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Above: Rugrats (1991)
Below: All Grown Up! (2003)

"There was a long period of time during which nothing much happened."

A Time Skip is similar to the Distant Finale, but rather than coming at the end of a series, occurs somewhere in the middle, usually between seasons or Story Arcs. A Time Skip can also happen when a series gets a sequel that picks up after the Distant Finale. Naturally, this occurs far more in animated series and comics than in live action, unless a long period of time passes in real life. A mid-series Time Skip in a manga usually causes a break between series in the anime adaptation. It's also a common point in the story for filler to be fitted in.

A Time Skip also provides another advantage for animated series that isn't necessary for live-action series: after a certain number of episodes have passed it looks more and more ridiculous that the characters haven't aged. However, animation does not really allow for the extremely subtle effect of gradual aging. Thus, the best way to show aging has happened is to jump ahead to when they're older.

A Time Skip usually takes no less than three years, and may indicate a shift in the Competence Zone, or at least the characters' place in it. The Official Couple now has a kid, the kid sister... Wow! She Is All Grown Up! When a time skip occurs in a Shōnen anime or manga, you can bet that almost the entire cast will have Taken a Level in Badass.

Time Skips can cause/result in a dramatic shift in the tone of a series, especially if the main characters were kids or teenagers. Alternately, it can be a "The Next Generation" situation, with the children of the previous protagonists taking up the mantle of their parents. A common device of such a variation has the previous protagonists realizing that they now have to put up with the same shenanigans they put their own parents/commanding officers through.

A time skip may be used as well to link the origin story and the story itself, when the story does not take place immediately after the origin. Instead of using a Flashback within the main story, the story details the origin story at the beginning and provides a "many years later" screen to jump to the main story.

Tends to be used as a follow up to a Wham Episode.

Often leads to Ridiculously Successful Future Self for one or more characters.

In a story that runs on Webcomic Time, an occasional periodic Time Skip is almost a requirement to keep the time frame current with the real world. Some don't bother. Alternatively, multiple time skips can be chained together in any medium to produce a story with a larger time span at the expense of insignificant events between major plot turns — see Dashed Plot Line.

Thanks to the nature of time flowing forward and that ugly process known as "aging", live-action works can use a Time Skip to help make Role Reprises feasible in the event of a Sequel Gap.

Longer time skips tend to be a round number of years. See also: Offstage Waiting Room. And check for eyepatches. If the Time Skip is especially lengthy, see Distant Sequel.

A time skip that doesn't get covered in enough detail tends to be prime Fanfic Fuel. If canon doesn't have a time skip yet, fans may just write their own future scenarios for the characters in Flash Forward Fic.

Contrast Spin-Off Babies, which instead makes the characters younger, and Bait-and-Switch Time Skip, which only looks like a long period of time has passed.


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    Comic Books 
  • Age of the Wolf: The three stories have around a 15-20-year gap between them, showing the heroine aging from someone barely out of her teens to an old woman.
  • The All-New, All-Different Marvel relaunch picks up eight months after the most recent Crisis Crossover, Secret Wars (2015), with the time gap leading every returning title to change its status quo in some way, such as Parker Industries going from a struggling business to an international success. Many of the changes were explored further in flashbacks, but a few were never really explained.
  • The Avengers #35 and New Avengers #24 take place eight months after their respective previous issues, additionally teasing different changes in the status quo of the Marvel Universe that would later come to be in other titles in the following months, including Superior Iron Man, Thor losing his arm, the Fantastic Four going back to blue costumes. To avoid spoiling some of these changes, special Superior Iron Man, Tony Stark didn't appear in The Avengers or New Avengers until Superior Iron Man #1 was published.
  • Dawn of the Jedi ends up skipping the initial invasion. At the start of "Force War", the Rakata and the Je'daii have already been fighting for a year. The authors presumably rushed things so they could finish the storyline before Lucasfilm/Disney cancelled the series, which indeed happened.
  • Image published the Images of Tomorrow event with Bloodstrike #25, Brigade #25, Stormwatch #25 and Supreme #25, skipping ahead a year or more with major changes shown in these future stories, in an attempt to lead up to these future issues. Stormwatch had a smooth transition to its future issue, Supreme dismissed its issue as just a dream; Brigade and Bloodstrike didn't made it to #25.
  • The entire DC Universe jumped forwards a year following the Crisis Crossover Infinite Crisis, during which time Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were out of commission. The weekly limited series 52 filled in the events of the missing year in real time through the eyes of several minor characters.
  • In Jupiter's Legacy, the plot skips forward nine years after Walter and Brandon's coup.
  • Legends of Baldur's Gate: The comics are set decades after the games from which they were spun off. Minsc, the main link between them, spent the intervening time up as a statue which Delina, the main new character, accidentally brings back to life.
  • The New Universe was supposed to take place in real time, with each book happening in the current month. However, the writer of D.P. 7 decided that that was just a general guideline with the main thing being that one year in comic book time equaling one year in real life. His first story arc took about nine issues (9 months) but only lasted a few weeks in-story, so to catch up with the rest of the New Universe there is a time skip to the following year after that arc.
  • Noble Causes: The last eight issues, vol. 2 #33-40, take place five years after #32, during which time Rusty loses his humanity and starts acting like a robot, Frost becomes an accepted member of the family, and at least three marriages happen.
  • Quantum and Woody skipped ahead to #37 after #17, then attempted to fill in the gap from #18-21 before being cancelled. Q2: The Return of Quantum and Woody takes place twenty years later.
  • Runaways: Terry Moore's second arc jumps forward an uncertain amount of time, as demonstrated by the fact that Karolina has apparently gotten over Xavin and Klara has become acclimated enough to the modern world that she's able to beat Victor at videogames.
  • Scooby Apocalypse: Issue #21 jumps ahead two months from the end of Issue #20, but the most significant time skip is the six-month leap between Issues #25 and #26. Following Fred's death, the gang was able to successfully take control of the mall and the location is now a base of operations and is on its way to becoming a true survivors' encampment as Velma had hoped, currently housing of hundreds of humans who have managed to find their way to Albany. Oh, and Velma and Shaggy are now a couple.
  • Secret Wars (2015): The first issue takes place during the incursion between the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe. The next four issues take place eight years later, on God-Emperor Doom's Battleworld, formed from the remains of the destroyed multiverse. During this time, the two life rafts containing survivors of both the Marvel and Ultimate universes (led by Mister Fantastic and The Maker, respectively) were discovered and opened, causing chaos. Issue six jumps ahead three weeks, after a manhunt was issued for the Incursion survivors, framing them for the murder of Sheriff Strange (Doom secretly killed him).
  • Sillage: There's a time skip between issue #7 and #8. In this time, the mentor of Nävis, Mackel-Loos, died.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) did an interesting variation of this: at the end of issue #125, Sonic is teleported across the universe, and spends the next several issues making his way back to Mobius. In issue #130 he finally makes it home, only to discover that — due to relativity — what had been a few weeks for him was actually a whole year on Mobius, during which many things had changed.
  • Sonic the Comic: Sonic and his friends were sent forwards into the future by Dr Robotnik in one of the earliest issues, during which time he had managed to make himself emperor of Mobius.
  • Spider-Man:
  • In Supergirl series:
  • Superman:
    • "Brainiac Rebirth" has Brainiac to start building a new body after his former self's disintegration. Then it skips several months ahead, when Brainiac has completed his rebuilding into a mechanical horror.
    • The fourth volume of the original Legion of Super-Heroes began with the words "Five Years Later", leading into a controversial Darker and Edgier revamp of the series. The events that occurred in the time skip are narrated via a textplosion.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage): The third volume starts fifteen years after the last one; its sister title Tales of the TMNT sometimes fills in the gap with stories taking place during the Time Skip.
  • The Transformers (IDW) skipped forward three years between the end of The Transformers: All Hail Megatron and the start of the ongoing series. The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers has a few flashbacks that take place during the time skip.
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 3 has a one-year time skip between #22 and #23 after Rio Morales dies.
    • Ultimate FF: Sue gets pregnant in Issue #5. Issue #6 takes place nine months later (no wonder why).
  • The X-Men family of comic books used a time skip for a revamp of the line in 2000. It was only six months, but it was uniform across all the X-Men spinoffs. Its success at revamping the titles is dubious; two were cancelled the following year, and another was revamped again. In part the Time Skip was used to introduce changes to line-ups and characters that supposedly happened in the intervening time, and which (according to the plan) were eventually going to be explained. For example, the X-Men had lost 1990s member Marrow and gained a rookie member in Thunderbird III, and reserve members Forge, Moonstar, and Tessa (Sage). Cable redefined himself and his mission following the supposed deaths of Apocalypse and Cyclops, Colossus had developed an unrequited love for Rogue, Nightcrawler had become a priest, Phoenix and Psylocke had somehow exchanged powers, and Shadowcat had received an Important Haircut and became more powerful and a bigger jerkass. Most of the changes were never actually explained and in retrospect served mostly to confuse the readers.

    Comic Strips 
  • From the newspaper comics, Funky Winkerbean was Frozen in Time for many years, following its High School cast. Then, out of the blue, it time-skipped nearly 20 years, almost re-syncing with real time, and follows both those same kids as parents, and their kids as well, attending the same high school. It was frozen for another stretch, but at the conclusion of a long story arc that ended in a character's death from cancer, it skipped another ten years. The intervening years are occasionally covered as flashbacks.

    Fan Works 
  • Adventures of a Super Family: After the first few scenes, the action jumps ahead six years in the future.
  • Advice and Trust: A minor in chapter 5. The last segment happens several weeks after the former.
  • Subverted in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, where Calvin and Hobbes are shown to have been stranded for 50 years, having to fend off their insane parents and eat tires for nutrition. It turns to have been All Just a Dream of Calvin's, though.
  • A Crown of Stars: Chapter 66 features two time-skips. The beginning of the chapter happens two weeks after the end of the former chapter. And the second scene happens five weeks after the first one.
  • Always Visible: It plays out in a strange way in the third act, when Galbraith gets into a taxi and ends up moving forward two months, with everyone around thinking that the inspector himself simply does not remember the current date.
  • AIEchidna's Five Nights at Freddy's does this with almost every new entry, Withered taking place four years after Nightmare, Refurbished and Afton taking place 6 years after Withered, Springlocked has two, the prelude taking place 12 years after Refurbished and the rest of the story taking place 18 years after that, and Finale takes place 3 years after Springlocked.
  • Darth Vader: Shattered Galaxy picks up five years after the end of Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo.
  • Daylight Burning: The story is set about eight years after the show's second season, which had been airing when it was written. As such, the characters are all aged up and have progressed through their lives to various degrees, such Twilight having gotten a grant to build a university in Ponyville, Fluttershy going through med school and working as a doctor's assistant, Rainbow Dash having gone through a relationship and bad breakup with Spitfire, and Spike having matured into a teenaged dragon and training in the Guard.
  • The Devil's in the details: While the events of Far From Home still happened, the series completely skips over it, Peter describing what happened to Matt in "Returning Home".
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: 25 Years Later: As the title suggests, it takes place 25 years from the original series.
  • A Diplomatic Visit: The first chapter of the fourth story, The Diplomat's Life, picks up a few months after the end of the previous story. There's a few more later, including a six-year one between the final battle with the Pony of Shadows and the events of the epilogue.
  • After Chapter 10.7 in Don't Lose Your Heart, there's a nine year time skip to the events of the first Kingdom Hearts game.
  • The Empath: The Luckiest Smurf novel has a ten-year time skip between the final chapter and the epilogue, where Empath and Smurfette's wedding takes place. The other stories in the series are written to fill in the gap of that 10-year time period, to see how Empath and Smurfette progressed.
  • The Equestrian Wind Mage: Season 3 jumps ahead five years after the end of Season 2, when the long promised bridging of worlds between Equestria and Hyrule occurs, setting the stage for the final conflict between the heroes and the forces of the Church of Majora. Though this is something of a downplayed example, as the author also has Season 2.5, a series of interludes that expands on what happened during those years.
  • Extended Stay starts off in relatively normal time, but begins to skip ahead in time after Chapter 10. Chapter 11 skips ahead to approximately six months after the Mistress discovers she is pregnant. The next two chapters take place a month after Chapter 11. Chapter 14 takes place four years after Chapter 13 and Chapter 15 takes place sixteen years after Chapter 14.
  • The Forbidden Drink: The sequel, Return of the Titans, picks up a month after the end of the first story.
  • Ghosts of Evangelion: Due to the nature of the story — it being a collection of small vignettes — this happens frequently. Most notably, the story at one point skips from Shinji and Asuka's daughter's adolescence in the 40's to her parents' demises in 2080.
  • HERZ: The epilogue happens twenty years after the events of chapter 12.
  • In Hater Good Side Story Swayed Decisions, a Breadwinners and Pickle and Peanut crossover, there is a time skip at the end of SwaySway and Sophee as middle aged adults being close friends again.
  • House of Summers: "Wait For Me" begins eight years after the end of "The Girl From Tomorrow". "Heart Sees Through Lies" is set twelve years after "Wait For Me".
  • The Immortal Game skips ahead a month after the defeat of Nihilus. And after the Final Battle, the story cuts ahead a few weeks to show everyone adjusting to the post-war world and rebuilding. Then the last scene skips ahead an unspecified amount of time (long enough to completely restore Canterlot) to Alicorn!Twilight's coronation.
  • Jewel of Darkness starts out when Raven was a little girl, but after a few chapters skips ahead several years to when she's a teenager for the "present" of the story. There's another skip of several months between the Jump City and Rivalry arcs, meant to simulate the break between seasons of the show.
  • Limitless Potential has a 10-year gap between chapters 21 and 22, the latter entering the timeframe of the events of the Day of Sigma OVA in Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X.
  • Mega Man Reawakened has two months pass between Arcs 3 and 4.
  • My Family and Other Equestrians takes place before the "Equestria Games" episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. After chapter 76, the story skips to the end of the season (so the Games and the battle with Tirek happen during this time) and shortly after the beginning of the following season.
  • The My Hostage, Not Yours series skips several months between the first two stories, and a couple of years between the second and third stories.
  • The epilogue of My Little Avengers skips ahead the better part of a year after Loki's defeat.
  • Naru-Hina Chronicles: Chapter 9 takes place one year after Chapter 8 and is appropriately titled "One Year Later...".
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide:
    • Chapter 1 starts out a while after the death of Kaworu. After Shinji visits Asuka while she's hospitalized, the story skips ahead several weeks.
    • The epilogue happens three years after the final battle.
  • The Night Unfurls: In order to advance the plot, the training montage of Kyril's 4 apprentices are cut short into a couple of lessons and combat scenes, in order to avoid describing the "gitting gud" process one is expected to experience when playing Bloodborne.
  • Oni Ga Shiku Series: Since the fic starts when Izuku is four years old and follows him through his entire life, time skips are very common as the fic focuses on the major event in his life. The biggest time skip the three year gap between the Akatani arc (when Izuku is ten) and Kiryu faking his death (which happens when Izuku is thirteen).
  • Out Of The Shadows: This story is set roughly a couple of months after the end of the first movie.
  • The fanfic Path of the Tyrant happens 10 years after The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle.
  • An in-universe example in Pokémon Strangled Red. After Miki dies in a trading accident, a year passes in the hacked game. Interestingly, the skipped year is tacked onto gameplay time.
  • There is an unspecified but seemingly years-long gap between Rolling in Beaches and Atlas Strongest Tournament.
  • MLP Next Generation: Love Conquers All! Avarice Takes It All! picks up six months after the previous story left off.
  • The Contractually Obligated Chaos series sees roughly three and a half years pass between the end of the first story and the start of the second, then four months between the end of the second and the start of the third.
  • SAPR: After the fic's version of the Battle of Beacon the story skips ahead several months in order to mimic the time skip that happened in RWBY canon.
  • In misakiyu's illustrations of SlifofinaDragon's Sengoku Basara fanfics, they begin from 1998 (of the Gakuen Basara timeline, when Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura graduate from Basara Academy) to the early 2000s, and the main story starts from 2015 and takes place during 2021 to 2024.
  • In Sonic X: Dark Chaos, there are short indeterminate time skips between most of the episodes. Only Episodes 55/56 and the episodes after 74 directly follow each other.
  • Star Wars vs. Warhammer 40K: Around halfway through the tenth episode, the entire story jumps ahead to weeks after the Senate became gridlocked in response to the Imperium's invasion of the Axum system. This is done to show the fallout of the Imperial occupation of Axum — the Republic is facing a sudden refugee crisis caused by civilians who fled Axum before it fell, while the Imperials have had time to entrench themselves on Axum and start purging the planet's non-human population. Most of the Imperial invasion force has moved on since then, leaving behind only a token garrison to defend their newly conquered holdings, presenting the Jedi with the opportunity to launch a counter-invasion to retake Axum and force the Senate to break their weeks-long deadlock.
  • The Stars Will Aid Their Escape starts out shortly after Trixie ran away from Ponyville; after she gets the Neighcronomicon from Herald, it skips ahead two years.
  • In The Swarm of War, at the end of the first arc the Overmind rules the planet, but cannot expand beyond until he consumes enough of the Warp Storm surrounding it to clear the way. It takes decades, but of course there isn’t much to tell about.
  • Us and Them:
    • Following the Shinra raid on Corel, the story skips ahead ten years where we meet seventeen-year-old Aeris arriving in Midgar.
    • After getting stranded on the Twin Planet, there's a skip of two years while Aeris and Sephiroth try to find a way to get back to Gaia.
  • Villain Song (Roving Otter) : The movie is set eight years after Magnifico’s downfall and imprisonment.
  • The first fourteen chapters of The Vow tell how Lord Shen and Lady Lianne meet, fall in love and are almost married, but Shen's canon banishment happens anyway in the end of the 14th chapter. The 15th chapter is used to narrate pithily how Lianne and Shen spend their three decades of separation, after which their story is included to the movie's plot. Later in the last chapter's epilogue, five years pass after Shen is forced to live imprisoned in Lianne's — who has become his wife — home with her and their son Zian before we reach the final scene.
  • Young Justice: Darkness Falls: There're three significant time skips within the story. One is from January to March, marking the leadup to Darkseid's first attack. Then there's the time between March and July where the League is mostly just training and rebuilding, and not much else is happening around the world. Finally there's a timeskip between the end of Retaliation and the epilogue of 9 months.
  • Zim the Warlord: Irken Reversion does this between its first two chapters, as Chapter 1 ends with Zim going into a coma that lasts 6 months, which he awakens from at the start of Chapter 2.
  • Zootopia 2 The Movie takes place two years after the Nighthowler case.

    Films — Animation 
  • Black Fox skips twice, with one passing from Rikka's Minor Kidtroduction to her Dangerous 16th Birthday, and then one more that moves to six months after, where the meat of the story takes place.
  • Cars 2 takes place four years after the first movie where Lightning has since won four Piston Cups. The third takes place six years after the second, where he is now a 7-time Piston Cup winner.
  • Coco: The epilogue skips forward to the next Dia de los Muertos, one year later.
  • Numerous examples from the Disney Animated Canon, frequently via a Time Skip song:
    • A time skip occurs in Bambi after his mother dies, and he appears as a fully mature buck. No montage here; just a hard cut. A midquel was made much later to fill in some of the time frame.
    • In The Fox and the Hound when Amos Slade takes Copper away for a hunting trip.
    • In The Lion King (1994) during "Hakuna Matata", we see Simba mature from a cub into an adult lion. Again, like with Bambi a midquel shows some of the time frame in between.
    • In Hercules during "One Last Hope", a Training Montage takes Hercules from awkward teenager to buff and accomplished adult. The animated series spinoff is set during this time.
    • In Tarzan during "Son of Man", Tarzan develops from young boy to adult man, developing all the skills he needs to survive in the jungle, and inventing some other ones. This also got a midquel placed in-between.
    • In Frozen during "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?", Anna grows from five to eighteen via a montage of her knocking on Elsa's door and asking the song's title, while Elsa is instead educated in repressing her powers. It also covers the death and funeral of their parents in the meantime, which sets up the rest of the film's plot.
    • Frozen II takes place three years after the end of the first movie. This is confirmed in the film itself, where Anna and Elsa say that their parents died six years ago; in the original film, it had been three years since the Queen and King were lost at sea.
    • In Moana during "Where You Are", which speedily covers Moana's growth, education, and conflict between the draw of the ocean and requirements of her people. And also the consideration of coconuts.
  • Finding Dory briefly opens with Dory's childhood, showing how she got separated from her parents. The rest of the film is set a year after the events of Finding Nemo.
  • Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie takes place roughly a year after the events Hey Arnold!'s final episode "The Journal". Arnold has just finished fifth grade, having previously been in fourth grade.
  • Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa opens with Alex's childhood back in Africa, where he is captured by poachers and sent to New York City. The specifics are unknown, but it happens before the September 11 attacks (the WTC Twin Towers can be seen). The film then cuts to the aftermath of the first film.
  • There is a timeskip of five years between How to Train Your Dragon and How to Train Your Dragon 2, featuring new designs for the grown up protagonists. The third film, on the other hand, takes place a year after the second.
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish takes place quite a while after Puss in Boots. The latter is set before Shrek, while the former is set after Shrek Forever After, during which time we see Shrek and Fiona meet, fall in love, and start a family of three children, so the time skip is at least several years. Puss also sounds significantly older, as The Last Wish is released eleven years after its predecessor.
  • Rise of the Guardians opens three centuries before present, when Jack Frost is granted his powers by the Man on the Moon.
  • Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back takes place two years after the events of the first movie.
  • Steven Universe: The Movie takes place two years after the end of the series' fifth season.
  • The unofficial sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit by GoldenFilms shows Peter and Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail as older children (possibly in their teen years), judging by their voices.
  • There was a huge jump in time between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, most notably with Andy having already graduated high school and going off to college. This was done to mesh with real time, since most of the kids who watched the first two movies are already in college. Additionally, the voice actor for Andy had grown up and they wanted to use his voice for all three movies, so it made perfect sense that Andy had grown up to match his voice actor.
  • In Turning Red, there is a short one of a week between Tyler's birthday party on May 18, 2002 and the day of the 4*Town concert. There is another right after the climax which skips to a few weeks or months later.
  • Ralph Breaks the Internet is set six years after Wreck-It Ralph, matching the real-life gap between the two films.
  • Your Name jumps forward in time 5 years 8 for Mitsuha and the Itomori residents for the final part after the evacuation of Itomori.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Amazing Spider-Man begins with Peter Parker as a child being dropped off to Uncle Ben's house by his parents, who are killed in a plane accident shortly after. The sequel does this again, only this time from the perspective of Peter's parents, revealing exactly how they died.
  • Armageddon (1998) starts out showing the world of the dinosaurs being destroyed by an asteroid... followed by the title card "65 Million Years Later".
  • An Autumn Afternoon skips to Michiko's wedding without even showing her meeting the guy, only showing her agreeing to give him a shot.
  • Anger of the Dead: After Alice meets Stephen at the start of the Zombie Apocalypse, the screen cuts to black, then it fades into a shot of a building with "4 Months Later" in the top left corner of the screen.
  • Angry White Man: After the scene of Skeeter angrily messing up the wake of his would-be wife's funeral by spilling all the food onto the ground and storming into a trailer, the movie jumps ahead six weeks.
  • Axe Murdering with Hackley: The prologue of the movie is a trailer for a Hackley movie stated to take place in 1984-and-a-half. After that, the movie jumps ahead to the Present Day.
  • Bicentennial Man: There are a number of time skips within the movie, which begins when a fully robotic Andrew is first activated in 2005 until Andrew's death in 2205, just after being recognized by the World Congress as a human being with all the rights humans have.
  • Black Angel Vol. 1 starts with the newborn Ikko being abducted from the hospital, then jumps ahead six years to Ikko witnessing the massacre of her family and being smuggled out of the country by her father's agents. It then jumps ahead fourteen years to the 20 year-old Ikko returning to Tokyo to start her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • A Bronx Tale has the first act with the main character as a 10-year-old, and a second where he's 17.
  • Capps Crossing: The movie's prologue is set one year ago. The movie itself is stated to be set in the present day.
  • The film Cast Away has a four-year skip in the middle of it, between Tom Hanks' initial efforts to survive on the island, and his eventual escape from it.
  • Christmas Blood: The prologue is stated to take place on Christmas Eve, 2011, where we see the Santa Claus killer murder his latest victim and get caught and shot by the police. The movie then jumps forward to Christmas Eve, 2016.
  • Claw (2021): After Julia and Kyle survive their ordeal with the raptor, the film jumps ahead a year to show them in LA, with Julia being welcomed to perform on-stage at a comedy club. Though this is actually a dream Julia's having.
  • Clownface: After Clownface kills Rick and kidnaps Zoe, the film jumps ahead one year.
  • Clown Kill: The film begins in a bar, and then jumps ahead six months to when Jenny returns to work.
  • The Conjuring Universe:
  • The Dark Knight Rises takes place 8 years after The Dark Knight (twice the real-time gap between films). A Freeze-Frame Bonus in the second film establishes that film's year as 2008, putting the events of Rises in 2016, possibly into 2017 and the main events of Begins in 2007. However, it takes place 9 years after Batman Begins, and was released seven years after said film. Batman Begins itself opens with Bruce Wayne's childhood, showing the accident at the well and his witness of his parents' murders.
  • DC Extended Universe:
    • Man of Steel is told in an anachronistic order, with frequent cuts between important parts of Clark Kent's life, including as a baby crash landing on Smallville, then a kid, a teenager, and finally an adult.
    • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice begins in 1981, with the murder and funeral of Thomas and Martha Waynenote , then jumps forward to 2013, during the climax of Man of Steel, where we see General Zod's attack on Metropolis from the point of view of Bruce Wayne. The film then jumps forward 18 months, when the rest of the film is set.
    • Aquaman begins by showing how Arthur Curry's parents meet, then their years living together as a family and having a son. It subsequently skips to several years later, as Arthur displays his power for the first time. It doesn't pick up with his adult life until about 11 minutes in.
    • SHAZAM! starts in 1974, showing the Start of Darkness of Dr. Sivana, before transitioning to the present day.
    • Wonder Woman 1984 opens with an Amazonian Olympic Games that Diana attends as a child, before skipping to 1984.
  • Deewaar skips ahead from the main characters' childhoods to their early adulthoods.
  • Doctor... Series:
    • Doctor in the House (1954):
      • After Simon's date with Rigor Mortis, the film cuts ahead to the start of his second year of medical school.
      • After Simon asks Nurse Gibson on a date with the help of Mr. Briggs, the film cuts ahead to his final year.
    • Doctor in Love: After Dr. Hare is diagnosed with jaundice, the film skips ahead eight days to his recovery.
    • Doctor in Trouble: After Dr. Burke finds out he'll have to stay on the Drobny, the film cuts ahead by two weeks to his return to England.
  • Doll Factory: The intro happens on Halloween Night, 1976. The rest of the film is set in the present day.
  • Ten-year time skip in-story in Ever After.
  • Ghost Note: The movie's prologue takes place in 1971, showing a blues musician being abducted and tortured by a man. It then jumps ahead to the "Present Day" where the rest of the movie takes place.
  • Halloween at Aunt Ethel's: After Aunt Ethel kills the two teens at the start of the movie, it jumps ahead one year.
  • The film Hook featured a grown-up version of the perpetual child Peter Pan, who left Neverland to experience fatherhood. He ends up returning there when Captain Hook kidnaps his children, whom Peter had grown distant from.
  • House of the Witch begins with a teenage boy approaching the titular house to swipe the address numbers off the front door. He's pulled into the house, and then the movie jumps ahead one year.
  • House Shark: After the first kill of the movie (the titular shark pulling a babysitter into the toilet bowl right in front of Frank's eyes), the film jumps ahead 2 months to Frank and his son, Theo, living in their backyard.
  • In the Fade: After the opening where Nuri is released from prison and married Katja, there is a break of around seven years, as they now have a six year old son.
  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny starts during the last year of the Second World War when he and a fellow archaeologist attempt to recover the Lance of Longinus (the spear allegedly used to pierce Jesus Christ after the crucifixion) - which turns out to be fake - but do come across half of the titular Dial. After this ends, the film jumps to 1969 for the rest of the film, aside from a trip to 214 BC caused by the Dial.
  • I Think I Do (1997) opens with the characters in college, when Bob makes a pass at Brendan that ends their friendship. The movie then skips ahead five years to when they meet again at their friends' wedding.
  • The James Bond series has had a few:
    • GoldenEye begins in 1986 with 007 and fellow agent 006/Alec Trevelyan infiltrating a Soviet chemical weapons factory, a mission that ends up going very wrong. The film then skips to 1995, where Bond is sent to investigate the theft of a prototype helicopter capable of resisting EMP attacks during a military demonstration in Monte Carlo and how it ended up in a radar facility in Siberia.
    • There was a minor case in Die Another Day, where 18 months pass during the Artistic Titles.
    • No Time to Die has a couple — the first one from an undisclosed year (in which Madeleine Swann witnesses Lyutsifer Safin killing her mother) to the present day (in which Bond is ambushed in an Italian town visiting Vesper Lynd's tomb), and then a second one from that time to five years into the future, during which time Bond retires from MI6 service.
  • Jumanji:
    • The first film has an intro in 1869, where the title game of doom is buried in the jungle. It then cuts to 1969, where the protagonist Alan finds Jumanji, and ends up sucked into it while playing with his friend Sarah. Then goes to 1995 (the year of release), where two children find the game and end up freeing Alan. When Alan beats the game, he and Sarah go back to 1969. After they throw the game in the river, cut to a 1995 where both are married and meet the children and their parents.
    • The sequel/soft reboot Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle begins in 1996, a year after the first film, showing how the board game is rediscovered and played again. Then it cuts to the present day.
    • Jumanji: The Next Level is set two years after Welcome to the Jungle.
  • Jurassic Park:
  • Charlie Chaplin's The Kid has a time skip from the time the orphan he picks up as a baby to the time he's five years old.
  • Killer Under the Bed: The film begins with a girl hiding in a tool shed, then being accosted by an unseen attacker. Then the movie skips ahead one year.
  • Killer/saurus: After the intro scene plays, we get the title and opening credits. Then the movie skips ahead three months to Kayleigh and Jed waking up from their sleep.
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe could technically be considered to have this trope between installments by virtue of the fact that, with few exceptions, the movie dates are released in accordance to their real life release date.
    • Captain America: The First Avenger is mostly a prequel to all of the other films, set during World War II. Then in the ending, Steve Rogers gets frozen in ice and wakes up during the 2010s...
    • Iron Man 3 briefly opens on December 31, 1999, showing how pre-Character Development Tony Stark completely screws a guy and inadvertently leads to him becoming a villain.
    • Thor: The Dark World begins with Thor's grandfather defeating the Dark Elves led by Malekith, which happened thousands of years before the present day.
    • The first scene of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) shows how a young Peter Quill gets taken by aliens.
    • Black Panther has two instances of this in the prologue. It begins thousands of years ago, as four African tribes that make up Wakanda are united by the first Black Panther. Then it skips to 1992, showing T'Chaka's tragic visit to his brother, N'Jobu, that will lead to problems in Wakanda's future. Then it skips once more to the present.
    • Captain Marvel is mostly set in 1995, but the post-credits scene is set in the aftermath of Avengers: Infinity War in 2018.
    • The truest example of this in action is Avengers: Endgame, which jumps five years after the events of Avengers: Infinity War from 2018 to 2023. Furthermore, despite the Timey-Wimey Ball at play, this remains completely permanent in the end, setting the stage for the rest of the franchise going forward.
    • Black Widow starts with a mission that happens in 1996 before jumping forward two decades and ends with a scene after the titular character's death in 2023.
    • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings starts in an unspecified year when Xu Wenwu finds the titular rings, followed him through history and ends with a scene in 1996 when he finds a village and fights its protector, with whom he would eventually father the eponymous character and his sister. The films then skips to the present day, albeit with several flashbacks to important parts of Shang-Chi's past.
    • Eternals begins in 5000 BC, then skips to the years after, following the titular group as they assume different identities throughout human history, though most of the film is set in the present day.
    • Most of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is set a year after the opening scene, which shows the death of T'Challa.
  • MonsterVerse:
  • Men in Black: International starts in 1996 with Molly's parents being neuralysed - and she is as well, but is ineffective - after she helps an alien escape. The rest of the film then happens in 2019, except for a scene in Paris, which is set in 2016.
  • Moonlight is divided into three distinct periods focusing on the same protagonist, telling his childhood ("Little"), adolescence ("Chiron"), and adulthood ("Black").
  • Mystery of the Wax Museum jumps from 1921 London to 1933 New York.
  • Napoléon (1927) jumps ahead nine years (from 1783 to 1792) from Napoléon Bonaparte's time at Brienne College to The French Revolution.
  • Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight: The film starts with a mailman making his rounds, investigating a sound he hears in the crawlspace... and then getting drug in by something unseen. Then the film jumps to 30 years later.
  • None Shall Escape—a 1944 film about a trial against a Nazi officer following the end of the then-ongoing second world war, told via flashbacks from the points of view of the witnesses at the trial—has several due to the story structure; each flashback/witness testimony is set a few years after the previous one. The first one by Father Warecki takes place in 1919 right after the end of WWI, the next one by Karl takes place in 1923 right before and after the Beer Hall Putsch before skipping ahead to 1929 and then to 1934 after the Night of the Long Knives, and the last one by Marja takes place during WWII.
  • On the Buses films:
    • On the Buses:
      • After Stan and Jack play their first prank on Vera, the film cuts ahead by three weeks to when Bridget has been hired as the new canteen cook.
      • After Stan takes Bridget home to have it off, the film cuts ahead by another three weeks.
    • Mutiny on the Buses: After Arthur's first driving lesson, the film jumps ahead by three weeks to another lesson.
    • Holiday on the Buses: After Stan and Jack see Blakey at the Department of Employment, the film cuts ahead by six weeks to Arthur moaning about Stan's lack of a job.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean:
    • The Curse of the Black Pearl starts in 1720, when a young Elizabeth Swann spots a boy - who later turns out to be Will Turner - at the site of a shipwreck when sailing to Jamaica. The rest of the film is set in 1728.
    • On Stranger Tides is set in 1750, twenty one years after At World's End.
    • Dead Men Tell No Tales briefly opens in 1742, focusing on twelve-year-old Henry Turner (son of Elizabeth and Will). It then cuts to nine years later in 1751.
  • Raising the Wind: After Alex tells his flatmates of his plan to get them to replace a string quintet at the Tudor Rose Room for his aunt, Mrs. Featherstone, the film jumps ahead a week to the night of the recital.
  • Redwood Massacre Annihilation: The prologue for the movie doesn't have a set date. However, the movie jumps ahead by 10 years after it.
  • Relative Fear opens with a scene of two women giving birth. The rest of the movie takes place when their sons are four years old.
  • The opening of Remember Me is set in 1991, showing a young Ally witnessing her mother's murder, before jumping to 2001.
  • The Scream franchise skips time corresponding to its release year. Scream 2 is set a year after Scream (1996), Scream 3 is set three years after Scream 2, Scream 4 is set eleven years after Scream 3, Scream (2022) is set eleven years after Scream 4, and Scream VI is set a year after Scream (2022).
  • Shredder Orpheus has a one-year time skip after Orpheus makes it out of the Underworld but loses Eurydice in the process, during which EBN gains even more broadcast control and Orpheus has become famous among the populace.
  • Sniper The White Raven starts with the Russian invasion of the Donetsk region of Ukraine in 2014. "Raven" joins up, becomes a sniper, and goes on his first few missions. Then we get a black screen, and "Four years later," and a Sniper Duel. After that, we get a second time skip, to the Kiev region in February 2022, where Raven is still a sniper.
  • Spotlight is mostly set in 2001, but the opening is set in 1976, showing how far back the Catholic Church has covered up the child sex abuse scandals in Boston.
  • Star Trek:
    • There is a three-year timeskip between the end original series (2266-2269) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (2272), then a larger skip to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (2285, a gap of 13 years). Khan directly follows into the next two films, but then there are further time skips over the other films, which are as follows:
    • The Motion Picture to Star Trek II (2272 to 2285; 13 years)
    • Star Trek II to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (2285; both films happen right after each other)
    • Star Trek III to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (2285 to 2286; 1 year)
    • Star Trek IV to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (2286 to 2287; 1 year)
    • Star Trek V to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (2287 to 2293; 6 years)
    • Star Trek VI to Star Trek: Generations (2293 to 2371; 78 years)
    • Generations to Star Trek: First Contact (2371 to 2373; 2 years)
    • First Contact to Star Trek: Insurrection (2373 to 2375; 2 years)
    • Insurrection to Star Trek: Nemesis (2375 to 2379; 4 years)
    • The 2009 film starts with Kirk's birth in 2233 and the introduction of the main villain, then Kirk's childhood in the 2240s, then Spock's childhood, then Kirk in the bar fight (2255) and joining Starfleet, then three years after that (2258), the rest of the film. Later on, when Kirk meets Spock Prime, you could argue that the vision Spock shows him is another Time Skip, albeit one to an alternate future of 2387 (of the Shatner/Nimoy/Kelley Trek timeline).
    • Star Trek Into Darkness picks up in 2259, six months after the events of the previous film. Incidentally, the real-life gap between filming was four years. Simon Pegg has even commented on the weirdness of picking up where they left off after such a relatively long break. Also, Kirk's speech at the end takes place in 2260, almost a year after the Vengeance crash-lands in San Francisco.
    • Star Trek Beyond begins about three years after the end of Into Darkness, in 2263.
  • Star Wars:
  • Strippers Vs. Werewolves: The first scene of the movie is set in 1984, where we see a building called "Silvadollas" get blown up. Then it jumps ahead to 2011, where the bulk of the movie takes place. The movie skips ahead at the end to 2012, showing the surviving girls are now helping monster hunter Sinclair with his job as his werewolf posse.
  • Terror Birds: The intro of the movie shows the birds being airlifted to the ranch, then attacking some people who are supposed to be transporting them... then it skips ahead three months.
  • Trick or Treats: After Joan has Malcolm falsely committed to a mental hospital, the movie jumps ahead several years (it actually says that).
  • Up the Front: After Lurk is made a Colonel, the film jumps from 1914 to 1939.
  • The Veronica Mars movie takes place at Veronica's ten-year high school reunion, nine years after the events at the end of the show's final season. Interestingly, this means that the film takes place in Next Sunday A.D., since Veronica graduated in the class of '06, so the film released in 2014 is presumably set in 2016 (although they don't say it outright).
  • Werewolves Within: The movie starts with a man being attacked and dragged off-screen by an unseen assailant. Then it jumps ahead 29.5 days.
  • Why Don't You Play in Hell? jumps forward ten years after the first act, then does a little hand-holding to introduce the new actors playing the younger characters, even though they wear the exact same outfits as before.
  • Wolves: Cayden is a high school senior at the beginning, but later dialogue indicates he's in his early twenties. The extra time most likely elapsed during the Fugitive Arc.
  • Women Is Losers: At his urging, Celina has sex with Mateo on the roof after agreeing that she wants her first time with him.
  • Wrath of the Titans takes place 10 years after the first film and also gives Perseus a 10-year-old son to boot.
  • X-Men Film Series: There can be fairly long gaps of time within the individual stories and in between some movies.
  • Youth (2017): The story jumps forward a few times. Among others, there's a time skip of one year after the end of the war, and after the troupe disbands, there's a skip of about 11 years to 1991.

    Literature 

  • All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG: After Arthur gets settled into Wolf Moon Hive, the story skips forward four years, to when he assembles his first Rare card.
  • Anne McCaffrey:
    • To Ride Pegasus: skips around seventy years between the first book and its first sequel, with several main characters in the latter being children or grandchildren of characters in the former. One character who appears in both is Dorotea Horvath, who goes from being a small child to being an octogenarian grandmother.
    • Tower and the Hive: There's a twenty year gap between the connected novels Damia and Damia's Children. Damia finds out she's pregnant at the end of the former. The latter starts with that child (her eldest, Laria) about to head to another planet as a Tower Prime.
  • Beowulf does it with "He ruled well / for fifty winters" and manages to have more years pass than letters are used to describe the passage of time.
  • The Book Of The Ler: The Gameplayers of Zan is set in A.D. 2550. The second book, Warriors of Dawn, is set possibly millennia after. In the meantime, both the ordinary humans and their genetically engineered ler offspring have colonised a large segment of the galaxy.
  • The Black Arrow: Book III starts some few months after Dick Shelton escapes from the hands of his guardian Sir Daniel at the end of Book II.
  • In Brothers of the Snake, there are huge time skips between the stories, ranging from two months to five years.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: In Prince Caspian, the Pevensies return to Narnia to find that thousands of years have gone by there, while only one year has passed for them. Similar time skips occur throughout the series. Subverted in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the now fourteen-years-older Pevensies are chasing the white stag in the last chapter, only to be transported back to the real world as children.
  • The Tom Clancy novels, particularly between Clear and Present Danger and The Bear and the Dragon, generally follow a pattern of pseudo-Webcomic Time, with generally around one or two years taking place between novels. Thus, a timeline which was originally set 20 Minutes into the Future began to lag behind into the past. His latest novel of the series, Teeth of the Tiger rectifies this by staging an 8-10-year timeskip into the future.
  • Ian Douglass' Heritage, Legacy and Inheritance trilogies have time skips between them of century scale - the first takes place in the mid-21st century, the second in the 24th century, and the third begins at the end of the third millennium. As well, the second and third books of the Inheritance Trilogy have a timeskip of ~1000 years between them, with the third starting with the reawakening of Marines kept in stasis for centuries - but none of them are characters from the previous two books.
  • In the Dreamblood Duology, ten years go by between The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun.
  • The Dresden Files books use this on a miniature scale, generally having about a year between them, giving plenty of time for recuperation, healing, learning, and Noodle Incidents to happen. In Ghost Story, Harry unwittingly experiences a six-month timeskip in the course of a single conversation, apparently because it's easy to lose time when you've just been shot and killed.
  • The Dune series skips thirty-five hundred years between Children and God Emperor, then another 1,500 years before Heretics. By comparison, the three-year skip during the first Dune book (covering the early years of Paul leading the Fremen) looks like nothing.
  • Empire from the Ashes: The third book, Heirs of Empire, starts a decade after the end of the previous one, and contains multiple other skips, covering over a decade itself.
  • The Empirium Trilogy: Lightbringer includes a five year gap between the final chapter and the epilogue.
  • Several thousand years pass between Ender's Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead. Though only a couple decades passed for Ender as he spent most of that time on relativistic starships.
  • Most of Feral Creatures, the sequel to Hollow Kingdom, takes place over a decade after the previous installment. While an exact time range isn't given, S.T. notes that his daughter Dee (who was a baby at the end of Hollow Kingdom) is now a teenager and the minor recurring feline character of Genghis Cat is mentioned to have become noticeably elderly.
  • Forest Kingdom: Between all the main series' books. Book 2 (Blood and Honor) is set seven years after book 1 (Blue Moon Rising), book 3 (Down Among the Dead Men) is set another three years later, and book 4 (Beyond the Blue Moon) is set twelve years after book 1, five years after the events of the end of the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series, and two years after the events of book 3. Then book 5 (Once in a Blue Moon) is set one hundred years after the events of book 1 and eighty-eight years after the events of book 4.
  • The Golden Demon: Four years pass between the first and second volume, after which the protagonist changes dramatically from dutiful high school student to ruthless and renowned Loan Shark and the heroine has suffered from a disastrous marriage.
  • Honor Harrington: Early in the series, up to at least book 6, the novels always have a skip of at least one year between them. As the plot gets more complicated, this practice comes to an end.
  • Hurog: Dragon Blood is set four years after Dragon Bones, and the protagonists are all adults, have grown more mature, and Tosten doesn't appreciate the protectiveness of his big brother Ward as much as he used to. And Ciarra is not mute anymore.
  • The Icemark Chronicles: Twenty years pass between book 1, The Cry of the Icemark, and book 2, Blade of Fire.
  • The first half of I Think I Love You takes place in 1974 and follows the protagonist as a thirteen-year-old girl. The second half jumps ahead to 1998.
  • Lukyanenko's Labyrinth of Reflections ends with Leonid meeting his Love Interest for the first time outside of VR. In False Mirrors, several years have passed, and they are now married. In fact, their marriage is on the rocks, especially since that first Real Life meeting at the train station never happened. It turns out Leonid dreamed it all, while suffering from Deep psychosis.
  • Left Behind: Kingdom Come has a few time skips right in the story itself. It starts off at the beginning of the Millennium, then jumps ahead to 93 years later where it stays for most of it, then jumps again to the end of the Millennium.
  • The Legend of Rah and the Muggles does it a lot, to the effect of making important things happen offscreen and Stouffer cock up basic arithmetic.
  • Sergey Lukyanenko's Emperors of Illusions takes place four years after the end of Line of Delirium with Tommy now having grown up (he was only 14 in the first book).
  • The Lord of the Rings has a substantial time skip between the first and second chapters, to the tune of seventeen years while Gandalf is off page researching the true nature of Bilbo's ring. There's also a skip of a couple of years between the penultimate and final chapters of the book.
  • Magic: The Gathering: Cory Herndon loves this trope. In both the Mirrodin Cycle and the Ravnica cycle, there is a timeskip of five years between the second and third books. Also both times, the protagonist is as confused as we are, due to being in stasis in the first case and being dead in the second.
  • There's an eighteen year gap between the end of The Miniaturist and the beginning of its sequel, The House of Fortune.
  • Mortal Engines has a sixteen-year time skip between the second and third books.
  • Gauntlgrym, the first book of The Neverwinter Saga, covers nearly a century during Drizzt and Bruenor's search for the titular dwarven homeland. We see only glimpses of their journey between large timeskips.
  • The Parasol Protectorate:
    • There's an implied skip of a few months at the end of Soulless between the events of the book proper and the wedding in the epilogue.
    • Changeless takes place three months after said wedding.
    • Book 4, Heartless, takes place five months after the events of book 3, at the end of Alexia's pregnancy.
    • Timeless, the fifth and final book, takes place two years after Heartless.
  • Perry Rhodan regularly features Time Skips between arcs varying in length from a few years to a few centuries. The longer Time Skips have the nice side effect of whittling the cast down to more managable levels with everyone who was not immortal, a member of a particularly long lived race, a robot or AI, frozen in stasis or a godlike or ascended higher being having died of old age in the interim.
  • The Pillars of the Earth: Time skips happen between every part. The whole story is set in about forty years of time (or about fifty if one counts the prologue), which is not surprising considering the novel is about building a cathedral.
  • Beatrix Potter created two books featuring Peter Rabbit and later Benjamin Bunny and even one of his sisters as adults in the book The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and The Tale of Mr Tod.
  • The Power of Five: The beginning of Oblivion features a 10-year time skip from Necropolis.
  • The Princess Bride: Used very pointedly. Because William Goldman claims to be "abridging" the original novel, he often cuts out chunks of what he claims are very boring pieces of narrative. The timeskip comes when Buttercup, having agreed to marry Prince Humperdinck, must go through a few years of royalty schooling in order to become a princess. Goldman says this is terribly dull and so he boils it down to simply this: "What with one thing and another, three years passed."
  • Quantum Gravity: There's a time skip where we come back to find that Lila has spent a lot of time in Demonia and married Zal and Teazle, of all people. There's another one which takes the trope literally, as Lila is catapulted forward fifty years.
  • Quarters: No Quarter confirms that it (and by extension Fifth Quarter) are set a decade and a half after Sing the Four Quarters since Annice and Pjerin's daughter Magda (whom she'd given birth to near the end) is a teenager here.
  • Retired Witches Mysteries: Book 2 picks up six months after book 1 ended.
  • Rip Van Winkle, probably the most famous example, has a man drinking enchanted liquor and falling alseep in the Caskills, then waking up twenty years later, having missed The American Revolution.
  • Sano Ichiro: There is a five-year gap between the last two books of the series, The Shogun's Daughter and The Iris Fan, though there are flashbacks of the interim period in the latter. Circumstances have changed greatly for Sano and those around him, and definitely not for the better.
  • Schismatrix skips more and more time the longer it goes. The first four chapters all take place over the course of around 19 months, while the last two chapters alone contain skips of 53 and 32 years. Also, in universe, there is a group that practices "ice assassination", by forcing people to experience a time skip through cryogenics.
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
    • The Dark Artifices is set five years after The Mortal Instruments. Emma, Julian, Livia, and Tiberius are now teens instead of tweens, Dru is a tween instead of a kid, and Octavian is a kid instead of a baby. Clary and her friends (barring Magnus) have also aged up to their twenties.
    • The Last Hours is set 25 years after The Infernal Devices. The former teenage/young adult characters are now middle-aged adults in the London Enclave and have children of their own, who are the main characters. Except for Tessa, of course, but her young looks are never a hindrance, and she is generally treated as a senior in the community.
  • Shtum: The last chapter takes place at the end of Jonah's first year at his new school, with Ben looking forward to Jonah's first fortnight-long stay at home and visiting Jonatan's grave in Bulgaria.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: George R. R. Martin originally intended to utilize a five-year time skip after A Storm of Swords. More than six months of labor later, Martin figured out it wouldn't work and had to start over. As of A Dance with Dragons, the series is still stuck in 300 AC, the year the events of A Storm of Swords conclude in.
  • The Space Odyssey Series has books titled 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001. No points for guessing the length of the time skips. It's notable that a Human Popsicle from the first book plays a large role in the last one.
  • Star Carrier jumps twenty years between book three, Singularity, and book four, Deep Space. Then-Admiral Koenig has been elected first to the USNA Senate, then to the presidency, and then-Lieutenant Gray is now a captain and commanding officer of the America.
  • Star Trek: New Frontier has the three-year timeskip between Stone and Anvil and After the Fall, during which time various characters have been promoted, changed allegiances, married, and, in some cases, previously implacable near-enemies have apparently become friends. Oh, and there was a major war (which was precipitated by the heroes in the novel before the jump).
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Death Star: There are multiple skips of several months. They never get announced; it's always through dialogue or the narration.
    • Galaxy of Fear: Death in the Slave Pits of Lorrd, or What I Did on My Inter-Term Break, is an Interquel written over a decade after the main series came out, addressing the several things skipped over in that series' gap between Army of Terror and The Brain Spiders.
    • Jedi Apprentice: There's a timeskip of unknown length between The Day of Reckoning and The Fight for Truth, in which Obi-Wan relaxes into his Jedi role a little farther and strengthens his bond with Qui-Gon.
  • The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: The novel's Second Part starts about six years after the end of the previous half.
  • Taiko skips over decades at a time, with the story beginning in 1536 and ending in 1583.
  • The Tale of Genji: The Uji chapters skip forward about twenty-five years and are about Genji's son and his peers (as the opening chapter says right off, Genji's dead). Since the Tale is often considered the first Novel (or at least the first psychological novel), it just goes to show.
  • The second book of the Tough Magic trilogy, Trenus, skips about a month's worth of time from the first book.
  • Under Suspicion frequently utilises time skips both in individual installments and between books, especially as the plots revolve around investigating cold cases.
    • I've Got You Under My Skin: The prologue takes place five years before the main events of the book, while the epilogue takes place six months after the climax.
    • The Cinderella Murder: The first three chapters take place on May 7th and May 8th 1994, introducing the reader to the Dempsey family and leading up to Susan Dempsey's murder from the perspective of her mother. It then skips ahead twenty years to the main part of the story in 2014. The epilogue is set two months after the story's climax. It's also set nearly a year after the events of I've Got You Under My Skin.
    • All Dressed in White: The prologue is set just over five years before the main events of the story, introducing us to Amanda forty-three hours before her ill-fated wedding was to take place; the epilogue takes place a month after the main story is wrapped up. It begins two months after the epilogue of The Cinderella Murder.
    • The Sleeping Beauty Killer: The prologue takes place on the day Casey learns her verdict in the murder trial; the story then picks up fifteen years later on the day Casey comes out of prison. The main story begins a month after the epilogue of All Dressed in White.
    • The prologue of Every Breath You Take is set three years before the main events of the story, during the Met gala where Virginia Wakeling dies. The main story Is set nearly three months after The Sleeping Beauty Killer.
    • You Don't Own Me is set a few months after the previous novel. The prologue takes place on the night of Martin Bell's murder, then skips ahead five years to the present day events. The final chapter takes place two weeks after the main story is concluded.
  • Venus Prime features several time skips to cover the times that Sparta and Blake spend either in extended transit or establishing cover identities (the first book, for instance, has a two-year time skip to cover Sparta working her way through the Space Board bureaucracy, and then a six-month time skip to cover her training to become an Investigator.)
  • The Vita Nuova begins with a brief prose section about Beatrice and Dante's first meeting in 1274 before segueing into Dante's poetry about her written from 1283 to 1293. The poet explains that he didn't want to go much into his youth since stories about kids often sound made-up.
  • Warhammer 40,000: In Talon of Horus, there's a two month's time skip as Tlaloc travels across the Eye to the nearest safe harbor, and then another few months as it makes its way towards the edge of the Negative Space Wedgie the book takes place in.
  • Warrior Cats: There is a 12-month skip between the first and second series (although this gap has been filled by Firestar's Quest and Ravenpaw's Path), and a six month gap between the second and third series. The fourth series is also supposed to start around six months after the end of the third.
  • Seventeen years pass between Whence Comes A Prince and the next book, Grace In Thine Eyes, of the Lowlands of Scotland series by Liz Curtis Higgs.
  • Gregory Maguire's The Wicked Years series features multiple time-skips. Book One alone has four, jumping from Elphaba's birth and infancy straight to Elphaba's time at university, through to the university crowd in their mid-to-late twenties, and finally to Elphaba in her mid-thirties. Book Two (Son of a Witch) starts out with Liir still a child only a little older than he was in Wicked, but quickly skips to his early-to-mid twenties. Book Three (A Lion Among Men) focuses on a different set of characters and actually goes back and forth compared to the main continuity, but has a lot of internal skips of its own as Brrr's life story is told in disjointed order from birth to middle-age. Finally, Book Four (Out of Oz) skips again to Rain (born at the end of Book Two) as a child of seven or so, and proceeds to follow her more or less continuously until the age of sixteen.
  • The Witch of Knightcharm: After the end of the orientation arc, the next episode takes place a month later, after the surviving students have recovered somewhat and gotten acclimated to the evil Wizarding School that they're stuck in.
  • Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence has many time skips. The book Exultant hops back and forth between the first few nanoseconds of the universe and 28,000 years into our future, while Ring starts in the year AD 3951 and jumps to AD 5,000,000.
  • C.T. Phipps' Agent G series has a fifteen year time skip after Saboteur that follows the release of Black Technology into the world and the transformation of society from the present to a Gibosnian Cyberpunk dystopia.
  • Wolf Pack: After the prologue ends with Garrett and Phyllis discovering the wolf pups they've taken in have turned into human babies, the book jumps ahead 15 years to when said babies are teenagers.
  • Worm has a two-year timeskip following the death of Behemoth, during which Taylor trains with the Chicago Wards, fights more Endbringers and Class-S threats than are covered in the story previously, and becomes a respected superhero, with the timeskip concluding on the eve of Taylor being admitted into the Protectorate and reuniting with the Undersiders. The skip encompasses eight times as much time as the entire million+ word story preceeding it.

    Music 
  • Kids Praise: Apparently at least a few years were between the second an third albums, given that Psalty both got married and had triplets who had become more than old enough to speak in the intervening time. The third album begins with the kids decorating a barn for a welcome back party for Psalty.
  • C. W. McCall: "Jackson Hole" describes the people who worked in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in different eras, and jumps forward to new eras with every verse, starting in 1836, jumping a hundred years forward to 1836 and then forty years forward to 1976.

    Myths & Religion 
  • The Bible:
    • In the Book of Exodus, there's a time skip in Chapter 2 from Moses as an infant to Moses as a 40-year-old Egyptian prince who sees a fellow Isralite in trouble, defends him from his attacker, and flees to the Midian desert in fear of being found out. Then at the beginning of Chapter 3, it skips to Moses being around 80 years old when God calls him to Himself through the burning bush.
    • The Four Gospels: In the gospel of Matthew, there's at least a two-year skip between when Joseph is told that Mary is having a child by the Holy Spirit and when the three Wise Men pay the young Jesus a visit, then after that there's a skip to when Jesus is about thirty years old and is baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. In the gospel of Luke, there's a twelve-year skip between Jesus' infancy and His being in the Temple in Jerusalem as a young boy, then it skips again to His baptism in the Jordan.
  • The Odyssey is a sequel to The Iliad and starts about one year later. It then lasts ten years, with time skips from one to seven years in the middle.

    Podcasts 
  • Across several Cool Kids Table games:
    • The first round of Creepy Town takes place a week before Halloween as the victims set up the Creepy Town haunted house, and the next one is the night before Halloween while they do a dry run.
    • The four children in the Harry Potter-themed game Hogwarts: The New Class are taken to Hogwarts in the spring, but spend a montage in the summer learning about the wizarding world so that they're not out of their depth when they start classes in the fall.
    • Sequinox has one between each pair of episodes during which the team fights low-level mooks, while the episodes themselves focus on bigger battles with stars and constellations.
  • The last two episodes of 1865 skip ahead to 1867 and 1868 to cover the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

    Roleplay 
  • The PBP board Cerberus Daily News' went forward one in-universe year after the conclusion of Mass Effect 3.

    Tabletop Games 
  • BattleTech had a number of timeskips:
    • The 20 Year Update made the jump from 3028, just after the 4th Succession War, to 3049, right before the Clan Invasion. The War of 3039 was presented as backstory.
    • A much longer timeskip happened with the launch of Mechwarrior: Dark Age. It is set in the same timeline as BattleTech, just in 3132 instead of 3067 (where BattleTech was at the time). Because of that, it presented the major Word of Blake Jihad, started in 3067, entirely as backstory to the Dark Age era. This also massively spoiled most of the major events of the Jihad era. Combined with the radical changes to the game's rules, moving to a CCG-style rather than BattleTech's standard board-game, fans were not pleased. The Dark Age boardgame was later discontinued (though not due to lack of success; despite persistent rumors to the contrary, Dark Age and its sequel Age of Destruction were actually very popular), and the main boardgame and timeline has since caught up to it.
  • Exalted has rules for instituting your own time skips, with recommended amounts of Experience Points earned by your characters during the skip as it's assumed they didn't spend the whole time sitting around doing nothing. These can range from months to decades, and can be necessary if you want your characters to get all the training time they need once they get into high Essence ranges (5+), or to make magical artifacts, or various other projects.
  • More than a few tabletop Role-Playing Games and settings put time skips between editions (if they don't just change the setting entirely):
    • Forgotten Realms has jumped years to centuries with changes in Dungeons & Dragons, and Greyhawk has undergone some changes as well (when it still got support, anyway).
    • Shadowrun tends to change to keep the current edition about 60 years ahead of the real-world date when it's published, advancing the cutting edge of cyberware and other tech (and because Technology Marches On).
    • Magic: The Gathering has had jumps of months, years, or centuries between blocks as the story moves along or shifts to a different plane entirely. Between Antiquities (the Brothers' War) and Odyssey/Onslaught (some of the last blocks to take place directly on Dominaria) the game covered around 2000 years of Dominarian history. The Urza's Saga block in particular followed Urza's millennia of plotting and planning from the very end of the Brothers' War to just before the Phyrexian invasion.
  • Warhammer 40,000 With the introduction of the Horus Heresy series, there is technically a time skip from the heresy to "present day", 10k years later. While the Horus Heresy game is built upon the same game system as "regular 40k", its points system does not seem to be balanced against the existing 40k system (with many saying that it has good internal balance, but will utterly crush any current 40k army). Forge World (the producer of Horus Heresy series) differentiate between the two by stating that certain models can be used in 40k, dubbed the "Age of Darkness", and gain extra rules to reflect how they're older technology, but also has adjusted point costs and rules. The Horus Heresy campaign books itself contains several time skips within the Heresy, as it took place across several years with only a few notable events happening (due to it being an intergalactic war). Between 7th and 8th editions there's a jump from the final days of the 41st millennium to a little more than a century later... or the next day, depending on where a given character was standing when time went weird.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Between first and second editions; after the conclusion of the "Realmgate Wars" — the game's first narrative campaign series — there's a forward jump of about a century, which allowed for the introduction of the Cities of Sigmar as both a new faction and as main settings for a lot of the story going forward; they were built in the interim after the Realmgate Wars allowed Sigmar to establish beachheads in each Mortal Realm.

    Theatre 
  • At the end of the first act of Aspects of Love, Rose has written Alex a letter saying that she is pregnant with her daughter, Jenny. When the second act starts, Jenny is 12 years old, and she jumps to 15 later on.
  • A hundred years pass between the acts of Sunday in the Park with George.
  • Sixteen years pass between the third and fourth acts of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, following his most famous stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear". The time skips are Lampshaded in the Prologue of Henry V:
    'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings / Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times / Turning the accomplishments of many years / Into an hourglass
  • In between the first two acts of Our Town, three years pass, and, between the second and third act, 9 years and the deaths of several characters, including Emily go by.
  • The second act of Show Boat opens with the World's Fair of 1893, but with the change of scene skips a decade to see Magnolia and Ravenal's marriage unravel. From ringing in the new year of 1905, it abruptly jumps past World War I to 1927.
  • Vanities does this at least twice (three times in The Musical). The first act/scene is in 1963, the second in 1968, the third in 1974, and the musical's finale is sometime in the mid 80's-early 90's.
  • The Pitmen Painters goes through multiple timeskips, starting in 1934 and ending in 1948.
  • Miss Saigon has a scene end with Kim and Chris embracing on the balcony of their apartment. The next scene is celebrating three years since the reunification of Vietnam.
  • Prima Facie: The second half of the story takes place 782 days after Tessa's rape, represented by numbers projected on the wall ticking progressively upwards. It makes a point about how long victims must wait for their cases to be heard in court.
  • In The Rose Tattoo, the first three scenes form a sort of prologue to the rest of the drama, which takes place three years later.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
  • In Strawberry Vinegar, you will get a time skip to nine years later after the credits, with the exception of one bad ending.
  • In the True Ending of ClockUp's Euphoria, the final scenes take place three years after the main events have ended.
  • An Octave Higher has varying time skips of several months for three of its five possible endings. The true story path begins with a five-year time skip after the end of the first act.
  • Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return takes place six years after the disastrous ending of the previous game, Sunrider: Liberation Day.

    Web Animation 
  • A Day With Bowser Jr: This fanmade Mario series takes place in the near future, where Bowser Jr is in his teens.
  • gen:LOCK opens in 2068 with the Union's attack on New York City, and then skipping ahead four years to 2072. Season 2 also picks up six months after the season 1 finale.
  • Some time happens between Inanimate Insanity and Inanimate Insanity II, which is long enough for OJ to create a hotel with the money he won.
  • Volume 3 of RWBY ends with the transition from Fall to Winter, during which Ruby fully recovers from her injuries and leaves for Haven with the remaining members of Team JNPR. Volume 4 starts 6 to 8 months after Volume 3.
  • In Welcome to... Facebook!, the titular guide is deactivated by its user a minute into the video, and it reawakens four months later, horrified to see what said user has done to her profile.
  • CPU Championship Series: Season 4 is set 2 years after Season 3, with the first tournament even being called TIMESKIP.
  • The second season of Meta Runner takes place six months after the finale of the first. The third season had a much less drastic jump of a week.
  • Lackadaisy, the Animated Adaptation of the webcomic of the same name, is actually a Stealth Sequel, set a mere three-and-a-half months in the comic's future. The comic begins in earnest around May 21st, 1927. Its most recent strips have Venturous Smugglers Rocky, Freckle and Ivy making their debut as a whiskey-runners for a probationary supplier, while speakeasy saxophonist Zib and Professional Killer Mordecai concurrently realize through a police station encounter and mob informant grapevine that the feds are newly arrived in town. An open day planner on a station desk places these events no later than May 31st of that year. The Pilot Movie takes place in mid-September 1927, as referenced by speakeasy owner Mitzi May reading, out loud, a passage from Isadora Duncan's obituary. (Her real-life scarf-induced tragicomic death occurred September 14, 1927.) By then, Rocky and company are a slightly less green Caper Crew, the supplier is now a regular, underworld figures treat the Feds presence as common knowledge, and Zib, booked for public drunkeness and in jail for a two-month stint in-comic, is out amongst 'em and soused as ever.
  • ‘’Wolf Song: The Movie’’ has a few. The opening scene is Cerberus instructing his younger brother to find him 3 items needed for him to escape, it then immediately cuts to some time later where said brother of Cerberus reveals he is actually the Big Bad and conducts a brutal massacre of two different packs, with Koda, a juvenile survivor of the massacre vowing revenge on the guy that killed those he knew. The film then cuts to a snowstorm several months or years later where the rest of the plot kicks off.

    Webcomics 
  • Cashmere Sky: After the events of Volume One, Volume Two skips forward in time by seven years.
  • Tower of God has a five year time skip between season 1 and season 2. The changes are rather great: the main character is definitely not who he used to be, he is about to meet new comrades, the setting went from the second floornote  to the 20th and the tone is a bit more shounen-like, at least at first. Most of the important cast and Paracule are reintroduced later.
  • The Order of the Stick had a time skip come out of the blue when we follow Roy, dead and in Heaven, in his reunification with his late parents. We actually see what transpires for him, but he finds out the hard way that he's been dead for three and a half months — he failed to notice the passage of time because in the afterlife the sun never sets, the weather never changes, and he never gets hungry or thirsty or tired. We then cut back to the other characters and catch up on their (rather grim) situation.
  • At first, Dominic Deegan had each adventure following on the heels of the last. Lately, after every arc the comic skips forward a few months.
  • Questionable Content is known for having a very sporadic case of Webcomic Time, where a single week's worth of strips can depict anything from a week's passage in-universe to a single one-minute long conversation. However, around comic 1311, a time-skip long enough for it to become winter and for Dora's hair to grow out, exposing her blonde roots, occurred. Judging by the length of her hair, Penelope's pining over Wil's absence, and the seasonal change, at least two or three months passed between one strip and the next.
    • At strip 4846, Clinton states it's been months since the events of the previous arc. He didn't say how many in that strip.
  • Coga Suro has an eighteen-year time skip between 'Coga Suro' and 'Coga Suro 2' [imaginatively named sequel].
  • Arthur, King of Time and Space:
    • The webcomic had a timeskip after Merlin's death in the contemporary arc and the sabbatical. Although the sabbatical only lasted six months, the strip picks up again two years later, when present-day Guenevere is expecting her second child, and Merlin is about to get imprisoned forever by Nimue in the base arc/leave with his new apprentice Nimue in the space arc. It's since been established that previous cartoons have been pushed backwards so it's still "the present" in the contemporary arc, meaning Merlin didn't become an advisor to Obama, because he was dead before the election.
    • A second sixth-month sabbatical took us forward 10 years, from Mark killing Tristram and Isolde, and the death of the False Guenevere/Fasha, in all the arcs to Contemporary Arthur announcing he was standing for the presidency.
  • Darths & Droids has a two-year time skip in the "real world" at the same time as a ten-year time skip in the roleplaying game the characters are playing, between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. And then another two "real" years, along with the three in-universe years, pass between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. This two-year skip trend continues with the subsequent movies, aside from Rogue One and Solo each being a Whole Episode Flashback recounted during other events.
    • Lampshaded with the The Last Jedi campaign, where Pete complains about having to wait two whole years to resolve the Wham Line from the end of the last campaign, given that in-universe no time has passed.
  • Rumors of War features a two-month time skip between the first and second Story Arcs. In the first arc, the characters are en route to the city of Varna and encounter adventure during a layover, while in the beginning of the second arc they are implied to have not only reached their destination, but to have been there for some time. In the meantime, several characters have vanished and several new ones have appeared, owing to the comic's large cast.
  • Not too long after the reset Fuzzy Things skipped forward two years, so that the main cast are eight instead of six years old.
  • The Last Days of FOXHOUND skips seven months after FOXHOUND allies themselves against the Patriots, but other than that they seem to skip indeterminate amounts of time between major story arcs and even simple conversations within an arc.
  • The initial storyline of Collar 6 involves a spanking contest that's three weeks off, and the first year of story only covered a single day, so it was inevitable that they'd use a Training Montage.
  • All Roses Have Thorns started off during the early 16th century, it is currently now in the 19th century, with various skips forward in time in between.
  • Homestuck. The story for the first five Acts takes place over a single day, disregarding Flashbacks and characters in the far future. Act 6 takes place about three years after that day...in an Alternate Universe. As the characters from the original universe travel to the new one (a trip which takes three years), the story of their journey is told through a series of vignettes in the Act 6 Intermissions, stopping at the beginning of the journey, 1 year into it, 2 years into it, and the end of the journey.
    • During Act 4, there is a four-month time skip into a Bad Future where John has died fighting his Denizen way too early, and Jade could not enter the Medium and died too. It gets reverted though.
    • After the alpha kids enter the medium, we see flashes of what they go through as we skip ahead 22 weeks.
  • 8-Bit Theater had a time skip relatively early on... Which was accidentally undone by "The Wizard Who Did It", while he was making dinner, before we really had a chance to see anything.
  • Dumbing of Age:
    • Book 2 technically had one, which is a relief considering that it had been a year and the characters had barely finished the first few weeks of school. The problem? The time skip was four days.
    • Book 6 had another one, again lasting all of four days.
    • Book 7 jumps forward three days to skip the aftermath of Ryan attacking Amber with a knife...and getting the shit kicked out of him.
    • Book 10 commemorates the comic's first decade by being the biggest Wham Episode thus far, and ends with a time jump of several months, with multiple strips forming a Time-Passes Montage.
  • Magician has an approximate 8 year time skip after part one where The Bad Guy Wins.
  • El Goonish Shive skipped ahead six months in one panel, which is rather impressive considering that the entire ten-year long run of the comic had only encompassed about 5 months (not including brief flashbacks), starting on January 25th. The skip runs from June 30th to December 23rd.
  • Drowtales had several.
    • The first occurred in Chapter 1, where there was a 10-year jump.
    • The next happened during Chapter 2, where there was a 4- or 5-year jump.
    • The most significant storywise is a 15-year jump between Chapters 32 and 33.
    • A three-year timeskip occurs between chapters 51 and 52.
  • Not an in-universe one, but a sketch page for Forever 16 has the main cast appear as 21-year-olds.
  • Ryan Armand used a time skip for a narrative purpose in his webcomic Great After all sorts of wacky and over-the-top situations both before and after it, the protagonist is still not satisfied with his life despite spending the whole comic pursuing greatness — as it turns out, it is rather heavily implied that the best time of his life was when he was quietly living normally with his wife and kid, for a period of six years that was skipped over for his son to grow up, and that the readers don't get to see much of once the plot restarts.
  • Girl Genius has protagonist Agatha (and the audience with her) go through one in-universe when she gets unwillingly dragged through a magical teleportation-portal. Thanks to outside events, the normally instantaneous trip takes two and a half years, during which things have gone pretty badly for all the rest of Europa.
  • In Imaginatives, after Kordon takes over at the end of 13 Stories of Hell, there’s a ten year gap before the beginning of the Dystopian Utopia arc.
  • Plume jumps several months between chapter 9 and 10 as characters get used to their new situations, such as Corrick now accompanying Dom and Vesper and Tegan searching for them. It also gives Hunter time to track Vesper down.
  • Cobweb and Stripes begins two years after the events of the film Beetlejuice, and contains a number of time skips within the story itself. For instance, chapter 14 takes place entirely on one day in July (Lydia's birthday); chapter 15 then jumps a few weeks into the future to late August, when she leaves to start college.
  • Zebra Girl: While Sandra was banished to the Subfusc for a few days top, time on Earth flew much more quickly. As such, exactly 1,666 days went by between her banishment and her comeback. Even Sam, who was skeptical about Sandra's return, is forced to admit that this is ominous enough.
  • Table Titans has one between season 1 and 2. Of the original party consisting of Drake the cleric, Lulani the bard, Lefleur the thief and Draziw the wizard (and their pet blink dog), only Draziw and Lefleur remain, the fate of the others being unknown. At some point the remaining two also befriended the paladin Gar, the barbarian Valeria and the ranger Arroc. Draziw has also graduated from magic school, and has grown a beard.
  • ReBoot: Code of Honor picks up "hours" after the end of ReBoot's cliffhanger ending, with Mainframe being completely devasted and overrun by Megabyte's zombinomes.
  • In Yokoka's Quest, between each chapter is a time skip of a few weeks or months. The durations aren't explicitly stated, but can be inferred as lasting longer than just a few days from hair growing longer, learning to speak a new language, becoming adept at swordfighting, etc. Less than a year has passed in total between chapter 3 and chapter 9.
  • In Crimson Knights two years pass between chapters 3 and 4. There are also several smaller ones between other chapters.
  • Not a huge one, but in Ennui GO!, at least two months have passed between Izzy's wedding in Part 1 to Max and co. starting high school in Part 2.

    Web Original 
  • Happens twice in Greek Ninja during the journey to and from Japan.
  • Tech Infantry is mostly organized into seasons in conscious imitation of Myth Arc-laden series such as Babylon 5, with a few shorter stories considered "TV Movies". The first two seasons take place a hundred years after a prequel movie, then time skips 20 years for third season, several decades more for the fourth season, then the fifth through seventh seasons are set several centuries later, then eighth season jumps back to an alternate timeline 20 years after the fourth season, then there's the Aborted Arc Tech Infantry: Exodus spin-off project, set several centuries after the seventh season.
  • Chaos Fighters II is set 100 years after Chaos Fighters and Chaos Fighters: Chemical Warriors.
  • The second book of Tales of MU starts at the beginning of Mack's second year at MU, truncating the ending of her first semester.
  • Can You Spare a Quarter?: The epilogue plays out eight years after the rest of the story, and it is the moment when Jamie - who is now an adult - finally breaks with the last vestiges of his past.

    Web Videos 
  • Asrika Films: The third act of SpongeBob SquarePants Gag Dub "Tragedy in Mie Ayam Shop" uses clips from "Krusty Towers" and takes place three weeks after the part adapted from "Squid on Strike". In the video's context, the time skip fills the time needed for Mr. Krabs to renovate his mie ayam shop after SpongeBob destroys it.
  • In Noob this is implied by the level progression of the characters between two seasons. These gaps are loosely filled by the novels and comics.
  • Video Game High School: There's a timeskip after Brian leaves school. He gets a job at an arcade, takes over the arcade, becomes a respected businessman, well-loved by both his customers and coworkers... all in the space of one day.
    Brian: Ted? How long has it been? Twenty? Twenty-four hours?
    Ted: You haven't aged a day!
  • Critical Role has a few:
    • The first is between Episodes 94 and 95, during which the members of Vox Machina pursue their own personal projects over the course of a year.
    • The second is a twenty-year period between the end of the Vox Machina campaign and the beginning of the second campaign.
    • The third is the mini campaign Exandria Unlimited take place six year after Campaign Two
    • The fourth with Campaign Three, which happens 1 year after Exandria Unlimited.
  • Out With Dad: After season three, the series jumps ahead, with Rose going from being fifteen to beginning university.
  • Kontrola: The series skipped ahead two years in between season three and four.

    Western Animation 
  • Arcane: After the very first scene shows Vi and Powder as young children, the rest of Act 1 skips forward to Vi as a teenager and Powder still a kid. Act 2 jumps forward again, with Vi as a young adult and Jinx as a teenager.
  • Disney at one point was going to make an animated series based on The Aristocats which turned Duchess's kittens Marie, Toulouse and Berlioz into teenagers. The idea got cancelled in 2006, but concept art of the characters do exist.
  • The Ben 10 franchise did this with every entry of the "classic continuity". The biggest was the five-year Time Skip between the original series and Alien Force that was largely used to make the series Darker and Edgier. Ultimate Alien takes place a year after Alien Force, while Omniverse takes place a few months after Ultimate Alien, with aliens now living among humans generally peacefully; the series even takes advantage of the initial five-year Time Skip to have a fair number of interquel stories.
  • Beware the Batman has a six-month time skip between "Reckoning" and "Nexus". This was done to allow Gotham City to heal after the black-out and mayhem created by Ra's al Ghul and to show the harmful effects that Alfred's departure from Bruce and Tatsu has caused on the former.
  • "The Adventure Begins", the two-part premiere episode of the 2006 revival of Biker Mice from Mars, establishes that ten years have passed since the events of the original 1993 series.
  • The first episode of Castlevania begins in 1455 with Lisa coming to Dracula's castle to become a doctor and Dracula's wife. The episode then skips twenty years ahead to 1475 and shows Lisa's execution as a witch. It then skips ahead another year to 1476, which is then used as the show's "present".
  • Two years pass between the second ChalkZone short on Oh Yeah! Cartoons ("The Amazin' River", which would later be edited into the series episode "French Fry Falls"), which was the last one to air during the show's first season in 1998, and the third short ("Rudy's Date") which began the next season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. This was brought upon by Nickelodeon; when production began on the shorts for the second season, Nick was interested into giving it its' own show. However, they requested that Rudy had to be a little older (he was eight at first and ten after the time skip).
  • Darkwing Duck. No less than 3 years pass between the pilot and episode 17, where Gosalyn remarks Darkwing turns into a camping maniac every spring (at least 2 of them would be needed for it to be a pattern), and that it's spring again. The implication is that all this happened right after the pilot, as Darkwing transformed from a totally inept nobody to one of the most respected superheroes on the planet, called in for help by the world police on a number of occasions. And between the end of the TV series and the comic by Boom! Kids, a year and a half has gone by.
  • DC Animated Universe:
    • Batman: The Animated Series had a follow-up called The New Batman Adventures, which took place a few years later and showed some changes in the characters (Tim Drake was Robin, Dick Grayson was Nightwing, and Barbara Gordon was much more active as Batgirl). Somewhat later (after the end of Justice League), according to Word of God, the Joker kidnapped Robin after Darkseid and Lex disappeared.
    • Justice League: Unlimited takes place about a year after the two first seasons, after the League has built a new Watchtower and recruited a much larger membership.
    • Justice League itself takes place a few years after Superman: The Animated Series. It's not specified how many years exactly, but it's at least enough time for Superman's public image to have recovered somewhat after the events of the latter's Grand Finale “Legacy” and for a few more heroes to have established themselves.
    • Batman Beyond begins with Bruce Wayne's final battle as Batman, about twenty years after the previously-mentioned DC Animated Universe series. The series proper takes place twenty years after that (about 40 years from the rest of the DCAU).
  • Nickelodeon announced their intentions to launch a teenage Dora the Explorer series, where the main plots will often involve Dora going shopping at the mall and hanging out with the boys at school, maintaining her educational values from the original series by solving mysteries, and sport a slightly older character design. Interestingly, Nickelodeon did not intend to show off imagery of the new Dora until the fall toyline, releasing only a teaser silhouette of her. Some parents and children liked it, though some were worried about how much chickification Dora's about to go through. Nickelodeon properly unveiled her in attempt to settle the outcry. In the end, the ensuing series, Dora and Friends: Into the City! lasted only 38 episodes and killed the series for a while.
  • A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, the Live-Action Adaptation and Series Fauxnale of The Fairly Oddparents is set 13 years after the series and Retcons the ending of Channel Chasers.
  • The Season 2 finale of Generator Rex sends Rex forward six months into the future, with the status quo being affected by his absence during that time.
  • The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after Avatar: The Last Airbender ended. Long enough that there are few surviving characters from the original series and the children of said characters are middle-aged adults. Korra itself has a six-month time skip between Books 1 and 2. Then a three-year skip between Books 3 and 4.
  • Legion of Super Heroes (2006) has a timeskip between seasons, or rather, two timeskips in one: the second season takes place a couple of years after the first, and when the new Big Bad arises, Superman is brought back from the 21st century... but where season one Supes had been pulled from his Superboy days, season two Supes has been pulled from his Justice League days. Where everyone else has aged two years, Superman has aged about ten and goes from being the least experienced member of the team to an Older and Wiser adult hero.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • The Old Grey Hare: Bugs and Elmer are shown in then distant year of 2000, where they are both old.
  • Moral Orel does two timeskips in the second to last episode. It time skips from the Spring Season foward Six months to the fall season, then at the end of that episode it skips to Christmas.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has its Dénouement Episode, "The Last Problem", take place an unspecificed number of years after the preceeding two-parter episode. It's implied to be at least a couple of decades though, as characters who were children and infants during the show's run are now adults, while Luster Dawn remarks that the era before Twilight ascended the throne was "so long ago."
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: Parodied in the season two premiere "Seasons Change", when K.O. comes back from a three-month Time Skip between seasons one and two to find a bunch of silly, nonsensical changes that have happened over the summer, like Enid becoming a mime, Rad turning orange, and background characters getting random redesigns. He’s not impressed. Even funnier, the few actually plot relevant changes like Darrell taking over Boxmore or Mr. Gar dating K.O.’s mom are shunted off to the background while the team obsesses over irrelevant things that get undone by the end of the episode.
  • The Owl House: At the end of season 2, the Hex Squad are stranded on Earth. Season 3 starts from there and soon skips to several months later, with a Time-Passes Montage showing Luz's friends adjusting to life in the Human Realm and a few failed attempts at finding a way back to the Demon Realm.
    • The epilogue takes place several years after the final battle, with the cast about to celebrate Luz's 18th birthday.
  • Phineas and Ferb: The episode "Act Your Age" takes place ten years in the future.
  • Quack Pack was an animated series that aired which featured Huey, Dewey and Louie as teenagers.
  • ReBoot combined a time skip with Year Inside, Hour Outside. During the third season, Enzo and AndrAIa found themselves trapped in the Game after losing it, moving from system to system. After their initial loss, the series time-skipped to Enzo and AndrAIa as adults, with significant but much less time having passed back on Mainframe.
  • A one-year time skip occurs in the Road Rovers episodes "Dawn of the Groomer" and "Still a Few Bugs in the System".
  • Rugrats Sequel Series All Grown Up! follows the baby characters from the first series after a ten-year time skip, inspired by the show's tenth-anniversary special: a What If? episode that showed what it might be like if Rugrats hadn't been Frozen in Time the length of its run. Despite popular belief, it actually wasn't intended to serve as a Poorly Disguised Pilot: the producers were far more interested in different spin-off ideas that would have mostly maintained the ages of the characters, such as a show about Angelica and Suzie starting preschool. However, the ratings for the special were so good (at 11.9 million viewers, the TV movie is the most-watched program in the channel's history by a wide margin) that Nick naturally wanted a spin-off of that instead. For its part, the preschool show (Rugrats Pre School Daze) would have four direct-to-video episodes made before being scrapped entirely.
  • In Samurai Jack, Jack has spent 50 years without aging a single day between Seasons 4 and 5, with at least one incident happening during that period of time causing him to lose his spirit. The episode titles even lampshade this, with the season premiere being labeled Episode "XCII" rather than "LIII", cheekily implying a few dozen significant events have been skipped over.
  • The Secret Saturdays has this to start off the third season. Six months have passed and in that time: the Saturdays have become fugitives, with the Secret Scientists wanting to freeze Zak for eternity and the world blaming them for Argost's disappearance. Other things include Van Rook becoming broke and homeless, Zak's powers going haywire, and Doyle becoming a James Bond-like spy for the Saturday family.
  • In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "I Was A Teenage Gary", after SpongeBob leaves for the convention, Squidward gets ready to relax...then it jumps to three days later when SpongeBob is coming home and Squidward neglected Gary the whole time.
    • In "SB-129", the episode skips 2000 years into the future with Squidward frozen in the freezer.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: There's a timeskip ten episodes into season three to give the impression of the Clone Wars dragging out endlessly (since the war only takes place in the three-year time period between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith), providing an opportunity for new models and wardrobes for the main characters. Many of the characters have been redesigned (particularly Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Yoda, Padmé, and Palpatine), for example, and Ahsoka has created a second lightsaber and takes up Dual Wielding. The series' Anachronic Order also ends after this point (with the exception of "Revival", aired as the season 5 premiere but set later in the season).
    • Another timeskip took place between Season 6 and the Un-Cancelled Season 7, with Anakin and Obi-Wan now in their Revenge of the Sith outfits and the conflict starting to wind down. It gives the impression that the three periods of the show take place in each year of the war.
  • Star Wars Rebels: The series regularly has brief timeskips of between a few weeks and a few months between episodes.
  • Superjail!: There is a timeskip between the second season finale and the season three premiere.
  • Steven Universe has the television movie take place two years after the finale, with the Future miniseries picking up a few months after that.
  • Total Drama:
    • Action had a time skip from the finale, to the later special and the third season. It's not known exactly how long, although a year is probably the best guess (enough time for about half of Heather's hair to grow back, and most of them to try to grasp fame and fail at it).
    • The 2023 reboot of Island is explicitly stated to take place 15 years after the original Island, which took place in the Summer of 2007, placing the reboot in the Summer of 2022.
  • The Transformers skipped about 20 years (from then present 1985 to 2005) between the last episode of the second season and The Movie, during which Cybertron fell to the Decepticons and two of the four biggest Transformers ever were built. There is also a timeskip in the Japanese animated continuity - there is a one-year gap between the end of Transformers 2010 (American season 3) and The Headmasters.
  • Transformers: Rescue Bots sees Season 4 skip a few years after the first three seasons, reflected by Cody and Frankie being teenagers and the latter getting a baby sister. The series also takes place in the Transformers Aligned Universe, with the first three seasons being concurrent with Transformers: Prime and the fourth being concurrent with Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015), a fact reflected by Bumblebee going from talking with the beeps he did through most of Prime and his Rescue Bots appearances in the first two seasons, to being voiced by Will Friedle, as in the final four episodes of Prime and RiD. Sideswipe from RiD also appears.
  • Inverted with Wacky Races spinoffs Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Races took place during the time of its production, 1968, while the spinoffs are set decades earlier. Then again, Dick Dastardly and Muttley would reappear in their Vulture Squadron attire in 1985's Yogi's Treasure Hunt.
  • Every Season of Young Justice (2010) takes place a certain number of years after the previous season. Season 2: Invasion takes place 5 years after the first season, Season 3: Outsiders takes place 2 years after season 2, and Season 4: Phantoms takes place a year after season 3.

 
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A Mere 50 Years

As an elf Frieren lives for thousands of years and thus has a warped perception of time, with her casually inviting her normal friends to watch a once-in-50-years event, without realizing they would the end of their lives by them. When she reunites with her friend Himmel 50 years later for the event, she's shocked to see he's now an old man.

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