Some characters are Older Than They Look (much older, even). Some, meanwhile, are younger. Maybe they're robots, clones, some other kind of artificial construct, or just unhealthy. Maybe there's a superficial reason, such as a curse. Or they're just overdeveloped. One way or another, this character may look like an adult(/teenager/older child), and even act and talk like one, but chronologically speaking, they aren't.
Other times there may be a young adult with the appearance of a middle aged or even older man. Gray hair, a prematurely receding hairline, generally cause someone to look older. Certain types of facial hair also can make a younger man seem older.
Subtropes include Older Alter Ego, a magical ability for younger kids to temporarily turn into adults and back, and Plot-Relevant Age-Up, the same permanently.
Similar, but not to be confused with Artistic Age, where this is due to art rather than in-story causes. If, in live-action, their age is surprising to the viewer but not anyone in story, it's a bad side-effect of Dawson Casting.
Many people will contest that this is a Truth in Television.
Compare Compulsory School Age, Mistaken Age, Age Inappropriate Dress. Contrast Animation Anatomy Aging. Compare and contrast Really Seventeen Years Old (where someone is younger than they claim to be).
Examples
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Anime and Manga
It is revealed that Maria in Hayate the Combat Butler is only 17, but she is incredibly mature and everybody mistakes her for a beautiful woman in her mid-to-late-20s, leading Hayate to believe that he likes older women. It also becomes a Running Gag that Maria is irritated when people mention "young girls" as if she doesn't fit into that group.
Specifically, she keeps saying "I'm 17-years-old" with increasing irritation. It's also a Shout Out to Kikuko Inoue.
Mildly subverted in Bubblegum Crisis: given how long ago sexaroids were labeled as illegal by the series start, we get the implication that while Sylvie and Anri may not be as old as they look (Sylvie appears in her mid-twenties while Anri looks to be the loli model), they're not single digit ages.
Yagi Yuria in Shibatora works at a maid cafe, passing as over eighteen, but is really only twelve years old. The fact that her mental maturity is normal for her real age, not her appearance, results in her being exploited by a number of other characters.
The manga adaptation of Battle Royale has bizarre character designs; a small amount of the characters look their age, while the rest look much, much older. Like Mitsuko and Shogo.
Zelgadis the chimera of Slayers is 20 at the start of the Light Novel series, and his appearance appropriately matches his age. In the anime, his age is bumped down to sixteen (a Word Of God statement in a film book), making him fall under this trope. It doesn't help that his voice is noticably deep, especially in the English version. More often than not, Gourry (who's older and taller than Zelgadiss is; in the anime, he's the only protagonist who's in his twenties) is referred to as a boy.
In Excel Saga, a pedophile takes a nine-year-old to a love hotel, only to learn that she's, er, "prodigious"* meaning she was able to completely hide away her triple-g cup breasts. The episode in question was making as many jokes that couldn't be aired on TV as possible (it didn't, which was what the creators wanted), but everything was still played for laughs (all black laughs), which meant the pedophile left the under aged girl broken hearted when he saw what she looked like, before anything awful happened. Yep.
Well, when the episode is titled "Going Too Far", what did you expect?
Harumi in Irresponsible Captain Tylor appears to be in her mid-twenties, but viewers who have a quick enough eye to catch her character stats just before the commercial breaks will be surprised to realize that she's only 3 years old. It turns out that she's an android, so don't worry too much about it.
A more mundane example in the same show would be Dr. Kitaguchi, a 33 year-old doctor who looks like he's somewhere in his 50s. If his self-proclaimed thirty-year drinking habit isn't an exaggeration, you can probably figure out why.
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has Professor Banner, who looks like he's in his mid-20's, but he's actually 18. It's because that at 18, he contracted a terminal disease while doing alchemy research, so he made a second body to continue research and stop the funder of his research, Kagemaru.
Yuki Nagato and her associates in Suzumiya Haruhi appear to be about fifteen, but as constructs of the Data Overmind, their physical bodies at least are only up to three years old. It's somewhat debatable since it isn't known how the whole system works, but with Nagato getting trapped in a time loop for hundreds of years (and mentally aging, as she alone retains full memories of the repetitions) the fifth novel inverts this and makes her Really 700 Years Old.
An alternate theory mentioned in the show is that the whole universe was recreated three years earlier, so * everyone* who thinks they're older than three is actually Younger Than They Look.
Kyon's sister's friend Miyoko is this. She is the same age as his elementary school aged sister but appears to be within a year of Kyon's age.
Yoko in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is actually 14, the same age as Simon. However, since humans had been living underground for generations, without a sun or anything, they probably couldn't tell time as accurately, so who knows.
In Planetes, a minor character is twelve years old, but since she grew up on the Moon with it's lower gravity, her size makes her look like she's in her early twenties. This causes the twenty-something main character to be really uncomfortable when he discovers her true age... especially since he'd been hitting on her.
In Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan, the title character has a nine year old sister that looks about nine years older than her.
In Mahou Sensei Negima!, two of the Huge Schoolgirls are forced to pay full price for movie tickets, even though they're only 14-15 years old (While two of their classmates who are a couple months older but look younger get away with claiming to be elementary school students for a larger discount). One of them gets so mad, she uses magic age-reducing pills to turn herself into a small child, until she realizes (too late) that the cost of the pills combined with the ticket come out to more than she would have had to pay normally. The other, being a Ninja, just Henges herself younger for free.
There's Chachamaru, who has been built two and a half years ago, but looks like a teenager.
There is also Naba Chizuru, who is explicitly the youngest girl in the class aside from the android but is maternal enough (in multiplesenses of the word) to pass for at least 20.
Jet of Cowboy Bebop looks like he could be in his fourties or fifties, but is only thirty-six. This is lampshaded in the preview for "Waltz for Venus" where he tells us this, and says you shouldn't judge people by how they look, or how much hair they have.
Most of the cast of Eyeshield 21 qualifies, but the one that takes the cake is Rikiya Gaoh: He's two meters tall (6'7"), square-jawed, musclebound, capable of bench-pressing over 200 kg (over 440 lb)...and we're supposed to believe that he's a high school freshman. Some of the other characters don't believe it either ("There oughta be a law against players like him!").
All the "manly" (which is most of the cast) football players of Eyeshield 21 look like more pro-football players in their 20s and 30s rather then a bunch of high schoolers playing youth football. Though it does explain how they manage to get away with gambling, smoking, and drinking when they aren't even 20 yet.
That's not even getting into Atsushi Munakata of the Amino Cyborgs, whose tremendous musculature and broad, dashingly handsome face make him look over 30, a fact that is actually commented upon. One Omake chapter shows that he actually looks exactly like his father... and his mother.
Pictured above: Lampshaded when Sena and Monta discover the identity of Musashi, who they only knew as the middle-aged looking construction guy who worked on their ever expanding clubhouse. They cry out in unison "you're seventeen??!!"
Similar to Musashi, Yamabushi from Shinryuuji looks much older than he is due to his half-grown in beard. He's even charged with pumping up the Japanese youth cup team before the game against America because he looks the oldest. When he gets too emotional, the similarly adult-looking Mamoru Banba steps in to offer his own uplifting words.
Mr. Don, Gaoh's opponent in the American game, is supposed to be 18, but looks closer to sixty with his white hair, massive stature, and heavily-wrinkled face.
Lampshaded in a chapter where we learn they even have rankings for who has the worst case of "old man" face.
It'd be easier to name the people in this show who DO look their age.
You would never, ever know it by looking at him or hearing him talk, but Piccolo at the beginning of Dragon Ball Z is only eight years old. Nobody remembers this, for good reason.
When he was born he was supposed to be a demon. He actually takes much longer to reach maturity than Piccolo Daimaou's other "offspring", who are full-grown when they hatch.
In a similar vein, Cell is much, much younger than you'd expect - even with all the time-traveling he had to do to reach a timeline where he could absorb the Androids, he's still only in his early twenties.
In Dragon Ball GT, there is an extreme case of this in the Shadow Dragons, who, though mature as any other Dragon Ball villains, are, by technicality, newborns, spawned from the dragonballs' misuse.
Bleach: The high school boys all look like they're older than they really are, particularly when they're in battle situations. Their shinigami counterparts who are the same age biologically also look older than they really are in similar situations. The most affected characters are Ichigo, Sado, Uryuu, Renji and Kira. This is in stark contrast to the girls of the same age-group who are always depicted looking younger than they really are.
Trigun's main character Vash starts out in Younger Than They Look form, seeing as he's really a plant-like alien who matures into a young child far more rapidly than a human would; when the series opens, however, he's Older Than They Look, seeing as he's existed since before the incident that initially colonized the planet.
However, Wolfwood in the manga does have a Lampshaded case; The experimental treatments his Evil Mentor used to give him superhuman capabilities and Healing Factor also caused him to age faster; while he looks in his mid-to-late 20s, he's probably sixteen or so when we meet him. His former guardian at the orphanage doesn't recognize him until Livio's about to kill him.
Guts from Berserk because of extreme amount of physical and mental stress looks to be about 30 or 40. If you pay attention, you'll be surprised to learn that Guts is around 22.
Umehachi, male protagonist of the manga Tende Freeze, is 17, but looks like he should belong in junior high. (Admittedly, he regularly acts that age, too.) This is repeatedly lampshaded with people who get it wrong; his brother is in junior high but looks far more grownup than his brother (and, again, acts the part too...); when they go to the movies, they buy each other's tickets to avoid lengthy explanations.
While Satella of Chrono Crusade looks somewhere around her late twenties or early thirties, she turns out to only be nineteen years old much to the surprise of Rosette.
One of the students in Doki Doki School Hours looks and acts like a middle-aged man even though he's still in high school. They even call him "Oyaji" (i.e. "Geezer" or "Pops").
In Slam Dunk, Shinichi Maki, the captain of Kainan team, looks like he was over 35 but he is only 17. After learning it, Hanamichi immediately nicknames him "Middle-aged Man" and never calls him by his real name. Maki retaliates by pointing out that Akagi, Shohoku's captain, looks even older. And later on in the series, Uozumi (whose the same age as Akagi), is mistaken for Akagi's father.
Arf is another example. She looks to be in her mid twenties or so, but in reality is probably only three or four years old tops considering Fate created her, and Fate herself is a another example as a clone with a copy of the memories from the girl she was cloned from.
By extension, this trope applies to Erio and Zest for the same reasons as Fate.
Sette looks like an adult woman, but is the last of the Numbers to have been activated, and thus younger than any of the others (particularly Cinque, who is a direct inverse: looks like a kid, has the mind and skills of a seasoned commando).
Occurs with the all young girls in Junko Mizuno's Pure Trance manga; they appear to be about three when they're born, and one quickly ages about 16 years in a matter of months due to her ability to shed her skin like a snake.
The silpelits from Elfen Lied Age at about double the rate of normal humans. Nana looks 14-15 and is really around seven years old. Similarly, Mariko is really somewhere around three years old.
Naruto's Tsunade manages to be both Younger Than They LookandOlder Than They Look: in calendar years, she's about fifty or sixty, the same as Chivalrous Pervert Jiraiya. However, she uses a powerful genjustu round the clock to make herself look like a twenty-year-old (or however old she needs to be to escape her creditors.) However, her most powerful jutsu of her own invention heals any wound she may receive, but at the cost of aging her far faster than her contemporaries. So without the genjustu, she isyounger than she looks. (whew!)
This applies the Sound Four who were all only 14. It was probably deliberate so their progressively unmerciful deaths didn't disturb readers.
Hana-chan in Ojamajo Doremi Dokkan having aged herself magically from a baby to a tween.
Primula from SHUFFLE! appears to be around eleven or twelve years of age. She's actually younger, since she's the most recent test subject of the Yggdrasil Project.
Isabella from Paradise Kiss is high school age, but dressing like a middle-aged Victorian lady makes her look remarkably older. Her very mature and composed attitude only add to it, as do her knobbly, slightly manly hands.
In Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, 15 year old Lambo (after being shot with the 10 year into the future bazooka)... really does notlook 15.
Mahoromatic, being about androids, has an alien android who poses as a school teacher. When asked over the course of the series about age-related issues, such as if he would go drinking with a group of other teachers, he always replies, " That would be illegal, as I am only three years old." For some reason, nobody bothers to question him on this.
Otaku no Musume-san: Taeko, a high school student who also happens to be a landlady, often is assumed to be a lady cosplaying as a high school student (mostly because the tenants are generally otakus themselves, so it's not a big leap). Amusingly, her mother actually works at a Cosplay Cafe and was mistaken for Taeko's friend when she turned up in her work uniform. The combination of the two tropes lead to Taeko looking older than her mother.
Ling Yao of Fullmetal Alchemist is a mild case. He's 15, but he looks like a fully-grown adult. This is used for both a joke about him being much taller than Ed (who is slightly older) and a plot point when he's arrested as an illegal immigrant and the authorities don't believe he's really a minor.
Hibiki No Mahou has Asuma, a wizard who ages much more quickly than normal as a price for using magic. In reality, he's probably at least in his late teens, but he looks to be about in his late 20's/early 30's.
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei and Asuka occasionally fit this trope. Most of the times when they're actually drawn like 14 year olds, it's because they are meant to look unsexy. Some fans have joked that the size of Asuka's breasts seems to change depending on how far they are from Shinji's face.
Misato, on the other hand, follows the opposite of this trope. Despite being taller than her younger charges, she's drawn the same way, even though she's in her late 20s.
As for in-series examples, it's implied that Rei is in fact a 4-year-old with the mind of a 14-year-old as a result of being a clone. On the other hand, there's no evidence the clones haven't been growing at a normal, human rate, so physically they could all be 14. It all depends on how you interpret what counts for age: mind, body, or soul? How much are Rei I, II, & III the same person?
Some, if not all, Sekirei fall under this. Apart from 00/01, the absolute eldest is 20 years old. While some Sekirei do appear to be teens or younger, the majority look like fully mature adults, and not teenagers like they should be. An example would be Kazehana and Matsu, who do not look 20.
Yukio Oikawa of Digimon Adventure 02 would be in his early thirties, but you'd never know that by looking at his grey skin and sunken eyes.
Masaru and Touma of Digimon Savers are both fourteen, but look like they're in their late teens or early twenties; this is especially emphasised when they're compared to Yoshino, who like them looks like a young adult because she is a young adult.
Most people assume Baccano's Luck Gandor to be somewhere in his late twenties. Delving into the light novels and doing a little rough math, however, will reveal that he's only in his late teens.
Air Gear stars Ikki, a 14 year old who looks and sounds like he's 20. To say nothing of Ringo, who might be the most well endowed 14 year olds in anime.
In Sailor Moon, when ChibiUsa and Hotaru are possessed, they take the forms of adult women, though they both are children younger than any of the other characters.
Pinoko of Black Jack depends on how you count it. She started life as a teratoma (a form of tumor) that had grown everything but a body while attached to an eighteen-year-old woman. If you count her life starting with her "sister", she's eighteen and Older Than They Look; if, like Black Jack, you count her life from when she was removed, she's less than a year. Either way, her artificial body looks about six.
Stiyl Magnus of To Aru Majutsu no Index. You know, this red-haired guy who's smoking all the time and at 2 meters quite tall. Believe it or not, he's just 14.
Kanzaki and Oriana also looks around 20-25 when they're both only 18.
All of the Misaka clones, naturally. Most noticeable with Worst, who looks older than the rest (including older than her original), but is actually the youngest clone. She is teased at one point that, despite looking 16, she's technically the "younger sister" of Last Order, who looks 10.
George of Dragon Crisis, despite looking about thirty, actually turns out to be 19.
Honey Kisaragi passes for 16, but since she's actually the transforming android Cutey Honey, she was probably built more recently than that.
Gareki from Karneval looks in his early twenties but is actually only 15. He's only a little bit shorter than Yogi, who's 21, and he acts as a guardian/big brother to Nai which doesn't help.
Akagi: Shigeru is only 13 pre-Time Skip but looks considerably older in the anime (he's more plausible in the manga). A line referring to his age was even changed from "Yeah, you look it too" to "Really? You don't look it" in the adaptation.
Leorio from Hunter × Hunter looks like a businessman in his thirties or early forties. He's nineteen. It was even lampshaded when he tells Gon and Killua, who are more than shocked.
Lady Kayura in Ronin Warriors/Yoroiden Samurai Troopers is physically 12 years old despite having lived for centuries and appearing to be in her late teens.
YuYu Hakusho has an early joke about this—a creepy one-shot youth gangster who kidnaps Keiko in the manga, who has an oversized head with overdeveloped bone structure and a load of stubble. In an early panel where he's perving on Keiko his face is labelled, 'fourteen years old.' I.e., in his last year of middle school.
Kuwabara falls into this a little, too. He doesn't look fourteen. Then again, he doesn't look Japanese.
Really, the entire middle school system in the story acts more like a high school system, what with its various gangs and all.
Shinonome Nano from Nichijou looks and acts like a high schooler but she is actually only a year old at the beginning of the show. She's a robot (with a wind-up key, natch).
Recorder and Randsell has Atsushi Miyagawa the impossibly 180 cm/5'9 tall 11-year old.
Aioros died when he was 14-years old and he was already taller than a 20-year-old Aioria. Then there was that flashback of Shura in the anime.
Next-generation sequel anime Saint Seiya Omega has the original main characters inverting this due to the art style not aging them much, while the new cast members get to take over the trope.
The protagonist of Accel World is 13 years old but looks at least 2 years older.
Kyouichi from the first chapter of Himitsu Kichilooks like a 20 year old when he's no older than 10 or 11.
Hiroshi Agasa of Detective Conan has fallen victim to this. He dislikes being called "ojisan" since he's only 53 years old.
Marida Cruz from Gundam Unicorn looks to be 18 years old, but should technically be around 7 since she's revealed to be a clone of Elpeo Ple from Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ.
Jotaro Kujo from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a very tall, very muscular man who looks to be in his mid-twenties. He's seventeen. Funnily enough, he somehow ends up looking younger in later parts of the manga.
Cleo from Break Blade is only slightly shorter than most of the other female characters, and still manages to rival them figure-wise. Would you believe she's 12? The other characters certainly can't.
Ryu, Ken, Vega, and Fei Long in "Anime/Street Fighter V". They are all supposed to be 17 when they set out on their journey, but are so ridiculously jakked and chiseled they looked like 30-somethings at least! Absurdly large musculature is typical of Street Fighter-related art work, but eve the games keep their few teenage characters relatively realistic in size!
Comic Books
Many comic book characters get this, usually when a character transfers to a more respectable team. For example when Alex from Power Pack joined the New Warriors he was drawn like he was in his late teens despite being around thirteen.
Many X-men are susceptible to this, Iceman when just starting out was sixteen but looked identical to his teammates.
Magneto is old enough to have lived through the holocaust, but has been de-aged and re-aged back into his 20s/30s. You'd never expect he and Xavier are the same age.
Sometimes characters are drawn older to reflect new roles, In the second New Mutants series Dani Moonstar becomes a teacher and is depicted like she's in her mid to late twenties despite only being twenty one. Everything from her hair style to her posture to her personality is changed to reflect her being older, she even adopts Elixir who is only six years younger. However in the third series all this is scrapped, she's a student again and is drawn around her age.
Bart Allen (aka Impulse, then Kid Flash, then The Flash) in The DCU aged unusually quickly for the first few years of his life due to an exceptionally fast metabolism. The reverse is true for his Evil Twin Inertia, who took over 50 years to develop to the physical age of 15.
As indeed is Superboy (as in the Superman clone introduced in Return of Superman), who's presumably even now well under ten comic years old, but looks at least fifteen. He was supposed to look even older, as his growth was being accelerated to the point where he could replace the original Superman, but he was broken out before he was ready.
Victor Mancha of Runaways. He's a cyborg implanted with false memories. He was built as a teenager, so he's approximately 15 years younger than he looks. Molly even comments that she forgot that he's younger than her.
Representative Joshua Freeh, of Transmetropolitan, is the product of a "Bastard Farm" given a wetware upgrade so he has full higher brain functions, created so the Big Bad would have a running mate with a clean-slate past.
Spider Jerusalem:Josh Freeh was the perfect running mate. He had no skeletons in his closet. Hell, he's only two years old!
Both Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, thanks to Older Alter Ego. Lampshaded in Formerly Known as the Justice League. At one point Captain Marvel had to break up with the teenaged superhero Stargirl because even though they were the same age, it just looked really creepy.
It used to be even more extreme; Billy and Mary had the exact same superhero forms when they were pre-teens. Though Comic Book Time makes this a very slow process, they're narrowing the age gap with their alter-egos. Given Black Adam's example, eventually they'll be Older Than They Look, as their Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel forms don't age at all.
Like Billy and Mary, there's Colin Wilkes from Streets of Gotham. With the Venom in his sytem activated, he's as brawny as Bane and looks completely like an adult thug. He's a hero and around the same age as Damian Wayne, who he (sort-of) befriends.
Snowbird of Alpha Flight was a fully grown woman at the age of six.
Prime of Ultraforce is really a thirteen-year-old boy who takes on an adult appearance when powered up. Makes for some raised eyebrows when he proudly announces that the thirteen-year-old girl he has a crush on is his girlfriend.
Magik of New Mutants fame spent half her life in a realm of Limbo outside the normal timestream. As a result, she was a teenager despite technically being born 6 years prior to her abduction, much to the X-Men's shock, since seconds passed on Earth for them.
Jenny Quantum of The Authority looks about 14 or 15. Actually, she was born at the turn of the century - she was just really sick of being treated like the little kid she was, and had the reality-warping power to change that.
The children of Mother of Champions, of the DC Comics Chinese superhero team The Great Ten, age 10 years every day. Between this, the fact they all have Super Strength, and the fact Mother can produce a new batch every three days, they are considered cannon fodder of the finest kind.
Eisenstein, a minor-ish character in Preacher, has "looked over a hundred" since he was 12.
Marvel Comics hero Rage was about 14 when he started his superhero career, but looked like he was at least 30 due to his gargantuan size and muscles. Prior to getting his powers he looked like a regular kid. In any case, this gives him the distinction of being the youngest Avenger ever - so young that when the team discovered his true age they sent him to the New Warriors and told him to come back when he was 18.
When Helen goes on her first date with Atomic Robo in The Deadly Art of Science, she does not react well to the discovery that Robo is only seven years old.
Robo: Intellectually I'm twenty to twenty-five. It's not that bad.
Helen: I need... I think what I need is a drink. And what'd going to the movies have to do with solving this case anyway?
Robo: Well, sometimes it helps to step away from a problem.
Helen: And sometimes you realize your boyfriend is eight years old.
Robo: Seven. But, hey! Now "robot" isn't the weirdest part of our relationship.
Master Splinter, the agedmentor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is younger than you'd think. Rats generally live less than three years (five is exceptional, and seven is the record). When the series begins (about fifteen years after his mutation) he'd still be less than twenty years old.
Taken even farther in the IDW comics, where the story begins only 18 months after their mutation, making them all less than 5-7 years old at the most. Justified in that Splinter, and the Turtles to a lesser extent, have some memories of a past life.
Skaar, The Hulk's son. Looks like an adult in Hulk form, a teenager when in 'human' form, but in actual fact is only a couple of years old, thanks in part to his mother being an alien with an accelerated aging rate. His twin, Hiro-Kala, looks like a young teen.
Film
The concept to Jack starring Robin Williams was about a boy that ages four times faster than normal, with him having the body of a 40 year old with the mental age of 10.
A deleted scene in Napoleon Dynamite has the mustachioed transfer student Pedro exploit this to buy a lottery ticket.
Peluca, the short film on which Napoleon Dynamite is based, has this scene as part of its central plot. The lottery scratcher gives the characters just enough money to buy a wig for another character who had shaved his head.
The Island has clones that appear to be various ages, from thirties up to their sixties. It turns out that oldest ones are no more than four years old.
One horror example exists in Warlock, in which the title character curses the female protagonist to age 10 or 20 years for each night that passes. She remarks to Redfern, "This is worse than death", to which he replies, "That's what he had in mind."
Seeing Double had clones of S Club and various other celebrities that were artificially aged so they could take their places, but kept in a childlike state.
The clones are altered to grow twice as fast in order to be battle-ready sooner. The Star Wars Expanded Universe features a Jedi being confused because she senses a child in the Force, but sees a grown man.
In Episode III, the soon-to-be-Emperor Palpatine ages a few centuries in a matter of seconds. The Expanded Universe came up with the idea that it was his normal appearance (after years of Dark Side corruption), but he was disguised in some way, and the stress of his battle with Windu broke that beyond repair.
Padme in The Phantom Menace is a fourteen year old queen wears a lot of ceremonial makeup and elaborate costumes, apparently to disguise the fact that she's so young. Even still, she's actually the elected leader, so the people must be well aware of her age.
There was a point in the Clone Wars where some Separatists were cloning Nikto, presumably to supplement the droids. The facility was discovered and went under seige, and the cloners decided to respond by bumping up the growth rate to get as many new adults as possible. This didn't work out too well in the end.
The titular character of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, who starts life looking as an old man and dies as a baby, so as a child looks like a small eighty-year-old. He even says to another character early in the movie, "Seven. But I look a lot olda."
J F Sebastian in Blade Runner is in his twenties, but he looks around fifty due to an aging disease (most likely Werner's syndrome). The Replicants are created as young adults and have a four year lifespan.
Tom Hanks's character in Big is a child in the body of an adult, thanks to a magic wishing machine.
In Catch Me If You Can, 16-year-old Frank Abagnale is played by 28-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio. This is justified by the fact that the real-life Abagnale also looked much older than he was, and in fact, his deceptive looks were a key part of how he was able to pull off his scams.
Martin Brundle in The Fly II grows to physical adulthood by age 5 due to the fly DNA he inherited from Seth Brundle. Then his condition takes a turn for the much, much worse.
Maruti in The Return of Hanuman grows to be a primary school student by the age of 3... months.
Ree's mother in Winter's Bone. She's probably in her late 30's but looks more like 60.
Trainspotting: Mark Renton meets Diane in a club, then goes to her house where they have sex. Immediately after the act she kicks him out of her room and he sleeps on a sofa. In the morning it's revealed that she's underage. She even threatens to report him for sex with a minor if he doesn't see her again.
A parental guide for Wreck-It Ralph continuously refers to Vanellope Von Schweetz as "a teenage girl", even though Disney themselves have confirmed that she's nine.
Harry Potter: While the main cast aged with their roles and were actually on the brink of Dawson Casting in the last two installments (yet being merely an average of 2-3 years older than the characters they portrayed) they don't really fit this trope. However the same cannot be said about the character of Severus Snape, who according to the books was supposed to be in his thirties by the time of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone but certainly looked a lot older in the movie adaptation due to his portrayal by Alan Rickman, who was already 55 when the movie was shot. As a result, the character was retconned to look older than he was in the books (see Literature).
Literature
In Brave New World this is mentioned as an attempt to create lower-caste proletarian workers who efficiently skip all those useless developmental years, but the six-year-old men and women are too mentally under-developed, and the program fails.
Somewhat subverted in The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield's hair is starting to grey on one side as a teenager, and he claims several times that looks more mature than he is, but hardly anyone is fooled when he tries to pass for older.
Wilbur Whateley of H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror grew unnaturally quickly — he could speak like an adult and read books by the age of one year and seven months, and was adult-sized by the age of ten.
In Stephen King's The Green Mile, a supposedly elderly couple turned out to watch John Coffey's execution. They turn out to be the 30-something parents of the two dead girls that drove the story.
In The Stand, Nadine has prematurely grey hair which later turns completely white. She's in her mid-30s.
In Mary Renault's The King Must Die, Theseus says he is 19 because he worries that people will think 16 is too young for a king.
Played with in the Old Kingdom books. In order to get Sam to leave her alone, Lirael lies and tells him she's a very young-looking 35. She's 19. He believes her.
Although it's not emphasized as much in the books (and is dispelled somewhat by the later novels), the popular image of Severus Snape falls into this trope. Partly due to Adaptation Displacement by the much older Alan Rickman's brilliant performance as Snape in the movies, partly due to his being a peer to much older characters like Dumbledore and McGonagall, and partly due simply to Snape's own scowling personality, it's very easy to forget that he was barely in his thirties when the series began.
Same with Lily and James (and the rest of the Marauders). It's very easy to forget Lily and James were only 20 when they had Harry and 21 when they died. The films didn't help this; the flashback clips of Lily and James look more like a couple in their 30's or 40's. That wasn't really the fault of the movie makers, though, as their ages weren't given until the seventh book, six years after the first movie had been made.
The casting of older actors to play Lily, James, Snape, Sirius, Lupin, et al actually ended up making sense in the context of the movies. In the books, J.K. Rowling has given Harry, Ron, and Hermione's year-group as being born in the 1979-1980 academic year, meaning they started Hogwarts in September 1991. This makes Snape, Sirius, Lupin, etc. about 31/32 in the first book. However, as the first movie was filmed roughly 10 years after Rowling's in-universe date for Harry starting Hogwarts, this makes James and Lily's year-group in their early 40s rather than early 30s, maintaining their original birth-years (around 1960) given by Rowling. The kids, of course, must have been born 10 years or so later than their book counterparts: presumably around 1990.
This is averted by Lupin in the books. Although he is described as ill-looking and prematurely greying (implied to be a side effect of his lycanthropy), he still looks his age:
Though quite young, his light brown hair was flecked with grey.
In Star Trek: New Frontier, Xy, the son of Burgoyne and Selar, is the chief science officer of the Excalibur...at 5 years old. He's cursed to rapidly age and die very young thanks to the intermingling of Hermat and Vulcan DNA until his mother gives her life to find him a life-extending drug.
In another Star TrekExpanded Universe novel, "Immortal Coil", Rhea McAdams becomes the new security officer of the Enterprise...despite being a barely two-week old android.
In Twilight Edward and Bella's daughter Renesmee will look like she's 17 at the age of seven due to her being a hybrid.
In Teacher Trouble by Alexander McCall Smith, the 12-year-old heroine looks so mature for her age that on her first day of high school she is mistaken for a teacher and left in charge of a class.
The story takes place in medieval France. 40 was considered pretty old, so to be bald at 36 is not unreasonable. (And even today, many men go bald in their mid-twenties.)
Miles Vorkosigan tends to straddle this trope and it's inverse. His short height, slight build, and high pitched voice cause people to subconsciously register him as a child; however the facial lines caused by constant pain for most of his life means that only a slight adjustment of tone, expression, and body language is needed to convince people he is at least a decade older than he actually is.
Music
Jackson Browne's song "Cocaine" has a line that goes "Son, it says here you're 27, but that's impossible. You look like you could be 45," due to the protagonist's cocaine use.
Live-Action TV
Little House on the Prairie:The 1981 episode "Sylvia" was about Albert's friend (and very quickly, girlfriend), a 14-year-old girl who matures early and as a result, faces ridicule from the school. She will quickly become the target of a child rapist (a man wearing a metal clown mask) and — after the rapist impregnates her — the subject of both scandal (thanks to Mrs. Olesen spreading an outright lie that Albert had done the deed) and being callously cast out by her cold, uncaring father. In the end, Sylvia has another run-in with the rapist, and is killed after falling from a rickety ladder trying to escape.
The Electric Company: In the original 1970s incarnation, the members of The Short Circus, the show's quintet of youths, were teenagers playing (or intended to play) 8-10 year-old children. June Angela, the lone member of the cast who lasted all six seasons (known by all as "Julie," a name Angela picked to pay homage to Julie Andrews), was 16 when the last shows were taped in early 1977, and could still pass for 12 due to her tiny size. In addition, each of the adult characters have played children in various one-off and recurring skits, with Rita Moreno's Pandora character — a brat with a bow in her hair, much in the vein of the later Nellie Oleson — the most common.
Diff'rent Strokes: The 1981 episode "The Older Man" – a crossover episode with The Facts of Life due to appearances by Lisa Whelchel and Mindy Cohn (as Blair and Natalie, respectively) – sees 15-year-old Kimberly pout over having to be a young teen-ager and unable to land a desirable date. Blair agrees to give Kimberly a wig and puts on makeup that makes her look like she's in her early 20s. This has unintended consequences when she lands a date with a 25-year-old man named Mike. Arnold and Willis know what this means and try to disrupt the date at the movie theater. Fortunately, Mr. Drummond finds out and intervenes before Mike even thinks about his next move – and Mike seems genuinely surprised (and aghast) when he learns he was dating someone who was in her mid-teens. (Fortunately for Mike, Drummond lets him off the hook because of Kimberly's deception, particularly because he could have had him arrested for any number of sex-related charges and caused him a lifetime of negative consequences.)
Elizabeth, the half-human half-alien "starchild" from the Sci-Fi series V (1983-85). Like scores of other "magical" children in TV-land, she grew rapidly after conception (the typical TV Express Delivery) and after birth, becoming first a pre-teen girl and then undergoing a metamorphosis blatantly scripted so that they could swap the girl actress for a 20-year old actress in a white dress. She, being a starchild, had mystical healing powers! Even though neither of her parent races had such powers. Gah.
In The 4400, Isabelle Tyler, the toddler daughter of two adult characters, ages herself to an adult, killing her mother in the process. As a three-year-old in the body of a twenty-something, she seduces a male character, has a sexual relationship with him and then blackmails him into staying when he threatens to leave her, because she's psychotic and murderous in addition to being really three years old. Squicky much?
Luke Smith, who is grown in an alien laboratory, from The Sarah Jane Adventures is born in the first episode ("Invasion of the Bane") as 13/14-ish year old boy who is as capable as your average teen... in fact more. But he acts naive and innocent as he has no life experience.
In the TV adaptation of 10ThingsIHateAboutYou, the character of Patrick Verona looked like he was around 19-21 years old, but was actually a high school junior. The actor who played him was only slightly older than he looked, being 22-23 when the series was shot. Walter even points this out to Kat, calling him her 'friend with the disturbingly deep voice who looks much older than 17.'
One episode ("The Doctor's Daughter") has a planet where everyone is born as an adult and with all the knowledge they need downloaded into them. The titular daughter, Jenny, is an example.
The Sontarans, a mass-produced clone race engaged in an unending war, are similar:
"I've had a good life. I'm nearly 12."
Dawn from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who is created fully formed at age 14. On the other hand, she is also the Key, which is nearly as old as the universe.
Kes in Star Trek: Voyager looks like a 20-something... but she's not human; she's actually about 2 years old when she joins up. Her species has an average lifespan of about 9 years, with the idea of making it to twelve being shocking.
Also, 20-25ish year old Seven of Nine has the emotional age of six when she joins the series, thanks to living as a Borg drone since that age. Her initial mannerisms and speech don't suggest it, but especially once you get to "The Raven", it's clear just how badly assimilation hurt her and how she hasn't been able to move on.
The Jem'Hadar of Deep Space Nine are able to fight within hours of being born from their test tubes. While no maximum age is given—they may even live as long as humans—they're considered "honored elders" by the age of twenty because they were created with almost no survival instinct to be soldiers and/or cannon fodder for the Dominion.
Many Vorta, being clones, are also younger than they look. Consider Weyoun, who has a propention for getting killed (often). Many of the Weyoun clones are merely months or even weeks old when we meet them, and *some* have lifespans shorter than a year.
Another case of magical (or close enough) rapid aging is Adria from Stargate SG-1, born from a regular character and aged into her apparent 20s in a matter of days.
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron can easily pass herself off as a teenager or twenty-something, but she is nowhere near as old, having been modeled to assassinate John Connor in the future by assuming the form of a woman he knows.
The In Vitroes of Space: Above and Beyond are decanted from their tanks with the apparent physical age of 18. Cooper Hawkes is just six years old at the beginning of the series, with T.C. McQueen being considerably older, but still younger than his middle-aged appearance would indicate.
Liam Kincaid, one of the revolving door protagonists of Earth: Final Conflict, is born at the beginning of Season 2 and almost immediately grows to adulthood, both physically and mentally.
With the memories of all 3 parents, including the show's Magnificent Bastard.
Mackenzie Hartford from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive looks like a 17-year-old when he first appears. Later in the series, he is revealed to be a 2-year-old android, which makes him the youngest ranger, even younger than Justin Stewart from Turbo.
On Malcolm in the Middle, Malcolm and his Dad got in trouble because of this trope. Malcolm beat up a kid who was bullying him but was really 7 years old. The kid's brother picked a fight with Hal. Hal was arrested for beating up a 15 year old.
An episode of Sister Sister featured one of the teenaged twins falling for a cute boy on her bus, who invited her to his birthday party. To the older girl's horror, it was his 12th birthday (boy's mom: "Who wants to watch Aladdin?").
Similar, but slightly Squickier, in Greek, Casey brings a date to show up Rebecca (who's with Cappie at the time) at a double date sorority party. Cut to her in bed with him...and his mother waking him up to go to school. To high school. He's 16.
Also, Heath's sister...does not look 15, much to Beaver's dismay when he hit on her during Parents' Week. Although you do have to Take Our Word for It...
An episode of The Inbetweeners had a mechanic who was really fifteen but looked to be in his mid-thirties.
The Brother Cavil/Number One model of Cylon in Battlestar Galactica looks like an old man but is 30-40. No doubt being permanently old is one of the reasons he's so cranky, along with removing his own need for sleep.
Mork and Mindy: Orkans are born looking old and grow younger looking as they age, so when they're old they look like babies. Jonathan Winters plays M&M's son in later seasons.
A Law & Order episode had two fashion models, one the Victim of the Week and her "workmate" who both had a few racy photoshoots. The victim was 14 and her acquaintence is in the eighth grade.
In an early episode of Hannah Montana, a boy had a crush on Miley. The boy looked like he was around 13 or 14, which at the time was the same age as Miley. Eventually, he invites her to his birthday party, which to her shock had balloons and other party accessories like confetti. The boy was 11.
iCarly did this pretty bad. Griffin, Carly's love interest in the iDate A Bad Boy special, was played by a 23-year-old who could've passed for his age and looked like a college student. The character was supposed to be a high school senior. In this case, the whole Dawson Casting thing didn't really work out.
Jan and Peter Brady went from looking their ages (14 and 15) in the fourth season of The Brady Bunch to looking 18, just a year later.
All the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were supposed to be in high school, but all of them, especially the guys, looked like college students. Strangely, some of the actors actually were in their late teens during the filming of the first season, with Austin St. John being the only one still high school aged at 18. While high school students can be fairly close to college, what makes this trope stand is that the characters were supposed to be 15 year-old freshmen.
Bulk and Skull were the worst offenders; they both looked to be around 23-24, but were implied to be the same age as the rangers. The actors Paul Schrier and Jason Narvy were 24 and 19 respectfully when the first season aired but they looked nothing like that age.
A B-story on an episode of CHiPs contains Ponch becoming fixated over a model on a billboard. By the end of the episode his fellow officers finally give him a chance to meet the young woman, who turns out to be very young - 14 to be exact.
The New Girl episode "Kids" contains Jess taking care of her boyfriend's 14-year-old daughter, who is also one of her pupils, and begins to fall hard for Nick. Meanwhile Nick himself brings home a woman he meets in an art museum, and we later find, she isn't that much older than the little girl Jess is taking care of.
Super Sentai has Yuusaku Hayakawa (a.k.a. MegaSilver), a 25-year-old who could pass for 30.
The X-Files: Gillian Anderson was 25 when she started playing Agent Dana Scully, who looks(though this is mainly due to the way she dresses) and acts several years older.
In an episode of Friends, Monica, who is in her mid to late twenties, dates and has sex with a young man who told her that he was a senior in college, while she tells him she's 22 (rather than 26). When she comes clean about her age, she is shocked to find out he lied as well, and is really a senior in high school. It was his first time, too, but she is not too happy doing what would "make one of us a felon in 48 states."
In "And the Hold-Up", a second-season episode of 2 Broke Girls, three different characters give a Big "WHAT?!" when they find out that Han, who they had thought to be in his 50s, is only 29.
In Once Upon a Time, 28-year-old Emma Swan is stated to be 18 when she got pregnant with Henry. However, the flashback episode "Tallahassee" showed that her teenage self looked no different that herself in the present day, save for a pair of glasses and different hairstyle and clothes. Neal, Emma's ex and Henry's biological father, was stated to be at least 23 on his 'Wanted' poster but looks like he's in his 30s.
In The Twilight Zone episode, "A Thing About Machines," the main character, Bartlett Finchley is said to be 48 years old, but the actor playing him is 55 (and looks much older) when the episode is filmed.
In an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Charlie starts a relationship with an Asian girl while his friends conspire to get her to participate in a wet T-shirt contest. To their horror, they discover that she's only 12 years old. Luckily Frank is able to jump in front of the water blast aimed for her, and Charlie never so much as kissed her.
Parodied in one episode of Scrubs, when the Janitor takes offence at Carla thinking he's forty-five, explaining he looks older because "I drink and smoke heavily, and work with chemicals, and sleep on my face". He's forty-three.
Mythology
The Greco-Roman goddess Athena/Minerva was born fully grown (most images depict her as being in her mid-twenties at the time of her birth). It's very telling that this is one of the less incredible aspects of her birth story. She's doesn't age, so it quickly turned into a case of Older Than They Look.
The Táin Bó Cúailnge of Celtic Mythology suggests that Cu Chulainn matured quite a bit earlier than most people do - he apparently wooed Emer and took up training with Scáthach at age six.
Radio
Adventures in Odyssey had an episode where two boys get stuck inside a computer and meet a boy named Gregory who despite looking like an old man of 70 was in fact 12 due to having his life sucked away by playing computer games. The adventure (along with Gregory) was just a virtual reality simulation.
Video Games
Dizzy from the Guilty Gear games has the appearance and much of the maturity of a fully grown woman, but is actually only three years old, and has the innocence to match.
Also, Ky's son Sin... who is probably at maximum, five years old. At minimum, two.
Teira, one of the female companion choices in the Shadowlords series (fan-made expansion for Neverwinter Nights) is nineteen. Due to the side effects of a dangerous spell she was forced to use to escape a prison before the game begins, she looks like she is twenty-five or thirty.
The Numan◊ Rika in Phantasy Star IV looks to be in her late teens/early twenties, but is really only a year old.
Nei and Neifirst from Phantasy Star II also fit into this category only having existed for one and two years respectively.
Amoretta the Homunculus of Grim Grimoire measures her lifespan in days (about 3 months), despite having the body of a young woman.
Jack in BioShock is implied to be only a couple years old, yet he seems to be an adult.
You find an audio diary describing the progress of an accelerated growth treatment, but you may not immediately realize who the unnamed test subject is.
Cid Highwind in "Final Fantasy VII"". Despite being listed as only 32 years old, Cid looks like he's at least 42, and behaves older still. This may have something to do with Cid's apparent excessive drinking and smoking, plus his cynical, defeatist attitude since the suspension of the Shinra Space Programme. He is also a classic Oyaji character, which a character may be regardless of age. ("Oyaji" are generally men who act like they're middle-aged, complete with perceived "middle-aged man habits" such as smoking and drinking. Whilst many Oyaji are older guys, the actual age of the character is not important as being Oyaji in the character-sense is about attitude and behaviour, not actual age.
Not to mention the fact that in Japanese media, being over 25 makes you a "grizzled veteran."
Arguably, the entire main cast of Final Fantasy VIII. Despite being 17 or 18, many of the lead characters look like they're at least in their early-to-mid 20s (especially Quistis). This was apparently deliberate as Square were aiming for a more "Westernised" style and, according to popular opinion in Japan, most Westerners look older than they are.
Auron of Final Fantasy X could easily pass for someone in his late forties or fifties, despite only being 35. This could be justified when it is revealed that he's actually Dead All Along, except for the fact that other Unsent, such as Seymour or Yunalesca don't seem to be similarly affected. Yunalesca in fact has kept the same lithe figure despite being dead for a thousand years.
This could be explained by the fact that he was in Zanarkand where everyone keep aging normally, even if they all are dead. For example Tidus started as dream (ghost) before becoming 'real' upon arriving to Spira, and he is shown to grow up normally in the flashbacks. But this still doesn't explain why he looks so old. One theory would be to assume that griefing over his friends and general stress took its toll over the years, as he arguably looks less old than simply careworn.
Or that he somehow altered his appearance in order to seem older so that people wouldn't realize what had happened to him.
Arguably, Rikku as well. When she is first met, she is roaming with a band of Al Bhed led by Brother; she is unfazed by combat (and the presence of Fiends in general), and despite not acting like it, could very easily pass for being in her late teens (i.e. the same age as Yuna), when in actuality she's only 15. And you (as Tidus) can make a pass at her. To which she replies "Maybe some day!".
Though it is worth noting that in Japan (where this was made) the age of consent is 13, making this technically not squicky. Technically.
On the other side of the gender line, female characters in the earlier Final Fantasy games generally looked and acted a bit older than they were. In Final Fantasy VI, Terra and Celes were both a mere 17 years old, and 10-year-old Relm is developed enough that Edgar tells her to get in touch with him in a few years. And in Final Fantasy V, Krile is younger and still "mature" for her age.
Every replica in Tales Of The Abyss, the main examples being Luke, Ion and Sync.
It's even pointed out that Luke is essentially only seven years old.
Replicants? Just by looking, it's hard to put Tear and Asch as being only 16 and 17, respectively.
Depending on how you look at it, every character in the the game considering Auldrant's year is twice the length of Earth's.
Van comes off as a middle-aged man, at least in the English version, but according to his bio he's only 27. It doesn't help that his hair color makes it look as though his hair is graying.
It's suggested that he invoked this trope in the skit "Brother And Sister", as Tear tells Luke that he grew a beard to seem older in response to other members of the Order being jealous of his rising so high so quickly.
Teisel Bonne in Megaman Legends has his age given out as 29. His grey hair and rough face make him look to be in his forties or over.
Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4 is in his early forties, but looks like he's in his eighties because he was genetically altered to age prematurely and die as a form of planned obsolescence. To rub it in that much more, his codename on his final mission is "Old Snake", though no one ever vocalizes the "Old" part.Behind the scenes It's generally interpreted as a Lampshade Hanging on the fact that Snake looked to be in his forties in 2 despite being in his thirties. This was done to make him look more like a mentor to Raiden.
Meryl does, as an insult. It even makes his Psyche gauge drop.
And Otacon affectionately calls him "Old Snake" in Gratuitous English in the Japanese version, although it was removed from the English one.
His younger brother, Solidus, looked a lot older than him in MGS2.
Oswin in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Swords, as his B Support with Hector summed it up:
Hector:Grr... you ill-hearted old man! Oswin:Not that I'm correcting you, but I'm only in my thirties... I would say that 'Ill-hearted Gentleman' is more appropriate.
Wallace from the same game also counts. He's completely bald, but his supports with Renault confirm that he's only about 40.
Team Galactic leader Cyrus in Pokemon Diamond And Pearl, and Platinum looks middle-aged (in his artwork, his face looks a bit wrinkled and his hair is a somewhat pale shade of blue), but in Platinum his age is given as 27.
This is likely due to the extreme degree of overwork and stress he's put himself through since he was a child, as his grandfather explains.
The player characters could qualify too, since they're supposed to be 11, but could pass as teens.
Would you believe that, according to the official tie-in manga, Samus Aran is only 17 years old during the events of the first Metroid game?
Rouge the Bat from Sonic the Hedgehog is only eighteen years old. She neither looks nor acts like an 18 year old (and her 4Kids voice actor didn't make her sound 18 either).
The main character Vayne of Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Alrevis, being an artificially-made Mana, looks like any normal 16-17 year old teenager, except that he was actually around six years old.
Angela Orosco from Silent Hill 2 is only 19, but looks at least in her 30s. This was done intentionally by the animators, to show how her past of sexual abuse and killing her abusive father has prematurely aged her and taken a physical, as well as emotional, toll on her. It was also done to separate her from young and supposedly innocent characters, like Laura, and to emphasize that she isn't to be sexualized in any way, as much of the symbolism in the game places emphasis on sexuality. Originally, the character was conceptualized as 15 or 16, but the voice actress chosen to portray her gave her an older-sounding voice, and the design team changed her accordingly.
Lisa Garland from Silent Hill Origins acts as a twenty-something woman, specially when you consider that she slept with Dr. Kauffmann, but since she was 23 in Silent Hill, she is suposed to be around 16 in this game.
Considering that the Lisa in ''Silent Hill could have been a manifestation and not real, in Origins she could be anywhere from 16-23.
Chuck Downfield of Backyard Football looks like he's in his 20s. His age? 9. He just knows the game so well and dresses like an adult.
The vat-grown people from Shin Megami Tensei II (that is, Aleph, Beth, Daleth, Gimmel and Zayin) were grown to adulthood in a single day. This means that the main character is only a few days old from the start.
Ramon Salazar of Resident Evil 4 has the skin of a man in his seventies (and the stature of a twelve year old boy), but claims to be twenty years old.
Ryu in Breath of Fire IV is a newborn...who looks to be in his late teens. Justified as he's a Literal Split Personality of a god that was split in two and temporally displaced to boot (split 600 years across time and space, at that) thanks to a botched summoning. (The other half of the god in question, Fou-lu, is not only a case of Older Than They Look but is Really 700 Years Old to boot.)
And for much of his life (until he went into torpor for 600 years and became the Fou Empire's King in the Mountain) Fou-lu himself would be an example of this trope—only finally "catching up" after unifying the future Fou Empire in a single generation. It's implied in the game (and overtly depicted in the Comic Book Adaptation) that Fou-lu, much like his Literal Split Personality Ryu, ended up being summoned into the world looking like a young adult.
Mass Effect 2 has Grunt, who is within a week old when you "recruit" him. Despite him looking like he's weathered at least a few years of life, or maybe a couple of month's worth of battling. (Still, compared to other Krogan, he's pretty "smooth-as-a-baby's-behind" material.)
Technically, while the other Nobodies may be Older Than They Look, Roxas, due to his amnesia and lack of connection with his other, is about a week or two old at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days.
Astaroth, the hulking bruiser of the Soulcalibur series? 7 years old in Soulcalibur II; not much older in more recent games. He's a Golem created by a cult devoted to a god of murder.
Adult Link. In OoT he's actually a 9 year old who's been asleep for seven years.
In Warcraft, some orcs, including Rend and Maim Blackhand are artificially aged, and thus become adults years before they would naturally grow to that point.
Super Macho Man in Punch-Out!! is 27, but due to overtanning leaving him with leathery skin and Hair Color Dissonance (silver-blonde, but looking white), he's frequently mistaken for 50 or older by players.
Persona 4 has Kanji Tatsumi. He's the tallest and appears to be the oldest of the group. However, he's a first-year student and (once you look up the characters' birthdays) actually the youngest of the human characters on the Investigation Team.
Sengoku Basara's incarnation of Date Masamune looks like he's well into his twenties...when he's actually 19. To a lesser extent Sanada Yukimura as well, who is only 15-17 but is actually five, but looks older in most of his Basara incarnations.
Jak and Daxter's Jak, from the second game on. According to his bio on the official Jak X site, the 18-year-old "is a seasoned hero, with etched lines on his face that show the many challenges he's overcome, and the many adventures he's had to endure."
Kainé of Nie R is actually seventeen. She doesn't look a day younger than 20.
Mario looks around 35-40 years old, but the ages of other characters would put his age closer to 20.
Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic II looks to be in her 70s. However, according to her creator, Chris Avellone, she's only around 50. The reason for her older appearance is likely due to her heavy use of Dark Side powers since the Mandalorian Wars.
With few exceptions, the characters in Eternal Sonata are noted for being either this or older than they look, due to the game's graphical style.
ESP Ra De's Big Bad, Gaara, looks like an elderly woman, easily somewhere in her 60s, if not early 70s. But according to the end credits, she's only 41. This is courtesy the utterly ridiculous amount of psionic energy she's utilized to maintain the Alice Clones and otherwise make Yaksa the avenging juggernaut it is.
Jim Raynor in Starcraft II is 34 despite looking 20-years older than that.
Fate/stay night - Token Mini Moe Ilya's maids and apparent caretakers appear to be around twenty and are a bit... strange, and have about five minutes total screentime. They're actually two year olds. They're also fairly lethal combat homunculi, whom Ilya made.
Tsukihime: While the 800 year old Arcueid only looks like she's in her late teens to early twenties she may well be much younger than that, mentally, as she was put into sleep mode when she wasn't killing Fallen True Ancestors, and after the True Ancestors died out, whenever Roa's incarnations were inactive.
Molly the Peanut Butter Monster in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has yet to celebrate her first birthday. Her recently generated sister Galatea is even younger.
Page 78Two Kinds shows this trope with a whole race. Flora, one of the main characters, who looks and acts as if she is in her early twenties, is only 11 years old. However, her kind only DO live into their early twenties. Late twenties at best.
Dr. Schtein from String Theory is apparently only 34 despite the lines on his face and his completely white hair.
In Nectar of the Gods, Bacchus' father, Apollo, is MUCH younger than he looks, he has the goatee, the benjamin franklin hairdo, the old man glasses, the wrinkles and near white hair to make it almost obvious he's in his mid 70s.... he's actually 46
Kit from Feywinds has this. she's a fox turned girl and fox age doesn't equal human age so she looks early 20's but is actually not anywhere near that. she acts accordingly though with a childish but quirky personality and can be very naive. She looks like an adult, age wise is a child but has the mentality of a girl in her mid to late teens, albeit a clueless one. Though the author of the comic has said she likes us to not think about how old the character actually is.
Cole Richards from Pv P looks like he's in his mid-40s, but he states in an early strip that he's about to turn 30. Moreover, he was college roommates with Brent, Robbie and Jase, who look about right for being in their late 20s.
The Cyantian Chronicles: All of Exotica Genoworks' creations suffer from this since they are designed to mature to something like 12 to 15 in only 4 or 5 years.
One of the school psychiatrists at the Whateley Academy is in his mid-thirties (or so, based on author descriptions) but looks like Dr. Bellows from "I Dream of Jeannie", so he appears to be 55 or 60. One protagonist has even researched the psychiatrist, and has lampshaded this.
Fifteen-year-old Chou Lee (Bladedancer) apparently looks like Zhang Ziyi.
Belpheobe is a clone of Jobe's ideal girlfriend with the memories of Belphegor. Pheobe is then legally entered as Jobe and Belphegors' daughter, with Jobe the mother (as he is turning into his ideal drow girlfriend. Pheobe is therefore "0 going on 16"
Robert "Bobby"Jacks, Adam Dodd, and Nicole Husher from Survival of the Fittest are all teenagers, yet they look like young adults. Bobby is a large, muscular, professional boxer who has spent almost his entire life devoted to the sport, causing him to look much older; Dodd had always looked a bit older than he actually was, but the horrors of the first game added a great deal to that; Nicole, meanwhile, developed very quickly due to an early onset of puberty, causing her to appear to be a few years older than she actually is, with predictable results when she reached middle school-age.
In Super Stories, Veldron's robot duplicates are always built to look older and less attractive than him. This is because, when given the opportunity to make a false image, most people would assume the opposite.
In Darwin's Soldiers, most Pelvanida experiments are much younger than they look. This is justified because they were grown with accelerated growth chambers.
Neku looks and acts like a 17 year old but is 6.
Snow looks and acts like a twenty year old but is the same age as Neku.
Chase looks and acts like a twelve year old. He is two years old.
John "Johnny" Smith is an extreme case. He looks and acts like a thirty four year old. He is seven.
Sabre 9 looks and acts like a thirty one year old. He is eight.
Ice looks and acts like like a thirty two year old. He is the same age as Sabre 9.
Walter "Wally" O'Pierce looks and acts like a thirty four year old. He is ten.
Now much Older Than They Look, The Nostalgia Critic looked about fifteen years older than he actually was when he first started his reviews, thanks to shitty lighting and baggy clothes.
From the same website, The Rap Critic was born in 1992 and is the youngest of the That Guy with the Glasses crew, but could easily pass for his mid-20s or early 30s.
The creepypasta Jeff the Killer? He's only thirteen!
Eve of Dragomirs Diary was born a baby, but within months grew to the size of a teenager. This may have something to do with the story being set in a video game - or it could be something far more sinister.
Chakona Space: Shadowcrest is only 12 or 13 when she is critically wounded. After being "processed", she is once again intact but she looks like she's 20.
Leanna and most other artificially-grown slaves wind up suffering this trope for a while.
Western Animation
Lloyd in the later episodes of "Ninjago" looks to be in his late teens or early twenties. He's actually about seven to ten, thanks to a magical powder called Tomorrow's Tea.
Ms. Censordoll from Moral Orel looks like she could easily be in her seventies or eighties, but when someone calls her a senior citizen she shows her ID and it turns out she just turned forty. It's heavily implied and confirmed by Word Of God that this and her obsession with eggs comes from her mother having her ovaries removed at a young age.
Hans Moleman on The Simpsons: even though he looks like an old man, he confessed during the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the Season 4 episode "Duffless" that he's really 31 years old (and looks like an old man due to his alcoholism). This has become a one-off joke, because in later episodes, Hans Moleman is usually seen at the Springfield Retirement Home.
In one of the new episodes though there's an even older Moleman who he's the son of. They even participate in a father-son wheelebarrow race at the home. It may be possible he's just visiting him all the time. Maybe?
Also Homer Simpson is younger than he looks, according to the Season 4 episode "Lisa the Beauty Queen". While at a carnival, Homer tries his luck at the "Guess Your Age and Weight" booth. The mind reader guesses that Homer is 53 years old and 420 pounds. Homer then laughs at him and reveals that he's 36 years old (though later episodes have him as 38 or 39, depending) and 239 pounds, which disturbs the mind reader.
Before Flanderization, Mr. Burns was only 81, but looked older because he went bald during his college years, according to the Season 2 episode "Simpson and Delilah". The later episodes have Mr. Burns as somewhere in the 100s ("Homer the Smithers" confirmed that he was 104; "Goo Goo Gai Pan" had him as 109, with a driver's license that expired in 1909). That said, in "The Regina Monologues" and "Them, Robot" imply that Mr. Burns' age has four digits in it (in the former episode, his PIN number for his bank card is his age [PIN numbers are four digits long, for those who live in countries that don't have bank cards or AT Ms or have them in a different format than in America], and in "Them, Robot," Homer asks Mr. Burns how old he really is, and Mr. Burns says, "Well, it has four digits...").
Thailog, of Gargoyles fame, being a clone who's been artificially aged, reached the end of Gargoyle adolescence after a mere nineteen weeks. Especially impressive, when you consider that Gargoyles live longer and age slower than humans as it is.
In an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, "Fake Dad", a six-foot-tall, overweight convicted criminal with hairy arms and 5 O'Clock shadow, who calls himself Kowalski, is 10 years old.
Joseph Gribble in King of the Hill. He hit extreme growth-spurt puberty before turning 13, before Bobby gets a chance and he's older (despite being late-bloomer). He was given an adult menu at a restaurant and assumed of wanting a beer like the parents.
In Galaxy Rangers, Shane Gooseman looks about 25, but the second-to-last episode reveals he is nineteen, meaning he was 17-18 as of the pilot episode. As he is also stated to be the "youngest" of the Super Soldier project that created him, the other Supretroopers can't be any older than thirty.
Superboy in Young Justice, having the appearance and mentality of a sixteen year old, but is actually sixteen weeks old having been born in a test tube.
Lampshaded after the Time Skip in the second season. When Wendy asks Conner how old he is, he truthfully responds by telling her he's six. After seeing her shocked reaction, he quickly corrects himself and tries to claim that he's actually twenty-two.
Also Captain Marvel who is actually an eight year old kid with his powers helping him to appear like an adult.
Smurfette in The Smurfs, despite being an adult Smurf, is really only about a few years old, being a magically-created Smurf.
DJ, Alejandro, Sierra, Leshawna and Trent from Total Drama Island look like adults in their late twenties-mid thirties, despite their real age being 16-18.
In Revenge of the Island, Brick and Jo look older than their actual age of 16.
Cheerilee from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. She seems older then the cast, but a flashback to Rarity's past shows a filly that looks just like her and is the same age as Rarity. Rarity is a victim of Vague Age, but she appears to be in her mid to late twenties at best (or the Pony equivalent).
The principal in Alvin And The Chipmunks Meet The Wolfman. Dave mistakes her for being over-fifty, when she's really only thirty. She still has her blonde hair though. Her (apparent) early aging is due to how stressful her job is; she's getting an early retirement.
In the original 1985 Thundercats, Lion-O appears 20, despite really only being about 10-11 originally. Thanks to a faulty cryosleep chamber, his aging wasn't as delayed as the other two young Thundercats, WilyKit and WilyKat.
In Pepper Ann, P.A. befriends Effie Shrug, a new student who is exceedingly intelligent and taller than she is. The two get along well, although the viewers learn that Effie can be quite threatening to get what she wants. She's something of a Social Darwinist. Pepper Ann invites her over to her house, Moose sees Effie and is immediately horrified. Effie reveals that she was previously an elementary school student. She'll be nine next month.
Cassie from Bounty Hamster looks and sounds like she's in her late teens, but she's actually 13.
Many people pin Molly from Arthur as a teenager when she's supposed to be nine years old. In fact several of the fourth graders fit this.
Real Life
In General
Place information about specific people in the category below this one.
In general, children who go into puberty at an early age can look older than they are, especially if those signs of puberty are visible, such as height and voice deepening (in both genders), muscle development (in male-bodied children) and breast growth (in female-bodied children)
Hard living in general can make you look older. Homeless people often look middle-aged in their late twenties, due to poor health practices and chronic stress. Back when it was common practice for women to have 10 or more kids while living on a fairly poor diet, they aged pretty fast too. And people who do very hard labour that's risky to your health, such as coal mining, often end up Younger Than They Look as well.
Anyone born with progeria, a disease that causes rapid aging; sadly, sufferers never become As Old As They Look, rarely living past their teens. The disease was the basis for Jack, as seen above.
Some drugs in Real Life can do this, too. Heroin addicts in their early 20's can easily appear 35-40 years old.
True for most drugs. Substance abuse is notorious for rapidly accelerating the accumulation of cellular damage and decay we normally identify as "aging".
This is the basis of the "Faces of Meth" campaign, which uses before and after photos to highlight just how much damage the drug can do. For an example, former America's Next Top Model contestant Jael Strauss is 28 in that second photo (and those two were only taken six years apart.)
This is generally true for most people in extremely stressful jobs. Most American Presidents seem to age around a decade for each term. Just look at pictures of George W. Bush before and after his term. Look at pictures of Barack Obama before his term and during his term.
Similarly, having children tends to age most men and (especially) women considerably. Many young-looking women who have children look quite a bit older when their child reaches his/her first birthday.
Anorexia can cause this-the starvation causes muscle to waste away and skin to become looser, creating wrinkles. The lack of nutrients also thin the hair, making it look older. Marya Hornbacher talks about this in her memoir Wasted-in her late teens/early twenties, a barman guessed her age at thirty-six because the wrinkles made her look much older than she really was.
Heavy smoking can also cause skin and hair to age by both drying them out and by restricting the amount of oxygen they get by constricting blood vessels with nicotine and by blocking oxygen transport with carbon monoxide. This makes hair brittle and likely to gray sooner, and it makes skin lose its elasticity, causing it to wrinkle early. (Plus its effects on how "young" you are on the inside!)
It also makes your voice sound raspier and, thus, "older." Many 20-something year old women who are heavy smokers sound more like they're in their middle ages.
The stress from playing a role in Military Command (i.e. sending hundreds of soldiers to their deaths) will age you majorly.
It ages those involved psychologically - so their facial expression changes in regards to this, they adopt nasty little habits which are a trademark of old men, and so on. But military men are bodily very fit, in many cases stronger and quicker than men of the same age or younger.
Most college (and in some cases, high school) athletes tend to look at least 2-3 years older than they are. This is mainly because they are rather built, especially if they are a football player, and are often taller than the average male height (the average male height is 5'10'). For example, an 18-year-old freshman basketball player may look like he's around 20-21 years old.
LeBron James is probably the best example, having looked to be in his 30s since his late teens when he started in the NBA. how many people look like this◊ at 19?
In New Zealand, anyone who looks under 25 is asked for photo identification when purchasing alcohol or tobacco (restricted to ages 18 and over) to avert this trope and prevent retailers from getting themselves into trouble with the law.
Same thing happens in the UK.
Also quite common in the US.
Men (and boys) can look considerably older depending on their hair. A naturally balding man tends to look older than they might actually be. Facial hair and facial hair style also can make a man or teenage boy look more aged. Combining the two can leave observers very unclear as to how old the man really is.
Specific People
Real Housewife Kim Zolciak looks like a 40 year old who's aged well. She's was actually born in 1978 making her 34 (at the time of this writing) This is made even worse that her oldest child was born in 1997 making her 16.
Mila Kunis got her first major role playing Jackie on That '70s Show when she was just 14, even though everyone auditioning was required to be 18 or older. When Mila was asked if she was 18, she said that she would be, but didn't specify when. Eventually she was found out, but was still considered the best fit for the part.
There's a 1979 WPIX (CW affiliate in New York City) clip on YouTube of their newscast where one of the anchors is a man named Bill Jorgensen. Watch the clip and try to guess how old he is. He's 52 in the clip, which would make him around 81-82 right now (Jorgensen's still alive as far as I know)
Hollywood lore has it that three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan's career took off after he lost his teeth in a fight and found that without them he could play old men from around the 1930s onwards - when he was only in his '30s!
Florence Owens Thompson, the woman in this famous photograph◊ by Dorothea Lange was thirty-two when it was taken. It showed the devastating effects of The Great Depression more than words possibly could.
The famous picture of the Afghan girl◊ from National Geographic has many people wondering if she's really a "girl". She was 12 years old when the picture was taken, but because of the stress of being a refugee, she looks to be in her mid-20s. And when the photographer (Steve McCurry) met her again, this is how she looked at 35 years of age.
In 1970, the much-older-looking Mary Ann Vecchio was, in fact, a 14-year-old runaway. Jon Filo's photograph of her crying over Jeffry Miller, who'd been killed in the Kent State shootings, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1971.
David Gregory of MSNBC appears as of writing (2012) to be in his early 50s, mostly because of his silvery hair and slightly aged face. He was born in 1970.
Nobody could tell how old Michael Jackson was in his later years, mainly because he barely looked human.◊ When he was young, however (Thriller and before), he looked a bit old for his age, particularly when he was a kid, looking to be around 11 or 12 when he was just 8 or 9. Oh, and look at this photo.◊ Take a good look at it. He was not yet twenty.
Michael Gross (Steven Keaton from Family Ties) shares the same birthdate with Meredith Baxter (Elyse), but while Baxter looked her age when she was cast for the series, Gross looked about 5-10 years older largely thanks to his thinning, prematurely gray hair.
At the age of 15, Traci Lords claimed to be 20, used a fake ID, and started appearing in porn magazines and films. Authorities only caught on three years later. Some rumors claim that she tipped off the authorities herself to force the issue so she could get out of the business without having her work follow her. Since she only did one film after she was 18, everything else is illegal in the US.
Hitler was said to have aged rapidly in appearance during the final years of World War II, after having held uncannily the same appearance from the mid-1920s to 1943.
Metal singer Ivan Moody, vocalist for Five Finger Death Punch. Take a good long look at this photo.◊ And this one.◊ He's only 31. He looks at least 15 years older than that. This is especially strange because he was 27 when his band's first album released, and looked that age.
Ritchie Valens practically defines this trope. He died when he was just 17 years old. Seriously, look at this dude.◊ Who the fuck looks like that at 17?!! Twice that age, maybe.
R. Lee Ermey looked to be a mid-50s gunnery sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. He was only 42 when the film was shot. His look has changed incredibly little since then.
Tommy Lee Jones. He falls squarely into the trope due to his signature craggy facial skin which appears to make him look older than he is. To put this in perspective, the ages of the four leads in Space Cowboys: Clint Eastwood (70 during the film's shooting), James Garner (72), Donald Sutherland (65), and Tommy Lee Jones (54). Jones is 11 years younger than Sutherland and nearly 20 to the others, yet he is portrayed as being around the same age as his co-stars in a film where a running gag is that many of their peers from their training days decades ago are all dead from old age (and Jones was fifty-four!).
Both Sherman Hemsley and John Amos got away with playing the husbands to women twenty years older than them and the father to sons played by actors only ten years their junior in the Norman Lear produced sitcoms The Jeffersons and Good Times. Hemsley was 36 when he started playing the role and John Amos 35, yet both were playing someone roughly 50. It helped that in both cases they were prematurely bald.
Zara is a 13 year old girl from England, yet she looks she's pushing 60. That's because she has a rare condition know as Congenital Generalized Lipodistrophy, which causes the supporting fatty tissue under the skin to crumble while the skin continues to grow, making her appear older.
Ryan Clark, the lead singer for the heavy metal band Demon Hunter. The music video for his band's 'Infected' was shot in 2002, when he was just 23. But due to the large beard he had and his lack of hair (and he's a little fat), he looked to be around 10 years older or so. He's now at the age of 32 and looks that age, though.
Whitman Mayo was only 40 when he portrayed Grady Wilson on Sanford and Son.
Steve Martin's hair began to grey at an early age. Because of this, even in his twenties, he looked like he was much older.
George Clooney had a full head of grey hair before he hit the half-century age in 2011.
Leon Botha, who had the aforementioned genetic disease Progeria, lived to be 26, but looked like he was over 100 years old. Sadly, he was the oldest person on record to have had the disease.
Some of the people on Intervention who are hard into drugs may be in their early 20s, but look like they're an average 30 something.
Stephanie Cole has specialized in playing women much older than she is. She was the elderly Mrs. Featherstone in Open All Hours in her 40s, and the retiree Diana Trent from Waiting For God when she was in her 50s (opposite Graham Crowden, who was born 20 years earlier).
John Thaw would have been between 33 and 37 when he played Jack Regan in The Sweeney, but looks well into his forties- partly reinforced by the way he acts as well. Thaw himself apparently said "I was born looking 50".
Saoirse Ronan is 18, but looks like she's in her twenties. This is especially strange since only three years ago, she played a fourteen year old in The Lovely Bones, and looked that age.
Dioxin poisoning causes serious acne problems, which causes rapid aging. Victor Yushchenko, then in his late 40s, underwent this during a bitter campaign for presidency of the Ukraine, as seen here◊
Seth Rogen, especially in his earlier films, looked like he could easily be in his mid-thirties, though he was born in 1982 and would have been in his twenties. Rogen is pretty well aware of his "old" looks. He occasionally jokes about it in interviews.
Bill Hader in some of his films (namely Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall) looks considerably older than he really is.
Jason Segel. All of Apatow's "stock actors" (except for Jonah Hill, who actually looks younger than he is) look older than they really are.
While Carrie Fisher looks about her age now, she looked and sounded like she was in her late-30's in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, even though she was only in her mid-20's when those films were shot.
When jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker died at age 34 due to heavy substance abuse, the coroner mistakenly estimated his age at between 50-60 years old.
This photo◊ of George Orwell had been taken when he was 30 years old. He could have been anywhere from 45 to 60 by looks only. 7 years later◊ he still looked like a grandpa. 12 years later◊ and suffering from tuberculosis, he was still unchanged, so it could not be blamed on poor living conditions only.
Frank Oz, famous for voicing Yoda from Star Wars, Grover from Sesame Street, and Miss Piggy from The Muppets among others, is in his 60s, but looks like he's in his 70s. YMMV on this one, though.
Many of the WWE wrestlers. For example, Wade Barrett is only 31. He looks more like he's in his early-40's. Stephanie McMahon, after her voice went through a radical change in 2002-2003 (most likely due to all the screaming she was doing before then), definitely sounded much older than she really was.
Shane Harper from Good Luck Charlie looks like he's around 20-22 years old. He's 18. Made even worse by the fact that he was 16 in the early episodes of the show, and still looked the same. How many people really look like this at 16?
To put it in layman's terms: In season 1 of the show, he was 16, playing a 17-year-old character who looked like he was 20.
George Michael seemed to have aged rapidly since he hit his 40s.
Don Rickles unfortunately looks like he's in his 80s, but he always looked unmistakably old for his age until at most 20 years ago. Which is kind of funny, since he still possesses the voice of a 20-something guy from Boston.
Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear has consistently looked at least ten years older than his real age for some time now. It's a little hard to believe he's only nine years older than Richard Hammond.
Robin Williams looks his age, if not a little younger, but he seemed to have aged badly as a young man. He was in his late 20s when he was on Mork and Mindy, but looked like he was in his 40s. Williams was into drugs and heavy drinking during his early career, which could have contributed to this.
Max Von Sydow has looked about 75 since the day he was born. When he did The Exorcist, he was 44, looked absolutely ancient. Now he is 82, and looks rather spritely.
To be fair, Dick Smith did a very good age makeup on von Sydow for The Exorcist; you just don't notice it because of the flashier work on Linda Blair. Look at the center-right image here and you'll have a better idea of what he actually looked like then.
He was in his TWENTIES when he played Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal. See it and you won't believe it.
Ernie Pyle, American journalist and World War II soldier was 44 when he died. When he died he looked like he was in his 60s or 70s.
Austin St. John (a.k.a. The Red Ranger) was only 18 years old when he first started playing Jason Lee Scott. He looked more like he was about 20-22. It didn't help that his character was supposed to be 15. He actually seemed age appropriate a good amount of the time, but his build made him seem older. Still, it's a little hard to believe he was the youngest of the original six, as Jason David Frank, who was 19 at the time, looked fairly age appropriate.
Jason Narvy (Skull) was only 19 when filming began. He looked to be around 23 or so, as did Paul Schrier (Bulk), who was 23 for real.
Wilford Brimley for years was a shining example of this trope. To wit: He was only 50 years old when he was cast in Cocoon, but was able to portray a convincing elderly man with just his hair whitened. And this◊ is how he looked when he was in The Waltons. He was in his early 40s at the time.
It's amazing how many people are shocked to discover that swimsuit model Kate Upton isn't even 21 yet (she was born in 1992).
Miley Cyrus was once mistaken for a 40-year-old woman by a bystander who offered her face cream, despite being 18 years old at the time.
Unusually, Hayden Panettiere (born in 1989) qualifies for both this andOlder Than They Look, as a number of people thought she was older than her actual age while she was on Heroes.
Michael Douglas, in his mid-50s, looked about ten years older, because he seemed to be trying desperately to hide how old he was(the new, young wife might have had something to do with that), now, in his late-60s, he seems to have made peace with his age, and actually looks younger because of it.
Topol was only in his mid-thirties when he Played Tevye in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof. But he was able to convincingly play a 45 year old Russian farmer who'd had a rough life. See pic here.
NBA player Greg Oden is 24 but according to pictures, he looks to be in his 30s.
Fergie actually used to look younger than she really was (she was in her early 30s when her debut album was being promoted, but looked like she was around 24-25). But in recent years, she seemed to have aged rapidly, and she is now in her mid-30s but looks like she's in her 40s.
Alice Cooper now looks really good for being in his 60s, but he used to look far older than he really was. This is him in his high school yearbook,◊ looking to be around his mid-20s. By the time he actually did hit his 20s, he looked to be somewhere in his 30s. He continued to look older than he really was until he hit his 40s, when he aged considerably well and slowly converted to being Older Than He Looks.
Christian Weston Chandler, creator of Sonichu, looks about fifty when he's only thirty.
Vladimir Illych Lenin got his trademark figure which he held for life when he was just 25◊ and his photos from the late 40s to early 50s actually show him less aged. This is why a Russian journalist and historian said: "It would be hard for modern people to imagine Lenin in his younger years".
Taylor Momsen, due to her Goth appearance looked like she was at least 20. At 19 she looks closer to that. Though pre-Goth she looked her age like on the first season of Gossip Girl.
Alisha Dean was a 13-year old girl who became famous for abusing statutory rape laws. She had a Facebook page where she claimed to be 19 and divorced, and completely looked the part. She had a habit of seducing older men through her Facebook page, arranging meetings with them to have sex, and then turning them in. She sent THREE men to jail in this manner, reportedly just for fun. Her father did nothing to stop her, instead agreeing that "these laws are there to prevent this from happening". Never mind that the girl even had a fake ID with her fake age, meaning that anyone who actually tried to verify her age could still be duped.
Randy Blythe from Lamb Of God is only in his early 40s but looks like he could be 5-10 years older.
June Shannon of HereComesHoneyBooBoo fame, she is 32 but she looks 10-20 years older than that.
Courtney Stodden looks like she's in her mid-twenties at the youngest. She participated in the Miss Teen Washington pageant in 2010...at age 16. Squick comes into play when you take into account that she married Doug Hutchison in 2011. They may look like an age-appropriate couple, but she was 16 when they married...and he was 51.
Malcolm Mcdowell for most of his career post 1980. In A Clockwork Orange, he was 28 when he did the role but he did look reasonably young at the time. By the late 1980s, his hair went white overnight and he lost his young Alex looks. And he started getting a considerable number of "elderly man" roles despite the fact that he only just turned 70 in 2012. Mr. Mcdowell has confessed that he has no one to fault but himself.
This◊ is a photo of Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward. He was born in July 1982. He's only thirty.
Scarlett Johansson managed to convincingly play a character in her early-to-mid-twenties in Lost in Translation despite being 17. She looks her age now, though.
Another Judd Apatow related example. Steve Bannos, the actor who played Mr. Kowchevski on Freaks and Geeks was 39 years old at the time, even though he looked like he was at least 45.
Sophie Turner is still high school aged but appears to look like she's just hit her 20's. Many people still can't believe she's the same age as her character on Game Of Thrones.
Actually she's two years older than her character with Sansa being 14 at the start of season 3 with Turner being almost 17 at the time of the seasons premiere
Lindsay Lohan ... oh my. Only seven years have actually passed between this photo◊ and this one, yet it looks more like sevenTEEN years had passed.
