Or rather, ''mustachioed" baby.
"Some babies are born bald... but Mario was born with a full head of hair, and a full face, too!"
— Nintendo Comics System, "Family Album: The Early Years"
A baby is born, shows up on screen, or someone becomes one through a Fountain of Youth. But wait, what is that on their face? Facial hair? How is that possible?
Usually in infancy, except for the hair on their head, a baby is too young to have anything resembling a beard or a moustache. Yet, somehow, some of them have one despite the lack of hormones and other substances within their body needed to grow one, and most of the time it goes ignored by the other characters.
A Visual Gag usually Played for Laughs. May overlap with Gonk if it is used to make a baby intentionally not cute and Girls with Moustaches if the baby is a girl. May also result from Strong Family Resemblance if it runs in the family or Beard of Evil if it's used to mark the infant as evil, usually in the form of a Dastardly Whiplash.
Surprisingly this can happen in real life. A medical condition known as precocious puberty
can result in a child starting puberty much sooner than usual. In extremely rare cases this can go so far as a boy entering puberty, including growing facial hair before they're one year old.
See also Hairstyle Inertia.
Examples:
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Advertising
- The barbarians in Capital One's credit card commercials include a kid with a beard.
- The Ultimate Wingman commercial for Club Orange depicts the Wingman as mustached when he is seen as a baby.
Anime and Manga
- In two of the three Amada Anime Series: Super Mario Bros videos, Mario is born with his full moustache.
- Subverted in Fullmetal Alchemist. Ed and Al are shown an old childhood photo of Olivier with a cute baby in her lap. The brothers immediately freak out when they learn the extremely normal baby in the photo was actually Alex when he was younger. They proceed to have an Imagine Spot of how they thought Alex would've looked, ergo an extremely muscular baby with a giant moustache.
- One Piece: Capone Bege's infant son Capone Pez is born with the same upper lip Perma-Stubble as his father.
- The protagonist of Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi was born with a full beard the same as his father's.
- Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z once mentioned that Saiyans are born with the same hair they'll have as adults which made fans wonder if his father, King Vegeta was born with his moustache.
Comic Books
- Nintendo Comics System: Super Mario Bros. No. 3 has a one-page comic called "Family Album: The Early Years", which shows photos of what Mario and Luigi looked like as children. In a few photos, the infant versions of Mario and Luigi are shown with stubble (with the caption for the first photo even saying that Mario was born with a full head of hair and a full face), and the toddler version of Mario is shown with a full mustache.note
- The Solicitine Nuns of Castle Waiting are a religious sect comprised of bearded and mustachioed women who are the custodians of the relics of St. Wilgeforte. One of their charges is a little girl called "Skeeter" (short for "Solicitious Kummernis Eutropia Dignifortis Uncumber Hulfe Reginfledes Liberata"), who was left on the abbey's doorstep as an infant with a full mustache already grown in. There's a good image of the nuns Discussing this trope while they're talking about Skeeter as a baby, but unfortunately no images of the baby Skeeter herself.
- In Tintin - Tintin and the Picaros, at their show trial, the Thompsons are accused of having deliberately grown out their mustache to better blend in in San Theodoros as part of their conspiracy against General Tapioca. They retort, "We were born with our moustaches!".
Films — Animation
- The LEGO Ninjago Movie: Master Wu had a goatee as a baby, as seen in an old family picture.
- Leaked animatics for Genndy Tartakovsky's cancelled Popeye film show Bluto was this.
Films — Live Action
- In Addams Family Values, Pubert is born with the same moustache as his father Gomez.
- In the prologue of Meet the Spartans, it is shown that Leonidas represents the ideal Spartan as a baby (and thus will not be thrown into the pile where rejected babies are discarded) because he had abs, facial hair, and the voice of an adult man.
Literature
- In Dave Barry's Babies and Other Hazards of Sex, Dave Barry does the following joke:
A common fear among new parents is that, as a result of a mix-up in the nursery, some kind of terrible mistake will be made, such as that they'll wind up taking home Yasser Arafat's baby [Note: written in 1984, you can substitute whatever controversial Middle Eastern leader you want here]. This fear is groundless. When a baby is born, a hospital person immediately puts a little plastic tag around its wrist with the words "NOT YASSER ARAFAT'S BABY" printed on it. So whichever baby you wind up with, you can be sure it isn't his. (the illustration shows a row of babies with "NOT YASSER ARAFAT'S BABY" wrist-tags along with a baby with a turban, beard stubble, machine gun, pistol, and grenade, no wrist-tag.)
- In canonical artwork for the Discworld, all Dwarfs are depicted as having beards - even babies in arms. Dwarfs on the Discworld, like their mothers and fathers, are born with beards. See here.◊
- Bumblemore, the Dumbledore from the Barry Trotter trilogy was said to have been born with his beard which is thought to be a sign of a powerful wizard.
Live-Action TV
- In the Father Ted episode "Speed 3", lecherous milkman Pat Mustard's affairs with Craggy Island's women has resulted in a series of new hairy babies, some of whom have his mustache and/or sideburns.
- Jose Chung's opening narration in the Millennium (1996) episode "Jose Chung's 'Doomsday Defense'" mentions that author and cult founder Juggernaut Onan Gupta was born with a full beard.
Music
- Stephen Lynch's song "Baby" is about his wife giving birth to a comedically ugly baby. One line states that "her hair color doesn't match her beard."
- Kunt and the Gang have a song called "Jesus (Baby With A Beard)".
Mythology and Folklore
- Some Paul Bunyan tales proclaim he had facial hair as a baby.
Video Games
- Baby New Year in City of Heroes. Actually, he doesn't resemble a baby at all, aside from being tiny.
- Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped: In the Golden Ending, Cortex and N. Tropy get absorbed into the malfunctioning Time Twister's vortex and turned into babies, but keep their facial hair.
- Baby Mario and Luigi in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time have Stache stats, despite a visible absence of actual mustache.
- The Babalities for Kratos and Kano in Mortal Kombat 9 have them sporting a little beard even as a baby.
- In the Manniversary Update of Team Fortress 2, one of the promo images for the update is Mr. Testosterone Poisoning himself, Saxton Hale, bursting out the chest of a grizzly bear as a very muscly one-year-old baby, complete with his iconic mustache to boot.
Web Animation
- In SUPER MARIO - AFTER THE GAME, Mario and Peach's daughter is born with a mustache.
- Hector from Smosh Babies is a Mexican gangster baby who is shown to have a moustache.
Webcomics
- Axe Cop and his brother Flute Cop are both shown with moustaches as babies.
- Maximumble: In "Long Ago", a wizard explains to another character how he was created, and a week later, his Wizard Beard filled in.
- The Order of the Stick:
- All male dwarves are shown to have beards from a young age, as shown in flashbacks to Durkon's childhood. Even his infant son Kudzu has a beard.
- Elan's Evil Twin Nale is shown in flashback to have already had his Beard of Evil when they were infants.
Web Original
- In the SuperMarioLogan episode, "Mr. Goodman's Baby!", Mr. Goodman's infant son, Benjamin Franklin Goodman has a mustache, much like his father.
Western Animation
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In "Musta Been A Beautiful Baby", Scratch and Grounder's attempt to age Sonic and Tails into seniors with Dr. Robotnik's decrepitizer instead turns them, and later Robotnik, into babies. The infant version of Robotnik is shown to have a mustache, much like his adult counterpart.
- The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: Current page image. In "Toddler Terrors of Time Travel", Ludwig Von Koopa's animated counterpart Kooky Von Koopa's Time Travel Tube turns him, King Koopa, Toad, Mario, and Luigi into babies. The infant versions of Mario and Luigi are shown to have mustaches, much like their adult counterparts. note
- Bordertown: Ernesto's flashback in "Viva Coyote" shows he was born with his signature moustache.
- The Fairly Oddparents: Foop is born with a goatee as part of his existence as an Evil Counterpart to Poof.
- Inspector Gadget (2015): In one episode, the Chief decides to take a dip in the Fountain of Youth. When he is pulled out, he becomes a baby but retains his moustache.
- Jimmy Two-Shoes: In one episode, Miseryville goes through a moustache craze with everyone except Jimmy being able to grow one, even babies!
Beezy/Heloise: Its all about muscle control.
- In the King of the Hill episode "Hank Gets Dusted", Dusty Hill from ZZ Top puts a fake ZZ Top-esque beard on newborn Bobby Hill in a flashback sequence.
- The Looney Tunes Show: The Merrie Melodies music video, "Moostache" from the episode, "Itsy Bitsy Gopher" reveals that Yosemite Sam was born with his moustache.
- The Simpsons: In "Dad Behaviour", Jasper's child is still an unborn fetus, but somehow has the same long, white beard as his father.
- In South Park (including the first Spirit of Christmas short), any depiction of baby Jesus is just adult Jesus' bearded, haloed face on a baby's body.
- Tangled: The Series: In the episode "You're Kidding Me!", Cassandra, Lance, and Shorty are made younger by a magic spinning top. The former two become toddlers and Shorty becomes an infant, yet retains his long, white beard.
- Uncle Grandpa: The "Uncle Grandpa Babies" segments show baby Uncle Grandpa possessing a moustache.
- In Voltron: Legendary Defender, male Alteans have facial hair by the time they're toddlers.
- Hey Arnold!: In "Helga's Locket", Grandpa Lou reads in the newspaper that a 2-foot baby was born with a 3-foot beard.
- Male historical characters who are popularly known by their facial hair, such as Abraham Lincoln, are routinely depicted with their signature beards and/or mustaches on Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, even though they'd encountered as small boys.
