History Main / DeathByDeaging

* In ''Film/WEIRDWorld'', Dr. Abby O'Reardon has invented a youth serum, but hasn't yet developed the antidote that can ''stop'' the rejuvenation process before this trope ensues. As such, when she decides to test it on [[HateSink the obnoxious Dr. Mayhew]] without his permission, he's more than a little bit concerned; however, after three hours with no effects, he's convinced that the serum didn't work and feels safe enough to leave the lab... only to end up calling Abby in a panic when he finds himself back in his twenties and getting steadily younger. By the time he returns to the lab, he's a child and clearly convinced that he's just about to regress out of existence, judging by the terrified whimpering. However, [[SubvertedTrope Abby then reveals that she's had an antidote all along]] and she was just fucking with him. She still takes her time in curing him, though, just so she can adopt a baby.

->''"We'll all get younger and younger until we suffer a {{fate worse than death}}: pre-life! Then death."''
-->-- '''Professor Farnsworth''', ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', [[Recap/FuturamaS4E9TeenageMutantLeelasHurdles "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles"]]

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks. In fact, it is this Quirk that finally causes All for One's death: during the final battle, AFO uses a copy of Rewind to negate a fatal injury and gain immense regenerative abilities, hoping that this last-ditch effort will give him enough time to reach and re-brainwash a rebelling Tomura. Instead, the heroes' efforts and attacks rapidly cause him to deage until he disappears without having accomplished his goal]].
* Discussed in ''Anime/OnePieceFilmZ'', where Ain mentions being able to use her Devil Fruit powers to regress people out of existence by touching them enough times; thus threatening an already deaged Robin into not fighting back further.

* ''Creator/DCComics'':
** ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'': In ''Adventure Comics'' #338, the Time-Trapper provides his agent Glorith with an hourglass that emits "devolutionary radiation", causing anyone who touches it without special protective gloves to regress in age until they become "protoplasmic slime... the source of all life". Fortunately, when Glorith tricks the Legionnaires into touching the hourglass, they are merely [[BabyMorphEpisode de-aged to infancy]] thanks to the presence of a "[[ChemistryCanDoAnything Fountain of 1,000 Chemicals]]". The Time-Trapper [[YouHaveFailedMe punishes Glorith for her failure]] by tricking her into touching the hourglass without her gloves, and then tries to complete the Legionnaires' retrogression into protoplasmic blobs... but not before [[CriminalAmnesiac exploiting their youthful innocence and still-formidable powers for his own criminal gain]].

* ''Creator/ECComics'''s ''Tales From the Crypt'': In "A-Corny Story", a man who was fired for being too old sends his youth-obsessed boss a hexed oak tree. As the tree ages backwards, so does its owner... until the tree has ended up as an acorn and the boss has de-aged out of existence.
* ''Creator/MarvelComics'':

* ''ComicBook/TalesToAstonish'': In "What Was the Strange Power of Simon Drudd!!" the eponymous villain decides not to share his youth serum with the world once he's developed it, instead opting to use it on himself so that he can become an immortal and eventually go on to rule the world. For good measure, Drudd even locks his assistant Bentley in the freezer just so he won't be able to stop his bid for immortality. Unfortunately for Drudd, once the TransformationExhilaration stage is finished, it turns out that the serum is a lot stronger than anticipated - and can't be stopped. With Bentley still locked in the freezer, Drudd is left helplessly regressing to infancy, before quietly vanishing out of existence and leaving behind only empty clothes.
* One of Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/ThargsFutureShocks'' [[http://againwiththecomics.blogspot.com/2009/05/man-reversible-moores-alan.html strips]] was about a man aging backwards: he started lying in the street undying of a heart attack, got better, he started a job and got demoted until he was the teaboy, his kids moved into his house and finally vanished (would have been more unpleasant for their mother), split up with his wife, moved home, went to school to forget things... Bonus points for a [[DeathIsDramatic dramatic]] [[InvertedTrope birth.]]
* In the ''Witching Hour'' comic "The Girl Who Grew Younger," wealthy heiress Sara has just been forced to dump her poor boyfriend in exchange for a million-dollar inheritance on her 21st birthday, only for the cake to produce a plume of green smoke when she blows out the candles. The next morning, she has regressed to sixteen years old, and to the horror of her controlling aunt and uncle, continues getting younger over the next few days until she's become an infant. By the time a doctor arrives to help, Sara's regressed to nothingness. [[spoiler: And then it turns out that the whole thing was a ScoobyDooHoax: Sara used the million-dollar inheritance to hire lookalikes of her at different ages, successfully tricking her guardians into believing that she was regressing out of existence - while the ''real'' Sara fled the country alongside her boyfriend.]]

* Discussed in ''Film/DennisTheMenace Strikes Again''; The Professor and Sylvester try to scam Mr. Wilson by selling him a root that can make people younger if they use it. Upon hearing about this, Dennis worries that if he uses too much of it, he'll become so young that he'll cease to exist.

* In the 1996 direct-to-video film ''Film/PastPerfect,'' a group of assassins are sent back in time to murder a gang of criminals while they're still teenage delinquents. However, the killers all have to wear special molecular coating; without that, they will regress to match the time period - with disastrous results if they hadn't been born yet. As such, when the DarkActionGirl ends up losing her protection in a clash with the heroes, she immediately regresses out of existence, leaving only empty clothes behind.

* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator'': Willy Wonka has managed to develop Wonka-Vite pills, which decrease someone's age by 20 years exactly. Upon being offered some by Wonka, Grandma Josephine, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina take ''four,'' despite some of them barely being in their eighties. Worse still, Josephine is younger than eighty, leaving her to regress to minus years and vanish out of existence; this leads to her reappearing in [[EldritchLocation Minusland]] as what is essentially a preborn ghost at risk of becoming the prey of [[EldritchAbomination Gnoolies]].

** A variation involving MentalTimeTravel occurs in "Literature/TheCuckooClockOfDoom", where the protagonist is gradually sent further and further into his own past by the titular object and has to find a way to reverse the process before he disappears. [[spoiler: After managing to undo the curse and return to the present, he finds that his abusive little sister has accidentally been subjected to the same treatment and erased from history as a result.]]
** A variant featuring physical regression appears in the ''Literature/GiveYourselfGoosebumps'' novel "Literature/TheKnightInScreamingArmor." In one plot thread, you and your two friends find themselves falling foul of yet another time-controlling clock and regressing into infancy over the course of the next few minutes. With your friends having [[TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody mentally regressed]] as well, it's up to you to stop the clock before it rewinds you to a time before you were born. [[spoiler: You manage to stop regressing and restore your friends to their former ages, but for no adequately explored reason, it doesn't restore ''your'' age, unfortunately; as such, this plot-line ends with you being cuddled by one of your cousins as you bawl your head off. For now, you're still alive, but it's never made clear what'll happen to you next - if you're stuck reliving your entire life from square one, if you're permanently a baby, or if you really ''will'' suffer the DeathByDeaging you saved your cousins from.]]
* In ''Literature/AMillionAdventures'', an ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture'' novel, there is a time screen, under which time goes backwards. When it's accidentally left unattended, a rooster comes under the screen, turns into a chicken, then into an egg, then vanishes completely. Heracles, a pithecanthropus, crawls under the screen to eat that egg and barely escapes the same fate.
* In the Creator/JGBallard short story "Mr. F Is Mr. F", Charles Freeman finds himself unexpectedly growing younger over the course of several weeks until he's been reduced to infancy. Worse still, his wife is either directly responsible or complicit in the process: her apparent pregnancy is actually just her way of getting ready to absorb Freeman. After several days of being babied by his own wife, the infant Freeman goes BackToTheWomb and rapidly being regressed into nothingness, [[KarmaHoudini allowing his widow to shack up with a neighbour]].
* Frank R. Stockton's ''The Queen's Museum and Other Fanciful Tales'', short story "Old Pipes and the Dryad". When a dryad kisses a human being, the person's age is reduced by exactly ten years. People who live in an area where dryads are found are careful to not allow children of ten years or less to wander freely, as a child that young is kissed by a dryad, they will be made so young that they will cease to exist. [[spoiler: Consequently, when the villainous Echo Dwarf is trapped in the eponymous Dryad's tree - [[HoistByHisOwnPetard specifically the exact tree he'd hoped to trap her in]] - the children who might have been able to rescue him immediately mistake the Dwarf for the Dryad, and fearing being regressed either to infancy or nonexistence, [[SealedEvilInACan decide to leave him there]].]]
* ''Literature/RedDwarf''
** In ''Backwards,'' Lister has been transported to the Backwards Universe in order to reverse his fatal heart attack in the previous book. After living a long and happy marriage with his girlfriend Christine Kochanski, he is eventually due to be picked up by the Red Dwarf crew in his mid-twenties so he can be returned to the normal universe. Unfortunately, given the crew's [[FailureHero predictable screw-ups]], they end up missing the window to leave and getting trapped there for the next ten years, during which Lister and the Cat are regressed to teenagers. When they finally get to try again, [[RobotBuddy Kryten]] is deeply concerned that if they screw up ''this'' time, they won't get to leave until the two organic crewmembers are toddlers, with any further mistakes resulting in them regressing even further and suffering "a very sticky end." Fortunately, they get it right on the second try.
** According to both ''Backwards'' and ''Last Human,'' Lister and Kochanski's children have already experienced this in the Backwards Universe; having been rescued alongside her husband in ''Last Human'' and having acclimatized to living in a Forwards Universe, Kochanski can now remember seeing her children shrinking down into infants before being pushed back inside her.

* ''Series/TheManFromUncle'': "One of Our Spies Is Missing" involves a biochemist who has discovered the secret of restoring youth, which he uses to restore retired statesman Sir Norman Swickert back to vitality to carry on his career. However, the process puts a considerable strain on the body, with him warning that if used too much the machine will "turn you into a boy, a dead boy." He later uses the same process to commit suicide rather than risk his technology being controlled by [[NebulousEvilOrganisation THRUSH]].

** Mentioned ''as a positive'' in "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonIIIBackwards Backwards]]": naturally, people in the Backwards universe age in reverse, so the Red Dwarf crew quickly realize that they're going to start regressing if they stay long enough, ultimately resulting in the organic crewmembers being absorbed back into their mothers' wombs and dissolving into nothing... but Rimmer and Kryten don't actually regard it as death and believe that it will ultimately result in all humanity merging into "one glorious whole." Lister, who already considers Rimmer to be "one glorious hole," is not convinced.

* In the ''Series/StargateSG1'' In the episode "Past and Present," SG-1 stumbles upon a planet were everyone has amnesia, and also, there are no old people. They eventually learn that the rogue scientist Linea ha developed a way to reverse the aging process. Unfortunately, a gas cloud escapes containment and spread across the planet causing everyone to regress some 40 to 50 years. Thus, the people they met are the elders, while anyone younger than 50 or so years met their demise through de-ageing.
* The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E15TooShortASeason Too Short A Season]]" features the famous now-elderly Admiral Jameson having discovered a drug on Cerberus II which can restore youth - but carries a high mortality rate at the best of times. He initially planned o slowly taking it with his wife, but when his old enemy Karnas organizes a hostage situation with the intention of luring Jameson into a confrontation, the Admiral takes ''both'' doses so that he'll be young enough to face him. Despite initially promising results, the drug eventually causes him to regress to adolescence - younger than he was when he met Karnas - with the strain of the changes killing him shortly afterwards.
* In the FailedPilotEpisode of ''Film/WEIRDWorld,'' Dr Abby O’Reardon has invented a youth serum, but hasn't yet developed the antidote that can ''stop'' the rejuvenation process before this trope ensues. As such, when she decides to test it on [[HateSink the obnoxious Dr Mayhew]] without his permission, he's more than a little bit concerned; however, after three hours with no effects, he's convinced that the serum didn't work and feels safe enough to leave the lab... only to end up calling Abby in a panic when he finds himself back in his twenties and getting steadily younger. By the time he returns to the lab, he's a child and clearly convinced that he's just about to regress out of existence, judging by the terrified whimpering. However, [[SubvertedTrope Abby then reveals that she's had an antidote all along]] and she was just fucking with him. She still takes her time in curing him, though, just so she can adopt a baby.

* ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' supplement ''Curse of the Chthonians'', adventure "The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn". The Time/Space Machine is able to de-age an object or creature, moving it back in time and making it younger. If a creature is moved back to before it was born, it will cease to exist.
* The De-Age spell in ''TabletopGame/LamentationsOfTheFlamePrincess'' supplement ''Better Than Any Man'' can cause this, among various other potential side effects; what makes it particularly risky is that the amount of de-aging it causes is highly random - a single casting can remove anything from one to over thirty years.
* The ''Shadow Of The Demon Lord'' supplement book, ''Occult Philosophy'', has several new spells as well as rare high-level spells, including the Alchemy spell "Brew Longevity Potion", which allows one to brew an ElixirOfLife that can make any who consumes it younger. However, there is a risk that one may grow ''too'' young and end up turning into a tiny embryo that dies a few rounds later.

* ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'' has a random event where the crew of your ship encounter [[EnergyBeings Zoltan]] monolith known as "the Great Eye". Should you pull the ship closer, several outcomes might happen, and one of them is your crewmember rapidly aging in reverse until they disappear, with the rest of your crew hoping that they merely [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence transcended physical existence]] instead of simply ceasing to exist. Deaged crewmembers also [[DeaderThanDead cannot be brought back even with the Clone Bay]].

* In ''Webcomic/TheDragonDoctors'' this happened to most of the research team that discovered the FountainOfYouth, as well as every other living thing in the area. When the water is replicated and mass-produced it includes a safeguard that stops the de-aging process at babyhood.

* ''Webcomic/{{Magellan}}'' a woman who obtained deaging powers from a genie nearly does this to hero Gola Beh. While she's stopped before Gola de-ages into non-existence, Gola still winds up as a teenager from it.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/ClassOfTheTitans'' episode "Time Enough For Everything," Cronus, villainous god of time, gets his hands on the timepiece of Zeus and, among other things, uses its power to de-age Jay out of existence. Fortunately, all the time travel shenanigans get [[ResetButton undone]] by the end of the episode.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'': "The Halls of Time" has the crew visiting a realm where the [[DeathsHourglass hourglasses of people's lifespan]] is kept. [[TheDitz Billy]] ends up putting his, Irwin and Mandy's hourglasses upside down, causing them to de-age. They become progressively younger until they're reduced to fetuses, and Grim [[MurderByInaction chooses not to turn their hourglasses back to normal so they can cease to exist]]. Thinking he has the last laugh, Grim regresses once again and runs to his hourglass, which he is unable to lift because it is so huge and he is a toddler by the time he reaches it, and de-ages out of existence at the end of the episode.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheMask'': in the episode "[[Recap/TheMaskS3E2LittleBigMask Little Big Mask]]," the Mask creates an anti-aging cream and [[ProfessorGuineaPig uses it on himself]]... only for Stanley find that the effects can't be stopped, not even by the Mask's reality-warping powers, leaving him and Peggy Brandt struggling to create an antidote before he regresses out of existence. Towards the end of the episode, Peggy wakes up in the hospital to find that there's nothing left of Stanley but empty baby clothes, and tearfully assumes that this trope has come to pass; to her immense relief, it turns out that Stanley had just been taken away for a check-up and is a perfectly healthy infant... but unfortunately, he's still getting younger, and by now [[BroughtDownToNormal he's too young to wear the Mask]] - leaving him unable to help in what might be his final minutes. Fortunately, Peggy is able to improvise a cure before it's too late.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheMidnightGospel'' episode "[[Recap/TheMidnightGospelS1E6VultureWithHonor Vulture With Honor]]", it's revealed that Clancy's propety is right next to an extremely dangerous region of "[[RealityIsOutToLunch Wobble]]" where space is divided into multiple dangerous colors, each one with its own lethal reality-warping effects. Steam-colored Wobble fatally regresses any organic lifeform touching it - or as Captain Bryce puts it, it reverts them into "cream," which he demonstrates through BlackComedyAnimalCruelty. Soon after, he and Clancy find a looter that's been trapped in the purple Wobble for so long that his mind has completely snapped, prompting Bryce to MercyKill the guy by tipping him into the steam Wobble and allowing him to regress out of existence.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLifeAsATeenageRobot'': Due to complications involving TimeDilation in "Good Old Sheldon", Sheldon ends up becoming an old man. Dr. Wakeman manages to create a de-aging mechanism based on Jenny's movements, however, she's still fighting once he gets back to his normal age. By the time he's an infant, Dr. Wakeman warns Jenny not to make any movements lest Sheldon be reduced to a zygote, and has to age another 15 years to get back to normal.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters'' episode, "Three Men and an Egon", Egon gets caught in the proton beams along with a ghost that ages in reverse, causing them to exchange aging processes. As a result, Egon begins to de-age from an adult to a baby at an alarming rate. Ray, Peter, Winston, and Slimer have to find the ghost and reverse the process before Egon disappears.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' episode "[[Recap/RegularShowS04Ep03TerrorTalesOfTheParkII Terror Tales Of The Park II]]", Margaret tells a ghost story of how Mordecai, Rigby, Eileen, and herself joined a party bus, only to soon discover that everyone was rapidly aging to the point of turning to dust. The four try to escape but the bus driver laughs as he refuses to stop. They manage to get the bus into reverse to try to undo the rapid aging, but they de-age too far into young adults, then teenagers, then children, then babies. They find a hatch on top of the bus and jump off to freedom, but they keep de-aging anyway until they disappear into nothing. The bus, meanwhile, turns to dust.
* ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'': One sketch has Ra's Al Ghul bragging to Batman that the Lazarus Pit makes him functionally immortal. He enters as an old man and surfaces around middle aged. Batman responds by refusing to let him climb out, forcing him to revert to a teenager, then a child, then an infant, and then....
--> '''Batman:''' Well, I just killed a baby.
* Discussed in the ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'' episode, "[[Recap/RugratsS8E10BackToSchoolSweetDreams Back to School]]"; When Didi says she's going BackToSchool (specifically, to college to master her degree in child development), Angelica overhears and tricks the babies into thinking that everything is going backwards. The babies then overhear Stu telling Dil it's time for him to go back to the hospital, making them believe that Dil is going to be unborn (Stu was really taking Dil to the hospital for a check-up). They also worry that it will eventually happen to them.
* The [[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS2E6TheCounterClockIncident final episode]] of ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'' features the crew accidentally getting stranded in a backwards universe, in which the "old" ultimately die at the nadir of infancy; for good measure, in [[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Log_7 the novelization of this episode]], Spock admits to being rather curious as to how obstetrics work in this reality. Later, while speeding towards a nova star that can return them to their universe, the crew of the ''Enterprise'' begin to experience the effects of reverse TimeDilation: instead of observing the passage of time at a much slower speed than anything outside the ship, they experience it at a drastically accelerated rate - and because people age in reverse in this reality, the crew find themselves getting younger and younger until they run the risk of ceasing to exist. Worse still, [[TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody the regressed also lose access to their adult knowledge]], leaving them with progressively fewer qualified crew-members to get them to the nova star in time. Fortunately, there's a septuagenarian commodore and his wife on board to save the day.

* In the [[OneEpisodeWonder pilot episode]] of ''W.E.I.R.D. World,'' Dr Abby O’Reardon has invented a youth serum, but hasn't yet developed the antidote that can ''stop'' the rejuvenation process before this trope ensues. As such, when she decides to test it on [[HateSink the obnoxious Dr Mayhew]] without his permission, he's more than a little bit concerned; however, after three hours with no effects, he's convinced that the serum didn't work and feels safe enough to leave the lab... only to end up calling Abby in a panic when he finds himself back in his twenties and getting steadily younger. By the time he returns to the lab, he's a child and clearly convinced that he's just about to regress out of existence, judging by the terrified whimpering. However, [[SubvertedTrope Abby then reveals that she's had an antidote all along]] and she was just fucking with him. She still takes her time in curing him, though, just so she can adopt a baby.

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks. In fact, it is this Quirk that finally causes All for One's death: during the final battle, AFO uses a copy of Rewind negate a fatal injury and gain immense regenerative abilities, hoping that this last-ditch effort will give him enough time to reach and re-brainwash a rebelling Tomura. Instead, the heroes' efforts and attacks rapidly cause him to deage until he disappears without having accomplished his goal]].

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks. In fact, it is this Quirk that proves instrumental in finally killing All for One- during the final battle, the heroes rapidly cause him to deage until he dissapears.]]

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks.]]

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks. In fact, it is this Quirk that proves instrumental in finally killing All for One- during the final battle, the heroes rapidly cause him to deage until he dissapears.]]

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks. In fact, it is this Quirk that proves instrumental in finally killing All for One.]]

* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'': Eri's Quirk lets her "rewind" living things to a previous state, [[LethalHarmlessPowers including to the state in which they never existed]]. [[spoiler:She accidentally did this to her father when her Quirk first awakened, and the bullets that the Shie Hassaikai are producing work by rewinding the people they shoot to a state from before humanity first developed Quirks.]]

The FountainOfYouth seems an attractive idea, especially for the elderly; you get to wind back the clock and prolong your life. However much like a drug, it can come with dangers if overdosed. If it has a continuous effect, the youth could make someone so young they regress to before they were ''born'', becoming a fetus exposed to the world and at severe risk of dying. Or worse, regressing beyond that to the point that they don't even exist!

* ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'': "The Halls of Time" has the crew visiting a realm where the [[DeathsHourglass hourglasses of people's lifespan]] is kept. [[TheDitz Billy]] ends up putting his, Irwin and Mandy's hourglasses upside down, causing them to de-age. They become progressively younger until they're reduced to fetuses, and Grim [[MurderByInaction chooses not to turn their hourglasses back to normal so they can cease to exist]]. Thinking he has the last laugh, Grim learns that Billy put ''his'' hourglasses upside down. He's unable to lift his huge hourglass by the time he reaches it, and de-ages out of existence at the end of the episode.

* The minor villain Loco from ''Manga/{{Mar}}'' uses a set of Darkness ÄRMs that allow her to immobilize enemies and then inflict agonizing pain on them through a [[VoodooDoll straw doll]], at the cost of making her de-age afterwards. She received them from a previous user who de-aged into nothing immediately after passing them to her. In the anime, Loco comes close to suffering the same fate but stops at baby age.

* ''Creator/ECComics'''s ''Tales From the Crypt'': In "A-Corny Story", a man who was fired for being too old sends his youth-obsessed boss a hexed oak tree. As the tree ages backwards, so does its owner... until the tree has ended up as an acorn and the boss has de-aged out of existence.
* One of Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/ThargsFutureShocks'' [[http://againwiththecomics.blogspot.com/2009/05/man-reversible-moores-alan.html strips]] was about a man aging backwards: he started lying in the street undying of a heart attack, got better, he started a job and got demoted until he was the teaboy, his kids moved into his house and finally vanished (would have been more unpleasant for their mother), split up with his wife, moved home, went to school to forget things... Bonus points for a [[DeathIsDramatic dramatic]] [[InvertedTrope birth.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' episode "[[Recap/RegularShowS04Ep03TerrorTalesOfTheParkII Terror Tales Of The Park II]]", Margaret tells a ghost story of how Mordecai, Rigby, Eileen, and herself joined a party bus, only to soon discover that everyone was rapidly aging to the point of turning to dust. The four try to escape but the bus driver laughs as he refuses to stop. They find a hatch on the roof to climb out of. As everyone jumps off the bus to freedom, they suddenly start de-aging into young adults, then teenagers, then children, then babies, then finally into nothing.