 5 years.
- Judges Guild supplement The Fantastic Wilderlands Beyonde
- Desert Lands hex 3731. At the top of a high mountain is a small shallow pool full of contaminated green water. Anyone who looks into the pool under moonlight must make a saving throw or age 10 years.
- Lenap Idyllic Isles hex 3617. Any creature within 10 feet of a petrified pterodactyl ages at a rate of 1 year per ten minutes.
- Judges Guild supplement Glory Hole Dwarven Mine. A gnome called Kish has been kept alive for 1,000 years by the magical artifact the Crystal of Power. If the Crystal is taken away from him, Kish will rapidly age 1,000 years and be Reduced to Dust and bones.
- Judges Guild supplement Inferno
- The female angels the Player Characters can encounter outside of Heaven have Staves of the Heavenly Host, which can age a target by 15 years at will. Any opponent repeatedly targeted by this effect would be aged to death in a matter of minutes.
- In the palace of Minos is a trap which can age a creature 30 years. If a creature repeatedly triggers this trap, they could age to death in seconds.
- Judges Guild Pegasus magazine #5 article "Potions Perilous" (side effects of drinking potions).
- Normally a Potion of Longevity reduces the drinker's age by 1-10 years. One possible side effect of drinking a Potion of Longevity is for the drinker to immediately age 1-10 years instead.
- A Potion of Speed ages the drinker by 1 year. One side effect given in the article is for the drinker to age 1 year per hour until a Dispel Magic spell is cast on them.
- Judges Guild supplement Modron. When the goddess Modron hits an opponent in combat, the opponent ages 1-20 years. Repeated hits can quickly age an opponent to death.
- Judges Guild supplement The Unknown Gods
- The deity Promehene can age a creature by 1-10 years by touching them with his hand. If he does so repeatedly, he can age the creature to death in seconds.
- The deity Ainu can increase the age of any creature by 10-200 years by touching it with his Temporal Staff. This can be done once per combat round.
- The deity Xirchiriog has a randomly chosen special attack, one of which is to age the target by 10-100 years.
- Earthdawn supplement Arcane Mysteries of Barsaive. The spell Eternal Youth prevents the recipient from aging for a number of years. If the spell is ever not successfully cast on the recipient, all of the previous Eternal Youth spells cast on the recipient are cancelled. This causes the recipient to suddenly become their true age, which could result in them dying of old age.
- Gamma World. The mutation Hands of Power has four variants. The fourth one is Withering Hands, which causes any creature touched to immediately age 1-10 years.
- GURPS
- Challenge magazine #47 article "The Ultra-Tech File". If it works, the two-days-long Rejuvenation process lowers the character's age. If the process suffers a critical failure, the recipient's age increases by 6-36 years.
- GURPS Warehouse 23: Characters placed through the Genius Machine will age at increased rates due to the toll taken by their new, energy-hungry superbrains. If the provided nutrition pack was taken, they age at four or eight times the normal rate depending on whether their intelligence was double or tripled. If the supplement, which contained among other things a tailored virus meant to adjust their body's metabolism, was not taken, then they age at a rate of about a year per day.
- Imagine magazine #29, Traveller/Star Frontiers adventure "The Sarafand File". One of the adventure involves an ancient biological weapon. If the game system being used is Traveller, characters infected by the disease age at a rate of 1 year per hour using the standard aging rules (loss of Strength, Dexterity and Endurance). This will cause them to die within a couple of days unless they find some way of curing the disease.
- In Nomine
- The Corporeal Song of Entropy in the Liber Canticorum
- It causes a target to instantly age two to twelve years (or more, if the celestial casting it spends extra Essence). If cast upon the same being repeatedly, it can age them to death in a short space of time.
- It can be used to reduce a creature's age. If an unfavorable Intervention is rolled while doing so, all of the age that has previously been removed from the creature suddenly returns, causing the creature to immediately become its true age.
- An Ofanim angel of the Archangel Eli can increase the age of a living creature by up to 1 year per day for each level of Precision the angel has. Since an angel can have a Precision of up to 27, such an Ofanim could age someone by 27 years per day.
- Little Fears. A child that comes into physical contact with a ghost ages at a rate of 1 year per 10 seconds of contact.
- Avalon Hill's boardgame "Kremlin" represents the political power struggles within the Soviet Politburo. A key element of the game is tracking the effective ages of the various politicians controlled by the players — in addition to aging one year per game-year, they may by aged further by performing extra actions or hostile actions (such as subjecting them to KGB investigations) by opponents.
- Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set boxed set, Judge's Book. The Norse Mythology goddess Hela can fire Aging Rays that instantly age the target by 100 years. If done repeatedly, this can destroy even other Norse gods.
- Paranoia XP supplement Stuff. The Chronogun has a setting that ages any living creature so much that the target is Reduced to Dust.
- Pathfinder: A carmine dragon's Breath Weapon is infused with the Wind of Death, and causes its targets to age to death and their equipment to rust into nothingness as if millennia had passed in the span of seconds.
- The Scepter of Ages, a dangerous artifact that can be wielded as a +4 heavy mace and causes targets struck and damaged by it to instantly age by 1 year per point of damage taken, or double this rate if its scores a critical hit, permanently and not allowing any saving throw.
- The Sands of Time spell instantly ages a creature to its next age category for 10 minutes per caster level.
- The curse of the ages causes the afflicted to age by one year per day.
- Avalon Hill's Powers & Perils RPG, Heroes magazine Volume 2 #2 article "Shadow Magic". The Wasting Hand spell can age the target by (1-10) x (EL + 1) months. So if the caster's magical Experience Level is 9, the target will instantly age up to 100 months (about 8 1/3 years).
- Rolemaster setting Shadow World.
- Supplement Demons of the Burning Night. While wearing the Helm of Kadaena the wearer accumulates 10 years of aging during each combat, but the Helm prevents the aging from taking effect. If the Helm is ever removed all of the aging immediately takes effect.
- Supplement Jaiman: Land of Twilight, adventure "Cult of the Third Moon". The Priestess and Sisters (acolytes) of the title cult have remained young for 150 years by Vampiric Draining the Life Energy from sacrificial victims. If the Priestess' amulet is removed she will suffer this trope, become her true age and die. If the amulet is destroyed, so will the Sisters.
- Shadowrun
- Adventure Bottled Demon. Anyone who uses the Horror-powered idol will age at a rate of approximately 10 years per day.
- Supplement Shadows of Europe. One of the survivors of an outbreak of shedim (evil spirits that can possess living beings) says that a shedim sucked the Life Energy out of a friend of his, causing them to be aged until they became old-aged in seconds.
- Gamelords, Ltd.'s Thieves' Guild 8 adventure "The Secret of the Crystal Mountains". Centuries ago the adventurer Giles acquired a Lissar crystal, which kept him young until it was recently stolen from him. With the loss of the crystal he's aging at a rate of 10 years per week and will soon be dead.
- Ghouls in Vampire: The Masquerade stave off aging as long as they regularly receive blood from a vampire. If they go without a certain period of time without drinking vampire blood (which grows shorter as they grow older), they're hit with this trope. Not so bad if they rapidly age from 20 to 30 in one go, but obviously fatal for those that are well older than a human lifespan.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Ungol Hag Witches' unique Spirit magic causes rapid aging as a Mark of the Supernatural. It's a combination of a cosmetic effect and actual physical degeneration and can be so extreme that the Hag's appearance becomes a Supernatural Fear Inducer. Luckily for them, their magic can also prolong their natural lifespan, perhaps indefinitely.
- West End Games' DC Universe Roleplaying Game supplement Metropolis Sourcebook. A character with the Temporal Manipulation power at the 15D or higher level can cause a living creature to suffer accelerated aging until it dies of old age.
Theatre
- In Das Rheingold Wotan has offered the goddess Freia to the giants Fasolt and Fafnir in payment for building Walhall. He Did Not Think This Through very well, as Freia also grows the golden apples that keep the gods young. After she is taken away, they suddenly become much older.
Theme Parks
Toys
- BIONICLE: During a clash with Makuta Teridax, the Shadowed One received a blow that sent him flying at the unconscious body of his already felled underling, Voporak. Said underling was protected by a force field that rapidly aged anything that touched it, thus the Shadowed One grew 3000 years older in a matter of seconds. Longer exposure would have turned him to dust, which is the fate Makuta's distraction army received earlier. Still, it's definitely a case of Time Dissonance...because due to the already enormous lifespans that the characters have, it would be the equivalent to a human aging less than a decade.
Video Games
- In Ancient Domains of Mystery, ghosts and their variants have an aging touch attack. If you're an elf or a dwarf with a lifespan of hundreds of years, this isn't too big a deal. If you're something with a short lifespan, like a ratling or a troll, well...
- In BioShock Infinite, it's revealed that the Lutece device, which offers the ability to see into Alternate Timelines, has caused Zachary Comstock (a.k.a. Booker DeWitt) to look like he's in his late fifties despite being in his late thirties, as well as making him sterile.
- In Blasphemous, a young woman named Viridiana will show up to offer assistance in certain boss fights. If you accept her help, she'll provide a powerful buff during the battle, but will be aged each time. After three times, she will die of old age. She does not mind the price she pays for helping you, considering it Worth It to be of aid in your quest.
- In Brain Dead 13, Lance definitely dies from this if one of the ghosts possesses him and drains the living soul out of him in one death scene.
- Some of the titular Creatures can fall victim to this, dying of old age less than an hour into life — the most extreme cases in Creatures 3 and Docking Station don't even live a full minute. The root cause varies between different games, depending on how aging is handled and what mutations can affect them: Either the creature in question depletes its Ageing/Life chemicals by converting it into another chemical, or it's born with no Ageing/Life chemical at all and will burn through every lifestage immediately after hatching.
- In Dark Devotion, the player character ages from a young woman to an emaciated crone in seconds after beating the final boss, and she barely has time to take in her withered state before she drops dead.
- One of the main threats in Death Stranding is the Timefall, a mysterious and supernatural rainstorm that rapidly ages any living creature caught in it. Porter suits are designed to protect people from the effects, but can fail if damaged too badly. The Girl from FRAGILE turns out to have the head of a young girl and the body of an elderly woman, as a result of Higgs stripping her and forcing her to run through the Timefall with nothing but a Porter mask to protect her. Notably, one minor NPC works out a means of calculating the next Timefall event and capturing the rain to grow crops from seeds to full ripeness in a matter of seconds.
- As a result of their powers, Sera from Digital Devil Saga has the body of a teenager when she's actually 7 years old.
- In Disney's Villains' Revenge, Captain Hook turns Peter Pan into a bearded old man to prevent him from defeating Hook.
- In Dragon's Dogma, after you kill The Dragon, the Duke ages rapidly when his immortality consequently wears off.
- In The Elder Scrolls series' backstory, Wulfharth Ash-King was the legendary ancient King of the Nords and noted Shezarrine who has died and come back to life at least three times. After Alduin and Orkey turned everyone in Skyrim into children, Wulfharth used the Thu'um to age them all back up. However, he aged himself up too fast and died for the first time.
- In Final Fantasy V, some enemies can inflict a temporary "Old" status ailment, which makes the targeted character white-haired and physically weak.
- Nasus, from League of Legends, can inflict a temporary version of this to slow and weaken an enemy.
- Metal Gear:
- Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. This is due to Clone Degeneration, which gave him Werner syndrome by design. Barely a decade after the Shadow Moses incident, when Snake was still young, fit, and handsome, he essentially has the body of a chronically ill 80-year-old. This is, however, foreshadowed in earlier games, as different characters remark on how age hasn't slowed him down, or how he hasn't aged well. Despite this, a majority of the rapid aging appears to happen in the five year gap between the second and fourth games, which adds even more horror to the situation.
- His brother Solidus Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty also has Clone Degeneration and Werner syndrome, by the Patriots' design. Despite being 30 years old, he essentially had the body of a 60- to 70-year-old.
- Metroid II: Return of Samus: Eight hatched Metroids progress from infant to larval stage in the time it takes Samus to move from one room to another but the final infant stays an infant in the time it takes for Samus to leave the planet and fly to a research station.
- Miis in Miitopia can be affected with this condition during battles, causing their design to change to wrinkled and with grey hair. They are unable to fight and have to use their weapon as a cane. Thankfully, this is not permanent and, like most alignments, can be reverted in the Mii's next turn if put in the safe spot.
- This is the punishment Mortal Kombat antagonist Shang Tsung suffers if he does not frequently kill people and take their souls onto his one.
- In Mystery Case Files: The Black Veil, the Scottish town of Dreadmond is plagued by a mysterious force that drain the townpeoples' lives, aging them from approximatively sixty years in a heartbeat.
- N uses this trope to justify the game's time limit; the ninja's superhuman metabolism grants them incredible running and jumping abilities, but also gives them a natural lifespan of only 90 seconds. It doesn't explain why running out of time causes the ninja to explode, though.
- In Romancing SaGa 3 Black was cursed by the clone of the Devil Lord Forneus and lost his youth, however defeating Forneus' clone with Black in your party reverts him back to his original self.
- In Sifu, the protagonist has a talisman that revives them upon defeat at the cost of their lifespan, slowly but surely aging them with every defeat. Eventually, once they reach 70 they can't be revived anymore.
- Singularity has the TMD, which can age a living person forward until they turn to dust. Turning the clock backwards, however, has different results...
- StarCraft II: A more mundane version happens to Arcturus Mengsk. In Wings of Liberty, he is shown to have a very youthful appearance, with a smooth face and brown hair. By the ending cinematic of Heart of the Swarm, which takes place only several months later, due to a combination of the PR disaster after the mission "Media Blitz", his son Velarian betraying him, and the Zerg literally at his doorstep, the burdens of being an Emperor had finally caught up to Mengsk, as his hair had turned gray, and his face had all but shriveled up.
- In Street Fighter, Balrog's ward and Only Friend Ed is affected with a bad case of this. When he first appears in Super Street Fighter IV he's a pre-teen boy, but when Street Fighter V hits he alrady has the looks of an older teenager, and when he's Promoted to Playable his sprites and model are those of a heavily-muscled adult (though his in-story illustrations are still proper of an older teen). It's a very justified since poor Ed was kidnapped by the S.I.N. division of Shadaloo, and experimented on in order to become a replacement body for Bison.
- Tomodachi Life: One of the items you might recieve from Miis when you do them favors is an Age-O-Matic, a spray that causes kid Miis to quickly become adults. This doesn't have much effect other than them becoming taller and being able to form romantic relationships with other adults and get married. When two kid Miis decide they want to get married, they will ask you to spray them with an Age-O-Matic so they will be able to. The game also has the Fountain of Youth counterpart in the Kid-O-Matic.
- Trauma Center (Atlus): In Under the Knife 2, this is the fate of villain Reina Mayuzumi, who was using the Alethia strain of GUILT to preserve her youthful looks. The player discovers this right before the final operation, when Mercer decides to inject her with something else in hopes of learning how to cure his wife. It immediately drains Mayuzumi's body into that of an old woman, as well as causing the GUILT to rampage through her body. Notably, the player saves her life... but not her looks.
- Uninvited: In the NES version, eating a piece of fruit in the greenhouse will suddenly cause you to age a year for every second until you are reduced to dust. The other versions say that the fruit is poisonous and you collapse after eating it.
- WarCraft:
- Khadgar was the young apprentice of the Guardian Medivh, but when Medivh turned out to be the host of the demonic Sargeras, Khadgar was forced to kill him, and in the ensuing fight, Medivh artificially aged Khadgar.
- Garona Halforcen was originally introduced as half-human, half-orc, the result of the protracted war between the two races over the course of the original Warcraft. The conflict was drastically shortened in later revisions of the history, so Garona was explained to be the result of forced mating between orcs and draenei, magically-aged and brainwashed to serve as an advance scout.
- This was actually a prefered method of recruitment in the Old Horde. Gul'dan would have his warlocks use their Life Drain magic to force orc children into early adulthood so they could fight on the front lines that much sooner.
- The Watchmaker (2018): As a result of time being sabotaged, Alexander has begun aging more quickly than normal, until he reaches 90-years-old and dies. He can restore himself to his normal age by collecting pieces of time.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Moebius Y developed a machine that can rapidly age a Kevesi or Agnian for the purpose of bringing them close to Homecoming. After Colony Omega is freed, a new incarnation of Ethel willingly uses the machine to become physically old enough to fight in an Ascension Quest she shares with Cammuravi.
- Grumples and Everfore from Yo-kai Watch turn people old when they inspirit them.
- In Zanki Zero, the characters go from child to adolescent to adult to old man/woman in a span of 13 days as a side effect of them being clones.
Visual Novels
Web Animation
Webcomics
- Bound Together: Downplayed; when Chess has to age up her daughters' minds (since they were born as cats and aged faster before turning into humans), she has to give up 15 years of her own lifespan. Fortunately for her, this turns her into a buxom Stacy's Mom.
- The Cyantian Chronicles: Exotica Genoworks engineers their designer life-forms, such as C-skunks and Siracs, to reach maturity in just a few years. The Akaelaes tried to slow down the process for the cubs Syrys broke out of EG's lab, but they weren't entirely successful as they look like teenagers while barely half a decade old, and fully grown at 11 years old.
- In Girl Genius the first few creatures Gil's researchers pull out of the time stopped Mechanicsburg rapidly age, decay and turn to dust. When they refine the process a bit and pull out Vole he ages hundreds of years in a matter of seconds (and later states he's fairly convinced he felt every minute). Luckily the information gained from their experiment with Vole allows them to figure out how to pull people out without the aging side effects.
- In Kill Six Billion Demons, the demiurge Mottom owns ''The'' Tree of Life, whose fruits can restore a withered crone to her pre-teen glory yearsnote the number of fruits required is apparently dependent on the age of the person consuming them. However, the fruit's main effects only last a few hours, and she rapidly degenerates to a middle-aged woman within the span of hours. Allison destroys the tree to stop the blood sacrifices of virgins powering it, and Mottom ages even faster as she draws upon her powers in a fit of rage.
- In Nixvir, at the climax of the Old Harry Flowerpot Saga, Erik stabs Old Harry Flowerpot in the underbelly, which causes the evil demon-wizard hypnotist to age rapidly, shrivelling away in front of his beloved mirror. Upon Old Harry Flowerpot's death, his spells are broken, with the exception of the witch being transformed into a bird.
Web Originals
- SCP Foundation:
- SCP-119 ("Timecrowave") is a microwave oven which can speed up the flow of time inside of it. Its power setting can be set in a range of 1-5. The time (in seconds) that the microwave is on is raised to the exponential power of the setting to determine the actual time that passes inside SCP-119, so if the power setting is 5 and SCP-119 runs for 30 seconds, then (30 x 30 x 30 x 30 x 30) seconds (or 281.25 days) pass inside it. Anything inside SCP-119 suffers the increased aging that occurs.
- When SCP-224 ("Grandfather Clock") chimes, it causes time to speed up in the surrounding area, sometimes causing people within range of the sound to age up to several years in a short time. In one case a person was affected by 7 chimes, aging them approximately 70 years in a matter of seconds.
- If someone tries to use SCP-429 ("Clockwork Teleporter") without understanding it they will still teleport, but when they re-appear they will be dead and in a state of advanced decay. Monitoring devices sent with it on one of these jaunts recorded over 8 months passing. The creator of SCP-429 died of old age after using it too often.
- SCP-723 ("Aging Staircase") is a spiral stone staircase. When a person climbs it, after the fourth or fifth step they start aging rapidly, with additional aging occurring for each additional step taken.
- This can occur due to the time-manipulating abilities of SCP-728 ("The Forever Room"). During one test only one hour passed on the outside of SCP-728, but when SCP-728 was opened again, the person who had been inside SCP-728 had aged to death.
- A researcher who played SCP-896 ("Online Role Playing Game") for less than 10 hours straight leveled up many times but then died. An autopsy showed severe arthritis, Alzheimer’s, a cataract and several tumors, indicating death from old age.
- Each time SCP-983 ("The Birthday Monkey") sings a verse, the person who activated it will age 1 year. If it isn't deactivated, the victim will be aged to death. The Monkey will continue singing verses until the victim has been reduced to a skeleton.
- SCP-1007 ("Mr. Life and Mr. Death") ages at a rate of 1 year per minute until it reaches age 75, at which point it dies. Then it comes back to life and goes through the same routine again, and again. If a key is inserted in its back and turned, it will age backwards...
- When a man signs the SCP-1066 ("Instant Education") diploma he disappears for 4-10 minutes. When he reappears, he's four years older.
- When a child less than 13 years old enters SCP-1080 ("The Creche"), it closes and locks. When it opens three to five days later, the child is about 20 years old.
- After inhabiting SCP-1211 ("King in the Castle") for three months, a man 35 years old will have become about 80 years old. After an additional month (or more) subjects will experience rotting of the skin and muscle tissue and skeletal degeneration, but don't die.
- When SCP-1225 ("The Worst Christmas") is activated, anything within 4 meters and inside a container ages at a high rate: one year in the first 24 hours, and a total of ten years after three weeks, after which the aging stops.
- After a person makes skin contact with an example of SCP-1627-A ("Mushroom Wars"), over the next two weeks, the person will age rapidly until they die of old age.
- After they're hatched, SCP-1657 ("MAN EGG") grow to maturity (the equivalent of human adulthood) in only 13 days, and die of old age in 17 days.
- SCP-1716 ("Imperfect Life Extender") causes the Life Energy donor to age 10 years for every year the recipient's life is extended.
- Time passes faster than normal inside SCP-1979 ("Relativistic Treadmill")'s time acceleration sphere. A person inside the sphere will age at a higher than normal rate, with the rate increasing as the sphere expands. At a radius of 25 meters, a person will age at a rate of 10,404 times normal, or 173 minutes per second. As the sphere expands to 30 meters it will age about 9 years. By the time the sphere reaches 35 meters, they will age another 48 years. By the time the sphere reached 40 meters, they would be long dead.
- Anyone who signs up for an SCP-2647 ("Premium") life insurance policy will stop aging for as long as the policy continues in effect. If the person cancels the policy, they will quickly grow older until they are their true age, which could cause them to die of old age.
- One Internet meme has people explaining that they aged so rapidly as to turn to dust during a conversation with a younger person, usually in response to a What Are Records? question like "What's a brony?", "What's teabagging mean?", learning Mass Effect or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City are now considered retro games, etc.
Web Videos
Western Animation
Other
- The graphics on the screens of the stage during Russia's performance in the 2009 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest shows the Russian performer (which is only seen as her face) aging throughout the course of the song while singing the lyrics, in sync with the actual performer's, joined by five backing singers wearing folk-inspired costumes.
Real Life
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