What will you be like in five years? Ten? Twenty? A hundred, if you last that long? Chances are you'll have seen different sides of life, witnessed multiple worldview-shattering events, and met countless new friends and enemies. If it weren't for your name, you could be easily mistaken to be a new person.
In stories, this trope concerns the time the audience is given the chance to see the future of a setting and future versions of different characters, who will almost certainly contrast their past selves in several different ways. This view can be obtained through Time Travel (sometimes a Future Self Reveal), a Flash Forward, or a Time Skip. This is a Super-Trope to Future Badass, Future Me Scares Me, and Future Loser. I Hate Past Me and Former Teen Rebel may also be involved.
Amnesiac Dissonance is related, where someone becomes a different person in the future because of amnesia (or someone is revealed to be different in the past because of amnesia). Compare Character Development, Characterization Marches On.
Examples
- Of all characters from the first generation of Digimon, Sora Takeuchi is the one who most changed of all the Chosen Children. In Digimon Adventure she's a tomboy who was rebelled against her mother for not being feminine and also being a soccer player. But in Digimon Adventure 02 as well in Digimon Adventure tri. (the events of both of witch happened various years after Adventure), Sora receives a Girliness Upgrade, in which as other things, she changed soccer for ikebana, aka Japanese floral arrangement.
- In Dragon Ball Z, the main timeline Trunks is an overconfident, somewhat spoiled Bratty Half-Pint who nevertheless has supportive friends and family. Future Trunks is a mild-mannered, reserved Heartbroken Badass who has watched most of his loved ones die off.
- In the Turn of the Millennium version of Teen Titans (the one made by Geoff Johns), the regular team found themselves with their obscure future versions called "Tomorrow Titans", in which Superboy is the new Superman, Robin (Tim Drake) is the new Batman, Wonder Girl is the new Wonder Woman and Kid Flash (Bart Allen) is the new The Flash (before he briefly took the mantle a year after Wally West "died" in the Infinite Crisis), and also there are grown-up versions of Raven and Beast Boy. Sadly none of them were on the good side as they became Darker and Edgier versions of them in a Bad Future.
- One Black Panther comic had T'Challa dealing with an untreatable, progressive brain injury from repeated head trauma that'd eventually kill him after eroding his mind. He meets himself from the future where he is a jovial goofball compared to his present day stoic self from it.
- In Meet the Robinsons, Lewis is a socially marginalized orphan and a struggling inventor. His future self, Cornelius Robinson, is a world-famous orphan that has formed a very large and supportive family.
- In The Flash (2014), Barry Allen/The Flash is a warm-hearted superhero-in-progress. He meets two, very different versions of himself in Season 3. One has become a depressed, solitary Jaded Washout after the death of Iris. The other is Savitar, a megalomaniac narcissist with a serious case of being a Godhood Seeker.
- Reversed in Final Fantasy X, where we contrast Auron from the present, where he's a gruff, cynical, snarky mentor figure who shows deep distrust and distaste for the Corrupt Church, to the past version of him seen in old recordings found throughout the game. Past Auron was a stiff, honorable, and eager true believer and a Warrior Monk in the Church of Yevon. We go through a pretty large portion of the game's plot before we learn everything that happened to cause this transformation.
- In Fate/stay night, the main timeline Emiya Shirou is a naive, optimistic young boy that wants to be a "hero of justice", someone who saves lives at the expense of his own. His future self Archer is a Heartbroken Badass and Anti-Villain that gave up all of his ideals after trying to uphold them broke his mind. Archer, now a Death Seeker, wants to kill Shirou in order to escape the deal he made for his new powers.
- Ben 10. Ben Tennyson was a Bratty Half-Pint Jerk with a Heart of Gold before becoming a slightly more mature, but carefree and friendly teenager. In the very distant future, Ben 10,000 is serious, distant, and has No Sense of Humor.
- In a time travel episode of Justice League, Batman (along with some others) travels into the Bad Future and meets his elderly self from Batman Beyond, who is appalled by how "green" he once was. The two of them proceed to pull a Good Cop/Bad Cop on a crook, with the younger Bruce playing the good one, the weirdness of which is immediately lampshaded by Static.
- Futurama: In Bender's Big Score, Philip J. Fry (a rather immature fool) meets his future self, an older man going by the alias of "Lars Filmore" who is considerably wiser than his younger self.
