History Main / FormerTeenRebel

* [[FairCop Kate Beckett]] from ''Series/{{Castle}}''--up until she started college, she had a rebellious wild child-streak. It's kind of played with in Richard Castle's case, in that he's still kind of a rebel in some ways and likes getting on people's nerves sometimes, but it's generally in a more focused and ''mostly'' law-abiding way.

* [[FairCop Kate Beckett]] from ''Series/{{Castle}}''--up until she started college, she had a rebellious wild child-streak. It's kind of played with in Richard Castle's case, in that he's still kind of a rebel in some ways and likes getting on people's nerves sometimes, but it's generally in a more focused and ''mostly'' law-abiding way.

* Dr. Gordon Gordon-Wyatt from ''Series/{{Bones}}'' used to be a glam rocker.
* The ''Series/RedDwarf'' gang go back in time and see Lister at age 17 with his [[DreadfulMusician head-banging "sham glam" band]]. According to Lister, the crazy whacked-out hippie drummer became a police officer and a Freemason, and the "neo-Marxist nihilistic anarchist" bassist became an insurance executive with his own parking space.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'':
** Captain Lochley joined the military to clean herself up after she found her best friend Zoe dead from a drug overdose.
** Dr. Franklin is a minor example. He took up medicine partially to spite his soldier father.
* ''Series/JukenSentaiGekiranger'' has an example in team mentor Miki Misaki to the point that she is still remembered and feared by the current batch of teen rebels. She's also capable of kicking more ass ''now'' than she was back then thanks to studying Geki-Ju-Leopard-ken (Fierce Beast Leopard-Fist) in the intervening period.
* Joey Jeremiah and Christine "Spike" Nelson in ''Series/DegrassiJuniorHigh'': Joey was originally a goofy prankster and Spike was a friendly punk rocker. When they reprise their roles in the [[Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration sequel series]] as adults, Joey is now a successful car salesman and Spike has toned down her fashion sense and become a successful hairstylist, and both are good parents to their children (Craig and Angela for Joey, and Emma and Jack for Spike).
* ''Series/ModernFamily'': Claire Dunphy used to be much more like her wild-child eldest daughter Haley than she'd like to admit. Haley was actually conceived in the backseat of Phil's car after a Music/DuranDuran concert.

* Willie and Kate Tanner from ''Series/{{Alf}}'' used to be hippies and rebels during the 1960s, but by the time the series takes place both have become responsible adults and parents.
* Both Christy and her ''Series/{{Mom}}'' Bonnie, were out-of-control drug addicts in their high school years with no real mother figure (Bonnie was a foster child, so never really got good at the whole “mother” thing for Christy) who got [[TeenPregnancy knocked up at sixteen]]. When they reunite, both are recovering alcoholics trying to get their lives together, with Christy even working to become a lawyer.
* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' Mary Cooper, Sheldon's mom, is devoutly Christian in the present. In "The Rhinitis Revelation" she tells Penny "When I was your age [[ReallyGetsAround you could have me for a car ride and a bottle of strawberry wine]]."
** In ''Series/YoungSheldon'' it's revealed that his father used to wear a leather jacket and ride a motorcycle, and Sheldon's older brother was conceived pre-wedlock.
* Hal in ''Series/{{Malcolm in the Middle}}'' as a teenager was, essentially, Francis. His misadventures include running a pirate radio station as "Kid Charlemagne", which he attempts to revisit in one episode.
* Felicity Smoak in ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', introduced as a very proper and easily flustered IT technician at Queen Consolidated, albeit one who has the skills and flexibility to deal with the boss's more "off the book" requests, eventually becoming part of Team Arrow. The FlashBack in her DayInTheLimelight episode reveals that when she was a student she was a somewhat {{Goth}}y PlayfulHacker.
* A plotline in season one of ''Series/VeronicaMars'' made use of this trope, when students in Neptune High paid PI in training Veronica to "dig up dirt" on their parents. Each of the students who came to Veronica came to find the trope was true about all of their strict parents, and their spotty records include reckless driving, Vegas weddings, and wet t-shirt contests.
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'': In the first season, Regina, the Evil Queen, is a very strict and harsh towards her adoptive son Henry, to the point of {{Gaslighting}} him. [[LittleDidIKnow Little did he know]] then that in her youth she used to run away from her own evil mother, The Queen of Hearts, and was quite the RebelliousPrincess.
* In the Japanese WorkCom ''Series/KeishichouNasiGorengKa'', division head Detective Chief Kazahaya Kyoko is formerly Salt, the powerful yankee leader of ''Series/MajisukaGakuen'', and goes undercover as her old self in an episode of the latter series.
** An unnamed female detective in season 2 of ''Series/MajisukaGakuen'' is also a former yankee.
* ''Series/StElsewhere'': In "Time Heals, Part 2", it is revealed that Donald Westphall was a rebellious teen in 1945 who skipped school and stole the pocketbooks of two patients at St. Eligius. His father Thomas sent him to Father Joseph [=McCabe=] to straighten him out. In order to pay back the money that he stole, Westphall began working as a shoeshine boy at the hospital. This eventually led him to study medicine and return to St. Eligius as a doctor, becoming Director of Medicine in 1975.
* ''Series/That70sShow'': In "Backstage Pass", [[RashomonStyle Red and Kitty try to remember how they first met]], their recollections show that [[GenerationXerox their younger selves were a lot like their future children]]: Red had a mischevious prankster side like Eric, while Kitty was a HardDrinkingPartyGirl like Laurie.

* Believe it or not, Ben Stein (of [[Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff "Bueller....Bueller...."]] fame) wasn't quite so stuffy when he was in college 45 years ago and was protesting UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. (Even more shockingly, his mother ''approved'' of it!)

* Mystery writer Anne Perry, who was revealed to be murderer Juliet Hulme after the release of the movie ''Film/HeavenlyCreatures''.

* In the '60s, San Francisco was the capital of the counterculture. Nowadays, it's better known as the capital of the tech world, and the residents (at least those who can still afford to live there) are more likely to be yuppies than hippies. Some longtime residents bemoan the influx of straitlaced, business-minded go-getter newcomers to the city. It's probably no accident that Portland, Oregon has the reputation as the QuirkyTown that San Francisco once enjoyed. Played straight with the personal computer industry in the Silicon Valley, as it was founded by people who were steeped in the counterculture in the '70s, and then became full-fledged businesspeople as their companies became successful.

Definitely TruthInTelevision. Contrast with UsedToBeASweetKid where a villainous or otherwise unpleasant character is shown to be much nicer and polite as a child. Compare ParentalHypocrisy. TeensAreMonsters is often a strong factor of why the character used to be a teen rebel, which can lead to a TeenageWasteland. See also RetiredOutlaw.

* Inverted in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''. Young [[StateSec inquisitors]] are freshly indoctrinated and therefore puritanically orthodox. Those who survive to old age tend to lose their naivety and innocence to the setting's BlackAndGrayMorality, willing to employ daemonhosts and possessed weapons in their efforts to turn Chaos against itself, even for short-term victories. So these older Radicals often end up the target of the next generation of young Puritan inquisitors.

* [[FairCop Kate Beckett]] from ''Series/{{Castle}}''--up until she started college, she had a rebellious wild child-streak. It's kind of played with in [[TitleCharacter Richard Castle]]'s case, in that he's still kind of a rebel in some ways and likes getting on people's nerves sometimes, but it's generally in a more focused and ''mostly'' law-abiding way.

[[quoteright:350:[[Series/CriminalMinds https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/former-teen-rebel2_1510.jpg]]]]

* Joey Jeremiah and Christine "Spike" Nelson in ''Series/{{Degrassi}}'': Joey was originally a goofy prankster and Spike was a friendly punk rocker. When they reprise their roles in the sequel series as adults, Joey is now a successful car salesman and Spike has toned down her fashion sense and become a successful hairstylist, and both are good parents to their children (Craig and Angela for Joey, and Emma and Jack for Spike).

** Marty's mother, Lorraine Baines [=McFly=] in [[Film/BackToTheFuture Part I]]. We don't see much of her in the present, but when he goes back to [[TheFifties the 1950's]] Marty is definitely shocked to see her smoking and drinking. She also flirts with Marty and wants to [[AutoErotica park with him]], despite her assertion thirty years later that girls shouldn't chase boys and her insistence that she never did that kind of thing with a boy.

** Additionally, an [[Script/NumberTwo original draft]] for the [[Film/BackToTheFuturePartII Part II]] had George and Lorraine as members of the hippie counter-culture of [[TheSixties the 1960's]].

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'': Ash's loyal Charizard used to be quite the defiant and disobedient Charmeleon.

** Captain Jean-Luc Picard of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' was a delinquent and skirt-chaser at the Academy, culminating in a bar fight with a group of {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s in which [[spoiler: he got stabbed in the heart]]. After that, he became rather more focused and regretted his wild years, but when Q gives him the chance to return to the past and relive them, Picard discovers they were necessary to make him the man he became.

*** In the 2009 film, Kirk plays this straight, largely on account of not having a father growing up. He changes when he decides to follow [[GenerationXerox in his father's footsteps]]. Though he certainly manages to hold on to part of his rebellious attitude.
** Chakotay from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' is shown in "Tattoo" as a petulant youth who rejects his father's attempts to instruct him in [[MagicalNativeAmerican The Ways Of His People]] because he'd rather run off and join Starfleet.

*** Vulcans generally have a very strong tendency for this. Their philosophy of cold logic and detachment from emotion is their way to compensate for and restrain their violent and confrontational nature.

On a few rare occasions, a former teen rebel was actually a closet rebel who was LivingADoubleLife. An extreme example might be TheFundamentalist kid you knew in high school and/or college, the one who always complained about all the other believers who didn't live exactly by their strict interpretation of AsTheGoodBookSays. Then -- sometimes decades later -- the truth comes out. That obnoxious bible-thumper had actually gone through high school and/or college [[SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny regularly cheating, lying, stealing and/or screwing]] AnythingThatMoves. Of course, such people don't exist in a vacuum. Somebody -- a cohort or an adversary -- knew the truth all along, but their warnings usually went unheeded. TheReveal allows this person to say "IKnewIt" or "IWarnedYou" to all the doubters.

* In the ''Jem'' {{continuation}} oneshot ''Fanfic/RockStars'', the Misfits have long since disbanded due to the changing music scene of the 1990s. They've all seemed to have toned down their images. Stormer has an indie rock empire while Roxy is implied to be a FashionDesigner.

* ''Fanfic/OneDayAtATimeFanfic'': This is how PeggySue protagonist Jason Todd's gradual transition from Red Hood to Batman is portrayed. He even calls his younger self "[[IHatePastMe an angst-ridden mess stuck in a constant phase of delayed teenage rebellion]]".

* ''Film/SweetHomeAlabama'': Melanie and Jake got up to a lot of antics during their teenage years to the point where the former earned the nickname "Felony Melanie". As adults, Jake tries to get the sheriff to remove Melanie from his house by bringing up some of her prior misdeeds including shoplifting, cow-tipping and driving a tractor into a pond.

* In the ''Film/{{Paddington}}'' films, Mr. Brown is shown in flashbacks to have been a wild, motorcycle-riding bad boy in his youth. The editing humorously implies that he changed to his current stodgy, adventure-hating self literally overnight when his wife gave birth to their first child.

* ''Series/OnceUponATime'': In the first season, Regina, the Evil Queen, is a very strict and harsh towards her adoptive son Henry, to the point of {{Gaslighting}} him. Little did he know then that in her youth she used to run away from her own evil mother, The Queen of Hearts, and was quite the RebelliousPrincess.

** [[SternTeacher Iruka]] [[ParentalSubstitute Umino]] used to, like Naruto, be a prankster as a means of coping with his parents' death, making him strict but sympathetic with Naruto (he makes Naruto clean up his graffiti on the Hokage faces, but after Naruto points out he has no one to go home to, he offers to buy him ramen).

** [[spoiler: There's also Biff Tannen. Subverted at first with him being [[SchoolyardBullyAllGrownUp exactly the same as an adult]] in]] [[TheEighties the '80s]] as he was in the '50s as a teenager. However, after Marty changes the past, he plays this straight in the new timeline.

* Ye Thuza in ''Webcomic/SandraAndWoo'' is literally a former teen rebel, having [[ChildSoldiers fought in the Burmese]] [[LaResistance resistance]] in her youth [[RetiredBadass before settling down to become a suburban housewife]].

* Koneko is revealed to have been like this in ''WebAnimation/NyanNekoSugarGirls''. She's currently a soft-spoken [[NiceGuy nice girl]] who wears a conservative style. In college, she wore heavy makeup, a midriff-baring shirt, shorts, and is shown popping bubble gum like the delinquent stereotype goes. Apparently she received a breast reduction as well because she no longer has GagBoobs.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Sixteen}}'': Through some old security tapes, the main characters discover that [[TeenHater Ron the]] [[FunHatingConfiscatingAdult Rent-a-Cop]] used to be just as big a troublemaker as Jonesy. This gives Jonesy an existential crisis, because he fears he might end up just like Ron as an adult.

* ''Manga/MyMonsterSecret'': The main characters' homeroom teacher Akari Koumoto used to be the legendary delinquent known as "Akari of the Hundred Visits". Nowadays her anger mostly shows up in reference to her {{Troll}}ish multi-great-grandmother Akane, who loves rubbing [[ChristmasCake Akari's singleness]] in her face, and an enraged Akari is said to be more terrifying than Godzilla. Akari herself treats her past as OldShame, mostly since [[spoiler:those "hundred visits" were her unsuccessful attempts at getting a boyfriend and flipping out when she failed. However, the story has a happy ending, since her past allowed Akari to connect with her student Sakurada and reform him into one of these, which lead to their [[HotForTeacher becoming a couple]] later on in the manga's run.]]

* [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/41231076/chapters/103368975 One of]] nirejseki's snippets for ''Series/TheUntamed'' shows that Lan Qiren had a wild, promiscuous youth and slept with Wei Wuxian's parents, Jiang Cheng's parents, and Jin Zixuan's parents. Now that he is a stickler for the rules, he regrets it.
** A later snippet claims that he also slept with Nie Huaisang's parents and Wen Ruohan. And ''also'' got drunk at Wen Ruohan's wedding, another very wild bit of behavior.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'': A Sunday strip has Jeremy having a nightmare where this happens to him. He meets his future self and is dismayed to discover that he is not a rock god but is [[TurningIntoYourParent dressed in a business suit, balding with a comb-over, and has a dental practice in the suburbs]]. The last panel has Hector asking him why he's dressed in a stereotypical thug outfit. Jeremy calls it "self-defense against my future".
** More than a few flashback comics have implied this about Jeremy's parents, Connie more so than Walt, especially in the strips early days when it made sense for two baby-boomers to have a teenage son. Other strips imply they were pretty dorky back then too, so it depends on what the joke of the day is.
* It's hinted in ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' that Calvin's parents may have been like this, such as this memorable example when Calvin goes through his dad's old college yearbook.
-->'''Calvin:''' Is this you with the keg and the "Party Naked" t-shirt?
-->'''Dad:''' (snatching the yearbook from Calvin) GIVE ME THAAAT!
** And in another, where Calvin [[https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/11/09 found old pictures of his parents:]]
-->'''Dad:''' That "bimbo" is your ''mother!''
-->'''Calvin:''' Pretty funky hairdo, Mom!
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* Inverted in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''. Young [[StateSec inquisitors]] are freshly indoctrinated and therefore puritanically orthodox. Those who survive to old age tend to lose their naivety and innocence to the setting's BlackAndGrayMorality, willing to employ daemonhosts and possessed weapons in their efforts to turn Chaos against itself, even for short-term victories. So these older Radicals often end up the target of the next generation of young Puritan inquisitors.

* A number of the adults in the Literature/WhateleyUniverse were teen rebels, with some even being minor supervillains as teens. Notable examples include Soothe (whose [[DarkAgeOfSupernames original codename was 'Riot Act']]) and Tabby Cat.

** In Season 2's "Bush Comes To Dinner" then-President UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush brings this trope up to Stan after he angrily tells Hayley that she's a lost cause. Bush reveals that he was a very wild party boy when he was younger (which is TruthInTelevision) and that Hayley, due to her rebellious ways, is not a lost cause, but is on the track to becoming President of the United States.