Older Than They Look



"If she tells you she's 26, and looks 26, she's damn near forty!"

- Chris Rock, "No Sex (in the Champagne Room)"

Sometimes characters look their age. But in this instance, they don't. Whether it was a deliberate artistic choice on the behalf of the creator (usually to make the character more attractive or to legally fulfill a fetish) or something much deeper and linked to their characterization and the plot, this character will be older than they look. Although still within the normal range of the human lifespan (for that setting, anyway), this character will be noticeably younger than their age. Sometimes even improbably younger; it's not unheard of for a seeming teenager to be over the hill chronologically.

This is an extremely common trope in Speculative Fiction, where magic or Applied Phlebotinum can be used to explain the characters appearance being at odds with their age.

When science fiction or fantasy takes this trope to its illogical extreme, it leads to Really Seven Hundred Years Old or a Time Abyss. See also Age Is Relative and Improbable Age. Not to be confused with Older Than They Think. Contrast with Younger Than They Look. If they're just drawn in a way that makes them seem older, it's Artistic Age. When a character is played by a much younger actor, it becomes Hollywood Old unless the difference is justified. When the actor is older than the character they portray, it's Dawson Casting (although the actor themselves may just fit this trope, justifying the Dawson Casting).

Compare Mistaken Age, Age-Inappropriate Dress.

Contrast Animation Anatomy Aging.

Remember, this trope only covers characters who aren't impossibly old, just much older than they look. For characters who are impossibly old, see Really Seven Hundred Years Old and Time Abyss.

Fan Works
"Romsca: (as Maoimi) C'n I 'ave some candy, pwease, nice mister paedophile?"
 * A fandom example: for a while, it was vaguely popular among Harry Potter fanfiction writers to claim that (a few hours per weekday for a year of) Time Travel had sufficiently aged Hermione that it is no longer squicky to have her paired with Snape. Which is silly on the face of it, since two or three extra hours every weekday for an entire year (without even considering summer vacation) adds up to less than thirty days of additional aging. Not to mention she was petrified in her second year for about the same length of time. That's right folks, she broke even.
 * Maoimi in Soulless shell is supposed to be seventeen, but her age isn't mentioned until the final chapter and thanks to the hilariously clumsy writing she comes across as being about seven. The MSTing does not let this go un-riffed.


 * Zigzagged with in Kyon: Big Damn Hero, with aging a year during training every night, but having  de-age them afterwards with added Laser-Guided Amnesia. Then, Kyon time-travels all over the place, running errands for his future self, which makes things more complicated.
 * The Naruto fanfic Hakumei has a jounin-level villain in her late teens convincingly disguise herself as a 12-year old genin.
 * With Strings Attached takes place in 1980; when The Beatles are sent on their journey, they are physically (but not mentally) de-aged from the thirty-something men they are into the ages they were when Beatlemania was at its height.
 * Lady Venus in The Blue Blur of Termina. According to Tatl, despite appearing to be in the human equivalent of her late twenties, she is actually over five hundred years old.

Tabletop Games

 * This generally happens to werewolves once they undergo the First Change. As werewolves have a strong Healing Factor, it's understandable that aging would be somewhat slowed. There's a vignette in one book meant to emphasize this - a werewolf who looks to be in her early 40s is called in for a polygraph test, and completely confuses the cops when she admits to being in her 70s and the test shows she's telling the truth.
 * The same goes for the Sin-Eaters. The fusion of the Geist and human soul causes Sin-Eaters to stay roughly in their prime in terms of energy and ability. They don't necessarily stop aging, but they avoid most of the problems of old age, such as arthritis and organ malfunction, often resulting in this.

Theater

 * Older Than Radio: In the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe, the hero, aged twenty-five, is caught embracing a woman who is not his fiancée and looks seventeen. She's actually his mother, a fairy, but the other characters think that's a staggeringly improbable cover story. "Her age upon the date of his birth", reasons one, "was minus eight."
 * In the Distant Finale of Vanities: The Musical, the women are in their late 30's or 40's, but are still "lookin' good", as the closing song in the off-Broadway version says.
 * in The Light in the Piazza.
 * in Arms and the Man.

Video Games

 * Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is twenty-two years of age. However, in the second case of the game, the police seem to be under the impression that he's of the same age as Trucy (who's fifteen), shooing him away from the crime scene telling him to "go play somewhere else."
 * Likewise, Lamiroir's age is 40 years old according to her profile in the Court Record, despite her looking like a woman in her mid-twenties.
 * Most likely a side-effect of being
 * B.B. ("Baby Bonnie") Hood (aka "Bulleta" in Japan) from Darkstalkers. The same game has an example of Really 700 Years Old in Lilith.
 * Not quite right, the official guide states her age as being "between 10-14". Around 12 seems about right for her.
 * The character named "Jr." in the Xenosaga series appears to be twelve or thirteen years old, but is actually twenty-eight. His genetically engineered powers caused him to be physically stuck with a kid's body due to a major trauma when he was actually that age. He has a clone twin brother, (well, two, actually, but let's not get into that) who is younger by a small margin but has aged normally, and at one time chides him, "You're older than I am. Try to act like it sometimes." There is a running gag in the series about how one popular rumor is that Jr. is actually the "illegitimate son" of his clone twin. Jr. doesn't seem quite sure whether to be amused or annoyed by this. Being so young in appearance makes it acceptable for Jr. to have a romantic interest in an artificial human girl who is Loli in appearance and is actually about the age she looks...
 * Rose in The Legend of Dragoon. She might look like she's only in her twenties or thirties, but she fought in The Dragon Campaign, which happened at least a thousand years ago.
 * While most demons in Disgaea are definitely in the category of Really 700 Years Old, there is one "mundane" example in Yukimaru, who is twenty years old but looks rather younger.
 * Both and  in Time Hollow are frozen in time, so they don't age.  is about forty, while  is implied to be Really 700 Years Old.
 * If you choose to date her during the summer festival, 15-year old Ayane Matsunaga from Persona 4 is mistaken for an elementary, then middle school student by one of the vendors. To add insult to injury, when she wins a book in a festival raffle, the host politely warns that it may be too difficult for her to read. She doesn't take it very well.
 * According to Grienko's notes in Second Sight, the psychic Zener Children are afflicted with a developmental disorder that has stopped them from aging past puberty. Since Project Zener has been active (if not funded) for several decades, this would place most of them in their forties or fifties.
 * Either this trope or the opposite appears in Resident Evil 4, with Ramon Salazar. While most players assumed he was a child no older than 11 playing dress up, Leon refers to him as old man. Both are wrong, he's in his mid 20's.
 * Pretty much everyone in Bayonetta; the heroine looks about thirty, but she's actually more than six centuries old.
 * Several characters in Tales of Symphonia fall under this trope because of Magitek experiments.
 * Presea Combatir had her biological and mental growth stunted by a magical implant for 16 years, leaving her a 28-year old with the body and (heavily traumatized) mind of a 12-year old. Due to her circumstances, she is treated much like a Human Popsicle by the rest of the cast.
 * Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has Alice. While it's never explained how or by how much, in one of the skits Marta explains that Alice, who looks younger than her, is actually much older. Alice flaunts her cuteness constantly, much to Marta's annoyance and Decus' delight.
 * Well, they do give the excuse that she's half-elf (but then, so is Genis and he looks about right for his age.) She's said to be at least eighteen, but she's rather short, and she acts and dresses like she's about six.
 * Beryl Benito in Tales of Hearts is the requisite tiny squeaky thing, but she's supposed to be eighteen.
 * Pascal from Tales of Graces is supposed to be 22 years old. Considering how she looks and acts, this is pretty hard to believe.
 * To say nothing of the 40-year old Malik.
 * In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and its sequel, Radiant Dawn, a few characters are described as "Branded", meaning they are a result of a taboo union between the two races in the game: laguz (shape-shifters) and beorc (normal persons). While the branded are most like the beorc, they generally age slower like their laguz forefathers. As branded are shun by laguz and beorc alike, they cannot settle down, and need to hide their brand (which can be difficult if it shows up on, say, the face).
 * While the laguz also generally belong to this trope, their life spans are a lot longer, and a few races (like the dragons) become Really 700 Years Old.
 * Vincent Valentine of Final Fantasy VII appears and is listed in all game materials to be age 27, but that fails to factor in the thirty years he spent sleeping in a coffin. As his age in all future installments has failed to increase like the rest of the cast's, it can be assumed that the bizarre experimentation Hojo subjected him to has sealed his age.
 * Vincent's love interest Lucretia is just about as old as he is but thanks to Jenova cells she still looks just as young.
 * In Dirge of Cerberus, Vincent meets Shelke, a new character (and possibly a new love interest). She's a 19-year old whose body stopped growing at age nine.
 * In Final Fantasy XII, reveals she left the village fifty years ago. This revelation is later played for laughs, with Vaan being utterly (and understandably) confused by this information.
 * Rydia in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is probably in her forties or at least her late thirties, since she was an adult at the end of Final Fantasy IV, and TAY takes place seventeen years later. Nonetheless, she retains much of her youthful appearance and mannerisms.
 * Possibly a side-effect of
 * As of Advent Children, Sephiroth is 32 but stopped physically aging at 25 (that's what you get when ).
 * In The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask, Kafei is a grown male that is about to be married to his fiancé. He comes across Skull Kid, when Kafei doesn't play with him Skull Kid transforms him into a child, he spends the game in hiding or covering his face with a mask.
 * In Ocarina of Time, the Kokiri don't appear to age over the seven years that Link grows from ten (their apparent age) to seventeen, though it's strongly implied that they are Really 700 Years Old as long as the Deku Tree is close enough to support them. Impa from the same game may be a straighter version of the trope (in the present, that is, and not just the future), but not enough information is given in canon to confirm this.
 * Don't let Malo's cute baby looks fool you—he is actually eight years old and very savvy when it comes to business.
 * Fiona of Arcana Heart, who stopped aging after she was pulled into the Elemental World, so while she's approximately as old as Saki, she still looks like a little girl.
 * In Secret of Evermore this trope extends to all four of the human characters who have been trapped for thirty years in the virtual world of Evermore, since nobody physically ages there, but it particularly comes into play with Elizabeth, who was 10 years old at the time of the experiment. When the present-day hero's accidentally transported into Evermore and meets her, she's become the ruler and protector of a prehistoric village, and has a mature, The Obi-Wan personality that's completely at odds with her appearance.
 * Lymle from Star Ocean: The Last Hope looks and acts around six years old, but really is around 15 due to both the size of her people in general and from an accident with symbology that caused her to fall into a demon portal and suffer so much hate and miserly she cut off all of her emotions. (This is only revealed in the in-game encyclopedia.)
 * She's also supposed to be autistic, but because that's a hot potato topic the word "autism" was left out of the localisation.
 * Akuma from Street Fighter is 50 in the most recent game in the timeline (Street Fighter III). You wouldn't know it by looking at him.
 * Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog's rival, is 50, but that's just the time he's accumulated being preserved in a machine on Prison Island. Apparently, he shouldn't even be two. Funny, considering that he curses up a storm in his game...
 * In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Mother/EarthBound series characters Ness and Lucas are depicted as looking very young, when they are actually supposed to be teenagers. It's justifiable in that their original in-game sprites and character models look like children, but it's still pretty funny when you see just how short they are. It's especially evident in the Subspace Emissary scenes where Lucas and the Pokémon Trainer are traveling together. According to the Pokémon series canon, people can apply for Trainer's licenses at 10 years of age, and yet Lucas, who could be at least 3 years older than the Pokémon Trainer, is half his height.
 * That rule applies to the anime only. In the games and most other media, you can become a trainer whenever you can handle Pokémon and they listen to you (in Pokémon Black and White you even fight kindergärtners in the Japanese version; pre-schoolers in the international ones). Pokémon Trainer is eleven, though, since he's based off Red.
 * To an extent, some of the Pokémon protagonists. In canon, most of them are around eleven years old from the looks of it, but several look a bit younger. The Black and White protagonists are supposed to be older, though.
 * Pit in Kid Icarus. It can be gathered by a comment Palutena made in the demo of Uprising that Pit is at least over 24. Being an angel, it's very likely he is centuries old.
 * Jaguar from Space Channel 5 doesn't look much older than Ulala and Pudding who are respectively 22 and 19, though he's actually 35.
 * Carlie of Seiken Densetsu 3 looks like a toddler. She's actually 15, because
 * The half-beastman Kevin fits too, although not quite to the extent of Carlie.
 * Tekken has its moments. Marshall Law in Tekken 6 specifically looks younger than 49, and even fans speculated that could be his son Forest in disguise.
 * Lee Chaolan also looks younger, he looks like he's in his late twenties to early thirties. He's actually 49, but it isn't really surprising to fans, since he was in the first two Tekken games, and the newer Tekken games take place 20 years after Tekken 2. But for people new to the games, it's a bit surprising.
 * The queens of this trope for this particular series have to be Nina Williams and her sister Anna. Both are 42 years old biologically, but spent the 19 years between Tekken's 2 and 3 in cryogenic slumber, which explains their early 20's-ish appearance.
 * Not that it's a bad thing.
 * Jun Kazama, especially in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, which came out over a full decade after the first Tag which subsequently was her last appearance. Seriously, for someone who's lived for almost 40 years now, she is glowing. And that's without cryogenic sleep.
 * Most of the human race is this in Mass Effect, due to vastly improved medical technology and genetic engineering. Kaylee Sanders is in her early forties, but appears to be in her early thirties. The Illusive Man looks fairly young but is implied to be much older. Miranda Lawson is in her mid-thirties, but appears to be in her early-to-mid twenties.
 * Liara spends the series messing around with this trope, she looks about twenty, but is really 106/108/109 years old. Normally this would fall under Really Seven Hundred Years Old, but in her later portrayals she's at least as bitter and cynical as the members of the cast who are ten times her actual age.
 * Aya in Parasite Eve is somewhere between her late 20s and early 30s, but her parasite energy powers keep her look at early 20s. She complains about this a few times to herself whenever she goes on about how she just wants to live a normal life and not live forever.
 * Aya is actually stated to be aging in reverse in Parasite Eve 2, which is why when that game comes around, she actually looks younger than she did in the first. She actually mentions how she's worried that the reverse aging won't stop and will make her a kid again.
 * The Jedi Exile from Knights of the Old Republic 2; according to Mira, the Exile's appearance hasn't changed since the Mandalorian Wars, ten years prior to the game. This would put the Jedi Exile in her thirties at least.
 * Most of the 'magical' cast in Umineko no Naku Koro ni.
 * In Narcissu, the female lead Setsumi is 22 years old, but the 20-year old male lead often comments that she looks considerably younger than him. For Setsumi, whose life consists of a hopeless cycle of hospitalization and release, "time has stood still" ever since she was first hospitalized in middle school.
 * Tonnio and Liina in Phantasy Star Universe both look like 12-year old kids but are actually on their late twenties, which came as a surprise in Portable 2 when
 * Pretty much everyone in Mr. Driller looks older than they look, mostly the teenagers, all of them look like they're 11 years old or so, most of them are already 14 or even 17.
 * Shows up now and then in the Golden Sun games. Isaac and Garet look about ten in the prologue, despite being supposedly around fourteen. They still look fairly young three years later, and join forces with Ivan, who is fifteen but looks around ten. Felix on the other hand looks much older, though his age is never specified.
 * Felix' age is stated to be 18 (post-timeskip) in the manual.
 * Becomes a plot point in Dark Dawn, as Alchemy exposure has caused the major characters of the first two games to age much more slowly. As a result, Isaac and Garet are now in their late forties and look to be in their mid-twenties, and Kraden, while seventy to begin with, only looks about 80, despite being over a century old.
 * Dark Dawn still has some straight examples, though: Rief and Himi look like small children but are implied to be teenagers, Amiti looks closer to fourteen than nineteen-ish, and there's no way Eoleo is over thirty (and again, an inversion shows up—Briggs has gone from his mid twenties to looking about Kraden's age).
 * Dixie Kong.
 * While Touhou mostly goes with Really 700 Years Old characters, there are still some that fit this trope. Patchouli, for example, is "only" about a hundred (or has been living with Remilia for about a hundred years; it isn't definite), Rinnosuke merely ages slowly instead of stopping aging all together, appearing identical when Marisa was a child but being laughably young by Gensoukyou standards, and Sakuya appears to be somewhere in her twenties but is noted as being far too mature and worldy to be so young.
 * The Kingdom Hearts trio in their first game, and subsequent gang appearances featuring said designs. Sora and Kairi especially, who are fourteen but could pass for eleven or 12-year olds; it's probably Artistic Age and symbolism. Riku less so, since he's muscular and Bishonen. The biggest contenders for this, however, were Tidus and Selphie. They're the same as as the trio, but look and act years younger; like seven - nine years old, though Tidus does have some muscle on him.
 * from The World Ends With You is much older than he looks. It's explained in the Secret Reports that this is because he's from a different plane and it causes him to look way younger than he should be. On another note, this plane shift also causes him to lose several abilities, such as
 * The upcoming Soul Calibur V game takes place after a 17 year Time Skip. Between her alchemical experimentation and exposure to the Spirit Blades Ivy (conveniently enough) has not aged at all.
 * Finn from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, is 35 in the second generation and 34 in the related game Thracia 776, but in both he looks like he is only in his early-to-mid twenties. It becomes especially apparent when you compare him to Glade and Oifey, who are in their mid thirties and look their age.
 * The Witcher:
 * All witchers age slowly due to the mutations that make them witchers.
 * Geralt looks like a fit man in his late twenties. By putting pieces of Backstory together, you can place his age at 80 at the youngest.
 * Vesemir, the Old Master of the witchers, looks like about sixty, but has a physique that makes 30-year olds green with envy. Vesemir's age is unknown, but is implied to be pushing eighthundred!
 * Dandelion the Bard. As Triss so eloquently puts it: "You are 40, sound like you're 30, look like you're 20, and act like you're ten!"
 * Ezio Auditore is 48 by the end of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Although Cesare calls attention to it, calling him an "old fucker", he doesn't really look the part. Revelations fixed this by giving the now 52-year old Assassin plenty of grey in his hair and noticeable wrinkles. Not that it's slowed him down at all.
 * Radio advertisements in Grand Theft Auto Vice City mentions a show called Just the Five of Us, featuring a character called Jimmy who looks 12 but claims to be a 42-year old investement banker. This turns out to be real, in show and out in San Andreas, about 9 years later when we hear the actor who played Jimmy again, still looking and sounding like a kid, even though he's in his fifties.
 * All the deities from Asura's Wrath, To absolutely ridiculous extents. The deities we see in the game look around to be specific ages, but are actually countless Millenia in years of age. And they are all descended from earlier generations of older deities with similar mantra types.
 * Team Fortress 2: The Medic is in in his late forties or early fifties (got his medical license right after World War II, game takes place in 1969), but you'd never know that from looking at him.

Visual Novels

 * Angie in Shikkoku no Sharnoth looks and acts like a little girl, but she's about the same age as the both Mary and Charlie and is the only one with an actual fiancee.
 * From Fate/stay night, Saber is about twenty-five years old (i.e. not counting the centuries since ), but fifteen in appearance (when she stopped physically aging). Ilya, looking about ten years old, is actually older than Shirou (who's about seventeen).
 * In Saber's case, this actually caused her problems. When her subjects realised she didn't age, they began to call her inhuman, and started saying that she, as a apparently unaging immortal, couldn't possibly understand ordinary humans. This eventually lead to and Saber's death.
 * In Fate/Zero, when Ilya actually is around ten, is worried because her growth is so slow that she only weighs about twenty pounds!
 * And apart from these examples, Gilgamesh drank a youth potion in Fate/hollow ataraxia and is walking around in the form of an adorable elementary school aged version of himself.
 * Every single female in Kanon, AIR, Clannad, etc. It's particularly jarring when we're supposed to believe that characters who look no older than sixteen are mothers and aunts of other characters.
 * In Clannad, Akio and Sanae Furukawa look barely older than their daughter, Nagisa. Sanae is often mistaken for Nagisa's older sister in the anime.
 * Maji De Watashi Ni Koi Shinasai has Token Mini-Moe Mayo, 2-F's Class Representative. Joined by Monshiro Kuki, Hideo's younger sister, in the sequel.
 * Emi of Katawa Shoujo is short and has a youthful appearance, but is one year older than Hisao and the rest of the girls, having taken a year off of school while relearning how to walk.

Web Original

 * At the Super-Hero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, Generator (Jade Sinclair) and Warlocke are both fourteen, but look only ten or eleven. Then there's Headmistress Elizabeth Carson, who looks like a hot movie starlet in her early thirties, but is actually over seventy. And there's at least one teacher there who's Really 700 Years Old: Circe. The Circe.
 * 18-year old Survival of the Fittest character Kimmy Redmond is described as looking about thirteen, which is simply down to physical immaturity rather than anything fantastical. There are also Laeil Burbank, who looks about 16, and Alice Jones, who is commonly mistaken for an elementary school student. A recent addition is V4's Celeste Beaumont, who looks like an under-developed freshman.
 * This trope is in full force in Deucalion Chronicles - to the point where it's easier to name characters that actually look their age. Almost everyone stops aging after a certain point, thanks to either natural magic or the alchemical solution Ambrosia. Some Outsiders barely age past puberty. The only exceptions are certain religious groups that refuse Ambrosia and non-CU worlds where it is unavailable.
 * Enrei Islio, 21 in Chaos Fighters II-Chemical Siege is called an 8-year old man due to this trope.
 * The Nostalgia Critic is 30, but still has the same babyface as he did when he was fourteen.
 * Similarly, while The Angry Video Game Nerd has definitely aged over the last three or so years, he still looks younger than his actual age (32).