History Main / LiquidAssets

* The 1990s ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAndHisAmazingFriends'' has an arc based around this, with elderly villain Silvermane trying to become younger via magic and winding up turning himself into a baby. The Vulture constantly shifts between youthful and elderly form, eventually managing to stabilize himself as young by taking Silvermane's youth via the AppliedPhlebotinum meant to restore him to adulthood (thus returning Silvermane to his original elderly form). Later, Venom and Carnage are recruited by a villain to steal LifeEnergy to release a SealedEvilInACan. This results in rapid aging.

It is sometimes used for FairestOfThemAll. It may also be a PowerSource to some villains or powers, or as the food for HorrorHunger. If the character is using this to live forever, it's LifeDrinker. It helps when you use PowersAsPrograms. EmpathicHealer is a more heroic inverse of this trope, where someone ''heals'' another person by transferring the other person's wounds to themselves. The assets may be acquired via a BloodBath. Supertrope to LevelDrain, LifeDrain, ManaDrain, and TransferredTransformation.

A variation simply has characters "aged" or "youthened". There's no actual drain or transfer, but age is still treated as a substance, where it can be added or removed and you'll automatically get a whole host of physical changes. This can be extended to where someone is [[FountainOfYouth youthened into a baby]], or a [[RapidAging baby aged into an adult]].

It is sometimes used for FairestOfThemAll. It may also be a PowerSource to some villains or powers, or as the food for HorrorHunger. If the character is using this to live forever, it's LifeDrinker. It helps when you use PowersAsPrograms. EmpathicHealer is a more heroic inverse of this trope, where someone ''heals'' another person by transferring the other person's wounds to themselves. The assets may be acquired via a BloodBath. Supertrope to LevelDrain, LifeDrain and ManaDrain.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ChipAndDaleRescueRangers'' features recurring villaing Professor Nimnul [[CutLexLuthorACheck trying to make an honest living]]. He had invented an aging ray, and tried to demonstrate it by turning a huge bottle of milk to cheese. Not that cheese works that way, and the convention hall full of the dairy industry should've mentioned that ... and the ray does work to age things. Notably the two cops and the police car, as well as one of the Rangers.

** And it happened to Dr. Pulaski when her aging disease was cured, only justified as the [[TeleportersAndTransporters transporter]] basically restructured her body.

* ''Manga/BusouRenkin'': The special ability of Ouka Hayasaka's bow weapon is that she can craft arrows that transfer wounds to herself. She uses them twice: once on her brother, and once on Kazuki.

* In ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'', victims of [[BattleAura ki]]-vampire Hinako Ninomiya's [[LifeEnergy Life]] EnergyAbsorption attacks don't age, but ''wither'', to the point where they can be rolled up like used toilet paper and even flutter in the wind. She, on the other hand, spontaneously gains enough mass to grow from her [[TokenMiniMoe eight-year-old]]-looking body to her real [[HelloNurse late twenties]] appearance, [[FanWank apparently implying]] that all the [[BattleAura ki]] she absorbed was somehow transformed into biomass. Then the reverse happens when she [[KiManipulation expels the accumulated ki]] and she shrinks back down into her child form. Even her hair reverts to its original length.

* In ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureJojolion'', Josuke Higashikata is able to use his stand, "Soft & Wet," to extract various attributes from anything by touching them with special "soap bubbles" before another bubble passes on the attribute to another target. He has used this ability to steal properties such as friction and physical objects such as fur from a cat.

* In ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureJojolion'', Josuke Higashikata is able to use his stand, "Soft & Wet," to extract various attributes from anything by touching them with special "soap bubbles" before another bubble passes on the attribute to another target. He has used this ability to steal properties such as friction and physical objects such as fur from a cat.

* In ''Literature/TheSecretsOfDrearcliffGrangeSchool'', "Shrimp" Harper has the ability to "breathe in" the life force of others, leaving them feeling tired and run-down.

* In ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure JoJolion]]'', Josuke Higashikata is able to use his stand, "Soft & Wet," to extract various attributes from anything by touching them with special "soap bubbles" before another bubble passes on the attribute to another target.

* The villain Mad Mod in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' used a magic cane in his second appearance to suck the youth out of Robin and into him. He then proceeded to rule over reality (or at least one city's worth of it) like a [[Music/TheBeatles Beatles]] - and ''Creator/MontyPython''-obsessed God until the Titans put him back in his place.
** ...that'd sounds like a pretty awesome god, actually.
*** Until he starts crushing people with the GiantFootOfStomping, or forcing people to play in the UpperClassTwit games, at least.
** It also sucked the youth out of Robin's ''clothes'' turning them into old and worn-out with faded colors, and made Mad Mod's clothes regain their color and look new again. What's the name for that trope?

A form of HollywoodScience where it's possible to, in effect, "drain", or "transfer", or "reverse" physical conditions.

* ''Series/PowerRangersDinoThunder'' had a MonsterOfTheWeek who "stole youth" to be used as a power source, leaving victims elderly. Since ''Rangers'' monsters suffer from NoOntologicalInertia, taking the monster out caused everyone to turn young again.
** Similarly, ''Series/KamenRiderDouble'' had a [[MonsterOfTheWeek Criminal Of The Week]] with aging powers who sold his services (primarily to {{Stage Mom}}s); once his [[AppliedPhlebotinum Gaia Memory]] was destroyed, all his victims returned to normal.
* One episode of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' involved a [[ProudWarriorRace Luxan]] holy woman undergoing a psychic ritual with D'Argo, which unexpectedly resulted in her becoming far younger, because she was accidentally draining energy from [[SpaceWhale Moya]], who underwent accelerated aging.
* In the ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' online material, Linda Niles [[spoiler:a.k.a. Leona Mills]] has this as her superpower. She also suffers from accelerated aging if she doesn't use this power regularly. However, she's a ''protagonist'', so she only drains youth from trees and pieces of wood rather than people.
** Additionally, in the main series, when [[spoiler:Adam]] loses [[spoiler:his]] healing factor [[spoiler:Or, more accurately, when Arthur Petrelli drains it from him, he ages super-rapidly and crumbles into dust]]. Apparently, healing factors in the Heroes 'verse merely suppress the symptoms of aging rather than reversing them or making them never happen at all.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' features an alien artifact that transfers life energy. It can be used to heal illnesses, wounds, etc., but does not visibly alter the age of either the donor or the recipient.
* In the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' episode "Redux" the [[MonsterOfTheWeek Freak of the Week's]] power to absorb life energy immediately becomes apparent as the victim rapidly ages.

* In ''Series/LoisAndClark'', an evil scientist drains Jimmy Olsen's youth to rejuvenate herself.
** Bonus points in that old Jimmy was a cameo by Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olsen in ''Series/TheAdventuresOfSuperman'' in the '50s.
* "Grampira," an episode of ''Series/WeirdScience'', had Wyatt wishing for his elderly grandmother Nana to leave her nursing home by being young again. LiteralGenie Lisa granted the wish by giving her the power to suck the youthful energy from anyone she touched: Nana became more active and energized, while the teens themselves acted like old people trapped in young bodies (talking about early bird specials and becoming hard of hearing, for example). The only way to set things right was for Nana to go back into the nursing home again, which, in a surprising reversal of this trope, she willingly did, explaining that she while being young again was fun, she's also quite happy to be old, too.

* In the ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "[[{{Recap/TorchwoodS1E8TheyKeepKillingSuzie}} They Keep Killing Suzie]]", the resurrection gauntlet, when used with enough empathy on the revived person (a normal resurrection lasts one or two minutes), transfers the fatal injury to the user of the gauntlet. When the connection broke, the injuries leave.

* This proves to be Chloe's GreenRocks-given power in ''Series/{{Smallville}}.'' Her first use of it left her clinically dead for a long time, and her second left her with a finger cut in the same manner as Jimmy's had been when she healed him.

* In the ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' original episode "[[{{Recap/StarTrekS3E12TheEmpath}} The Empath]]", the titular mute alien could heal others, but suffered concurrent damage to herself. If she healed someone badly enough injured, she could die.

* The Master ages the Doctor 900 years while suspending his [[TheNthDoctor regenerative]] capability in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords Last of the Time Lords]]".

* This happened to Martha temporarily when [[TheGrimReaper Duroc]] almost took her in the ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "Dead Man Walking".
* The various ''Franchise/StarTrek'' series have had instances of rapid aging caused by diseases, etc. During a ''[[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Next Generation]]'' episode, an away team was also turned into children in a transporter accident.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'' had someone caught in a temporal anomaly die of old age, even though his ship didn't have enough supplies for him to live that long. And then there was the affliction Sinclair had in the two-parter "War Without End"...
* In the episode "The Pisces" of ''Series/TheStarLost'', the crew of a scout starship discover that [[HollywoodScience relativistic]] TimeDilation has NoOntologicalInertia, so that once they slowed down they started rapidly aging to their "real" ages.

* Something like this occurs with the Weeping Angels of ''Series/DoctorWho''. They send you back in time to live out your life in the past, then feed on the years you "might have had". The Doctor says this isn't a terrible way to go and calls them "the only psychopaths in the universe who kill you nicely." That is, until [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E5TheAngelsTakeManhattan "The Angels Take Manhattan"]], where they figure out they can make a "battery farm" of humans by sending them back repeatedly and feeding on them again and again until they age and die.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Vriska Serket from ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' can steal {{luck|Stat}}, which apparently causes catastrophic misfortune to ''immediately'' befall her victims.
[[/folder]]

The usual form this takes is related to LifeEnergy-- [[VampiricDraining if you drain someone's life energy]], they start to show the physical signs of aging. Transferring life energy ages the victim and [[LifeDrinker youthens the recipient]]. This treats aging as if it's the presence or lack of a substance. With right the set of in-universe rules, this becomes both possible and reasonable with the right kind of FunctionalMagic or AppliedPhlebotinum.

* In the ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "They Keep Killing Suzie", the resurrection gauntlet, when used with enough empathy on the revived person (a normal resurrection lasts one or two minutes), transfers the fatal injury to the user of the gauntlet. When the connection broke, the injuries leave.

* In the ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}'' original episode "The Empath", the titular mute alien could heal others, but suffered concurrent damage to herself. If she healed someone badly enough injured, she could die.

* The Master ages the Doctor 900 years while suspending his [[TheNthDoctor regenerative]] capability in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Last of the Time Lords".

* In ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'', [[BigRedDevil Abaddon]] consumes the LifeEnergy of everyone in his shadow, which gives him a deadly PhlebotinumOverdose when the [[ResurrectiveImmortality immortal]] [[spoiler:Captain Jack Harkness]] steps up.

* Franchise/MarvelUniverse villan Selene, in her earlier appearances in ''ComicBook/NewMutants,'' was an energy vampire; as she sucked the life out of her victims she became ever more young and beautiful; as she used her powers more, she would look older.

* One episode of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' involved a [[ProudWarriorRace Luxan]] holy woman undergoing a psychic ritual with D'Argo, which unexpectedly resulted in her becoming far younger, because she was accidently draining energy from [[SpaceWhale Moya]], who underwent accelerated aging.

** ... that'd sounds like a pretty awesome god, actually.

* In the ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "The Quality of Mercy", an alien device used by a disgraced human doctor transfers life energy between the people attached to it. [[spoiler: The device was actually for executing criminals, a use to which it gets put by the end of the episode.]]

* In ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf'', victims of [[BattleAura ki]]-vampire Hinako Ninomiya's [[LifeEnergy Life]] EnergyAbsorption attacks don't age, but ''wither'', to the point where they can be rolled up like used toilet paper and even flutter in the wind. She, on the other hand, spontaneously gains enough mass to grow from her [[TokenMiniMoe eight year-old]]-looking body to her real [[HelloNurse late twenties]] appearance, [[FanWank apparently implying]] that all the [[BattleAura ki]] she absorbed was somehow transformed into biomass. Then the reverse happens when she [[KiManipulation expels the accumulated ki]] and she shrinks back down into her child form. Even her hair reverts to its original length.

* Something like this occurs with the Weeping Angels of ''Series/DoctorWho''. They send you back in time to live out your life in the past, then feed on the years you "might have had". The Doctor says this isn't a terrible way to go and calls them "The only psychopaths in the universe who kill you nicely." That is, until [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E5TheAngelsTakeManhattan "The Angels Take Manhattan"]], where they figure out they can make a "battery farm" of humans by sending them back repeatedly and feeding on them again and again until they age and die.

* ''Film/XMen'':

* Notably averted in the Creator/LarryNiven book ''A World Out of Time''. Aging is dependent on cellular poisons that can be removed. However, people who have it removed don't instantly turn young, but gradually get young as their younger cells can repair the body.

* Creator/MarvelComics' most recent attempt at an ongoing series for ComicBook/{{Rogue}} took her absorption power to a ridiculous extreme; when she touches Juggernaut to absorb his powers while he is having a heart attack, she ''absorbs the heart attack.'' In a subsequent issue, she accidentally touches Gambit who is temporarily blind because of an eye injury, and is also struck temporarily blind until the absorption wears off. [[note]]''ComicBook/{{X-Men}}'' #179, when she absorbs Colossus's steel form after he'd been paralyzed by the stress of being near-melted and then frozen in a tag team attack; despite it being the results of external attacks rather than natural powers, she assumes the paralyzed form. (Not to mention ''every time'' she absorbs Cyclops's powers, since the lack of control necessitating his visor was the result of an external injury rather than being inherent to his power).[[/note]]

** Played straight and then averted to a hilarious degree on the 90s ''WesternAnimation/{{X-Men}}'' cartoon. While in the Savage Land, all the mutants temporarily lost their powers. For some reason this enabled Professor Xavier to walk although his inability to walk is related to a spinal injury and has nothing to do with his powers. When villains inevitably arrived, {{ComicBook/Wolverine}} announced "I've got news for ya, bub! There's nuthin' mutant about these!" and released his adamantium claws. However, without his healing factor he nearly passes out from the pain of ''grievously injuring his hands''.

* The ''Series/WarehouseThirteen'' Season 2 episode "Age Before Beauty" has Myka become an UndercoverModel to track down an ArtifactOfDoom that's causing other models to age to death. [[spoiler:The culprit reverts to an old man when he's HoistByHisOwnPetard.]]

A variation simply has characters "aged" or "youthened". There's no actual drain or transfer, but age is still treated as a substance, where it can be added or removed and you'll automatically get a whole host of physical changes. This can be extended to where someone is [[FountainOfYouth youthened into a baby]], or a [[OvernightAgeUp baby aged into an adult]].

It is sometimes used for FairestOfThemAll. It may also be a PowerSource to some villains or powers, or as the food for HorrorHunger. If the character is using this to live forever, it's LifeDrinker. It helps when you use PowersAsPrograms. EmpathicHealer is a more heroic inverse of this trope, where someone ''heals'' another person by transferring the other person's wounds to themselves. The assets may be acquired via a BloodBath. {{Level|Drain}} and LifeDrain are both Tabletop and Video Game sub tropes.

* The second book in the ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series has this as a major plot line - evil sorceresses drain the power of wizards and add it to their own.