History NotAllowedToGrowUp / WesternAnimation

*** What's more averted is that Arthur and his friends begin 4th grade finally, and age up for Season 25, the last season of the show.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': At first, despite there being three episodes set on separate April Fools' Days ("April Fools Rules", "Fool's Paradise", and "Fool Me Twice"), meaning at least two years have passed in-universe, none of the cast appear any older or are stated to have aged a year. This was eventually averted as of Season 5, where all of the cast ages a year. Lori goes to college, Lily goes to preschool, is potty-trained, wears clothes more consistently, and speaks full sentences, and Lincoln and his friends go to middle school.

* The boys in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' took three seasons to go from the third grade to the fourth. The show is now in its twenty-second season and they're still in fourth grade.

* Mordred, the spoiled immortal son of Morgan le'Fay in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', is kept an eternal child by his mother's magic, who's only willing to let him grow up once he has his perfect kingdom. Being a child for millennia has made him an EnfantTerrible of nightmarish proportions. He ended up breaking the spell, though, [[AgeWithoutYouth which caused him to become a helpless elderly man that his mother now has to take care of]]. She doesn't mind one bit.

** Zig-zagged by Finn: At first, he aged in real time from 12 to 14. The staff apparently realized the show would last quite a while, and so he spends the bulk of the series' eight years at 15. Once it became clear the show was ending, Finn was mentioned to be 16 in the second-to-last season, and turned 17 in one of the last few episodes.

* played with in ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'':
** The original series run only lasted four years, so the boys not aging was less noticable.

* As a possible result of this, the titular characters in ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'' see their time in high school stretched out from the ''UsefulNotes/BillClinton'' era to the ''UsefulNotes/BarackObama'' era. In what should be a huge span of time, neither of the duo grow any grow older. And the same goes for their fellow students like Stewart and all their Highland teachers. From critiqueing 90s MTV music videos to watching ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' when it comes out, Beavis and Butt-head still haven't graduated high school or look a single day older.

** The Cake twins by the Season 6 episode ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E4OnYourMarks On Your Marks]]'' they still seemed to be infants, although they no longer wore diapers like in ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E12BabyCakes Baby Cakes]]''. However, as of ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E8AHearthsWarmingTail A Hearth's Warming Tale]]'' they have been shown behaving more autonomously and singing carols (though their distinct voices aren't heard), so they do seem to be aging--at a rate somewhere between [[FurryReminder a pony's]] and a human's. In ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS7E20ItIsntTheManeThingAboutYou The Mane Thing About You]]'', Pinkie has a line that suggests that the Cake twins are either one year old or are almost one year old. This explains why they're talking and also shows that there's been at least two years in-series since the first episode. However, "The Mane Thing About You" also plays this straight as the foals still look and (mostly) act like infants despite being toddler-aged. ZigZagged in the SeriesFinale; [[spoiler: they're adults in the DistantFinale, but still babies in the flashback to the present]] despite that [[https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2020/3/10/2294590.png they should be at least over 5]] by which time [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E20ForWhomTheSweetieBelleToils they'd have the distinct 5-year old design]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''

** The kids in ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' never seem to age through 100 episodes and [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheMovie one movie]], despite the fact that judging by the order of their holidays, they've been in 4th grade for 2-3 years. (Christmas->Valentine's Day->Halloween->Thanksgiving->Veterans Day->Spring Break->April Fool's Day -- In that order). They age about a year and a half in [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheJungleMovie the second movie]], even though it appears to take place in recent years, [[TechnologyMarchesOn with beepers being obsolete and replaced by cellphones and Wi-Fi]].

* Used very oddly in ''WesternAnimation/{{Franklin}}''. Throughout most of the series, the kids were in kindergarten, but they were finally allowed to advance to the first grade in the DVD release ''Back to School with Franklin'', which came after the fifth season. [[MST3KMantra Best not to think about this at all]] when it comes to either Bear's little sister Beatrice or Franklin's little sister, Harriet. In the first season, Bear's sister was born, but a couple of seasons later, he said that she was four years old. And Franklin's little sister wasn't born [[SomewhereAHerpetologistIsCrying (yes, born, not hatched)]] until after the fourth season in the film ''Franklin and the Green Knight: The Movie''. Yet by the next film, ''Franklin's Magic Christmas'', she was already talking and walking and by the time of ''Back to School with Franklin'', her speech had advanced and she was said to be just a year away from being able to attend preschool.
* Despite dates in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' advancing with real time, Cubert, Dwight, and the Cookieville Minimum-Security orphans never grow any older. Similarly, Amy was originally meant to be in college and an intern at Planet Express. The show would {{lampshade|Hanging}} this a few times, calling her a "long-term intern" in ''Bender's Big Score,'' for instance, but she was eventually allowed to graduate college.
* The kids in ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' never seem to age through 100 episodes and [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheMovie one movie]], despite the fact that judging by the order of their holidays, they've been in 4th grade for 2-3 years. (Christmas->Valentine's Day->Halloween->Thanksgiving->Veterans Day->Spring Break->April Fool's Day -- In that order). They age about a year and a half in [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheJungleMovie the second movie]], even though it appears to take place in recent years, [[TechnologyMarchesOn with beepers being obsolete and replaced by cellphones and Wi-Fi]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' has been running for 25 years, but Arthur and the other characters are still the same ages. For example:

*** What's more averted is that Arthur and his friends begin 4th grade finally, and will age up for Season 25, the last season of the show.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': At first, despite there being three episodes set on separate April Fools' Days (''April Fools Rules'', ''Fool's Paradise'', and ''Fool Me Twice''), meaning least two years have passed in-universe, none of the cast appear any older or are stated to have aged a year. This was eventually averted as of Season 5, where all of the cast ages a year. Lori goes to college, Lily goes to preschool, is potty-trained, wears clothes more consistently, and speaks full sentences, and Lincoln and his friends go to middle school.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' has been running for more than twenty years, but Arthur and the other characters are still the same ages. For example:

* Both used and averted in ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'', with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm aged somewhat realistically throughout the years. In the series they grew from babies to toddlers in from seasons 3-6, in the TV specials of the 1970's they were young children, in ''WesternAnimation/ThePebblesAndBammBammShow'' show they are teenagers, and in the TV specials ''I Yabba-Dabba Doo!" and "Holly Rock-A-Bye-Baby" they are adults who marry each other and have children of their own. Their parents, however, have looked exactly the same throughout the series and specials.

* WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}, if perhaps allowed to grow up a bit, experiences a very dragged-out childhood. In the earliest books from the 1990s, he is a baby. In the very early installments of the television series, he is 3. From then on, he is officially 4, as stated in the theme song, "''I'm just a kid who's 4 / Each day I grow some more!''" However, in later seasons he takes more steps into school and eventually starts attending playschool and mixing more with older kids. And that's where things stand as of 2017.

** ''Film/AFairlyOddMovieGrowUpTimmyTurner'' has Timmy as a 23-year-old. However, he's still in 5th grade but must face the choice of whether to grow up or not, [[spoiler: specifically whether to fall in love or not, with TheBigDamnKiss to seal the deal if he does]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': Despite there being three episodes set on separate April Fools' Days (''April Fools Rules'', ''Fool's Paradise'', and ''Fool Me Twice''), meaning least two years have passed in-universe, none of the cast appear any older or are stated to have aged a year. Finally averted as of Season 5 with the cast aging a year, Lori going to college, Lily going to preschool, being potty-trained, wearing clothes more consistently, and speaking full sentences, and Lincoln and his friends going to middle school.

** Taken to ludicrous lengths when baby Dil was introduced. If not from the sheer number of episodes, then at the very least, the number of holidays that passed before Dil was introduced would lead one to infer that close to a year must have passed from the beginning of the show. There was both a Christmas special and a Chanukah special, and a Passover special, and a summer vacation special (where they went to Las Vegas--your guess is as good as mine), and the three-episode season finale that set up Didi's pregnancy was almost pointedly set in autumn. Nine months later, maybe eight if it was a relatively brief pregnancy, Tommy is ''still'' just one year old, and after the time skip, their ages are 11 and 10. Pregnancy Does Not Work That Way!

* The kids in ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' never seem to age through 100 episodes and [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheMovie one movie]], despite the fact that judging by the order of their holidays, they've been in 4th grade for 2-3 years. (Christmas->Valentine's Day->Halloween->Thanksgiving->Veterans Day->Spring Break->April Fool's Day -- In that order). They age about a year and a half in [[WesternAnimation/HeyArnoldTheJungleMovie the second movie]], even though it takes place in the present day, [[invoked]] [[TechnologyMarchesOn with beepers being obsolete and replaced by cellphones and Wi-Fi]].

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'':
** They were five years old in Craig [=McCracken's=] school film, the pilots, 75 series episodes in the space of five years (including an episode where they celebrate their birthday), a movie and two specials. This could be justified due to them being {{Artificial Human}}s but their peers don't age accordingly either.
** ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls2016'' reboot features the girls as ''seeming'' older than before. Their [[TheOtherDarrin new voice actresses]] speak in lower voices and they act more like ten- or eleven-year-olds than five-year-olds. Despite this they don't look any older than they did at five, they are still in Ms. Keane's class despite having several school picture days, and Princess only turns six during the series.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is probably amongst the rulers of this trope alongside ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'':
** This concept is parodied in the episode "Behind the Laughter", where in a "documentary" about the show featuring the cast as AnimatedActors, Lisa complains about how she was forced to take anti-growth hormones in order to prolong the series. Homer dismisses the idea, noting, "That's ridiculous. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial How could I even get all five necessary drops into her cereal?]] ...What?"
** The chalkboard gag for the season 12 finale, airing about 11 and a half years after the show's debut, has Bart writing "I should not be 21 by now".
** Also brought to light in other ways; in early flashback episodes, Homer and Marge attended high school in 1974; in season 19's "That 90s Show", Marge then goes on to college almost immediately -- but it's now 19''9''4...
*** In "That 90s Show," Bart also lampshades this trope by saying he's "never heard" of TheNineties. Hey, after all, this episode aired in 2008, and Bart is only ten... Just like he was in the first episode in 1989, and during the entire following decade while ''The Simpsons'' practically re-defined television!
** One "appearance" in a ''K-Zone'' magazine featured Lisa being interviewed: when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said something along the lines of "I used to want to be a jazz musician or the President. Now I just want to be nine!"
** In one episode, Homer muses sadly about how work is keeping him away from his kids. "I'm missing out on Bart's whole childhood. He won't be ten forever!"
** One particularly bad case is "Lisa's First Word". The entire episode is basically one long joke about TheEighties when Lisa was born. Nowadays she can't have been born until this millennium. Pretty much all the flashback episodes must be CanonDiscontinuity to some degree.
*** To give you an idea of how quickly the show retcons characters' ages, Homer is singing a hit song from 1983 in the flashback to when Marge was pregnant with Lisa. In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" one season later, she's old enough to speak full sentences in early 1984 (the year Dexy's Midnight Runners was nominated for a Grammy).
** In one episode, Gil [[ItsBeenDone moves into their house]] for the better part of a ''year'', as demonstrated by an ExplodingCalendar stopping at each holiday. Notably absent are any of the characters' birthdays, which according to this episode must all take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
** One episode centered around reviving the "Angry Dad" character Bart created during the late '90s Internet bubble. Those exact words were stated in the show, and no hint of an explanation whatsoever was given as to why Bart's still ten years old.
*** Matt Groening once pointed out in an interview that one of best parts of doing an animated show was the kids didn't ''have'' to grow up. He cited the absurd number of times they'd done a show about Bart's tenth birthday as an example.
** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the CouchGag of the episode "Them, Robot".
** This trope was spoofed in the Season 11 episode "Bart to the Future"; in a scene set 30 years in the future, the family is eating dinner together when Lisa (now President of the United States) asks where Maggie is. Marge reaches down and picks up Maggie, who '''''still''''' looks like a pacifier-sucking baby...and then adds "just like her mommy, Maggie, Sr."
** To sum things up, if The Simpsons had been allowed to grow up, as of now (2021) Bart would be 42 years old (born 1979), Lisa would be either 39 or 40 (born 1981)[[note]]This depends on whether or not her 8th birthday in ''Stark Raving Dad'' is [[RetCon retroactive]] to the beginning of the series.[[/note]], Homer would be 68 (born 1953, which would make him 36 in 1989, but his current age has been retconned to 40), Marge would be 66 (born 1955, which would make her 34 in 1989, but her current age has been retconned to 38), and Maggie would be 33 (born 1988). In the present day, Bart's birth year is now 2011, Lisa's 2013[[note]]''after'' "Lisa's Wedding" is set![[/note]], Homer's 1981, Marge's 1983, and Maggie's 2020.
** Rarely characters have ended up dying of natural causes, but this has never happened to most of the characters at the Springfield Retirement Home, such as Grandpa or Jasper, despite both of them having been in World Wars previously, nor Skinner, who served in the Vietnam War in 1966.
** In the episode "Half-Decent Proposal" in season thirteen, Marge and Lisa realise with shock that Homer has gone to work on the West Springfield oil rigs. Grandpa, walking in, says, "What? Homer bowled a 300 game?" (which happened in a season eleven episode called "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder"). Marge, annoyed, tells Grandpa that that happened a year and a half ago. Of course, in that year and a half, the Simpson kids haven't aged a day.
** A ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' sketch lampshades this, at least for Bart, wherein he writes repeatedly on the chalkboard "Why aren't I aging? Good God, am I a monster?".
** In the episode where Apu and Manjula's octuplets are born, Manjula goes from trying to get pregnant for a few months to being pregnant to having octuplets and for those octuplets to be ''older than Maggie'' (they're shown to be able to speak a few words while Maggie is still silent) without any of the Simpsons kids aging a day. The same thing happened when Selma adopted her Chinese baby girl.
** A 2015 Treehouse of Horror segment (specifically "Wanted: Dead Then Alive", where Sideshow Bob successfully kills Bart) hangs a massive lampshade on it, as Bob mentions that it took "24 years of trying to kill a 10-year-old child" before he finally succeeded.
** When ''The Simpsons'' premiered as shorts in April, 1987, Bart and Lisa had grown up with [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn the Soviet Union]], [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfTheColdWar the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction]]. As of the most recent episodes, they have known only a post-9/11 world and by late 2010s and early 2020s, they had grown up with smartphones and Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
** Lisa finally averts this and turns 9 in Season 32... but it is in [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS32E4TreehouseOfHorrorXXXI a Treehouse of Horror episode]], so this might not be canon.

** The Cutie Mark Crusaders are a trio of fillies who were on the hunt for their cutie marks until [[spoiler:Season 5]]. During that time, other foals in the series were getting theirs about OnceASeason. [[spoiler:Finally averted in "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" where all three of them finally got their cutie marks.]] Age wise, their voice actresses have aged, and thus Applebloom and Sweetie Belle [[VocalEvolution voices have deepened]], however, they still use the same foal designs they did in season 1. The series handwaves it by saying only a year has passed since episode 1. Eventually, this was subverted. The season 7 episode "Forever Filly" has Rarity trying to bond with her sister but treating Sweetie Belle as if she was a little filly. It lampshades how much the Crusaders have developed since season 1, even featuring them with slightly taller designs than in previous seasons. The [=CMC=] seem more like preteens in later seasons rather than the little kids they were in season 1.
** The Cake twins by the season 6 episode ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E4OnYourMarks On Your Marks]]'' they still seemed to be infants, although they no longer wore diapers like in ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E12BabyCakes Baby Cakes]]''. However, as of ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E8AHearthsWarmingTail A Hearth's Warming Tale]]'' they have been shown behaving more autonomously and singing carols (though their distinct voices aren't heard), so they do seem to be aging--at a rate somewhere between [[FurryReminder a pony's]] and a human's. In ''[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS7E20ItIsntTheManeThingAboutYou The Mane Thing About You]]'', Pinkie has a line that suggests that the Cake twins are either one year old or are almost one year old. This explains why they're talking and also shows that there's been at least two years in-series since the first episode. However, "The Mane Thing About You" also plays this straight as the foals still look and (mostly) act like infants despite being toddler-aged. ZigZagged in the SeriesFinale; [[spoiler: they're adults in the DistantFinale, but still babies in the flashback to the present]] despite that [[https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2020/3/10/2294590.png they should be at least over 5]] by which time [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E20ForWhomTheSweetieBelleToils they'd have the distinct 5-year old design]].