Big Little Brother / Live-Action TV

• Arrow: Played straight at first with Laurel and Sara Lance, as Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Sara) is taller than Katie Cassidy (Laurel). However, Wood was replaced by Caity Lotz after the pilot, averting this as Lotz is shorter than Cassidy.
• Casey in Atypical, is younger than Sam but takes on a protective role. Because his autism can make things difficult, she is often helping him navigate dating, schooling and socializing.
• One episode of The Beverly Hillbillies had Mr. Drysdale be informed that the little brother of one of his secretaries wanted to have a talk with him. His reaction was "Send the little fellow in! I'll give him a piggy bank!" The "little fellow" was built like a linebacker.
• BOB ❤️ ABISHOLA Bob's younger brother Douglas is several inches taller than he is.
• Genderflipped in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where by the Season 6 episode "Normal Again", Buffy notices that her younger sister Dawn has become taller than she is. When she was introduced in Season 5, Dawn was shorter although she shoots up over the course of the episodes, already visibly taller by 'Crush'. In this case, Buffy takes it as another sign of her Sunnydale "delusion" coming apart.
• Everybody Hates Chris has Chris's younger brother, Drew, being both taller and much cooler. Chris is quite aware of it. Eventually subverted in later seasons when Chris' actor hit puberty, which resulted in Chris and Drew being about the same height.
  Narrator: Instead of Drew wearing my old clothes, I wore his old clothes. I think I was the first kid to get hand-me-ups.
• Lampshaded on Clarissa Explains It All: Clarissa calls Ferguson a "little twerp" and Sam points out that he's taller than she is. (He wasn't originally, but the actor grew.)
• Fuller House takes place twenty years after Full House. It's quite noticeable that Stephanie is several inches taller than her older sister DJ.
  • Even in Full House during the final seasons, Stephanie had reached the same height as DJ who was five years older than her.
• Game of Thrones universe:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Ser Loras Tyrell is several inches taller than his sister Margaery, and book readers (and probably most viewers) naturally assumed that he is the older sibling. However, Word of God has established that Margaery is the eldest Tyrell child on the show.
    • Dickon Tarly, as played by Freddie Stroma, is dramatically taller than his older brother Samwell, played by John Bradley. Taken even further in Season 7, when 6'5 Tom Hopper was recast and who is not only taller but way bulkier than Stroma. This makes sense in-story, as the reason Sam is their father's Unfavorite is that he's much less athletic than Dickon, which is why Randyll Tarly forced Sam to join the Night's Watch in the first place, so Dickon would be his heir.
    • It's less noticeable given that Bran's legs are paralyzed so he doesn't stand, but Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark, is much taller than Maisie Williams, who plays his older sister Arya. In fact, by Season 6, he grows up considerably (his actor is now 5'11) and is now the tallest of his siblings. In an interview for Season 6, Richard Madden (Robb's actor) says he feels bad for Kristian Nairn (Hodor's actor) for having to carry Isaac Hempstead-Wright around because he is so big now.
    • Lyanna's notably taller than her older brother Ned back when they were kids. Many actually thought she was the older sibling in this version because of that, but she calls Ned "big brother" in the next flashback.
    • Euron is both taller and bulkier than Balon.
  • House of the Dragon: Adult Aemond is taller than his older brother Aegon. This Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance denotes that he is the more serious, dangerous, and competent of the two brothers, regardless of what primogeniture says.
• On Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Aphrodite often refers to Herc as her "big brother," even though she's older than he is by centuries.
• Home Improvement has the middle child Randy turn out to be much shorter than his older brother Brad and younger brother Mark, which happened incidentally as the actors grew up. When he complains about that to his mom all she can say is that he can't obsess over it because you don't know where life will take you and Randy may have just had a delayed growth spurt (he never did became taller, though).
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Louis is the eldest of the de Pointe du Lac siblings, but his younger brother Paul is slightly taller than him. The following exchange is from "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...".
  Paul: You remember the day I got taller than you?
  Louis: Always bringin' that up.
  Paul: Shot up like a Nuttall oak. Daddy said I was gonna look down on you for the rest of days.
  Louis: Yeah, yeah. Half an inch.
  Paul: That was a good month, that month.
• The Last Man on Earth's protagonist, Phil/Tandy Miller, has a younger brother named Mike who stands a good few inches taller and is much better built. He's also far more mature, competent, and successful, being an astronaut and scientist who excelled in math and basketball back in high school and committed local acts of heroism, such as saving a woman and her cats from a burning car, before the apocalypse.
• Last Man Standing at first had all three daughters at about the same height, with Kristin and Mandy both played by adult actors. Kristin was recast in the second season with a slightly taller actress, while Eve eventually grew taller than Mandy and was pointed out when Mandy tried making a short joke. Mandy was then recast in the seventh season with a very tall actress, towering over both sisters and playfully ignoring the fact that she was supposed to be shorter than the other two.
• Notably subverted on Married... with Children. One would expect Bud to grow taller than his older sister Kelly, but because David Faustino topped out at only 5'3, he maintained the "little brother" dynamic with Kelly for the entire series.
• Moon Lovers: Baek-ah is notably taller than his older brother Wang So.
• Once Upon a Time: In a Season 3 arc, Peter Pan kidnapped Wendy Darling and kept her trapped on Neverland until her younger brothers John and Michael became adults in order for them to deliver a then-baby Henry to Peter Pan in exchange for their sister, which was further delayed when Regina Mills adopted Henry first. Since no one ages in Neverland, when Team Charming is able to reunite the Darlings in Storybrooke, Wendy's still a young teenage girl while John and Michael are now grown, young adults.
• Rodney to Del in Only Fools and Horses.
• In Royal Pains, Evan R. Lawson is taller than his brother, Hank Lawson, by a few good inches.
• Scarlet Heart: Yin Ti is the youngest of the Aisin Gioro brothers (well, the youngest one who's important to the plot) and is a lot taller than his older brother Yin Zhen.
• Matty Levan from Skins is notably shorter than his younger brother Nick; before Nick's A Day in the Limelight episode in Series 5, fans thought Matty was the younger brother because of this.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: Worf (6'2" Michael Dorn)'s younger brother, Kurn is played by 6'5" Tony Todd.
  • Worf himself is younger than his adoptive brother, Nikolai Rozhenko, but, being a Klingon while Nikolai is human, he's much bigger.
• By Season 3 of Stranger Things, 14-year-old Mike has grown several inches taller than Nancy, who is about 3-4 years older than he is. They were about the same height in the first season.
• On Succession, Cousin Greg is a cousin rather than a brother to the Roy children, but otherwise plays the trope straight: he is the youngest of the main characters and also the tallest, at 6'6" (Connor, the tallest of the Roys, is 5'11").
• In The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Moseby's taller than his older brother Spencer who is a little person. Spencer though is stronger, more wealthy and a grade-A Jerkass.
  • He also has a younger half-brother who’s a pro basketball player.
• Supergirl:
  • While Kara is chronologically older than Alex, she is physically the younger sister due to having spent time in the Phantom Zone and looks even younger because Kryptonians age more slowly than humans. That said, she is over an inch taller than Alex, as Melissa Benoist is a Statuesque Stunner.
  • Kara is 13 years older than her baby cousin Kal-El and was sent to protect him, but because she was suspended in the Phantom Zone, where Time Stands Still, she hadn't aged when she came out of it 24 years later. By the time Kara crash landed on Earth, Kal-El had become an experienced, adult superhero who didn't need her help anymore, while Kara was still 13.
• Supernatural: Sam Winchester is very tall (6'4"), while his notoriously protective big brother Dean is several inches shorter (around 6'0"). Sam teases him about it on occasion, even though 6'0'' is pretty tall by normal standards.
• In the Super Sentai series Battle Fever J, the Make My Monster Grow method is for an Egos Monster to call out its "little brother," a giant robot duplicate.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has the Sneak Brothers. Younger Brother is an average-sized Monster of the Week. Elder Brother is the size (and shape) of a baseball. Later, we meet Sister, who is basically Younger with a little skirt added.
• Today's Special: Sam has two older sisters who only appear in pictures. Both are shorter than him.
• Alcide Herveaux from True Blood is a walking mountain of muscle, but his older sister Janice still refers to him as her "baby" brother.
• In Victorious Tori (younger sibling) and Trina (older sibling) started off at approximately the same height, but over time, Tori became several inches taller than Trina.
• Young Sheldon: Discussed in the episode "The Wild and Woolly World of Nonlinear Dynamics", when Sheldon points out that Missy (they're twins, but Sheldon was born first) is now taller than he is. Subverted in their adult years, as Sheldon is taller than Missy in The Big Bang Theory and their older brother Georgie is the tallest in both shows.