Exposition of Immortality: Difference between revisions

[[Exposition of Immortality]] is a [[Narrative Device]] common in [[Speculative Fiction]], [[Fantasy Literature]] and modern media derived from those sources. Increasingly popular as more and more TV shows, Films and authors craft works in which immortal, long-lived or unaging characters like elves, vampires and superheroes with a powerful [[Healing Factor]] occur, [['''Exposition of Immortality]]''' is a trope that is itself [[Older Than They Look]]. It's about the methods that a work uses to show that a character is really, really old and it generally occurs in the following ways:

If a work has a character who falls into one of the immortality tropes you can be 99% certain that, at some point, their age is going to come up in conversation or otherwise be brought to the attention of the audience in (at least) one of those ways or a variation thereon.

[['''Exposition of Immortality]]''' is '''not''' the same as [[Time Travel]]. Characters who end up with memories of past times or encounters with historical figures solely due to temporal tourism did not live through that period of history, and thus, aren't demonstrating their extreme longevity at all. Such characters may, however, be encountered by people who know them in the future via [[Time Travel]]. [['''Exposition of Immortality]]''' ''only'' applies to characters who're unusually long-lived or actually immortal. Naturally old characters reminiscing does not invoke this trope.

Closely related to [[Really 700 Years Old]], [[Time Abyss]] and [[Older Than They Look]]. Often involves [[Dreaming of Times Gone By]], [[The Time of Myths]] and settings with a [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]].

[['''Exposition of Immortality]]''' will often lead to two sub-tropes being invoked: Exposure Of Immortality and Evidence Of Immortality.

* Exposure Of Immortality: When a character in a work is immortal they are often either perceived to be normal or actively trying to be perceived as such. Sometimes, they'll need to out themselves to the world at large in order to prove the existence of the supernatural to doubters and deal with a greater threat. Sometimes, they just want to prove it. And sometimes, they're exposed by others deliberately; either to reveal their True Nature and bring about their downfall or during the course of a mundane investigation that uncovers their secret.

* Evidence Of Immortality: Exposition that shows a character to be immortal or otherwise older than they appear to be [[Captain Obvious|can happen in any of the forms listed in]] [['''Exposition of Immortality]]'''. However; memories, conversations and flashback sequences don't tend to hold up too well as evidence. Photos, paintings, objets d'art and a series of documents showing that you and the last ten generations of your 'ancestors' have the same handwriting are much more damning proof of your unnatural longevity.

* ''[[Code Geass]]'': C.C. states that she knew [[Benjamin Franklin]]. The date in the show is in an alternate New Tens.

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'': [[Really 700 Years Old|Resident immortal Evangeline]] recalls NegisNegi's Fatherfather and a couple of things outside that range (including recalling her past with exact details).

* In ''[[ClanDestine]]'', a group of villains figure out that Adam Destine is immortal based on finding portraits of him, all at the same apparent age, spanning several hundred years.

* ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)|Preacher]]'': {{spoiler|Proinsias}} Cassidy. He's a vampire and was made one during the Easter Rising in Dublin 1916, which makes him 80+ during the series' run. He tells Jesse all about how he was turned and how he came to America and all the friends he's left behind and lost to old age through the years during a long conversation on top of the Empire State Building. [[Unreliable Narrator|Turns out he missed a few details, though.]]

* ''[[The Sandman]]'''s Hob Gadling. Hob lives forever, thanks to the whim of Dream. He meets up with Morpheus every 100 years, allowing for several instances Such Memories in their conversations with each other; the changing times get a visual reference in the differing costumes and backgrounds shown; ranging from the Tudor tavern they first meet in to the glass and chrome, trendy wine bar they're shown in at the end of ''Men Of Good Fortune.''

* ''[[Bram Stoker's Dracula|Bram Stokers Dracula]]'': Whilst at Castle Dracula early in the film, Harker passes comment on a painting of Dracula from the 15th Century, noting the ''"family resemblance."'' Of course, as the audience, we've already seen the Count fighting the Turks in 1462 via an opening sequence.

* ''[[X-Men: First Class|X Men First Class]]'' has a brief scene in which Professor X and Magneto walk into a bar to talk to Wolverine who, of course, looks exactly like he does in the [[X-Men (film)|first film.]]

* [[Iain Banks]]' [[The Culture]] novels have a number of entities that need some exposition of their long, long lives. Most of the Minds are effectively immortal and many of them have been around for hundreds and occasionally thousands of years.

** ''[[The Culture/The Player of Games|The Culture]]'': Chamlis Amalk-Ney, the aging drone who's one of Gurgeh's close friends on Chiark Orbital, is at least four thousand years old by it'sits own admission (no one is impolite enough to look up it'sits construction date to find out if it's really ''older''). In between the drone's much larger body than a more modern drone, like the [[Comedic Sociopathy|warped and snarky]] Mawhrin-Skel, and those two sniping insults at each other about their respective ages, there's also Gurgeh's own musing about the age of Chamlis and how long the drone's been living on Chiark.

* ''[[Last Legionary]]'': In ''Galactic Warlord'', Talis patiently explains to Kiell that the alien Glr is not an "it" but a she, and that the Ehrlil are very long-lived, the scientist who first encountered her was his father. Flr herself chips in that she's four hundred, and still considered a wayward youth by her people.

* [[John Masefield]]'s ''[[The Box of Delights]]'' had Ramon Lully, aka Cole Hawlings, 14th century philosopher posing as a 1930s children's entertainer. His reveal comes courtesy of the [[Big Bad]], Abner Brown, who's been in pursuit of him for some time and shows his henchmen a book with pictures of Lully when he was alive which look remarkably like Hawlings.

* [[Robert Rankin]]'s ''Armageddon Trilogy'' features a version of [[Elvis Presley]] who evaded his own death and is [[Sharing a Body|bonded to a genetically-engineered sprout]] with TimeTravel[[Time powersTravel]] powers who grants him near-immortality. Elvis looks the same and [[Paper-Thin Disguise|conceals his identity]] with several new names like '''T'''heodore '''H'''enry '''E'''dward King and [[Punny Name|Noah Never]] (it's a play on the Elvis song ''No, I Never'').

* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' has more than a few instances of immortal characters and Elrond in particular evokes [[Exposition of Immortality]] as he pointedly reminds Boromir of ''who'' told Isildur what ''should'' have been done with the One Ring, 3000 years ago.

* In ''"St. Austin Friars''" a short story in [[Robert Westall]]'s anthology ''[[Break of Dark]]'', William Henry Drogo invites the Reverend to dinner and tells him several detailed stories about the past of Muncaster, as if he witness them directly. When challenged he simply states: ''"I am one hundred and ninety-two years old."''

== [[Live -Action TV]] ==

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' uses this on several occasions. Fourth Doctor serial ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S16 E3/E03 The Stones of Blood|The Stones of Blood]]'' is a case of Incriminating Evidence in the form of a set of portraits showing the villain over several centuries.

** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S13 E5/E05 The Brain of Morbius|The Brain Of Morbius]] contains a sequence in which the three previous incarnations of the Doctor are shown, and [[Canon Discontinuity|eight additional faces beyond that]]. Morbius asks ''"How far back Doctor, how long have you lived?"'' - even by Time Lord standards, it seems The Doctor has been around for a while.

* ''[[Forever Knight]]'' has several types. Nick has Incriminating Evidence photos, mementos like Joan of Arc's cross and plenty of memories he likes to share, usually [[Once an Episode]].

* In an episode of the newer ''[[Outer Limits]]'', a character proves she's immortal by having her father-in-law-to-be look up a photograph of a portrait of the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), who she is.

** In the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' episode "Requiem for Methuselah", Mr. Spock finds a waltz by Johannes Brahms written in original manuscript in Brahms' own hand inside Flint's home, but it is totally unknown. Likewise Flint has a collection of Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces that have been recently painted on contemporary canvas with contemporary materials. Flint later admits that he ''was'' Brahms and da Vinci.

** In "Time's Arrow", a two-part episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'', the ''Enterprise'' crew runs into Guinan, the El-Aurian bartender on their ship, while on a [[Time Travel]] trip to the 19th century. She's shown talking with [[Mark Twain]] and Jack London; but when Data approaches her, believing that she too, has traveled through time, she doesn't know him or the rest of the crew.

** In an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'', a member of the Q-continuum shows us a picture of him and an ancestor of Will Riker from the time of the [[American Civil War]].

* In the ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' episode "Something Wicked", Sam discovers the identity of the witch they are looking for, because he finds a news article with a picture of the witch as a doctor back in the 1890's.

* ''[[Torchwood]]'''s Captain Jack Harkness shows his age every way possible. There's his Army greatcoat, his Webley revolver, a [[Photo Montage]] of him through the ages in one episode, him remembering meeting fairies in 1909 and being the British contact for the 456. Not being a native of the 19th century, he speaks normally, though.

* In the original ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' episode ''Long Live Walter Jameson'' the titular character is a history prof. who knows his stuff, who has a retiring colleague who comments on his appearance, and who is seen in a Civil War picture.

* ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' 1990s campaign ''Utati Asfet: The Eye Of Wicked Sight'' featured a [[Big Bad]] who dated back to the Egyptian Empire. The players have an opportunity to uncover this at one point via a set of diaries, documents and paintings.

* ''[[Fallout 2]]'': Harold can be encountered once again by the Chosen One. Along with much of the ghoul population of Necropolis, he's settled in an abandoned nuclear power plant and formed a small town named Gecko. FO 2''FO2'' is set a further 80 years after 1, making Harold 189 when the Chosen One meets him.

* ''[[Fallout 3]]'': Many of the ghouls you can encounter in Underworld lived through the war and can tell what, frequently little, they can remember of the time before. Carol, the ghoul running the bar and eatery there was born in 2051, twenty-six years prior to the Great War.

** Harold makes his third and final appearance (to date) in ''Fallout 3''. A further fifteen years down the line from the last time a player could meet him in FO 2''FO2'', Harold's most distinguishing feature, a tree growing out his head has now mostly consumed his body; making him into a face growing out of a tree.

* Sovereign, Harbinger and the other Reapers of the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' series make a lot of noise about how they were here ''long'' before humans and that they'll be here ''long'' after they've devoured them all.

** Conversations during ''[[Mass Effect (video game)|Mass Effect 1]]'' with Liara reveal that she herself is 106 and that the asari live for a great deal longer than that - she's considered to be little more than a child by many of her species' elders.