Ron: I found the source of the ticking! It's a ten-year-old Youtube Video!
Harry: Wait a minute! Ten years!? What are we still doing in school?
Harry: Wait a minute! Ten years!? What are we still doing in school?
— Potter Puppet Pals: "The Mysterious Ticking Noise: 10-Year Anniversary in 4K"
Everything seems to be getting a revival nowadays. The phrase "What's old is new again" has never been more accurate than before. However, real life doesn't necessarily have the benefit of a Floating Timeline, especially with aging and death very much in the equation.
So... how do you acknowledge the passage of time in a revived media property? Well, depending on what type of property it is, you may find a character acknowledging the actual time skip in-universe, even if they look like they haven't aged a day. It can be an Aside Comment to the audience, a Lampshade Hanging, heck, the audience may not even be acknowledged at all.
This can also factor in anniversary specials as well as film sequels, both animated and live-action, particularly ones that have a long gap between them.
A subtrope of Leaning on the Fourth Wall. Often comes as a result of the property being in Development Hell. Often overlaps with Long-Runner Tech Marches On. Compare Real-Time Timeskip and Year Inside, Hour Outside. Contrast Timey-Wimey Ball.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Crayon Shin-chan: The Funimation Gag Dub lampshades the delay of the release of season 3 by titling the first episode of season 3 as "How I Spent My Two-Year Summer Vacation."
- Lupin III: Part II: Part 2 aired in 1977, five years after Part 1 concluded. The characters acknowledge this and the first episode is their reunion after those five years spent apart.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Season 2 starts with Brief giving a recap on season 1's Cliffhanger and says he feels like he's been in despair over Panty's apparent death for 15 years, the same amount of time that passed between the two seasons. Garterbelt immediately corrects him by saying it's only been five minutes.
Films — Animated
- Frozen II: Alluded to in "Some Things Never Change", when Olaf turns to the audience and says, "And you all look a little bit older." In-universe, three years have passed since the first film while a six-year gap happened between this movie and the first one's release.
- Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus: While not exactly lined up with the show's original cancellation and the premiere of the film, Zim explains that his two-phase plan involved him sitting in the toilet and doing nothing for fifteen years, essentially forcing Dib to stay in his chair and observe him for that period of time.
- Moana 2: When Moana returns to Motonui, she and the villagers sing "We're Back", which is about how excited they are that she's coming home. It's clearly meant to be a double meaning since the first movie was released in 2016 and this one was released in 2024.
- Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe: "We're Back", the song that plays over the credits, is basically Phineas and Ferb announcing their return after 5 years since the show's original run ended. The song was also used in a teaser for the series' revival, which ended up premiering a full decade after the show ended.
- Ralph Breaks the Internet: The six-year skip between the original and the sequel is referenced with a poster at the arcade for a girl who celebrated her fifth birthday in the first film is celebrating her eleventh birthday.
Live-Action TV
- Gilmore Girls: The Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life revival from 2016 establishes that it has been 9 years since the end of the original series, showing Rory as a struggling freelance journalist, Lorelai and Luke's years-long engagement starting to strain their relationship, and Emily mourning the loss of Richard (reflecting the real-life death of Richard's actor Edward Herrmann in 2014).
- Kids in the Hall: In the 2022 revival, enough time has passed when the title lads are rediscovered as the result of an in-universe revival of interest via Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy discs that they have to be dug up and revived from a common grave. Dave Foley asks if he's still the cute one and the others hem and haw.
- Mr. Show: The four-episode revival "W/ Bob and David" opens with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross emerging from a real-time travel machine, having entered it after the final episode in the show's original run in 1998. Having spent 17 years in what looks like a porta-john, the other cast members remark that Bob and David have gotten old and they smell terrible. After Paul F. Tompkins points out the obvious syntax issue, they then go back to 1998 where the mad scientist (played by Tom Kenny) who invented the machine clarifies that the hyphen in the machine meant that it operated in real-time, so in order to de-age them and get them back to 2015, he switches off the hyphen so it becomes a real time travel machine.
- Red Dwarf: Downplayed in "Back to Earth", which was released just over ten years after the last episode and which opens with a title card reading "Nine Years Later." Mention is also made of Lister running a bath for almost nine years, which ended up taking out Holly, who was present in the previous episode.
Video Games
- Alan Wake II: The game directly acknowledges that Alan, the protagonist, has been missing for thirteen years. In-Universe, he's been in the Dark Place; in reality, it's due to a massive case of Development Hell.
- Duke Nukem Forever: The tutorial ends with the reveal that Duke was playing a video game featuring himself, and this bit of dialogue, poking fun at the game's status as the most infamous case of vaporware in the industry at the time:
Holsom Twins: What about the game, Duke? Was it any good?Duke: Yeah, but after twelve fuckin' years, it should be.
- Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time: Downplayed; while it doesn't directly acknowledge the time skip between Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped and 4, a bit of dialog gives a Discontinuity Nod to the fact that all of the other games released in between take place after this.
Lani-Loli: How many times have you beaten this clown, anyway?Coco: Three.Lani-Loli: Really? Only three?(Crash nods with a "Mm-hmm")Lani-Loli: Funny. Seemed like more.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising sets the tone for the game a mere minute into the first chapter when Medusa points out that it's been 25 years since her last bid for power.note
- Kingdom Hearts III: When he gets to Twilight Town, Sora rushes up to meet Pence, Hayner, and Olette, shouting that it's been forever since he's seen them. Pence is a bit surprised Sora said this, and corrects him that it hasn't really been long at all: while Kingdom Hearts II came out in 2005 and III came out in 2019 in real life, in-universe, only enough time had passed between II and III for Sora and Riku to go on a dream quest in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance].
- Psychonauts 2: This sequel came out in 2021, sixteen years after Psychonauts came out. In-universe, the sequel doesn't take place that long after the original, but in a bit of side-dialog, one character says that it feels like twenty years since their previous adventure.
- Team Fortress 2: The seventh and final issue of the supplemental comics released for the game was delayed by seven years. The first words we see on-panel read "Seven years later..."
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: The four-year hiatus that the Brothers Chaps took from 2010-14 was lampshaded when they released an April Fools toon where Homestar commented on the lack of updates to the site, specifically the Hairstyle Runner gallery, the Old-Timey Homestar runner cartoons, which are colorized, and the Homestar Runner Talker game, which he adds a few words to. Strong Bad decides to butt in, saying that what fans really want is an updated computer operating system for the Strong Bad Emails, more specifically Windows 98.
Webcomics
- The Order of the Stick: Between Strips 863
and 864, author Rich Burlew suffered a debilitating injury in the form of severing the tendons in his thumb on broken glass, which prevented him from working on the comic for three months; Elan naturally lampshades this, and even dubs the latter episode a Recap Comic. Roy complains as recaps rarely move the story forward, but Elan points out a detail that none of the rest of the party had considered... before ending his musical recap with a song about how Burlew got injured.
- The Weekly Roll: Being Medium-Aware, Trevor notices when a hiatus ends and greets the reader. The others are confused.
Trevor: It's been like... over two months?
Becket: We went to sleep and nothing happened for six hours.
Web Videos
- Potter Puppet Pals: The ten-year anniversary video of "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" has Ron discovering that the source of the ticking this time around is the original video, which, at the time of the former's release, was ten years old. Harry remarks that if it's been ten years, then he, Ron and Hermione should have left school by now. A naked Dumbledore remarks to Snape that ten years makes him feel old.
Western Animation
- Animaniacs (2020): In line with the original's tendency towards Breaking the Fourth Wall, the Animaniacs reboot premiere shows they are highly aware of how long it has been since they last appeared on screens:
- The opening scene, a parody of Jurassic Park (1993), has Ellie Sattler mention the Animaniacs "have been extinct since 1998" (not acknowledging the Direct-to-Video Wakko's Wish from 1999), while the Animaniacs later do a whole satirical song getting caught up on everything they missed.
- The Pinky and the Brain segment also acknowledges the time gap, explaining that Brain has been working on the same Long Game plan over 22 years, part of which involved inventing and ensuring the widespread adoption of smartphones based on the prediction that most humans would use them to share cute animal videos.
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Season 6 ended in June 2019, at which point the series' future was put into Development Hell. The official 7th season teaser, released in May 2025, starts with Elmore being completely covered in dust. Gumball and Darwin wake up to their alarm clock. After Gumball sneezes away all the dust, he asks how long they've been asleep. Darwin looks at the clock, and, realizing that they are late for school, says in a hushed tone, "About 7 years". Gumball then responds that they can sleep in for another five minutes.
- The 2022 revival of Beavis and Butt-Head begins with the streaming movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe in which the titular characters enter a wormhole that sends them 24 years forward in time.
- Clone High: Due to the original series ending on a cliffhanger in 2003, the revival picks back up 20 years later when the main cast is thawed out from their frozen stasis and are told in the first episode that it is now 2023.
- Futurama: The episode "The Impossible Stream" makes reference to the fact that the previous series finale, "Meanwhile" was ten years ago by having Professor Farnsworth inform the Planet Express crew that biologically, they aged ten years when the universe was frozen by the time button breaking. He further points to the Atomic Calendar (represented as a pinup calendar with an atom) on the wall as proof, saying it's now the year 3023.
- King of the Hill: The 2025 revival's opening title sequence shows what happened since the original series ended, with notable events being the the Hills moving out of Arlen, a new neighbor moving in and drinking with Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer, Bill becoming infected with Covid-19, the pandemic affecting Arlen with Boomhauer, Dale, and the new neighbor social distancing, Dale running for mayor, the Hills moving back to their old house, and Bobby reaching adulthood.
- Total Drama: The series puts an interesting spin on this trope as, in the first episode of the rebooted season, Chris mentions how, In-Universe, it has been fifteen years since the show's first season, which, while a larger gap than the start of the reboot to the last season released (if one counts the spin off, Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, was eight years and if one does not, nine), still lines up with the real amount of time that passed between the two seasons airing on TV.
