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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"Of course, I was much taller in those days... six foot three..."''|'''[[Dirty Old Man|Basil Makepeace]]''' ([[Blatant Lies|clearly fibbing]] to impress a new resident), ''[[Waiting for God]]''.}}
Something about aging shrinks people. Maybe it's the effect of old age on posture, or cartilage compression, or maybe it's just how kids these days shoot up like beanpoles with how much they eat. Either way, most senior citizens -- ''especially'' [[Old Master|the skilled, powerful ones]] that can kick the crap out of younger
In real life, there is basis for shrinking in scientific lore. Except in cases of severe osteoporosis, however, most people will only lose a couple of inches from their tallest height over their lifetime. Note, however, that each generation has been, on average, taller than the last throughout the 20th century even in the west thanks to heartier diets rich in protein that their peasant ancestors could not enjoy, while Japan in particular (and Asia in general) is currently going through an accelerated version of this phenomenon since the end of World War II. Taller people tend to have shorter lifespans, which accounts for elder characters in general being shorter, but not individual height loss.
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Since this tends not to be noted as anything peculiar by younger characters, it's also an instance of [[Cartoonish Companions]].
{{examples
▲== Anime & Manga ==
▲* Most of the more famous examples come from [[Rumiko Takahashi]]'s work:
** Cherry from ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]''.
** Yukari Godai from ''[[Maison Ikkoku]]''.
** Cologne and Happôsai from ''[[Ranma
*** The anime lampshades this in a different way; one episode has them travel to the past when Happôsai and Cologne were teens themselves. Happôsai tries to claim to have been a tall, blond [[Bishonen]], but nobody believes him and, to nobody's surprise, the 18-year-old Happôsai turns out to be an ugly little dwarf. Cologne then claims that a beautiful, dark blue-haired girl sweeping in the village is ''her'' past self. Ranma outright tells her to make her lies more believable, and Cologne promptly proves that, yes, that really ''is'' her younger self. In the English dub, this nets a dumbfounded "Oh my god!" from all of the others present, even Shampoo herself.
**** In [[Hot Amazon|Shampoo]]'s case it's probably more like, "OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO END UP LOOKING LIKE A RAISIN!"
*** Lampshaded ''again'' when Happôsai explains why he can't hit the pressure points on Hinako to nullify her [[Energy Absorption]] power: it involves hitting points on her front and back simultaneously and his arms are too short to do that.
*** As well as Cologne and Happôsai, ''Ranma ½'' has other Miniature Senior Citizens as well. The manga has Happôsai's old partner/rival Lukkosai, who has managed to get himself a [[Fountain of Youth|Jusenkyô Spring of Drowned Child curse]]. The anime has Happôsai's old friend Chingensai, who basically looks like Happôsai with a massive head of brown hair that, coupled with his thick beard/moustach, covers his whole head, and a trio of unnamed others who show up in an early seventh season episode.
*** Finally, a [[Filler]] episode in the first season gives us Kin Ono, the diminutive mother of [[Brother Chuck|Dr. Tôfû Ono]]. Unlike these others, she's only a "normal" old person, about 60 or so, but she seems to have been fairly tiny even when she was a young girl.
** Also lampshaded in ''[[Inuyasha]]'', in which Miyoga is smaller than the younger characters for a
* ''[[The Slayers]]'' has, in at least Slayers NEXT (the second season of the anime), Auntie Aqua, a little old woman who's barely waist-high on Amelia. She turns out to be {{spoiler|the last remaining fragment of the soul of the Water Dragon King, one of the five gods who serve the Dragon God Ceiphied}}.
* An elderly woman from an episode of ''[[Burn Up|Burn Up Excess]]'' plays this trope straight, all while harassing Rio.
* Grandma Hina in ''[[Love Hina]]''.
* Sana's grandmother in ''[[
* Winry's grandmother, Pinako, in ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' seems to barely come up to most character's waists. Nonetheless, she still makes fun of Ed for being short. Notably, when one character recalls Pinako as a young woman, she's a great deal taller than she is when we see her in the show's present; whether she really was that tall or the character recalling her is exaggerating (he's terrified by the mention of her name) is not made clear.
** It should be noted that in the manga, Pinako appears in a photograph with Hohenheim and really is a great deal taller.
*** This is also true in the ''Brotherhood''-exclusive [[Clip Show]] / [[Dream Sequence]] episode.
* Rei's grandfather from the ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' anime provides this page's image. (He is shown to be quite dapper in the manga.)
* ''[[
▲* ''[[Samurai Seven|Samurai 7]]'''s village elder, and Kirara's grandmother, are both [[Miniature Senior Citizens]].
* Torogai in ''[[Seirei no Moribito]]''.
* Genkai in ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' (Although like Yoda, she is seen in flashbacks to have always been that height.)
* Libra Dohko, the [[Hermit Guru]] in ''[[Saint Seiya]]''. He's about 140
* Yugi's grandpa in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''. It should be noted, however, that Yugi's not much taller.
* The Tsuchikage from ''[[Naruto]]'' was recently revealed to be an old man so tiny that he's only about 1.5 times as tall as his [[Nice Hat|Kage head piece]] is long. It turns out that Onoki was always tiny, though.
** Sabu is also pretty tiny, especially compared to his giant raccoon and his [[BFS|giant axe]].
* Akino Ametsuchi a.k.a. Grandma from ''[[
* Joey's grandma in ''[[Heroman]]''; that woman cannot be taller than 2 feet.
* Elmore Tenjuin of ''[[Psyren]]''.
* ''[[
* Master Makarov of the eponymous mage guild ''[[Fairy Tail]]''. Ironically, one of his more used magic abilities, Titan, lets him turn into a giant. A flashback in the anime show he was short even in his youth and another in the manga showed he was short by the time he was about forty, but neither was as short as he was in the present.
* Hikari's grandmother in ''[[
* Fuu's grandmother in ''[[Tamayura]]'' certainly counts.
* Touhou Fuhai from ''[[Rosario
* Shiho's grandfather Jin from ''[[
* Ueda's mother in ''[[Japan Inc]]''.
* Enya Geil from ''[[
* [[Wicked Witch|Majorina]] in ''[[
* Every single elderly character in ''[[Oh! Edo Rocket]]''.
== Comic Books ==
* Inverted in Swedish children's comic ''[[Bamse]]''. Title character Bamse is a family man (OK, anthropomorphic bear) with four children. Three of them are half his height, very reasonable since they are supposed to be around eight years old, and the fourth is a toddler. Bamse's parents are one head taller than him, and his grandmother is again one head taller, meaning that Bamse just about reaches granny's waist, and Bamse's toddler daughter is shorter than granny's foot is long!
* Geriatrix in ''[[Asterix]]'' is even shorter than Asterix himself, and about half the height of his [[Ugly Guy, Hot Wife|hot wife]].
* Ma Dalton in ''[[Lucky Luke]]''.
== Films -- Animation ==
* [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney examples]]; note that these are all [[Bumbling Dad]] types:
** Maurice from ''[[Beauty and
** The Sultan of Agrabah from ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]''.
** Prof. Porter from ''[[Tarzan (Disney film)|Tarzan]]''.
* Mr. Fredrickson in ''[[Up (
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* Yoda from ''[[Star Wars]]''. He's 900 years old, and his species features many standard traits of human aging, such as whispy white hair, large ears, a wrinkled face, and a small, stooped stature.
* In [[David Lynch]]'s ''[[Mulholland Drive]]'', Diane Selwyn is attacked by ''literally'' miniaturized old people. They're about three inches tall.
* Benjamin Button from ''The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'' was born a baby-sized old man (not a spoiler) and gets younger as the story progresses. In the original story, he might be the size of an aged adult (he's explicitly described as too big for the crib). [[Fridge Horror|Don't think too much about the]] [[Death
== Literature ==
* Rule One, according to Lu Tze from [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[
* Another ''[[
* A very extreme example: Úrsula Iguarán from ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]'' lives to be 120 years old, and by that time she has shriveled to the size of a fetus.
* In ''[[The House of the Spirits]]'' the viciously evil Esteban becomes convinced he's started getting shorter (no matter what the doctors say). This is deliberately symbolic of what he believes is a loss of power and influence due to age.
* La Menou from ''[[Malevil]]''. She's often referred to as a petite skeleton and she is [[Known Only By Their Nickname|Known Only By Her Nickname]] which means "tiny".
* The earliest draft versions of [[
* Professor Flitwick from ''[[Harry Potter]]''.
== Live-Action TV ==
* When {{spoiler|The Master}} uses a reversed form of the Lazarus machine on [[Doctor Who
** {{spoiler|The immortal but still aging Captain Jack Harkness apparently mutates into just a (gigantic) head... maybe.}}
* In the sitcom ''[[WKRP in Cincinnati]]'', newsman Les Nessman frequently voices concern over his (never seen) aged mother's chronic shrinking.
* Marie in ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]''.
* The Janitor from ''[[
* On ''[[ER]]'', the term "LOL" was shorthand for "little old lady." Presumably they didn't encounter many six-foot-tall elderly women.
== Myths & Religion ==
* This is [[Older Than Feudalism]], thanks to the Greek myth of Eos, goddess of the dawn, and her [[Mayfly
* Similar fate befalls the Cumaean Sibyl in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses''. She is granted near-immortality by Apollo, but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In the end, her shriveled body fits inside a jar.
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== Video Games ==
* Kliff in ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' comes up to the waist of most of the younger cast; he's even a touch shorter than May, the second-youngest character in the game (Dizzy, the ''actual'' youngest character, is taller than either). Some of his special moves restore his youth, doubling his height in the process.
* Old man Strago from ''[[
** Their respective sprites, however, are just as large as the sprites for the other characters. For Relm this is accomplished through a [[Nice Hat]], but Strago makes up for lack of height with an abundance of Mohawk.
* Most of the older characters in the first ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' game (such as the bird lady and Jak's uncle) are tiny and reach only to Jak's waist. Samos the Sage is significantly shorter than his daughter Keira, though apparently his younger self was short as well.
* Inverted in ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles]]'': ''[[Crystal Bearers]]'', for the Lilties. Typically small in their prime, the average never going taller than four feet (excepting the princess and those train conductors), Lilties grow ''much'' larger as they age; Cid is nearly as tall as Layle and quite wide to boot, and Jegran could easily pass for a basketball player. The ''elderly'' Lilties are large enough to [[Foe
* Chin Gentsai in ''[[The King of Fighters]]'' is a diminutive man (he's just about as tall as Choi
** [[Truth in Television]]: Chin's design was a homage to Chinese actor Yuen Siu Tien. Yuen's most famous role was that of Beggar So in [[Drunken Master]] and [[Snake in
* The twin witches [[Playing
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[A Skewed Paradise]]'' has [http://aspcomics.net/archindex.php?strip_id=80 Nick's dad].
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'', Mrs. Primrose is fairly
== Web Original ==
* Sensei Ito, in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'', is the short, elderly [[Old Master]] who teaches aikido at the [[Super
* The King of Town, from ''[[
* Maria Calavera from ''[[RWBY]]''.
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[The Simpsons (
** Although he does once claim to be only 35, Hans Moleman at least looks elderly and is very short.
* A textbook example of this occurs in the ''[[
** Dexter's grandfather isn't much taller than the boy.
* In a particularly strange spin on the trope, Hank's father in ''[[
** Oddly, his arms are proportional to his diminished frame, [[Fridge Logic|with no real explanation given]].
* [[
* The Dungeon Master, from the ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (
* In ''[[
** Also Ruel Stroud's grandmother, who is even shorter than Yugo (without her giant afro).
* A time-travel episode of [[
* Head dog catcher McLeish's mother Agatha in the 2010 ''[[Pound Puppies]]''.
* Quetzal from ''[[Dragon Tales]]''. Despite being one of the oldest dragons in Dragon Land, he is only the same height as a human like most of the younger dragons. The adult dragons are all giants.
* [[The Dreaded|Mumm-Ra]] from ''[[
* Subverted in ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
* While not as extreme as some of the other example on this page,Lo and Li from ''[[
* ''[[American Dragon: Jake Long]]'': Jake's grandfather is so small several people during the [[Halloween Episode]] mistook him for a kid dressed like an old Chinese wise man. Then again, it was shown in flashback he wasn't much taller than that during his prime. Jake's Mom should be glad the dragon powers weren't all that skipped her.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Tiny Tropes]]
[[Category:Anime Reality]]
[[Category:Elders]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
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