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She Is All Grown Up
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"I distinctly remember you not having a nose."

"Thank heaven for little girls
for little girls get bigger every day!
Thank heaven for little girls
they grow up in the most delightful way!"
Gigi, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls"

So this guy hasn't seen his Childhood Friend in a long time. Then they meet again, and she's absolutely stunning. He realizes that his friend that he never thought of in "that way" really can be thought of in that way, usually just as she starts dating someone else. If he pairs up with her in the end, it will invariably be revealed that she had been in love with him all along; she just needed time to mature (and maybe switch to contacts) before she could catch his eye.

A variant of this: the first story part, they're so-so to okay looking. Cue the sequel, and BAM! knockout. Sometimes, the reason for this is the character was too young to be thought of "that way" in the first part. In live-action shows and movies, this can happen to a character when puberty hits the actor or actress like a Colony Drop.

This is Truth in Television for many girls in their early teens, though it's not often addressed in TV or movies, where girls are absolutely ecstatic about their physical changes and the (male) attention it gets them or freaked out and unprepared for the harassment that sometimes results. This can happen for a variety of reasons. It is also the reason why issues of Playboy featuring nude pictorials of former-child-stars-turned-hot-bombshells usually sell out their entire production runs.

Despite the trope's name, it is hardly an Always Female trope and gender flips are pretty common.

Contrast with PƦdo Hunt and Ephebophile when characters like young-looking characters, Used to Be a Sweet Kid when a villainous character used to be a good kid, and I Was Quite a Looker when an elderly character was good-looking when they were younger. This can sometimes lead to First Girl Wins. This sometimes overlaps with She Cleans Up Nicely, Curves in All the Right Places, and/or Formerly Fat. Might happen to a Kid Hero All Grown-Up.

In-universe examples only, please. Although the audience can definitely feel this way about a character, this only applies if the character's change is acknowledged in some way by another character.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • There's a variant in ƗƗƗHOLiC, as of Chapter 187, as Kohane visits Watanuki some years after he's taken over Yuuko's shop, and comments on how good she looks in her school uniform. When she responds that he's constantly saying it, his response hints at this trope.
  • Ai Yori Aoshi's Kaoru gets this when he realizes the lovely adult woman he meets at the start of the series is the same little girl he played with as a kid. Not to mention he gets an up-close and personal introduction to just how well she developed during that first night.
  • In the first episode of Basquash!, Dan realizes — a little later than Miyuki would've wished — that the busty mecha mechanic he's been hanging around with for the past few hours is his childhood friend from years ago.
  • In Bleach, this happens to Urahara's child assistants Jinta and Ururu after the Time Skip. Jinta became very tall and muscular, while Ururu became taller with larger breasts and attracts male attention. Also happens to Ichigo's sister Karin. Post-Time Skip, not only has she filled out considerably from her Tomboy days, she's also picked up more of her brother's spiritual awareness.
  • Bokura no Hentai begins with a group of middle schoolers and has them aging a few years. Satoshi received this. He grew from a cute lil' Wholesome Crossdresser to a tall, Bishōnen boy within chapters, despite being younger than the main trio. Puberty hit him hard as he grew several centimeters over a spring break. He quit crossdressing due to said growth spurt. Marika's astonished by his change in clothes but soon falls for Satoshi.
  • In episode 4 of Burn Up Excess, we learn that when Maya (who edges out Rio and Nanvel by 1cm for the bustiest of the squad) left for the Tokyo police academy, she was a Tomboy. When she returns home to Osaka on personal business, everyone was surprised when they learned just how much she filled out while she was in the academy, and there was a Running Gag where she slugged everyone who noted it in a specifically lusty manner.
  • Mixed with Leaning on the Fourth Wall in the Captain Tsubasa TV series. In the first episode of the original TV series's junior high arcs, Sanae Nakazawa is introduced by talking to a bunch of girls that are off-screen, with her back towards the 'camera'. She then turns and directly addresses the viewers, identifying herself as Sanae to show the fans how, in the span of three years, she's gone from an unruly tomboy to a more mature Girl Next Door.
  • D.C. ~Da Capo~:
    • Subverted in Season 1, everyone was surprised when Sakura returned looking exactly like she did 6 years ago (a little girl). She leaves at the end of Season 1, but on her return halfway through Season 2 (years after the first story) she looks... exactly the same.
    • In the sequel D.C. II, which takes place 50 years after the original, Sakura still looks the same.
  • In D.N.Angel, Rika decides to go check on Daisuke after he mysteriously collapsed in the middle of school. After getting flustered at the sight of his sleeping face, Riku notes that Daisuke looks a bit more mature than she remembers him being and that it's only a matter of time before he turns into a full-blown Bishōnen.
  • Death Note. After L's death, we come back after a few years' gap and Light's little sister Sayu has done exactly as this trope predicts, going from an adorable kid to a hottie. Matsuda even gets a crush on her, despite knowing her since she was a kid and being 11 years older than she is. Soichiro is not pleased, of course.
  • In Devilman, merging with Amon triggers a noticeable growth spurt in Akira's base state, quickly turning him from a fairly scrawny Ordinary High-School Student into a tall, athletically built young man who draws more than a few admirers.
  • A more platonic and gender-swapped variant of this trope is seen in the first episode in the original Japanese dub of Digimon Adventure 02, with old friends Hikari and Takeru. Upon their reunion (after a couple of years of not having seen each other) Hikari compliments Takeru by saying that "You've gotten taller." Of course, easily-jealous Daisuke — and Takeru/Hikari fans — had a less platonic interpretation of this observation. She makes a similar remark again in the third movie of Digimon Adventure tri., though accompanied by a light blush this time — from both of them.
    • In both Adventure and the 02 movie Diaboromon Strikes Back, Koushiro is either too busy with his laptop or too distracted with The End of the World as We Know It to pay attention to Mimi. But in tri, once Mimi comes back from New York after 3 years, he can't stop looking at her and quickly develops a not-so-secret crush as a result. She even lampshades it upon their reunion:
      Mimi: You're all nervous because Iā€™ve gotten super cute now, aren't you!
      Koushiro: (flustered) Tā€“Thatā€™s not it at all!
  • In a few Doraemon movies, oddly enough, despite the main cast being Not Allowed to Grow Up:
    • Doraemon: Nobita and the Kingdom of Clouds brings back Kibo the sentient plant from the manga episode, "Goodbye Kibo!" who went from a shrub in his previous appearance to a fully-grown talking tree. The main gang couldn't even recognize him until Kibo revives Doraemon and asks them, "Remember me?"
    • Doraemon: Nobita's New Dinosaur, allegedly a remake of Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur, turns out to be a Stealth Sequel when Nobita's previous dinosaur, Piisuke, returns to save his master from drowning. In his second appearance Piisuke is visibly older, with a longer neck, larger flippers, a more realistically-textured skin, and has visibly aged ever since Nobita left him.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • This happens to both Goku and Chichi in the last part of the original series (before it became Dragon Ball Z). First, Bulma and company didn't recognize the 19-year-old Goku at first, having gained a couple of feet of growth and the hotness to match (Bulma herself couldn't help but hesitate a little). They could only believe it when he removed the turban he was wearing to reveal his signature hair. Then, Goku didn't notice that the Tsundere he was fighting against in the Tenkaichi Budokai quarterfinals was the girl he agreed to marry when they were kids (she entered the tournament anonymously), and he didn't find out until Chichi revealed herself. ("But-but-but are you the same little Chichi I met so long ago?!" "Hey, of course I am!") Basically, she got tired of waiting for him and decided to approach him more on his terms...and this time it stuck.
    • There's also the time in Z that Bulma learned that (future) Trunks was her Kid from the Future. Her reaction (after the requisite Gasp! of surprise, of course) was, "My kid's gonna grow up hot? Sweet!" She also has some trouble keeping her thoughts about Goku entirely platonic ever since he turned eighteen — even after he's married.
  • In the Eureka Seven Good Night Sleep Tight Young Lovers movie, Renton commented to Eureka in the sickbay that she has grown pretty since he last saw her 8 years ago.
  • Suzuna tries to get this reaction out of Sena in Eyeshield 21 and beats up Monta when he pulls this...on Mamori. Poor Sena gets stomped on too.
  • In Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle, Jubei notes that Mai has grown, implying that he hasn't seen her since she was too young to have her most famous attribute.
  • In the Fruits Basket manga, Momiji goes from a cute Older Than They Look young teen to a very handsome young man by the end of the series.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, the main character Edward's love interest/childhood friend/automail mechanic has been out of town with a job for months, and Edward finds her, has his limbs adjusted and goes on his way. Winry notes to herself (as she further realizes she is in love with Ed) that his back/shoulders are broader now, and Ed is becoming a man and is no longer a child. At least in one instance, this was mostly due to Ed regaining his self-confidence and his posture improving as a result.
  • Futakoi has Nozomu and Ichijou sisters, with flashbacks and stuff.
  • Ruriko from Gate Keepers is a hard-nosed, responsible student by day and a powerful invader hunter by night. Her childhood friend Shun remembers her as a weak-hearted sniffler.
  • Genshiken starts with Saki noticing her old childhood friend, who's grown into an incredible Bishōnen.
  • Parodied in the Gintama fifth season where Shinpachi finds the show had a two year timeskip in its one year break and finds Kagura has the body of an adult. It turns out it wasn't a timeskip, everyone is just acting like it was a timeskip because they were infected with wart parasites. Except for Gintoki
  • In the GUNƗSWORD, Van's Kid Sidekick Wendy Garrett is show to have grown up into an attractive young woman when they are reunited years later in the finale.
  • In Haruhi Suzumiya, present-Mikuru is a little moe girl who (despite having a large male following) is generally referred to more as cute or adorable than hot or sexy. Her future version, however, generally gets labels like "bombshell" applied to her, and whenever she does anything at all, Kyon uses adjectives like "seductively" to describe it. It's hard to tell in the anime because of Generic Cuteness, but future-Mikuru is still drawn a bit more beautiful than her younger version.
  • Actually seems to have been inverted in Hayate the Combat Butler: Hayate doesn't seem to have noticed A-tan's growth when he meets her after ten years of separation, until he's directed to look via an extremely obviously loaded question...and even then it seems to take him a moment. This is particularly funny as they met when they were children and she's now one of the most developed girls in the cast. Interestingly, he actually seems to prefer the memory of the younger Athena too.
  • Tsugumi Shibata from season 1 of Hell Girl reappears in season 3 as a stunning adult, bonus points for becoming a nurse.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • England leaves the young America and tells him to grow taller and stronger. When they see each other again... oh, my. America is quite taller than England.
    • There's also France's reaction to pubescent-but-not-quite-legal-looking-Italy.
      Italy: What's intercourse?
      France: It's something you do with someone you like! ...So, Italy. Do you like me?
    • Played with when Hungary and Prussia meet as teens after she's defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Only then Prussia fully realized that the kid nation he used to fight against more than once that swore was a boy is actually a woman.
  • In His and Her Circumstances, Takefumi's appearance has changed so dramatically from when he was a fat, bullied kid that Tsubaki, the girl he liked back then, doesn't even recognize him at first. He takes advantage of this to get close to her with the intent of getting revenge on her for her only pretending to be his friend back then because a teacher ordered her to. Funnily, it later comes out that Tsubaki actually liked his fatness so much that she tries to fatten his slimmer older self back up.
  • Another genderswapped variation occurs in Kekkaishi: Tokine initially has difficulty seeing Yoshimori as anything but the crybaby kid she used to try and cheer up when they were younger even after other people have pointed out that he won't stay a kid forever. Events later in the manga, however, have her admitting to herself that Yoshimori is growing to be a strong, reliable young man. She even finds herself imagining how he'd look in a few years and finds her mental image of an older Yoshimori "surprisingly cool-looking."
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) has a male example. Darpa may joke that Link "got old", but Rusl remarks that he's grown into a striking man shockingly fast when they reunite, and Zeu is impressed by how built he now is.
  • In the final episode of Library War, Komaki and a young neighbor that he only ever thought of as the little girl next door, until she turned nineteen or so.
  • In Love Lab, Riko's childhood friend Satoshi was very effeminate looking and teased for resembling a girl. When they run into each other in the present, she doesn't recognize him at first because he's become manly.
  • Genderswapped in Lovely★Complex when Risa's childhood friend Haruka moves back to Osaka and is revealed to have grown taller than her, she's impressed but can't help but think of him as the pretty little crybaby she protected when they were young.
  • Genderswapped in Magic Knight Rayearth. Ascot the Summoner was a little boy in the first part of the series, but when the Knights returned to Cephiro in the second part, he was a handsome teenager tall enough to tower over the girls (even more with his hat). Caldina says he "grew up" out of love for Umi, but he denies it (though his Luminescent Blush and his behavior towards Umi say otherwise...).
  • In the first Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS sound stage, Shamal notes that Suzuka has become quite beautiful in the ten years since A's.
  • In Maid-Sama!, when Misaki last knew him, Hinata Shintani was a fat gonk. Ten years later, Hinata returns as a wide-eyed Bishōnen with the personality of a hyperactive puppy and his mind set on finding his first love (Re: Misaki). In a subversion, Misaki doesn't particularly seem to notice or care very much. Her younger sister Suzuna, on the other hand...
  • In MƄR, Koyuki and Ginta already had a Childhood Friend Romance, but when he returns from MAR Heaven, she is quite impressed to see that he's stronger, taller (courtesy of Year Inside, Hour Outside training) and doesn't need glasses anymore (the latter was due to the magic of MAR Heavenā€”his vision cleared the moment he got there).
  • In Miyuki, Masato feels this way regarding Miyuki Wakamatsu - who is his stepsister...
  • Naruto:
    • Reversed when Sakura notices that Naruto has grown up. When she asks if she looks more like a woman, he says "You look fine. You haven't changed a bit." Yeah, that was the wrong thing to say.
    • According to Tsunade, this happened to Kushina, Naruto's mother.
    • It also happened to Tsunade herself. Back in her genin days, she was called flat-chested by Jiraiya. The difference between her child and adult physiques is lampshaded in an omake of the anime.
  • Chapter 45 of Natsume's Book of Friends has a bit where a girl named Miyoko complains to a friend while walking home about how this Creepy Child she knew back in preschool named Takashi Natsume. Miyoko's annoyed because he's going to be in town for a couple of days, and since her parents invited him to stay at their place, she's gonna have to put up with him the whole time. Ugh! But enough about that, why don't they talk about who that really cute guy standing at the front door is and why he's waiting there like...Oh.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • A series of age-disguising pills causes this to happen with Negi and his students a couple of times, although the girls didn't recognize it was him. Later, a few more girls get a similar effect when they see how his father looked.
    • This is repeated later in the series (the Magic World arc). This time around, though, some of them are catching onto it.
    • Also noted by Rakan in referring to Asuna. But since it's Rakan, he says 'Look how big you've gotten!' and pokes her breast. Followed by Asuna decking him and him pretending to fall off of Ostia.
    • Setsuna's feelings for Konoka always lay in that sort of direction, but it's implied that she first consciously realised how attractive Konoka had become when she saw her dressed up in a fancy kimono in cinema town. Not that she was willing to acknowledge it just yet...
    Setsuna: Ojousama really has grown into a beautiful young woman. Why am I so shaken up?
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Implied with Asuka when Misato acknowledges that she's "filled out" nicely since their last meeting - when she was closer to eight. It is later in the series when we see her at a much younger age and how she grew up into the attractive girl she is at fourteen.
  • Yuki in No Bra is all grown up to the main character ...the catch is that Yuki is male. Later on, so is Kaoru. They were in the same nursery, at least.
  • In RahXephon Haruka makes a comment about Ayato finally growing taller than her just before admitting to him that not only is she in love with him but that she's still in love with him, as they used to be middle-school sweethearts before the universe decided to fuck things up between them with time dilation and a mind wipe.
  • Rebuild World: Downplayed and Gender-Inverted with Akira, with the narrative sometimes having a Time Skip of months. Due to growing up abused and malnourished in the slums, his bodyā€™s development was hindered, and a hospital treatment he gets to recover from that helps to make him taller, as well as all of his Training from Hell via his Virtual Sidekick Alpha sees him grow to peak human fitness. This is noticed by Shizuka when he changes in front of her. This also leads to some scenes with the tailor Celene and Dogged Nice Girl Sheryl Eating the Eye Candy when seeing him undress.
  • The young Yukari Sendo from Rosario + Vampire takes a dose of temporary aging pills in season two. To her relief, she learns that the only thing separating her from the rest of the harem is about four yearsā€”she just needs to be patient.
  • Gender-inverted in Sand Chronicles, Ann notices that her love interest Daigo has gotten taller in Chapter 2 (1.5 years after Chapter 1) and she wonders if it's why she feels nervous around him.
  • Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: Gideon Graves was the epitome of a geek in high school. In the current day he's glowed up significantly, wearing nice suits, sporting a stylish haircut, and losing the braces. Julie needs a long moment before identifying him as Gordon Goose rather than Gideon Graves and despite his terrible state when she encounters him, is attracted enough to him to let him stay at her place.
  • Mika of Seraph of the End certainly grew up nicely as evidenced by his Shower Scene.
    • In chapter 46 Ferid drives up in his car and holds out his hand to Mika and Yuu, with a flirtatious look and teasingly saying "I heard you two were being attacked by a dangerous vampire so I came to your rescue. Come take a ride with me. I'll save you." He plays mind games with Yuu and Mika throughout the chapter, and when Yuu turns into a demon to attack Ferid for showing them Akane's head Ferid tells Mika he's "worried for the poor guy (Yuu)" because he says Yuu could turn into a full demon. He states he has an antidote to cure Yuu and tells Shinoa "Let us go rescue dear Yuu." Mika is adamant to keep Ferid from getting near Yuu and says "I won't let you have your way with him!" Ferid smiles and says he just wants to help Yuu. Mika says he's not going to let Ferid touch him. Crowley engages Mika in a fight while Ferid states cheerfully "Now precious Yuu is all mine." Ferid approaches Yuu and blushes, saying "Wow! Haven't you grown into the cute one!! Your demon is on the verge of rampage yet you still have such clear and beautiful eyes. No wonder you are the extra special guinea pig." He then lifts Yuu's face by his chin and gets close saying "Perhaps before I heal you I'll take a little sip of your blood."
  • Skip Beat! has a Genderswapped version. Kyoko vividly remembers Corn from her childhood, but he left suddenly. During the Guam arc, when she encounters him emerging from the ocean, she immediately recognizes him and her thoughts revolve around how this is exactly how she thought he would look like, if he had grown up into an adult: tall, mature and just as beautiful as he had been all those years ago.
  • The Colony Drop version is also used as a joke in Super Robot Wars W, where Ruri Hoshino undergoes all the physical growth she did in the six years between Martian Successor Nadesico and The Prince of Darkness in only six months between the first and second halves of the game.
  • Tenchi Muyo!:
    • Sasami. It's shown several times over the course of the series that the world's most adorable girl is going to grow up to be drop-dead beautiful — there's even a short story in the manga where Ryoko points this out to Ayeka — "Sure she's a kid now..." She's so far beyond Ryoko and Ayeka's league that the two can't even come up with a decent comeback in the OVA. The best they can come up with is insulting each other and comparing themselves to her. Or at least, that's how the two of them seem to see it.
    • In one episode of the original series, Ayeka on seeing Sasami's adult form in Tsunami bemoaned the fact that her sister's beauty would soon surpass her own.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • The light novel/manga Tenkosaki follows high school transfer student Hayato finding out that his new class's sweetheart idol student Haruki was his Childhood Friend - one he thought was a boy all this time since Haruki presented themselves in a rough boyish manner and dressed the part up too as a kid. It's relatively downplayed in that Hayato is simply happy to hang out with her like before, and Haruki is similarly elated to act normally around him as the tomboy she naturally is instead of the demure girly girl persona she keeps up in public.
  • In Uncle from Another World, Fujimiya looked and acted like an ill-mannered boy in grade school. Come middle school, however, she made more of an effort to act like a girl. Thankfully for her, puberty was very generous to her.
  • Wandering Son:
    • Yuki was surprised to see how her middle school crush grew up once he reached high school, considering she dropped out of school in middle school and became a hikikomori. Said crush later becomes her boyfriend when they meet as adults.
    • In high school Nitori meets up with her old elementary classmates one day. They're surprised at how handsome she's become, especially a girl who had a crush on Nitori.
    • Not having seen Nitori much since they split into different high schools, Takatsuki is surprised by how she's matured. Takatsuki confesses later, but gets turned down.
  • Wolf Girl and Black Prince: Erika meets her middle school friend Terasaki, who was pudgy back then, only to learn that he is now a Bishōnen.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, a brief glimpse of everyone's futures reveals that the children Rua and Ruka grow up well. Guys stare at Ruka and bump into each other, and Ruka's female friends start gushing about Rua and saying he's hot.
  • In a scene later on in YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke stares at his childhood friend/love interest Keiko's body before remarking, "...since when did YOU start filling out in all the right places?", which promptly results in him getting smacked.
  • In Yuri is My Job!, Hime Shiraki was friends with a girl named Mitsuki Yano while the two were in fifth grade, but they parted on bad terms, only to reunite in high school, five years later. Over the years Mitsuki, who was only a little taller than Hime back in elementary school, grows into a tall, attractive and big-breasted Onee-sama, which is part of the reason why Hime doesn't recognize her at first. When Hime sees Mitsuki in an outfit that shows off her breasts, Hime is shocked at how much Mitsuki has grown.

    Comic Books 
  • Archie Comics:
    • A story titled "A Date with Suzy Stringbean!" had Betty set up a date between Reggie and an old classmate who had a crush on him, Susan Starn (or Suzy Stringbean, nicknamed because she was the skinniest girl in the class). Reggie fakes an illness to get out of the date, so Betty sends Archie in his place. When Reggie sees Suzy the next day:
    Reggie: S-Sue-Suzy! You've filled out! I mean, you've grown up! I mean, I don't know what I mean! [face turns green]
    Suzy: Gosh, Reggie! You must still be sick! You're turning a bit green!
    Betty: Yeah! Green with envy!
    • Another example: The reason Jughead avoids women is that he fears his heart is going to get broken a second time; the first was when his first love and childhood friend Joani Jump moved out of town. Or maybe he who moved away from her. At any rate, in one story, when they reunited briefly, for the first time since they were about five years old, she was a knockout. Even Reggie was a little flustered when he saw her. (Archie had enough respect for Jug to leave them alone, dragging Reggie with him.)
  • Asterix Legionary has Panacea, who returns after many years studying outside the village.
  • In The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Fat Freddy goes back to his hometown and meets an attractive teenage girl who invites him home. As they're sharing a bath together, her parents come home—and Freddy realizes they're his parents too, having not recognized his now attractive sister.
  • Les LĆ©gendaires:
    • The series takes place in a world where everyone has been turned back into a child because of a curse the protagonists accidentally caused on their world. In Book 6, Danael, after going through a Time Travel, meets with a past, full-grown version of his Love Interest Jadina. He is quick to notice he was used to the child version of her and forgot how beautiful she was as an adult.
    • Later played straight in a minor way with character Toopie, who started out as a regular child and as such was still able to grow up until she reaches 12. When the heroes meet her again, she has reached such age, and Razzia is quick to notice how much she has grown up, pissing his girlfriend Tenebris off in the process.
  • A 1967 issue of The Mighty Thor features the first modern encounter of Thor and Lady Sif. He is surprised because he remembers her as a child who he used to dandle on his knee, and he now sees her as a stunning beauty. He concludes that: "By my mallet—thou art child no longer!" This was also Thor's reaction to meeting the grown-up Lorelei, Amora's younger sister, who is in the process of using magic to seduce and rape him. The last time Thor saw her she was still a child.
  • Runaways has done this a couple of times:
    • In the very first issue, Alex refers to Nico as "that dorky girl" who borrowed his DVDs of The Prisoner the previous year and never returned them. When he sees her again, he is literally speechless. A flashback much later on shows that the younger Nico had shorter hair, glasses, and a much more conservative wardrobe.
    • In the second volume, the gang meets a future version of Gert, described in Brian K. Vaughan's script as "busty" and "very, very attractive." The Gert fans know and love is an overweight, bespectacled nerd.
  • Sin City. John Hartigan saves eleven-year-old Nancy Callahan from a pedophile rapist. Eight years later he walks into a bar looking for her and is dumbfounded when informed she's the buxom stripper (played by Jessica Alba in the movie) up on stage in the cowgirl outfit.
    Skinny little Nancy Callahan. She grew up. She filled out.
  • Scott Pilgrim takes notice of how much prettier Lisa Miller is compared to when they were in high school. Lisa noticed his reaction and starts tramping herself up because she really liked him staring at her.
  • Supergirl started out being depicted (and drawn) as a typical teenager, with Supergirl rarely looking more than 13 or 14 in most of her early appearances, only by the mid-1960s to be depicted and drawn as a sexy 20-something woman. Although "eye of the reader" does not apply for this trope, Supergirl becoming a woman is touched on in numerous issues, including stories where she tells her cousin Superman that she doesn't need his guidance or approval anymore.
  • In Superman storyline A Mind-Switch in Time, Superboy travels to the future and is stunned when he sees his childhood crush Lana Lang and realizes how gorgeous she has become.
  • Layla Miller in X-Factor. She was stranded in the future as a prepubescent girl, and returned as a young woman, with hips and "things" as Jamie observed.
  • When the 3rd Loki got his Plot-Relevant Age-Up in Young Avengers the reaction to his new teen/young adult self was stunned silence and:
    Kate: Okay. Now he looks like trouble.
  • Gender-swapped in Zot!: Short-and-nebbish Woody, who has a crush on Jenny (who of course only has eyes for hero Zot), goes to France for the summer. When he returns, he's six inches taller and quite a bit buffer. Jenny's reaction: "My God, he's adorable!!"

    Comic Strips 
  • For Better or for Worse had a slight variation: Michael returned home to find that his sister Elizabeth was actually good-looking, and remarked on this, prompting her to go mark that date on the calendar. In another strip, he noticed that she actually looked similar to his girlfriend Deanna. Brain Bleach may have been needed.
  • An early-to-mid '60s installment of Peanuts has Linus reading the paper and fretting because...
    Linus: Annette Funicello is all grown up!!

    Fan Works 
  • Link has this reaction in After Ganon when he's reunited with Zelda after six years. She's become even more attractive over the years:
    As he expected, she was in the courtyard, where she had been when they were 10. Now she faced him, and he couldn't help but notice how beautiful she had gotten. Her eyes had gained more depth, and her hair had lost the bleached tone it once held, and not looked purely like strands of gold. He slowly walked up to her, for fear of breaking the beauty of what lied before him.
  • After the End (Arabella and Zsenya): Everyone is surprised to suddenly find out Eloise Midgen has become extremely attractive. Also, Colin Creevey has become rather tall and good-looking. There are a few fics out there that sometimes depict Neville has having grown out of his awkward younger phase and becoming something of a stud. No doubt, there is some influence the similar transformation of Matthew Lewis, the actor who plays Neville in the films.
  • In the Buffy/Stargate crossover fic All Your Base are Belong to Her, we catch up with Dawn as she approaches her eighteenth birthday. Although she had been cute enough even as a young teen, Dawn has come along nicely in the two and a half years since the end of Buffy Season Five, and is acknowledged by most (though not all) of the characters she meets as being a legitimately gorgeous young woman (as well as being an insufferable brat, but that's another point altogether).
  • This is used platonically in Another Rainbow in Another Sky when Wind Whistler compliments a now-adult Megan after having not seen her since she was a child.
  • Harry 's original intent in The Awakening of a Magus is to try passing his physical changes from the Awakening as a growth spurt. So far, it is unclear whether the secret will even hold until it becomes relevant. Also, it turns out that the more powerful wizards undergo a less severe case of this; in fact, Voldemort, when shown a memory of the "New Harry" believes this is the case.
  • Played for Laughs in Blood That Flows with Vita, who is now suffering from Laser-Guided Karma for calling Signum a Boob Monster, considering that she is about Hayate's height, with Shamal's bust.
  • The Bolt Chronicles: When Penny flirts with teen hearthrob actor Lance Stonewell in "The Cameo," he remarks on how much she has changed since her time starring on the Bolt television show, when she was a pre-pubescent girl.
    Penny: Oh, you flatter me. I'm Penny, by the way. I guess you remember me from the show's earlier days? And this is Bolt. They used to call him "The Hardest-Working Dog in Show Business" back then.
    Lance: [stammering]' Ah — right, right, right! That was a few years ago now, wasn't it? My, my, how you've changed — and I must say, for the better. You're not that gangly little pixie on a scooter anymore.
  • Played straight in the LDD-fanfic, Bridge to Terabithia 2: The Last Time. As expected, Leslie who turns out to still be alive is absolutely gorgeous as a teenager, and more feminine than either her book or film counterpart, preferring to wear perfume and lipstick and having her hair grown long. But the same thing also applies to Maybelle, who at age 13 takes on a more spunky persona, is more adorable and prefers figure-hugging clothing, and even more so on Jess, who Took a Level in Badass as a teenager, started working out and changing himself into the complete opposite of the innocent fifth-grader he was in the original story, with one chapter outright stating he even had abs.
  • Comes up in Burnin' Passion regarding Moe Kamiji. When Izuku first met her, the girl was chubby to the point of being nearly round. By the time they're teenagers, Izuku remarks that puberty "hit her like a fully loaded 18-wheeler with an extra trailer".
  • Child of the Storm:
    • The fic has Harry undergo this offscreen - while there isn't a time skip, he is, at first, completely oblivious and constantly surprised by how much taller he's got, and the narrative doesn't particularly dwell on it, save to remark on his height. Over the course of the story, he goes from a thirteen year old who could probably pass for eleven to a fourteen year old who could comfortably pass for eighteen by the sequel, after The Glasses Come Off (thanks to Asgardian magical eye surgery around chapter 57), better food and a long overdue growth spurt - one probably related to his demigod genes at that. He's noted in-universe as being well on course to being very handsome indeed and to be a growing recipient of the Female Gaze. Since he's still young and a bit shy, he's more freaked out by it than anything else.
    • Carol's main problem is that she went through this trope prior to the story starting, ahem, developing early into her canon counterpart. The sexual harassment that results is depicted as absolutely miserable and causes Carol to develop a somewhat spiky outlook since most guys her age seek to befriend her with a view to getting with her and grown men have no compunctions about hitting on her or copping a feel. When we first encounter her, she's 14.
  • In Children of Time, Sherlock Holmes first meets Beth Lestrade when she's a fifteen-year-old, Hot-Blooded tomboy. When he sees her next, she's seventeen and has matured quite a bit in the past couple of years, acting far more like an adult than a kid. He's left unsure of how to handle it.
  • The God of Destruction comes to Remnant: Nicolas Schnee was in a coma for about 17 years. When he wakes up and is reacquainted with his loved ones, he comments that the last time he saw his grandchildren, Winter was a little girl and Weiss was a baby. Now they are grown up and beautiful.
  • Fates Collide: Siegfried is a handsome, tall, and well-muscled warrior. Jeanne shows Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos pictures of back when he was just a scrawny kid.
  • In the How to Train Your Dragon alternative continuity fanfic, Hitchups has a parental version of this when Hiccup, having fled Berk with Toothless for two years of adventures, returns to help his people against the Red Death. To the Berkians amazement, the clumsy boy named Hiccup has returned as a mighty and tested Dragon Rider warrior on top of being a brilliant inventor and dragon expert favored by Thor himself.
  • Karma in Retrograde has a platonic version with Shouto. When Touya wakes up in a flaming warehouse, the first thing he sees is a guy who looks disturbingly like his eleven-year-old little brother. But this guy was his age, tall, muscular, and sharp. This only adds to Touya's confusion as he remembers speaking to Shouto over the phone just last night. When he and Shouto finally get a chance to sit down and talk, one of the first things Touya brings up is the fact that Shouto is taller than him now.
  • In Outcast Bandicoot, Crunch is abducted when he and Tani are teenagers. It is several years before Crunch can return to Earth. Upon his return, he finds that Tani has grown up and changed in the years that passed.
  • In Over the Rainbow, Ozma watches Dorothy from afar using the Magic Mirror. Dorothy grows up to be quite pretty after their years apart, which only makes Ozma feel more upset that they live so far away from one another.
  • In A Pleasant Surprise, both Fluttershy and Midnight have this reaction to each other, given that they haven't met in years. Fluttershy didn't expect him to have grown up to be adorkable, and Midnight had no idea that Fluttershy had gone from cute to amazing.
  • In the Kingdom of Heaven fanfic, Prelude to Heaven, Balian is tall, gangly, pale and somewhat clumsy. Then after serving in an army, turns into... well, what Orlando Bloom is. This is noted by the girl he was crushing very badly on, who didn't recognise him and had had a bad experience in the intervening years before he sweeps her off her feet as it were.
  • PokĆ©mon Reset Bloodlines has a variation: shortly after being thrown into the new timeline, Ash meets a 15-year-old Misty, whom the narration describes this way:
    Ash couldn't believe his eyes as he saw her; the short, angry, tomboyish girl just a bit older than him was now a tall, angry, tomboyish girl who actually looked like one of her older sisters in body shape.
  • Artificially (though unintentionally) induced in Science: Saving Humanity Without Regard to Morals Or Ehics. The retrovirus tailored for Asuka that's meant to cure infertility turns her from a "stringbean of a girl who thought she looked hot" into an amazon fertility goddess, who's not only taller than the rest of the cast but curvier than even Misato.
    Misato was every bit as dumbstruck as the teenaged boys sheā€™d brought with her. This was not the Asuka Langley Sohryu she left behind in Germany two years ago. Hell, she was pretty sure this wasnā€™t the Asuka Langley Sohryu that left Germany a month ago! She was supposed to be a short girl of slight build, almost waif-like evenā€“not this voluptuous young woman that stood before herā€¦ that stood taller than her! And her figure! The way that Asuka filled out was straight up scandalousā€“and that was coming from Misato ā€˜no neckline is too lowā€™ Katsuragi!
  • Fu of all people gets this in Son of the Sannin. She's introduced in Part I as a rather short and scrawny girl, and quickly befriends Naruto and his peers during the Chunin Exams. Fast-forward to Part II, when they rescue her from Hidan and Kakuzu, they're shocked to see she's grown One Head Taller than them, and has built up some muscle on top of that.
  • In the Miraculous Ladybug fic The Space Between Us, there is a bit of tension and discomfort (not just in the metaphorical sense) due to Marinette and Adrien having an identity reveal right before Adrien got a growth spurt that made him shoot up about a foot, while Marinette's spurt made her... a lot squishier.
  • In the Harry Potter fanfic "Strained Reunions", a reclusive 38 year old Harry Potter is shocked to discover that the "drop dead sexy" young witch who "just showed up one day, announced she was going to have me whether I knew it or not, and hung around so much I eventually fell in love with her" is, in fact, Rose Weasley, daughter of his best friends from school, Ron and Hermione, whom he had last seen when she was only three years old. They end up happily married with children, much to her parents' chagrin.
  • The whole point of the Thicc Falls AU is that we are re-introduced to all the characters of Gravity Falls at least ten years later when all of the kid and teen characters have become adults, and Dipper, Mabel and Pacifica in particular have all grown up to be extremely attractive.
  • Naruto and Hinata in Twice Shy (sequel to Two Halves). Long story short, Tsunade convinced an old student of hers to take Naruto and Hinata for training during the time skip. They come back and well... Hinata has more confidence, doesn't stutter and wears modest clothes that don't hide her figure. Naruto thinks before he talks, eats a balanced diet, is less impulsive and (due to the proper diet and training during time skip) is 6 feet tall and ripped. When they get back to the village Kiba is practically foaming at the mouth at seeing Hinata. Sakura and Ino knock on Naruto's door and look down for when he opens it thinking he's still short... they end up staring at his chest.
  • Us and Them: Sephiroth, who has been raised since he was eight by Aeris' parents, suddenly realizes this one day when when she hugs him from behind, causing him to suddenly realize she has breasts now.
  • Worm Grand Order: Around the time that Hero was killed, Miss Militia was a little girl. When Taylor summons him as a Servant, he eventually runs into Miss Militia, who is now an adult, and is amazed at how she has grown.

    Films ā€” Animation 
  • In Bambi, Faline grows into a very pretty doe after the Time Skip. Bambi briefly gets his antlers tangled in the branches of a tree after seeing her grown up.
  • The Book of Life:
    • The main plot is kicked off when Maria returns to San Angel after several years of studying abroad.
    • Maria herself has a moment like this when she sees Manolo singing "Creep."
  • A somewhat wacky version in Brother Bear 2. By the time Kenai meets his childhood friend Nita again, she's a pretty young bride-to-be, and he's a bear. It works out in the end; Nita becomes a bear in order to stay with him.
  • The Lion King:
    • Nala. Simba doesn't even recognize her at first!
    • In the sequel, Kiara (Simba and Nala's daughter), being the protagonist, seems to react more to "he's all grown up" than Kovu does to her when they first reunite. However, she did get a similar moment where everyone comments on how much she has grown, much to Simba's discomfort.
  • A platonic variation: In The Princess and the Frog, Charlotte's reaction to Tiana in the blue dress (which Charlotte loaned her after a costume ruining) is half this, half She Cleans Up Nicely.
    "Look at you. Why, you're just as pretty as a magnolia in May."
  • Happens to Princess Odette in the The Swan Princess. With the added twist that she and Prince Derek were engaged from an early age, but couldn't stand each other because she was an incorrigible tomboy and he thought girls had cooties. It then gets deconstructed as Derek wants to marry her straight away. Odette asks him if her beauty is all that matters to him, to which — put on the spot, not having really thought about her kindly before, and rather distracted by his sudden attraction to her — he replies "what...else...is there?" so Odette calls off the marriage. Derek essentially has to spend the rest of the film proving that his love for Odette is based on more than just noticing how she filled out.
  • The beginning of Up shows how Ellie goes from a gawky, androgynous little girl to a beautiful woman and continues to age gracefully up to her deathbed.

    Films ā€” Live-Action 
  • In 13 Going on 30, the main character finds out that her pudgy best friend grows up to be a pretty good-looking guy. Unfortunately, he's also engaged to someone else.
  • In Angels with Dirty Faces, Rocky doesn't recognize Ann Sheridan's character when he first sees her and is shocked to learn she hasn't been hitched yet.
  • Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again (released on video as Archie: Return to Riverdale): This live-action TV-movie is about the high-school reunion of the comic book characters, now adults. Jughead spends most of the movie trying to avoid Big Ethel, but he decides to confront his fears and goes to her house. She's now a supermodel.
  • Enrique's and Ignacio's reunion as adults after not having seen each other after grade school in Bad Education (2004) has shades of this.
  • In The Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick (and the audience) discovers that "Jack", now Kyra, not only grew up and filled out, she also Took a Level in Badass (and was very annoyed to find out that her role model had been feeding her BS).
  • A ten-year Time Skip in Circus of Horrors allows Nicole to transform from a tomboyish child to a glamorous and sexy equestrian.
  • In Eyes of a Stranger the protagonist's little sister Tracy discovers this about herself at the end of the film. Having suffered hysterical blindness after being attacked as a child, Tracy has never seen her grown-up body. In the climax successfully defending herself from a second attack causes her sight to return, and she is bemused by her new appearance, examining her breasts in the bathroom mirror.
  • A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner! does this with Tootie. In the original series, Tootie was a Stalker with a Crush who was absolutely obsessed with Timmy, but in the film, she's now an adventurous Granola Girl, who Timmy doesn't recognize until she says her name out loud. In addition, because she's no longer crazy over Timmy, the two manage to get together on mutual terms.
  • The infamous unreleased The Fantastic Four has Sue Storm developing a Precocious Crush on Reed Richards at the age of 13, meeting him again 10 years later with one such introduction, and marrying him by the movie's end.
  • During the first The Fast and the Furious movie Mia mentioned this as having happened to her brother Dom in regards to his relationship with his girlfriend Letty.
    Mia: Letty grew up just down the street. She was into cars since she was like ten years old. Dom always had her attention. Then she turned sixteen...
    Brian: And she had Dom's attention.
    Mia: Yeah, it's funny how that works out.
  • Gigi. The plot pretty much turns on the fact that the male lead falls in love with the female lead without even knowing it because he considers her a child, and therefore discounts her charm and appeal until it is all but shoved in his face (so to speak)!
  • In Heart of Darkness (1958) a character says to her "little brother" who she hasn't seen for several years: "You're not a cub anymore, are you? You're a panther now, grown black and shiny."
  • It's a Wonderful Life: George Bailey has to be strong-armed into dancing with his friend's "kid sister" Mary at the graduation party, and reluctantly agrees only as a favor to his friend. Then he sees what Mary looks like now, and isn't reluctant anymore.
  • Just Friends stars Ryan Reynolds as the fat, nerdy teenager in love with his best friend, Amy Smart, who loves him "as a brother". He runs away and 10 years later is rich, cool, and good looking. He comes back into town where she immediately is struck by his new appearance.
  • In Kaamelott: Premier Volet, Karadoc's daughters Mehben and Mehgan have grown up (they were children in the series), they're quite pretty and they have suitors now.
  • Isabelle from Legends of the Fall had had a Precocious Crush on Tristan and they get married when he returns.
  • Scrawny Chiron from Moonlight (2016) grows up to be very muscular. His childhood friend Kevin is very surprised. By the end of the night, Chiron confesses to him.
  • In The Namesake, Gogol isn't thrilled about re-meeting his childhood friend Moushimi, as she was a classic awkward teenager (glasses, braces, frizzy hair), as well as quite stuck-up. He's floored to see that the glasses make her look even more attractive and she's now gorgeous.
  • James Norrington noticed this in Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl after the Time Skip following the intro, and tries to court her later on. However, she ends up falling for Will Turner instead.
  • In Rush Hour 3, we meet Ambassador Han's daughter again after almost ten years. Carter mentions that they should get her a teddy bear, then he sees her and adds "or a bra!". Surprisingly though, for a film series about as bawdy as PG-13 can get, it doesn't play up her attractiveness very much beyond that.
  • Sabrina, the Audrey Hepburn movie, later remade with Julia Ormond, builds a story around this trope.
  • In Shadow of a Doubt, Charlie notices how his niece has grown since they last met. Their relationship gets more serious afterwards.
  • In She's Out of Control, dowdy Katie gets a makeover where she gets contact lenses, a new hairdo at a professional hair salon, a new wardrobe, and her braces removed while her father is out of town. He returns to be shocked and horrified that Katie is now being chased by practically every teenaged boy.
  • The Tina Fey and Amy Poehler vehicle Sisters (2015) features a scene where they get together with an old high school friend, after exclaiming how Tina Fey's character is still as hot as she was in high school, he sees Amy's geeky character and declares she "grew up to become a peach".
  • Slums of Beverly Hills, puberty hits Vivian fast and hard, that she almost grows enormous breasts overnight.
  • A male example in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, when PadmĆ© sees Hayden Christensen-era Anakin for the first time. He replies "So have you, grown more beautiful... for a senator, I mean."
  • Between the two movies based on Ultraman Cosmos. Mari, the childhood friend of Musashi and resident Tomboy first shows up in the prequel movie Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact, where she frequently hangs out with Musashi and the rest of the boys. In the series proper, she's completely absent. And when she reappears in Ultraman Cosmos 2: The Blue Planet, set 8 years after First Contact, Musashi meets Mari and is stunned at how gorgeous and feminine she had become in 8 years.
  • This trope can be inferred in Lord Steyne's attraction to Becky Sharpe when he meets her as an adult after having had an interesting encounter with her as a child in The Film of the Book of Vanity Fair.

    Literature 
  • The Belgariad: In The Mallorean, Silk is completely thrown when he meets up again with Velvet, who he remembers as the child who always pulled his nose. She's been in love with him for years and, now she's on adult terms with him, sets off on a determined campaign to cure him of his bachelorhood. It still takes a while for him to admit that he has indeed noticed she is now all grown up, but she gets him eventually.
  • The Change Room: Sophia has blossomed into a beautiful girl at fifteen, which both her mother Janet and Eliza (her mom's friend) notice, which she accentuates by wearing more revealing clothing. Janet is worried by this, afraid she'll get into trouble with boys. She's actually a lesbian, with a girlfriend (which Janet is also upset by at first).
  • Colin Fischer: Melissa Greer was bullied when she was younger for her acne, braces, and wild hair. Over the summer before high school, the acne and braces disappeared, her hair became more manageable, and she developed enough curves that she's now one of the most attractive girls in class.
  • In The Dragonlance Chronicles, Tanis notices this after he pulls Laurana down on top of him. Especially justified as he is a half-elf and she is a full elf, so he hit puberty at least a decade before she did. Also happens with Caramon and Tika. He remembers her as a little freckled brat and is stunned by what she's grown into (and what has grown onto her, if you know what I mean...) after he's been gone for five years.
  • Molly Carpenter of The Dresden Files. Harry met her first when she was "somewhere between training wheels and training bra" and doesn't realise she's turned into a complete stunner until she calls him to help bail her boyfriend out of jail. However, he still feels very uncomfortable with the idea of relating to her in any non-platonic way because he remembers when she was a little girl. It doesn't help that her father is the one person whose good opinion matters the most to Harry.
  • The Elenium: When Sparhawk returns from a ten-year exile, the child-Queen he remembers serving is now a grown woman of eighteen and extremely interested in him. The situation completely throws him for a while, before he comes to accept it.
  • In the first Gotrek & Felix novel, the main characters save a young girl named Kat from a Chaos warlord. When they return to the region a couple of decades later in Shaman Slayer, she has become a badass Beastman hunter and quite an attractive young woman.
  • Invoked several times in The House of the Spirits:
    • Clara del Valle, the soon-to-be matriarch of the Trueba family, was a kinda ugly little girl at age 12 when Esteban's fiancĆØe and the World's Most Beautiful Woman Rosa died. Some years later Esteban, now a Self-Made Man, asks the Del Valle family for Clara's hand in marriage... and is stunned to see that the 20-year-old Clara has grown into her looks quite a bit.
    • Esteban and Clara's eldest daughter Blanca was rather ugly when she was born, average-looking as a child and a total beauty as a teenager/adult.
    • Blanca's love interest Pedro Tercero was a Country Mouse as a boy, then borderline Tall, Dark, and Handsome as a teen/grown man. Then he loses three fingers, but has the charisma and the singing/songwriting skills to be still very attractive in the eyes of the women around him.
    • TrĆ”nsito Soto was a rather ugly but charmingly plucky teen Hooker with a Heart of Gold when she befriended Esteban Trueba and he gave her some money so she'd make it in the city. Esteban found her again some years later and saw that, even with a tacky dress/hairstyle combo she had on, she looked much better. Each time they meet through their lives, TrĆ”nsito has grown further into her beauty until the last time, where she's a very old and serious-looking Miss Kitty.
  • An interesting variant happens to Cosette in Les MisĆ©rables. Fresh out of a convent school, she's a mousy little thing who Marius (her future husband) and Courfeyrac just think of in passing as 'Mademoiselle Lanoire' for her plain black dress. Then she herself notices she's gotten pretty and makes more of an effort to dress accordingly, turning heads wherever she goes and causing Valjean, her adopted father, a lot of anxiety. Courfeyrac notices the change immediately, but Marius doesn't - until he meets her eyes.
  • The pre-reviz Magic: The Gathering novel featured the initiate druid Greensleeves, in her late teens, being spirited away by an archdruid for a crash course in advanced magic. Her brother and some trackers took a week or two to find where she managed to get to in a single night. When they arrived he saw she had grown taller, gone from a skinny youth to being, as the cliche goes, a woman with curves in all the right places—perhaps older than her brother (in his early twenties)—and lost her stutter. The implication is that her mentor did a magical version of SORAS, compressing time for her so she could learn what she needed before she needed it, which she wouldn't have if she had been taught the traditional way, over years.
  • A parental version happens in Mansfield Park. After Sir Thomas returns from many months in Antigua, he notices for the first time that the quiet, timid niece he fostered at age ten has grown up to be a very proper and respectable young lady of eighteen. With his own daughters gone after the elder's marriage, he starts treating Fanny with a much warmer, paternal air and begins to think seriously about advancing her future.
  • The Neapolitan Novels: The first book explores the squicky side of this trope, as the girls of the neighborhood start being sexualized by older men almost as soon as they hit puberty. This is especially egregious and becomes a major plot point in Lila's case, as she goes from being considered an ugly duckling to being the object of infatuation of several legal adults at only fourteen, which ultimately ends up having disastrous consequences for her.
  • In Ɩverenskommelser by Simona Ahrnstedt, Edvard suddenly has a realisation of this kind about his cousin Beatrice. And being the sociopath that he is, it only makes him across as a total creep.
  • Invoked in the Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce. When the pages come back from holiday after Keladry has started developing breasts, Owen has this to say:
    "Mithros' spear, Kel, you're a girl!"
    "I've always been a girl."
    "But a girl girl! With a chest and everything!"
  • In Reborn to Master the Blade, thanks to the 8 year age difference between the protagonist, Inglis, and her older cousin, Rafael, he leaves for the Knight Academy when Inglis and his little sister Rafinha are both 7. Once he reunites with the now 15-year old ladies when they are old enough to join the Academy, Rafael is stunned to see how much Inglis has developed, and his fellow knights tease that this is the first time that the Academy's "most popular introvert" has ever been so struck by a lady's appearance.
  • Invoked in Keith Laumer's Retief's War, when Retief meets a very attractive girl he has no memory of ever seeing before ("Sorry — and I do mean sorry"), although she clearly knows him. Subversion, or maybe not, since she turns out to be his cousin.
    "You couldn't be over twenty-one," Retief said. "It would take more than twenty-one years to forget that face."
    The girl tossed her head, her eyes sparkling. "Perhaps you'll recall the name Fianna Glorian...?"
    Retief's eyes widened. "You mean little Fifi...?"
  • In Shimmering Splendor, a retelling of the Eros/Psyche myth, Psyche was very plain-looking when she was young and her family and neighbors grew so used to her plain looks that they didn't realize how much she changed as she grew older until a newcomer to the town tried to abduct her in the middle of the night.
  • The Summer I Turned Pretty opens with Belly visiting the Fishers' beach house after she turned 15 and changed her glasses with contacts. The difference is immediately noticed by Conrad and Jeremiah, therefore setting up the Love Triangle of the story.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Theon Greyjoy returns to Pyke and flirts heavily (and we mean heavily; there is groping aplenty by both parties) with a local ship builder's wife while talking about his sister Asha, who was a skinny little thing with knocky knees and who allegedly has grown into chain mail and leather underclothes. Surprise; the ship builder's wife is Asha, who was deliberately fucking with him. Theon is none too pleased.
    • Deconstructed by Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen who had had a Precocious Crush on her champion Ser Criston Cole. She grew up a beauty but inexperienced in sex so she asked her uncle Daemon for "lessons". Gossip got out of hand and damaged her reputation and her standing with Criston. This is just one account, related by a tell-all book by an ex-jester. The whole truth may never be known.
    • Elaena Targaryen was a pretty young girl when she was in her early teens, but when she grew up she became the World's Most Beautiful Woman. In fact, she was said to be more beautiful at age sixty than at age sixteen.
    • Arya Stark is certainly growing into this. She is offered a position as a Courtesan, can easily seduce any mark and her beauty has been noted by many other characters.
      • Arya is also noted to bear a striking resemblance to her aunt Lyanna, another gangly and awkward girl who was amply blessed by the puberty fairy.
    • Arianne Martell used to be flat chested when she was younger. She's not a child anymore.
  • One Star Wars EU novel features Wes Janson (who flew back seat with Wedge Antilles at Hoth) flirting with a female pilot, who he later finds out is Han Solo's daughter Jaina.
  • In Youth in Sexual Ecstasy, in the protagonist's backstory when his big sister started to grow up and develop, their then stepfather started to harass her and molest her, until one night after coming home drunk, he attempted to rape her but was stopped by their mother. Later the protagonist sees a recent picture of her and sees that she further grew into a real beauty.
  • A parental example occurs in Isabel Allendre's novel Zorro when Juliana and Isabel's father sees that Juliana has outgrown her dresses and the top knot she wears is too childish. He immediately asks their duenna to hire a dancing master, buys her new clothes and prepares them to become ladies.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Arrow. When Oliver Queen returns home after five years of being Not Quite Dead, the fact that his kid sister Thea is now a seventeen-year old Hard-Drinking Party Girl with a drug habit and a string of boyfriends causes a lot of tension between the otherwise close siblings in Season One.
  • In the Barney & Friends special Sing and Dance with Barney, several characters from the first two seasons make a special appearance in a platonic example. All of them are now teenagers (or in Michael's case, a young adult), and show the current batch of kids some pictures of when they were their age.
  • The second episode of Blossom is called..."Blossom Blossoms". Three guesses as to what it's about.
  • In Boy Meets World Cory and Shawn are stunned when they find out Topanga went through puberty during summer vacation.
    Shawn: That's a nice blouse. [stares at Topanga's chest]
    Topanga: Thanks, I got it over the summer.
    Shawn: Summer was very good to you.
    Topanga: At least what I grew is real. [rips Shawn's fake sideburns off]
  • The Brady Bunch: Season 5's "Peter and the Wolf" has Greg (desperately) trying to get one of his buddies to date his girlfriend Sandra's cousin, Linda (on a double date to the drive-in movie theater). All of them say no. Why? Because when Sandra last saw Linda several years ago, she was a nerdy girl in pigtails and thick horn-rimmed glasses and wearing braces. Greg then talks Peter into posing as one of his buddies ... and then needless to say, on date night, Linda had grown up ā€” hotter and sexier than ever!
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In "Him", Xander and Willow come to the simultaneous realization that the nubile and scantily clad girl dancing provocatively at The Bronze they've both been ogling (Xander; "Daddy like!") is Buffy's kid sister Dawn whom they used to babysit.
    • The Mayor gets all teary-eyed seeing Faith go on a torture/kill date with Angelus. "She's not a little girl anymore."
  • Castle:
    • In the episode "Making the Girl", Castle runs into a model who knows him from somewhere, but who he doesn't remember. She gives him her phone number anyways, much to Beckett's chagrin. His teenage daughter informs him that the model in question is in fact the gangly girl who used to babysit her years before, making Castle feel like a Dirty Old Man.
    • Castle has this reaction to his own daughter while at a sci-fi convention. After cooing to Beckett about how cute Alexis was dressed as a little Princess Leia, he later freaks out when she walks by (under)dressed in a stripperiffic cosplay outfit.
  • An episode of Cheers has Sam reuniting with an "old" flame and her daughter, who was a child when he knew them before, but now not so much. He tries to sleep with both mother and daughter.
  • After listing off the varying ways in which America isn't doing too well at the moment, Stephen Colbert consoles the crowd at the Clinton Global Initiative by pointing to Matthew Lewis's successful conquering of puberty.
    Colbert: And, most importantly, Neville Longbottom now looks like this. I think we can all agree that that is a real message of hope.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Girl in the Fireplace": The Doctor first encounters Madame de Pompadour at the age of 7. When he meets her again ā€” a few minutes later by his reckoning ā€” she is played by the gorgeous Sophia Myles.
    • "The Eleventh Hour": Amy Pond. The Doctor meets her first when she's seven, and after accidentally time-travelling 12 years doesn't recognize the older Amy at first since she's understandably grown since five minutes ago. The sexy aspect of this trope is shown too, as she's wearing a kissogram outfit that shows off her impressive legs, not that the Doctor notices.
      • The cricket bat to the head may not have helped.
  • Inverted on Friends when Monica is all grown down between her first and second meeting with Chandler. There's only a year gap but she loses a ton of weight and he's totally gobsmacked.
  • In the fifth season episode "Tested" in Glee, Kurt is seen looking significantly buffer than previous years, where his scrawniness and femininity was a major character trait. He jokes with his friends that he's "finally hit puberty". Several people - girls and guys alike - look on appreciatively while Blaine, his fiancĆ©, jealously eats Cheetos in the background.
  • Growing Pains:
    • Mike, on the first day of school, spots an incredibly beautiful girl in the halls and spends the day following her around trying to get her to tell him her name. She seems to know him already. Turns out that she's "Buck-Toothed Becky," whom he used to mock for getting corn stuck in her braces.
    • Mike's friend Boner catches Carol in her nightgown, ogles her chest, then says to her "Well, they're growing quite nicely."
  • The Hexer: Teenage Renfri is rather unimposing, scrawny thing, made look even worse due to her boyish haircut and constant pouting. When Geralt meets her a few decades later, she's a Statuesque Stunner with a fantastic figure, more than aware of how her looks work on men.
  • On the Impractical Jokers Universal Studios special, Matthew "Neville Longbottom" Lewis substitutes for Sal in a "Refuse you Lose" challenge on the Jurassic World ride. Lewis could be considered the male poster child for this trope, so the Jokers make him say to fellow riders "You know, I wasn't always this hot. Soak it in!"
  • Malcolm in the Middle:
    • There's an episode where Malcolm meets a female friend after the summer holidays, and can't work out why she's suddenly slouching around in baggy jumpers snapping at people. Turns out she... filled out, and isn't used to the male attention she's started getting because of it. Malcolm tries to be understanding, but can't quite concentrate... Particularly funny because the last time she appeared, Malcolm's mom confidently predicted she would ''fill out'' in front of Malcolm, his friend, and her parents.
    • Another episode featured an incredibly sexy babysitter hired for the boys, who turned out to have been an old classmate's of Francis'. Francis calls them from military school, and we see his image of her as an obese, awkward nerd.
  • On Maury, he will often feature people who used be nerdy or obese (or both) who improved their looks (usually with plastic surgery). The girls are often Stripperiffic and the guys are usually muscle-bound beefcakes.
  • Parodied in The Monkees episode "The Monkees in Texas". Mike visits his aunt in the Lone Star State and meets his cousin Lucy, whom he has not seen in years and of course is now gorgeous. He marvels over how the knock-kneed girl with bad teeth he used to hang around with is now a beautiful swan until his aunt informs him that he is confusing Lucy with his other cousin, Clara, who still looks the same.
  • Riverdale: In the first episode, everybody comments that Archie Andrews is a scrawny geek. Everybody is shocked when Archie shows up after summer vacation and is now a handsome, muscular hunk.
  • Saturday Night Live
    • Lindsay Lohan once played Hermione Granger who went through a growth spurt.
    • The digital short "Let's Do It In My Twin Bed", which featured a bevy of women trying to seduce their boyfriends in their childhood bedrooms. Only to find the men completely turned off by all the childhood artifacts present, including their seventh-grade class pictures. The skit ends with a montage of the pictures next to the now adult women.
    • There was also a sketch where a girl, played by Rachel Dratch, who was part of the ensemble of kids who jump about and dance around on a Barney & Friends type programme, had 'blossomed' over the summer break, to the dismay of the adults working on the show. While the director (Jimmy Fallon) gently tries to talk to her about this, the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking actor in a dinosaur costume (host Ray Liotta) doesn't show the same tact.
  • Gender flipped in Sister, Sister. Tia and Tamera's neighbor Roger was always trying to get a date/a kiss/SOMETHING from either one of them and they'd always blow him off with "Go home, Roger!" Over one summer, however, he goes through puberty, turns into a hunk ("from AS IF...to ALL THAT!"), and the girls spend an episode fighting over him before realizing they'd still rather just be friends with him.
  • In the first episode of The Steve Harvey Show, Steve finds out that Regina Grier, the fat girl he tormented in high school, is (1) no longer fat and (2) now his boss at the high school where he teaches.
  • The Summer I Turned Pretty: The title is derived from the fact that Belly grew significantly over the past year and has become beautiful. It sparks new interest from boys due to this, which she's pleased by.
  • In Teen Wolf, Kate made a predatory "this one grew up in all the right places" comment towards Derek, implying his physique was gained during the six years when he and his sister were away from Beacon Hills. It implies that he wasn't considered "grown up" when she sexually manipulated him.
  • That '70s Show: "Oh my God, it's Casey Kelso and he's so DREAMY!" Also played with in regards to "Eric's Hot Cousin!"
  • In The Thorn Birds Mini Series, Father Ralph DeBricassart has this reaction upon seeing Meggie Cleary enter Mary Carson's birthday party.
  • Towards The Republic: When Sun Yat-sen first met little Song Qingling, she was a seven-year-old girl. And when he met her again years later, she had grown into a nubile young woman whose childhood crush on him had become full-fledged love.
  • Twisted in an episode of Two and a Half Men, where a homely childhood friend of Alan's shows up, now a knockout. As Alan and Charlie compete for her affections, she reveals she had starved herself and had plastic surgeries to make herself beautiful, so she could rub it in their faces for teasing and ignoring her in high school.
  • On an episode of Welcome Back, Kotter, Juan Epstein's slightly younger sister puts in an appearance. Barbarino remembers her — but not quite like that.
    Barbarino: So, Carmen... you've filled out!
  • The Wonder Years loved this trope:
    • Winnie Cooper goes from scrawny dork to "Fanservice for pre-teens" incarnate—all in the first episode.
    • "The Pimple" has Kevin's parents expecting a visit from some old friends, the Pruitt family. The Pruitt's daughter, Gina, who adult Kevin described saying "always a scrape on her knee, loved to make mud pies", is shown in a recent photograph to have blossomed into a very pretty young woman.
    • In "Growing Up", Kevin cringes when he hears that Dettweiler's daughter is at the party he's attending, as he had found her annoying when they were growing up, but then finds that the girl he and his friends once called "the stick" is now very well-endowed and attractive.
    • A meta example happens in the sitcom Working, when the two Wonder Years actors meet in this setting.

    Music 
  • Subject of the songs "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" and "Next Door To an Angel" by Neil Sedaka.
  • "Little Sister" by Elvis Presley
  • "Come on Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners can be interpreted as this.
  • Easily interpreted in the song "Valleri" by The Monkees.
    "She's the same little girl who used to hang around my door
    but she sure looks different than the way she looked before..."
  • "Shout" by The Isley Brothers has a case combined with Puppy Love.
    I still remember
    When you used to be nine years old
    I was a fool for you, from the bottom of my soul, yeah!
    Now that you've grown, up
    Enough to know, yeah yeah
    You wanna leave me, you wanna, let me go
  • "The Little Girl I Once Knew" by The Beach Boys.
  • "Big Girl Now" by New Kids on the Block featuring Lady Gaga.
  • "Daddy's Money" by Ricochet.
  • "One of the Boys" by Katy Perry is told by the girl in question.
  • "All Grown Up" by Johnny Horton
  • "Love Games" by The Drifters.
    ...When you were only nine and I was ten
    We had such fun, babe, playing lovers
    You were never more than just the kid next door...
    And now you're grown, I wanna play some more
    Love games...
  • Steely Dan: Well, we used to play when we were three—how about a kiss for your "Cousin Dupree"?
  • Weezer's "The Girl Got Hot" is about a narrator who goes to a rock show and sees a girl he knew in junior high:
    Knew this girl back in junior high school
    When nobody gave her a look
    Look at what we got, the girl got hot
    Switched up and rewrote the book
  • Gorillaz's Noodle caused rampant Viewer Gender Confusion in her Phase 1 preteen days, became more obviously feminine (if still with a tomboyish style of dress) in Phase 2 at the age of thirteen and fourteen, and is now a pretty and more obviously-feminine young woman in "On Melancholy Hill".
  • "Control" by Janet Jackson from the first person point-of-view.
  • "She Hasn't Always Been This Way" by Doc Walker combines this trope with Unrequited Love Switcheroo, as the singer realises that his friend's sister (who used to have a crush on him) has now grown up into a very attractive young lady who won't give him the time of day.
    "She hasn't always been this way. I really can't believe how much that girl has changed. She's out of my life, she's out of my reach, I'm out of her mind, she's out of my league..."
  • This Brazilian song is about a woman who went through this rejecting a former Precocious Crush who previously turned her down for being too young.
  • "Centerfold" by The J. Geils Band is about a man who is shocked to discover that his high school crush appeared on the centerfold of a men's magazine.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • An angle in ECW between Tommy Dreamer and Raven revolved around a fat girl named Beulah McGillicutty whom Dreamer and Raven had both known at summer camp. Dreamer had made fun of her at the time for her weight, see, and so she fell in with Raven. Beulah grew up not just to be a hottie, but according to many wrestling fans, the most classically beautiful valet of all time. She ended up with Dreamer in both the storyline and real life.

    Theatre 
  • Spoken nearly word for word by Joe Keller about Ann Deever in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, though it's his son that's interested in her.
  • A platonic version occurs during Disney's Believe's princess medley. Dr. Greenaway sees Sophia all grown up with a prince of her own and comments on how beautiful she is, lamenting that he missed out on her childhood.
  • In a more sentimental and nostalgic way, in Fiddler on the Roof. In the song "Sunrise, Sunset", the older characters come to terms with a young couple getting married. "Is this the little girl I carried, is that the little boy at play? I don't remember growing older, when did they?"
  • Regine Engstrand in Ghosts. It is strongly implicated by all the other characters (up to and including Helen Alving). that she has "filled out" and has become quite attractive.
  • In most variations of The Phantom of the Opera, Christine and Raoul were childhood friends. In the musical version by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Raoul has the line "What a change! You're really not a bit the gawkish girl that once you were!" when he sees the now-adult Christine on stage.
  • The comedy Two and Two Make Sex spends the entire second act establishing this fact then sitting back and watching the consequences. George discovers that Jane, who he's been having an affair with, is in fact Janey, a girl he hasn't seen since she was three. He was reminded of this fact by his old football friend, Jack, who just happens to be Janey's father.
  • Played with in The Yeomen of the Guard. To avoid execution, Col. Fairfax masquerades as Leonard Meryll, who's been away in the army for years. When Leonard's sister Phœbe greets him in front of everybody, Fairfax is baffled and has to be told who she is. He quickly covers with "Why, how you've grown! I did not recognize you!"

    Toys 
  • Barbie has not one, but two kinds of dolls with "growing up" mechanisms that give them taller statures and larger breasts.

    Video Games 
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Averted in Final Fantasy IV. Adorable seven-year-old Rydia travels to another dimension and returns as a stunning seventeen-year-old, but the only person who comments on her beauty is Edge, who didn't meet her until after her Plot-Relevant Age-Up.
    • Serah is amazed how much older Hope is in Final Fantasy XIII-2. Justified, since she traveled 10 years into the future and sees the young teenager "suddenly" aged by a decade into a young man. A Live Trigger option during the game can also be used to lampshade her reaction.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Kyle and Syrene's C support has them realize that they met as teenagers (Syrene was a Pegasus Knight in training for Frelia, Kyle was a squire for the Renais military, some years ago he ran some errands for his country in her land and she helped him with that). Cue Kyle being surprised to see that the cute girl he befriended years ago is now a beautiful Lady of War.
    • In Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, there's a platonic example in regards to Finn and his childhood friend Selphina:
      Finn: So this is the little girl with the braids...?
      Selphina: Ten years can make a difference. I'm now married to Glade!
    • Sothe of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance gets a more mature portrait when he reappears in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Aimee approves.
  • I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: During the Vertumnan Youth Ball on their 17th birthday, the protagonist is surprised by how much their friends have blossomed from awkward teens to attractive adults that they could "hardly recognize some of them."
  • Dart is amazed at how much Shana has changed in The Legend of Dragoon. She was a scrawny 13-year-old when he left but now she's an 18-year-old young woman, and she doesn't want to be Dart's "little sister" anymore either.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • This happens to Tali'Zorah from Mass Effect. In her introduction, she was just a quirky teenage ill girl who just happened to be very good at hacking, with no romantic subtext. Come the sequel, she is officially a romance option for male players, and this trope comes to full effect. Even if the player chooses not to romance her, other characters will still remark on this, like Javik or Garrus, who forms a Beta Couple with her in case neither of them is romanced by the player. This can lead to some very funny dialogue, especially when it comes to Tali's embarrassed surprise at finally being noticed after years of having a crush on Shepard, her bumbling romantic interactions, and her dialogue with Ashley, in case Shepard romanced her in the first game:
    Tali: "Good to see you again, Lieutenant-Commander Williams."
    Ashley: "You sure about that?"
    Tali: "Definitely. We're all adults here."
    Ashley: "Of course. Oh, and congratulations on getting your big-girl name."
    Tali: "Thanks! I'm glad you decided to help Shepard this time."
  • Persona:
    • Applies to the entire cast of Persona 2 Innocent Sin. While Tatsuya and Jun start out as attractive and stay that way, Lisa, Eikichi, and Maya all get hit with this trope hard — Lisa, a white girl raised in Japan, was mocked for her appearance as a child but grew up to be the envy of her high school, and Eikichi, a popular and skinny Visual Kei fanatic, was an obese, shy loser as a kid. Maya looks drastically different as an adult, having developed nicely and grown her hair out to the point that the others don't recognize her as their childhood friend until well into the game.
  • A non-romantic example from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: When Geralt brings their adoptive daughter Ciri to Kaer Morhen after months of searching for her, and years since they last saw her, Yennefer's first reaction to seeing Ciri after a massive hug is to remark on the beautiful young woman Ciri has become.
    Yennefer: CIRI! My, you've grown beautiful.
  • Like a Dragon:
    • Haruka Sawamura, when she introduced in the first Yakuza game, she was a cute 9-year-old kid who would go on to become series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu's adopted daughter. As the series progresses, she can be seen growing into a young woman over time, where by Yakuza 5, she's 16 and has grown quite beautiful. Yakuza 6 then shows her having grown into a beautiful woman of 20, and even has a kid of her own, which kickstarts the events of the game's plot.
    • In Yakuza 0, Kiryu joins a Pocket Circuit Racing Derby, where he gets to race a bunch of toy cars with children, even making friends with some of the kids. By the time of Yakuza Kiwami (the remake of the first game that adds in new side-quests and storylines that continue off of 0), they've all grown up into fine young adults that Kiryu has trouble remembering until they remind him of who they were.

    Visual Novels 
  • CLANNAD: Mei, briefly, in the Grand Finale. Blink and you might miss itnote . The rest of the girls in the series also qualify, though much more subtly. They were already beautiful, but look generally more mature at the end than they do in high school. Justified in that they're all in their mid-20s at this point. Subverted for Fuko, who is still very childlike in appearance and mannerisms though she is the same age as the other characters.
  • Puberty seems to favor the cast of Clock Zero a lot considering how gorgeous everyone is in the future. Nadeshiko gets this reaction by Nakaba in the Drama CD and in the bonus epilogue, while Madoka also gets this reaction from Nadeshiko twice: as Bishop and as his adult self from Nadeshiko's present timeline ten years after the main plot has ended.
  • In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Hiyoko Saionji is a classical dancer who looks like a child despite being the same age as the rest of the cast. However, the only reason she looks like that is that the cast is trapped in a simulation and look the same as they did when they first entered Hope's Peak Academy. Later on, the main character finds a newspaper clipping from the real world that shows how Hiyoko really looks, and she's definitely grown up, looking taller and much more mature.
  • In Fate/stay night, Shirou mentions early on that lately he's been getting this feeling for Sakura.
  • Waver Velvet in Fate/Zero: short, scrawny, wimpy nerd. Waver Velvet ten years later: Officially voted #1 TILF of the Mage Association.
  • Played with in If My Heart Had Wings: Aoi did already confess to Childhood Friend Ageha before he left, but he'd merely innocently mistaken his worries about leaving for love and didn't really have a crush on her yet. And in process of confessing, he inadvertently offended Ageha by claiming that he wants to go out with her because she's One of the Boys, meaning that in the meantime until they meet again Ageha deliberately tried to invoke this trope by making herself into a cute girl in the hopes that he'd be shocked and humbled when he returns. He's definitely surprised to see his young, boyish friend having turned into a such a pretty girl... but he doesn't remember the comment, and as soon as they start interacting again they fall into familiar patterns. It's not until they get caught in the rain one day and see each other half-naked and wet that it hits both of them that they're the opposite gender and damn attractive, too.
  • There's a weird "instant" version that happens in the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games with Nick's spirit medium sidekicks Maya and Pearl. In The 'Verse, whenever somebody channels a spirit, they take on the physical appearance of said spirit. Naturally, when Nick's very busty Spirit Advisor Mia gets summoned by either her teenage sister or her 8-year-old cousin, the... er, maturity is very noticeable. In Trials and Tribulations, the third game, an old man who goes to a coffee shop to ogle the waitresses refuses to talk to Phoenix, who then semi-concocts a scheme to get Maya employed at the coffee shop. He then convinces her to come with him to meet the old man, who looks at her uniform with obvious lechery...until deciding that she's too "small". Cue the spirit possession, and the much more "developed" Mia begins questioning the old man, who is only too happy to provide answers. Lampshaded afterwards when Mia states she "can't believe Maya called [her] for this!" before dispossessing her sister.
  • One of the most interesting bits of Tokimeki Memorial 2. The game features an interactive prologue where the protagonist is in grade school and meets the various female characters as children. After the prologue, the protagonist moves out of town, and is only reunited with his childhood friends when he starts high school (the game proper): naturally, they're all grown up. The protagonist and Hikari, his closest childhood friend, regularly have discussions of how much and in which way they have changed, throughout the storyline. Also, if the protagonist is a Track & Field Club member, and sees Hikari if he peeks at the girls' bathroom during Summer Training Camp, he'll make a comment on how much she has grown physically.
  • In the words of Umineko: When They Cry's Battler Ushiromiya: "Jessica has breasts now!" Much of the family is surprised too to see that Battler's a tall Bishōnen now (if a horny, immature one).
  • "Uncle" Kunihiko in My Forged Wedding does not have an immediate reaction to seeing the protagonist again once she arrives in Tokyo from Kyushu after graduation from university. Instead, he continues to think of her as the little girl he used to babysit, and only begins to become aware of her as a woman halfway through his route, with a sudden corresponding change in the way he treats her once the realization hits him.

    Web Animation 
  • Parodied on Homestar Runner in episode 4 of Teen Girl Squad. So-and-So's imaginary boyfriend "Brett Bretterson" apparently tells her that she's filled out nicely over the summer, and she says the same to him.
    Narrator Strong Bad: Weirded out!
  • In PokĆ©mon: Twilight Wings, the abused Feebas that Nessa cheered up as a child returned to see her many years later when Nessa went to the same lake for a photo shoot, only the Feebas had evolved to a Milotic by then.

    Webcomics 
  • In Kubera, Leez is a gonk (though she's usually drawn with Generic Cuteness in deference to her status as a main character) who gets scowls all the time. Flashforwards and a temporary Plot-Relevant Age-Up show that in a few short years she will be a curvy Statuesque Stunner who turns heads everywhere she goes. And she'll die shortly after. The Plot-Relevant Age-Up was a warning: It was showing her guardian what she would look like twelve hours before her death.
  • Mob Psycho 100: The Nondescript Shigeo Kageyama keeps hoping this will happen with him, joining his school's bodybuilding club despite his comically fragile constitution. He seems to get his wish late in the comic when he overhears girls whispering about a handsome "Kageyama-kun" and appreciatively glancing in his general direction as he's walking home... completely forgetting that he's walking home with his brother Ritsu, the resident School Idol and actual focus of their attention. In the end, he never does get the makeover he was hoping for, but by then, he's gained enough self-confidence that it longer really matters to him.
  • Questionable Content plays with the idea in this strip, though in this case, the "she" in question is a daydreaming robot.
  • Reunion (2021): In the second chapter, reunited childhood friends Shiro and Rhea both positively comment that the other looks so different from how they looked as kids. Bas later relates that Shiro had told him Rhea was "cute now".
  • Scary Go Round did this in early 2008 - after a three-year absence, the hero's former student-exchange partner becomes worthy of his romantic attentions after straightening her hair and getting contact lenses. She has also become magically cool, interesting and something of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the latter probably due to the fact that she is French. Meanwhile, the audience is encouraged to laugh at her little sister, who is as ugly now as the elder was three years ago. In 2014, the little sister has gotten the same treatment. That's her on the right, in the hoodie.
  • Sleepless Domain: When Tessa transfers to her new school, she runs into Will, an old schoolmate of hers from middle school. She initially doesn't even recognize him, and it's hard to blame her — he used to be nerdy-looking with braces and pimples, but now he's clear-skinned, tall, and "kind of cute".
  • Sticky Dilly Buns plays with the trope a couple of times — once for each gender:
    • When the bisexual Zii encounters ingenue Ruby for the first time in years, having last seen her as a child, she remarks that Ruby has "grown into a very fine young woman." While Zii shows no signs of active sexual attraction in the ensuing conversation (Ruby may be naive, but she's somehow very obviously straight in every way), she's happy to talk to her as a sexual being.
    • The teenage Dillon used to babysit a little boy named Julian. When Julian turns up to visit in the present, he turns out to have grown impressively; the gay Dillon's first response is "Oh, my!". However, Dillon can't get over the idea of Julian being a child, and hence isn't comfortably attracted to him; unfortunately, both Julian and Yaoi Fangirl Ruby promptly start looking for ways around this.
  • The entire premise of Chillguy's 'Thicc-verse' is this. Virtually every character from across multiple cartoon universes are presented years later as young adults, with virtually all of them being 'blessed' in one way or another.
    • When Grenda and Candy meet Dipper again for the first time in years and see he grown to be tall and muscular, Grenda starts stammering while Candy says something in Korean.
    • When Marceline meets Finn again after some time. She stares at him for a few seconds, then asks her girlfriend if they can break up for a little bit.
    • While they are impressed by how tall and in shape KO is now that he's a 18-23, Rad and Enid assume Dendy hasn't changed much in the years they've been gone from the bodega when they see her, only for her to stand up and reveals she has very big "glasses". KO really does mean her glasses by the way, saying they make her look super cute.

    Web Video 
  • The Nostalgia Chick's Nella greets Mara Wilson with the following:
    Nella: Holy shit, Matilda, you've got a great rack!
  • The Nostalgia Critic:
    • The host went through all the stereotypical downfalls of puberty at about thirteen, but as he's bragged, thankfully grew "handsomenerā€” hanā€” handā€” hanā€” ner, prettier" when he got older.
    • A lot of commenters on the A Simple Wish review seemed to have this reaction to Mara Wilson when she confronted the Critic at the end.

    Western Animation 
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers has a platonic example. In the episode "The Night Of The Wolf", the youngest Planeteer, Ma-Ti, develops a crush on a young girl named Laura. Seeing them walk away holding hands makes Wheeler say in surprise, "Ma-Ti? With a girl?"
  • In the five-part story that begins Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Monterey Jack had known Gadget when she was younger; when he and his two friends first meet her in the story, he exclaims that he hasn't seen her "since you were knee-high to a knee!" (Slightly inverted because Jack shows more a paternal attitude towards her than anything else since he was friends with her dad and she probably thinks of him as a favorite "uncle".)
  • DuckTales (1987): A platonic version appears in "Duck to the Future". When Scrooge sees the future Webby, he says that she's "changed into Cinderella". Being her adoptive uncle, he's not in love with her himself, but he can't help remarking that she grew up beautiful.
  • Parodied with Stewie and his old dancing school rival Olivia in Family Guy. Stewie falls in love with her because "she's all grown up," but she looks just the same as before.
  • In Goof Troop, Max hasn't seen his (now college age) cousin Debbie in a while. By his own admission, she's now super hot.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): In "Creatures From The Tar Swamp", Prince Adam's cousin Lady Edwina visits. She hadn't seen Adam since he was a child, so she is struck by how big and handsome he has become. She then proceeds to flirt with him, though he ignores it.
  • Happens in the Kim Possible movie A Sitch in Time, to both Kim's little brothers and Wade.
  • On Phineas and Ferb:
    • Baljeet has this reaction when his old childhood friend Mishti comes to visit and looks like she's a teenager; he refers to her transformation as "turning into a girl" (given the flashback of them playing soccer in the mud, she seems to have been something of a tomboy). Somewhat like the Family Guy example, because both Baljeet and Mishti seem to be preteens who last saw each other as children.
    • Doofenshmirtz has the same reaction when his old childhood friend Grulinda moved to Danville; she was a tomboy who used to dump water on his head because she liked him but he was too petty to see it that way. He was stunned speechless when he saw her.
  • Portrayed in South Park episode "Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society", where the male fourth-graders behaved like apes when they saw Bebe's naturally-developing chest.
  • Invoked in the Terrytoons short, "The Wolf's Pardon"; Taking place in a 'verse' where the figures of Mother Goose stories have grown up, the Big Bad Wolf, having spent the last ten years in prison, realizes that Little Red Riding Hood must have become moreā€¦(Traces an hourglass shape, wolf whistles). He goes to her home and finds that while Red does appear more shapely, her face looks a bit goofy with thick-lensed glasses.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: In "Running with Scissors", Marco Diaz becomes stuck in another dimension where time flows faster than on Earth. When Star arrives to retrieve him, he's gone from a scrawny teen to a rugged man mountain. Star can barely keep her eyes off him or keep her sentences coherent. Much to his regret, his body reverts to his 14-year-old self when he returns to Earth.
    Marco: My hot bod! Where did it go!?
  • Happens to both genders in season 3 of Wakfu:
    • Amalia was always a cute girl with Hartman Hips, but after the time skip between Season 2 and the OVAs and Season 3, she has blossomed into a young woman, which hasn't go unnoticed by Yugo.
    • As a result of his stretched-out life expectancy, Yugo in season 3 still looks like the kid he started out at, but an encounter with some time magic briefly ages his body, showing that when he does reach full maturity, he'll be taller than the rest of the Brotherhood. This, incidentally, has not gone unnoticed by Amalia.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Shes All Grown Up, He Is All Grown Up, Hes All Grown Up

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Jen's Class Reunion

Jennifer surprises her old classmates when she shows up for a class reunion as She-Hulk.

How well does it match the trope?

4.67 (12 votes)

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Main / SheIsAllGrownUp

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