Your Size May Vary: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Large Characters ==

* ''[[Digimon]]'' as a whole is very guilty of this.

** A major offender is the Greymon from ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'', who sometimes stands several stories tall, yet has frequently had fights within hallways of normal buildings. Another is Greymon's counterpart in ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'', Growlmon, who was the size of a large house in his introduction, but was later depicted as being much, much smaller.

* Toyotomi Hideyoshi, from the second season of ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'' is a great example of this. The man can't seem to stay the same size for ten minutes! He can go from just [[One Head Taller|a head taller]] than the main character in one scene, and in the next, he can be almost on par with Honda Tadakatsu. His final episode fight with Masamune features this trope in spades.

 

* In [[DC Comics]], Giganta is a villain who can grow to giant size, but just how much [[Depending on the Writer| depends on the writer and the continuity]]. Sometimes her maximum height is 50 feet, others place it at 100, 200, or even 250 feet.

 

** It should be pointed out that each era of the Godzilla films takes place in a different universe (This is ''especially'' evident in the Millennium series, in which, apart from two exceptions, ''each'' film takes place in a separate continuity), thus it's reasonable the monsters aren't completely identical.

** In-universe explanation, the second Godzilla (in the Heisei series) was created by newer and stronger weapons than the first Godzilla (in ''Godzilla vs King Ghidorah'', he's created by contemporary nuclear weapons, very powerful indeed). So "better weapons = larger monster" when it comes to Godzilla.

** A major point of criticism for ''[[The Godzilla Power Hour]]'' was that Godzilla's size varied greatly within scenes, such that Godzilla could carry the entire ship with two hands while a human character can just barely fit in his palm in a later shot.

*** The Roland Emmerich / Dean Devlin 1998 ''[[Godzilla (film)|Godzilla]]'', as [[Roger Ebert]] and other critics noted, constantly changed size within the film as well.

** In the 1970s Dino de Laurentis remake, Kong's size varies quite dramatically from scene to scene, most likely for the same reason. It has been said that "[[Strong as They Need to Be|King Kong is as BIG as he needs to be]]."

** In the original, he also gets bigger when he arrives in New York. So it's not so much "everything is bigger in America" as "America makes everything bigger"?

** Some shifts in scale occur, mostly in regards to at least being visible. Optimus was able to hold Sam and Mikaela in one hand and later pinched a pair of glasses between his fingers, realistically the glasses would be over a foot long in comparison.

 

* ''[[Christian Humber Reloaded]]'': Season-Bringer, the dragon who's described as being roughly the length of a small country and weighs about as much as a ''continent.'' Until he somehow manages to be the copilot in a small spacecraft that's only big enough to seat two people...

* [[Humongous Mecha|Mecharu]] and [[Everything's Better with Dinosaurs|George]] of ''[[Snow Angels]]'', due to [[Rule of Funny]].

 

* [[Humongous Mecha]] scenes in ''[[Super Sentai]]'' and ''[[Power Rangers]]'' have been inconsistent of late as [[The Powers That Be]] get a bigger CGI budget. The [[People in Rubber Suits|rubber suits]] for the Zords are the same size even when the mecha, as seen in effects shots, aren't. Bear with us for this one, 'cause it's sort of hard to explain quickly or without the names:

** In ''[[Power Rangers Dino Thunder]]'' (adapted from ''[[Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger]]''), the main [[Humongous Mecha]] is the Thundersaurus Megazord, whose three component mecha (called Dino Zords) fit inside the gigantic Brachiozord. One of the Thundersaurus' attacks involves sliding down Brachio's tail... something that would be impossible if the Thundersaurus was the size it would have to be if it's formed from the Dino Zords (given the size the individual Dino Zords are when seen leaving Brachio.) In other words, when doing this attack, Thundersaurus apparently shrinks from being larger than Godzilla to being about two car-lengths.

 

=== [[Toys]] ===

* The relative scale of ''[[Bionicle]]'' characters varies wildly from medium to medium. A very early example is a Nesquik cereal TV ad (since promotional CDs were given away in cereal boxes back then), in which Toa Tahu appears among a group of human kids, and seems to be about as tall as a normal adult. According to official supplementary story material, he is actually about 7 and a half feet tall.

** The infamous introduction scene from the movie ''The Legend Reborn'' has a supposedly 40 million feet tall Mata Nui robot looking considerably shorter when standing, not even reaching out of the planet's atmosphere. This robot and its smaller prototype also caused a lot of head-scratching for comic illustrators, since they had to appear small enough to fit into pictures with normal-sized characters.

** Even when it came to the toys, scale issues still arose when comparing older figures to newer ones. The original toys have usually been short and stout, while later, more articulated figures used longer limbs and larger body pieces, and thus became taller themselves, even though they were supposed to be the same size as their ancestors. This was only ever addressed in the '08 storyline, in which it was explained that an energy source caused the Light Matoran to grow larger than normal. Just to let you know how things have changed since the line's debut in '01: the small [[Little People|Matoran]] have grown to be almost as big as the original Toa toys. In turn, the first Toa sets only reach up to the later Toa figures' waist.

 

** Bowser's size changes massively in ''Super Mario Sunshine''. When he's sitting with {{spoiler|Bowser Jr.}} in the ending, he's about the size you might assume an adult of his race would be compared to him. In the boss battle preceding it, however, he's enormous.

*** Bowser Jr. himself has changed sizes throughout games. In ''Super Mario Sunshine'', he's smaller than Mario. In ''New Super Mario Bros.'', he's just slightly taller than Mario. In ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'', he is as tall as, if not taller than, Peach. He shrinks back down to his Sunshine size for spinoffs, though.

* Much like the anime, the ''Digimon'' games often do this, but at least once they manage to do it within the same game. As an example, [http://youtu.be/yw404jsp2g8?t=5s Beelzemon] and [http://youtu.be/yw404jsp2g8?t=1m30s Gallantmon] are both roughly the same size (around six foot, based on the buildings) in the opening cutscene of ''[[Digimon World 3]]''.

 

* A mild version of this occurs in ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]''. Buck is taller than the average human, but how tall exactly seems to vary a bit, from being about a head taller to what seems like a few feet. There's also one panel with Buck and Hyraxx where Hyraxx seems to be about half of Buck's height, while in all other panels she reaches to his chest. However this is probably because of the angle of the shot (the view in the panel is upward from near floor-level, which messes the perspective somewhat) rather than the relative sizes of the characters changing.

* ''[[Megatokyo]]'': The size of rent-a-zilla is awfully inconsistent. [http://megatokyo.com/strip/1061 Here], it's around twice the size of Yuki, [http://megatokyo.com/strip/1075 here] it's about the size of a four-story building, while [http://megatokyo.com/strip/1108 here] Yuki seems to be about the size of rent-a-zilla's eye...

{{quote|"Like any proper ''dai kaiju'' ('giant critter'), her size varies from one scene to another, and that is as it should be."}}

 

* ''[[Transformers]]''. Hoo-boy. They managed to avoid it in the 2007 movie, with any exceptions (Frenzy's head fitting into a cell phone) being arguable or having [[Hammerspace]] be an implicit ability of the AllSpark. Notable examples from Generation 1 include a motorcycle transformer becoming as large as a helicopter when forming the leg of a [[Humongous Mecha]], and one about the size of Optimus Prime being able to accommodate a Formula One racer on each of his legs. Robots that transformed into ''transformer-scale cities'' were often shown to be no larger than the rest of their fellows ''who were supposed to be able to fit comfortably inside them''. The list goes on.

** The scale issue is ''[[Transformers]]'' is [http://www.tfwiki.info/wiki/Scale best left to a Wiki that can give it an article unto itself.] (Note the category "Things that don't exist".) The average Transformer, it seems, is about the same size as King Kong or an EVA unit.

*** Broadside transforms from an Earth jet into an entire ''aircraft carrier.'' Astrotrain deserves special mention. He transforms from a 21 m ( 70') locomotive (shown to be normal sized compared to others) to a 56 m (184') shuttle (assuming a real life shuttle) - or into an even bigger shuttle, as witnessed by his ability to carry an entire Decepticon team inside of him - including [[Combining Mecha|Devastator]]. And yet Astrotrain's robot mode is as tall as Megatron.

* On the ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' episode "[[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|Attack of the Fifty Foot Sister]]," gigantic-Candace climbed [[Mad Scientist|Doofenshmirtz]]'s building King Kong-style, meaning it was several times taller than her. In the episode "The Lizard Whisperer" [[One Steve Limit|Steve]] is able to easily reach the roof of the same building despite supposedly being ''forty'' feet. Possibly justified in that both sizes were just estimates the characters came up with, but compared to other things around them Candace still seemed much larger than Steve did. (And for the record, Doofenshmirtz's building is known in another episode to be at least thirty-eight stories tall.)

** Phineas is usually shorter than Isabella, but sometime's he's the same height or taller.

{{quote|'''Lisa:''' 'Scuse me, [[Paul Bunyan]] never fought [[Rodan]]. And his size seems to be really inconsistent. I mean, one minute he's 10 feet tall, the next his foot is as big as a lake.}}

* [[Scooby Doo]] could be terrible with this some times. For example, one episode's monster of the week was a panther-headed giant taller than most trees. Yet, after they'd managed to knock him down, Freddy walked up to him and unmasked the (now human sized with no explanation whatsoever) monster.

 

== Small Characters ==

* In the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bi3erz2Ek8 2008 commercial] of Orangina, you have chameleon strip dancers who are as big as the rest of the cast. But then at the 1:16 mark, you see a chameleon dancing to one of the plant people... who are ''small''.

 

* Though she's hardly giant, Teddy in ''[[Eiken]]''. In the back of the first volume of the manga the author admits that he draws her without much aforethought so both in and out of costume her size can vary greatly from panel to panel.

* In ''[[Pokémon Special]]'', in one panel Black's Munna looks a lot bigger than it previously did. This is worth pointing out because his Munna bellyflopped on his head and looked like it should've sent him toppling over. Fans joked that constantly feeding off Black's dreams made it fat.

* In ''[[Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto]]'', the height of the [[Catgirl|anthropomorphic cats]] varies between scenes, with scenes depicting ''just'' those characters generally depicting them as roughly one or two feet tall, while scenes in which they interact with human characters frequently give them apparent heights of up to a meter.

 

* [[Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe|Marvel's Official Handbooks]] are a handy reference point for every fanboy who wants something to argue over. By way of an example, [[Wolverine]] has been consistently listed as 5'3" (about 1.6 metres), and Jubilee an inch or two taller. Despite this Wolverine tends to tower over Jubilee, to the point where she must be about 4'6". When they stand next to other characters, their height tends to appear more as listed.

* The [[Silver Age]] bottled city of Kandor was blatantly subject to this. It was a shrunken city where the buildings were visibly several inches tall. That scale would mean the city would only be a block or so in size, yet the people in it were microscopic and the city was a whole city of millions of inhabitants.

* Doll Man's [[Sizeshifter|shrinking ability]] is supposed to be limited to switching between his normal height and 6 inches tall, but he has been portrayed anywhere from a few inches to a couple of feet tall, often varying in size within a single story. One comic cover shows him large enough to be tied to seperate bathtub faucet knobs, while another cover has him smaller than a handgun.

 

* In ''[[Pinocchio]]'', Jiminy Cricket goes inside a lock to pick it. The lock seems to be no deeper than Jiminy is tall, and yet the scenes from inside the lock make it seem cavernous. Also, Jiminy is significantly larger in long shots simply because he'd be invisible otherwise.

* The Oompa Loompas in the [[Tim Burton]] version of ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film)|Charlie and The Chocolate Factory]]'' vary in size from about 18 inches tall to [[Deep Roy]]'s actual size.

 

* Foreign translations of ''[[The Hobbit]]'' simply ''cannot'' agree on Gollum's size. Sometimes they keep him about the same size as Bilbo, sometimes (such as in the Japanese translation), he's ''enormous'', much larger even than a human.

 

* In ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' the USS ''Defiant'' was designed to be a small, dedicated warship when [[The Federation]] generally avoided such titles. In general the actual measurements should allow it to fit ''inside'' the saucer section of the TOS Enterprise, and while it is always portrayed as being rather small at other times it would barely fit inside the TNG Galaxy Class saucer section. The problem was worse in the days of physical models, which were never built on the same scale and so had to rely on composite shots and forced perspective tricks. At other times it's done for dramatic effect, as the arrival of the Enterprise-E in ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]'' either makes the Defiant really small or the Ent-E very large to highlight the scene as a [[Gunship Rescue]].

* [[Little Britain]] plays this for laughs in the Dennis Waterman sketches.

 

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'': Plankton tends to vary in size even within the same scene. Generally, he is anywhere from the size of a golf ball and small enough that a microscope is required to see him.

** As Spongebob advanced as a series, and especially when the movie came out, they made it fairly clear that the residents of Bikini Bottom are all about the natural sizes that your average <s> artificial</s> sea sponge, crab, or starfish normally would be. This reasonably justifies comparing Sandy Squirrel and even Plankton to the rest of the cast, but still doesn't quite explain Pearl, who is a teenage whale.. Even if she was just a baby, she'd still be about 7 times larger than all of Bikini Bottom.

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'': Ron Stoppable's [[Non-Human Sidekick]], Rufus, usually rests comfortably in Ron's pocket. When other characters aren't around for comparison, though, Rufus tends to be somewhat larger in comparison to furniture and other objects, about the size of a small cat. To be fair this is [[Truth in Television]], rats, mice, cats have bones very similar to most small children and can fit into places that are a bit smaller then they are.

* ''[[The Fairly OddParents]]''

** [[Rich Bitch|Trixie]] [[Asian Airhead|Tang]], also not particularly small, is always depicted as being taller than Timmy, but how much taller she is than him also tends to vary.

* ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' characters are sometimes subject to this, even when Nimnul's ray gun isn't involved. Especially see Queenie from "Risky Beesness": her size relative to the Rangers changes for no apparent reason over the course of an episode.