Huge Guy, Tiny Girl

"A lumbering hulk aside a delicate flower,
A gentle leviathan of terrible power"

— Miracle of Sound, "Little Sister"

Some writers like pairing up characters of the opposite sex and opposite ends of the size spectrum. The height difference goes well beyond One Head Taller, and the tall one is often several times wider to boot.

Averted more often than not in film and Live-Action TV, where props and camera angles are employed to equalize the heights of the leading man and lady, to make filming easier (otherwise, getting them in the same shot would be a pain in the arse). Even when the actors themselves represent this trope, if it appears on screen you can be sure there was an intentional choice to invoke it.

Usually, it's the man who's bigger. This is an exaggeration with some basis in truth: men on average are taller than women, and many people choose opposite-sex mates with the "traditional" comparative height. Physical attraction aside, the image of a hulking giant showing his soft side for his little lady is popular with many viewers.

The relationship is not always romantic or sexual. Sometimes, the girl is a Morality Pet who hangs out with the guy to show he isn't a brute, or it could just be a platonic friendship. They could even be relatives. See also Badass and Child Duo, which is not as tied to gender, but often goes this way. Monster and the Maiden often overlaps, since the "monster" is often much larger and physically imposing than the "maiden" (though not always).

In an action series, the guy may look big enough to break his girl like a toothpick, but she is likely to be just as deadly as her man.

The inversion of this, which is not as common in real life, is Tiny Guy, Huge Girl.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Ancient Magus' Bride features this with the two titular characters; Chise (5'1") is a 16-year-old Japanese girl whose smallness and frailty are mentioned fairly frequently, whereas Elias (6'7"), her skull-faced "fiancé", towers a few feet above nearly every other character in the series, even without the horns. Highlighted whenever they hug or he picks her up. Highlighted further when he transforms into a giant monster that easily fills an entire room.
• Ani Ga Imouto De Imouto Ga Ani De has two pairs of these. Youta Koizumi and Kakeru Mayama are fairly tall teenage boys. Hikaru Koizumi and Yurika Oda, the two teenage girls they swap bodies with, are tiny. While their heights aren't explicitly given, they appear to be about 122 cm tall.
• Anpanman has a few of these. There's Jongara-kun and Bachi-chan, Tahara-kun and Rice-chan, and Hotcakeman and Sryup-chan.
• While Deunan in Appleseed is actually rather tall compared to most women and quite strong, Briareos can only be described as huge. Next to him, Deunan does look rather tiny. They also venture into the Beast and Beauty territory thanks to Briareos being a full-body cyborg.
  • In the second movie, this seems to be less overt and seems a little closer to the One Head Taller region. He's still significantly more buff than Deunan, so it probably still counts.
• Armitage III: Armitage is already short, to begin with (152 cm/4ft 11)but, when standing next to her partner, Ross Syllibus (who's 191 cm/6ft 3 of solid muscle), she looks like a child. Which isn't helped by the fact that she looks no older than 13-14 years old, despite being an adult and literally dressing like a hooker.
• In the original Astro Boy manga's World's Greatest Robot story arc, the developing relationship between Astro Boy's younger sister Uran and the giant robot Pluto. Uran helped turn Pluto from a proud Blood Knight into someone genuinely trying to find something in life more than just fighting.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Reiner (6'2") and Bertolt (6'4"), the two tallest members of the 104th Trainee Corps, may have romantic interests in the two shortest girls in the Trainee Corps. Like most things in the series, things are still unclear.
  • Post-timeskip, Eren (183cm) gets a lot of ambiguously shippy interactions with Historia, the shortest member of the 104th.
• Basquash! has Sela and Navi. While Sela is normal-sized, Navi is a literal Giant who's as big as the Bigfoot mecha.
• In Beastars, Haru (3'4.8") the bunny stands at the height of Legosi (6'2") the wolf's waist.
• In Berserk, the exceptionally tall and muscular protagonist Guts has a tendency to form intergenerational friendships with small-statured teenage girls he meets on his journeys. Jill, who serves as his Morality Pet during the "Lost Children" arc, is one example. He definitely has this dynamic with the young witch Schierke (3'11"), who supports him in combat with her magic and clings to him in her astral form in order to keep him from losing his mind while he's enclosed in the Berserker Armor. In both of these cases, the girl has a Precocious Crush on Guts, while his feelings fall under Big Brother Instinct.
• Blame!: Cibo and Killy, after Cibo's body is destroyed and she ends up occupying a new, much smaller one.
• Bleach:
  • Kenpachi (202 cm/6'7.5") is perhaps the most masculine character in the series, being a very strong and physically imposing man who is ridiculously obsessed with the adrenaline rush of battle. Meanwhile, his constant companion Yachiru (109 cm/3'7") is a (seemingly) sweet little girl. As lieutenant of the combat-renowned 11th Division, she's more than earned the right to be second-in-command, but the reason she can ride around on Kenpachi's back is that she's so very tiny compared to his great size.
  • Rukia, who stands at 144cm or roughly 4'9" - is this with practically all the main male characters. This dynamic is especially apparent between her and her Childhood Friend and later husband, Renji, who is 188cm or around 6'2" - she only comes up to his elbow.
• In Blue Comet SPT Layzner, Eiji Asuka and Anna Stephanie flip-flop between this and One Head Taller. While Eiji isn't the tallest member of the cast, Anna is positively tiny and Eiji seems to have difficulty to even give her a hug. When they kiss, he has to lean very low and she has to tiptoe. There is also Eiji's older sister Julia and Big Bad Ru-Kain; she's of normal height, maybe slightly taller than average even, but he's MASSIVE and sometimes he's drawn even bigger than he actually is.
• Bio-Meat: Nectar:
  • Kanomiya and Banba evolve into a platonic version of this by the time they're in highschool.
  • By the time They're All Grown Up and dangerously close to Platonic Life-Partners, cute highschoolers Luna and Kiryuu take a romantic, drastic version of this trope.
• Brigadoon: Marin and Melan gives us Melan Blue, a robot a little taller than (most) human beings, and Marin, a young teenager who seems to be short for her age.
• An extreme example occurs in Choujin Gakuen, where the male lead, Adam Shinjou, is about 1.8 m (5'11") tall, and the female lead, Oska L. Duke is... 61 cm (2 feet) tall. Ironically, Oska is the older of the two, by a wide margin. She's also much stronger than he is.
• Chrono Crusade: Rosette (5'4") and Chrono (5'1") don't look like this at first, and might even look like an inversion, but the cute little boy thing is just his Sleep-Mode Size — In his real form, Chrono (7'0) completely towers over the girl.
• Riful and Dauf in Claymore, he being a large, mostly unintelligent brute and she being a tiny girl, most noticeable when he's in his Awakened form and she's perched in human form on his shoulder. They also have a pastime of torturing people to make them Awaken. Ironically inverted whenever she Awakens, as while Dauf's Awakened form is huge, hers is colossal.
• Sakura's parents in Code:Breaker. Dad is a normal/tallish katana-wielding retired badass ill guy, mom is a tiny Moe Blob who loves costumes.
• Code Geass: 6'3" Li Xingke (24) and 4'8" Empress Tianzi (13). This was a romantic relationship, at least for Tianzi. She was even about to be married to Prince Odysseus who looks to at least be in his thirties until Zero stopped the marriage ceremony.
• In Daily Lives of High School Boys, Motoharu is One Head Taller than his older sister. This, however, does not prevent the latter from bully him once a while.
• Dance in the Vampire Bund presents Akira Kaburagi, a taller-than-average 17-year-old high school senior, and Mina Tepes, who looks like she belongs in the sixth grade (at best) and is about chest high to him.
• Dragon Ball invokes it between Chi-chi (5'4") and her father (over 13 feet), the aptly named "Ox King".
  • The Ox King and his late wife as well; the only known image of her is a family portrait where she's sitting on his upturned palm.
• Dragon Ball Super: Broly has Broly and Cheelai, though the exact nature of their relationship is a little vague. They haven't been given official heights (aside from a whopping 300cm (9'10") for Broly's Legendary Super Saiyan form), but Broly is enormous even in his base form and Cheelai is shorter than the 164cm (5'4") Vegeta.
• Durarara!! has a platonic example: Shizuo winds up befriending a 10-year-old Yakuza Princess named Akane. Given a charitable estimate, Akane probably grazes 122 cm (4'0"). In contrast, Shizuo is 185 cm (6'1"). Side-by-side, she reaches only up to his waist◊.
• In Eat-Man, protagonists Bolt's average Girl of the Week's head hovers somewhere around his chest, and only has a third of his shoulder width. With his Badass Longcoat on, you'd probably never notice most of them if they're standing behind him.
• When Ooshima is shown standing face to face (or... stomach to face...) with his girlfriend Misaki in Emerging, it is clear to the reader that he is almost exactly twice her height.
• Gajeel and Levy of Fairy Tail. Gajeel stands several meters taller than Levy and, at one point, single-handedly lifts her off the ground. Levy meanwhile is possibly the shortest member of the guild. (Not counting the Exceed Squad)
• Eas/Setsuna and Westar/Hayato of Fresh Pretty Cure!. The exact nature of their relationship is up for debate, but they do have a strong connection to one another either way.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Scar and Mei. Scar is a grown man who is like an Aloof Big Brother while Mei is a tiny child.
  • Of the more shippy variant is Al and Mei, due to Al's current bound-to-a-frickin-huge-suit-of-armor form. And — before the inevitable comments — Al is only 14 and not that much older than Mei, and he's also never technically been through puberty since he spent his teenhood so far outside of his physical body and in a suit of armor. After the series, they both have growth spurts and the difference between them is minimal. Also, they may or may not have hooked up.
  • Another romantic example is Sig and Izumi Curtis. Sig is well over a head taller than Izumi, and about 2-3 times her width on top of that.
• Full Metal Panic! has one instance when Sousuke (5'9") was piloting the Arbalest while carrying Kaname (5'5") in one hand and Kurz in the other. She was rather enjoying herself until he suddenly threw her into the air to free up one arm for attacking and then caught her on the way down. Needless to say, she didn't appreciate it.
• Fushigi Yuugi:
  • Yui Hongou and her chief Seiryuu Seishi-slash-confidante, Nakago, are at least ten inches apart.
  • In a non-romantic subversion (not that the first example was romantic anyway), Miaka is only three or four inches taller than Chiriko, but he's only shown to be up to her waist.
• Ken and Shoko Shiina in Futari Ecchi. Ken looks like a Yakuza thug, while Shoko looks like a little girl, despite being in her mid-20s.
• Another non-romantic example in GaoGaiGar: Mamoru is a short 9-year-old who barely comes up to Gai's waist (and that's because of his hair). See also Volfogg, a Transforming Mecha who protects Mamoru as one of his primary duties, and Mike Sounders the 13th, who is probably the closest to Mamoru after Gai.
• Kazuya Kujo (174 cm/5ft 9) and Victorique de Blois (152.4 cm/5ft) from Gosick
• Bluebeard and Josephine in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics. Josephine only reaches Bluebeard's shoulders. Apparent to a lesser extent with Maria and the beast in the "Beauty and the Beast" episode. Even in his human form, the beast is considerably taller than Maria.
• In both the source material and anime adaptation of Grimoire of Zero, Mercenary towers over Zero, and frequently carries her around on his shoulder. In the opening to the anime, he literally picks her up and throws her into the air.
• Various Gundam entries did this a lot more than once, e.g: Kamille (5'6"), his Gundam and Kamille's partner Fa in Zeta Gundam.
• Zaitsu Misao and Arihara Ayumi of Hatsukoi Limited. Ironically, though he's three times larger than her, Ayumi can still knock Misao out with just one high kick.
• Hellsing:
  • Alucard (6'3") is far taller than Seras Victoria.
  • Romantic example with Pip and Seras at least in the OAV, where he (and the other wild Geese mercs) is drawn significantly taller than Seras.
• From the picture of them that we see, Joey Jones' parents in Heroman, it's kinda like looking at Heroman and Joey side-by-side. And if you think it applies, this also goes for Heroman and Joey.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers has some variations.
  • Sweden (5'11.6") and Finland (5'7") are both men, with Sweden being much taller (at least by 12 cm/5 in, according to Finland in one strip).
  • Germany (5'11") and North Italy (5'8"), with the latter having difficulty even hugging the former.
  • The most blatant example is England (5'9") and America (5'9.6"). Both fanon dōjinshi and canon (in the strips) greatly exaggerate their already existing height difference; technically, America is just .75" (2 cm) taller, but England is drawn much shorter than he truly is (he and 5'9" France are around the same height, according to the charts, but France is drawn taller). This is sort of justified when one thinks about just how much bigger the US is than the UK...
    • The fanart for America and England is absurd. America looks about eight inches taller than England. To think England is the 'big brother'.
    • Russia's sister and stalker Belarus (5'3") is at least 20 cm/ 8in shorter. She's also svelte while he's a Husky Russkie.
  • South Korea, as the tallest of the Asians (apparently tall enough to stand eye-to-eye with America), has these dynamics with almost everyone in the group. China◊ is the◊ biggest◊ example◊ but there's also Taiwan (4'9")◊ and Hong Kong◊ (sometimes).
  • There's also Monaco, who is shorter than one of the younger characters, Liechtenstein. In strips with France or Serborga, she barely comes up to their chests, despite the fact that they're both of rather average height.
• In Hiyokoi, the main character, Nishiyama Hiyori is only 140 centimeters (4ft 7), while her love interest, Hirose Yuushin, is 190 centimeters (6ft 3).
• Saji and Koizumi from Iketeru Futari have this dynamic going on. Saji is only roughly normal height, but Koizumi is tiny, which makes Yuki wonder if it's part of her appeal.
• In Ikki Tousen we have Gentle Giant Kanshou and Cute Bruiser Chouhi (which can go either platonic or romantic). Also, The Vamp Kaku and her Genius Bruiser lover Kakuka (he seems to be the only one of Kaku's boyfriends whom she cared for, as seen in his death scene in Dragon Destiny). In a purely platonic sense, the other Gentle Giant Gakushuu and either Idiot Heroine Hakufu or Tsundere Ryoumou.
• Inuyasha:
  • Sesshomaru (5'9") sort of acquired (or adopted) Rin (4'3), an eight-year-old girl. Sesshomaru's humanoid form looks nineteen. (His true form is much larger.)
  • Inuyasha's mother (5'2") and father (6'5"). He visits his father's grave and enters his father's remains and has room in his chest to both move around and fight his brother. We see his mother in a flashback and she was a normal-sized human lady. Even in his human size, the father is noticeably taller than she is.
  • Likewise for Sesshoumaru's mother (5'7"), who even in her dog demon form is much smaller than his and Inuyasha's father.
• Karakuri Circus: While Shirogane is pretty average, Narumi is an enormous martial artist.
• Karakuridouji Ultimo:
  • Yamato absolutely towers over his love interest Sayama, despite her still being a fairly average height. Then again, there's really only Akitsu, that Yamato doesn't tower over so he would be an example of this no matter who it was, or what kind of relationship he had.
  • Koganei Hana, a girl who looks no older than five, and Edile the Glutton, a Karakuri Douji the size of a building.
• Kill la Kill has Ira Gamagoori and Mako Mankanshoku. Mako is about the size of an average girl her age, while Gamagoori is a giant whose size varies depending on the scene (though at his smallest he's easily 7 feet tall and about as wide as Mako herself is tall). The two are on pretty good terms with each other despite being on opposing sides for most of the series. It dips into Ship Tease later on when Gamagoori constantly risks his life to protect her. The epilogue of the series even gave the possibility of him asking her out.
• Koi Kaze, whose story involves Brother–Sister Incest, features big and burly 27-year-old Koshiro and his small, cute 15-year-old sister Nanoka. The conflict between their feelings for each other and society's norms is made that much harder because of their size and age difference in addition to being blood siblings.
• Lucky Star: Konata's (4'8") parents, since her mother Kanata (4'8") was Older Than She Looked by a wide margin, and her dad Soujirou (5'11") is kind of a Comedic Lolicon.
• Non-romantic (And perhaps all-too-literal) example: Zest and Agito in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Zest and Lutecia, as well, but they don't hang out together as much. This may be a Shout-Out to Zanger Zonvolt and Irui from Super Robot Wars, as there are quite a few other references in the Nanoha series.
• Magic Knight Rayearth:
  • Hikaru (4'9") only comes up to Lantis's waist, but then CLAMP has always been a bit silly about proportions.
  • There's also Lafarga and his girlfriend Caldina(though in the anime this got downgraded to One Head Taller). And Zagato and Princess Emeraude...
• Michel Blanc (5'11") and Kuran Kuran (around 48') from Macross Frontier. That is, if Kuran isn't Micloned. If she does, the trope is played straight instead, as she looks much smaller and younger than her real age.
• Maken-ki! subverts the trope with Kai and Azuki, who's actually one of the tallest girls at Tenbi Academy. Except Kai's so gigantic, that she (and everyone else, for that matter) looks tiny compared to him. Even without his getta, the top of her head barely reaches his waist level!.
• The main couple of Midori Days would have counted even before she became his right hand.
• Nozaki and Sakura are the tallest and shortest members of the cast of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, respectively. Specifically, they're one foot and a half apart in height; Nozaki clocks in at 190cm (6'3"), unusually tall for a Japanese person, while Sakura is at 145cm (4'10"), at the low end of Japanese normalcy.
• Nozomu and Rino from My Girlfriend Without Wasabi (and its parent series I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying), the former being slightly above average height and the latter looking like she's eight. One of Nozomu's main fears during the time they were dating was that he would end up being Mistaken for Pedophile.
• Takeo and Yamato from My Love Story!!. He is 2 meters (6'7") tall and she just barely reaches his chest.
• Touko in My Monster Secret barely reaches her husband's knees. Not because she's tiny, but because he's something like 4 meters (13 feet)-tall. They were about the same height in high-school though.
• My Senpai Is Annoying: Futaba is about half as tall as Takeda, which only encourages people to think they're father and daughter.
• Oldboy: At least in the manga version, protagonist Shinichi Goto and his girlfriend Eri. He's significantly taller and more heavily built. Her habit of hanging onto his side emphasizes the size difference.
• In One Piece the late Mermaid Queen (7'4") was a human-sized mermaid who was incredibly fragile. Her husband King Neptune (40') is a giant merman. Their daughter the Mermaid Princess Shirahoshi (38'11") takes after her mother in looks but takes after her father in size. The fact that the Mermaid Queen being able to survive giving birth to a giant isn't the weirdest thing in One Piece says all that needs to be said about the series. Mainly that it is awesome.
• The anime canon of Persona 4: The Animation has Kanji and his interest in Naoto. Yosuke (175cm/5'9") and Narukami (180cm/5'11") are roughly the same height, and the same can be said of Chie (158cm/5'2"), Rise (155cm/5'1") and Yukiko (164cm/5'5") (who are about a head shorter than the first two). Meanwhile, Kanji (183cm/6'0") tends to be drawn roughly one to one and a half heads taller than Narukami and Yosuke, Naoto (152cm/5'0") is about a head to a head and a half shorter than the rest of the female cast... while wearing platformed boots.
• Popcorn Avatar:
  • Lisa's parents Daniel and Helen Vayu, though Helen isn't exactly tiny, standing about Lisa's height. Given Daniel's imposing height, however, this is the impression one gets of the couple.
  • Another straight example is Indra's incarnation Amano and her avatar Kai, with Amano barely reaching Kai's chest.
  • Inverted in the case of Lisa and Kurando, where the former stands over the latter by at least half a head.
• An example with two males: Jin Akutsu (6'0") and Taichi Dan (4'1"0) from The Prince of Tennis. There's also Miyuki Chitose and either her older brother Senri (6'4") or "thief-bro" Tezuka (5'10"), as well as Munehiro Kabaji (6'3") and his (unnamed) older sister...
• Alice (5'0) in Pumpkin Scissors isn't exactly tiny, but she looks it compared to Randal, who's estimated at seven feet tall.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Misao (4'10.5") isn't much shorter than Kaoru (5'1"), making her closer to average height for a girl her age. But Aoshi's (5'11") so tall and lanky, that she looks like a kid when standing next to him.
• S.S. Astro has a platonic example where a small girl and a rather large colleague are participating in a three-legged race at the sports festival. It's not really a fair race when the guy can simply pick up the girl and run off with her.
  Izumi: Umm... do you think we should switch them with someone else? It looks like he's kidnapping her...
  Yuko: Personally, I love the combination.
• In Sachiare, Tomoharu is of normal height, but his wife Sachiko is so short he basically has to pick her up or sit on the floor to kiss her.
• Sacred Seven: Like many other tropes taken to ridiculous extremes, Alma is (195cm/6'4) to Ruri's (144cm/4'9").
• The towering, Cyborg Kikuchiyo and the pint-sized Komachi from Samurai 7.
• Slam Dunk: Any important male character (except 5'6" Miyagi) when paired with any of the few female characters in the show. It's completely justified though since they're all basketball players, so most of them are 6ft or over.
• Another non-romantic example can be found in SoltyRei. Roy Revant is 197 cm (6'6") and muscular, while his adoptive daughter Solty is 153 cm (5'0") and slender.
• Star Ocean: The Second Story: If one reads the manga version, they might get this impression of Ashton and Precis, as in some pages, Ashton appears to be twice Precis's height. In actuality, it's not QUITE a huge difference. According to official records, Ashton is 5'10" (180 cm), while Precis is about 5'1" (155 cm), meaning there's only a 16% difference in height (that still makes Precis fit the tiny girl part of the equation, so they might still be considered as qualified for this trope).
• Slayers:
  • Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev, at (153 cm/5ft) and (190 cm/6ft 3). There's official art of her sitting on his shoulder like a parrot.
  • While Zelgadis is very slender and only about 5'7" (170 cm), he looks much taller when paired with 4'9" (145 cm) Amelia. Amelia grows a bit through the seasons, though, which makes sense when you consider her family particularly her sister.
• Koushi Inuzuka of Sumomo Mo Momo Mo is normal-sized, but Momoko herself is tiny enough to compensate.
• Hayase and Hikaru (5'11") get to pull this off near the end of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which Hikaru piloting (obviously).
• Toradora!: Ryuuji (5'8") is about average-sized; it's his not-girlfriend Taiga (4'8.5") that's short. Played up for laughs in the first chapters of the manga, but eventually moves on to the One Head Taller range.
• In Trigun, Vash (5'11") is almost a foot taller than Meryl (4'11) and has to really bow down when he wants to hug her, especially in the manga.
• Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase has a few examples: Balgus (Vargus) and Arte are one. The little twins Hikaru and Kouru are engaged to Kouhei and Seiji.
• Mamoru and Haruka from Until Death Do Us Part. She's like only up to his stomach. Or course she's still a kid.
• Lum's parents in Urusei Yatsura. Her mother is the size of an average human woman, while her father is a hulking brute almost twice as tall and more than three times as broad as her. Given that Lum's species are basically Space Oni, this is to be expected.
• Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!:
  • Sakurai (5'11") is noted as being fairly tall (180cm) and is the tallest character in the main cast, though Asai senior is only slightly shorter than him. Uzaki, on the other hand, is extremely short, to the point that, when Asai senior first meets her, most of her body is hidden by the counter he's kneeling behind, and he mistakes her for being in middle school, when she's actually 19 and in college. He realises his mistake when he stands up and sees her very large breasts.
  • Slightly downplayed with Uzaki's parents. Fujio is actually close to average height for a Japanese man (5'7"), but he has a muscular build, and since his wife Tsuki is hardly taller than her daughter, he easily towers over her.
• The Vision of Escaflowne:
  • Emperor Dornkirk invokes an image of Van's (5'5") Escaflowne being guided by Hitomi's prophetic abilities to take over the world in one of his visions. This doesn't happen so explicitly but that's what happens throughout the series.
  • For a straight-up example instead of the Giant Robot variant, we have Hitomi (160 cm/5ft 2) and Allen (185 cm/6ft 1)
• Shiryuu Kusanagi and Yuzuriha Nekoi in X/1999. Non-romantic example: Fuuma Monou and his ill sister, Kotori.
• Yona of the Dawn has titular heroine Yona (5'1") and her Love Interest Hak (6'2"). The top of her head barely reaches his shoulders, and he's packing at least double the muscle she is.
• YuYu Hakusho: Kuwabara (191 cm/6'3)and his crush Yukina. Her height is never given but she is visibly smaller than her brother Hiei, who stands at 147 cm (4'10").
  • From the same series is Younger Toguro (9'0") and his ex-girlfriend Genkai. The former easily towers over nearly everyone, and was about a head and shoulders taller than Yusuke when still human, while the latter tops out around the height of a 12-year-old even into old age.
  • Enki and his wife Kokou also qualify. While Kokou's height of 189 cm/6'2 is far from what would be considered "short" by human standards, she's still much shorter than other demons like Yomi (221 cm/7'3), Raizen (266 cm/8'8) and especially her husband Enki (274 cm/8'11).

Comic Books

• Asterix:
  • In ''Asterix and Caesar's Gift', it's notable that the reason Obelix feels attracted to Influenza is because of how small and light she is. He mentions how light she is several times, annoying his dog.
  • Both Vitalstatistix and Fulliautomatix are much larger than their tiny wives.
• DC Comics:
  • The Joker and Harley Quinn (5'7") — although Joker is sometimes described as only 183 cm (6'0") tall he's more often 191 cm (6'2") or 193 cm (6'3") and drawn in a particularly lanky fashion, while Harley (a former gymnast) barely comes up to his shoulders.
  • Swamp Thing (6'10") and his wife◊, Abigail Holland nee Arcane (5'7").
  • Al Rothstein (229 cm/7'6") and Courtney Whitmore (166 cm/5'5") in some runs of the JSA.
• In ElfQuest, Dewshine/Tyldak display this trope. Other couples do as well, due to major height disparities between different generations of elf.
• Les Innommables, a French comic by Yann and Conrad, has Mac Buttle, a rather rotund adventurer deserted from the US military, and Alix, whose mother was executed by the Communists. Mac isn't that much taller than Alix, but he's at least four times as wide.
• Although Ragamuffin from Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl is trapped in a small doll for the most part of the comics, when he is turned into his old vampire self the difference in height between him and Lenore is really noticeable. While they're not a romantic couple, their age difference is pretty disturbing, too, Lenore being 10 years old (and dead for 100 years) and Ragamuffin between 20-30 years old (for 400 years).
• Marvel Comics:
  • Colossus (7'6") and Kitty Pryde (5'6") when they're romantically involved.
  • Well before these Johnny-come-latelies, the original dimorphic superhero couple: Ant/Giant-Man and the Wasp, both are size-changers, so this mostly only comes into play when he grows and she shrinks. Applied to non-combat situations for awhile when Giant-Man got stuck at around 3.66 meters (12 feet) tall, and Wasp was still her usual 163 cm (5'4").
  • The Thing (6'0") and Alicia Masters (5'4"); it doesn't help that Alicia is also blind. This was even joked about in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer when Johnny (6') asks how Ben and Alicia manage a sex life. He then explains that he's only asking out of concern that Alicia might one day be killed in a "rock slide" and runs as Ben comes after him.
    • It's hinted, several times, that the Thing has no... ehm... external organs, because the rock skin is actually an exoskeleton of some sort. Obviously different authors said differently, but the Thing never got a "giant penis" joke, while other "big guys" (like the 8'0" Hulk), had.
    • Ironically, this was a serious plot device for the Thing in some early issues. He actually tried to resist his desire to become human again, fearing that Alicia would not love him if he was "plain old Ben" (seeing as she had not met him before he became the Thing).
  • Sabretooth (6'6") is a big guy period. How big can vary. In any case, he tends to look huge alongside any of his love interests. The most blatant case being Holly Bright, whom he towered over◊.
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk with basically any human-sized love interest. Even his Amazonian Beauty cousin She-Hulk (6'7") is only chest height to him. Some artist's renditions of the Hulk are capable and actually have held love interests clasped between his hands.
    • Part of the problem with the Hulk is that his size is incredibly inconsistent, to the point where it'll vary between panels on the same page. His third wife, Caiera (7'0"), was a hot amazon with similar proportions to his cousin. Some panels had them standing next to each other with only a few inches difference in height, while others have him absolutely dwarfing her. The Hulk's official height is less than eight feet tall, however some panels will have him pushing fifteen feet for dramatic effect.
    • This is not so much artist variation as an effect of his powers, part of his ability to get stronger as he gets madder is an increase in size, up to a maximum of twelve feet.
    • The size-changing thing is a handwave that may or may not be used Depending on the Writer. Most writers have his size remain consistent, though the artwork usually won't reflect this for dramatic purposes. This is why the Hulk won't always just get bigger as he gets angrier, he'll vary in either direction from one panel to another (even if they show the same moment in time or are separated by a matter of seconds).
    • Originally, Bruce Banner became the Hulk by saving an irresponsible teenager (5'9") from being caught in an atomic bomb blast and that said teenager became hulk's companion, which would make it another trope altogether.
    • Ultimate Hulk can be worse. Typically only around the 2.4 meter (7'10") mark, there's one storyline where he's somewhere in the neighborhood of six meters (19'8") tall and has a harem of dozens of normal-sized women.
  • The Kingpin is one of the largest, non-superhuman villains in the Marvel universe, while his wife, Vanessa Fisk, is a woman of normal height and weight.
  • In The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior, the wizard Ogeode is of normal height, and his warrior woman wife Shen is a dwarf.
• The Maxx has the semi-platonic versions, with the Maxx and Julie, the Maxx and Sarah, Sarah and her Maxx.
• Mortadelo y Filemón cranks this up to the extreme with Mortadelo's parents (as introduced in "Su vida privada"). Mortadelo's father is so tall the panels only portray him from the legs down a la Cow and Chicken (in the same panels we can see the full body of his son, whose billed height is 5'11"), while his mother is just a few inches tall and Filemón needs to look down to talk to her.
• The Italian underground comic book Ranxerox is an example: the titular Ranx is a huge robot (one can describe him as a punk Frankenstein's monster) that, because of a malfunction of his electronic brain, loves and follows little Lubna, who is a young, petite, and very nasty Little Miss Badass.
• In Runaways, Chase (5'11") appears to be at least 30 cm (1 foot) taller than his girlfriend, Gert (5'1").
• Barbaric and Ricochet in The Savage Dragon and Freak Force; Barbaric is of a Hulk-like stature, while Ricochet is rather small for her age.
• Dwight and Miho from Sin City is a platonic example. Dwight clears six feet while Miho is often described as being barely 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall. As the series progressed, Frank Miller decided to exaggerate the differences to the point where Dwight looks as if he could swallow Miho.
• Another platonic example (and a very unusual one) is Tiatkin and the war droid Giza from the Star Wars oneshot comic Lando's Commandos: On Eagle's Wings. Giza was at least three times his Twi'lek partner's size and also had rather a lot of affection for her. Cue Roaring Rampage of Revenge when she was gunned down during a mission.
• Star Wars: Invasion: Kaye and Arbeloa, as a non-romantic example. In one issue, she asks him to relay issues to an army, only for him to tell her that she is their leader. She then points out that she wanted him to signal because he's the one tall enough to be seen over several rows of heads.

Comic Strips

• InSecurity has Sam whose wife Sedine is shorter than him.

Fan Works

• Like the Bionicle example above, this is not canon, but a lot of 9 fic-writers like pairing the enormous 8 with 4, who is one of the smallest characters. (Most writers like to think of 4 as a female, thus making it an example of this trope and not Big Guy, Little Guy.)
• Marcus Romero and Amy Zavala, the District 2 tributes from The 92nd Annual Hunger Games are totally this. Marcus is a 6'5", 200 lb. gargantuan 18-year-old, while his partner Amy is a 4'10", 90 lb. little 14-year-old. However, Amy proves to be far from harmless and can hold her own in the fight for survival alongside Marcus.
• In Beyond Heroes: Of Sunshine and Red Lyrium, it's observed that Bethany Hawke is considerably shorter and slighter than either of her tall, burly brothers. Cassandra is surprised when she meets Hawke and Carver and sees how much larger they are than she expected, because of the fact that Bethany is so petite.^note Bethany is, canonically, one of the smallest adult humans in the Dragon Age franchise.
• Though not canon in any sense, BIONICLE fans tend to pair up Toa Hewkii and Macku. Macku is a three-foot-tall fisherwoman, Hewkii is a seven-foot-six superhero with stone and gravity powers.
  • A more canon example would be Mata Nui and Kiina. Sure, at seven-and-a-half feet tall, Kiina is hardly "tiny" by most people's standards, but when you consider that Mata Nui's original form is forty million feet tall, it becomes a highly exaggerated version of this trope.
• Wheatley's human body in Blue Sky (Waffles) is based on actor Stephen Merchant, who is 6'7". Chell is described as being "not particularly tall".
• Several examples in The Bridge (MLP), mostly due to the kaiju ponies being well above average size. Most notably, Anguirus finds Gentle Leaf, a little filly lost in the woods, and takes care of her; resulting in they traveling together with her riding on his back a lot. Within some bonding time Anguirus takes on a Parental Substitute for the little one until he can get her back to her parents, and Gentle Leaf being in danger is what causes his Big Brother Instinct to flare up.
• Bree and Min of the Tomb Raider (2013) fanfic The Dreaming form a variation on this trope. Though both are female, Min is very tall and androgynous, while Bree is much shorter and girlier.
• In The Dragon That Will Pierce the Heavens, Zoro and protagonist Hikari fit this trope, since Zoro is closer to six feet tall and Hikari to five feet. This doesn't mean she isn't equally dangerous.
• Very popular on the The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Kink Meme. Plenty of fills involve a female Breton Player Character (the smallest possible human) getting paired up with a strapping male Nord (Brynjolf, Farkas, and Vilkas are popular) or Altmer (especially Ondolemar or Legate Fasendil). Another such pairing that turns up frequently is Mirabelle Ervine and Ancano.
• Enemy of My Enemy has Sarah Jennings - a young, human girl - form a strong bond of friendship with two Seperatist Hunters whom she dubs 'Jib' and 'Jubb'.
• In the Firefly fandom, the "Jaylee" pairing, considering that Jewel Staite, Kaylee's actress, stands at just 166 cm½ (5'5");" compared to the towering 193 cm (6'4") Adam Baldwin, who plays Jayne. Those who ship Jayne and River also like to play up the dynamic in their fic, despite Summer Glau being an average-sized 173 cm (5'8").
• Mario Kart fic Firefly has the non-romantic pair of Bowser, an über-tall heavyweight racer, and Toadette, whose growth was stunted artificially to minimize her weight. Their tastes in fashion further heighten the difference.
• In Frail Equilibrium and the fan-verse following it, Tess' allegedly short stature (peaking at an average 5'4" as an adult) compared to a towering 6'5" Dante is a long-time running gag.
• A Green Dragon's Hoard: This is a given considering Izuku is roughly five and a half meters tall. Even Yamato, who's three and a half meters tall, barely reaches his waist. Though it's especially profound with Izuku's first girlfriend Manami who, at 111cm tall, is almost exactly one fifth his height.
• In the Happy Tree Friends fandom, one particular Fan-Preferred Couple is Flippy (a bear) and Flaky (a porcupine). While the two (like most of the characters) are the same size on the show, some fans like to de-anthropomorphize the characters. D'aww ensues.
  • There are thousands of pictures with them in human, anime forms, in which Flippy is drawn at least One Head Taller than Flaky. Some examples are here.
• Shown a bit in DiscordantPrincess' Hazbin Hotel works with Alastor and his wife Megan. While Megan is not overly short (her height was once stated as 5'9"), she's a good foot shorter than Alastor.
• The Heart Trilogy pairs an average-sized woman named Kathryn with the massive dragon Smaug. Eventually Smaug gains a muscled and seven feet tall human form that also dwarfs Kathryn.
• Hit And Miss, a NSFW Balthier (6'0")/Ashe (5'5") fanfic, brings up the difference in the two characters' heights frequently. When it's mentioned in Chapter 20, Balthier sleeps with someone else and can't stop himself from thinking that, compared to Ashe, she's too tall.
• Hivefled: the Grand Highblood's lover, the Condesce, is about half his size, and they've had threesomes with trolls who are even smaller than her.
• In I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!, Itachi (5'7'') ends up with Karenbana (short enough to be mistaken for a child).
• This series of Judge Dredd movie-verse fanfics features Judge Anderson (specifically stated to be 5'4" like the actress who plays her) totally-not-paired-with Judge Cornelius (described as "six-foot-four of Baltimore beefcake" and explicitly taller than Dredd himself. Although not played for laughs, there are several instances where the height difference is obvious - once when he puts his elbow on her shoulder for support after getting stabbed.
• PudgyPudge's work Master of the Zanbatous. By the time the story ends, Sakura is able to ride atop Naruto's shoulders in a fashion reminiscent of Kenpachi and Yachiru It IS stated that in order to wield the blades effectively, he had to undergo a MASSIVE growth spurt, but 4'6" to 6'11" seems a tiny bit excessive.
• Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises gives us Max and Morgan. Max is a fairly tall individual, while Morgan herself is absolutely tiny compared to most other characters in the series.
• The Danganronpa Series Fic New Island Life has two as the Official Couples of three of the four stories: Hajime Hinata and Hiyoko Saojin in New island Life and Shuichi Saihara and Himiko Yumeno in New School semester.
• Old West has Rattlesnake Jake (a staggering-sized rattlesnake) and Grace Glossy (a shorter and a lot slimmer glossy snake). The pictures provided by the author (links provided here) help to outline the comparison.
• Some examples in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
  • In the Ritchie Gaiden, the title character is stated by the narration to be taller than his mother at age 15. She later marries a man who is big enough to call her son "half-pint".
  • In the Hiker Interlude, the titular Hiker meets a young girl named Mizu, no older than nine years old.
• Remi the Grey has Jedi Knight Remi, who is described (and shown in artwork by the author) as quite petite, paired up with Lord Scourge who is canonically the tallest and most muscular body type available for males in the game.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Little 5'2" Buffy is dating 6'4" NFL quarterback Freddie. Since she's a Breslynn Orphan, however, she's strong enough to lift him over her head.
• The Servants of Ungoliant features the 25-year-old Jhebdryk, who is the tallest and most muscular of the main Darklanders and the 18-year-old Rhejya, who is one of the youngest of the main Darklanders. Also doubled with One Head Taller.
• Obsidian and Vale in Some Semblance of Meaning. Obsidian is a Career, described as tall and muscular, whereas Vale describes herself as scrawny and "vertically challenged."
• Leif of soulless shell (Redwall) isn't described as being particularly big, but his girlfriend Maoimi can't reach above his waist (she's supposed to be seventeen).
• Any fanfic shipping Supernatural's Sam Winchester (6'5" and muscular) and Gabriel (5'8" and compact). (Since Gabriel's an angel, though, it's actually inverted once they're out of their meatsuits—Sam's soul can fit in a briefcase, while a younger and less powerful angel than Gabriel is the size of the Chrysler building, so Gabriel's probably even larger.)
• Fan-artists for Suzumiya Haruhi no Seitenkan tend to draw Kyonko (5'2") as really short compared to the male characters, such as Haruki (5'7")◊ or Yuuki (5'5.5")◊.
• ToyHammer: Michael and Zara. 1.8 meters (5'11") to 5 cm (2 inches).
• Fans like to pair Arcee with Bulkhead from Transformers: Prime. Arcee is shorter than Bumblebee and Bulkhead comes up to Optimus's chest pre-upgrade.
• In the Uplifted series Joachim Hoch is described as just under 6'5" and built like a grizzly bear. Hanala on the other hand is lucky to be 5'1". Of course, size means nothing but a height difference as Hanala is the brutally violent one.

Films — Animation

• Beauty and the Beast. Even after the transformation, there's still quite a size difference. Gaston is also considerably bigger than Belle. In the stage musical, Belle is usually cast as short as possible to play up this aspect.
• Brave:
  • Short and squat Maudie and the nameless, towering Hunk from Clan Dingwall appear to be heading this way, as evidenced by his behavior toward her the end of the film.
  • King Fergus and Queen Elinor. They're fairly similar in height - indeed, Elinor is quite tall - but Fergus is about five times wider.
• Exaggerated in Cats Don't Dance: Max is a Tiny-Headed Behemoth, while Darla Dimple is a Bratty Half-Pint.
• Gru and his daughters in Despicable Me, but specially Agnes, who is barely bigger than his head. His eventual partner Lucy Wilde counts, as she's waifish compared to Gru's bulky frame and only manages to stand taller than Gru with huge heels (and his hunch helps, as seen when his normal-postured brother enters the fray◊).
• The Emperor's New Groove gave us a platonic example overlapping with Brains and Brawn, in the form of the gaunt old Evil Chancellor Yzma and her hulking Minion with an F in Evil Kronk.
• Ernest And Celestine are a perfect example of this trope with Ernest being a gigantic bear, and Celestine being a tiny little mouse who fits in his paw.
• Kristoff, from Frozen, bears a partial resemblance to the scrapped Bastion, being taller and stockier than the average Disney leading male. However, he's still more conventionally attractive and is only One Head Taller than Anna, rather than towering over her.
• Chiaki and Makoto in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time -she barely goes up to his shoulders.
• How to Train Your Dragon:
  • How to Train Your Dragon 2 has this trope played straight with Stoick and his long-lost wife Valka, who is roughly a third his size. Rather downplayed in that she is less than a head shorter which means she looms more than a bit in her own right.
  • In the spin-off film The Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon, Gobber's parents were depicted this way in his flashback.
• Moana:
  • Platonic example with the title heroine and Maui. Moana is an average-sized teenage girl, while Maui is considerably taller and about 2-3 times her width.
  • There's also a romantic example with Moana's parents. Tui is slightly over a head taller than Sina, as well as about twice her width.
• Francoeur of A Monster in Paris is a seven-foot, anthropomorphic flea, so he's taller than most people, but his dance partner/sister figure Lucille is pretty small compared to the more normal-sized cast members.
• A non-romantic example. Monsters, Inc. has Sulley (a furry monster with the build of a lineman) grows attached to a two-year-old girl whom he names "Boo." Also, it's worth noting that his assistant (and all the assistants of the 'scarers' at their workplace) are dwarfed by their counterparts, with Mike being about the size of Sulley's head.
• In Mulan II, Chien-Po, the guy big enough to pick up four people and a horse, ends up with the tiniest of the princesses.
• My Moon: Earth is about the size of a small building, while Sun is dozens and dozens of times larger than her. He can even fit her in the palm of his hand and still have plenty of room left over.
• Pixies: Joe Beck's spine is double the length of Michelle Meyers', he towers multiple heads over her.
• Flynn and Rapunzel from Tangled avert this. However, an earlier version of the script played it straight. Bastion was Rapunzel's love interest before Flynn but was scrapped for a more conventionally handsome protagonist. Bastion was a very large guy while Rapunzel is somewhat short. Rapunzel didn't even reach Bastion's shoulders.
• The director's commentary in Shrek suggests that Shrek and Fiona were specifically designed for this image. The situation then becomes merely One Head Taller. This is why we also have tiny little Donkey paired up with the massive Dragon.
• Kerchack and Kala from Tarzan. This one's justified since male gorillas really are much bigger than the females.
• Wreck-It Ralph has the title character Ralph (normally a Gentle Giant) befriending tiny Bratty Half-Pint Vanellope Von Schweetz. Seen in the page image.
• In Zootopia there's Mayor Lionheart and Assistant Mayor Bellwether. He's an enormous male lion, while she's a dwarf female sheep that barely comes up to his waist.

Films — Live-Action

• Clint Eastwood, who was also 6'4" in his prime, and was exactly a foot taller than his most frequent leading lady (and sometimes real-life romantic partner) Sondra Locke.
• Babylon A.D.: Toorop and Aurora. Not only is he One Head Taller, but probably twice her weight as well. Of course, he's a muscular veteran mercenary, and she's a sheltered young woman. It doesn't go beyond Unresolved Sexual Tension, however.
• James Merten, the namesake architect who built the Mertin-Flemmer Building in Being John Malkovich was allegedly a sea captain married to a dwarf woman and built the 7 1/2 floor for her and her "accursed kind" (Maxine doesn't believe it).
• Taken to an extreme in Big Top Pee-wee, with circus owner Kris Kristofferson (5'10) and his wife, who is small enough to live in his shirt pocket.
• In Black Cat, White Cat, six-foot-plus Grga Veliki and midget Afrodita end up together after Grga finds her in a stump. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Non-romantic example: Gentle Giant One and Wise Beyond Her Years Miette from the French Film The City of Lost Children.
• Four Christmases cast Reese Witherspoon (5' 1"/1.55 m) opposite Vince Vaughn (6'5"/1.95 m). The film's poster featured them standing back-to-back, with her standing on a stack of four wrapped presents.
• Freaky centers around an average schoolgirl (5' 5"\1,65 m Kathryn Newton) and a enormous serial killer (6' 5¼" \ 1,96 m Vince Vaughn) going through a body swap. Them having to adjust to the new bodies leads to some comedy, as the killer who took down people with ease now lacks his old strength (one of the murders has the would-be victim throwing the petite girl easily), and the girl hits her head on tall branches ("I'm a giant!").
• Ambrose and Ermengarde in the film Hello, Dolly!, played by 6'7 Tommy Tune and the 4'10 Joyce Ames. At one point they're dancing and he lifts her off her feet to disguise her short height (making her less notable to her uncle sitting nearby).
• King Kong (1933):
  • Played with, in fact, by Merian C. Cooper (5'8). According to Fay Wray (5'3), when she was given the part of Ann Darrow, Cooper told her that she'd be working with "the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood" (she was expecting 6'1 Clark Gable).
  • Bruce Cabot (6'1.5), who played her human love interest, was also nearly a foot taller than her.
• May has this with the eponymous character and her ill fated Love Interest Adam. May being played by the dainty, 5'3" Angela Bettis and Adam being played by the impressively built, 6'1.5" Jeremy Sisto. There's even a moment in the film where he has to crouch down to meet her eye level. Its worth mentioning though that May still manages to kill Adam!
• The title characters of Min & Max, who are a short woman and a tall man. Actually, those names in the title are nicknames; their real names are Xia Xiling and Zhang Xiao, respectively. Anyway, this trope is subverted here in that Xia Xiling keeps on rejecting Zhang Xiao's attempts to win her over. Double subverted when she ends up developing feelings for him anyway.
• In Mirrormask, Valentine isn't "huge", but he is far enough on the tall side to contrast with petite Helena.
• Jaws (7'2) and his girlfriend, Dolly, in Moonraker. There was some concern about audiences accepting the height difference until Richard Kiel pointed out his real-life wife was the same height.
• Trini in Power Rangers (2017) is played by 5' actress and Latin-pop Singer Becky Gomez, who in some shots, barely comes up to some of her castmates' shoulders (mainly RJ Cyler who is a foot taller than her).
• Quigley Down Under has 6'4" Tom Selleck paired with Laura San Giacomo, who's only 5'2".
• The massive, 6'4" John Wayne was this next to most of his female co-stars. A particularly striking example was Angie Dickinson from Rio Bravo, who was slender, petite, and stood nearly a foot shorter than Wayne.
• Shall We Dance (2004): Big Fun Vern only has a few scenes with his fiancée, but she is nearly two heads shorter than him, even in high heels, and at least fifty pounds lighter than him.
• Star Wars:
  • Han Solo and Princess Leia borderline it. Harrison Ford, Han’s actor, stands 6’1 and Carrie Fisher was a foot shorter at 5’1.
  • The Force Awakens: Maz Kanata (4'1) offhandedly refers to Chewbacca (7'7), who's at least a meter (3 feet) taller than her, as her 'boyfriend'.
• In Sullivan's Travels we have 6'2" Joel McCrea paired with 4'11" Veronica Lake.
• In Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and its sequels, Johnny Weissmuller (6'3) was a full foot taller and considerably more massive than Maureen O'Sullivan.
• Thor and Thor: The Dark World have the waifish Natalie Portman (5'3) paired with the towering and chiseled Chris Hemsworth (6'2.75). In Thor: Love and Thunder, Portman's character getting Thor's powers also makes her taller through extensive set trickery.
• Thor: Ragnarok:
  • Valkyrie and the Hulk have struck up a friendship since he arrived on Sakaar at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie) is 5'3¾ while the Hulk is at least twice that height. They've even given each other nicknames that resemble the trope name.
  • Non-romantic example with Valkyrie and Thor, given the ten inch height difference between Thompson and Hemsworth.
• Divatox tried to marry Maligore out of convenience in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. Maligore can grow even bigger. Unfortunately (for Divatox), this marriage would most likely lead to End of the World as We Know It and so was naturally spoilt by the Turbo Rangers.
• In The Wanderers, the leader of The Fordham Baldies, Terror, is played by the 6'6" and well over 300 lbs Erland van Lindh, while his girl Peewee is played by the 4'10" Linda Manz.

Literature

By Author:

• In any P. G. Wodehouse story where Stinker Pinker and Stiffy Bing make an appearance, Bertie will introduce them in the narration by remarking how they embody this trope.

By Title:

• In the Ahriman Trilogy Fausto is a giant football player and Zoe is repeatedly described as being tiny. She's a total badass though, so it balances.
• Egyptologists and detectives Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson. Amelia frequently describes her husband as "Herculean".
• The Belgariad and The Malloreon series:
  • Garion is at least six and a half feet (about 2 m) tall, possibly seven feet (about 2.1 m). His wife Ce'Nedra, being part-Dryad, is 5' (152 cm) at most — and repeatedly described as tiny.
• In Black House, the biker named Mouse tells of his late girlfriend, Little Nancy. Jack asks how big Little Nancy was since Mouse is 6'2'' and 290 pounds. Mouse remarks that he could have lifted her one-handed.
• Brandon Vanderkool (6'8") and Madeline Rousseau (5'-ish) in Border Songs.
• The Robo-Boogers from Captain Underpants start out as a Big, Thin, Short Trio. However, when Carl (thin) dies, Frankenbooger (big) and Trixie (short) become a straight example. Even none of there genders are explicitly stated, Carl and Frankenbooger are implied to be male and Trixie is implied to be female.
• The Cat Who... Series: Liz Hart and her boyfriend Derek Cuttlebrink are described this way. However, Liz is a woman of ordinary proportions and only appears tiny next to Derek, who is literally seven feet tall.
• In The Crocodile God, Mirasol is the tiny Filipino-American girl to Haik, the title's Filipino crocodile-god. His exact height isn't mentioned, but he's at least a head above her, extremely muscular thanks to being a sea-god who sails for a living, and descended from the Maori.
• Played for Body Horror rather than humor in Ramsey Campbell's Cthulhu Mythos story "The Faces at Pine Dunes", in which Michael's tall father has grown enormously fat and his mother is petite.
• Derek and Chloe from the Darkest Powers series. Derek is built like a linebacker, with shoulders nearly as broad as the average doorway, and stands at around 6'3" or so. He also weighs about 220lbs. Chloe is five-foot-nothing and probably weighs 100lbs soaking wet.
• Red and Sorcha from Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest Sorcha is very petite and compared to Red who's a pretty big guy, she's like a small child.
• During Dinoverse, eighth graders become dinosaurs. Candacye Chambers becomes a pig-sized Leptoceratops, while the two boys she's with become an Ankylosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus rex, respectively. Your Size May Vary, but she does climb on top of Bertram's shell and leaps into Mike's tiny arms at various points. Candayce is also considerably smaller than Janine. Once they all return home, she's back to being a tall, leggy girl.
• Captain Carrot and Angua von Uberwald of Discworld. Angua has never been described as particularly small, granted, but it probably wouldn't matter, seeing as Carrot is 6'5" (196cm) and nearly as broad across the shoulder. Sometimes Angua only comes up to his waist ... although admittedly that's when she's quadrapedal.
• Dragon Bones has Gentle Giant Ward, and his younger sister Ciarra, who is so small she looks more like twelve than her actual age of sixteen. They usually greet each other by her jumping onto him to hug him, and his picking her up and whirling her around.
• F'lar and Lessa in Dragonriders of Pern — Lessa has been referred to as "diminutive", "child-sized", etc. Nevertheless, she is a force of nature, personality-wise.
• Dragons in Our Midst has a non-romantic example: Sapphira (a fairly smallish woman) and Yereq (a giant, some nine-plus feet tall), from Oracles of Fire.
• The Dresden Files.
  • Non-romantic (at first, anyway) example: Harry Dresden and Karrin Murphy. (He's canonically 6'9"; she's five feet tall.)
  • Harry with his other girlfriends, Susan and Anastasia Luccio also qualify as neither lady is described as being over 6 feet tall.
  • Another non-romantic example from the same series: Kincaid and the Archive. The latter is a young girl with the sum of all human knowledge and the former is her bodyguard (who's almost as tall as Harry), leaving them with a weird 'father'/super-intelligent daughter relationship.
  • Kincaid and Murphy have a Friends with Benefits situation going for a while as well.
  • Thomas and Justine. Thomas has been mentioned as tall (though not nearly as tall as Harry), and Justine has been described as tiny, frail, and waif-ish.
  • Queens Mab and Titania, rulers of Winter and Summer respectively, are described as appearing close to 6 feet in most forms (they can change their shape to a certain degree). Their peers in Faerie are Santa Claus and The Erl-King, both described as well over 7 feet tall.
• Eleanor & Park:
  • Steve is huge, while his girlfriend Tina barely breaks five feet.
  • Park's father is much larger than his mother. At one point, they are compared to Paul Bunyan and an It's a Small World doll respectively.
• The Elenium has Sir Sparhawk, repeatedly described as an uncommonly tall and burly bruiser of a man, and his eventual wife Queen Ehlana.
• Empire from the Ashes: Heirs of Empire has Pint-Sized Powerhouse Sandy MacMahan, who tops out at a mere 140 cm (4'7), and Sean MacIntyre, who is 60 cm (2 feet) taller.
• Garrett, P.I.:
  • Waldo "Saucerhead" Tharpe is a humungous bodyguard/bruiser with a long track record of dating women who can barely reach his elbows.
  • Garrett himself is no shrimp, yet is usually paired with Tinnie Tate, whose whole family is short.
• Gentleman Bastard: Jean, who is larger than average, and Ezri, who is petite (but the tallest of all her sisters) in Red Seas Under Red Skies.
• Susan and the unnamed protagonist of Neil Gaiman's short story "Goliath".
• In Mary Gentle's Grunts! we have the pairing of Ashnak (six feet of muscular orc) and Magda Brandiman, a halfling (probably around 3' to 4' at the most).
• Vernon and Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter books, though the difference is in girth as opposed to height.
  • Possible example: of the three leads, Ron is the tallest and Hermione is the shortest, though it's unclear how much the height disparity is, and considering the books take place over their teenage years it certainly varies as well.
  • Dean Thomas (confirmed to be taller than Ron) briefly dates petite Ginny Weasley during Half-Blood Prince.
• From Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar, Talia, who is described as petite, and Dirk, who's been referred to as "that man-mountain of hers". Also a case of Ugly Guy, Hot Wife.
• Honor Harrington:
  • The titular character's father is 192 cm (6'3" and a half), and her mother is third-grader size at "barely over" 125 cm (4'1" and a half).
  • Kevin Usher is described as being rather large, quite unlike his rather petite wife Virginia.
  • Abigail Hearns, while tall for a Grayson, is still average height at most. Her armsman, San Martin-born Mateo Gutierrez, is two meters (6'7) tall and weighs 200 kilograms.
  • Lady Dame Estelle Matsuko, Baroness Medusa, Imperial Governor of the Talbott Quadrant, barely clears five feet (158 cm) and is delicately built. Her military counterpart, station commander Admiral Augustus Khumalo, is not only easily over six feet, but described with words like "massive".
  • Berry Zilwicki is smaller than average (in part due to malnutrition as a child) while her boyfriend Hugh Arai is positively enormous, being former Mesan heavy labor slave.
• Kyle and Jodi/Sunny from The Host (2008). This also is the fate of Ian and Wanda in Pet's body.
  • Also invoked in the movie as while Jake Abel who plays Ian isn't massively tall at 6'1, he still ends up towering over Wanda, played by the 5'2 Emily Browning.
• Humanx Commonwealth: Skua September and Isili Hasboga from The End of the Matter. Skua is described by many characters as the biggest man they've ever seen, while his employer Isili's description pegs her as half a head shorter than teenage Flinx (who'd not yet grown tall).
• Iron Widow has Zetian and Shimin, whose heights per Word of God are 5'2" and 6'5" respectively. Despite this, Zetian is, in many ways, more dangerous than Shimin.
• Journey to Chaos: A Mage's Power: Laharg the orc is taller and broader than any human. His mercenary partner, Malize, is a fairy and so she's small enough to ride on his head.
• Owen and Annabel from Sarah Dessen's novel Just Listen. This is picked up on in-universe, and their schoolmates start giving them unkind nicknames like Beauty and the Beast.
• In Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter, 6'6 (and massively ugly) Thorfinn, aka Macbeth, is married to Gruoch, who is small and short enough for him to pick up and carry. This is based on a historical account of Thorfinn carrying her to safety when their home was attacked by enemies.
• In Lorna Doone, John Ridd is described as being able to carry away the doorframe of Sir Ensor Doone's house. For reference, the doorway is 6 feet and one inch high and nearly two feet across. Lorna, on the other hand, is slim, such that half of John's arm can go around her.
• To some extent, George and Jessie Challenger from Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Notably, Challenger is short (well, at least when compared to Edward Malone), but only because he has short, stocky legs. His chest, arms, and head are huge, and his wife is a tiny, thin woman whom he is able to lift absolutely without any effort. To Malone, they together resemble a gorilla and a gazelle.
• Karsa Orlong and Samar Dev from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Karsa Orlong is a Blood Knight and a deconstruction of the Barbarian Hero from a race known as the Teblor, while Samar Dev is a slim and short human Hot Witch and engineer. Karsa having little social graces and bordering on a He-Man Woman Hater who learns his lesson would bring his courtship of Samar into humorous territory if it wasn't a deliberate deconstruction of Bigger Is Better in Bed. Karsa is acutely aware of that, but somehow, between books, they manage to become a couple.
• Brother/Sister version in The Millennium Trilogy books, with the Zalachenko half-siblings. Super-hacker Lisbeth is less than five feet tall and skinny even for her size. Her half-brother is a towering, ridiculously muscled bruiser.
• Nina Tanleven: The Ghost Wore Gray includes the elderly couple Arnie and Meg Coleman. Arnie is six-foot-five, and Meg is about Nine's height (four-foot-ten).
• Not a romance, but the partnership of Tuskanini and Super Gnat in the Phule's Company novels. He's the biggest member of the Omega Mob, she's the smallest, and they are a solid team, to the point that very pacifistic Tusk slugs a sergeant for picking on his partner.
• Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth: Tom Builder is described to be unusually tall and muscular, and his second wife Ellen is described to be leaner and smaller.
• A Post-Modern Fairy Tale book features a very butch princess (she likes wrestling and fixing helicopters) whose parents force her to preside over an engagement gauntlet of princes who must be taller, stronger, and maybe even smarter then her in order to marry her. They are especially interested in the only guy who's taller than the princess; unfortunately, he's also a Noodle Person who has to wrestle her (she lets him win to avoid injuring him). Meanwhile, she falls for the same prince's pilot/chauffeur, who's much shorter and chubbier but very much her equal. Naturally, he's the real prince and the tall guy is his pilot/chauffeur. They switched because the prince knew his height would've instantly eliminated him, and he thought the whole thing was silly anyway.
• In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy is described several times as tall and once as a "great, tall fellow" by Bingley, while Elizabeth is supposedly lithe from her walking and 15-year-old Lydia and Georgianna are both taller than her.
• The Rogue King has almost nine-foot Koral hook up with a girl whose eyes are 'level with his belt'. But then, most people are that short to him.
• In Shade's Children by Garth Nix, Ella isn't described as being particularly small, but she certainly would seem so next to her teammate Drum, who was dosed with steroids as a child. One scene implied that her armpits were about level with his waist. Interestingly, Ella is almost certainly the elder.
• In The Sharing Knife series: Fawn "I'm not a child, I'm just short" Bluefield and Dag Redwing, who's so tall and lanky that Fawn can't reach up to touch his face unless he stoops.
• Sienkiewicz Trilogy: The Gentle Giant of With Fire and Sword, Podbipięta, falls head over heels with tiny Anusia.
• Possibly Nessa and Tulkas in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion — she's described as petite and graceful, like a deer, and he's massive and muscular.
• The title characters in the Julia Donaldson and Axel Schiffer picture book The Snail and the Whale. The female snail is about the size of the male whale's eye.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo have an arranged marriage. He's a hardened tribal leader who towers over most men, while she's thirteen years old and slight even for her age.
  • They may never appear and are only mentioned once, but the eight-foot-tall Gregor Clegane has been married three times. Other examples include Duncan the Tall (6' 11") and Young Nan (Average height and very thin), Sandor Clegane (6' 7") and Sansa Stark (Around 5'). There is also a mention of a slave master who owned both a giant and a dwarf and liked to make them have sex for his guests.
  • There's also Gendry, who at only 14/15 but is noted as being big and tall for his age around 6'3, and tiny Arya Stark who is 10 years old and under 5'.
  • In the prequel story, The Sworn Sword, Ser Duncan (6'11") has a flirtatious relationship with Lady Rohanne (4'11") Webber, who is rather short. It's social status, however, and not height, which gets in the way.
• In the Spellsinger universe, native residents of the fantasy world are significantly shorter than those in the non-magical twenty-first-century world. Talea is in fact quite tall by her native world's standards, but she's much shorter than her love interest, the six-foot Fish out of Water Jon-Tom.
• Early in The Stand, Nick meets the sheriff, a huge man, and later his wife, a slight little thing, leading Nick to ponder the trope and its implications.
• Stardoc: The first love of 4'11", skinny Cherijo Grey Veil's life is a seven-foot Jorenian. She eventually ends up marrying Duncan Reever; while he's nowhere near that big, he's still quite tall.
• The Stormlight Archive: Shallan is quite petite, and constantly annoyed at having to jog to keep up with "storming Alethi and their long legs." With Adolin, the problem is exacerbated when he rides his giant ryshadium.
• Corie and Elisandra's parent figures (mother in Elisandra's case), Jaxon and Greta in Summers at Castle Auburn. Jaxon is a huge, wild-looking man, while Greta is so small that if she could ever be quiet, people would overlook her. Fortunately for Greta and unfortunately for those around her, she is never quiet.
• Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe:
  • Buri and Raoul. When introduced in the first book series, Buri is described as being reasonably short. Raoul is well over six feet, and a massively built warrior, whereas Buri is a waif-like rider. It gets pointed out directly once that when the two stand next to each other, Buri doesn't even reach Raoul's shoulder.
  • Daine and Numair; in Wolf-Speaker, it said that Daine was 5 feet 5 inches (at the age of fourteen) and Numair is 6'5", and quite a bit older.
• The Twilight Saga: Alice and Jasper. Jasper is super tall, lanky, but WAY above average, and Alice is repeatedly described as tiny and pixie-like. Discarded in the film series, where Ashley Greene and Jackson Rathbone are only 2-3 inches apart in height. There's also any girl with any of the male werewolves.
• In Twisted (2010), Clare is a petite human woman, while Railrunner is an anthropomorphic roller coaster that's over twenty feet long and weighs several thousand pounds.
• Vagabond gives us Pierre, described as nearly seven feet tall, and his wife Yvette, described as being tiny and stick-like.
• Princess Siri in Warbreaker is a slight teenage girl sent off to an Arranged Marriage with a nearly seven-foot-tall God-Emperor.
• In The War Gods, Leanna is unusually tall for this trope, being over six feet tall. However, her husband Bahzell is 7'9".
• In John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming, half-titan Raven is married to the very, very petite Wendy. She's not kidding when she says he can pick her up with one hand.
• In Watchers of the Throne, the two more combat-oriented protagonists are Aleya and Valerian, who are respectively a regular-sized woman and a giant Super-Soldier. Aleya has her Anti-Magic aura to keep up with Valerian.
• Par for the course in The Wheel of Time. Moiraine and Lan, Nynaeve and Lan, Rand and Min, Perrin and Faile, Mat and Tuon. Rand, Lan, and Perrin are all well above average in size, while Moiraine and Tuon are both particularly small women.
• In Mary Gentle's White Crow stories, recurring characters Baltazar Casaubon and Valentine, although that's probably mostly attributable to Balthazar being absolutely massive.

Live-Action TV

• On 30 Rock, 5'4" Liz (Tina Fey) once had an off-screen fling with 7'0" Grizz (Grizz Chapman).
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Daisy Johnson (5'5) next to Grant Ward (6'2) and Lincoln Campbell (6'1), and platonically with Mack Mackenzie (6'4), Jeffrey Mace (5'11), and Robbie Reyes (6'0), all of which was often emphasised to different effects, particularly once Daisy gained her powers as it helped convey her being a Pintsize Powerhouse. Generally downplayed and averted with other guy/girl pairs on the show, as outside of Mack's romance with Yo-Yo Rodriguez (5'6) and Ward's relationship with Kara Palamas (5'4), the rest of the male cast were 5'7-5'10 and barely stood much taller than the women (especially as they often wore heels), with Lance Hunter (5'8) actually being visibly shorter than his ex-wife Bobbi Morse (5'11).
• All in the Family had Mike and Gloria, played by the 6'2" Rob Reiner and 5'1" Sally Struthers. Gloria often wore platform shoes to help with the size difference, which were in fashion for the first time, so it was even plausible in-character.
• Rene Artois (5'10.5) in 'Allo 'Allo! has this going on with two of his mistresses, Maria and Mimi (4'9) (especially Mimi, since her actress is over a foot shorter than Gordon Kaye who plays Rene), to the point they have to stand on a stool to kiss him and neither can hug him and put their arms more than halfway around.
• Austin and Ally from Austin & Ally Austin is eleven inches taller than Ally and twice as wide, the top of her head just reaches the bottom of his neck in heels. It's particularly noticeable in the opening sequence, where he crouches down quite a bit, so they are eye to eye.
• On Baby Daddy, they have Danny Wheeler, played by the 6'6" Derek Theler, meaning most of his love interests will fall into this to some degree, but they occasionally go out of their way to find especially petite actresses to help sell his Gentle Giant demeanor, such as Amy,◊ played by the 5'2" Lacey Chabert.
• This trope is used for a sight gag on Boy Meets World: Frankie (6'1), who is quite tall and large, and his dad (6'4), played by professional wrestler Vader, are at a meeting in Mr. Feeny's (5'7) office and them stepping out of the room reveals a short, waif woman who's revealed to be Frankie's mom was standing behind them the whole time.^note This joke has a basis in reality. Vader's real-life mother was only 4'10 and his birth had to be induced early for their safety.
• Carol and Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch. Mike is about three heads taller than Carol.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Anya (5'5") and her Viking ex Olaf (6'7"). Even before the troll thing.
  • To a lesser extent, Buffy and Angel◊ and Buffy and Riley◊; Sarah Michelle Gellar is 5'2" and skinny, and David Boreanaz is 6'0" and muscular, and Marc Blucas is 6'2" and also quite well-built.
  • Lampshaded when Riley Finn comes back in Season 6. Buffy stares at him in disbelief and asks, "Were you always this tall?"
• 5'3 Fiona Glennane (Gabrielle Anwar) in Burn Notice is fairly small compared to the male cast, with Michael (6') being taller but Sam (6'1) and Jesse (6'3) are more muscular.
• On Charmed, often the men are much larger and brawnier than the women, which can be seen particularly with Phoebe, while she was dating Cole, and in the 8th season, when she was with Coop. Milano, who played Phoebe, is 5'1.5". Julian McMahon (Cole) is 6'2" and Victor Webster (Coop) is 6'4".
• Brooke Burns, hostess of the GSN version of The Chase, is 5'8", which is above-average for an American female. However, the trope is played straight when she stands next to the 6'6", 370 lb. Mark "The Beast" Labbett.
• Chuck:
  • Zachary Levi (Chuck) who is 6'3" is at some point paired with Rachel Bilson (Lou, a Romantic False Lead) who is 5'1", a full foot and two inches shorter! She even mentions that she is "intrigued by their height difference".
  • A non-romantic example with Adam Baldwin as John Casey and Mekenna Melvin, who plays his daughter, Alex. Baldwin is already enormous (6'4" and built like a tank), but Melvin's tiny 5'1" just exaggerates the difference even further.
• In The City Hunter, actor Lee Min Ho is only comparatively tall at 6'1", but he's huge compared to the diminutive actresses he's paired with. Lampshaded by one of them:
  "He's so tall that giving him a once-over hurts my neck..."
• Discussed in The Cleaner (UK). Wicky is played by the 6'8 Greg Davies, and in one episode he crosses paths with his petite ex-girlfriend Maggie, who left him 20 years ago. While he fondly remembers the sex, for her it was "kinda samey" because there weren't many positions comfortable for both of them, with doggystyle being their default.
  Maggie: It was like being taken from behind by the Eiffel Tower!
• On Community Jeff - portrayed by 6'4" Joel McHale - when paired with either Britta or Annie - respectively the 5'4" Gillian Jacobs and the 5'3" Alison Brie.
• An identical height difference can be seen in one of the pairings on Season 26 of the U.S. version of Dancing with the Stars—Lindsay Arnold (5'6") and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (7'3").
• A Different World:
  • 5'11" Dwayne Wayne paired first with Denise Huxtable and later Whitley Gilbert, both of whom are 5'2".
  • Whitley is the tiny girl with just about anybody she's dating, though it's less noticeable if she wears heels. There's also 5'3" Freddie dating 6'2" Shazza Zulu.
• The episode "Voyage of the Damned" on Doctor Who had this with the Doctor, played by the 6'1" David Tennant, and Astrid Peth, played by Kylie Minogue, who is only five feet tall. This is fully played up in one scene when Astrid literally pulls up a box and stands on it to give the Doctor a goodbye kiss.
  • Platonically, it's fairly common in the series with Doctor+Companion pairs.
    • Rose Tyler (5'5" Billie Piper) with the Ninth (6'0" Christopher Eccleston) and the aforementioned Tenth Doctor, who also travelled with Martha Jones (5'1.5" Freema Agyeman).
    • Clara Oswald (5'2" Jenna Coleman) with the Eleventh (5'11.5" Matt Smith) and Twelfth Doctors (6' Peter Capaldi).
    • 5'4" Elisabeth Sladen with her Doctors, 6'3" Tom Baker and 6'2" Jon Pertwee. Third Doctor companion Katy Manning was even shorter, at 5'1"!
    • The Fifth Doctor (6'0" Peter Davison) with his three female companions Tegan (Janet Fielding), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), and Peri (Nicola Bryant) who stand at 5'1"-5'2", continued with the Sixth Doctor (6'0" Colin Baker) and Peri and Mel (5' Bonnie Langford).
• ER: 6'4" Luka Kovac (Goran Visnjic) dated 5'2" Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney) and 5'3" Samantha Taggart (Linda Cardellini).
• Everybody Loves Raymond:
  • There's 6'1.5" Ray Romano with 5'2" Patricia Heaton.
  • Robert is played by the 6'8" Brad Garrett, and his long-term love interest on the show is the 5'6" Amy (Monica Horan). After they have sex for the first time, she puts on his pants and they're long enough to keep her modest. In fact, you could bring up any romantic interest Brad Garrett had throughout the course of the show... it's Brad Garrett, after all.
  • Though it is not a romantic relationship, whenever Robert (6'8") stands next to Debra (5'2"), the 18-inch height difference is, obviously, really noticeable.
  • Frank Barone (Peter Boyle; 6'2") was 13" taller than Marie (Doris Roberts; 5'1").
  • Parodied in one episode when Debra's in-laws come to visit, and Debra's mother (Katherine Helmond), who is just as short as Debra, tries to kiss Robert on the cheek.
• Fawlty Towers. Basil (6'5") towers over his extremely petite wife, Sybil (5'3.5"). Meanwhile, John Cleese towers over his extremely petite then-wife, Connie Booth (5'4").
• Game of Thrones:
  • Daenerys Targaryen is fairly short and slight, while her husband Khal Drogo is pretty damn massive, with Dany barely coming up to his chest. He is a really beefy dude as well. For real-life reference, Emilia Clarke (Daenerys) is 5'2", while Jason Momoa (Drogo) is all of 6'4", and, as mentioned above, has the body of a rugby player. She is also this with Daario, who is at least six feet tall. Averted with Jon Snow (5'7" Kit Harington), which is lampshaded in the final season:
    Dany: This is only the second time I've felt this way about someone.
    Sansa: Who was the first?
    Dany: Someone taller.
  • Non-romantic example: Arya, at barely 5'0" and skinny for her age, has this with Gendry (who is noted to take after his well-built father) when they travel together for several seasons and later ends up roaming the countryside with Sander "The Hound" Clegane, at 6'6", which looks quite amusing.
• Glee:
  • has◊ Finn (6'3" Cory Monteith) and Rachel (5'2" Lea Michele)]] along with Ken and Emma (5'4) to a lesser extent.
  • A subversion occurs with Kurt (5'9.5") and Blaine (5'8")◊ on-screen: Chris Colfer (Kurt) is somewhat taller than Darren Criss (Blaine). However, Kurt is the more feminine of the two, which creates a general expectation that if anything, Blaine should be taller than Kurt. The fact that Kurt is the taller one if only by so much, makes the size difference between them seem bigger to the viewer than it actually is. In season 2 when Blaine was playing a mentor role for Kurt, the show actively tried to hide their height difference, even in promo photoshoots.
• On Haven, 5'1" Emma Lahana plays Jennifer, Love Interest to 6'2" Eric Balfour's Duke in season 4. It's not usually noticeable thanks to heels and creative camera angles that make them seem closer in height than they actually are. It does, however, mean it's jarring when their height difference is actually shown, such as one scene in which they're having an eye-to-eye conversation...while she is standing and he is sitting down.
• Heroes:
  • Matt (186 cm/6'1 and large) and Daphne (157 cm/5'2" and petite).
  • Sylar is 185 cm (6'1) and Elle is 155 cm (5'1"). He has the same height difference with Claire (5'0").
  • Claire and any guy she stands next to, including Hiro (5'6") (that's right, Hiro's actually taller than somebody!), Peter (5'9"), the aforementioned Sylar, and her father(s).
  • Noah Bennet (6'2.5") and Eden (5'5") are boss and subordinate, she is clearly tinier than him and is only slightly taller than Claire.
  • Mira, Mohinder's on-and-off girlfriend, is five-foot-nothing, while he's 5'10". There are only a couple scenes where the height difference is noticeable... but it's very noticeable◊. The actors also happened to be in a play called "Hatef**k" later on in their careers, with a scene where Kavi Ladnier pretty much climbs Sendhil Ramamurthy like a tree.
• Homicide: Life on the Street had Emma Zoole, played by 5'1.5" Lauren Tom, briefly dating Tim Bayliss, played by 6'4" Kyle Secor. Before that, she flirted with the 6'2" Lewis.
• House and Cuddy were together in season seven of House. Hugh Laurie is 6'2.5", while Lisa Edelstein is 5'6", putting them 8.5 inches apart.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Lily and Marshall, with a solid foot difference between Alyson Hannigan (5'4.5") and Jason Segel (6'4"). At one point, during a Pregnancy Scare, she panicked when she was told that Marshall was the size of a Thanksgiving turkey when born. A Halloween episode had them dressed up as Sonny and Cher — with Lily as Sonny and Marshall as Cher. Lily once had a nightmare about Marshall leaving her for a woman who was, in Nightmare!Marshall's words, "more height appropriate."
  • This extends to Marshall's entire family with Lily. In his family he is the "runt of the litter" and when visiting she could only give waist hugs. The shortest member of his family is his mother, played by 6'2" Suzie Plakson, who seems short in relation to her giant sons.
• Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: 5' 3" Nico Saiba supplies her height with 2" inch platform shoes and an aggressive personality, much to the misfortune of Taiga Hanaya, who easily towers over her at 5' 11.5" but still gets pushed, manhandled and bossed around easily. They're basically like a yappy Chihuahua and a melancholic Great Dane.
• Kamen Rider Saber serves a nonromantic example with the duo of Touma Kamiyama (185 cm / 6' 1" Shuichiro Naito) and Mei Sudo (163 cm / 5' 4" Asuka Kawazu). It's often used for comedic effect, as Touma doesn't realize how tall he is and that trying to hide behind someone is futile when nearly everyone around is either shorter or much shorter.
• The Last Ship has Danny and Kara Green. He is played by 5'11" Travis Van Winkle and she is played by 5'2" Marissa Neitling.
• Bobby Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio, 6'4") and Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe, 5'4") are detective partners on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He's a foot taller than she is, broad-shouldered and, as the series goes on, increasingly barrel-chested. She's slim and tiny and sometimes looks like he could put her in his pocket.
  • The CI casting directors doubled down on this when they brought back Mike Logan (6'1" Chris Noth) in Season 5, pairing him with Carolyn Barek (Annabella Sciorra, 5'3"). Makes it pretty fun when all four partners are in the squad room together in "In The Wee Small Hours". This one is only for a single season, as Sciorra did not return after Season 5, and Logan's subsequent parters, Megan Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson, 5'9") and Nola Falacci (Alicia Witt, 5'8"), avert the "tiny girl" half of the trope.
  • Two episodes in Season 8 also had Eames paired up with Nichols (Jeff Goldblum, 6'5"), who is less broad than Logan or Goren but is taller than either of them, and he just towers over her whenever they're standing next to each other. There's also a point in the Season 9 premiere when Eames, Goren, and Nichols are working as a trio, further exaggerating the effect. (Nichols only ever gets it with Eames, however, since both of his regular partners, Wheeler and Serena Stevens (Saffron Burrows, 6'0"), are more than tall enough to avert that part of the trope.)
• Legends of Tomorrow has Amaya Jiwe (5'5") with both Mick Rory (6'2") and Nathaniel Heywood (6'0").
• Life: Big lopey Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis, 6'1") and tiny spitfire Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi, 5'3").
• Liv and Maddie has Maddie and Diggy, played by Dove Cameron (5'2") and Ryan Mc Cartan (6'1") the top of her head barely comes up to his shoulders (also counts as a real-life example as Cameron and McCartan are actually dating).
• In the "The Final Four" episode of Neil Flynn's show The Middle, the trope is lampshaded when his character meets his wife's (5'2") Boss (5'8.5") for the first time and the Boss remarks about how short women always go for tall men.
• During the run of Live with Kelly and Michael (formerly known as Live With Regis and Kathie Lee/Kelly), Kelly Ripa (tiny soap opera star, 5'3") was paired with Michael Strahan (tall former New York Giants defensive lineman, 6'5"). Averted in the show's current incarnation as Live with Kelly and Ryan, with Ripa being paired with the 5'7" Ryan Seacrest.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Nori, is a teenage Harfoot girl, and The Stranger, one of the Istari sent on Middle-earth, has a human form. The difference in height between them is quite noticeable, but this does not stops them from being good friends.
• Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere, had an exaggerated version of this with Max (played by the quite tall and fat Peter Kay) and his ex-girlfriend Tina, who has dwarfism. Tina's height was actually the subject of mean jokes back when Max and Tina were dating, prompting Max to punch anyone who made those jokes. Sadly, Max himself wasn't above making such jokes, and it cost him his relationship with Tina when she overheard him letting his bouncer mates be rude about her (and left him before he headbutted one of them for going too far). Nowadays, Tina still fits this trope with her husband Kevin Wolfson/"The Wolfster".
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers paired Tommy (5'10") with Kimberly (5'1").
• Mock the Week paired up Greg Davies (6'8") and Lucy Porter (4'11") for a sight gag referencing The Lord of the Rings.
  Greg: This will never work, Frodo!
• Played with in Monty Python's Flying Circus' "Scott of the Antarctic" sketch, where initially the actor playing Scott is walking around with boxes under his shoes, while Miss Evans is standing in a trench. Pythonesque absurdity ensues.
• Herman (6'5") and Lily (5'4.25") from The Munsters.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: It's not entirely fair to call Felicia Day tiny (5'4") but with Jonah Ray more than a foot taller at 6'5", their lone on-screen pairing in the wedding scene in the revival season finale evokes this trope pretty blatantly.
• Nashville:
  • When Juliette introduces her fiancee Sean to the musicians, he is way taller than she is.
  • Gunnar and Scarlett are another example, played by the 6'2" Sam Palladio and the 5'2" Clare Bowen.
• Another platonic example on NCIS: LA - Boss Hetty (played by 4'9" Linda Hunt) is frequently in scenes opposite team psychologist Nate (played by 6'5" Peter Cambor), as they are two of the 'left behind' characters when the team go on missions. This is often played for laughs, with Nate forced to stoop over Hetty's Hetty-sized desk.
• Almost every pairing on Night Court, given that the entire male cast was freakishly tall, at one point even holding the world record for the tallest male cast.
  • Marsha Warfield (who is 5'11") joked that working on that show was the only time in her adult life that she felt petite.
  • Especially true of 6'3" Charlie Robinson (Mac) and screen spouse Denice Kumagai (Quon Le), who is 4'11".
• The Office (US):
  • Dwight Schrute (6'2.5) and Angela Martin (5'1). Another one of the reasons the pairing is cute despite its obvious weirdness.
  • Darryl (6'1.5) and Kelly (5'5), too. Also somewhat difficult to avoid with an actor as tall as John Krasinski (6'3").
• One on One focuses on the 6'4" Flex Washington and his 5'4" teenage daughter Breanna.
• Andy (played by 6'2" Chris Pratt) and April (played by 5'5" Aubrey Plaza) on Parks and Recreation. In addition to being nine inches taller, Andy's about twice as broad as she is. It's best shown when he tries to protect her from a bee swarm and is able to cover most of her upper body with his jumper, while her head still only barely reaches the bottom of his neck.
• Pushing Daisies had most of its relationships qualify — its four leads were a pair of tall guys (actors Lee Pace and Chi McBride are 6'3.5" and 6'4.5", respectively) and a pair of petite women (actors Kristin Chenoweth and Anna Friel are 4'10" and 5'3", respectively). As it made for some great sight gags, the writers loved to play with this trope.
• QI was originally hosted by Stephen Fry (6'5"); he was replaced by one of the show's frequent panelists, Sandi Toksvig (5'0").
• Roger & Val have Just Got In: While Dawn French is somewhat of a larger lady but she is short-statured, especially compared to Alfred Molina. (She stands at 5'0" whereas he stands at 6'2".)
• Scrubs gives us the Almighty Janitor (6'5") and his wife, Lady.
• On Seinfeld, the petite Elaine and her barrel-chested recurring love interest David Puddy. Additionally, Patrick Warburton is 6'2", while Julia Louis-Dreyfus is 5'2.5", making him almost a foot taller.
• On Selfie, John Cho's Henry dates a girl he's alike with in almost every way — except while he's slightly taller than average (Cho stands at 5'10"), she's positively tiny, not even making it to 5 feet of height, with nearly a full foot difference between them.
• The lead characters (5'0.5") and (6') in the Shakespeare Re-Told version of The Taming Of The Shrew.
• Sleepy Hollow gives us Ichabod and Abbie, played by Tom Mison, who is 6'1", and Nicole Beharie, who is 5'1", respectively. She comes up to his shoulder, and that's in heels.
• Smallville:
  • Clark and Lana. With Tom Welling being 6'2.5"/189 cm while Kristin Kreuk is 5'3"/160 cm
  • Clark and Chloe (5'5") count non-romantically, too. Allison Mack has to wear high heels and it's been mentioned she has to stand on a box in some scenes.
• Stargate Atlantis has Jason Momoa (6'4") so this comes up a couple of times. First, there's some Ship Tease with Dr. Keller, then the show ends on a Maybe Ever After between Ronon and Amelia Banks. Both actresses are about 5'5".
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes at 6'3" was tied for tallest regular Star Trek actor) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis, 5'3").
  • Also Worf (Michael Dorn, at 6'2") and Troi.
• Star Trek: Discovery: Michael Burnham (5'4" Sonequa Martin-Green) and Ash Tyler (6'1.5" Shazad Latif).
• Stranger Things has a (mostly) non-romantic example in Hopper and Joyce, played by bulky 6'2.5" David Harbour and slender 5'2" Winona Ryder respectively. Between height and width, he looks about twice her size whenever they appear on screen together.
• Supernatural:
  • In season four, Sam Winchester (played by 6'4" Jared Padalecki) and Ruby (5'3" Genevieve Padalecki) definitely fit this trope (they are also a real-life example as Padalecki and Cortese later got married). Naturally, Padalecki towers over virtually every actress he has ever been paired with, romantically or otherwise. He even tends to make his male co-stars look much shorter and smaller than they actually are, including his on-screen brother Jensen Ackles (who is 6'0").
  • The eighth episode of season 7 gave us Sam and Becky Rosen-Winchester (5'4).
• The mini-series adaption of To the Ends of the Earth has this with protagonist Edmund Talbot and his Love Interest Marion Chumley. Benedict Cumberbatch stands at 6'0", while Joanna Page is 5'1.5", making him a full ten-and-a-half inches taller than her. The difference onscreen is rather glaring.
• True Lies (2023): Harry (Steve Howey, 6'4) is much taller than Helen (Ginger Gonzaga, 5'5) which is very noticeable whenever they kiss, stand right by each other etc.
• Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell, 5'1") hooks up with Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring, 5'11").
• In Watching, Malcolm is very tall and lanky. Brenda is... not.
• On The X-Files, David Duchovny (6'0") was ten inches taller than Gillian Anderson (5'2"). Hence the "Scully Box".

Music

• Eek-A-Mouse's song Rude Boy is about people having a problem with him being so much taller than his girlfriend. With the lyrics Whole heap a people jus' a start to laugh
  She too short an' a me too tall
  She too short an' a me too tall, ey (it's in Jamaican Patois)
• The video for Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator" has, among 2 mannequins coming to life and various couples, as Steven Tyler puts it in the song, "shagging in the elevator", there is one couple consisting of a huge man and a female midget.
• Fleetwood Mac gives us 5'1" Stevie Nicks and 6'5" Mick Fleetwood. Never officially a couple, but they did have an affair. The cover of Rumours is a photo of the two of them which clearly shows the massive height difference between them.
• The music video for "Paparazzi" had the 5'1" Lady Ga Ga dating 6'4" Alexander Skarsgard.
• Märchen von Friedhof and Elise from the Rock Opera, Märchen. Märchen himself isn't exceptionally tall, but he doesn't need to be when Elise is the size of a porcelain doll.
• Gorillaz gives us a platonic example with Russel and Noodle, particularly in Phase Three◊, though the Gorillabitez short "Game Of Death" shows that she was able to flip him at age ten. To a lesser extent, Noodle is also a Morality Pet for Murdoc, who is fairly tall (though not huge) at 5'10" and 2D who is 6'3" was shown carrying her on his back in the video for "Rock It".
• The Jonathan Coulton song "Just As Long As Me" is about a guy who is sick of this trope and is trying to find a love interest of comparable height.
• Rapper Sage The Gemini is 6'5" and towers over most of the girls in his music videos, especially noticeable in "Red Nose" (where he towers over pretty much everybody).
• Linda Ronstadt had this with Aaron Neville on their album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind.
• Carole King and James Taylor when they recorded and toured together in the 1970s as well as concerts in 2007 & 2010. As well as James Taylor & Bonnie Raitt over many concerts between 2017 & 2019.

Podcasts

• In the podcast Past Division, party members Lolli Rose and Peter Panda are 3'3" and 7'6", respectively.

Pro Wrestling

• Silhouette's weight in Future of Wrestling was listed as "not telling", but it was safe to say it was significantly less than the wrestler she managed and lured away from Bobby Rogers, Maximum Capacity, who weighed in at 658 lbs.
• Particularly in WWE, where they appreciate the big man (perhaps too much), there can be a lot of Huge Guy Tiny Girl relationships. The hinted-at relationship of 7' (2.1m), then-(approximately) 485 lb. (220kg) The Big Show and, though she was not very slender herself, 5'3" (160cm) Joy Giovanni, for example.
• 5'3" A.J. Lee and damn-near-seven-feet-tall Kane.
• Natalya Neidhart and the over-seven-feet-tall Great Khali.
• Five Feet of Fury Alexa Bliss and the near 7-foot, near 400-pound Monster Among Men Braun Strowman in the WWE Mixed Match Challenge.
• At CHIKARA Aniversario Zehn, May 22, 2010, The Throwbacks (Dasher Hatfield and Sugar Dunkerton) faced the Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes team of Daizee Haze and Tursas. She's 5'4", 110 lbs., he's 6'8", 376 lbs.
• The Oddities had Kurrgan, Golga and Giant Silva, all 6-7 feet or more and over 400 lbs. Luna Vachon and Sable, not so much.

Roleplay

• Mirielle's parents from Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues. Her father is noted to be a hulk of a man, clearing six feet with large muscles, while his wife is much slimmer and smaller. They're modeled after Marinette's parents from Miraculous Ladybug, who are also an example of the trope.
• In Survival of the Fittest, while this is not normally looked at in a romantic way, Bayview (V4's school) has an abnormally tall population. The current average height of a female student is a relatively normal 5'5"...the male population, on the other hand, has the average height of 6'2".
• Viridian Dreams Quests:
  • Lucy (5'7") and Michael (8'0") of Vampire Quest.
  • Peri (4'7") and Leto (5'9" and growing) of Necromancy Quest.

Theatre

• In the Les Misérables 25th Anniversary concert: tiny Lea Salonga as Fantine and Jeff Nicholson, who's taller than the rest of the cast as the Factory Foreman.
• Gertrude and Horton in Seussical: Gertrude is a bird and Horton is an elephant.
• The Wild Party: Eddie and Mae, tiny dancer and hulking boxer. Like their song, "Two of a Kind" puts it, "She's two feet below me. And we're two of a kind".

Video Games

• The two default players from Assault Retribution, Reno Washington is a Scary Black Man who is a walking pile of muscles, while Kelly Doyle is a smaller, petite woman (but gets to use increasingly larger weapons each stage).
• Astro Boy's younger sister Uran seems to have this kind of relationship with the giant robot Pluto in at least one of the alternate timelines in Astro Boy: Omega Factor.
• Beyond Good & Evil gives us Jade and Double H: Tiny Reporter, Huge Soldier. Whether it's romantic or not is a debate best left to the shippers.
• Non-romantic example: A Big Daddy and a Little Sister from BioShock. One's a giant of a man in a bulky armored diving suit while the other is a girl less than ten years old in a child's dress.
• From Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, there's Claudia and her guardian, the Black Knight.
• Happens easily in City of Heroes where your typical female PC is under 5'10" (178cm) (often under 5' (152cm) even) in height while many male PCs are past the 6'6" (2m) mark and top out at 8'2" (2.5m). Males also have exclusive access to the huge muscular models while females are kept on the slender side.
  • Happens with NPCs as well. The Carnival of Shadows is the most extreme example, where the Strongmen are 3-4 times the size of the women who order them around.
  • There's also Ghost Widow and the Wretch. It's hard to tell if it's romantic, seeing as she's a literal ghost, and he's a horribly mutated brute with so little brainpower it hurts his head to talk. Still, they definitely care a lot about each other, and it's possible there was something there before they both lost their humanity to the same accident.
• Cyberpunk 2077:
  • Jackie Welles is a very stocky man who's about a head taller and much stronger than his girlfriend, Misty. He can also form a platonic variant with female V, who's about as tall as Misty.
  • Female V's male romance partner is River Ward, who's much taller and muscular than V.
• Dark Souls has Knight Artorias (around 9 feet tall) and Lord's Blade Ciaran (around 6 feet tall). Their relationship may or may not be romantic in nature.
• It is far from uncommon for the Disgaea 5 fanbase to pair Usalia and Red Magnus together. Not only is Usalia proportioned like a child (and possibly as young as one in demon terms), but Red Magnus is a big, bulky musclehead before his Sizeshifter powers come into play. The Demon Star Splitter combo skill makes the distinction especially clear, as Red Magnus gets to be so big you can't even see Usalia anymore.
• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, a female dwarf Warden can pull this off with anyone, naturally (well, except another dwarf). Female elves are quite small, too, but the human men are at most One Head Taller than them (though due to the Heroic Build favored by every guy in the game, they're also still quite a bit wider).
  • Dragon Age II can invoke this if male Hawke (whose build is very tall and burly) romances Merrill (a tiny elf woman).
    • The non-romantic variant is also seen in the prologue, regardless of Hawke's gender, with their twin siblings Carver and Bethany. Carver is a tall, brawny Farm Boy while Bethany is a slip of a mage.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition takes it even further with the Iron Bull, a large Qunari, when he's romanced by a dwarf, elf, or human of either gender. With a dwarf Inquisitor, it's particularly humorous in the base game's ending where the couple is making out on the patio... and your character is clearly standing on a stool.
    • Also seen if a Qunari Inquisitor romances Josephine or Sera. Josephine is about average for a human woman, but Adaar is huge by comparison; it's even more pronounced with Sera, who is an elf.
• Subverted in Dragon Ball Fighterz: Artificial No. 16 is so huge that his mother, Artificial No. 21, looks short when standing next to him, when in reality she's a Statuesque Stunner who is around the same height as Son Goku.
• Although non-romantic, Guan Yu (6' 8.75"/205 cm) towers over his daughter Guanyinping (5' 3"/160 cm) in the Dynasty Warriors games. Lu Bu and Meng Huo are even taller than Guan Yu, but the willowy Diaochan and amazonian Zhurong are just tall enough to fit into One Head Taller.
• In ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights,it's justified as Lily is small and only a child while many of the spirits protecting her are fully grown men and women (and hardened warriors) in their past lives.
• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West gives us Monkey and Trip. Monkey is a HUGE, muscular wild man who can pretty easily rip war robots into pieces. Trip is a light, young teenager who relies on her brains to get things done. He carries her around on his back and throws her onto ledges and across gaps like it's nothing. She's only nineteen, and we aren't really given an age for Monkey, but it's safe to assume that he's a few years older than her.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Ran Ran and En, rivals of Fei and Ri=ko. Ran Ran is a diminutive, toddler-sized child and a disciple of the spirit medium Master Wu. En is a large, taciturn youkai and her protector.
• In Fallout 4, while the player character is not particularly small, they'll still have this relationship with the permanently power armor-clad Paladin Danse.
  • Technically this relationship can be justified with any character in power armor, but it's especially relevant with Danse, who just won't leave it.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII (mainly Dirge of Cerberus), Vincent Valentine (6'0") and Yuffie Kisaragi (5'2")(especially for those who are huge fans of Yuffentine). In Dirge of Cerberus, Vincent shares a lot of screen time with diminutive Shelke Rui, a woman with the body of a nine-year-old girl who stands between 4'6" and 4'10". For an even greater height difference, Shelke also has several scenes with Azul (9'5"), more than double her height.
  • Final Fantasy VIII, the Beta Couple Selphie Tilmitt (5'2") and Irvine Kinneas (6'0").
  • In Final Fantasy X, the villain who's interested in Yuna and does end up marrying her freaking towers over her. Official heights don't make sense and seem to vary between FMV-models and gameplay models, but general fannish consensus is that Yuna hovers around 5'3", while Seymour is something like 6'4" with a fondness for hairstyles and clothing that makes him look larger than he already is.
  • Final Fantasy XI Elvaan and Galka males typically dwarf the females of all the other races. However, Fanon seems to have particular fondness for Mithra/Male Elvaan parings, often exaggerating this element to extreme degrees. Most likely it's because the Mithra are cute little Cat Girl, and the Elvaan are towering Elf Bishōnen.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Serah, who is around Vanille's height of 5'4" and just as slim, is engaged to Snow, who is 6'5 (or 6'7, depending on the source) and has a strong muscular build.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • The sultana Nanamo Ul Namo is a Lalafell, the smallest race in Eorzea. Her right hand is the Flame General Raubahn Aldynn, a Hyur Highlander who's both large and strongly built. When Nanamo wants to address a crowd, Raubahn will even carry her by having the sultana sit on his forearm like a falcon.
    • Although most races have their males and females with similar ranges of height, the Au Ra are the exception; males range from 80 to 85 inches (which overlaps with Roegadyn range), while females range from 57 to 62 inches (which is just shorter than Miqo'te, and only taller than Lalafell).
  • Final Fantasy XV, siblings Gladiolus and Iris Amicitia stand 6'6" and 5'3', respectively - a 15-inch difference in height.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Hector and Florina's ending in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade could qualify. Judge for yourself.◊
    • Another example would be the Cleric Serra and General Oswin from the same game, if they get paired up (This one's also May–December Romance, as she's half his age). There's also Dorcas and his NPC wife, Natalie. If we go to non-romantic lines, we have the Berserker Hawkeye and the Dancer Ninian - until she's forced to break out her dragon form by Nergal's magic, whereupon the situation reverses. Also, Jaffar and Nino.
    • Radiant Dawn takes the Ho Yay between Ike and Soren to canonical proportions... and Ike towers over Soren. Also, there's Sothe and Micaiah.
    • Any of Gentle Giant Arden's pairings in Genealogy of the Holy War, especially with the Pegasus Knight Fury or the Swordswoman Ayra
    • Also, in The Sacred Stones, Gilliam/Syrene, Ross and Amelia, and the mentoring/father-daughter bond between Amelia and Duessel. L'Arachel and Dozla is a non-romantic example as well... more in muscles since according to a support conversation with Ewan, Dozla is shorter than most.
    • Fire Emblem: Champion's Sword, the Alternate Continuity manga of Binding Blade has Gant and Celdia. Becomes official at the end and overlaps with Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action, since they have eight kids together.
    • In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, you can pair up Lilina (Roy's childhood friend and one of his love interests) with the Gentle Giant Gonzales.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, this is the case for the very short and very child-looking Divine Dragon Nowi and almost all of her love interests, particularly Gregor, Kellam, Lon'qu and Vaike. Also, Female Robin can hook up with a specially tall guy (like those above, plus Basilio, Priam and others) and specially the Heel–Face Turn-ed Walhart who seems to be the tallest and most muscular of them ALL. ^note Though this only works if Female Robin has the "early teen" (very short girl who seems to be under 15 years old) or "late teen" (average height girl) builds; the "older woman" build makes her rather tall.) The last one also overlaps with May–December Romance.
    • While not as extreme as in Nowi's case, pairing up the very short and young Tomboy Princess Lissa with a specially tall guy (like the aforementioned Gregor, Lon'qu, Kellam, and Vaike) can give a similar impression.
    • Male Robin can hook up with either Lissa or Nowi and invoke the trope via using either Build 1 (standard, rather tall but not exaggeratedly so) or Build 3 (The Big Guy, around Gregor and/or Vaike's height)
    • In regards to the Second Generation group - Yarne, Brady and Gerome are the tallest guys of the band (with Laurent following not too far behind and adding a HUGE hat) whereas girl!Morgan, Cynthia, and Nah are the shortest girls. Pairing them up causes this trope to happen. Nah and Cynthia can also marry Male Robin, and Female Robin can hook up with either Yarne, Brady, Gerome, or Laurent, so...
  • Fire Emblem Fates can potentially have the trope in regards to almost any woman who marries the Gentle Giant Benny, the hunk Arthur, or the Warrior Princes Ryoma and Xander. This includes Female Corrin, and double if she has the "younger girl" build.
    • Regarding the Second Generation, this can happen if either Benny's son Ignatius, Xander's son Siegbert or Ryoma's son Shiro marries a short girl, like the positively tiny Badass Adorable Midori. Again, Female Corrin is included.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Dimitri and female Byleth, if paired. Byleth stands at 5'4 while post-time skip, Dimitri has gained more muscle and several inches to reach 6'2. At one point, he even comments on how tiny Byleth's hands are.
    • Dedue is 208 cm tall, making him the tallest character with a defined height. As a result, all of his paired endings with women are this by default, including with the not exactly short Mercedes and Shamir (who are both 169 cm).
• Gears of War had the art style featuring enormous men and petite women, especially evident when Marcus and Anya are next to each other. At one point Marcus even removes his armor and still has about three times her mass.
• In God of War Ragnarök Sif would be a Statuesque Stunner by most standards considering that she's of roughly equal height to Kratos, but her husband Thor is at least seven feet tall and twice as broad as her.
• Halo:
  • Our main pair is Master Chief and Cortana. The former is a 7' (2.1m) tall super-soldier, and the other is a holographic display usually a mere 6" (15cm) or so, when she's not a two-inch (5cm) chip inserted into his helmet.
  • Bornstellar's unnamed parents definitely qualify. His father is four meters (13 feet) tall; his mother is only two (6'7).
  • The Didact and his wife the Librarian are a downplayed example. The former is 3.5 meters (11'6) with the bulk to match, and the other is "only" 2.9 meters (9'6) and quite slender.
• Ignis the Harvest King from Harvest Moon: Animal Parade is a potential hidden suitor to the much-shorter female protagonist.
• Seen occasionally in the Kingdom Hearts series:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Roxas and Xion are around the same height, but their friend and mentor Axel borders on the height of the two stacked on top of each other. This may or may not be romantic depending on how you ship them (all shipping combinations of the three have been seen).
  • And in an example that both inverts this AND plays it straight, the Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep trio has a huge guy (Terra), a medium girl (Aqua), and a really tiny guy (Ven).
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Kairi and Riku in Xehanort's Heartless form, because she's tiny when she's standing next to him.
  • Chain of Memories gives us a non-romantic (or romantic, if you ship that way) example with Lexaeus and Zexion. Lexaeus is easily the largest humanoid character in the series, while Zexion is only slightly taller than the teenage characters.
  • Kingdom Hearts III has Lea (Axel's reformed original self) with Kairi, who's only a little bit taller compared to the roughly a year or two younger (at least physically) Xion.
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land: The rulers of the animal kingdom, Leongar and Clawroline, are a huge lion and tiny leopardess. Compared to the rest of the Beast Pack bosses, Clawroline is rather small compared to the likes of Leongar, Gorimondo and Sillydillo.
• Knights of the Old Republic: Mission Vao and Zaalbar. A petite Twi'lek teenage girl and a HUGE adolescent Wookiee (taking him to Kashyyyk, he towers over the other Wookiees in height and bulk). They act Like Brother and Sister. As Zaalbar is painfully shy and can't speak Basic, he lets Mission do the talking. And while Mission is no stranger to a fight, she's a Glass Cannon Fragile Speedster. Zaalbar is a very good Stone Wall tank who can help his Twi'lek buddy out of physical force is needed.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link and Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Midna is a tiny imp while Link is a short-to-medium-sized Hylian.
  • Yeto and Yeta, also from Twilight Princess. They're yetis, so perhaps it's justified as being an aspect of their species - but then again, Yeto is over twice the size of Yeta...
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a brother/sister example with Sidon and Mipha of the Zora. Sidon is several heads taller than the average Zora, who are already twice as tall as the average Hylian such as Link, whereas Mipha is a head shorter than Link (though it's faintly implied that she had yet to reach her full adult height). They also have a Sibling Yin-Yang dynamic that matches their respective sizes: Sidon is energetic and sociable, while Mipha is quiet and demure.
  • Breath of the Wild also gives a parental example in the form of King Rhoam and Princess Zelda. Zelda's about the average height, slightly shorter than Link. Rhoam, meanwhile, has the largest male Hylian body in the entire game, and towers quite imposingly over her.
• Not as extreme an example as some, but Garrus and Tali in Mass Effect 3. One is noticeably taller and bulkier than a human, the other is about the height of a human when standing on the balls of her feet, and quite thin everywhere except the hips.
  • Due to limitations, game graphics weren't able to show the actual size of Turians, but if Garrus' scale figure is anything to go by he's about 7 feet tall, which would most definitely give him this dynamic with female Shepard (herself only about 5'3", making her even smaller than Tali) who can romance him as well.
  • In the second game, you have the option of repairing the relationship between a krogan and an asari.
• A mild case in Metal Gear Solid 3, where it's, uh, Huge Guy, Tiny Bishounen. Although Raikov is supposed to be the same height and shape as 6'4 Naked Snake (hence why his uniform had to be used), Volgin (6'7) is enormous.
• Monster Hunter has an inhuman example. The Ludroth are alligator creatures roughly 50% longer than your hunter is tall. All of these are female. The boys - the Royal Ludroth - are four to five times the size of your hunter character. This would be seen as Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action if they weren't the same species.
• One of the newcomers for Mortal Kombat X is a pair named Ferra/Torr. A hulking man with a teeny tiny woman riding on his shoulders.
  • Their arcade ending reveals that that Ferra and Torr are actually a symbiotic pair, with Torr requiring Ferra to live as part of their bond as warrior and rider. However, when the Great Metamorphosis hits Ferra, she is practically forced to abandon Torr to die while she undergoes a painful three-year-long transformation that turns her into a large, hulking version of herself. An inversion of the trope happens when a small male is chosen to be her rider.
• Neverwinter Nights 2 has a do-it-yourself example. Neither Casavir nor Gannanyev discriminate by race and are perfectly willing to romance a female Halfling PC.
• Persona:
  • In Persona 4, there is Kanji (6'1), the tallest member of the Investigation Team, and Naoto (5'0), the shortest.
  • Futaba Sakura (5'0), who eventually replaces Morgana (2') as your Mission Control in Persona 5, is not only the youngest member of the Phantom Thieves, but she's also the shortest by a significant margin (excepting Morgana, an anthropomorphic cat). As shown in certain scenes (such as her spending time with the protagonist if you romance her, or when she's talking with Yusuke (5'11) at the beach), she barely grazes their chests, though this is the result of slightly exaggerated models — going by the actual heights provided for each character, Futaba would hit around chin-height on the protagonist and would come up to Yusuke's shoulders.
• Pokémon X and Y have a fairly extreme and strictly platonic example. The immortal King AZ is at least ten feet tall. His dear Floette, who was also made immortal, is an eight-inch Fairy-type Pokémon.
• In Punch-Out!! on Wii, Super Macho Man's opening montage shows him with a series of girlfriends, each one about half his size.
• Resident Evil:
  • Chris (6'1) and Sheva (5'5) in Resident Evil 5. Chris is only about a head taller, but he's quite a bit bulkier.
  • Ex-marine Billy Coen (5'11) is nearly as burly as Chris, and Resident Evil 0 sets him as a partner to tiny eighteen-year-old rookie S.T.A.R.S. Medic Rebecca Chambers (5'3).
  • Resident Evil 6 takes it even further by partnering Jake Muller (6'4), possibly the biggest RE guy yet, with tiny Sherry Birkin (5'4). This is actually reflected in the gameplay: when climbing up an obstacle, Chris and Leon (5'11) typically boost their slightly smaller partner (5'10 Piers and 5'7 Helena respectively) up, who then help them up from above. Sherry, however, simply cannot pull Jake, who's easily twice her weight, up, meaning they have to find another way there for him.
• Saints Row:
  • In Saints Row 2, Brotherhood leader Maero towers over everyone he meets, including his girlfriend Jessica.
  • Oleg Kirrlov in Saints Row: The Third admits to having a crush on tiny, mousy hacker Kinzie Kensington towards the end of the game. The attraction largely stems from the fact that he's a Genius Bruiser and she's his intellectual equal.
• Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, in the StarCraft series, especially when he wears the Marine PoweredArmor and she dons the Ghost SpyCatsuit. Jim has to bow down to kiss Sarah.
• Street Fighter has both Birdie (7'1) and Ibuki (5'2) as part of Karin's (5'3) squad. Birdie literally is taller sitting down than she is standing up and is easily 4 times heavier.
  • Rufus (6'5) and his girlfriend in Street Fighter IV. What makes it funnier is that Candy is actually pretty tall compared to some of the other characters, but Rufus practically dwarfs her.
    • Before that, Hugo (7'10) and Poison (5'10). Even if Poison is a trans woman, she still counts.
    • Sakura Kasugano (5'2) and Ryu (5'9). Sakura still looks like a teenager despite being at least 20 and her fangirly thoughts on Ryu are strongly implied to have turned into an intense yet unrequited love, whereas he looks quite older than in other games and remains a Celibate Hero. It shows in the Ties that Bind OAV: in the scene where she gives him a desperate Cooldown Hug to bring him back to sanity after he's taken over by the Satsui no Hado, Sakura looks tiny compared to Ryu.
  • Sakura teamed up with The Incredible Hulk in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.
• Sanger Zonvolt and Irui Ganedan from the Super Robot Wars Alpha games. May or may not be romantic. Notable in that while Irui shares a similar relationship with the other main characters in their stories, it's Sanger/Irui that gets all the fanart.
  • Judging from the ending of Original Generation Gaiden (and the sequel to Endless Frontier), it looks like Axel Almer and Alfimi is going on this way as well.
  • Also, Kazuma Ardygun and his little sister/copilot Mihiro in W.
  • And then Super Robot Wars Z gives us the pair Rand Travis and Mel Peter, which plays this trope straight.
  • Tasuku and Leona from Original Generation series... mecha-wise, anyway. Tasuku's Giganscudo is positively gargantuan in comparison to Leona's Guarlion Custom and eventual signature Siegerlion. Otherwise, their (personal) height difference is minimal.
• Tales of Symphonia:
  • A nonromantic example with Regal and Presea (4'6).
  • There's the canonically romantic example of Regal and Presea's sister, Alicia. Tragically inverted when Alicia's exsphere transformed her into a monster and she begged him to put an end to her before she loses her mind and murders him. Her Exbelua form towers over the 189cm (6'2)-tall Regal.
• Team Fortress 2 has Miss Pauling, the mercenaries' link between Mission Control and the field. She spends a lot of time in the comics talking to Demoman, Soldier, and Heavy, all of whom are much taller and more buff than she is. Soldier and Heavy in particular have been seen acting very protective of her: In the comic Shadow Boxers, Soldier is concerned when he thinks his cardboard costume scared Miss Pauling, and Heavy decided to come on a mission with the two of them, just because Miss Pauling was going.
• Rick and Lori from Unbound Saga, in that order. He's at least a head taller and five times larger than her.
• The more dimorphic races in World of Warcraft, especially draenei and trolls. However, both of these are slightly unusual cases: With draenei, both sexes are approximately the same height◊, and it's almost entirely a matter of the fellas being several times wider. With trolls, both sexes are long and lean... but not only are females leaner, but males would be more than One Head Taller if they didn't slouch.
  • During the Thaldraszus storyline, bronze Dragon Aspect Nozdormu and his consort Soridormi are briefly seen standing next to each other in elf form; she barely reaches his shoulders and is about half as wide. While "boss" NPCs such as Nozdormu are typically given bigger models just to make them easier to see in-game, the Aspects are frequently shown to be much, much bigger than ordinary dragons, so this is likely intended to be a genuine size difference and not just a matter of game mechanics.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, while they're both the most physically powerful of their respective sides, Lanz and Sena form this dynamic as an Ouroboros pairing. They initially bonded over their shared love of muscle training, though, while Lanz is musclebound enough to show it, Sena is significantly shorter than him and very slender in frame. That said, Lanz believes Sena to be stronger than him, by virtue of the fact that she could wield her hammer unaided, while he struggled under it even with the assistance of his power frame.

Visual Novels

• The third Ace Attorney game features a humongous prison convict who talks in Hulk Speak and chews on his ball and chain at certain points, dating a very fragile-looking girl. (Not as fragile as she looks, though.)
• In Cafe Enchante, out of the regulars, Canus is easily the tallest and CGs show that Kotone barely makes it up to his shoulders.
• Fate Series:
  • Non-romantic example: From Fate/stay night, Ilyasviel "Ilya" von Einzbern (4'4") and her enormous Servant, Berserker (8'4"). Also, according to time-skip epilogues and using Archer (6'2") as obvious evidence, at his adult height, Shirou (5'6") will tower over the main heroines, especially 5'1" Saber (who's the shortest Servant by a full head at least).
  • Archer and Rin (5'2") works with this as well, for he's about a foot (30 cm) taller than she is and 68 lb. (31 kg) heavier.
  • Bypassing gender, we've also got Fate/Zero's Odd Couple Alexander the Great (6'11") and Waver Velvet (5'2")◊ stretching this about as far as adult human proportions can go, with Alex having about two feet (55 cm, to be exact) and 80 kg (176 lbs.) on Waver.
  • Ironically, Waver winds up on the other side of this trope after a belated but very dramatic growth spurt between Fate/Zero and Lord El-Melloi II Case Files that puts him at 186 cm (6'1")—a full head and shoulders over his 154 cm (5'0") apprentice, Gray.
  • Fate/Grand Order offer several examples:
    • Asterios is 298 cm (9'9⅓") who's also a mass of muscle outright called a Hunk compared to Euryale's outright tiny 134 cm (4'4¾"). She's small enough the narration describes him as being able to let her ride on his shoulder.
    • It turns out Orion and Artemis had this dynamic in life. While Artemis is a fairly short 165 cm (5'5"), Orion towers over her at 230 cm (7'6½"). His arms are also many times thicker than hers, but there's no question who's the stronger of the two of them.
• In the Little Busters! fandom, Gentle Giant Masato and Token Mini-Moe Kud are commonly put together in fanart (almost always non-romantically), though apart from Kud's route being the branching point for Masato's joke ending miniroute Muscle Sensation, they don't interact too much in canon. The anime plays to this by having Kud on Masato's shoulders, both of them cheering, in the second season ending sequence.
• Nanatsuiro★Drops has tall Haru and short Sumomo.
• The Player Character from Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow is a rather short bifauxnen, so all of her prospect hook-ups will involve her romancing guys quite taller than she is. It even gets lampshaded several times.
• Sweet Fuse: At Your Side:
  • Saki, the high school student protagonist can be this when paired with the hulking escort, Mitarashi, or the tallest character, fortune teller Urabe.
  • Also has some non-romantic instances when Shirabe's tiny daughter Mai shows up and takes a liking to Mitarashi.

Web Animation

• Epithet Erased has another platonic example: Mera is described in her character bio as "tiny" while her partner-in-crime Indus is nearly twice her height, towering over most of the cast — and wider than she is tall, too.
• Hazbin Hotel gives us a platonic example with Alastor and Niffty. Alastor is roughly seven feet tall; Niffty's head barely comes up to his waist.
• Although it's mostly in the background, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Digital Series regularly depicts big bodybuilder Bulk Biceps and petite girl Derpy Hooves as a couple.

Webcomics

• Alfie is a Fantasy Webcomic set in a world filled with various "demihuman" races, so given that the title character and her mother Vera belong to a populace that rarely cracks four feet in height any *ahem* "involvement" they have with non-Halfling men qualifies as this (even the undersized-for-a-human elf Ailduin looms over Vera when standing up). The budding relationship between Hana (rather lanky human female) and the "Green Man" Grasha also qualifies.
• Murray and Camille, the Official Couple of Bloody Urban. Murray is the tallest character in the series. Camille barely reaches his chest.
• In Catana Comics, Catana's boyfriend John is much taller than her, and several comics have her either standing on tiptoe to kiss him or compensating in other ways, such as standing on a stack of books.
• Chirault. Kiran is average-sized, but his Morality Pet Teeko is a young girl—and she's been shrunk to a few inches in height by a stray magic spell.
• The Official Couple of Crankrats: Jack is 6'7'' (or thereabouts) and Maddy is 5'5''. This has to do with Jack being ethnically Altavian and Maddy being a Bantarian, since pretty much all adult Altavians tower over almost all Bantarians.
• While Reinhold in Dominic Deegan isn't exactly huge for a human knight, Kiya is probably one of the lightest orcs ever seen.
• Sha'shiva from EATATAU!!! has an extreme fetish for guys who are much bigger than she is.
• Justified in Ennui GO! with Hashim and Sarah, as the latter has dwarfism. Also doubles as a case of Generation Xerox, as Sarah inherited it from her mother and her father appears to have gigantism.
• Played platonically and taken to extremes in The Friendly Winter. Min-Seong is an above-average height seventeen-year-old while Da-Jeong is a really short nineteen-year-old due to having a disorder that left her looking permanently like a little kid.
• Frivolesque: Saki and Conroy do mercenary work as a team. While not that tiny, Saki is a petite samurai girl, while Conroy, a 6'7" giant of a man, towers over her.
• The Girl and The Fed in A Girl and Her Fed. The tall, bulky Fed is initially afraid he might hurt the diminutive girl in a fit of anger...but she can actually beat him up.
• Appears in flashback in Girl Genius: Klaus is considerably bigger than Lucrezia. But then he is (possibly) a construct made of three people.
• A (presumably) Non-romantic example in Goblins: Life through their Eyes with an Ogre and a Kobold.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: Eglamore and Jones. (Now officially confirmed to be romantically involved.) It's explicitly stated that Miss Jones is the scary one of the pair. Later it's confirmed, in that concrete crumbled like a cake under her fingers. She's the oldest living thing on earth.
• Both the Kings and Queens of Homestuck gain power and change shape as players join their game. But while the Queens retain their more or less human height, the Kings grow with each change until they're mountain-crushing colossi.
  • It is very surprising to see Cheerful Child Nepeta and Cultured Badass Equius standing together, exactly the same height, given the stereotypes that they represent, although it really should be expected since they are all based on the same sprite and are all 6 sweeps (13 years) old.
• Rocko & Molly, for the brief time that they were sort-of-together, in The Inexplicable Adventuresof Bob. He later winds up with Moé the ninja girl, who is likewise much smaller than him.
• Insecticomics:
  • Lasorbeak, Kickback, and Thrust have all dated/slept with Tidal Wave, who is the size of a battleship. Probably best not to think about how this works.
  • Also Energon Megatron and Starscream, who got married right before Megatron abdicated his position as leader and took Starscream to parts unknown. Starscream was small enough to fit on his shoulder.
• Invoked by Macho and Ichigo's introduction in the Katamari webcomic. Using Your Size May Vary, she becomes tiny enough to jump all over her Gentle Giant cousin, finally settling down on top of his head.
• Kevin & Kell. Odder still: Kevin's a rabbit and Kell is a wolf. Oh, and he's still the huge guy. Not sure if they've ever explained how that works.
• Viktor Vasko and Ivy Pepper in Lackadaisy. Viktor is over six feet tall, hulking, middle-aged, and a former rum runner-turned-bartender. Ivy is a young, flirty college student and flapper- and one of the few characters in the comic that doesn't seem intimidated by Viktor. When asked if they could ever be romantically involved, Ivy denies the possibility.
• Little Tales: Uriel has about two heads height on his wife Gen, as seen here.
• Manala Next Door: Jacob is big enough to carry his girlfriend Nini on his shoulders.
• The author of Miamaska was dismayed to hear that this trope existed. According to his Tumblr, he specifically gave the characters Amity and Trosce a huge difference in both size and age as a shipping deterrent (he intended to give them a Like Brother and Sister relationship later on). A friend had to warn him later that many fans actually find a height difference incredibly cute, but by then it was too late.
• Miss Melee: Night Lion and Lotus Lynx.
• The Monster & The Girl: Kenrick-the-Monster is described as 2.27 metres (7'7" tall), Mayu (the Girl) is child-sized by comparison. If not for her big hair and high heels, she'd be barely half his height.
• morphE has one of the guards of the manor, Malloy, protecting his fellow Mastigos Asia Ellis. Asia's sprite goes about 3/5's of the way to the top of the frame. Malloy's is too big and his hair is out of frame.
• My Giant Nerd Boyfriend is based entirely around this trope. The author/artist fishball is a Malaysian woman who stands at 158 cm (5'2"), while her boyfriend the comic is based on is 199 cm (6'6"). The strip is basically just about the funny and/or touching moments on account of their size difference.
• Half-averted in The Order of the Stick: Celia should be small according to the monster manual, but she isn't drawn that way. Lampshaded at one point.
• Richard Olsen and Sophie in The Overture. Richard towers over most adults and he's still growing. With hair extensions, Sophie barely reaches his stomach.
• Pixie and Brutus: Brutus is a large, athletic German Shepherd (a breed which can get to be up to 80 pounds as adults), and his little sister Pixie is a tiny kitten who can't weigh more than a few pounds. The size difference forms the humor in several of the strips - including their introduction, when he observes that he has to protect her from basically anything larger than a squirrel.
• Annie Chang and Thomas Kensington in Pulse. Superhero School student, Powered Armor wearing Annie is 5' 3"- her non-super-powered love interest, metalworker Thomas is 6'.
• This unnamed US Air Force lieutenant from the space station arc of Questionable Content says that she prefers men who are big enough to be able to bench press her one-handed.
• In Sabrina Online purebred wolves tend to be tall enough for their heads to be obscured by the panel border, Thomas is the exception as his mother is a fox thus putting his parents under this trope. Carli the chinchilla and her wolf husband form a more drastic example.
• Schlock Mercenary has two notable examples. Corporal Burt "Nick" Nicholson and his girlfriend Liz, both human but Nick is at least a foot taller and three times wider as seen here. The second is a non-romantic example between Captain Sorlie and Captain Landon seen here and here. In this case more justified since Landon is a genetically uplifted polar bear and they really are massive in real life.
• Silver Bullet Nights features a same-sex version of this. Seek is massive whereas his partner Donovan barely comes to his chin.
• Vinnie and Jordan from Skins. He’s about 7 ft tall and she barely reaches his chest. How they have sex is anyone’s guess.
• Sunbird: Andraz is well over six feet tall. Salva is five foot nothing. They're married.
• Tiffany and Corey: Parodied here where Tiffany dates a giant who says he lives up a beanstalk.
• Trying Human: Both EBE1 and Hue are roughly two feet taller than their human love interests.
• Violet Goes to the Beach: Exaggerated example, Harley is a well above-average height man while Violet is small enough to fit in his shirt pocket.
• Wapsi Square's Monica, the 5'-tall (152cm) main character, suffers from this with every guy in her life — except Tepoztecal.

Web Original

• Critical Role has goliath barbarian Grog Strongjaw and gnome cleric Pike Trickfoot, best friends who grew up together.
  • Campaign 2 also gives us Fjord Stone (6'1) and Jester Lavorre (5'3), played by real life couple and example Travis Willingham (6'4) and Laura Bailey (5'4). Non-romantically, there's also Caleb Widogast (5'10) and his best friend Nott the Brave (3'), as well as his close friend Beauregard Lionett (never confirmed, but art generally shows her around the same height as Jester), and his ex-lover Astrid (stated to be Jester's height).
• While not a couple, this is the The Nostalgia Critic and The Nostalgia Chick: Doug is 6'0, Lindsay is 5'2. Especially noticeable in the FernGully review where they're fighting; while the Chick moves around a lot, the Critic never gets up from his chair.
• Outside Xbox has a sister channel, Outside Xtra, with female host Ellen Rose small enough to fit in a poster bag and male host Luke Westaway at least a foot taller than she is.
• In Suburban Knights, when everyone is revealed in their costumes, everyone dwarfs Lindsay.
• Norse and Elly of The Tournament of Rings are 10'5" and 4'2" respectively.

Western Animation

• In the not-quite-romantic vein, there's Action Man (2000) with Alex Mann and Fidget Wilson. Fidget's canonical height was 4'11", all the better for Alex Mann to pick up and carry around.
• The Amazing World of Gumball has Gumball's parents: Richard (a big, fat pink rabbit) and Nicole (a significantly smaller blue cat). Nicole isn't particularly short, but next to her husband (who's bigger than the whole rest of the family put together), she definitely looks it.
• Amphibia has the 20-foot-tall newt King Andrias and his sidekick 13-year-old human girl Marcy Wu.
• Thor (6'6) and Jane (5'7) in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.
• On Batman: The Brave and the Bold, B'wana Beast (6'6) is about a foot and a half taller and three times as wide as his girlfriend, Vixen (5'9).
• Dave the Barbarian and his sister Fang. She's a ''little'' bit tense about her size. Though really, even average-height sister Candy looks puny next to him.
• Common in the DC Animated Universe, partially due to the art style which tends toward slim women and heavily-built men:
  • Green Lantern (6'1) and Hawkgirl (5'4).
  • From Batman: The Animated Series: Baby Doll and Killer Croc (6'5)◊. She's really an adult, but that's still a serious Crack Pairing.
  • Onyx (5'8) and Puff, from Static Shock.
• In the DuckTales (1987) episode "Top Duck", Launchpad's father Ripcord is bigger and more muscular than his son, whereas Launchpad's mother Birdy is only half his height.
• The Fairly OddParents! Jorgen Von Strangle and the Tooth Fairy, despite the Tooth Fairy being significantly taller than most of the other fairies.
• Gargoyles:
  • Goliath and Demona, before Demona turned evil and stuff. Later, Goliath and Elisa Maza, a human, which is more Beast and Beauty, but the brief moments in the episode "The Mirror" when both had been the same species (both ways, even) showed the trope prove true. And then Broadway with Angela.
  • The size difference between Oberon and Titania is less extreme but noticeable enough to count as well.
• Jackie Chan Adventures has a non-romantic one in Tohru and Jade (who can climb Tohru).
• In The Legend of Korra, Tonraq dwarfs both his wife Senna, and his daughter, the titular Avatar Korra. In fact, he's hands-down the tallest and most massive of the six leaders of the world's nations. Just about any woman he stands next to looks tiny in comparison.
• Timber Wolf and Phantom Girl have this dynamic in the Legion of Super Heroes (2006) (not counting when Timber Wolf transforms into his monster form where his height nearly doubles), it's more noticeable in Season 2 with Timber Wolf being well over 6' tall and Phantom Girl being around 5'4" or 5'5".
• The Legend of Vox Machina features Pike Trickfot the gnome cleric and Grog Strongjaw as the goliath barbarian as best friends who grew up together. Pike is also one of the only ones who will keep up with Grog in the drinking department.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Marinette's parents. Tom (6'3) is tall and very broad-shouldered, while Sabine (4'7) is a small Chinese woman, not even as tall as her daughter.
  • Ivan and Mylène. Ivan's the tallest guy in the class and quite bulky too; he could almost pass for an adult. Mylène, though on the chubby side, is quite short.
• My Adventures with Superman: Superman and Lois Lane always have a noticeable size difference, but it's particularly pronounced in this version: she barely reaches his shoulders and is less than half as broad.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Big Macintosh is about a full head taller than Cheerilee and twice her build, which is obvious when the Cutie Mark Crusaders try to pair them up. Though this is all down to Mac being large, as Cheerilee is exactly the same stature as >90% of other mares. His eventual girlfriend, Sugar Belle, also falls into this trope.
  • Also, Cup and Carrot Cake both have unique bodies, her being chubby but no shorter than most mares while he is very tall and thin.
  • Fluttershy is the same stature as the rest of the Mane Six (who are all adult mares), while her friend (and possible love interest) Discord towers any pony and most part of the non-ponies, with a few exceptions. To give him a hug, Fluttershy has to fly into his arms.
  • While not remarkably huge, Twilight Sparkle's older brother Shining Armor is noticeably taller and beefier than his wife, Cadance. What makes it particularly notable is the fact that Cadance is an Alicorn, a kind of pony royalty that normally towers over normal Unicorns, Pegasi, and Earth Ponies.
• In one episode of Recess, Mikey and Spinelli become a platonic example when they're paired up for a dance recital.
• Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles has Vince and Jean Grant, Bowie's parents and characters exclusive to the Robotech continuity.
• In the 2018 reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Hordak towers over Entrapta (his collaborator on technological projects, friend, and eventual love interest). The top of her head only reaches the middle of his chest, but she is shorter even than the average Etherians. She compensates by lifting up on her Prehensile Hair.
• Eclipsa's monster lover from Star vs. the Forces of Evil is so big that compared to Eclipsa that she can easily sit on his arms and still wouldn't even be one-fourth the size of the monster.
• Taz-Mania has Bushwacker Bob, Taz's temperamental boss of Hotel Tasmania, who is a big man. His mother, Mum, is a Miniature Senior Citizen.
• Teen Titans (2003) had a platonic example in Kole (5'6) and G'Nark.
• On Tiny Toon Adventures, Babs has a mom of reasonable size and a ridiculously gigantic dad. Then again, that might be merely Buster's nervous perspective: He expects to date Babs, and her dad appears to be full of rage at the prospect.
• Total Drama
  • Beth (the shortest of the original 22 contestants) and Brady. She also had a brief crush on Harold, who's about twice her height.
  • Owen and Izzy. While Izzy isn't tiny, she is certainly dwarfed in size by her 300-pound boyfriend.
  • Platonic example with B (who is easily the broadest and heaviest of all the second generation contestants) and Dawn (who is the smallest of the second generation females).
  • Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race has the Daters, a.k.a Ryan and Stephanie. Her entire body could fit in one of his arms!
  • In the 2023 reboot's second season, short eccentric Priya starts a Ship Tease with hunky soft spoken Caleb.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender has a platonic variant. "Team Punk" has Big Guy Hunk with the very short Pidge.
  • Zarkon and Haggar. She barely reaches his chest, even back when they were younger and she didn't slouch.
• X-Men: Evolution has Lance Alvers (Avalanche) and Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) as a Dating Catwoman example.
• Mal Duncan (6'1) and Karen Beecher (5'7) in Young Justice (2010). Exacerbated by the fact that their superhero identities, Guardian and Bumblebee, are a hulking Badass Normal in armor and a yellow-and-black-garbed Incredible Shrinking Man.

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