How can you tell which sibling is older on sight? Common sense and
Captain Obvious say the taller one is older; after all, he (or she) has had more time to grow. But sometimes, due to circumstance or just
Rule of Funny, the
younger sibling will wind up the taller. Expect
hilarity to ensue when people identify the wrong sibling as the elder...
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Full Metal Alchemist's Alphonse Elric had been taller than his elder brother Edward since childhood, but when he loses his body and is bound into a seven-foot-suit of armor, he towers over Ed, who is a hair under five feet (and very defensive when this is pointed out). Due to his new metal form, he often gets mistakenly attributed with his brother's title of "Fullmetal Alchemist". At the end of the series, Al and Ed are adults in a family photo featuring Ed's family, complete with children, and Al, with his human body restored, is several inches taller than Ed.
- Fairy Tail: Elfman is the younger brother to Mirajane, but is incredibly protective of her, to the point that it's almost ridiculous.
Literature
- Harry Dresden, at six and a half feet, towers over his older half-brother Thomas, who's a hair above six feet. In Cold Days, Harry also realizes that since he's a White Court vampire, Thomas will also look more youthful than Harry, probably forever.
- The Gruffs play with this one. The fairy tales about the Billy Goats Gruff are about these guys, including the "my big brother will get you" shtick, where each older brother is exponentially bigger. the Eldest Gruff is five feet tall and crushed a Denarian out of hand.
Live Action Television
- Supernatural: Sam Winchester is insanely tall, while his notoriously protective big brother Dean is several inches shorter. Sam even teases him about it once.
- In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, we have the Sneak Brothers, the elder of which is a little red spiked skull, small enough to be held in his "little" brother's hand.
- Evan R. Lawson is taller than his brother, Hank Lawson, by a few good inches in Royal Pains
Video Games
Western Animation
- In the Regular Show episode "Don," the eponymous character is introduced as Rigby's hypercompetent brother and an endless source of frustration for him. He has a deeper voice, acts more mature, and looks like a grown man in a raccoon suit. It turns out that Rigby resents him because he's the younger brother, and people have always mistaken him for the older brother because he's taller than Rigby.
- Kick Buttowski: Shogun Sanchez is shorter than Papercut Peterson.
