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8[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gunnerkrigg_court_jone_collage_4.jpg]]]]
9[[caption-width-right:350:Oh, finally. For her first four billion years, there was nothing to read.]]
10%%
11->''"I was old when the molecules of your world joined and called themselves land and sea and fish and man.\
12That's why they come back to Z'ha'dum every time they're driven off. Because I'm here. They think they are showing respect. They don't understand. They did use to. But that was a long time ago. A million years."''
13-->-- '''Lorien''', ''Series/BabylonFive''
14
15There are the old, and then there are the truly old. People usually die within a century or so. Cities and nations may last a few millennia, and we think them old, and then there are ''these''.
16
17They were already old when all the nations we know were born, even those now [[TheTimeOfMyths vanished into history]]. They can speak of Ancient Athens and Babylon [[SeenItAll as casually as we might speak of yesterday]], for to them those ancient cities [[TimeDissonance are but recent memories]]. They were there when brick was first laid on brick, over five thousand years ago. They may have watched the trilobites come, and go, with eyes older than the stars. They may even be older than time itself.
18
19Contemplating such immense spans of time is like looking into an abyss, an inducement to vertigo, for they are more than we can grasp. Oh, we can talk about them easily enough, just more big numbers, but [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale we can't intuit them]]. We all know what a second or a week feels like; a million years (or even ten thousand) is beyond all human experience. It is from this incomprehension that this trope draws its power, when done right, an evocation of incomprehensible age that appeals to our sense of wonder. Naturally, a Time Abyss must experience all the years they claim. It doesn't count if they [[TimeTravel skip over]] or [[HumanPopsicle sleep through them]].
20
21While a Time Abyss is normally a person -- perhaps not technically human, but a person nonetheless -- [[TheConstant objects can also qualify]], everything from cities to coins. Imagine an [[BigDumbObject alien monolith]] that has been sitting on the moon for three billion years. Think about all it has seen: the slow dance of the continents, the long march of evolution, the sudden flowering of civilization. Think, and wonder.
22
23Geographical features can't qualify, though. We expect the hills to be old as dirt. We do not expect people, [[RagnarokProofing or any of their works]], to be older than the hills.
24
25Five thousand years or so is a decent estimate of the ''minimum'' age needed to qualify for this trope, excluding any hypothetical ContemporaryCaveman, and yet, in ScienceFiction, a Time Abyss will typically be far older than that. Geological time scales are usually involved. In modern-day works of a religious bent ([[NotUsingTheZWord or not]]), Adam and Eve (or Cain) are likely candidates, as the first ever living sapient creatures. If there are several of these individuals, expect a few of them (or one in particular) to be [[TheOlderImmortal significantly older than the rest]]. TenThousandYears is commonly used as a shorthand to establish that something is especially ancient.
26
27[[OurGodsAreDifferent A god]] or major EldritchAbomination is often a time abyss, as are {{Precursors}} and Elves (depending on how [[OurElvesAreDifferent they're portrayed]], many aren't old enough to follow this trope). These characters may decide that there's NothingLeftToDoButDie because WhoWantsToLiveForever. May even oscillate between LivingForeverIsAwesome and bored eternity.
28
29Meta-trope of LivingRelic, where the being in question finds themselves the last survivor of their civilization, race, or even species long after their kind has become myth. Being a Time Abyss will often lead to a work's creator wanting to engage in some ExpositionOfImmortality to show just how much they remember.
30
31One more interesting fact about them is that they can even be a kind of {{Ouroboros}} creature with no beginning and no end that simply lives forever.
32
33----
34!!Example subpages:
35
36[[index]]
37* TimeAbyss/{{Literature}}
38* TimeAbyss/LiveActionTV
39* TimeAbyss/TabletopGames
40* TimeAbyss/VideoGames
41[[/index]]
42
43!!Other examples
44[[foldercontrol]]
45
46[[folder:Multimedia]]
47* ''The 2000 Year Old Man'': as titled, he wouldn't be old enough to qualify, but he claims his oldest memories are of living as a caveman. And he says he met Moses.
48* Many Franchise/{{Transformers}} in all incarnations are millions of years old. Some ''individuals'' are older than the entire human species.
49** For an idea, in the ''Franchise/TransformersGeneration1'' cartoon, Optimus and Megatron had been battling each other for millions of years before arriving to Earth. There's also how Shockwave didn't change much during the four million years the Autobots and the Decepticons in the Ark were in stasis (well, except for being minus one hand).
50** The Thirteen are considered old even by the standards of their species, including [[Anime/TransformersCybertron Vector Prime]] and The Fallen. The first creations of Primus, they were old ''before'' the war that's been going for millions of years got started. They don't even have faction insignias, since they pre-date their formations by eons (their toys notwithstanding).
51*** In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' the Thirteen are said to have battled Unicron in ancient times. [[spoiler:Unicron eventually became Earth by collecting debris as he drifted through space. In the canon novel ''Exodus'', which takes place a few million years ago at most, Alpha Trion, one of the Thirteen, speaks to Optimus. In case you haven't figured it out that means Trion is at least five billion or so years old.]]
52** Kup and Alpha Trion from ''Franchise/TransformersGeneration1''; Alpha Trion was around when the Quintessons were driven from Cybertron -- about twelve million years ago. Kup could be anywhere from just as old to maybe "only" ten million years old; he's certainly older than Optimus Prime, who is at least nine million years old. Alpha Trion, in other media, was retconned into being one of the Thirteen, although this [[ContinuitySnarl isn't easy to reconcile]].
53*** The Quintessons themselves, or at least the ones who were personally around before they lost Cybertron (e.g. the three-face who built the Transorganic energy-leech) also qualify.
54** ...And that's not counting all the [[DeathIsCheap resurrections]].
55** Starscream is ''so'' good at [[TheStarscream the trope he named]] that he betrayed '''''time'''''!
56--->'''Starscream:''' My [[MechanicalLifeforms exo-structure]] was destroyed, but miraculously my [[OurSoulsAreDifferent spark]] endured, [[AndIMustScream drifting helplessly]] thorough the depths of space, [[{{Immortality}} beyond the reach]] of time itself! -- ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'', "Possession"
57** ''ComicBook/TransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'' states that Transformers actually can die of old age... it just takes a little under a billion years for it to happen. In fact they're so long-lived that, for many years, Cybertronians believed themselves to be biologically immortal, expressly because they'd never actually seen someone die of old age.
58*** Another continuity (''Transformers Regeneration One'') has the Transformers aging much faster after their universe is cut-off from Primus, the multiversal being that created the Transformers and influences every universe they appear in.
59** In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'', immense temporal units get thrown around casually, emphasizing just how long it is that they can live. For some examples, Ratchet, whose general demeanor is is middle aged, is millions of years old. Meanwhile, in a third season episode flashing back to Prowl's joining of Optimus Prime's team, Prowl claims to have spent a ''million years'' in meditation before they disturbed him, and shortly afterwards, Optimus casually refers to 50 or 60 years as being "no time at all" before they can all head back to Cybertron.
60** IDW Kup, mostly seen in ''ComicBook/TheTransformersRobotsInDisguise'', was already old when he was sent back in time to the beginning of the Dead Universe. Having taken TheSlowPath back to the present before returning to the normal universe none the worse for wear, he is almost definitely older than ''the universe itself''.
61** And then the 80's cartoon gave us Primacron, who in that continuity ''created'' Primus, Unicron and the Quintessons, and is still kicking around tampering with Creation in the present day. To boot, he also doesn't seem to have the justification of being made of metal, appearing to be a small organic alien monkey.
62[[/folder]]
63
64[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
65* ''Manga/AfterGod'': The Gods can track themselves to 700 million years ago, and apparently there was also once a human they're still scared of.
66* [[spoiler:[[HumanoidAbomination Ronnie Schiatto]]]] from ''Literature/{{Baccano}}'' is implied to be this. Although he doesn't give an exact date, he does drop a mention that he's been around since ancient times.
67* In ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'', a few members of the Zero Division seem to be older than Yamamoto himself. They are responsible for the fundamental tenets of Soul Society, so this makes sense. For example, Oetsu Nimaiya is the creator of Asauchi, the basic form of all Zanpakuto, while Ichibe Hyosube was responsible for the naming of everything in Soul Society. The novels reveal that Ichibe is ''millions'' of years old and in fact predates the creation of Soul Society itself.
68* The Kiltgangs in ''Anime/CaptainEarth'' are so incredibly old that [[spoiler:Teppei]] notes how weird an ordinary day (and life) on Earth feels. Then there's also the problem that anyone the Designer's Children kiss will be confronted via a telepathic kiss with memories worth eons upon eons of aggressive space warrior lifestyle.
69* The Millennium Earl from ''Manga/DGrayMan'' is implied to be thousands of years old. He fought an as of yet unnamed hero wielding the Heart of Innocence during the Great Flood. [[spoiler:He's the First of the Noah, and the only one who never reincarnated; moreover, while this made fans speculate that he was the biblical Noah, it's been recently implied that he's actually ''Adam''.]]
70* ''Franchise/DragonBall'':
71** The Kaios and Kaioshins. The youngest-looking of them is over five million years old and has not aged visibly in that time. The Old Kaioshin is roughly seventy-five million years old, according to WordOfGod.
72** The wizard Babidi, considering his father was killed five million years ago. Unlike the Kaioshins though, Babidi does look quite old.
73** ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' states that Beerus was the one who sealed the Old Kaioshin in the sword 75 million years ago. [[spoiler:As mentor of successive gods of destruction]], Whis is probably a lot older than this.
74** Majin Buu, the BigBad of the Buu saga (and Babidi's DragonInChief/[[spoiler:killer]]) came into being five million years ago. Or rather, that's what people believe. According to WordOfGod, Buu has actually existed since time immemorial. While Bibidi (Babidi's father) ''thought'' he had created Buu, he actually only summoned him.
75* ''Manga/FlyMeToTheMoon'': [[spoiler: Tsukasa feels her immortality is this after she was forced to drink the elixer when she was 16 (1,400 years is a very long time for somebody who wants to die at some point). From the perspective of all the other characters she certainly carries this aura, speaking of how lucky they are that they can travel across Japan in a few hours when 1,000 years ago it would have taken a week.]]
76* [[spoiler:[[TheManBehindTheMan Gooyan]]]], the true BigBad in ''Anime/FutariWaPrettyCureSplashStar'', is old enough to remember the universe before the Big Bang. He states that the silence was peaceful and that the cacophony of life is abhorrent to him. His entire goal is [[OmnicidalManiac to remove all life from the universe]] and return to that nothingness.
77* ''Manga/{{Guyver}}'': Zoalords Archanfel and Waferdanos were born before the last Ice Age, making them at least three million years old. The aliens who created them had been tampering with life on Earth pretty much since it first appeared, a ''billion'' or so years ago.
78* Stated in the trivia section of it's own wiki page, Ikaros from ''Manga/HeavensLostProperty'' is actually over 100 quadrillion years old.
79* ''Manga/HoshinEngi'': Joka and Fukki have been around since before humanity appeared on Earth. And with the reveal that [[spoiler:Joka has [[RestartTheWorld restarted the world]] so many times she lost track of the count, and the fact that we don't know exactly how old they were when they arrived on Earth to begin with]], they're likely several millions years old at least.
80* The Pillar Men from ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' are an ancient race of vampiric superbeings, stated to have been around since before the dawn of mankind.
81* Ajimu Najimi of ''Manga/MedakaBox'' is orders of magnitude older '''than the universe'''. Apparently it was quite boring before the Big Bang.
82* Dragons in ''Manga/MissKobayashisDragonMaid'' are mentioned to have lifespans on the magnitude of billions of years. Lucoa in particular is explicitly older than the Earth itself [[spoiler:and is established in ''Manga/MononokeSharing'' to have been one of the gods who made it in the first place.]]
83* [[spoiler:Garterbelt]] is one in ''Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt'', being forced to relive all of Earth's history since the dinosaurs by God.
84* ''Manga/QueenMillennia'': La-Metalians can live for over 1000 years with ease and Mirai is 360 million years old. She even recognizes Hajime because she's touched a hand of his prehistoric ancestor.
85* The Observer of Time in ''Anime/RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio''. [[spoiler:Ayato becomes the Observer at the end of the movie.]]
86* It isn't clear how old [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Onashia]] is in ''Anime/{{Simoun}}'' (or how long she's [[TheHighQueen ruled Simulacrum]]), but her [[WhoWantsToLiveForever personality]] definitely [[ICannotSelfTerminate qualifies]].
87* ''Manga/TalesOfWeddingRings'': The elven Elder, Peridot, is well over 500 years old, making her both the oldest living person in the world and the only one with firsthand knowledge of the original Ring King's mythic war against the [[BigBad Abyss King]]. A flashback to the war shows that, beyond her skin darkening over the intervening centuries, she looks the same now as she did then.
88* The Choushin from ''Anime/TenchiMuyo''. For an uncounted period of time they searched for a being greater than themselves. It's unknown how long they existed like that, assuming time even applies to that state, but they eventually created ''the entire multiverse of space and time'' and have been around ever since. And if that doesn't mean anything to you, then one of them created a physical body to exist in which she is still alive and kicking over twenty thousand years later.
89* The [[spoiler:living ruins under the town]] in ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}''. Older than sentient life, they exist to cause an EternalRecurrence of madness and destruction. The story is just one cycle of their purpose.
90* In ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', the Light of Ruin was a CosmicEntity that has literally been around for eons.
91[[/folder]]
92
93[[folder:Card Games]]
94* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'':
95** Nicol Bolas and Ugin are the last survivors of the Elder Dragons that ruled Dominaria when it was young. Ugin is described as unfathomably ancient, and Nicol Bolas is said to be over 25,000 years old -- to quote Tezzeret]: "I would have picked an opponent younger than, say, human civilization".
96** The Eldrazi Titans are alien gods formed before colored magic even existed. This means that they're older than Nicol Bolas, putting their age in the tens of thousands of years.
97** Any of the living, active Paruns in Ravnica (A parun being the founder of any of the ten guilds) counts, given that by the time of the first Ravnica block story, the guilds have been around for 10,000 years. The only survivors are Niv-Mizzet (the MadScientist dragon of Izzet), Rakdos (the demon in charge of his namesake guild), and Mat'Selesnya (the godlike elemental leader of the Selesnya, although unlike the other two they have not been directly seen in card form). [[spoiler:There is actually one more: Azor, the parun of Azorius, but being a planeswalker, he is currently not in Ravnica, but nevertheless alive and well.]]
98** Ugin's one-time allies Sorin Markov and Nahiri also qualify to a lesser degree. Sorin, a vampire planeswalkers, is about 8000 years old (as they first meet 4000 years ago and she remarks upon escaping the Helvault in modern times that she is now older than he was when they first met). While Nahiri was technically in suspended animation for most of her life she was conscious the entire time and constantly tormented by the legions demons sealed inside with her.
99[[/folder]]
100
101[[folder:Comic Books]]
102* ''Franchise/TheDCU'':
103** The ComicBook/NewGods of the Fourth World and their predecessors, the Old Gods, who predate the DC universe.
104** Vandal Savage is one of these, though you'd never know it just by looking at him. He began life as a caveman, and became immortal when exposed to [[GreenRocks a mysterious meteor]]. It was revealed in ''ComicBook/FinalCrisis: Revelations'' that [[spoiler:Savage is Cain. Yes, ''[[Literature/TheBible that]]'' Cain]]. In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', [[spoiler:it was shown that he was still kicking thirty thousand years after the end of the world, which, incidentally, he caused]].
105** Savage's arch-nemesis, the ComicBook/ResurrectionMan. Or maybe not; originally, every time he died, he reincarnated as a baby. Thanks to some scientific experimentation on his current incarnation, he now straight-up resurrects -- and survives in this incarnation up through the future of ''ComicBook/DCOneMillion''.
106* ''ComicBook/DoctorStrange'' villain [[EldritchAbomination Shuma Gorath]] and the other Many-Angled Ones were some of the first creatures to ever exist in the multiverse.
107* ''ComicBook/ElfQuest'' has quite a few long-lived characters which have been around since the humans were still in their stone age (with later stories taking place in a medievalish period), but ignoring those that got there by skipping millennia still leaves some examples: Two-Edge must be pushing twenty thousand years, was a legend in two troll kingdoms that have since crumbled, and had more or less secretly significant influence on the technological advancement of humankind. His mother, [[spoiler:Winnowill]] saw her tribe of elves go from wild forest dwellers to civilised, was cut off from them and watched/played with humans for some ten thousand years. She was venerated as a goddess by two entirely separate human peoples. Timmain spent most of her time as a wolf, but probably still counts. [[spoiler:When the immortal shapeshifting aliens that were the ancestors of elves were stranded on the World of Two Moons, she had lived through their space flight, which was long enough for the marmot and butterfly like animals they brought along to evolve into sentient humanoids. Before that, she was the last of her kind who remembered that they used to breed -- which the immortals had given up due to overpopulation of their planet.]]
108* In ''ComicBook/{{Fables}}'', Frau Totenkinder was originally a tribal shaman in the Paleolithic era.
109* ''ComicBook/GreatLakesAvengers'': All indications are that Mr. Immortal is destined to be Galactus's equivalent in the next universe. His power is being completely incapable of dying (or rather, of ''staying dead''). Not even the most powerful of omnipotent beings could [[KilledOffForReal kill him off for real]], meaning that he ''will'' be this trope, whether he likes it or not. And ''he's a JokeCharacter''.
110* ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'':
111** The Guardians of The Universe, source of Green Lantern's power. They were among the first sentient races to evolve, and are several billion years old -- as individuals, that is, not just as a species. Additionally the other races that share ancestry with the Guardians, like the Zamorans and the Controllers.
112** Enemies of the Guardians, such as Larfleeze, Atrocitus, and the older Manhunters, also have ages in the billions.
113** The Emotional Spectrum entities, born from the emotions of sentient life, are similarly old. Each one is stated to be the ''first living thing ever'' to experience the emotion of which they are an embodiment.
114** ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'':
115*** The Life Entity is the oldest being in existence. It triggered the birth of life in the first place. Nekron, the cosmic void's response to life, is the second oldest being in existence.
116*** The being known as Relic is even older than the Life Entity, since he is the only remaining member of the [=LightSmiths=], who were the first discoverers and users of the emotional spectrum, doing things even the Guardians couldn't even imagine. Relic is from the previous universe before the current DC universe the Life Entity created.
117* ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': One short story reveals that there is an inhabitant of [[MirrorUniverse Deadworld]] who outlasted even the immortal Dark Judges: the Boneman. Tasked with the mission to "endure" and "remember", the Boneman watched Necro-City One turn to dust, watched oceans evaporate, and the atmosphere dissipate, until one day justice might return to that cursed world.
118* [[MultipleChoicePast Depending on his identity]], the ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' villain named the Time Trapper is this. In all incarnations, the Time Trapper was born at least during the 30th-31st century, but has survived to operate ''at the end of time itself''.
119* ''ComicBook/{{Lucifer}}'':
120** [[EldritchAbomination The Jin En Mok]] predate the creation of the universe and want to escape it.
121** Also [[EldritchAbomination The Silk Man]], another survivor of a previous Creation, possibly the same one as the Jin En Mok, possibly not.
122** Lucifer ruled hell for 10 billion years -- which means every single angel and lilim is older than this.[[note]]However, time doesn't flow exactly the same for angels, devils, and God as it does for humans -- see the Sandman example below for an explanation.[[/note]]
123** One issue includes a Mesopotamian priestess who was cursed by the OldGods to experience the same miscarriage every day for eternity. She has been searching for millennia for [[WhoWantsToLiveForever a way to finally die]] and get her revenge on the gods.
124* The ''Franchise/MarvelUniverse'' is full of this. Galactus is the sole survivor of the universe existing before the Big Bang. Each member of the Elders of the Universe is the last survivor of a forgotten race from billions of years ago who fanatically pursues a personal obsession such as collecting, gaming or fighting. The Proemials were born as the Universe was created, the Elder Gods emerged before life first appeared on Earth, the Eternals are a million years old (created by the even more ancient Celestials), the various Gods are thousands to tens of thousands of years old, the Master of the World is forty thousand years old, the Neanderthal Cole witnessed the sinking of Lemuria twenty thousand years ago, the mutant Selene is seventeen thousand years old, and Black Axe is almost fifteen thousand.
125* Perhaps the most extreme non-cosmic example of the Marvel Universe is John Sublime from ''ComicBook/NewXMen''. He is a sentient bacteria who lives on Earth since the ''beginning of life'' on the planet, making him over 3 '''billion''' years old.
126* [[spoiler:Walker]] from ''ComicBook/{{Powers}}''. He's at least old enough to have been part of a clan of missing links, and his DNA has continued to mutate and evolve over time so that he fits right in today. Perhaps fortunately, perhaps unfortunately, [[TheFogOfAges his memory only goes back a very limited time]], maybe about a hundred years. Things towards the beginning of that span start fading and getting blurry, and eventually are replaced with new memories. Occasionally a catalyst can give him flashes of some long dormant memories, though.
127* The two main antagonists of ''ComicBook/RachelRising'' are Myth/{{Lilith}} (in the popular origin story that she was Adam's first wife before Eve was created) and a FallenAngel named Malus. So both of the bad guys have been around for as long as the human species has existed, or longer.
128* The world of ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' is implied to have a handful of inhabitants that inspire one of the quotes on the quotations page. For the most part, we are [[CrypticBackgroundReference just assured that they're out there]], somewhere. We do meet one or two of them, though.
129** The Endless, Lucifer, and any other angel are said to be ten billion years old, the figure Creator/NeilGaiman used as the age of the universe. Though information revealed later in the comic seems to contradict this somewhat: only Destiny is anywhere near the age of the universe, whereas the rest of them only came into existence when lifeforms complex enough to experience the concept they embody first evolved (then again, lifeforms that qualify include [[GeniusLoci stars]] and {{eldritch abomination}}s, pushing things much earlier than might be expected). The angels and other mythical beings exist in a strange Schroedinger-esque state of being as old as time itself and [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve having only existed for as long as humans believed in them]] -- or put another way, they were already ancient when they came into existence.
130** Thessaly, a human being (as opposed to cosmic spiritual entity) and powerful witch, sounds Neolithic when she describes her age in ''A Game of You''.
131** ''Brief Lives'' starts one chapter with a rough count of the number of humans and human-like beings on Earth who remember mammoths, Atlantis (the first one), dinosaurs, and were around before the Earth formed. Then it follows a 15,000-year old lawyer on his way to work, until he's crushed by a pile of falling bricks.
132** ''Endless Nights'' shows all the Endless around and established when the Earth was still cooling and lifeless, and the green energy of the Guardians of Oa was just a budding research project. So, at least four billion years old.
133** When Dream has William Shakespeare and company put on an outdoor performance of ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' at a hill called Wendel's Mound, Dream mentions that the mound was a theatre site before Shakespeare's race came to Britain.
134--->'''Shakespeare''': "Before the Normans?"\
135'''Dream''': "Before the humans."
136** ''ComicBook/TheSandmanOverture'' introduces beings even older than The Endless: [[spoiler:their parents Time (Chronos) and Night (Nyx)]].
137* [[spoiler:Knuckles the Echidna]] and Chaos in ''ComicBook/SonicTheComic'' were alive during the great war between the Echindnas and the Drakons which happened over eight thousand years ago.
138* Mammoth Mogul from ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'' is an immortal, and at ''least'' twelve thousand years old.
139* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'':
140** The one-shot ''Strange Visitor'' depicts a Superman in a universe where he started fighting crime [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks in 1938 at street-level]], but grew StrongerWithAge. By 2013, he's stronger than his mainline counterpart and has barely aged... but he finds, as the story goes on, that he's truly TheAgeless, and by the end of the story, he's literally survived to the ''heat-death of the universe''. Even moreso, [[SuperpowerLottery his power has grown to the point]] that he can ''hold back'' the heat-death of the universe, which he does so for billions of years, until the last life in the universe (the god Anu) dies. Even through all this, though, he still remembers to save a group of astronauts that were lost in time in 1939.
141** By the end of ''ComicBook/TheImmortalSuperman'', Kal-El has lived over one million years of history.
142** In ''ComicBook/SupermanVsShazam'', [[BigBad Karmang]] is way older than the Earth's first four-legged, air-breathing animals.
143* ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'': The setting qualifies, simply because they ''don't know how old their civilization is''. Oh, they have time travel technology, and they have fixed dates for historical events at around our present and beyond; they just don't know what date it is ''right now''. At some point, the ridiculously advanced society simply lost track of what date it was; they currently tell time by counting the amount of years from the historical events of their own history.
144* ''ComicBook/UltimateFantasticFour'':
145** Namor has been imprisoned for over 9000 years. The worst this did to him was to cause a bit of muscular atrophy, like astronauts suffer from.
146** Likewise the Super-Skrull, the oldest living Skrull, is over a billion years old.
147* Ananke in ''ComicBook/TheWickedAndTheDivine'' -- she has been alive for well over 6,000 years, incarnating herself as a young girl (who ages into the "Crone" of the Mother-Maiden-Crone trinity) and using four gods' heads as a ritual to ensure this happens. With one exception (possibly two, if the 9th century Egypt is to be believed) she succeeds this for every 90-ish years... until 2015 when [[spoiler: Laura found the true way to end Ananke's cycle, and then Valentine [[DisneyVillainDeath jumped off a building and took Minervananke with him]], causing the end of the cycle]].
148* ''ComicBook/XMen'' villain Comicbook/{{Apocalypse}} was born in ancient Egypt and in various cartoons/comics boasts about things like how 20th/21st century superpowers/technology are no closer to besting him than Babylonian fire sticks were.
149** Fellow X-villain Selene, Black Queen of the Hellfire Club and vampiric mutant, clocks in at about 15,000 years old, makeing her at least three times as old as Apocalypse.
150[[/folder]]
151
152[[folder:Fan Works]]
153* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8984362/10/Alpha-and-Omega Alpha and Omega]]'': [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Shinji]] is estimated to be ''1.68 decillion years'' old (That's 33 zeroes. Or to put it another way, he's lived through roughly a billion ''billion'' universes). Near the end, Shinji realizes one of the [[EldritchAbomination Leviathans]] is even ''older'' than he is.
154* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10258420/1/Belonging Belonging]]'', a ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' fic, features Kishar, a female demon who, along with her friends, imprisoned Trigon in another dimension ''200 million years ago''. The friends made a HeroicSacrifice, while she remained guarding the prison. In the end, she got bored and created humanity to have some company. Toward the end of the story, Kishar summons Death (to discuss the repercussions of a certain difficult choice made) and casually mentions it's been nearly a billion years since she last did that.
155* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'':
156** Doctor Strange admits that, between his longevity and constant time travel, he doesn't remember how old he is. [[spoiler:He stopped counting at ''100,000'', and roughly estimates he's about five times that.]] Adding to that, his constant time travel mean that he's woven through ''billions'' of years of history.
157** Thanos, by contrast, is not a time traveller and is so unbelievably old that per WordOfGod, "no one knows what Thanos was, let alone what he is now."
158* ''Fanfic/ACrownOfStars'': Daniel, GodEmperor of Avalon, is 452,388 years old. His wife Rayana is ''slightly'' younger... ten or twenty thousand years younger.
159-->''Asuka's brain was still refusing to process that number. He was 452,388 years old?! Stone tools weren’t that old! Fire wasn't that old!''
160* ''Fanfic/DungeonKeeperAmi'': The Light Gods, and Dark Gods as categories have existed since "a time so long ago that even the continents of this planet did not yet have their present shape".
161* In ''[[http://eloze.northcastle.co.uk/ ELOZE]]'', when speaking to the Sand Goddess, she laughs at the prospect of Ganon destroying the world.
162--> "THIS MEANS NOTHING TO ME. I WAS FIRST. I SHALL BE LAST. THERE WILL BE ONLY DESERT. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING I, CHAOS, WILL RULE."
163* ''Fanfic/HauntedMansionAndTheHatboxGhost'': Spirits in [[Fanfic/HauntedMansionAndTheHatboxGhost the Mansionverse]] are functionally immortal; Ammit the Devourer (yes, [[Myth/EgyptianMythology that one]]) and the One-Eyed Black Cat, two demons of unknown origins, still remember the Egyptian gods of old, and it is theorized some of the bedsheet ghosts in the Mansion are millenia-old ghosts who have, by now, completely forgotten their mortal life, and may have been Neanderthals for all we know.
164* ''Fanfic/HereThereBeMonsters'':
165** Amentep and his wife Taia were born in Ancient Egypt over four millennia ago.
166--->When he stepped through the doorway into the living room again, he looked like a new man. His head was wrapped in a red turban with a yellow jewel at the forehead, and his body was clothed in a formal, black suit with a red opera-style cape hanging from his shoulders. In his hand was the golden wand with the oblong head that was centuries older than himself.\
167And Amentep, like Taia, was over 4,000 years old.
168** Shazam -- the wizard -- was born eons ago. His power made the first super-hero and virtually immortal, until he asked for the gift of aging.
169--->''Eons past, Shazam himself had wielded the power of the ancient gods, as a super-hero -- the first such being on Earth. Then he had asked for the gift of aging, and been given it, though he aged at a much reduced rate compared to normal men.''
170* ''Fanfic/HopeForTheHeartless'':
171** [[{{Omnipotence}} The]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Invisibles]], creations and servants of [[CosmicEntities the Fates]] themselves, are stated to have existed for a millennium.
172** [[AncientEvil Arawn]], the [[NamesToRunAwayFrom/{{Nouns}} Death]] [[NamesToRunAwayFrom/{{Titles}} Lord]] of Annuvin, who died several centuries ago, is revealed to have existed centuries (possibly millennia) before that through various means.
173* ''Fanfic/TheInfiniteLoops'': Due to damage to the WorldTree, every universe has been put into "safe mode," [[GroundhogDayLoop looping eternally]]. Each universe has an Anchor (who is Awake for every loop) and normal loopers (who vary on whether they're Awake or not). Loops tend to last at least a year or two minimum, depending on the universe, and it's not uncommon for variant loops to last millennia. Every looper therefore has an age somewhere between "practically infinite" to "about the same as the age of the planet they're standing on." On their first loop, new loopers are often horrified when other "young" loopers will describe something a few centuries ago as "recent." Looping children, in particular, have to deal with NotAllowedToGrowUp, meaning that with the exception of extreme variant loops they will always be treated as children by non-loopers even though they are orders of magnitude older and wiser.
174* ''FanWorks/MyLittlePony'':
175** Pony fanfiction in general likes to dwell on the princesses' staggering, incomprehensible age. [[WhoWantsToLiveForever Sometimes it's not pretty.]] [[LivingForeverIsAwesome Sometimes it just]] [[CloudCuckoolander makes them willing]] [[WeirdnessCoupon to be a bit kooky]] because they have the perspective to know it'll all blow over in a few decades.
176** ''Fanfic/{{Antipodes}}'': Tantalus, Celestia and Luna began life as the living embodiments of chaos, order and the void between them and predate the formation of the world. Rubidium was also alive during the fall of civilization, making him around ten thousand years old and the oldest living non-divine entity in the story.
177** ''Fanfic/{{Austraeoh}}'': Downplayed. While we're never given exact ages for the elder alicorns (namely Celestia and Luna), they predate life as we know it. And they only discovered the world. [[spoiler:Whoever built it was probably even older]]. Whitemane and other lesser alicorn are also old, but note quite to that level of ancient.
178** ''Fanfic/DaylightBurning'': The Nightmare is an ImmortalitySeeker who has been around for a very long time, predating Equestria, the Princesses, Discord and the original Three Tribes.
179** ''Fanfic/ADiplomaticVisit'': Chapter 2 of the sequel ''Diplomat at Large'' reveals that Chrysalis is quite literally the ''first'' changeling Queen (not the first of their race, but the first to undergo a metamorphosis into a Queen), and as such is over a millennium old.
180** ''[[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/206633/- Ἐλπίς]]'' ("Elpis", Greek for "hope"): Celestia is not just older than the universe -- she is so incomprehensibly, unfathomably old that she has lived through the birth and death of countless universes. Every single time the universe comes to an end, she is forced to re-experience her memories of every single universe that had ever existed up to that point, and then is given a choice: to end the universe for good, or to "try again" and start the universe over from nothing. Every single time, she chooses to restart the universe, hoping that she can prevent TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt this time. Over, and over, and over...
181** ''Fanfic/EternalMLP'': Unicorns are immortal. Galaxy is the oldest, being older than time itself.
182** ''Fanfic/TheGodEmpressOfPonykind'': [[GodEmperor Princess Celestia]] mentions her true age is a bit upwards of ''four billion'' years old.
183** ''[[http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/05/story-merely-mare.html Merely a Mare]]'': [[PhysicalGod Princess Luna]] casually mentions that she and her sister Celestia are more than four hundred million years old. Pinkie Pie, [[CloudCuckooLander being Pinkie Pie]], wonders how she'll ever fit that many candles on her birthday cake.
184** ''Fanfic/TheMoonstoneCup'': Amarok the giant wolf is incredibly old -- the oldest records describing him go back to the ponies' prehistoric period, making him comfortably older than Celestia and Luna and probably the oldest living being in the world.
185** ''Fanfic/ThePiecesLieWhereTheyFell'': [[spoiler:The Nightmare is old enough that it cannot even remember if it was male or female.]]
186** ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'':
187*** The Concepts (such as Celestia, Luna, and Discord) are this if they didn't [[DeityOfHumanOrigin use to be a pony]]. Celestia reveals at one point she was present for the ''Big Bang'', meaning she's at least 13 billion years old -- and she's one of the ''younger'' Concepts. That also doesn't take into account the fact time doesn't exist as we know it in the spirit world and they are likely far older than that. If only her physical body is taken into account, she's still several thousand years old The [[TopGod Elders]] are even older, predating ''time itself''. and have seen the birth and death of the universe ''several'' times. In fact, Fauna Luster is the ''birth'' of the universe and Entropy is its death.
188*** Tirek and the Moochick are both so old that [[spoiler:they predate ponies as a sapient species]].
189** ''Fanfic/SharingTheNight'': Luna and Celestia are about two thousand and change years old. Far older than them are the eldest dragons still capable of being roused, whose memories stretch back many millennia. The eldest spoken to, Emberstoke, recalls as his very earliest memory the scouring rain of fire and stone that ended the previous world. [[spoiler:Gemini, the ghost of two of the ancient alicorns, has the cumulative memories of the two deities whose deaths caused this catastrophe, who had already been ten thousand years old in the bygone age.]]
190** ''Fanfic/TheWorldIsFilledWithMonsters'': It's not made clear how old it is, exactly, but Blightweaver is implied to be very old indeed. If its boasts are to be taken at face value, it was already around before ponies developed civilization or even sapience.
191** ''Fanfic/TheWritingOnTheWall'': The tomb is seventy-one thousand years old, and by far the oldest structure ever discovered. It is so old that conventional dating methods fail and its age can only be determined accurately thanks to an astronomical calendar helpfully left inside by its builders. Of the many, many languages represented on the eponymous wall, only the newest one is even recognizable to the explorers, and even that language is so old they don't have the reference materials they need to translate it on hand. [[spoiler:Which is a pity, because if they could have translated it sooner, they would have known the "tomb" is actually a nuclear waste storage facility, and they wouldn't be dying of radiation sickness.]]
192* ''Fanfic/ANewChanceSeries'': Many of the older Legendary Pokemon have been around for millions of years. [[spoiler:A century in a Soul Dew doesn't really bother Father Latios as much as missing out on raising his children.]] The infant Lugia encountered in the Whirl Islands is alone older than human history.
193* ''Fanfic/NobledarkImperium'': During a battle against the Tyranids, the Imperium managed to bring down a Hive Ship more or less intact and has spent the past few centuries studying it. When the technicians assigned to it were able to determine the thing's age -- which they had to do using radioactive isotope dating of the kind normally used for rocks, as regular carbon dating doesn't work well for anything more than fifty thousand years old -- they determined that the ship was around five million years in age. Not the Tyranid race, mind -- just that one ship. The margin of error alone was larger than the history of human civilization.
194* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10685852/2/On-a-Pale-Horse On a Pale Horse]]'': Harry Potter, or at least a version of him, is old enough that he uses the Earth's age as a unit of time, such as thinking he hadn't been a hero in "about four Earths worth of time".
195* ''Fanfic/ParisBurning'' has the personifications of some of the world's oldest cities, such as Jerusalem or Athens. Older still are the beings Cities consider to be the first of their kind, immortals of mysterious origin who reside in Africa and witnessed the birth of the first creatures we would recognize as human. And older, possibly, than ''them'' are the [[EldritchAbomination Things]] that sleep in the depths of the earth, one of which once said, [[http://thecitysmith.tumblr.com/post/73883673272/and-what-of-the-walls-and-borders-that-were-pounded-and "We do not feel pain because we existed before it."]]
196* ''Fanfic/ProjectDarkJade'': In the {{Recursive Fanfic|tion}} ''Fanfic/HerShadowedRealm'', due to absorbing the Dog and Horse Talismans, Jade has CompleteImmortality, and has been trapped in the Shadow Realm so long that she was ''already'' ancient by the time Egypt started the Shadow games ''thousands of years ago!''
197* ''Fanfic/RainbowBriteAndTheWarOfDarkness'' notes that Rainbow Brite's lifetime has spanned millions of years, with no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
198* ''Fanfic/TheSacredAndTheProfane'': According to the prologue, the War in Heaven and the resulting mass falling is very difficult to describe in a way humans can understand because it happened before anything familiar about reality to mankind, even time itself, was invented by God. Thus, this places the ages of Caphriel and Zirah as probably over fourteen billion years.
199* ''Fanfic/SonicXDarkChaos'': The Eternal War has raged between the Angels and Demons for five hundred ''trillion'' years. Maledict and Allysion are even older than that; they helped create the entire universe several times over.
200* ''Fanfic/SonOfTheWesternSea'': Percy admits that his baseline for "older than dirt" is anything before the time of the Titans, and only a few beings qualify. These include the Egyptian goddess Nekhbet and a [[NoodleIncident mysterious lady who he met in Iran]]. Then in Australia he realises that the [[Myth/AboriginalAustralianMyths Rainbow Serpent]] (which just [[PokeInTheThirdEye literally hit him out of a vision]]) is far, ''far'' older than both of them and what he was seeing had happened tens of thousands of years ago. ''And was still happening''.
201* ''Fanfic/SparkToSparkDustToDust'': Cybertronians, like their canonical counterparts, are extremely long lived. Their war has been going on for possibly longer than the existence of Remnant itself. When the Autobots originally crash landed on Remnant, Optimus states that the moon was still whole, which was well before the God of Darkness' genocide of mankind.
202* ''Fanfic/ThereWasOnceAnAvengerFromKrypton'':
203** The Collector claims that he's been alive since the dawn of creation, which would make him several billion years old at the youngest.
204** Moonstone states that she stopped keeping track of how old she is after she turned 10,000. Pidge even states that she's older than human agriculture. This naturally applies to the Diamonds as well since they're all ''much'' older than she is and one of the normal colonization methods they use amounts to "wait until the planet's species goes extinct".
205** The Omnitrix is somewhere in the ballpark of 100,000 years or less, having been created at a time when the Celestials still roamed the universe and the Asgardians were still in their early warmongering days.
206** As in canon, the Kwamis. Pollen mentions that she, as one of the older Kwamis, was born when the stars were ''young'', and that even before Tikki and Plagg (the former of whom was born ''at the same time the universe was'' if canon's lore still applies) there was an entity that all the Kwamis [[PiecesOfGod were once part of]] before that.
207** Vilgax claims that the Celestials -- who are merged with the Ben 10 Celestialsapiens (Alien X's species) -- actually ''made'' TheMultiverse and everything in it, making them as a species the current record holders for "oldest beings in existence".
208* ''Fanfic/ThingsWeDontTellHumans'': Along with the canon TimeAbyss Alpha Trion, Jetfire/Skyfire is also that old. It's heavily implied that he was the consort of one of the original Primes.
209* ''Fanfic/TopDog'': The roots of wizardry come from an ancient, powerfully magical civilization that existed on Earth about seventy thousand years ago. They created a race of {{Voluntary Shapeshift|ing}}ers to serve as shock troops in war, and, predictably enough, [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters were destroyed by them]]. Those shapeshifters later became the Amerai, and the clan heads are still almost all original created Amerai, rather than newer born.
210* ''Fanfic/TheUniversiad'': The Originals have lived for twelve thousand years.
211* ''Fanfic/TheWeaverOption'': [[spoiler:Lelith Hesperax]] is revealed to just be the [[IHaveManyNames latest identity]] of a far older being. She was born Aenaria Eldanesh and is the last living Aeldari to have fought in the War in Heaven. This makes her likely the oldest mortal being in the galaxy, and potentially older than even the Chaos Gods -- certainly older than Slaanesh.
212* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028117/chapters/40035780 World Enough And Time]]'': Part of TheReveal is that [[spoiler: both C.C. and V.V. existed before this ''current'' version of the world did. It's complicated to the point of MindScrew in how it's presented and even C.C. isn't entirely certain how and why she's immortal as TheFogOfAges has muddled her memory.]]
213[[/folder]]
214
215[[folder:Film -- Animated]]
216* ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'': King Kashekhim Nedakh is apparently 100,000+ years old when he dies in 1914 (when most of the story takes place). His daughter Kida, on the other hand, [[Really700YearsOld is approximately their equivalent of a teenager, despite being between 8,500 and 8,800 years old]].
217* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Minions}}'', it's hinted that at least ''some'' of the titular creatures may be the same ones that emerged from the ocean during the Cretaceous, and that they may even have existed since the dawn of life as single-celled organisms.
218* ''WesternAnimation/RiseOfTheGuardians'': Judging by the fact that he personifies good dreams, it seems that [[TheSandman Sandy]] has existed since humans first started to dream, which means that he is as old as humanity itself. As is [[EvilCounterpart Pitch]].
219* Number 22 from ''WesternAnimation/{{Soul}}'' is implied by her insanely low designation to have been around since the beginning of humanity. To put it in perspective, there is mention of soul 108 billion,[[note]] which [[ShownTheirWork is actually the approximate number of people that have lived in history]], at least during the time that the movie was made[[/note]] which means that there were around 108 billion people who lived and died after she was conceived.
220[[/folder]]
221
222[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
223* The alien eggs found in the ancient derelict ship from ''Film/{{Alien}}'' contain parasites that have been staying alive waiting for an oblivious victim to come along for God knows how much time, given that the alien pilot (the previous victim of the alien which presumably died before or after the crash) looks fossilized.
224* The Antareans in ''Film/{{Cocoon}}''. The first base they built here on Earth? It was ''{{Atlantis}}''.
225--> '''Walter''': Every ten or eleven thousand years or so, I make a terrible mistake.
226* The very premise of ''Film/{{Eternals}}'' is that they've been on Earth since the early beginnings of civilization, 7000 years ago. Later in the movie we find out that [[spoiler:they have had these missions before and with the exception of Ajak have been getting their minds wiped, so they've all existed for millions of years]].
227* ''Film/{{Glorious}}'': Ghatanothoa has resided in the aether since the dawn of time. He acknowledges that he is a very old and very lonely god. [[BenevolentAbomination He's very friendly though]].
228* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'':
229** ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah'': Godzilla's titular foe is mentioned to have originated during Precambrian times, and so old that they're actually anaerobic, implying that Destoroyah is more than two-billion years old.
230** Godzilla is suggested in the ''Film/Godzilla2014'' prequel comic to have survived the Permian Extinction and shifted between dormancy and active hunting across 250 million years, appearing at various points throughout human history. The [=MUTO=]s eggs laid dormant in a massive skeleton for millions of years.
231* Ego, the Living Planet in ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2'' is a being that predates all known accounts, originally starting as a giant brain then forming a planet around it. In that time he's created humanoid extensions of himself to travel the stars and meet other races and creatures, reproducing with many of them. [[spoiler:Unfortunately all that time spent interacting with other creatures has left him with a tepid opinion of the universe and, seeing that no one out there can match his existence, he wants to destroy the universe and create anew]].
232* ''Film/HalloweenIIISeasonOfTheWitch'': [[BigBad Cochran]] somewhat implies his pagan religion to be this, saying that the last time a sacrifice happened due to the same [[WhenThePlanetsAlign planetary alignment]] was 3000 years ago; if that ancient event wasn't the first occurrence, that would make the rite at ''least'' 6000 years old, predating recorded history.
233* ''Film/HowlingIIStirbaWerewolfBitch'': Unlike other werewolves, Stirba can restore her youth. She is very nearly ten thousand years old. In the Russian dub, she ''predates humanity''.
234* In ''Film/JupiterAscending'', the late Abrasax Matriarch was over 91 ''thousand'' years old when she died. Of the "younger" generation Kalique recently passed the 14 millennia mark and she's the ''middle'' child.
235* In ''Film/TheLastWitchHunter'', the Witch Queen claims to remember the times before mankind. Depending on which hominid you consider to be human already, her lifespan could be measured in millions of years.
236* John [[PunnyName Oldman]] from ''Film/TheManFromEarth'' is just about fourteen thousand years old, according to his own count. However, TheFogOfAges set in a long time ago for him, and a lot of his own knowledge regarding his earliest memories has been pieced together from studying archaeology.
237* The nameless monster from ''Film/NoSuchThing'', played by Robert John Burke, gives a speech about how he was there "When you were young", referring to life on Earth itself, in which he mentions that the period of time before we evolved into fish (i.e. the Precambrian era) was very boring for him.
238* The creature that possesses the body of Grant Grant in ''Film/{{Slither}}'' claims to have been around for a billion years, which is likely considering that it travels from planet to planet via meteorite, a mode of transportation that takes tens of millions of years at minimum.
239* In ''Franchise/StarWars'', Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke that the Jedi Knights have been "the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic" for "over a thousand generations." Expanded universe materials have generally taken this claim literally to mean that both the Republic and the Jedi Order have existed in some form for at least 25,000 years (though with various interludes in which the Sith took over all or part of the galaxy, or large swaths of the Republic fell out of touch with the whole).
240** Some of the species in this also qualify from a human's point of view, though not their own. Most notably, Yoda is 900 years old at the time of his death, which is normal for his species' lifespan. Somewhat less prolonged but still notable from a human point of view, Chewbacca is 200 years old and Jabba the Hutt 600 years old at the time of the movies.
241* Malekith and the Dark Elves from ''Film/ThorTheDarkWorld'', who have waited in hibernation for thousands of years since losing the war against the Asgardians. Their race has existed since before the universe, and Malekith seems to remember the time before the light.
242* In ''Film/WarOfTheWorlds2005'', the Tripods used to invade the Earth were buried underground at some point in the distant past. A character in the film speculates that they may have been planted before there were any human beings on the planet, but at a minimum they precede recorded history and the oral tradition of any society with surviving descendants. This gives them a minimum age in the tens of thousands of years.
243* The Djinn in ''Film/{{Wishmaster}}'' uses the most extreme variation, noting that his kind is older than time itself, possibly unintentionally created by God, and stuck in the void between worlds.
244* Like in the comics, [[Comicbook/{{Apocalypse}} the title villain]] of ''Film/XMenApocalypse'' originates from Ancient Egypt (at least 6 thousand years!), only in the movie they imply he had been alive quite a while before it.
245---> I was there to spark and fan the flame of man's awakening... to spin the wheel of civilization...[[TheSocialDarwinist and when the forest grew too wide and required clearing for new growth, I was there to set it ablaze.]]
246[[/folder]]
247
248[[folder:Music]]
249* This [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIbIHxKh9bk music video of Barber's Adagio for Strings]] uses this trope by focusing on a tree while human buildings fade in and out around it.
250* "Farewell..." by Dreamtale.
251* Music/{{GWAR}} brings this up from time time, stating to have been alive since the beginning of time after the creation of the universe by the Master, being banished to Earth for 65 million years ago by the Master, wiping out the dinosaurs, inventing music, creating the human race from prehistoric animals, wreaking havoc on human civilizations, and being FrozenInTime for thousands of years by the Master until the 1980s.
252* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkh7xMZyY0s Time Forgotten One]] by Music/{{vocaloid}} KAITO. It takes a bit of thinking to realize [[spoiler:he's just a statue]]
253* A concept album The Elders by Music/{{KISS}} introduces the titular Council of Elders with "When the Earth was young, they were already old..."
254* Music/NautilusPompilius: In the song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0VdNz9m7E "Polina's Morning"]], Polina's morning lasts a hundred billion years.
255* Most likely Universe Man from the Music/TheyMightBeGiants song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNT8SMlqLJA "Particle Man"]] represents this trope seeing as he has a watch with a minute hand, millennium hand and an eon hand.
256[[/folder]]
257
258[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
259* According to most major monotheistic religions in the world today, {{God}} is not technically one of these, because age is a foreign concept; time can only be an abyss to those that are bound by it. God wasn't created or born like humans are, He didn't '''have''' a beginning, He IS the beginning, everything is here because of Him therefore making [[InvertedTrope Him the abyss rather than time.]] Titles like Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the one who was (existed since the beginning), who is (presently is), and who is yet to come (always will exist), the Great I Am are richly deserved.
260** According to some philosophers, time itself is meaningless to God. He created time, [[BuffySpeak and existed before... He existed when...]] well, [[MindScrew explaining it is hard,]] though in one analogy God is like the author of a book. At what point does an author exist in his book's -- his universe's -- internal timeline? He can turn to the first page, or to the last page. He can write scenes out of order, go back and forth, and generally follow no continuity or causality.
261--->"With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."
262---->-- 2 Peter 3:8, NIV translation
263** Enoch, father of the more famous Methuselah, is sometimes argued to have lived the longest out of all humans named in the Bible. This is because he is mentioned to have been "taken by God" and to "not see death", which is interpreted to mean he never actually died and was carried to Heaven while still alive. Given common Biblical timelines, that would make him around 5,000 years old.
264** A similar argument is sometimes made for Elijah as well, although since he only lived around 900 BC he hasn't quite reached this trope yet.
265* In Myth/HinduMythology, reality and everything within it lasts as long as the lifetime of Brahma the creator. Brahma will live to be a hundred years old, except that a single ''day'' in his life is over four billion human years.
266** Assuming he lived even so much as a hundred ''days'', Brahma would have by then lived for over 400 billion years. To put that in perspective, it's currently believed that the universe is roughly 13.8 billion years old. If we get into years, the number goes into astronomical proportions longer than the predicated life span of the universe. Entire universes could die and be reborn many times over before Brahma ever even reached "middle age", such concepts as "time" and "space" might very well collapse and become meaningless terms as the wear and tear of the eons goes on.
267*** The Shiva Purana states that Vishnu ages one day in the time that it takes Brahma to grow old and die, and that Shiva, in turn, ages one day in the time that it takes Vishnu to grow old and die.
268* Depending on religion and whether any given denomination thereof believes in and/or counts the afterlife, a person's spirit may live as long as the respective deity would, given a belief in a spirit's eternal qualities.
269* FatherTime is literally as old as time itself... [[AnthropomorphicPersonification as he's actually time.]]
270* The Jade Emperor of Myth/ChineseMythology didn't ascend to the throne until he was nearly 227 ''million'' years old.
271* Rishabhanatha, the first traditional ''tirthankara'' (supreme preacher) of Jainism, is said to have lived for 8.4 million purvas, which is ''over 5.92 '''quintillion''' years''.
272[[/folder]]
273
274[[folder:Radio]]
275* Nicholas Parsons is regularly claimed to be as old as time by panelists on ''Radio/JustAMinute'' and other [[Creator/TheBBC BBC]] Radio 4 programmes. On ''Radio/TheUnbelievableTruth'', someone claimed that there could be a parrot that was older than him, to which Creator/{{David Mitchell|Actor}} replied "Nicholas Parsons has always...''been''."
276[[/folder]]
277
278[[folder:Roleplay]]
279* Fesxis from ''Roleplay/DawnOfANewAgeOldportBlues'' has lived for so long that she's possessed hundreds of bodies, and been everything from a destroyer to a saviour. This has shaped her philosophy, leading her to develop a personal {{code of honour}} rather than act aimlessly like she's done for so long.
280[[/folder]]
281
282[[folder:Toys]]
283* Tren Krom, the resident EldritchAbomination in ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'', acts this way, what with his "I watched your universe be born" and all. FridgeLogic then kicks in, however, as even though Tren Krom ''is'' the oldest being in the Matoran Universe, that universe is [[spoiler:actually a giant space-traveling robot, constructed many, many millennia ago. Its creators are still alive and has been waiting for its return, which makes them much older than Tren Krom]]. This goes for many other inhabitants both inside and outside the Matoran Universe as well: They are truly ancient by our standards, [[TimeDissonance but their own feeling of age varies vastly.]] Of course, that means that he's ''only'' 100,000+ years old.
284* Draculaura, the GenkiGirl VegetarianVampire from ''Toys/MonsterHigh'', reveals in her second diary that her "father" is not only not the Dracula we know,[[note]]The Stoker character was a con-man upstart vampire renting Draculaura's father's castle who decided to steal his identity and use it to terrorize mortals until he met some LaserGuidedKarma.[[/note]] but also was already an ancient vampire "[[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic by the time togas were first becoming fashionable]]." Pretty eerie and ominous stuff for a doll line rated ages 6+.
285[[/folder]]
286
287[[folder:Visual Novels]]
288* ''VisualNovel/MonsterProm'': Zoe, in the Second Term expansion, has her age listed as "4Ever", with it being noted that as an EldritchAbomination she's actually older than ''reality''.
289[[/folder]]
290
291[[folder:Webcomics]]
292* Sarda (and to a lesser extent, Lich), in ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater''. Sarda was present at the birth of the universe, and [[spoiler:due to the presence of White Mage]] was forced to wait several billion years for planetary formation to give him a reasonably pleasant place to live. By the time of the comic, he is ''quite'' mad (in every sense of the word). Lich notes at one point the shortsightedness of living races by the fact that they "build [their] cities right where glaciers will come screaming through in 200,000 years".
293* In ''Webcomic/BirdBoy'', [[http://bird-boy.com/ Bali stumbles on evidence of long, long, long ago.]] Mythic time, in fact.
294* In the ''ComicBook/BuckGodotZapGunForHire'' universe, it's said that the Winslow has existed since the Big Bang, and will continue to exist long after the universe ends. It's also said that there are other objects like the Winslow, leftovers from previous universes that have somehow become eternal and indestructible. The Winslow is special by being the only sentient one, however.
295* Several members of the cast of ''Webcomic/DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'': Even though most Cubi "only" live about three thousand years, clan leaders live much longer, with Cyra the ''youngest'' at about 7,000, Fa'lina 9,288, and the oldest about 75,000. The Fae and Dragons are even older, with a (now-deleted) secret cast page putting Mab at over 400,000 and the Dragon exemplar from [[AllThereInTheManual the Demonology page]] listed as over 57,000 and said to be "fairly young." To many of these people, [[{{Muggles}} Being]] civilization seems like something of an ephemeral fad. Fa'lina, in particular, seems completely unchanged since a sidestory set in the seventeenth century, in contrast to the much younger Kria, Aaryanna, and Abel; even Mink, whose age is unknown, seems to have become obsessed with 20th-century technology in the interim.
296* Immortals in ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' are only sort of this. Despite the name, they actually have to periodically reset which is a form of death. To be done right, it takes preparation. They gather their power and prepare their memories for their next incarnation. The memories are more in the form of a diary the previous incarnation leaves, so there's no emotional connection to them. They are inexperienced with their powers. They are bound by promises their previous incarnation made, however. If an Immortal fails to prepare properly, they may lack information and power.
297* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': It is eventually revealed that [[spoiler:Jones, a.k.a. Wandering Eye,]] has existed, [[spoiler:immortal, indestructible, unchanging]], and mostly alone, for more than [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=1113 4.5 billion years.]] [[spoiler:She has wandered the Earth ever since its creation. She claims that she isn't even alive, and even she doesn't know what she is]]. [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1112 Annie's reaction]] to this revelation is appropriate, all things considered. It also puts a lot more weight on something she said earlier in the comic:
298-->'''[[spoiler:Jones]]:''' I've never seen something like this before.\
299'''Headmaster Llanwellyn:''' Coming from you, that disturbs me greatly.
300* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''
301** The First Guardians are described as "nearly as old as their [respective] planets". Becquerel, Jade's pet Guardian, arrived on Earth from a meteor in the Devonian period, ''[[ArcNumber 413]] million years ago''.
302--->(From ''Homestuck'' Book Two) Long enough ago that a bunch of ocean used to not be there. Oh, and dinosaurs? They hadn't even been BORN yet.
303** Lord English, who exists outside of time and has lived through every universe, ever.
304** Age of ghosts, who exist in the [[EldritchLocation Furthest Ring]], can be very difficult to judge, since time as a concept doesn't make a lot of sense out there, and is completely disconnected from the timeline of any individual universe. In any case, [[spoiler:Aranea]] has been dead for so long time has lost meaning to her.
305* Anything having to do with the dragon or Nemesite civilizations in ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob''.
306-->'''Princess Voluptua:''' "I'm heir to the throne of an empire that has owned your world since your antecedents were fish."
307* Franchise/{{Cthulhu|Mythos}} in ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'', since he's been sent back to the beginning of time and forced to sit through the first 15 billion years of the universe's development ''[[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2255.html twice.]]''
308* In ''Webcomic/ItHurts'', [[spoiler:Pasqualo ends up as this, traveling through space from present-day until the heat death of the universe.]]
309* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'':
310** 2 Michael casually says he guarded Throne for "thirty kalpa" before humans arrived (which itself was millennia ago). A kalpa is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpa_%28aeon%29 a real unit of measurement]], and going by Hindu estimations, thirty kalpa is '''130 billion years'''. No wonder he is completely unconcerned with human lives.
311** All the angels are technically almost as old as Creation, though most have died (and [[ResurrectiveImmortality resurrected]]) multiple times since then and all but forgotten their first lives as a result (angels lose about 90% of their memories when they die). Then there is the Metatron, who hasn't died even once and therefore has lived all those thirty Kalpa, plus whatever time before Michael's first death, uninterrupted.
312** Most of [[BigBadEnsemble the Seven]] are 'merely' a millennia or two old (most having been born during [[TheGreatOffscreenWar The Universal War]]), but Gog-Agog is canonically a ''lot'' older than that and (if AllThereInTheManual is to be trusted) had already assimilated her entire homeworld centuries before The Second Conquest began and exposed her homeworld to TheMultiverse, making her at least ten thousand years old (still a baby by angel standards). In ''Wheel-Smashing Lord'', she reveals that [[spoiler:being a HiveMind she can distribute and store herself every time Zoss resets the EternalRecurrence the universe is trapped in: Gog-Agog has perfect memory of the StableTimeLoop the universe is currently trapped in and (like her fellow demiurge Jadis, Zoss, and presumably Metatron) experiences every single loop as simply an extension of her life.]] The [[ExpositionOfImmortality language she uses to describe this is similar to the length of a Kalpa in mythology]], so safe to say she is a ''lot'' older than mere millennia. [[spoiler:When Allison asks just how many times the universe has reset, Gog-Agog [[TimeLoopFatigue simply gives a demented smile in response]].]]
313* When they first appeared in ''Webcomic/{{Mindmistress}}'', the Sisters of Twilight were witnessing the birth of the [[EldritchAbomination Elder]] [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Gods]]. And they were already really old in those days.
314* The characters of ''Webcomic/{{Nebula}}'' are at least four or five billion years old at the time the comic takes place, what with being [[AnthropomorphicPersonification sentient planets]]; for a hint of how big a timescale they're working with, the age gap between them and Sun is around a hundred million years or so, and he's considered to be barely older than them.
315* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', the gods and the Snarl are extremely old, but it isn't until a major reveal in Book 6 that we find out that they are ''much, much'' older than anyone realized. [[spoiler:A sealed-off astral graveyard contains gravestones marking all the worlds that the gods have created and were subsequently destroyed by the Snarl. Even the first worlds lasted several years, and the gods have only been improving their craft with each iteration. And the gravestones are still numerous enough to blot out the sky. Thor implies that the true number of worlds they have made is an amount so large as to be incomprehensible to mortals.]]
316-->'''Thor:''' "Well, it's like my Dad says: We gods may have a lot of bad qualities, but we sure ain't quitters."
317* In ''Webcomic/TheSanityCircus'', both the Scarecrows and the Instrumen appear like young adults. Posey Morris, a Scarecrow, looks like a sweet young girl. Regardless, when she gets into a fight with Luther the cello, he cheerfully says 'Oh well! Let's not bring up centuries-old grudges.'
318* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'':
319** The Bradicor tend to be... [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-03-28 rather long lived]].
320--->'''Fobottr Tenant:''' Are you claiming that your people have been on the surface for over ten million years?\
321'''Rod:''' Oh, my people have been down there for ''much'' longer than ''that''. No, I was just talking about ''me'', personally.
322** One member of the race, [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-07-14 while talking to a human]], notes that he's having some trouble understanding their perspective on mortality (in particular, celebrating the death of an enemy) because he is personally so old that just the 1% margin of error when converting his age between the two calendars is ''older than humanity as a species''.
323** It [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-08-31 was]] [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-09-02 said]] that Carbosilicate Amorphs, the species of the titular Schlock, are naturally evolved from the incredibly durable data storage mediums the Bradicor store their brains in. This means that Schlock and his kin are effectively immortal, and gives you an idea of just how long the Bradicor have been around.
324** Eina-Afa, or "Synthetic Wind", is the mind of a space station with enough open air inside to house planets. After spending a few million years alone, she renamed herself T'kkkuts-Afa ("Broken Wind") and created storms in her otherwise paradisiacal sky in order to create evolutionary pressure for intelligent life to develop. Yes, she's old (and lonely) enough that she was willing to wait for animals to achieve sentience just so she would have someone to talk to.
325** There's also the derilict ship from the same civilization that built Eina-Afa and was used to track down her location. Its age is described as, "Micrometeor pocking, interstellar medium accretion, and vacuum-welding suggest a drift period of indeterminate length between 'this can't be right' and 'we now doubt whether these techniques are accurate.'"
326* ''Webcomic/SonicTheComicOnline'' has [[spoiler:Tikal The Echidna]] who was sealed with Chaos, Vichama the God of Death and the reason [[spoiler:Knuckles The Echidna]] is immortal as well as a weapon by the Drakon Empire called [[spoiler:Shadow The Hedgehog]] and the advanced Guardian Robot called the Gizoid.
327* No matter how far you go back in the Talse Uzer Stories, the Tower from ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'' was always there. Allegedly[[note]]as in, someone wrote that here[[/note]], it has been stated that it was conquered and civilized 5000 years ago, though. WordOfGod [[https://www.reddit.com/r/TowerofGod/comments/7t8p4k/translation_of_a_korean_fans_qa_compilation/ here]] gives the number of several tens of thousands of years -- and Jahad and several others who were with him are still alive since those times.
328* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': According to scripture, the Senet Beasts were created directly by the Gods in the [[TheTimeOfMyths legendary]] First World, whereas humans arose in the Second World through guided evolution. As such, they're literally older than Time, although TheFogOfAges has obscured almost all the details.
329* Jin of ''Webcomic/WapsiSquare'' seems to qualify. Not only does she predate most of Earth's known civilizations, but she has lived even longer than it seems due to a GroundhogDayLoop. The 1450 years before 2012 have repeated 56 times, and she is the only one that remembers. It is starting to get to her.
330** The Demons qualify and then some. They travel from mortal host to mortal host, moving to others when individuals die, civilizations die, species die, universes die, and new ones arise. They are literally trillions of years old. They're so static that the ability to change- even to gain a lifespan- is considered a holy grail for many of them.
331* In ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' Queen Albia of England is apparently [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20181212 older than the English Channel]]. Since the main story takes place in the late 1800s and the channel is believed to have formed around 6500BC that would make her well over 8 millenia old.
332[[/folder]]
333
334[[folder:Web Originals]]
335* ''Literature/BeyondTheImpossible'': The Drylon. Since they've disappeared five billion years ago, everything they've built is ''at least'' older than Earth [[spoiler:including the Nexus inside Noriko's head]]. The gods are also incredibly long-lived: Vesta is a million years old, Hekate is a hundred times older, and Gaea was around at the formation of Earth.
336* ''WebOriginal/BosunsJournal'': By the time of the later entries, the Bosun AI has been alive, active and aware for well over a hundred and thirty million years, and has kept careful watch over the rise and fall of entire species and ecosystems. In the DistantFinale, [[spoiler:he is nearly six billion years old, has witnessed the larger part of Terragen life's existence, and has lived to see the fusion of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies; some of the custodians living on the ship with him are nearly as old]].
337* ''Website/ChuckNorrisFacts'': When God said "[[Literature/BookofGenesis Let there be light]]", Chuck Norris said "Say please".
338* Several interdimensional characters (some eldritch, some not) in ''Website/TheCrewOfTheCopperColoredCupids'' are incredibly old immortals. Lord Thymon has ruled the VoidBetweenTheWorlds for "aeons", Madame Tarsa is described as older than him and calls herself "several septendecillion years old", and MediaNotes/JennyEverywhere casually recalls events that happened to her millions of years ago.
339* ''WebAnimation/{{Dreamscape}}'':
340** In Keedran's TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to Melissa in 'Confronting the Dark', she reveals she's dealt with the judgment of humanity for thousands of lifetimes.
341** [[ADogNamedDog Megalania]] has been alive for millions of years. Megalanias are a prehistoric species, after all.
342* ''WebAnimation/DSBTInsaniT'': Killer Monster is over 10,000 years old.
343* By the end of ''Literature/FineStructure'', Anne Poole has lived for over 20,000 years. Mitch technically gets that far as well, through tricks like BrainUploading and {{Body Surf}}ing, but Anne takes TheSlowPath and experiences the entire time -- including over a century spent buried alive.
344* Cro-Marmot from ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' is over 1,000,000 years old. Justified, since he is frozen in a block of ice.
345* [[http://www.jewornotjew.com/profile.jsp?ID=243 After Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, they sublet an apartment from Frank Lautenberg before finding a place of their own]], according to his Jew Or Not Jew profile.
346* ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheShisnoTrilogy'':
347** ''The Shisno Paradox'' introduces the [[OurGodsAreGreater Cosmic Powers]], who are (essentially) gods that have been in existence since the beginning of time. Their creator, the [[OurTitansAreDifferent Titan]] [[BigBad Chrovos]] is ''even older'' than them [[spoiler:thanks to a StableTimeLoop making them at least twice as old as the current universe]].
348** Furthermore, after ''Red vs. Blue: Singularity'', due to [[spoiler:them being sucked into black holes and getting spat out at the beginning of the universe, both [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Lopez]] and [[EnergyBeings Huggins]] are technically several eons old. It's downplayed with Huggins, though, since as an sentient light beam, she can travel near the speed of light so time doesn't effect her like it does other lifeforms]].
349* On the online speculative evolution project ''A Scientific Fantasy'', the dinosauroids (species normally don't count, but since the whole species is also a civilization, it counts) fired a laser to blow up the asteroid that caused the K-T extinction and had already been around for 10 million years.
350* Invoked by youtuber Spumwack with his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1CddzgVW14&t=73s Universe Death Clock]], a device built entirely in ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' that is expected to run for the next Googol[[note]] That's a 1 followed by 100 zeroes[[/note]] years, long after the universe has ended. Not the game's universe, but ''our universe.''
351* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'':
352** One of the Mystic Arts teachers at [[SuperheroSchool Whateley Academy]] is Circe, and it has been confirmed that she is the same Circe one who [[ForcedTransformation transformed]] [[Literature/TheOdyssey Odysseus]]' crew into pigs. She is by no means alone, nor is she the oldest around: early in the Gen 1 stories, she recognizes the New Olympians as being the same [[Myth/GreekMythology Greco-Roman Gods]] whom she was raised to worship, stuffed into mortal frames after escaping from [[SealedBadassInACan being imprisoned]] by a mysterious being known as The Foreigner.
353** Aunghadhail is a [[TheFairFolk Sidhe queen]] so old she remembers the Earth before humans populated it. She and her family may have ''created the dinosaurs''.
354** In the latest Tennyo story, we learn [[spoiler:the Star Stalker is eight billion years old and was constructed by one of the first civilizations in the universe]].
355* Stripetail, Mertavius, and Tarrax from [[Roleplay/InsaneCafeSeries Insane Café]] are anywhere from millenia to millions of years old.
356** Tarrax casually mentions his second marriage lasting 3,000 years.
357** Likewise, on the resort planet of Pokitaru, Stripetail mentions not having "rested this long in several thousand years".
358* ''Website/TheOnion'''s fictional editor-in-chief, T. Herman Zweibel, is somehow still alive at 140 years and counting, despite the innumerable ailments he suffers from. He's also an example of EvilOldFolks to rival even [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Mr. Burns]], apparently having [[BeenThereShapedHistory caused several major world events]] directly or indirectly and generally thinks of everyone else in the world as being beneath him.
359* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': Many [=SCPs=] would qualify for this trope. For example, [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-169 SCP-169]] is estimated to have existed since the pre-Cambrian era, which would make it over 530 million years old.
360[[/folder]]
361
362[[folder:Western Animation]]
363* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'':
364** Strongly implied to be the case for [[BigBad The]] [[OmnicidalManiac Lich]]. While already known to date back to [[WorldWarIII the Mushroom War]] [[AfterTheEnd a thousand years ago]], the events of "Evergreen" heavily imply [[PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs he was the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs]], which would make him at least 65 million years old. "Gold Stars" implies he's either older ''than the physical universe'', or at least old enough to have learned what was there before the universe came to be.
365--->'''The Lich:''' Before there was time... before there was ''anything''... there was nothing. And before there was nothing... ''there were '''monsters'''''."
366** The same episode shows that Ice King's crown was created during the Late Cretaceous Period and the first person to ever wear it was an uplifted dinosaur. A later episode shows that the memories of anyone who wears the crown are stored and remain alive within it, making most of them millennia old (one of them appears to be SantaClaus, or specifically "the first Santa").
367** Later we meet Orgalorg, one of the monsters that the Lich spoke of, and who is better known to viewers as [[spoiler:the penguin Gunther]]. He apparently managed to survive the creation of our Universe, then terrorized and destroyed entire planets before the King of Mars ordered [[PhysicalGod Glob]] to defeat Orgalorg. Orgalorg was defeated and landed on Earth, where he has been living as an AmnesiacGod since prehistoric times. (A series of flashbacks he has when he begins to remember his true nature includes a shot of him fending off what seems like a saber tooth tiger, then later participating in Egyptian, Ancient Greek, and Roman societies.)
368* In ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', Miss Simian has apparently been teaching since the Stone Age, and is at least 2 million years old. Her father's skeleton is on display in a natural history museum.
369* ''Franchise/AvatarTheLastAirbender'':
370** The Avatar Spirit. It's the spirit of the Earth, after all, so it existed even before it started manifesting itself as Avatars. ''The Legend Of Korra'' reveals that [[spoiler:the Avatar Spirit is actually Raava, the spirit of light and cosmic order. Given she is Vaatu's (see below) counterpart, she's almost certainly just as old]].
371** Vaatu, the spirit of darkness and chaos, claims to have lived 10,000 lifetimes before humans appeared. Since each Harmonic Convergence counts as a lifetime and each one is 10,000 years apart, he was ''at least'' 100,000,000 years old when humans first showed up.
372*** It's worthwhile to note that Avatar also uses the number 10,000 in the same sense that several East Asian langauges do to mean "uncountably many", for example in the title "He who knows 10,000 things". So it's entirely possible that Vaatu's lifespans were actually longer than 10,000 actual years and he experienced even more than 10,000 of them.
373** Tui and La, the Moon and Ocean spirits, [[spoiler:crossed to the mortal realm]] "very near the beginning" according to Avatar Roku. He goes on to point [[KidHero Aang]] towards [[CreepyAwesome Koh]] the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Face-Stealer]], who is himself an example, as he's the only spirit besides them old enough to remember that happening. The sequel graphic novel ''[[ComicBook/AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheSearch The Search]]'' has the Gaang meet Koh's mother, the so-called Mother of Faces -- the spirit who first gave humans the concept of ''identity''.
374** [[spoiler:The Lion Turtle.]] It's AllThereInTheManual that he and his species are ''as old as the earth itself,'' and therefore, as old as the Avatar Spirit. Unfortunately, [[spoiler:he's the LastOfHisKind]].
375* ''WesternAnimation/{{Beetlejuice}}'': In "Ship of Ghouls", the ghost pirate Jean [=LeFoot=] and his crew of the Flying Dutchman have been trapped inside the Bermuda Shorts Triangle for ''two'' eternities.
376* While Professor Paradox of ''WesternAnimation/Ben10AlienForce'' is a time traveler, he's also ''countless billions''[[note]]He lost count long ago.[[/note]] of years old, independent of time travel. When time travel ''is'' taken into account, Paradox has most likely existed forever, despite originally being an ordinary human.
377* ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'':
378** Gaia, [[MotherNature the Spirit of Earth]]. If what her EvilCounterpart, [[BigBad Zarm]], said about her in "[[Recap/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteersS2E17And18SummitToSaveEarth Summit to Save Earth]]" can be believed, she's about the age of Earth itself... or ''older''. And considering that a century-long sleep is "a little nap" for her, Zarm might have actually told the truth.
379--->'''Linka:''' What have you done to Gaia?!\
380'''Zarm:''' Gaia is simply starting to show her true age. ''(mockingly)'': What is it, Gaia? Five, six ''billion'' years old?
381** Zarm himself is implied to be quite ancient as well. While it's left unclear just ''how'' old he is, Gaia says in "[[Recap/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteersS1E6TheConqueror The Conqueror]]" that he used to be a Spirit of Earth, like her. Some time later, in "Scorched Earth", she also reveals that Zarm was at least partially responsible for the early humans' FaceHeelTurn from living in balance with nature towards violent fighting for domination. In that same episode, Zarm himself claims to have been "part of every important tyrant in human history"... which, depending on one's point of view[[note]]for example, the question of whether forms other than ''Homo sapiens sapiens'' count[[/note]], spawns from hundreds of thousands to about 4 – 4.5 ''millions'' of years.
382* The German short film ''WesternAnimation/DasRad'' (''The Wheel'') focuses on the lives of two anthropomorphic stone heaps. They witness the (exponential) rise of mankind [[spoiler:and its sudden fall]]. In ten minutes.
383* ''WesternAnimation/EarthwormJim'': Played for laughs. Evil the Cat claims he "existed before the dawn of time and will continue to exist past its end!" Jim and Peter escape from him as he tries to explain the logic.
384* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': Cosmo and Wanda have been married for nearly 10,000 years and physically seem to be in their 30s. Cosmo's mother is still alive and well and doesn't appear to be past middle age.
385* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':
386** The Nibblonians were already seventeen years old by the time of the Big Bang, while their nemeses, the Brainspawn, came to existence a few milliseconds after it.
387--->"In the time it would take to pronounce one letter of my true name, a trillion cosmoses would flare into existence and sink into eternal night."
388** Bender became this in "Bender's Big Score." The scammer aliens, after brainwashing him, got him to go back in time to steal them every valuable item in history. Keep in mind that the time travel he's using is one-way, Bender is searching for them one at a time, and is perfectly happy waiting it out with previous versions of himself. It's unclear how much time it took for him, but given the hundreds of Benders we see at the end, his minimum age would be ''a million years.'' And given the WhatIf Holiday special showed he could last half a billion years, Bender's life '''has just begun.'''
389*** Bender already made a step toward becoming this in "Roswell That Ends Well". The Planet Express crew travels back to 1947, and as they return to the 31st century, Bender's head falls out the ship, being buried for a thousand years. When asked what it was like to be nothing but a head completely alone for more than 1000 years, Bender's response is simply beautiful:
390--->'''Bender:''' I was enjoying it until you guys showed up!
391** Yivo from "The Beast with a Billion Backs". For a trillion years, shkle was satisfied with shkler life as the lone being of another universe, but when shkle looked across immensity, shkle saw the Big Bang and said, "Whoa. Who's that?".
392* Bill Cipher from ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' claims in "Weirdmageddon" to have been trapped in the Nightmare Realm for ''one trillion'' years. At the very least, it would make him more than seventy times older than ''our universe'', which is about 14 billion years old.
393* The ending of ''WesternAnimation/ItsSuchABeautifulDay'' has [[spoiler:the main character, Bill,]] outlive the Universe itself. This could all very well have been a delusion, but it's never made clear.
394* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'': Parodied with Ward Rackley, who claims to be 5000 years old, but is in reality just a thirty-something year old nerd who [[BasementDweller lives with his mother]] and [[{{Chuunibyou}} believes he's a wizard.]]
395* The ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPandaLegendsOfAwesomeness'' episode "A Stitch In Time" introduced The Shuyong Tree. A sentient tree that existed before time began and will continue to exist after it ends.
396* In ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug,'' the Kwamis are known to be centuries old, having empowered similar heroes in past eras. Tikki casually mentions having been around longer than Marinette's ancient Egyptian predecessor, having been around "since the beginning." We don't really come to get what that means until two moments in season two: In "Sandboy," [[spoiler:there's a day on which the other Kwamis can try to contact Nooroo: the Kwami version of a birthday]]. His 3500th cycle is coming, and a cycle is "several hundred" years. If we say that's 300 (as that's the lowest number a person would likely call "several" hundred) that it'd put him at 1,050,000 years old, at least. We learn that they ''very much are'' intended to be that old ''and more'' in "Style Queen" when [[spoiler:the end of the dinosaurs is revealed to have been Plagg's fault]]. A tie-in comic explains that the Kwamis [[spoiler:each came into being at the same time as the concept they are the AnthropomorphicPersonification of, making them unimaginably ancient. Tikki, as the Kwami of creation, is the oldest of them, 'born' alongside ''the universe itself''.]]
397* ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'':
398** ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyAndFriends'': Squirk is very, very old -- exactly how old is a touch unclear, as Pluma changes estimates on how long ago he ruled a couple of times before settling on "a very long time", but he's been around for at least a couple thousand years and can afford to wait centuries for his plans to come to fruition as his enemies age into decrepitude because he has all the time he needs to see them through.
399** ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyG3'': Spike claims that, being over a thousand years old, he's still "young" for a dragon, and that his pony friends should wait until he's at least a million years old before they start calling him "old". This was immediately after waking up from a thousand year nap.
400** ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'':
401*** Discord was [[TakenForGranite sealed in stone]] more than a thousand years ago, and offhandedly mentions being around for several "eons". As the AnthropomorphicPersonification of [[OrderVersusChaos chaos and disharmony]], he could be as old as the universe itself.
402*** Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are both somewhere over one thousand one hundred years of age -- exact dates aren't given, but in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS8E7HorsePlay Horse Play]]" it's stated that the first time Celestia raised the sun was one thousand, one hundred and eleven years ago exactly. While she herself is likely older than that, the fact that raising the sun is her special talent and that ponies discover these around puberty implies that she is not much older than that figure. With season premiere-class threats, Celestia is usually telling the protagonists about what was going on because it was so long ago that history books contain ''nothing'' on it. Every detail of history and magic that was ever written, Twilight knows. Every detail that was ''never'' written, totally unknown or thought of as only legend, the princesses alone can explain because they were there.
403*** Dragons in general have extremely long life expectancies, enough so that century-long hibernations qualify as naps for them. Torch, the Dragon Lord at the start of the series, is older than even Celestia and Luna: in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS7E16CampfireTales Campfire Tales]]", which describes events that took place when Equestria was new and the Princesses were fillies, he's portrayed as already being a massive, fully grown adult dragon.
404*** Grogar, the final season's ArcVillain, is so ancient that Tirek, himself implied to be thousands of years old, ''thought he was a myth''.
405* Used for laughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' with Mr. Burns, who reveals his birthplace to be Pangaea.[[note]]This would make him a minimum of 200 million years old.[[/note]] Of course, this is just another example of the show's NegativeContinuity.
406* ''WesternAnimation/SonicTheHedgehogSatAM'': Beyond crystallizing its residents if they try to return to Mobius, this is the primary effect of the Void. Naugus has spent years inside of the Void and hasn't aged a day, whereas while we see adult characters like Robotnik and Snively naturally age, King Acorn maintains his early adulthood youth inside the Void.
407* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': The [[PhysicalGod Force-wielders/Ones]] have been living in isolation for so long that the newest Jedi distress code they knew had not been used for over two millennia, and there's little doubt they're way older than that. ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' put their ages to well over a ''hundred thousand'' years.
408* In ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', the ''youngest'' of the (non-hybrid) Crystal Gems is at least six thousand years old, and the others are old enough to consider that young. They casually mention things that happened centuries ago, and one of the Gems mentioned that she could remember when humans were still hunter-gatherers.
409* General Immortus of ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' was a highly skilled military general -- who had been around for nearly every single battle in recorded history. At one point he quotes Sun Tzu, then mentions that he was an excellent pupil. He's described as knowing every tactic used in every battle in every war in history because he was there personally. (His comic counterpart is "merely" pushing a thousand.)
410* Most incarnations of ''Franchise/TheTransformers'' count, since Transformers tend to have lifespans that are millions of years long, but [[OldSoldier Kup]] from ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' cartoon is probably the best example. He's been fighting wars for somewhere around 9-12 million years and has SeenItAll. Except for [[PlanetEater Unicron]], he's never seen anything like that before.
411* ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'': A one-off joke in "Jorts" reveals that Mr. Gus is ''at least'' 1.993 billion years old. Uncle Grandpa later mentions being the oldest person in the RV so he's even older than Mr. Gus.
412* Qilby of ''WesternAnimation/{{Wakfu}}'', being one of the original Eliatropes, has gone through an endless cycle of death and rebirth. But unlike the others, he and his dragon twin Shinonome also retain the memories of ''all'' their past lives, from their original birth from their Dofus to their first deaths and then the time they spent within their Dofus awaiting their next incarnation. The cycle has been going hundreds of thousands of years ''at minimum'', and could very well stretch into the millions or even ''billions'' of years. His current incarnation alone is over 10,000 years old. [[spoiler:So it any surprise he's so [[OmnicidalManiac insane]], [[TheSociopath uncaring]], and flat-out [[WhoWantsToLiveForever sick of it]]?]]
413* In the first season finale of ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'', [[BigBad Vandal Savage]] begins his MotiveRant with a casual reference to having lived for over fifty thousand years -- and in ''all that time'', nothing disturbed him more than the foundation of the Justice League.
414[[/folder]]
415
416[[folder:Real Life]]
417* Living things:
418** In a way, life itself is a time abyss. The cells we are made of were split off from our parents' cells, and ''their'' cells came from their parents, and so on and so forth, back to the formation of life, 3.8 billion years ago. Gene sequences exist in every one of our cells that have remained unchanged since the earliest common ancestor to all life. The purest example of this is the common amoeba, which splits itself to reproduce rather than dying of old age. It changes over time, and obviously is composed of different individual molecules, but in a very real sense that first amoeba is still alive and wriggling two billion-odd years later. A new branch of SETI, Biological SETI, is currently examining our DNA for traces of messages left for us by aliens, on the assumption that, with its ability to self-replicate and self-repair, DNA is the only substance on which a message could be transcribed that could be preserved for millions, even billions, of years.
419** The oldest known living thing on Earth is a single, giant patch of [[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207152545.htm ''Posidonia Oceanic'' seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea]]. Studies show that it is most likely at least 100,000 years old.
420** Many species of plants and microorganisms have extremely long or unlimited lifespans; possibly the most famous example is the bristlecone pine tree, individual specimens of which are presently alive in spite of having sprouted nearly five millennia ago. One of them was found to be 4,844 years old when cut down in 1964. (John Muir once commented that a ''shorter-lived'' Sequoia tree was "already centuries old when Jesus walked the Earth.") There are also some trees that live in clonal colonies; the stems are continually renewed while the root system endures. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree) One such colony of Quaking Aspens]] has roots that are at least 80,000 years old.[[note]]Unfortunately, Pando is showing signs that it is dying.[[/note]]
421** The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii immortal jellyfish]] is another example, using a kind of reverse aging. Hydras have a similar mechanism.
422** The oldest known non-clonal organism is a bristlecone pine which was dendrochronologically dated in 2013 to be 5,067 years old. To put that into perspective, this tree was already about 494 years old when construction of the pyramids of Giza began.
423** Several unexpected lineages are examples of this. For example, myriapods (millipedes and centipedes, as well as probably the extinct euthycarcinoids) have been around for over ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosineia 500 million years]]'', thus making them the first animals on land. In addition, sponges have been around for almost '''''[[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03773-z a billion years]]''''', which firmly places them as the first animals whatsoever.
424* The half-life of the isotope Xe[[superscript:124]] is 1.8×10[[superscript:22]] years, more than ''12 orders of magnitude'' larger than the current age of the universe. Nevertheless, an Italian team detected in 2019 a double-neutron capture [[note]]essentially, two neutrons (which are the subatomic particles orbiting an atomic core) were pulled in & absorbed by protons to become neutrinos)[[/note]], in a neutrino detector (which usually measures neutrinos emitted by the Sun passing through the Earth). It is thought to be the rarest occurence ever, statistically-speaking.
425* Our very Earth. It is around 4.54 billion years old, a number that seems meaningless until you realize that ''Homo sapiens'' appeared no earlier than 200,000 years ago, while history was first recorded 5,000 years ago. As mentioned in YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm, if you condense the age of the Earth into 24 hours, the entire human history can be summed up in 10 miliseconds.
426* The objective of the [[http://www.longnow.org/clock/ Clock of the Long Now]], a clock that when finished is intended to last for 10,000 years keeping (nearly) perfect time.
427* Many of the stone circles in Britain fit this trope, being almost/over five thousand years old.
428* UsefulNotes/AncientEgypt: Egyptian history from the earliest extensive records in the 31st century BC to the Macedonian Conquest in 332 BCE spans ''2700 years''. Consider this: To UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} or [[UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar Julius Caesar]], the first Pharaohs were ''1000 years more ancient'' than either of them is to us; to the builders of the Pantheon in Rome, the Great Pyramid was older than the Pantheon is to the designers of today's skyscrapers. Even the third of the Ancient Egyptian "golden ages" of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties was as far removed from them as [[TheLowMiddleAges the Early Middle Ages]] are to us--the world of UsefulNotes/RamsesII was as far back for UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} as UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}} is to UsefulNotes/BarackObama. And everyone's favorite Pharaoh, UsefulNotes/CleopatraVII lived closer to the Moon Landing than the building of the Pyramids! Almost any trope recorded in Ancient Egypt is therefore by definition OlderThanDirt.
429** To clarify: the Pyramid of Giza was constructed in ~2560 BCE, while the Pantheon was constructed in 125 CE (2685 years later)[[note]]Incidentally, it also held the record for the tallest man-made structure until Lincoln Cathedral was built in 1311 CE -- 3870 years later[[/note]]. Meanwhile, the earliest pharaoh with verified historical evidences was a guy called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iry-Hor Iry-Hor]], who lived in the 32nd century BCE. That's three millennia older than Julius Caesar, who was born in 100 BCE. And Iry-Hor was certainly ancient by the time Ramses II was born 1800 years later (the late 14th century BCE), who in turn was medieval by the time Augustus was born 1200 years later (27 BCE). Finally, Cleopatra VII was born in 69 BCE, meaning she was 2491 years younger than the Giza pyramid and 2038 years older than the Apollo 11 mission.
430** When the Pyramid of Giza was completed, [[MammothsMeanIceAge mammoths]] still existed on Earth (specifically, in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island Wrangel Island]], a remote Arctic island currently part of UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}). In fact, they wouldn't go extinct until around 2000 BCE, a whopping five centuries later.[[note]]Please recall that five centuries before the establishment of Website/TVTropes (in 2004), UsefulNotes/HenryVII was King of England, Hernán Cortés had just arrived in [[UsefulNotes/DominicanRepublic Santo Domingo]] and was a full 15 years away from conquering Mexico, the Mughal Empire did not yet exist, Gutenberg's printing press was just about 70 years old, the Protestant Reformation was still over a decade in the future, and New York City simply did not exist in any meaningful way. Five centuries before that, [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfWessex Aethelred the Unready]] was King of England, Spain was firmly Muslim, and UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan was a full 200 years in the future.[[/note]]
431** To make things even more astounding, consider [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushim_(Uruk_Period) Kushim]], thought to be the oldest example of a named person in writing (though there is some debate over whether this refers to an individual person, their title as an officeholder, or to an institution.) The name was recorded during the Uruk period, between 500-1000 years ''before'' the construction of the Great Pyramid. The kicker is, Kushim does not appear to be a king or ruler, but - assuming it refers to an individual - of all things, a barley trader.
432* If anything human-built counts, some sites (including a few cities surviving to the present day) in the Middle East are leading contenders.
433** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe Göbekli Tepe]] is a pre-Neolithic religious complex in Turkey that dates from roughly 9600 BCE and was built by people who had not yet developed metal tools, pottery, the wheel, or agriculture. It is believed that the location's use as a religious centre goes even further back; all the way to 11,000 BCE.
434** The city of Jericho is also a pre-Neolithic settlement first inhabited around 10,000 BCE, and inhabited[[note]]sort of, it was all but abandoned during the latter part of the Bronze Age, including the date when it was supposedly sacked by the Israelites[[/note]] for all 12,000 years. To give an idea, the ice age ended around 10,000 years ago.
435** Damascus was first settled at least 8000 -- possibly even 11,000 -- years ago during early Neolithic times, and has been in continuous use ever since. It is older than any modern or ancient civilization. Creator/MarkTwain referred to it as "a form of immortality."
436* Speaking of remains made by human beings, the hand axes found in Olduvai, a region in Tanzania, date back 1.8 million years. That is incomprehensible. Not to mention possibly the oldest use of fire by human beings dates back to 1 million years, in a place in [[https://www.history.com/news/human-ancestors-tamed-fire-earlier-than-thought South Africa]]. Note however this isn't Homo sapiens, this is Homo erectus or Homo ergaster, an early human species.
437* Ötzi the Iceman could be considered to qualify as this trope, assuming that a dead person can qualify at all. The oldest mostly intact human body ever discovered, he lived and died over five thousand years ago, with the entirety of recorded history, plus a chunk of pre-history, having passed since then. When the first stone was laid for the first pyramid in Giza Ötzi had already been under the ice for about a millennium. When the first pharaoh unified Upper and Lower Egypt, he had already been dead for several centuries!
438* A show about the simple disappearance of all humans predicted that the last traces of human existence would be the man-made objects on the moon (lunar landers, US flag, etc.). Unless some outside force or object intervenes, they would remain on the moon forever. And the only human whose name will be left there (well, on the plaque on the Moon, anyway) is UsefulNotes/RichardNixon. There's something ironic there.
439** Take comfort, this show was wrong: Nixon's name and other Artifacts on the moon and will be destroyed (barring intervention) when the sun enters its red giant phase in ~4 billion years. Meanwhile, interstellar artifacts like the Voyager, Pioneer, and New Horizons space probes will almost certainly still be out there cruising between the stars for many billions of years beyond that.
440** It was also predicted that if humans disappeared from Earth today, Mount Rushmore would still be intact millions of years later (though many features, especially noses, would've eroded away by then), waiting to be seen by the next intelligent species to evolve.
441* The non-fiction history book ''Human Accomplishment'' by Charles Murray starts with a chapter intended to evoke the Time Abyss, by tracing back human society in 400-year chunks.
442* While 32-bit Unix systems [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem will run into serious trouble]] in the year 2038, users of 64-bit ones will not have to worry about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time#Notable_events_in_Unix_time that issue]] until the year 292,277,026,596.
443* Jupiter, the oldest of the planets, will likely stick with the Sun long into its future, as it exists in an orbit that will be well out of the Sun's way when it turns into a Red Giant, although it will become rather toasty for as long as the Sun stays in that phase. Even after the Sun turns into a white dwarf, assuming that a passing star doesn't come by and steal Jupiter from its orbit, the King of the Planets, and by extension, the other gas giants, will be here to stay for the many billions of years the Sun will spend in its quiet post-life[[note]]Up to one hundred billion years according to [[https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.07296 simulations]], with Jupiter being likely to be the planet that stays around the longest[[/note]].
444* On the same subject, PSR B1620-26 b, aka Methuselah is an exoplanet roughly 2.5 times the size of Jupiter, which is believed to have outlived its original star. It's currently in orbit of a binary system consisting of a Neutron star and a white dwarf, the later believed to have once been a sun-like star and the planet's original host before both was captured by the Neutron star ages ago, said neutron star also preventing the other star from going supernova and destroying the planet when it died. While the actual age of the planet is impossible to tell, its location would imply it was formed around 12.7 billion years ago, making it the oldest exoplanet ever discovered.
445* HD 140283 "Methuselah" is a star initially calculated to be older than the universe, literally older than time. It was later recalculated to be 14.4 billion years old, ±0.8 billion years, which is only slightly better. Even if on the sprightly side of that range, it's very old.
446** Perhaps surpassed by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMSS_J031300.36-670839.3 SM0313]] Note that age calculations for very old stars have a large percentage of uncertainty as they are based on theoretical models of stellar evolution, so it's far more likely they formed ''after'' the Big Bang and not before it.
447* Population III Stars, if any of them still exist, are definitely qualifiers for this trope. Hypothesized to have only minute amounts of metal elements, if any at all (thus being effectively made of nothing but hydrogen and helium and a tiny bit of lithium), these ancient stars would have been among the very first to bring light to the Universe, on the dawn of its Stelliferous era. To date, none have been definitively proven to exist today, but the possibility remains that at least one may be out there.
448* White dwarfs, such as what our sun will become once it runs out of fuel, slowly cool into black dwarfs for their final stage of existence, and the time it takes for any white dwarf to eventually become a black dwarf far exceeds the current age of the universe (which is shy of 14 billion years, to recap). However, beyond even that, a sufficiently large black dwarf may undergo a further change: Thanks to quantum tunneling, it's still possible for a large enough black dwarf to fuse atoms inside it by itself, albeit in an ''extremely slow'' pace, until it reaches a state where its core is populated by iron atoms and it initiates a runaway reaction that causes a supernova, much like gigantic stars of bygone times who builds up iron in their cores before exploding. The time it may take for these black dwarfs to go supernova ranges from 10^1,100 years to a staggering ''10^32,000 years'' (yes, one followed by 32 '''thousand''' zeroes)[[note]]This assumes protons would not decay much before (see further down). Furthermore, Freeman Dyson has suggested that without proton decay, in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_star 10^1500 years all matter would transmute into iron thanks to quantum tunneling too]][[/note]]
449* The very first moments of the Universe after the Big Bang fall into this trope (see [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_the_Big_Bang The Other Wiki]]). While those times from our perspective look tiny and meaningless, not so much if one notes the proportions between those epochs and compares them to the future ages of the Universe and considers more things happened by then than in the billions of years to come[[note]]For example, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_epoch Electroweak epoch]] lasted from 10^-36 or 10^-32 seconds to 10^-12 seconds after the Big Bang. If we equal the 10^-43 seconds the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_era Planck era]] (the closest we can get to the Big Bang itself with our current knowledge of Physics) lasted to a year, it would have lasted from 10,000,000 or 100,000,000,000 years to ''10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000'' (10^31) years after the Big Bang.[[/note]]
450%%* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time Deep Time]] (ZCE)
451* Black Holes, once formed, won't actually exist forever, as they release energy through a process called Hawking radiation, in which quantum fluctuations happen near a black hole and take its mass, [[DeathOfAThousandCuts photon by photon]] -- a process that's so slow, it [[NoSell has zero effect in the present day]], as even the Cosmic Microwave Background is still more than enough to immediately feed the black hole anything it loses right back. While the actual time it would take for a Black Hole to fully evaporate though is believed to vary depending on its size, its estimated to be somewhere between 8,6 × 10^70 years (that's 70 zeroes!) for a stellar-mass black hole to 1,3 × 10^99 years for one that's one trillion solar masses. And it's estimated that they could potentially get even larger than that, which means their deaths would take exponentially longer. If proton decay happens, they will be the [[LastOfHisKind only objects in the universe]] for the vast majority of its life. To put into perspective just how significant of a proportion this is, to quote ''[[WebVideo/SymphonyOfScience Time Lapse of the Future]]'': "On the scale of a human lifetime, [after the death of the last atom,] the universe has only just emerged from the womb."
452* Protons. According to one theory, they are ultimately stable, that is, live absolutely forever. According to another, they have a half-life that makes Brahma seem like a mayfly. Based on current evidence, the former (protons do not decay) seems to be true, however, the latter is not ruled out, but it would take at least 10^34 years.
453* Radioactive material, while not lasting forever, can last an ''incredibly'' long time. The two commonly found forms of uranium, uranium-235 and 238, have a half-life of 703.8 million years and 4.468 billion years respectively. If you were able to travel back in time and place a kilogram of Uranium-238 in orbit around the Earth as it formed, then came back to the present and checked it, there would still be some of that original mass around today. And, there are isotopes with longer half-lives than that; bismuth-209 has a half-life of around 19,000,000,000,000,000,000 years (that's well over a billion times the commonly accepted value for the current age of the Universe) and is the current record holder for radioactive isotope with the longest known half-life. (If protons actually do decay, then all elements are "radioactive", but experiments have set a lower limit of ''at least'' 59,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years for the half-life of hydrogen-1). Of course, radioactive material by definition doesn't last anywhere near as long as it would were it not radioactive.
454** Even after all the material in the Universe has decayed to its final state, the subatomic particles of which matter was once composed last effectively forever. It's recommended to take a look at this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future Timeline of the far future]] in [[Website/{{Wikipedia}} The Other Wiki]]. [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm You Cannot Grasp the True Form]] does not even start to define it: "Although listed in years for convenience, the numbers beyond this point are so vast that their digits would remain unchanged regardless of which conventional units they were listed in, be they nanoseconds[[labelnote:*]]billionths of a second[[/labelnote]] or star lifespans[[labelnote:*]]up to trillions of years[[/labelnote]]."
455** The final entry is at 10^10^10^56 years, for a new Big Bang to potentially form a new universe. This timescale is so inconceivably vast, even the number of all possible combinations of particles is a rounding error when multiplied with it. A Time Abyss so long, every single possible arrangements of every particle, allowing a new universe exactly identical to ours (along with all other possible universes there ever could be) to form again by pure random chance, is a negligible sum.
456** To try to gain even the most infinitesimal grasp of some of the numbers above, consider 10^10^3, in other words 10^1000 i.e. 1 followed by a ''thousand'' zeroes, a number practically inconceivably large compared to the current age of the universe ~10^10. Or 10^10^6, 1 followed by a ''million'' zeroes. There's still a very, very long way to go before reaching even 10^10^26, which is ''nothing'' compared to the numbers further down. At this point, it's probably worth stepping away and lying down.
457
458[[/folder]]

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