Exactly What It Says On The Tin, the old guy who loves to complain about how things were better in his day, and that kids these days show no respect. The
Grumpy Old Man is similar to a
Sadist Teacher, but old - and not usually in direct authority over the youngsters. May possess unexpected wisdom - but is likely to just complain about the young whippersnappers walking on his lawn, damn youngun's, no respect, don't know how good they have it. In my day we had to walk
fifteen miles through the snow to get to school, uphill
both ways! And we didn't complain, nosir, we were
happy, and we got a dime a year to work 17 hours a day in the mines, but did we complain?
NO! We were
satisfied, dammit, because there was a
depression going on, and we didn't dare complain when dad beat us, because it built character and we
respected him for it, not like these days...
In some cases, the
Grumpy Old Man might be a
Jerk With A Heart Of Gold who is able to slowly warm up to the company of kids - but, more often than not, he's just an elderly
Jerkass.
The
Old Timer would be the
Fan Dumb variant that doesn't appreciate those
young whippersnappers who have the unmitigated audacity to enjoy any of the TV shows, movies, music, or whatnot that were popular when
he was young.
Contrast
Cool Old Guy,
The Dumbledore. See also
Screw Politeness I Am A Senior,
Evil Old Folks.
Examples:
Abridged Series
- Yugi's grandpa in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. He frequently fantasies about dying as he hates his life so much, is increasingly senile and seems to find nothing in life enjoyable. Except of course, for his rendevous with the poster of the Black Lustre Soldier...
Anime and Manga
Film
- The movie Grumpy Old Men, featuring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, which focuses on two such characters fighting amongst themselves over old-man stuff and ages-long grudges. It got a sequel, Grumpier Old Men.
- Walter Matthau and George Burns played a pair of Grumpy Old Borscht-belt Comedians who despise each other in The Sunshine Boys. But they used to be a partner act, and they're coerced into reuniting for a television special. Grumpy Hilarity Ensues, of course.
- Sam Baines from Back To The Future seemed to be that sort of person. It's unlikely that kids would routinely jump in front of his car, and that he was just grumbling about "damn kids" in general.
- Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- Arguably, Miracle Max in The Princess Bride
- Mr. Nebbercracker in Monster House is shown at first to be the basic "Stay off my lawn" old man who took any toy that came near his house. However later it is revealed that this is a cover for his true intentions of protecting kids from the wrath of Constance, his child-hating deceased wife who has possessed his house for 40-so years and eats anybody who comes too close to her. Basically anytime he yells "Stay off my lawn" it is not so much a threat as it is a warning. Ultimately the main characters set her spirit free by blowing up the house and he loses his crotchety behavior, happily giving back all the toys he confiscated to everyone in the neighborhood.
- Norman Thayer Jr. in On Golden Pond.
- Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) in Gran Torino. (Never has the phrase "Get off my lawn" sounded so terrifying...or awesome.)
- Justified with Carl Frederickson from Up. He's grumpy and crotchety because of the overwhelming guilt from an unfulfilled promise he made to his late wife.
- Plus, his beloved wife is, ya know, dead. That might have had something to do with it.
- Jetfire in the Transformers Film Series. His father was the wheel! The first one! He may not have transformed into anything, but he did it with honor! Dignity! Overuse of exclamation points!
- "Pope Doll" 1 from 9.
Live Action TV
- The Four Yorkshiremen sketch from At Last The 1948 Show (featuring John Cleese and Graham Chapman of Monty Pythons Flying Circus) is basically a pissing contest between four old men trying to outdue each other in their "hard life" bit and taking to Beyond The Impossible levels: "We had to get up half a hour before we went to bed...".
- The program Grumpy Old Men, which is devoted to real-life grumpy old celebrities complaining about stuff.
- Frank Barone.
- There was a Saturday Night Live character, played Dana Carvey, who was actually called "A Grumpy Old Man". Every time he appeared on the show, he would make a rant against modern-day society, starting off with his Catch Phrase ("I'm old and I'm not happy!"), contrasting how things were in his day. ("In my day we didn't have hair dryers! If you wanted to blow dry your hair you stood outside during a hurricane. Your hair was dry, but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull! And that's the way it was and you liked it! You loved it! Whoopee, I'm a human head-kabob!")
- Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show.
- Bernie Kibbitz from All That
- Oscar from Corner Gas
- Sid Fields
from the fourth season Seinfeld episode, "The Old Man."
- Adam Schiff and to a lessor degree Arthur Branch on Law And Order.
- The BBC series of one-off TV shows Grumpy Old x takes a bunch of Real Life grumpy old celebrities, and has them do talking heads about whatever the x is this time. The initial ones were Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women, more recently there have been things like Grumpy Old Holidays, Grumpy Old Christmas etc etc etc.
- McCoy from Star Trek TOS shows traces of this, by being somewhat older than the other two in the Power Trio, snarky, and somewhat phobic of transporters. He makes up for it by being a compassionate, humanistic idealist and a competent doctor as well.
Music
- The Weird Al song "When I was Your Age":
"Didn't have no swimming pool when I was just a lad
Our neighbor's septic tank was the closest thing we had
Didn't have no dental floss, had to use old rusty nails
Didn't have Nintendo, we just poured salt on snails
Didn't have no water bed, had to sleep on broken glass
Didn't have no lawnmower, we used our teeth to cut the grass"
- The Green Day song "The Grouch":
"I was a young boy that had big plans
Now I'm just another shitty old man
I don't have fun and I hate everything
The world owes me, so fuck you"
New Media
Newspaper Comics
- Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace.
- Ed Crankshaft, originally from Funky Winkerbean then later spun off into his own strip, Crankshaft. He's not only a Grumpy Old Man, he's a school-bus driver, who keeps a running tally of how many times he's destroyed his neighbor George Keesterman's mailbox with the bus, and how far he can make parents or the kids chase the bus before they give up.
- Funky himself seems to have (d)evolved into this, after Time Skip #2.
- In one Dilbert strip, a scowling employee says that he had only plain zeros and ones to work with when he started programming, and sometimes not even ones.
Stand Up Comedy
- Comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's "Walter" character is a Grumpy Old Man.
- Comedian Godfrey's own father qualified. What makes this funnier is that his father is Nigerian, and is acted with an appropriate accent. When l'il Godfrey complained about missing the bus, he talked about how he had to walk one hundred miles to school every day. When Godfrey had managed to save up $195 towards $200 Air Jordans and asked for a loan, his father talked about how, in their day, he did not have feet. He had to borrow his feet.
Tabletop Games
- Long Beards in War Hammer. Their special ability allows units to reroll a morale test to prevent their grumpy leers and words of "told you so".
Video Games
New Media
Webcomics
Western Animation
...your Blu-Ray Discs and your pierced scrotums and your bull frogs and your telekinesis and your Marvel Comics and your YouTube.com and your nuclear physics and your ingrowing toenails and your Gears Of War and your Quentin Tarantino and your power steering and your elevators and your six-person space capsules and your illegitimate offspring and your - hey, why did it fade to black? Am I dead?
