Badass Grandpa

For God's sake, get off his lawn.

"I'm Hub McCann. I've fought in two World Wars and countless smaller ones on three continents. I led thousands of men into battle with everything from horses and swords to artillery and tanks. I've seen the headwaters of the Nile, and tribes of natives no white man had ever seen before. I've won and lost a dozen fortunes, KILLED MANY MEN and loved only one woman with a passion a FLEA like you could never begin to understand. That's who I am. NOW, GO HOME, BOY!"

—Hub to the teen he's currently choking, Secondhand Lions

Old men are weak, right?

WRONG.

When it comes to fiction, more often than not the oldest, apparently feeblest characters are the ones to be feared the most. They kick ass, take names, and can fend off armies single-handedly.

They can be the strongest character in the entire story. The reason for this is obvious: "Experience and treachery will beat youth and enthusiasm every time." Old men in a dangerous line of work have been doing it for a very long time. Additionally, in a Crapsack World, or when Earth Is a Battlefield, a man may well only live to be old if he is already very bad-ass to start with.

The defining characteristic of the Badass Grandpa is that, as the story begins, they already have several or max levels in Badass, and will almost always have more than anyone else, including, in many cases, the Big Bad; yet they generally opt for quiet and simple lives, sharing their wisdom with younger generations rather than directly involving themselves. After all, every generation of heroes has to grow up and fight on their own sometime, right?

Badass Grandpas hide their power level well...at least until it really matters. When the chips are down, and even The Hero looks like he's in need of assistance, it's time for the Badass Grandpa to step up and throw down, proving that age has done nothing to quell their ability to take down Big Bads literally decades their juniors. Even then, it's still the hero's job to ultimately save the girl and the day—otherwise, they aren't The Hero, now are they?

A Badass Grandpa may be The Patriarch of a Badass Family.

See also Retired Badass. Compare Cool Old Guy, Old Master, When Elders Attack, and Eccentric Mentor.

Is often The Obi-Wan on steroids. Might overlap with Good Is Not Dumb. If it's an old woman who is the badass, it becomes Never Mess with Granny. May overlap with Badass Bystander. If it's an evil person that ruined countless lives and still survived, see Evil Old Folks.

Examples of Badass Grandpa include:

Anime and Manga

• Bleach
  • Pictured above: Genryuusai Shigekuni Yamamoto. Captain of the First Division, creator of the modern two-thousand-year-old Shinigami Academy (yes, he really is that old), he's been Captain-Commander of the entire Gotei 13 for a thousand years. He has the most powerful fire-based weapon which doubles as the strongest offensive power of any weapon in the series to date. Despite his aged, scarred appearance, he's incredibly toned and well-muscled. He can outpace Shunsui and Ukitake easily (both considered brilliant in their own right) and take them both on in his primary release form without breaking a sweat. He has a stern sense of justice and will sacrifice his own limbs in battle without hesitation. Even the Invincible Villain fears his strength. In fighting games, he's almost a Game Breaker. Playing him makes fights easy.

Masked Invader: "I am surprised. It was quite easy to break into this room. Despite it being the office, or better, the personal room of the Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13. Isn’t security a bit too soft?"
Yamamoto: "There is no need to worry. I am here. There is no better security than this."

• • And now we have another Badass Grandpa...among the Arrancar: Barragan Luisenbarn, owner of a frigging huge axe and with the power to age anything he touches or breathes on into nothingness.
    • Slightly subverted in that, before the official ranks were revealed, everyone (both fans and characters alike) immediately assumed Barry was the Primera Espada, based on his resemblance to Captain Old Dude. Turns out he's just the Segunda (Second) Espada.
      • Played straight in his backstory: Barragan effectively was the most powerful Arrancar and the "King of Hueco Mundo" before Aizen arrived.
• Jack Rakan from Mahou Sensei Negima is somewhere around 70 years old, but he is easily the strongest member of the cast after the centuries old Evangeline. He can fight an Ancient Dragon to a draw, blow up mountains by accident and survive getting hit by the magical equivalent of a tactical nuke. Not to mention thrashing a Nigh Invulnerable Reality Warper without much trouble and willing himself back into existence after being erased.
  • Note that member's of Rakan's race live much longer than humans. If memory serves right, Rakan would be in his mid-thirties in human years.
• Joseph Joestar in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 3 and Part 4.
• Naruto
  • The Third Hokage takes this to extreme levels as well, but only truly shows his full prowess when battling Orochimaru shortly before his own demise while battling the reanimated corpses of two of his predecessors. In an interview the author stated that the Third was the strongest ninja who has ever lived.
  • The Third, while undeniably Badass, is a bit of a subversion. While he does have a mastery of jutsu that Orochimaru can't begin to match, the ANBU members observing the fight realize that the Third has less chakra than he did in the past due to his old age. This is one major reason the Third had to resort to a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Orochimaru.
  • Jiraiya also counts, being around 50 at the time of his introduction, a Kage level ninja who spends his time writing porn and perving on young women. For that matter, you can also argue for his fellow Sannin Tsunade and the first Big Bad Orochimaru.
  • And Danzo. Although, at the age of 72, he normally appeared to be a frail old man, Danzo was actually an extremely powerful ninja. He was able to easily kill several would-be assassins and was able to fight on the same level as Sasuke. He also was talented in dispelling genjutsu.
    • It should be noted that Danzo's power is not due to his own skills. All of his abilities come from his implants: The eyes of the slaughtered Uchiha, and the face of the First Hokage.
    • Danzo's Sharingan's, with the exception of Shisui weren't from the Massacred Uchiha. He gathered them over the decades it seems, hell there were probably Uchiha in ROOT who contributed to them, and his mastery over Futons (Wind Release) is all his power.
  • Chiyo is a badass grandma. She's a war veteran, a specialist in poisons and a skilled puppeteer. She is more or less 70-ish years old and, with the help of Sakura, managed to beat Sasori, her grandson, and his army of puppets.
    • Note that in that battle she used 10 puppets against her grandson's 100!
  • The Tsuchikage, Onoki of Both Scales, stands above them all. Despite being one of the oldest characters in the series (the only person older than him is Madara), he's still strong and fast enough to give the Sauce a whoopin when Sasuke attacked the Kage Summit looking for Danzo. In chapter 515, he's seen easily carrying an ENTIRE ISLAND enormous turtle (one large enough to support its own ecosystem, complete with smaller but still very large animals on its back). With one hand.
    • He tops himself all through the War. First off, his Jinton? Its made from Fire, Wind, and Earth, making it an Advanced Bloodline Limit-or Kekkei Tota. He's the only one in the entire Alliance who could take on the Second Tsuchikage, his old mentor-Mu, due to both having Jinton. However, like Hiruzen, he seems to suffer stamina issues and Gaara needs to help him locate Mu when he's invisible, and Naruto of course ultimately defeats (for a time) the Second Tsuchikage with a Wakusei Rasengan (Planetary Rasengan). Due to expending much of his chakra, he has to destroy the Second Mizukage's illusion clam with a Doton-increasing the weight of his rock fist greatly (and throwing out his back) to destroy the giant mollusk. His truly big moment though? Despite being limited to just using his impressive Doton, he manages to help Gaara and Naruto's Clone yank out Madara Uchiha himself out of his Susano'o. He stops Madara's Meteorite Attack, well the first one at least. Then he joins the most Badass Teamup ever-all Five Kages vs. Madara. And helping out A...the two shatter Madara's Susano'o!
  • As of 588, he's the only Kage who easily handled his five Susano'o Wood Clones which Madara made, Tsunade being a close second. A, Gaara, and Mei were being overwhelmed, while the oldest two Kages were fighting just fine. And then Onoki rallies them and using a huge Jinton Cube, he wipes out all twenty five out at once. Because of his ability to rally the other Kages, his superior firepower, and decades of experience, Madara considers him the strongest and most dangerous of the current Five Kages.
  • Suffice to say that any shinobi advanced in age, especially when their years of experience in the battlefield have been hinted at, would fall into this. See: the Third Raikage, the Senju brothers Hashirama and Tobirama who became the pioneer Hokages themselves (since their granddaughter/niece Tsunade was already born in their prime), Salamander Hanzo of Amegakure, Akatsuki bounty-hunter Kakuzu, Mifune of the Land of Iron, and the baddest motherfucker of the series to date, Madara Uchiha.
  • It doesn't help that Naruto has characters who have invented their own special brand of Immortality, so many of the S-Classes are Really Seven Hundred Years Old and automatically fit into this (if you were a genius discovering able to discover immortality and on the run in a world where warfare is very important, you've probably also invented at least 10 different types of weapons of mass destruction before or since then).
• Dragon Ball
  • Subverted in the Buu arc from DragonBall Z. Goku, though The Hero for most of the series, and never, ever regarded as frail or feeble, tries to become a Badass Grandpa during the Buu Arc. It's revealed that he could've defeated Majin Buu himself, but instead thought it wiser to let Gohan and the others fight the battle for themselves, rather than they becoming reliant on a dead Goku. This, however, royally blows up in his face, and in the end, he's the only one who can save the day after all.
  • Master Roshi, the man who taught Goku his most powerful regularly used technique, was one of the very few people to beat Goku in a fight, and one of the most powerful humans alive at the beginning of the story, and at the end is still #4 or #5. Of his three latest students, two take the "strongest humans alive" spot, and the other becomes "strongest anything anywhere", except perhaps for his own son.
  • Taken literally in the end of DBZ and all of DBGT. With Pan, Goku is literally a grandpa, and he's always been badass. Granted, he's not old, it's kinda made comical when he gets turned into a kid in DBGT. He's a Badass Grandpa who looks like he's 6.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, we have Lordgenome. He looks like your average guy...or, uh, your average bodybuilder, not like he's over 1000 years old. However, in the final fight of the first story arc with Simon, after his mech gets wrecked, Lordgenome pops out of the cockpit and beats the crap out of Lagann bare handed. He eventually lost, and had his final monologue without a heart, lungs, etc. Later, he's brought back as a bio-computer, Futurama head-in-a-jar-style. In the final fight of the second story arc against the Anti-Spiral, Lordgenome first recreates his body and his mech from nothing in order to do battle. He holds back the Anti-Spiral's Infinity Big Bang Storm, an attack on par with the creation of the universe, eventually being disintegrated on a quantum level. However, he actually absorbs the attack and turns its power into pure Spiral Energy, to give to the good guys as his final Badass Grandpa act. It's a shame, he was content to sit on his throne for the rest of his immortal life, ruling Earth, having an infinite number of mistresses, but those silly protagonists forced his hand...
  • Lazengann, the personal mech of said Lordgenome, can be considered a Badass Grandpa Humongous Mecha. Despite being at least one-thousand years old, it is far from rusty and clunky, it kicks ass using kung-fu, and even defeats the once-undefeated Gurren-Lagann with only a shredded hand to boot. The only reason it was defeated by Simon in Lagann was because of Simon's superior Spiral Power compared to Lordgenome's.
• In The Prince of Tennis manga, Tezuka's grandfather Kunikazu is in his 70s, but still has incredibly sharp reflexes (is able to use chopsticks to catch a falling teapot) and is one of the most respected (if not feared) instructors in the Tokyo Police Academy.
• Hajime no Ippo
  • Genji Kamogawa and Jinpachi Nekota. Both are in their 70s and retired, but still have impressive strength for their ages.

Kimura: (after seeing them exchange blows as a greeting)...THAT is how old men fight? Wow!

• • Their friend and rival Dankichi Hama also fits.
• Ghost in the Shell: What's Aramaki's response to being captured and put at gunpoint? Call his captors dumbasses and order them around. And they listen.
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam: Master Asia. Taking out a Humongous Mecha with only a loincloth (ON FOOT!) may be unscientific, but it cements his badassery and he follows up with much more feats of bad ass. Look! The east is burning reeeed!!!
• Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ: Grey Stroke, the future version of Judau Ashta is possibly the best pilot in U.C. While everyone has their claim to fame, Grey Stroke can admit to living until 80 years old, piloting the Gump, a broken ZZ Gundam with a PEG LEG and barely any of the original parts, and defeating ZANSCARE EMPIRE MOBILE SUITS despite a tech difference of 60+ YEARS. To put in perspective how badass that is, imagine taking on F-22 Raptors with a makeshift-customized P-51 Mustang and winning. Also, there's also the part of him being one of the few, if not only major characters from the earlier U.C. series who actually survive to old age.
• Vinland Saga
  • More a case of a Badass Great Uncle than Grandpa but still...Thorkell the Tall. Pure Badass, despite the goofy grin he's always sporting.
  • Askeladd's getting along in years as well, yet he is still stronger and harder than most men half his age.
• Tenchi's grandfather Katsuhito in the Tenchi series, who is later revealed to be Ayeka's half-brother Yosho.
  • Some exposition may be needed, since there are like 5 different continuities. In the spoiler above is the case in the OVAs, and his feats include fighting off a brainwashed Ryoko who's under Kagato's control.
  • In the Tenchi Universe series, he's still related to Jurai, but ran away to chill on Earth. As an old man, he...does fairly well...against the Big Bad Kagato who is his old friend and has a huge advantage due to a much younger body, and is introduced into the series by taking out a Galaxy Police Mecha with a wooden sword.
  • In Tenchi in Tokyo he's Guardian of the Earth, but he was getting Tenchi to take over.
  • In Magical Girl Pretty Sammy he never shows up, but in Magical Project S he makes a cameo as a sickly old man. Though he still talks like a badass though.
• Hiko Seijiro from Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin's teacher and master of the Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu sword style, is an example of this trope. He is by far the most powerful swordsman in the series, capable of matching Kenshin, already established as an impossibly fast and powerful swordsman, in speed even when wearing a 30 kilogram cloak made of metal and possessing strength beyond any other character in the series by a ridiculous degree. In fact, during Kenshin's second training, Kenshin strikes at Hiko with his "entire body and soul" at one point (devoting so much attention that he fails to land properly and passes out), and only manages to graze one of Hiko's bracers.
  • Word of God says Hiko is so powerful that he could very easily take on virtually ANYONE in the series and completely curb stomp them.
  • Actually, Hiko is just in his 40s so he's still too young for it. (though very much in his way.) Nenji "Okina" Kashiwazaki, Misao's adoptive grandpa and the ex leader of the Oniwabashu, plays it straight...when he gets serious.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Dark Magician becomes more powerful when aged a thousand years, becoming the Dark Sage.
  • Another example: If you read the Millennium World Manga, Yugi's Grandpa Sugoroku could be classified as this the combination of James Bond and Indy Jones has him investigating a a pyramid containing the Millennium Puzzle in a tuxedo!!!
• One Piece
  • "Dark King" Rayleigh certainly qualifies. He was the first mate of the former Pirate King, and even after about 20 years is able to fight toe to toe with a Marine Admiral, one of the strongest fighters in the World Government (and in the case of this particular Admiral, capable of moving at the speed of light).
  • And recently, he swam across the Calm Belt. A strip of ocean filled with giant sea creatures that even the most hardened Marines & Pirates avoid. Why would he do this? Because His boat sank in the Grand Line, so he had to swim through part of the Grand Line in order to get to the Calm Belt. No problem for him, of course. He had a message to deliver.
  • Vice Admiral Garp, the grandfather of the protagonist, who likes to attack people with a ball on chain the size of a boat, or throw/punch cannonballs at them.
  • Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate, called "The Strongest Man in the World" has the power to create earthquakes and massive tidal waves. He controls a massive fleet of pirate ships, and is stated to have the power to destroy the world. Unlike many of the examples on this page, whose fighting abilities seem unaffected by aging in the slightest, the story makes it clear that age has already more than caught up with Whitebeard. He pulls off some of the most destructive and Badass stunts seen in One Piece yet, and he does it all as a sluggish, half-dead shadow of the man he used to be.
  • Brook, Strawhat Pirates´s musician is an 88 year old skeleton who can play any instrument, runs on water and can make a sword attack so fast, that you realize you have been cut only when he re-sheathes his sword.
• Master Yupa from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is the ultimate Hayao Miyazaki Badass Grandpa. He wanders the world in peace and solemnity, looking for a solution to the Toxic Jungle, but also has a reputation across the entire world for being a legendary warrior. His finest moment may be stopping a sword at its point with his own forearm—and the force behind the sword in question is the title princess in an Unstoppable Rage.
• From Berserk, we have Azan. He was once called the Bridge Knight for keeping one hundred knights from crossing a bridge, and while he's no longer in the prime of his life he's still able to match an injured, but still very mean protagonist, Guts in combat.
• History's Strongest Disciple: Kenichi
  • Hayato Furinji might be the baddassest grandpa of them all. His nickname translates to "The Man Without Enemies", because nobody in the entire world qualifies.
  • He's only ever faced one opponent in his past that gave him trouble in a fight (it still ended in a draw). Unfortunately, it's implied that his opponent was Pencak Silat Master Silcardo Jenazad of YAMI.
  • Another nickname (or perhaps a different translation of the same nickname) is "The Invincible Superman."
  • To get an idea at just what we're dealing with here, this is what Hayato considers holding back.
  • For further reference, he's currently operating at 0.0002 percent of his full power.
    • Well hold on. That wasn't Furunji. That was mysterious 20 year-old Garyuu-X!
  • Hayato once decided to take on an entire American Army base; when Kenichi expressed concern everyone reassured him that the Elder had too much control to kill anyone.
  • Danki Kugatchi fits this to a T, right down to being the tiny bald wrinkled doddering old man. He then proceeds to tear a sword apart with a stick. Badass? I think so.
• Death Note
  • Watari. Not only is he able to put up with L (a fairly awesome feat by anyone's standards), he's also able to work round-the-clock with him and in the anime version, he shoots Higuchi from a helicopter at least 10 metres away.
  • Although he may not be quite on the level of Watari, there's also Light's father, Yagami Soichiro. Often cited as being the only truly righteous character in the Black and Grey Morality of the series, he pulls off various feats of badassery in the name of his idea of justice.
    • Just to give you an idea, he rammed a van into a TV station in order to shut down the pro-Kira broadcast. And in the manga and anime, this was after suffering a heart attack.
• In 20th Century Boys, a couple time skips causes just about the entire original main cast to become this. "When a man is singing, you DON'T SHOOT HIM!"
• Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen: Juzo. Kabuto.
• Yagyu Retsudo from Lone Wolf and Cub. Despite his old age he virtually controls the nation and is equal in combat with the main character (who is awlays portayed as the most skilled swordman).
• Shiryu's master Dohko from Saint Seiya. He is a subversion, though, since thanks to his powers, his old appearance is just an illusion and he hasn't really aged at all in 200 years.
• Balgus from Vision of Escaflowne definitely counts for chopping off the arm of a mecha with a giant sword, on foot. The only reason he lost was because he was fighting giant robots. On foot. While protecting someone. He would've been fine if he'd been alone.
• Bookman from D Gray Man. Just try to call him "Old Panda" and you'll see.
• Tokaki and his wife Subaru from Fushigi Yuugi are Badass Grandparents, fighting demons and the Seiryuu Seishi Miboshi at over 100. Justified as both of them are Byakko Seishi. Tatara, their fellow Seishi, is a subversion of this trope, seeing as Subaru cast a spell on him to make him look, feel and fight like he's younger.
• While not actually related to anyone, and a Dirty Old Man to the core, Happosai of Ranma ½ is also a legitimately dangerous old man who, when he puts his mind to it, can be the most powerful Old Master in the series. Though one of two Miniature Senior Citizens, he has once stopped a bomb the size of a small house with just his finger, sent a giant yeti-ox-crane-eel mishmash rocketing skyward with only his pipe, knocked said abomination against nature out with a single one of his homemade bombs, can use his Battle Aura with such proficiency he can grow into a kaiju-sized giant version of himself, and can defeat just about any combination of the teenaged cast with no difficulties whatsoever.
• Hunter X Hunter
  • President Netero.
  • And Killua's grandfather.
• Aniya-sensei from Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru. He's over 80 but is extremely muscular and very skilled at karate.
• Fu in Fullmetal Alchemist is a badass grandpa ninja. Or at least he was until he got killed by the series other badass grandpa, King Bradley.
• Cyborg Grandpa-G. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Toriko has THREE Badass Grandparents. There's "Knocking Master" Jirou who can ressurrect the recently deceased through acupuncture among other thingsd, his cook, Setsuna the Gourmet Living National Treasure who can easily break the Big Bad's Dragon's weaponry through sheer force of will, and finally there's Ichiryuu, president of IGO who recently either stopped or tanked every attack from Toriko and then casually one-shotted him.
• Professor Oak is still a pretty good fighter, even though he actually is a grandfather in Pokémon Special. Agatha is the same age, and is a member of the Elite Four. Wattson and Pryce also probably count. Bertha will probably be added to the list once she makes an appearance.
• Xerxes Break of Pandora Hearts qualifies as well. While his body doesn't show visible sign of aging, he couldn't possibly be any younger than seventy, with eighties or nineties being more likely, and he is still aging on the inside, often making reference to how surprised he is he hasn't died yet. While Break's main power is technically the Mad Hatter, he's a pretty good badass in his own right- even moreso in the anime, where in episode 24 he takes on dozens if not hundreds of giant supernatural abominations with his sword while his comrades are struggling to fight them with Chains. Before, of course, finally just calling out the Hatter to cleanse the entire city of a few thousand rogue chains in seconds.
• Fairy Tail
  • Makarov definitely fits. If you hurt his guild members--whom he thinks of as his family—he will nuke your ass.
  • For a villain example, we present you Hades of Grimoire Heart, the former master of Fairy Tail. He seems to be at least a few decades older than Makarov (and Makarov is 88!), but still kicks Makarov's ass without any seemingly problem.
• Walter C. Dornez from Hellsing originally appears as a somewhat pervy butler. Next episode, you learn he's a former Master Vampire Hunter, is highly skilled in creating firearms specialized to destroy vampires, and still has his old touch with his monofilament wire skills.
• Axis Powers Hetalia
  • Cuba's "boss" (who could be either of the Castros) in Hetalia Bloodbath 2010.
  • Germania and Rome are considered to be this in Fanon.
• Touhou Fuhai in Rosario + Vampire is a great great grandfather, and he's still more than a match for Akuha. Subverted in that he's at his most Badass when he doesn't look like a grandpa.
• Nurarihyon from Nurarihyon no Mago, the eponymous character's grandfather. Though the years have not been kind on him, as he is now far from what he was back in his prime, he still manages to curb stomp Rikuo in a fight.

Comic Books

• Judge Dredd is becoming one of these the hard way, due to the lack of Comic Book Time in his universe. 22nd century medicine helps, but several stories have focused on his feeling like the old man of the Justice Department, and the decreasing number of his classmates still alive and active.
• The Shade, from Starman, might count, though he's not a grandpa. He's over a hundred and seventy, looks like he's on his mid-forties, still dresses like it's the Victorian era, complete with cravat and spats. Oh, and he's the world's best shadow channeler, capable of summoning shadow monsters by the imperial ton, and a very experienced assassin, both with his skills and with swords. Not enough? He kicked a Black Lantern's ass. After his heart was torn out. With that very same heart. Immortal he may be, but add in his incredible wit, his own occasional act of heroism (though if you call him hero, he'll pound you) and his impeccable sense of fashion and you've got yourself a man you'd hate to offend. And that's without his actual powers.
• Gorgo from Love and Rockets, retired hit man and self-appointed protector of Luba's family. He's around 90 and spends most of his time asleep, which doesn't stop him from taking out two armed assailants by himself. With his cane.
• Jay Garrick. Alan Scott. Wildcat. Just about any surviving member of the original Justice Society of America falls into this category. (Hawkman is an iffy case, considering that he's been reincarnated into a younger form.)
• Bone Lucius Down.
• Nick Fury, original flavor. Over ninety, looks like he's fifty, can kick your ass like he's twenty-five, and a Magnificent Bastard, to boot.
  • And then Nextwave gave us his parody Captain Ersatz Dirk Anger, who is a subversion in the Who Wants to Live Forever? vein:

"I'm ninety years old. You know how I look so pretty? I take drugs. Special H.A.T.E. drugs. Life-extending drugs. H.A.T.E. has the best drugs. Because H.A.T.E. loves me. And I love H.A.T.E. Every day of my horrible drug-extended terrorist-fighting life."

• The Guardians of the Universe from Green Lantern are this; being the oldest beings (technically only Ganthet is this, as the other Guardians had been killed by Hal Jordan and replaced by Kyle Rayner) in the universe and subsequently one of the most powerful.

"He's old. Like beginning-of-time, big bang-theory old. But don't let the red robe fool you. Ganthet could crack the planet in half with a thought."

• Captain America (comics) is a World War II veteran. On the other hand, he was turned into a Human Popsicle in his twenties, and only defrosted 13 to 15 years ago, comic-book time, so he only counts if Buck Rogers does.
  • Bucky Barnes too, he looks young, but he's in his 60s.
  • Ultimate Red Skull being Cap's illegitimate son is in his 60s at least, but is A) in his physical prime and B) doesn't really have a face so it's difficult to judge.
• Jenny Sparks of The Authority, She may be as old as the 20th Century, but don't mess with her or London or she'll electrocute you back to 1945. And she looks like she's in her early 20s to boot.
• The Punisher. Doesn't fully fit the description as he's been anything but passive, but he's still an Badass Normal Ax Crazy antihero, despite being over 60. Lampshaded in the first Arc of Punisher MAX, as Microchip points out that Frank would've been a grandfather by that time, if his family hadn't died.
• Batman in The Dark Knight Returns, period.
• John Hartigan from Sin City (Frank Miller seems to like this trope).
  • Frank Miller has said that he has a problem with certain badass heroes being younger than himself.
• You do not mess with Scrooge McDuck. Period.
• Bor, the father of Odin and grandfather of The Mighty Thor. He was at last as strong as combined powers of Thor and Odin and possibly could easily destroy the Earth. When Thor has to kill him, he has to punch so hard, that his hammer was broken.
  • Buri aka Twiaz, father of Bor and great-grandfather to Thor, is literally the first of the Asgardian gods. Whereas Bor had kept young (about middle-age) due to being turned to snow, Buri has aged all that time. He comes off as a big man living in a cave. Despite being the oldest of a slow-aging race of gods he is still as strong as Thor, can sometimes beat Thor in a wrestling match, and has mystical powers beyond that of most other gods.
• Great-Uncle, really, but Aloysius Crumrin, relative of Courtney Crumrin is at least over eighty and will still fuck up the nastiest hobgoblin ever (with a cane sword!) or fight off vampires threatening his great-niece. It's acknowledged fact that even at his age, he's still the one that gets called in to handle the nastiest business that threatens the witch and warlock community.
• Kaine in Spider Girl. He's even got the coat and beard!
• The Superman from Kingdom Come. He is out of shape, has grey hair, and wrinkles, but when he crossed over into the DCU, he takes a punch from Heracles without flinching, and can move normally in a 100 G environment. Heracles earlier knocked our Superman through a building and bloodied his nose.
  • Similarly, Kal-L the Earth-2 Superman in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis. He's at least in his fifties or sixties, yet can still trade blows with The Anti-Monitor, a being inimical to all life in the matter universe. He's actually the one who takes the bastard down, in a pure Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• In Star Wars Legacy, Treis Sinde, Imperial Knight. Infiltrating Dac, beating up a lot of Stormtroopers and squaring off against a Sith Lord, all in the Issue of his first appearance. Has also the rather un-Imperial tendency to reinterpret or openly defy orders from the Emperor if he believes it is the will of the Force. Darth Krayt is also long over human expire date and you DON'T want to anger him. The Mon Calamari learned that the hard way. His counterpart, deposed Emperor Roan Fel, does qualify too.
• Ekuar in Elf Quest looks pretty wizened and decrepit, and he only has one arm and a wooden leg. On the other hand, he's pretty handy with his rock-shaping powers, and can wield his walking-stick as a formidable weapon (looks like wood, but it's reinforced with stone).
• Dan Turpin.

Turpin: Call off your goons, I'm an old man. And they'd hate to get their asses handed to 'em by an old man.

• Slam Bradley, aging Hardboiled Private Detective who took a beating from Batman and kept getting up for more.
• Magneto. Leaving aside his damn near phenomenal cosmic powers level of control, he can and will throw down without them, even if he won't always win. He's been de-aged at least once, but since most writers and artists tend to ignore that and white him at his original age, he's at least a good eighty.
• Wolverine, the guy was born in the 1800s.
• Spider-Man villain The Green Goblin is around 60 years old now and actually has a grandson to boot. His legacy character Hobgoblin is one as well, but only in Spider-Girl continuity.
• Iran "Pops" Sekula from Body Bags. He's old with gray hair, practically a dead man walking, and he still whips serious ass.
• John Constantine himself. He still kicks ass, even though he's almost sixty, and his alcoholism and smoking hasn't lessened that much. Granted, his comic book is on par with real time, so he's gonna get a bigger badass with time.
• Nth Man the Ultimate Ninja has Dr. Yagyu, ninja dentist. His satchel includes throwing stars and an Ingram MAC-10 in .45 ACP machine pistol.
• Armando's grandfather in Le Scorpion.
• Freedom Fighters has Captain Patriotic Uncle Sam, Anthropomorphic Personification of the American Spirit and looking exactly as old as he does in those world war two recruitment posters. He's also participated in every war of the country's existence and is as strong as the American People's faith in freedom.
• Gramps from Cavewoman. Used a body enhancer to give himself superhuman strength and toughness, then turned up on a flying motorcycle to rescue his granddaughter from a gang of drug dealers before transporting himself, his granddaughter and his 15 ft. tall pet gorilla back through time to live amongst the dinosaurs.

Fan Works

• Colonel (Retired) Nick Parker is an aging veteran of the First Tiberium War well into his seventies, spends much of his free time as a conservative pundit on the 24-hour news networks, and is twenty-percent cybernetics by this point. He also keeps a submachine gun in his car's glove compartment, can still land a headshot with a pistol at a hundred meters (left-handed), and once the Third Tiberium War breaks out starts hunting down and demolishing Avatars by his lonesome. "But that was why they called him 'Havoc.'" He's got a present for ya.
  • He even volunteers to rejoin the war effort as an adviser to Commander Karrde when they ship out to Egypt.
• Aburame Katsu from The Middle Ground (a Naruto fanfiction) is so bad-ass he can make Jounin shake in their boots by drinking tea. His son-in-law Aburame Shibi considers him to be scarier than his maternal grandfather who was a prison torturer. In fact he's so bad-ass he can take down a minor in-clan rebellion by just making it generally felt he disapproves of it, without once even mentioning it. That's how bad-ass he is.
• The Firefly fic Forward has Shepherd Book further cement his badassery multiple times over the story, including having a scene where he silently knocks out several mercenaries while Mal keeps their leader distracted, and a particularly memorable moment where he saves River's life by facing off against an entire horde of Reavers singlehandedly, armed with nothing but a pistol and a sword.
• Fuhrer Grumman, of Fullmetal Alchemist, becomes this in the third part of the Elemental Chess Trilogy. He spends the first part being a Chessmaster who's pretending to be a Cloudcuckoolander and having great fun at everyone else's expense, and is absent for most of the second part, but in the third installment he survives an assassination attempt, utilizes a secret escape passage to fool everyone into thinking he didn't survive it, and then comes Back from the Dead to rescue his grandson-in-law from execution by firing squad.
• The Arbiter in The Last Spartan is in his golden years by the time he and Master Chief meet again, but even then, charges headlong into a warehouse full of mercenaries holding the Spartan prisoner with only Garrus Vakarian for assistance.

Film

• For a literal example, John Wayne in Big Jake cut a swathe through a gang of desperadoes who kidnapped his grandson. Made even more heartwarming by the fact that Big Jake has never even laid eyes on his grandson.
• Practically every one of Jackie Chan's '70s to '80s kung-fu movies (not to mention the similar movies starring other actors) featured an Old Master who looked like a strong gust of wind should knock him over but who invariably mopped the floor with not only rooms full of mooks but also Jackie Chan himself until he learned to respect his elders. Most famously the film Drunken Master, but many others.
• Il Duce from The Boondock Saints. He's an undefeatable hitman, who, in one scene, ambushes the three Saints and nearly kills them all. When later the police were investigating the crime scene, the main investigator from FBI decided that the Saints were ambushed by six men, because Il Duce was carrying six guns.
• Even though he's gotten older and balder, Die Hard Detective John McClane only gets more badass with age, to the point that he's driving cars into helicopters by the fourth film.
• By Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Dr. Jones has become this trope. In The Last Crusade, his father is something of an inversion, being a bookish old man who nevertheless outfights the bad guys with ingenuity rather than brawn.
• Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid.
• In the Played By Sean Connery department, Allan Quatermain from the film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• The Lost Boys features a grandpa who only reveals his trope-worthiness at the very end of the film, by crashing his jeep through the wall of his own house and killing the Head Vampire with a hood full of fenceposts. He also delivers the best line, "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach -- all the damn vampires."
• Star Wars features a few examples:
  • Yoda is around 800 and nearing the end of his species' natural life span, but can still go toe-to-toe with the likes of Count Dooku and Emperor Palpatine. Even thirty years later, Yoda retains enough power to easily lift an almost-completely submerged X-Wing from a swamp. In the Clone Wars cartoon, he performs a variety of insane feats of the force while taking down a bunch of Giant Robot mooks.
  • Count Dooku, who not only takes down the respected Obi-Wan Kenobi but the prodigious Anakin Skywalker in the same fight, and still has enough in the tank to go to a fighting retreat with Yoda.
  • Sith Lord/Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine. He takes on five of the best swordmasters in the Jedi Order despite maybe 40 odd years lack of practice. He kills all but Mace Windu in roughly 10 seconds, then battles Yoda into submission. Decades later, he's got Luke Skywalker at his mercy.
  • Old Obi-Wan Kenobi handles himself pretty darned well in a bar fight, and he does go off to deactivate the Death Star's tractor beam alone.
• Spock Prime in the 2009 Star Trek movie.
• Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson), Papa Wolf on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Taken (film).
• 20 years after defeating the Russians alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, John J Rambo can still single handedly waste the Burmese military, in spite of being a 60 year old man. It helps being thick as a tree and wielding a .50 caliber mounted machine gun.
• Hub McCann in Secondhand Lions is an old man who's just suffered from a heart attack and walked out of the hospital as soon as he could stand. He's still able to take on four teenage greasers, then takes them home and gives them his "what every boy needs to know about being a man" speech. He's got a few good lines along the way, too:
  • After being attacked by a teenager with a knife: "You hold it wrong, son. Not like this. You always do it like this...smooth. (tosses the knife back) Try it again."
  • His Badass Boast: "I'm Hub McCann. I've fought in two World Wars and countless smaller ones on three continents. I led thousands of men into battle with everything from horses and swords to artillery and tanks. I've seen the headwaters of the Nile, and tribes of natives no white man had ever seen before. I've won and lost a dozen fortunes, killed many men and loved only one woman with a passion a flea like you could never begin to understand. That's who I am. Now, go home, boy!"
• Three of the main characters in Kung Fu Hustle (Landlord, Landlady, and the Beast) are shown as unassuming older folk—until they start kicking the hell out of asses.
• The old man guarding the Wall in the film version of Stardust apparently got much more badass after having failed to defend the gate nearly two decades ago. When Tristan tries to use the same trick his father used, the old man somersaults over the gate and delivers a few well-executed martial-arts moves. When his father points out that the man is 97 years old, Tristan defends himself by saying that he's had a long time to practice.
• Though Oogway from Kung Fu Panda doesn't get to show off his Badass Grandpa skills much, one flashback shows a fight with fellow bad ass Tai Lung that lasts all of a couple of seconds. Oogway completely immobilizes Tai Lung with a few nerve taps. Shifu himself is no slouch, trouncing all of the Fearless Five at once and holding his own against Tai Lung even though crippled by his regretful feelings.
• While only in his fifties at the time, Principal Joe Clark from Lean on Me, played by none other than Morgan Freeman laying the smackdown on a knife-wielding, teenaged drug dealer by using his megaphone is a badass moment.
• Basil L. Plumley from We Were Soldiers. Hardass extraordinaire, he doesn't so much as duck when the Vietnamese soldiers are taking pot shots at him. He doesn't even bother with a rifle, and uses his pistol for the entire battle. Even more impressive? He's based on a real person.

"Gentlemen! Prepare to defend yourselves!"

• Most Clint Eastwood's late films
  • Gran Torino
  • In Million Dollar Baby has Eastwood as well as Morgan Freeman's Eddie Scrap-Iron, who defeats a much younger fighter with one glove just to teach him a lesson.
  • The emergence of this in Clint's work appears to have been Unforgiven, which he admits having suppressed because he badly wanted to play the lead role but wasn't old enough.
• Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore. And in real life, too (a Karate Blackbelt trained by Chuck Norris).
• Parodied with The Chief in the Get Smart movie, who tackles the Vice President during an argument and later punches out an obnoxious Secret Service agent.

Chief: (after decking agent) What's that, Sonny? Speak up. I'm an old man, y'know.

• The 2009 animated Pixar film Up has Carl Fredricksen, who's one heck of a badass old guy. Although he technically isn't a grandpa, since he couldn't even have kids. There's also Charles Muntz who was a famous adventurer when Carl was a child, and is still in better shape than him when they meet.]]
• Jetfire in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. To quote the Transformers Wiki: "His cane is also an axe. This is awesome". "He can open a space-time bridge. In other words, he can teleport. This is also awesome". "He kills two Decepticons single-handedly in the battle. Also awesome. However, when he sees that Prime doesn't even have the energy to stand, he rips out his own spark so Prime can use his parts. Incredibly awesome. It's official ? Jetfire is the coolest old man ever, and we're gonna miss him".
  • Sentinel Prime also. He's been in stasis lock for a couple million years, but can kick ass with the best of 'em. Apparently, being badass is a requirement of being a Prime. He would have killed Optimus Prime if Megatron didn't intervene. Having none other than Mr. Spock as his voice actor didn't hurt, either.
• Joe Sarno in Way of the Gun puts a lampshade on this after getting attitude from some hot-shot younger guys: "The only thing you can assume about a broken down old man...is that he's a survivor." Later, the two main characters shoot it out with some older bag-man, though only Sarno himself proves to be much of a threat.
• Although in the comic the specifics of his death are left much more vague, Hollis Mason's death in the extended cut of Watchmen shows that he fits this trope pretty damn perfectly. Although surprised by 6 gang members, he gets in more than a few hits before they overwhelm him. It's one of the more moving scenes in the film.
• Rafiki the Mandrill in The Lion King, who can take on a pack of hyenas as well as any lion.
• In the Hong Kong film Purple Storm, the Big Bad Soong is a veteran terrorist who can handle himself well in a firefight despite his head and beard full of white hair.
• Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins) plays an elderly Zorro in The Mask of Zorro who is still tough enough to trounce his student.
• The Lion in Winter references this trope right in the title. The film opens with King Henry outfighting his teenage son.
• The really old Native Americans in Almost Heroes.
• Dr. Loomis in the original Halloween series. This guy took so many ass-kickings from Michael and still came back for more.
  • Loomis' Crowning Moment of Awesome was in Halloween 4, where after a decade of chasing the madman, he finally lured Michael in to a trap, then beat him savagely with a 2x4, screaming "DIE! DIE!" for each hit, and not even stopping when Michael was knocked unconcious. Payback well deserved!
  • Donald Pleasance in real life. According to the writer of Halloween 4, he did most of his own stunts in the film. He did all this while pushing 70!
• In the Mormon film Passage to Zarahemla, the previously mild-mannered, violin making grandpa scales a wall, breaks into a house, and careens down a staircase with a machine gun in each hand. The guns belong to the two thugs he and a guy recovering from being shot just knocked out. Later he stares down a handful of ancient warriors, armed to the teeth and covered with blood. Very calmly, he puts down one gun, scoops up his granddaughter, and walks away.
• Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky movies (and Rocky himself in the last two movies).
• RED is built on this trope. RED: Retired Extremely Dangerous.
• Grandpa Seth of Troll 2, who, despite being dead, takes on goblins with an axe, makes molotov cocktails, and summons lightning bolts!
• Kevin Flynn in Tron: Legacy. (Castor even says "He shut the whole room down just by walking into it!" Or something to that effect.) Doesn't hurt that he's actually God in that world, and proceeded to demonstrate it.
• In Breaking The Waves, an old Norwegian man at a wedding breaks a glass with his bare hand to show up a punk kid sitting at his table. He doesn't even have any dialogue.
• The upcoming Danny Trejo movie Bad Ass. Trejo plays an old guy who becomes an internet sensation after a video is circulated of him being threatened on a bus and kicking the punk's ass. Looks like he spends much of the rest of the movie kicking more ass, chased by Ron Perlman. The tagline is even "He's mean...he's angry...he's old...he is Badass".
• The protagonist of Drive Angry breaks out of hell to save his baby granddaughter from a demonic cult. Of course, the character in question is played by Nicholas Cage.

Literature

• Stephen the Stonewright of Micah E. F. Martin's The Canticle is a two-hundred-year-old cleric capable of taking down Eldritch Abominations with just his trusty warhammer.
• Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, from Jim Butcher's Codex Alera.
  • Doroga also qualifies, although he's rarely physically underestimated on account of being incredibly buff. Not only can he accurately throw a coffin-sized chunk of solid rock, he's bonded to Walker, who at one point smashed a hole in a wall made of bedrock.
• Belgarath from The Belgariad. He is seven thousand years old, generally accepted as the most powerful sorcerer in the world, and has about three and a half thousand years worth of descendants whom he calls "Grandsons". To add to it, Belgarath likes drinking, thieving, wenching, and has a surprisingly young body for a man who appears to be at least in his seventies.
  • Another Eddings example: Preceptor Abriel of the Cyrinic Knights from the Elenium/Tamuli. Near seventy, having been a knight for at least fifty of those years, eventually died in an attempt to charge Klael.
• Discworld has almost as many Badass Grandpas as it has younger badasses. Commander Vimes is also almost old enough to qualify, but he's just the tip of the iceberg.
  • Cohen the Barbarian IS this trope. A barbarian hero who is over 80 when we first meet him, he has survived over 60 years of fighting monsters and everything the gods can throw at him.
    • He has a set of false teeth made from the teeth of a Troll. Trolls are made of rock and their teeth are made of diamonds.
  • Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde distill the trope, chill it, and serve it with fava beans and your liver. The books take the variation of 'A barbarian hero who gets to be that old is a very good barbarian hero indeed.'
    • As demonstrated when the Silver Horde (all seven of them) conquer the whole of the Counterweight Continent. The scene where they meet a dojo full of ninjas aptly demonstrates their awesomeness.
  • In Thief of Time, it's taught to young History Monks as Rule One: "Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men."
    • Bear in mind that Rule 19 is "Never forget Rule One," emphasizing the importance of Rule One, which Lu-Tze emphasizes by example several times over the course of the book.
    • For that matter, Lu-Tze is actually the reason Rules 1 and 19 exist in the first place.
    • He gets a Badass warrior monk to wet himself mid-punch just by revealing his name!
  • Quite a few of the staff at the Unseen University probably qualify, but the best example would be ArchChancellor Mustrum Ridcully, who sleeps with a pair of crossbows and single-handedly ended a tradition wherein advancement in the wizarding hierarchy was performed via assassination (also known as the Dead Mens' Pointy Shoes rule) by virtue of being damned near unkillable.
  • As of Night Watch, Vetinari and Vimes are both in their late forties or early fifties. It's established that the "in the past" part of the book occurs roughly thirty years prior to the Discworld present. Vimes is sixteen at that point and Vetinari is somewhere in his late teens so that would make them both somewhere around fifty.
  • Technically Death is one of these because he adopted a human girl, Ygritte, who gave birth to Susan who is almost as badass as her grandfather. Just off the top of my head Death takes on an entire army of Auditors during the Apocalypse during Thief of Time/ This is badass in itself, but even more so when Death actually used a loophole to attack them (the true villains). To wit: Nowhere does it say to whom we must ride out against. In Reaper Man where he was forcibly retired and in a semi - indestructible body he rescued a child from a burning building, defying fate and ended up killing the New Death with a scythe sharpened by his anger. He blackmailed the multiverse into letting the main characters of Soul Music live . . . really, any moment where Death appears show him as a badass. Even while masquerading as the Discworld equivalent of Father Christmas!
  • Also, Sgt Jackrum from Monstrous Regiment. Having been in the Borogravian army for sixt...a very long time and not dying makes you a prime example, even though he's not a grandpa.
  • Don't forget the Badass Grandmas, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.
    • And the most terrifying thing about them is that Word of God states that NANNY OGG is the more powerful of the two! (She just refuses to use it.)
    • Refuses to use it? Just watch her play people like a one-woman band, convincing them she's nothing but a disgusting old baggage who's too busy drinking and smoking to notice anything. That, my friend, is all the power a witch needs.
• Lord of the Rings: Gandalf the White. After coming "back from the dead" (he was sent back, because his job wasn't done - very much hinted at in the book and by Word of God to have been by Eru Ilúvatar aka God), he is granted an even greater use of his power—specifically, it's estimated that he was allowed to use about a third of his full strength as "the White", and was still able to take down a Balrog with his old strength.
  • Theoden also qualifies.
• Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter. Although he was acknowledged to be the greatest wizard of all time since practically the beginning, so his magical abilities didn't came as a surprise; it's the raw badassitude he shows from the end of the fourth book onward.
  • Word of God says McGonagall is "a sprightly seventy-year-old".
  • Voldemort was 68 when he returned to power in Harry Potter.
  • By the same token, Hagrid, a half-giant and three years Voldy's junior.
  • Interestingly, none of these characters have children, let alone grandchildren. Actual grandparents seem quite rare in the Potterverse for some reason, while the childless just go on indefinitely.
• Lazarus Long's Badass Grandpa, Ira Johnson, from Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love. At seventy, we're told, he can hold an anvil at arm's length. By the horn.
  • An age of seventy doesn't really mean as much to him, however. That would be more like an age of forty, tops, due to the Howard Foundation thing.
    • Hardly, as Ira Johnson was a first-generation member of the Howard Families.
  • And Lazarus Long's first known appearance is at over 200. It's implied his lifetime is so long he may never die, and is bad ass enough to be a master at every profession including Piracy. He wears a kilt to have better access to his weapons at all time.
• Ser Barristan "the Bold" Selmy in A Song of Ice and Fire. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Selmy is still one of the toughest knights in the realm at the age of almost 60. When he's kicked out of his post for advanced age, an unprecedented insult, he travels halfway across the world in the guise of "Whitebeard," an old squire. His badass chops with a staff betray his identity, however, and he eventually offers his services to a rebel queen. At the queen's court, some courtiers call him "Barristan the Old" and "Ser Grandfather," but he's still got enough spunk to train a new crop of knights and take down a pitfighter.
  • Tywin Lannister, who is a literal grandfather and most certainly not to be messed with.
• Amelia Peabody and her husband Radcliffe Emerson are Badass Grandparents in development. They are detective archeologists in a mystery series by Elizabeth Peters, and started the series at thirty-something. They are now actual grandparents but just as formidable as ever. Their major disqualification is that they aren't cryptic enough about it. Having been badass archaeologist detectives in Egypt for at least thirty years, their badassery is well-known to the locals. Also, Emerson at sixty-something is still a roaring bull of a man, only rendered more distinguished-looking (at least in Amelia's eyes) by the streaks of gray at his temples.
• David Gemmell's Druss the Legend. Half a million Mongol Mooks are attacking a fortress held by nine thousand raw recruits. The only thing they're scared of is a 60-year-old man with an axe and an attitude.
• In Sandy Mitchell's novels, Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, manages to retain his badass status well into his ostensible retirement in Cain's Last Stand, going so far as to defeat Warmaster Varan in personal combat. On live, planet-wide pictcast.
  • Same can be said for Commisar Yarrick. At least a hundred years old by now, he keeps coming out of retirement to fight the orks on Armageddon, and will probably keep fighting until he and Gazghul Thraka kill each other.
• Dirk Pitt and Kurt Austin of their respective adventures are in their fifties in their latest books and yet they still get to kick serious ass and save the world.
• Papa Jan from This Perfect Day. A construction worker into his early 60s, as a young man he helped build UNICOMP, the supercomputer that rules the world, but came to regret it. Inspires his grandson Chip to break the system, and gives him crucial information on how to do so. Wanders around without touching his bracelet to scanners, defeating UNICOMP's efforts to keep tabs on him.
• David Weber has Wencit of Rum. The only living White Wizard and Wild Wizard. He's several thousands of years old and the one person upholding the rules of White Wizardry. He also is a Person of Mass Destruction, controlling the Strafing Spells that will coat an entire continent with Flames when he wills it. He also may be a god.
  • Elsewhere in the Weber bibliography, the existence of the drug Prolong in the Honor Harrington setting means that physical infirmities from old age are effectively no longer a bar to maintaining badassitude decades into the future.
• Les Misérables: Jean Valjean.
• In the Star Trek Expanded Universe Millennium trilogy, Picard is a 95 year old Admiral in poor health and well into the process of going senile. But when three Romulan assassins armed with disruptors attack him, he kills them all with a bat'leth. Naked, because he was in the shower when they attacked.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Luke Skywalker has gotten well along in years, but shows little sign of this other than mellowing out. He is still considered the strongest Jedi to have ever lived and perhaps the best lightsaber duelist as well. Toward the end of the last lengthy series, Luke pins Jacen Solo, also know as Darth Caedus, to a wall using Force Telekinesis in what essentially amounts to a shrug while he proceeds to calmly ask questions and inspect the room.
  • At about Luke's age we have Wedge Antilles. He was quite respectably awesome in the X Wing Series, but at the end of it, in Starfighters of Adumar, he made a pivotal decision that doing the right thing was more important than duty, and from that point on, any time that Aaron Allston wrote him Wedge was unbelievably awesome. He became more picky about who he obeyed and why, blunter, more willing to screw the rules to preserve lives, tighter with his family and friends - and his tactics became outstandingly unorthodox. And his reflexes, if anything, sped up. Not only was he an outstandingly impressive pilot, but also one who had a fine grasp on strategy, tactics, and political ramifications, and who was a Reasonable Authority Figure of the highest caliber, who could sort of speed up his thinking to make complicated decisions within seconds.
    • By Legacy of the Force, when the Corellian military kicked him out for being too moral to support tactics like the assassination of neutral leaders, a sixty-year-old Wedge was given the choice to publicly hand over his position, swallowing his pride to do so, or just go off. He was able to examine the choice, realize that both were bad in different ways, and decide on the one which would hurt the fewest people in a quarter of a second. After that, just outside of the room he slumped in shock but was able to pull himself together as he realized that someone was going to try to assassinate him - yes, the idea that people were going to try to kill him made him relax, and by the time he left the building he was able to give the guards a smile "like he was a rancor and they were made of meat".
  • Why haven't we mentioned the literal Badass Grandpa in the Star Wars EU? After spending the past 71 years seeing the beginning of the Clone Wars, leading to the end of the Republic, the rise of the Empire, the subsequent fall and the rise of the New Republic, Boba Fett is a literal Badass Grandpa. His granddaughter is as badass as he is, surviving being tortured and crippled by Jacen Solo/Darth Cadeaus, Fett is the leader of the Mandalorians until Cadeaus releases a toxin that would kill anyone with Fett genetics, wherein he passed the leadership to his second-in-command and one of his only friends, issued a father-like warning to Mirta's future husband - "You break her heart, I'll break your legs" - and proved he is still a badass by tricking Jaina into letting her guard down around him and knocking her on her ass. Boba Fett, 71 years old and still proving to be the baddest of the badasses.
  • Basically, any member of the original cast who is still alive is a Badass Grandpa by this point. Some characters introduced in the '90s also qualify.
• Snow Crash: Uncle Enzo, who is head of the Mafia as well as an ex-special forces soldier. He manages to fight off Raven with a straight razor.
• Papa O'Neal from John Ringo's Posleen War Series certainly qualifies. Though not perhaps as physically old as some mentioned on this page, he is a grandpa, literally, and is (or was, until the end of The Honor of the Clan) the head of a Badass Family.
• A malevolent example would be Dracula, who was of course Vlad the Impaler several hundred years ago and who (unsurprisingly) has white hair when we first meet him in the book before we discover him drinking blood.
• The old blind gardener from World War Z. We know his age because his blindness is from the bombing of Nagasaki during World War Two, and the story takes place around 2006. When he hears of the zombie attacks and pending evacuations, he runs away into the forests so nobody has to worry about him. There, armed with his digging stick, he tracks and kills thousands of zombies with his hearing alone. And cremates the bodies and prays for them. Later he encounters the sorely-out-of-place Otaku and trains him in combat, and by the end of the book they're training more Japanese survivors to battle the zombies.
• Any old wizard from The Dresden Files. Wizards only get more powerful with age and after a couple hundred years (or more) they are extremely powerful.
  • The Senior Council deserves special mention here. Ebenezar McCoy, their youngest and weakest member, pulled a satellite out of orbit to get revenge on Duke Paolo Ortego (he's a literal grandpa, too). A couple steps up the seniority chain, we have Listens-to-Wind, who once sent a horrifically evil demigod off crying. And their oldest, most powerful member? He held off the entire Red Court and the Outsiders they'd summoned with a single impromptu ward.
  • And we can't forget Shiro, a Knight of the Cross and a swordsman so good that he once managed to beat Nicodemus, a Person of Mass Destruction if ever there was one. Naturally, he's Too Cool to Live; he makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save Harry.
• Roland Deschain is by far the oldest member of his ka-tet, even when one takes into account the differences in time between Mid-World and Earth, but he is also by far the most Badass.
• Moses and Joshua from The Bible lived to be 120 and 110 respectively, leading the Israelite people even in their advanced age.
  • A companion of Joshua, Caleb, lived through 40 years of wandering in the desert and the entire campaign to take the Holy Land. And what did he ask for his reward after these long years of service? He picked to live on a mountain filled with giants and brigands, near the city of Debir. Just so he could eradicate the city by himself.
  • Elisha has a unique way to deal with children poking fun of his bald head. From 2 Kings, Chapter 2:

23. And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
25. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.

• In the Andrew Vachss Burke book Strega, Burke briefly passes by an old black man who, after getting knocked down by a punk, proceeds to get up and school him like the retired boxer he probably was.
• Martin Silenus from Hyperion surgically modified himself to become a satyr at one point just to deflower as many females as possible. His vocabulary once dropped to a slight variation of the 7DirtyWords. He's the only survivor of a Shrike attack on the city of Keats on Hyperion. Later (read: At the age of 700+), he got impaled on the Shrike's Tree of Pain. He died at the age of 1000, staying alive only because he refuses to die anywhere apart from Earth, and only if the Pax, the church is destroyed completely. The only problem is that Earth is either completely destroyed or in the Magellan Clouds, hundreds of light years away. He succeeds, and is buried on Earth.
• In Ender's Game, Mazer Rackham single-handedly wins the Second Invasion, then takes a fifty-year, near-lightspeed space trip only to come back and kick the crap out of a kid that has been specifically bred, raised and trained to be 100% Badass.
• The Wheel of Time has several examples. Gareth Bryne and Rhuarc are probably the best ones.
  • Don't forget Thom Merrilin. He says he's just a gleeman but that doesn't stop him from taking on a Myrdraal with nothing more than his daggers and surviving the encounter or from killing a king over a dead girlfriend and throwing an entire country into civil war in the process. And that's just his offscreen badassery...
• Kirth Gersen's grandfather from The Demon Princes is another literal example.
• Gorynel Desse in Melanie Rawn's The Ruins of Ambrai is an expert swordsman, fabulous with both escapes and magic, and arguably the only character the villains even consider a threat. It doesn't hurt that he's in charge of a secret resistance and has been on the run for as long as some of the other characters have been alive.
• The Fablehaven series has Seth and Ruth Sorenson, AKA Grandma and Grandpa Sorenson. Grandpa is smart enough to get buy without sheer brute strength, and Grandma generally packs heat in the form of a crossbow. And boy, is she a crack shot!
  • The second book introduces Coulter Dixon, who, despite being the Mr. Vice Guy of the cast, brings along many, many wonderful toys to the party. They make him very' awesome.
  • The fifth and final book also brings us Grandma and Grandpa Larsen, who are also storied asskickers. Rumors of their death were greatly exaggerated.
• In Robert E. Howard's "The Hyborian Age", the Backstory to Conan:

Gorm was slain by Hialmar, a chief of the Nemedian Aesir. He was a very old man, nearly a hundred years old.

• • In "The Shadow Kingdom" Kull holds a man in contempt for weakness, and his age does not excuse him, because Kull has seen older men fight.
• Cassel's grandfather in Holly Black's Curse-Workers novels.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs's heroes Tarzan and John Carter certainly qualify, by having a grandchild and being disobedient donkeys. John Carter certainly fits the trope starting his story with:"I am a very old man; how old I do not know."
• Jakub Wedrowycz, between some 80 and 90 years old (depending on when a particular story is set) is as fit as a youngster, has an entire arsenal of weaponry of all kinds hidden around and under his house (and can use them very well) -- enough perhaps to defeat an entire army, and faces demons and psychopathic killers without the slightest hint of fear. And nearly all the old people in his village embody this trope to a similar extent.
• Tadeo Kurita, in Carnifex, is over 90 years old, but still as ready to fight for the Dos Lindas, losing his life in the process.
  • See also Mr. Nguyen, helping the titular characters of The Amazon Legion in their guerrilla warfare campaign against the invaders even though he's probably^[1] well into his seventies by that point.
• Aral Vorkosigan, as of
• Characters like Firestar, Cloudtail and Graystripe in Warrior Cats are grandpas, but still manage to kick large amounts of tail.
• Benedict from The Chronicles of Amber has spent millennia studying combat and warfare. His godlike siblings have stated that if Benedict wanted the throne, they'd abandon their game of multiplayer Xanatos Speed Chess and let him have it.
• The In Death series. Pretty much everyone who actually participated on some level in the Urban Wars Took a Level in Badass. Some of them took more than one level and retained it better.
• Kit Carson of Time Scout found out he was a grandfather well after becoming a badass.
• Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Either Deconstructed or Subverted in the book Home Free. Harry Wong is training to become the number one martial artist in the world. To that end, he hires an old martial arts teacher who is at least 100 years old. Unfortunately, the old man does nothing except sit there and sleep...for 24 hours a day. Harry's friends, Jack and Bert pull some strings and have the old teacher/master carted out and bring in another old martial arts teacher who is at least 80 years and could wipe the floor with all three men. Shortly afterwards, the three men discover that the old teacher has up and died! In the end, Jack and Bert decide to be Harry's teachers.
• Velisarios in Captain Corellis Mandolin. At his last appearance, he's 87 years old and still has strength men a quarter of his age could only dream of.
• Father James in Someone Elses War is not afraid to hide children in his church, no matter what the LRA does to him as a result.

Live Action TV

• Bra'tac from Stargate SG-1. "Not bad, for an old man."
  • Let's not forget Teal'c himself who, despite looking young, was actually about 100 when the show began. Then, in the last episode he alone is aged 60 years on top of that. He still mopped floors with those who were dumb enough to cross him.
  • General George Hammond, despite being over 60, put on fatigues every now and again and blasted the crap out of bad guys. (see also General Jacob Carter, father of Colonel Sam Carter).
  • In Stargate Atlantis Major Sheppard is aged into an old man by the constantly feeding Wraith. Most people would literally wither and die. Major Sheppard ain't most people....
  • Lt. General Jack O'Neill, over 50 by now, a legend across the galaxy, and still a badass...
• Firefly's Shepherd Derrial Book. He punches out cops, shoots down space ships, decapitates deathbots, and shoots out men's kneecaps with rifles, one-handed, without even having to aim. If you called him a Badass Grandpa to his face, he would point out that he never married, so he is not a grandpa, but he couldn't deny the rest. He also orders an Alliance captain around, despite belonging to a group of outlaws. That man has a History.
• Doctor Who.
  • The First Doctor is a crotchety old man...who somehow outfought armed knights with just his cane. The Second Doctor pretended to be a clown, yet was more than capable of taking out the strongest Yeti. And then there was the Third...who was a master of Venusian Akido and was also capable of out-fighting two men in a sword fight at the same time, while wearing a horribly clunky suit of armor that offered little protection. The fact that the Doctor is probably over a millenia old and has a granddaughter makes him technically this trope even when he looks around 30 years old.
  • In his last appearance in the old series The Brigadier was getting into this territory as well, facing down the Destroyer of Worlds all by his lonesome with nothing but a revolver and silver bullets. And winning.

"Get off my world!"

• • He continued to do so in his guest appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
  • Wilfred Mott. Apart from using a paintball gun against a Dalek (it didn't work, but that takes balls), between the pistol and the laser turret, he becomes one of the biggest badasses in "The End of Time".
  • Jo Jones (née Grant). Twelve grandkids and number thirteen on the way, and still saving the world in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Groovy!
• Jack Bristow from Alias.
• An episode of Kamen Rider W featured a Dopant who can affect people's age. After he ages Shotaro into an old man, Kamen Rider W is unable to form since one half is having trouble just staying awake through the fight. Then Old Man Sho decides to take on Old by himself, including his trademark 'Count up your sins!' catchphrase and pose. He's not very effective but damn he's got guts.
• Star Trek
  • Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, especially in the movies. Notable for the breadth of his badassery—whether it's ship combat, shooting, hand-to-hand, fencing, or sheer endurance, Picard remains harder than Proud Warrior Race Guys half his age.
  • Captain James T. Kirk was busting bad guy asses well into his 50s and then came out of retirement to help Picard take down Tolian Soran.
  • Admiral Kathryn Janeway (the older, gray-haired version of Capt. Janeway) who defied the Prime Directive, the Temporal Prime Directive, lied to Starfleet, and swindled a Klingon and gave him the finger. All to bring Voyager home earlier. Even people who don't like Captain Janeway love the Admiral.
  • The Klingon captains Kirk butted heads with (Koloth, Kang, and Kor) turned up well past the century mark and still ready to kick serious ass in Deep Space Nine.
• Heroes has Daniel Linderman, Maury Parkman, Angela Petrelli, and the granddaddy of all badasses Arthur Petrelli. (See also Hiro's father Kaito Nakamura, whose badassery is increased by being played by George Takei).
• Mrs. Westen from Burn Notice manages to break a suspect by just sitting down and explaining how things will end if he refuses to talk. And this was after Sam and Fiona failed in interrogating him. All Madeline did was offer him a cigarette and talk about how he wouldn't have to worry about cancer. In another situation, Madeline also directly resisted the FBI by sending them on a wild goose chase while warning Mike about their investigation. They arrested her and she still didn't tell them anything.
• 24's Jack Bauer as of season 7.
• Midsomer Murders episode "Sins of Commission" has a female version, Camilla Crofton. She killed them all. In self-defence, as they were trying to off her. It's quite possibly one of the most awesome "how they did it" flashback sequences ever (spoileriffic).
• Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: Mess with the Samurai Sentai authorized by the Providence, you may just get to face their Badass Biker Stern Teacher head of the household servants, Kusakabe Hikoma. Lovingly known as Jii, he keeps the Samurai-tachi fed, trains them in the use of their powers... and will go hand to hand with the demonic mooks for his Lord if he needs to.
• This Eggo waffle commercial depicts a grandma beating the rest of her family to the waffle in question and eating it at a speed that would put Sonic the Hedgehog to shame.
• The Zen Master from Fist Of Zen. He has been shown, among other things, demolishing a nuclear reactor by sneezing. And then putting it back together through sheer force of will.
• Battlestar Galactica: Admiral William Adama. In season 4, during a mutiny of Galactica's crew, the Admiral can be seen dual-wielding assault rifles for the better part of the conflict. He's also 73 by the end of the series.
  • Arguably Battlestar Galactica as well, akin to a WW 2 era aircraft carrier taking on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and winning
• Dr Quentin of the Spy Game television series, played by Patrick MacNee as a semi-regular. His first appearance has him playing a sedate round of golf with an old espionage buddy (played by Mission: Impossible's Peter Lupus), when they're suddenly confronted by a much larger squad of young toughs. A fight ensues. Guess which side wins?
• John Locke from Lost.
• Community: The old billiards instructor in the episode "Physical Education".
• NCIS
  • Some might argue that Ducky,who has chased down kids who egg his van and had Fornell in a respectable (and accurate) headlock, shows signs of Badassery.
  • Jackson Gibbs is also a good example of this, chasing off Paloma Reynosa and Alejandro Hernandez when they come to attack him with just his old rifle.
• Jason Gideon of Criminal Minds, who has shown himself capable of outmaneuvering a man who had him at shotgun point, both mentally and physically. Dave Rossi as well.
• Master Po, Kung Fu.
• Bones:
  • Angela's father, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top fame, playing himself. Angela's middle name in the show, "Pearly Gates," is a reference to Gibbons' favorite guitar.
  • Let's not forget Bones' father. When a corrupt cop posed a threat to his daughter Brennan he gutted him and burned him at the stake. Now, that's badass. And during the Season 7 finale, it's revealed he used his underground contacts to help his daughter and granddaughter get off the grid for a while when they're being targeted by a serial killer.
• Mike the cleaner in Breaking Bad. Loves spending time with his granddaughter. Capable of taking out a small building full of Mexican Cartel enforcers.
• Gaius on Merlin. Probably Uther, too. Not grandpas, but still old enough to be and definitely both have moments of badassery.
• Joe Dawson on Highlander the Series
• CSI's Jim Brass and maybe even Grissom.
• Sons of Anarchy:
  • Clay Morrow is still leading an outlaw biker gang at an age where his adopted son has a kid. His hands are getting brittle, but otherwise he's still able to mix it up with the rest of the gang.
  • Despite being an Irish Priest in his 60s, Father Ashby is a high-ranking leader of the Real IRA. When Badass Biker Jackson Teller rushes him in a rage, Ashby simply tosses him to the ground.

Music

• "Aged Swordsman" is pretty much the Badass Grandpa anthem.
• "Pushed to the Limit", by UFO, is about maintaining the rock lifestyle instead of giving in to "age-appropriate" behavior:

...I still love women, sex and fancy cars...
...I'm just not ready for the shade of an old oak tree...
My doctor says it ain't right
for a man my age to fight
he don't get it, he ain't in it, I'm pushed to the limit
...kiss my ass, I'm still alive

• John Fogerty's "The Old Man is Down the Road:"

He take the thunder from the mountain
He take the lightening from the sky
He bring a strong man to his beggin' knee
He make the young girl's mamma cry

• Many rockers from the 60's and 70's are still alive and kicking, and definitely count as this trope.
  • Mick Jagger, for instance, has four grandchildren, and has only gotten more badass with age. The guy continues to live up to his legend as a pioneer of rock, still is in great shape, and can still dance like he's still in his twenties. Put it this way: there's a reason Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera aspire to have "Moves Like Jagger." His latest project? A duet with Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, a Rock/R&B/Techno fusion song called "Go Home." And it sounds awesome.

Professional Wrestling

• There are a few to be found in the realms of Professional Wrestling - Harley Race and Stan Hansen spring to mind - not to mention Terry Funk, who took part in a No DQ match featuring copious amounts of barbed wire in his SIXTIES. Most retired wrestlers also get the Badass Grandpa treatment whenever they show up for a cameo (look at Ricky Steamboat, Jimmy Snuka, and Roddy Piper during their feud with Chris Jericho leading into Wrestlemania 25).
• Ric Flair. There's the Worked Shoot promo Flair cut on Carlito ("I'll tell you what my problem is. Guys like you that have no passion, no GUTS! You want all the money, you want all the glory, you wanna fly first-class, you wanna walk around with someone like her? You don't deserve it!"). Not to mention working a full-time schedule in his sixties and blading like a mofo more than a few times to sell a feud. Still king of the craaaazy eyes, Flair.
• WWE Hall of Famer and wrestling legend The Fabulous Moolah qualifies as a Badass Grandma; Moolah won her last WWF Women's Championship in 1999 at the age of 76 and remained a force in the WWE's Women's Division right up until her death at age 84. Her longtime friend and tag-team partner, Mae Young, is still semi-active at age 86; she's more of a comedy character in the mold of Mae West, though. Vince McMahon famously promised that, if either Moolah or Young (or both) lived to see their 100th birthday, he'd let them wrestle a match. (Furthermore, the match would be against Stephanie McMahon's daughter, who would be 17 that same year.)
  • To reiterate that Mae Young deserves the Badass Grandma label as well: in 2000, during the infamous angle that saw her give birth to a hand, Mae Young was put through a table by the Dudley Boyz. Twice. According to the Dudleys, they weren't sure if they should go easy on her, but Mae smacked them upside the head and told them not to hold back. Keep in mind, Mae was in her 70s when this happened.
  • On the Old School Raw she challenged Lay Cool to a No-holds Barred match and won.
• More common in Japanese wrestling: some older wrestlers develop an ability known to some fans as "grumpiness", when they get so fed up with those gosh-durn kids with all their fancy moves that they just suddenly no-sell everything and knock the whippersnapper's block off with a single slap. Best exemplified by Genichiro Tenryu, though by no means is he the only wrestler who does this.
• Terry Funk once commented that he thought the most hardcore man in wrestling was Vince McMahon. Terry's reasoning? On some level, the wrestlers do what they do because they need a paycheck; Vince, on the other hand, is a billionaire who will never want for money again, and could do anything he pleases with his life, but gets beaten up, thrown around, steel chairs wrapped around his head, thrown through tables, etc. on national television just because he likes it (and he knows people love to see him get beaten up, since he plays the heel all too well). Vince is also an actual grandfather, which puts him squarely in this trope in Real Life.
• British wrestling legend Johnny Saint, though semi-retired now, has been wrestling since 1958. That's right, he's been a professional wrestler for over half a century. And he's still very capable of wrestling circles around men half his age, as the footage of him facing off against Delirious starting at the two minute mark clearly displays.
• The Undertaker certainly qualifies. Even in his forties, he's capable of putting out a good effort against guys younger and healthier than he; in fact, 'Taker and Shawn Michaels - both at least 40 years old at the time - showed up pretty much EVERYONE younger than them at WrestleMania 25.
• On that note, Shawn Michaels: he's over 40, and he can still pull out at least a three-star match out of pure instinct. And this is AFTER suffering a back injury that left him on the shelf for four years and unsure if he'd ever wrestle full-time again.
• The Iron Shiek. He may not go in the ring anymore, but WATCH OUT or he will suplex you, put you in a camel clutch and fuck your ass to make you humble old country way.
• Although he's only in his early forties, Batista is an actual grandfather. Yes, that Batista

Sports

• Just about any athlete over the age of 45 has the tendency to be a badass grampa by the standards of the sport, as their performance starts to wane as they get older.
• Pitcher Nolan Ryan threw fastballs in the 90-mph's and two no-hitters over the age of 40.
• George Foreman. Won a heavyweight boxing championship aged 45, and STILL can beat the crap out of anyone.
  • Evander Holyfield is trying to follow his footsteps, at the age of 48.
  • We must mention boxing's original Badass Grandpa Archie Moore, who won his first world title at the age of 39 and defended it for the next 10 years. His second to last fight was against a young Muhammad Ali well into his 50s, after having begun his career when Joe Louis hadn't even won the title yet. He still has the all-time record for most knockouts, 131. Think about that. The man had more knockouts in his career than Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather have fights combined.
  • I must now add Bernard Hopkins to this list, as he just recently became the oldest man to win a world title at 46 by defeating a man nearly half his age and who was considered the top light heavyweight in the world. And it's not like it's a one time thing, Master Hopkins has been outfighting younger men for the better part of the last 12 years. The only men who can claim wins are Jermain Taylor (and both fights were controversially scored, most people thought Master Hopkins won), and Joe Calzaghe (a decisive win for Calzaghe, who himself was a cagey, grizzled veteran at 38). Master Hopkins eats, sleeps, and breathes boxing and says he'll keep fighting at a high caliber until he's 50.
• While not as old as some on this list, Vikings Quarterback Brett Favre is literally a grandpa and is still one of the most feared players in the NFL.
• George Blanda started his NFL career in 1949. He ended it in 1976. He only missed one season in that span - 1959; and then only because Chicago Bears owner/coach George Halas wouldn't let him play quarterback anymore (In 1960, he signed with the Houston Oilers of the fledgling American Football League) He made All-Pro as a kicker in 1970 and 1973.

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Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000. Commissar Yarrick. He's not a Super Soldier, a Space Elf or a robot zombie. He's just an old, old man with unfinished business and a giant power claw for a hand and a laser beam eye. Though pretty much everyone in the above three categories does outlive a normal human a few times over and still remains badass.
  • Scout Sgt. Torias Telion of the Ultramarines. He's personally trained at least three of the Chapter's Captains, making him older than many people who outrank him. Most Ultramarines say that they owe their lives and successes to his training.
  • Commander Dante, the Chapter Master of the Blood Angels is one of the oldest Space Marines alive, being over 1000 years old. The closest most Marines has gotten is several hundred. This makes Dante a master strategist and is still a beast on the table.He even fought and clove one of The Mightiest Daemons of Khorne,the Bloodthirster Skarbrand,in two.
    • Let's not forget: he's been Chapter Master for over 1000 years. His real age is unknown, though it must be decidedly greater.
  • Space Wolves tend to have quite a few of these. Their Chapter Master, Logan Grimnar, is so old that he's earned the name of "Old Wolf", and has a full-on grandpa beard, completely grey hair.He's said to be strong enough to be able to fight a Bloodthirster one-on-one.
    • The oldest Space Wolves Dreadnought is Bjorn the Fell-Handed, one of the few individuals who can claim to have fought alongside Leman Russ and the Emperor. Also, as a corpse locked inside a giant robot loaded down weapons, he has a rather foul mood and the firepower to back it up.
    • The 13th Great Company of Space Wolves consists of ancient marines who served alongside with Bjorn and Russ himself.They have been fighting Chaos inside Eye of Terror for 10,000 years^[2]
  • Eldrad Ultharan can Mind Rape any character in the game to death with a little bit of luck, is a brilliant support mage, and isn't too shabby in close combat either. He was around during the Founding of Imperium and rumored to be just about the only living being in the galaxy who knows the Emperor's given name.
  • The Phoenix Lords were around during the Fall of the Eldar, and (depending on which one) eat Space Marine Chapter Masters, Land Raiders, and possibly even entire Imperial Guard Regiments for lunch.
  • The inimitable Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines; probably around a thousand years old, fitted with bionic replacements for his four severed limbs and his damaged left eye, dual-wields Power Fists, and punched out an Avatar of Khaine and lived to tell the tale. (Arguable: Calgar is just slightly old by the standard of Chapter Masters and certainly younger than Grimnar or Dante.)
  • And last but certainly not least, THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND. A 40,000 year old Physical God, who's spent the last 10,000 years holding the Imperium together and protecting it from Chaos WHILST BEING A VIRTUAL CORPSE IN A LIFE SUPPORT MACHINE.
• A sizeable portion of the Magi in Magi Nation are like this. In particular, if you ever meet a Magi with "Elder" in their title, it's probably a good idea to run away.
• Mutant Chronicles have Jake Kramer, part of the spec-ops well past the time when he should have gotten a discharge. And kicking ass.
• White Wolf's epic anime fantasy game Exalted has plenty of those. To name a few most outstanding:
  • Chejop Kejak is about 5000 years old and will die of old age in about 5 years. He's old, tired and bitter. He's also the most powerful Exalt currently living and a master of several Kung Fu styles capable of literally rewriting reality. Not to mention he actually rules Heaven.
    • Well, to be more precise, he is one of the people most listened to in Heaven. He is the most senior member of the Bureau of Destiny, has very deep connections across the rest and has an Essence rating of 10. To put it in perspective, no god in Heaven other than the Incarnae have Essence ratings of 10, and the Incarnae are hopelessly addicted to the Games of Divinity, so Chejop Kejak is the most powerful personage in Yu-Shan still politically active.
  • Saibok Gauto's age is hard to assess, but definitely over ten thousand years. He's a feeble, senile man with more wrinkles than body hair, and the only thing he cares for is his great garden. When in danger, however, he shows superb strength and fighting abilities sufficient to beat the living crap out of any starting character.
  • Though he's much younger than either of the above, the events of Yurgen Kaneko's Exaltation were tinged with this. He was a barbarian warlord who realized he'd grown too old for the battlefield and, following the standards of his tribe, walked out into an ice storm to die. The Unconquered Sun had other plans, and now he's managed to unite the various barbarian tribes of the North and give the Realm hell.
• In BattleTech, Clan Mechwarriors are but mayflies to the Inner Sphere, where your average 'Mechwarrior (Assuming s/he isn't killed in combat) will be in the cockpit till their 40s. But several examples of Badass Grandpas (And Grandmas) include Natasha Kerensky (In her 70s when she was finally taken down by a rare Clan 'mechwarrior almost as old as her), Jaime Wolf (died in his 80s during the Word of Blake-sponsored invasion of Outreach, after taking out an entire company nearly singlehandedly), Takashi Kurita (Who at the age of 80 had to be restrained by an agent of his son just to stop him from charging headlong into a clan invasion force of the capital world) and his son Theodore (Who fought a war on two fronts, against the Lyran Commonwealth and Federated Suns forces, and against his own army's staunch traditionalism sponsored by his father, at the age of 43, and only went further as time went on.)
  • Special mention should be made of Morgan Kell, who fought in his ancient Archer Battlemech into his 90s, and was the only living 'Phantom Mechwarrior' - essentially invisible to targeting computers, a condition he gained in his late 30s.
  • Nondi Steiner. She is 86, General of The Army of the Steiner side, and still deadly (although We Know Better).
• Werewolf: The Forsaken has a whole Lodge of these, known as the Lodge of Scars. Somewhat justified, as the werewolves who quality for said Lodge have survived decades in a life where they're constantly hounded by hostile spirits, in the middle of a holy war with their bastard cousins, and always one step away from going into a killing rage.
  • Another New World of Darkness example is the Chevalier Theleme from Hunter: The Vigil. A veteran member of an order whose members believe they are the children of Lucifer and have the powers to prove it, his aging has been greatly slowed, and he's still kicking monstrous ass centuries into his Vigil. The field handbooks of the Cheiron Group basically say, "If you encounter him, do not engage. Just summon reinforcements. All of them."
• Dungeons & Dragons characters can potentially become this if the player makes them old. Outside of this though, two specific examples come to mind: Elminster from the Forgotten Realms and this guy who appeared in 3.5 Edition's DMG 2.
  • Some veteran players and Game Masters, especially those who do not keep Comic Book Time between dungeons/campaigns, end up with characters that become this. Veteran players themselves, can be seen as this to younger players, in that they know very well how to break a character - because they had to try much, much harder back in the day to do so.
  • Monks (or at least 3.X monks) are destined to become this if they hit level 17 while still "young". They will not receive any further penalties (existing ones stay) to physical ability scores for aging, but continue to gain the increases to mental scores. As wisdom is a mental score, and important to monks, if they do hit level 17, they will be at the peak of their combat skills at an age where any other melee class would be long retired.
    • Druids get the same ability to resist aging two levels earlier, and Wisdom is even more important to them because they cast spells with it. Not that they're slouches in physical combat either, with the ability to Wild Shape into a variety of ferocious animal forms.
• Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game) has an option to pre-age your character at character generation. The harshness of the penalties depend on the era you're playing in, but by the 1920s you can effectively trade a little strength for enough skill points that you never miss with your preferred firearm type at a realistic range.
• In War Machine, promoting a warcaster to General is usually a final honour before retirement; upon getting his new rank badge, General-Adept Sebastian Nemo stoped inventing cool weapons and went straight to the northern border to save the primary defence fortress from destruction. Before promotion, he invented the Storm-Chamber tech powering the weapons of the various Storm Companies, built two sets of armour based on the same power (one for him, one for his star pupil), designed and built the most advanced Warjack in the whole game, and trained Lord-Commander Stryker, a man in command of about half of Cygnar's military power. He has gone toe to toe with the biggest and baddest warcasters of rival nations time and time again over 60-ish years of service, beat them all into death or retreat, and will happily demonstrate the exact reason why you should respect your elders, if you push him.
• In Nomine by Steve Jackson Games, meanwhile, has Michael, the Archangel of War, who is the second oldest created being in the universe and still able to kick the butt of anyone who gets in his way. With a battleaxe.
• In Magic: The Gathering, several characters are Badass Grandpas :
  • Nicol Bolas, the oldest known planeswalker, is a 25,000 year-old dragon (and actually one of the Big Bad of the storyline). He doesn't exactly look like he's that old, but he does get some aging problems after the Mending in Shards of Alara, which bothers him a lot as he usually thinks he's a god.
  • More grandpa-like is Barrin, Master Wizard, in Urza's Saga and the following sets of the Weatherlight Saga. Thanks to some slow-time water, he stops aging and starts getting younger instead, so that he actually looks stronger, and, one might say, sexier with age, so that in the end he doesn't look a grandpa any more.
  • Don't forget Urza, who fought a war against his brother (the end of which destroyed most of a continent and started a world-wide Ice Age) then struggled aginst the plane of Phyrexia for several thousand years before personally suiting up (along with eight of his closest "friends") to take the fight directly to Phyrexia.
• In Shadowrun, FastJack is one of the best Deckers/Hackers on the Matrix (both the old and the new.) He was born in 1999, which means that in 2nd edition he's close to sixty, and in 4th edition he's in his early seventies and perfectly capable of booting kids off of his (virtual) lawn.

Video Games

• Hectan, from the obscure-yet-well-known Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. He's got to be AT LEAST 60, has sky blue hair, and, well...NEXT.
• And from games that actually count, there's the Hero's Shade and Auru from The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess.
• From The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, we have Orca, who is an aged and avid swordsman. He practices constantly, and is Link's primary trainer in the ways of the blade. His intellectual older brother Sturgeon is exasperated by Orca's apparent refusal to exercise his brain in favor of sword practice, but surprisingly he himself used to be a talented swordsman in his younger days.
• The entire 501st legion, of Star Wars Battlefront. They were active from Geonosis until Hoth at least, and never accepted new recruits (they have always been composed of original Kaminoan clones), which counting growth acceleration and elapsed time makes them at minimum 45 years old and more probably around 70 years old biologically at the time of the original trilogy.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, the only character in your entire party with the balls to fight dragons barehanded is Haschel, who taught the hero, Dart, martial arts a few years before the game began and is actually Dart's grandfather, although he doesn't find this out until near the end of the game.
• Adam, from the Trauma Center series. He may not be able to move, but not only is he 121 years old, he uses his own body to manufacture deadly pathogens that border on the self-aware, plus his skin is dark grey with blue lines. DARK GREY WITH BLUE LINES. I really don't know how he isn't the entire representation of this trope.
• Sergeant Avery J. Johnson, from the Halo series, is a SPARTAN-I who served in classified Spec-Ops before rejoining the regular Marine Corps, and fought at both the first and last battles of the 28-year-long Human-Covenant war. He kills enough Flood to astonish the Master Chief himself, and successfully hijacks a Scarab. He even badmouths the Prophet of Truth to his face while being beaten by a Brute. He does most of this in his eighties; even taking into account cryo-sleep, he's still probably biologically in his seventies or so.
  • While not a ground pounder, Captain Keyes certainly qualifies as well.
• In Famous has Alden Tate, an "old grizzled man" who introduces himself by hurling a bus into the sky with the power of his mind. And he only gets more extraordinary from there...
• Trema, the Bonus Boss of Final Fantasy X-2, fits this perfectly, being a little wizened old man who can kick your ass faster than you can blink, as well as being a complete aversion of the normal tendency for Bonus Bosses to be giant robots, cosmic horrors, or otherwise huge and improbable monstrosities.
• Gen from the Street Fighter series. A professional assassin in his heyday, he's still capable of matching Akuma in his old age. Oro from Street Fighter III is over a hundred and is more or less the most powerful character in the series outside of Gill and Akuma. In fact, Akuma himself is old enough to be an example.
  • Actually, Akuma himself faces Oro, a match that apparently ends in a draw. Mind you, Oro has magically sealed his other arm to prevent him from accidentally killing someone.
  • Don't forget about Gouken!
• In the same vein as Gen, Fo Fai from Battle Arena Toshinden. Over a hundred, and still kicking it with kids 1/6th his age.
• Baldur's Gate has Keldorn Firecam. Quoting the Badass page: Sixty-something, but still covered in armour and swinging a two-handed sword whilst singing the praises of his rocking-out god. Plus he's the only NPC in the game capable of wielding the game's most powerful sword, and is a rare example of how to be a righteous paladin without having a stick up his ass.
  • Is he, though? He may not be a day over fifty. Men don't dye their grey hair or try to hide their age like Hollywood actors in Medieval settings! And Keldorn certainly never comes off as a frail old (or even frail older) man, being a clear Badass from square one, and thus doesn't really make this trope.
  • He does make this trope - making it to forty is rare in a medieval-esque setting, unless you're a wizard, and making it past then is rare indeed: Keldorn explicitly notes that he's old enough to be Imoen's father, and Imoen is twenty, meaning Keldorn could very well be a grandfather. Also given that he's a paladin on active combat duty, and has been for a long time, he definitely clocks in with the others who * have* to be a Badass simply to make it to old age, given their chosen career.
  • If the age thing is still a problem, well his epilogue says he eventually checks out at age sixty, pulling a fatal You Shall Not Pass on an army of Giants only to get picked to be the right hand man to the God of Righteousness. That should be enough to qualify him even if we disallow his earlier accomplishments.
• Final Fantasy IV: Tellah may appear to be an old codger and have a pathetic supply of MP, but keep in mind he was quite the mage back in his days—this is demonstrated in the fact that he knew (and forgot) almost every White and Black spell there is, and fully remembers them, along with Meteor, at far earlier levels than either of your other Black Mages can hope to learn them. The only shame, then, is that actually pulling Meteor out of his bag of tricks is his swan song. And then there's Fusoya, who actually knows them ALL, AND dispels Zemus' hold on Golbez and Kain in one transaction.
  • Also this game's incarnation of Cid. In the original game, he's 54 years old, and in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, he's 71, which ties with Strago for oldest playable character ever. What are his accomplishments? Let's see: he invented the airship (duh), is a playable character relying on brute force and hammers, has a boisterous and loud personality, and...oh yeah, he takes a flying leap from an airship and detonates what appears to be a mini nuke in his hand in order to seal up a passage for the party. And in a week, he's back on his feet and fixing your airship again.
• Final Fantasy V: Galuf, who can best be summed up in the following quote:

"But man, you fucking kids! Back in GALUF'S day, you didn't die from a single sword wound from a pretty boy! No sir! If you wanted to die, you had to go and find the world's most powerful black mage, who despite BEING a mage is wearing FULL ARMOR and WIELDS A SWORD, and knows all the most powerful spells in the game. And hell, just getting to him was a lot harder, too! You had to go through TWO worlds. And it was uphill in BOTH of them. And when you were finally AT that fucking mage, you didn't say "oh hey, stab me, it's a cut scene". No, you PUSSY, you FOUGHT him! And you kept fighting until your hit points were fucking negative ten thousand billion. THEN you can die, you cock-sucking youngin'."

• • In short, there's a damn good reason why his Crowning Moment of Awesome is mentioned across this wiki more than any other part of FFV. He's simply the coolest guy in the entire game, and arguably the franchise.
• Strago from Final Fantasy VI proves to be an exceptionally powerful wizard in spite of his age, and his granddaughter is also a player-character. Note that he is ten years older than the abovementioned Tellah, and that his first act as a member of the party is to charge into a burning building to rescue his adopted granddaughter.
  • And we must not forget Cyan. At fifty years old, he's nearly twice the age of any of the other party members, save Strago. His first act in the story is to single-handedly kill the leader of the Imperial siege of Doma, and then later to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, fully ready to kill every last Imperial in their base before stopping..
• Final Fantasy X: The only qualification that Auron lacks for this is his actual age. He's only 35 (technically, only 25 since he actually died 10 years before the game takes place). That's right, his own death barely slowed him down. Despite his relatively young age compared to most of the other examples on this page, he is still at least a decade older than any of the other playable characters and he certainly looks and acts the part in every other respect.
• Final Fantasy XIII: Similarly to Auron, Sazh is notably younger than most of the other examples on this page, only being in his early-mid forties. Yet, he frequently complains about being the old man on the team due to all of the other playable characters being less than half his age.
  • Vanille and Fang are chronologically over 500. However, due to spending most of that time as Human Popsicles, they are still physically and emotionally in their late teens-early twenties, so the trope still fits in regards to Sazh.
• Same place as Kliff Undersn from Guilty Gear, apparently. As a previous Commander of the Holy Order of Sacred Knights (at bare minimum 76 years old by the final battle of the Holy War, and he doesn't have Sol Badguy's enhanced longevity), he was an engine of destruction in his prime, being able to go toe-to-toe with Justice no less than seventeen times throughout the war and living through all of them. Even as an old and stooped dwarf of a man, he can still expertly wield his Dragonslayer Sword and strike hard enough to easily stun people one quarter of his age and four times his size. His only limiting factor is apparently his back, which does give out from time to time.
  • Sol Badguy is possibly a literal example during the events of Guilty Gear: Overture.
• Dynasty Warriors brings us Huang Zhong, easily the oldest looking character in the game, but a good swordsman and an amazing archer nonetheless.
• Sister series Samurai Warriors, not to be outdone, gives us Yoshihiro Shimazu, who - despite being a craggy old man with the requisite white beard - is built like a brick outhouse and can swing around a giant hammer with ease.
• Drachma from Skies of Arcadia
  • To elaborate, he's an old Captain Ahab expy who uses a freaking MECHANICAL ARM to fight, either by shooting the hand at the enemy, or running up and pimp slapping the enemy in the face. Lets not forget that he's likly to be at least twice the level of any of the other party members at the time and will easly double the HP of any party member except maybe Vyse long after they've caught up.
• Shujinko from Mortal Kombat: Deception. Over the 50-something year period in which the game takes place, he receives training from every martial arts master in the realms. Oh, and he can absorb the fighting ability of anybody he meets.
• The End from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Sure, the guy's over a hundred years old, with about a week's worth of life left in him, but he's still the best sniper in the world. In addition, he can run faster then Snake, is capable of photosynthesis, and is the absolute king of camouflage. He may be as old as the hills, but he will take you down. With tranquilizer rounds.
  • What about Old Snake himself in MGS4?
  • You can't forget Big Boss himself, who, by the time of the first Metal Gear game, was in his 60s and was considered THE most badass soldier of the century. By the time of MGS4, he's already survived being (supposedly) killed TWICE (the first time had his fortress collapse around him, the second involved being set on fire), was in a coma for about 15 years, had his body restored partially from the remains of his dead clones, and he was STILL considered to be THE badass to end all badasses. Also, he still scared Snake shitless when they had their little encounter in the cemetery. He was in his eighties.
    • Four syllables: CQC Hug.
  • Revolver Ocelot was in his sixties in MGS1, but that didn't stop him from being a badass 'Ricochet Genius' or handling his revolvers like he was still in his twenties. In MGS4 he's aged 10 years, and he's able to take Old Snake on in hand-to-hand combat. Twice.
  • Really all the Cobras can count for this. You have to remember that they were already veteran soldiers when the group was founded 32 years ago and by the time of their deaths were well into their 50s. The Boss is a slight exception since she is only 48, but she makes up for it in sheer badassness.
• Bill from Left 4 Dead may look like a nursing-home candidate, but he doesn't walk, talk, or shoot like one. He is, in point of fact, a former Green Beret who did two tours of duty in Vietnam.
  • "I was too old for this shit fifteen years ago."
  • He also is extremely close with the "kid" on the team, Zoey, acting much like a father or grandfather to her.
• The Pokémon Conkeldurr is a monster Badass Grandpa. The Pokédex says that it uses the pillars as walking canes. And it's a Fighting-type too.
  • Literal example: There is a battle with Professor Oak in Gen I that was taken out of the final game. He uses Pokémon that are level 66 to 70, placing his strength on-par with the player's rival and the Pokémon League Champion.
  • The Veteran class may count. They're all old men and women who, likely from the years of training, have pokemon generally of higher levels than those of other trainers around them.
• Heihachi Mishima from Tekken is improbably hardcore...not just incredibly strong and muscled for such an old guy, but also highly proficient at martial arts and he can generate electricity from his fists. And beat up 4 generations of his own family who tried to go against him. And he's incredibly rich and runs a world-spanning corporation. And he has a grizzly bear as a pet.
  • And you can then go one step further into the Mishima family tree with Heihachi's dad, Jinpachi Mishima. Had the family business taken from him, but chose to remain peaceful even though he kicks arse...then he gets possessed by a demon. Now he has blue skin, huge muscles, a gaping demon pair of jaws WHICH BREATHE FIRE in his chest, and has electricity always coruscating around him. That makes him a Badass GREAT Grandpa. Oh, and his goal is to destroy all of existence.
  • Not to mention that his son and grandson are both infused with the Devil himself and he can still take them down. And he can also take down an army of Jack-5's AND survive an explosion strong enough to level a mountain fortress AND survive for 5 months unconcious.
  • There's also Wang Jinrei. He's pretty damn old during his first appearances (in the first two games), but, by Tekken 4, he is well over 100 years old. And he still kicks ass.
  • Soul Calibur had Edge Master.
  • And Olcadan. Both come from an age before Soul Edge was even forged and have never lost a single battle, and the only draw they have ever experienced is heavily implied to have been against each other.
• Muramasa from Ninja Gaiden (specifically Ninja Gaiden 2). In the first one you can tell he was awesome in his prime. In the second one, you gotta wonder why he isn't taking on hell instead of Ryu.
• Ammon Jerro in Neverwinter Nights 2 probably counts as he's the warlock in the game's intro, going toe-to-toe with the King of Shadows. He's also a very powerful warlock in his own right (insofar as the game's rules can let a warlock be powerful).
• Ezio Auditore. It's most prounounced in Revelations, where he holds off armies and leaps around like he's still 17. He's 55. In the 16th Century!
  • Altair as well in his segments, where at the age of 60 he's still at least capable of free-running. While Ezio lived to be 65, Altair lived to be 92 in the 14th Century. He even lived to see his own son Darim become a Badass Grandpa as well.
    • Subverted in one of the later segments, when Altair's age is clearly taking its toll on him. He can no longer run or climb and he occasionally goes into coughing fits. He makes up for his physical infirmity with the upgrades to his gear he invented by studying the Apple like the second Hidden Blade and the Hidden Gun.
• J from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow spends most of the game wandering around as an amnesiac. He's at least fifty years old, and honestly, doesn't seem like he can do much. Then right before you get to the final boss, he's standing in the doorway. With Vampire Killer. And of course you've recently found out Soma Cruz, the main character, is Dracula's reincarnation. This is when he reveals he's in reality Julius Belmont, last in the line of very, VERY successful vampire hunters. Oh, guess what you are. Belmont charges, and you realize all of a sudden you are about to be in an entire universe of hurt.
  • Well, at that point Soma's got Black Panther, and is blazing fast beyond all sanity. Julius is still fast, just not as much as Soma. And he still hits like a fully-loaded freight train.
  • Julius is, without question, the fastest, least predictable boss in the game. Every other boss has some kind of pattern to their attacks, a cue that you can spot fast enough to know what's coming and avoid it even if you're pretty much a klutz at the controls. I laugh at Death and Chaos. Julius makes me cry.
    • Oh, and for a bonus? He's the only boss in the game who resists the holy damage dealt by Claimh Solais.
  • Let's not forget that his version of the Grand Cross attack has a powerful vacuum effect, deals huge damage and destroys parts of Dracula's Castle floating far away in the background. Getting caught in that is certain death.
  • After you defeat him it's revealed that Julius was unconsciously holding back. So you're not even fighting him when he's going all out!
  • The sequel features Julius getting beaten by Dario because Dario can use the dark seals to regenerate. This is because Julius can't use seals, whereas Soma has learnt to for the bosses. However, the badass part is that before then Julius was killing regenerating enemies before they had a chance to regenerate. Even Soma notes that should be impossible.
• If the player dawdles long enough, he can become a Badass Grandpa in Fable I. The ancient hero Scyth is also supposedly pretty badass.
• Jolee "I'm Too Old For This" Bindo from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. When you first meet him, he goes four-on-one against some of Kashyykk's native predators. And wins. Without breaking a sweat. Also, he's a Jedi, and old and respected enough to basically walk out on the Council without consequence.
• Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2, who serves as a rather morally ambiguous Obi-Wan to your character after having already been a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord. If that's not enough, her ultimate purpose is equally badass: she wants nothing less than the death of the Force itself, so people will stop being so weak and dependant on it. You're the key to making it happen, and she will remove any obstacle or inconvenience to her plan.
• 1000 years prior to the setting of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, eight legendary heroes cleansed the land of dragons. Two of them are still alive, and still the most powerful beings on the continent (one of them becomes playable for the final chapter and is the most powerful character you ever get, but the other one outdoes him by bringing a dragon back to life, complete with its original soul. The Big Bad qualifies, also, having been an old friend of one of those two some 500 years previous before a differing in opinions led to his turn toward evil.
  • No mention of Dheginsea, the Black Dragon King? Throughout the two games, he's portrayed as an exceptionally stubborn old man who wouldn't budge from his neutral position no matter what, just so he doesn't break his covenant with the goddess Ashera. He made a promise to not start or fight in any war, which certainly makes him seem like just an old, bitter scalebag... until the goddess herself calls upon him for help against her sister, Yune. It's only at this point where you realize that Dheginsea is a gigantic black dragon capable of destroying your whole army with utmost ease. In the game, normally each class would have one or two stat that can cap at 40, but Dheginsea? He has Strength and Defense capped at 50, and a HP of 100 (where your units with the highest caps will have a max of maybe 80). Not only that, he has Mantle, a skill which nullifies critical attacks, makes him invincible to anything that's not blessed by Yune, heals him the amount of luck he has (30) every turn, and nullifies any skill you might have. And then he has Ire, which randomly enables him to deal 3x damage. Oh boy... It's worth mentioning that he's probably over 2000 years old.
• Anduin Lothar from the Warcraft series. He formed The Alliance and led it to victory while in his sixties.
  • Cairne Bloodhoof and (according to some accounts) Prophet Velen.
    • The Tauren Chieftain multiplayer hero shares it with Cairne - while they have some choices for names that are randomized, they complain about their old bones aching while having the highest amount of the strength stat compared to all the other ones, even the demonic Dreadlord (not to mention creating shockwaves by swinging their axes and stomping the ground...).
    • Velen is a lolsmitepriest who makes self fulfilling prophecies and managed to outsmart Kil'jaeden for 25,000 years. He definitely qualifies.
    • Cairne was 97 during Warcraft III, so about mid 80s in human years
    • And despite his age, Cairne was still able to put the smackdown on Garrosh for awhile anyways...
  • High Overlord Varok Saurfang (yes, THAT Saurfang) who is at least in his late 60s (I don't really know how orcs age but read that Thrall was in his twenties in Warcraft III so I am guessing Saurfang's age on how he looks) and still can one-shot anyone with cleave and puts Chuck Norris to shame with his awesome.
  • The Alliance were getting Genn Motherfucking Greymane.
  • Tirion Fordring. TIRION FRIGGIN' FORDRING. When the Lich King states outright that he is going to recruit you whether you like it or not and your sheer strength of faith is enough to not only cleanse a cursed corrupted sword that's been that way for YEARS, but also bust the living hell out of the tiny glacier immobilizing you so you can break Frostmourne with the same sword...you know you're a badass.
• Gogen from Arc the Lad: 3.000 years old, already survived one apocalypse and spent most of his time sealed with the big bad: during his first appearance in Arc II he litteraly blows up the game's equivalent of the Statue of the Liberty with one spell.
• Daitetsu Minase from Super Robot Wars Original Generation. Has a six year old graddaughter, qualifying his on the age front. On the Badass? Well, he survived getting blown the fuck up by the Granzon mecha (whose weaponry can warp dimensions), commanded a single battleship against some crazy odds involving submarine warfare, facing off against an entire enemy force by himself twice (first time against six submarines, second time against the combined forces of the Divine Crusaders at Aidenous while his crew were beating the piss out of Bian Zoldark's Valsion), and has served as captain of two battleships that he kicked major ass with in both the first game and the anime adaptation.
  • In the second game, he gets many Big Damn Heroes moments, and at the risk of spoilers, manages to get his troops to safety after Operation Plantagenet goes awry, and flips a massive middle finger in the form of a massive energy blast at the enemy troops simultaneously.
  • Super Robot Wars has a whole bunch of those, for example Master Asia (the grand-daddy of badasses from G Gundam), Master Rishu (he trained The Sword That Cleaves Evil, and he's still good for a fight) and Alpha 3's Baran Doban.
• Wess from Mother 3 is probably the most powerful and helpful Nonplayable party member in the game.
• Two words: Master Xehanort. Good fuckity God. The guy's a bald, bent, skinny old man who might just be the biggest Badass out of Sora, Riku, every other Xehanort, Organization XIII, Mickey Mouse and Sephiroth. This is really no exaggeration. Behold.
  • Also, Xigbar. First Nobody upon entering the castle, only Nobody with visible age lines and graying hair, has an Eyepatch of Power and shows that he's been watching by eliminating every heartless facing you in about five seconds. THEN he reveals that he knew the previous keyblade master and you don't match up to them at all. Yeah, you beat him eventually. But he doesn't go down easily.
• Not exactly an old man but has the same "Must be good or else he would be dead" pre-requisite. Namely the Demoman from Team Fortress 2, "What makes me a good Demoman? If I was a bad demoman I wouldn't be sitting here discussing it with you!"
• The title character of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, a Quintessential British Gentleman Adventurer Archaeologist. In-game, he can however de-age when properly powered up, but his default from is his white-haired form.
• Cidolfas Orlandu of Final Fantasy Tactics, the "Thunder God" himself. The leader of the Nanten Knights and a general within the ranks of the banner of the Black Lion of Prince Goltana, he defects to Ramza's (you) forces because he realizes that despite having served the house of Goltana for decades...the war the Prince is esclating against Duke Larg for the crown will tear Ivalice (the games' setting) apart. Right from the moment you see him, even though he's among the ranks of many of the games' antagonists...you know he's honorable and awesome, daring to question his liege' intentions. You realize from reading his profile that he can probably do this because no one would stand a chance against him if they felt then need to quiet him...as is displayed later in the game. No martyrdom for this undefeated swordmaster! Oh no, he joins you after that and subsequently breaks the game because he's so damn powerful...the need for your other party members becomes tertiary. He has every major sword ability in the game including one that heals him while still doing massive damage, he comes with Excalibur, and he has superior stats. He IS Ramza's army by the end. If you can actually lose with Cid on your team then you...you just suck.
  • Technically, your whole party can become this. The game keeps track of the date and moving between each space on the map takes one game day. The game asks for Ramza's birthdate at the beginning and when that date passes, Ramza gains a year in the character biographies page. This happens for every unique character. It doesn't affect the story or abilities in any way, however. This troper once ended a game with Ramza at age eighty-six.
• Tenchu 2 had Master Shiunsai and...Urano Takehito.
• Tobias from Locks Quest: Lock's (grand)father figure, and the Big Bad.
• Father Paul Rawlings from Clive Barker's Jericho is a combination of this and Badass Preacher. He's 67 years old, wields two pistols effortlessly in combat, is a powerful exorcist, takes no nonsense, and has Seen It All to the extent that he's barely even fazed by the supernatural terrors he faces.
• Gen Fu from Dead or Alive. He may be in his 60s, but that man can kick some ass.
  • He also overlaps with Cultured Badass as some of his attacks suggest. Catching a woman in freefall and setting her down gently after kicking her into the air first? Very noble.
• Some of the Capos and Underbosses in The Godfather: The Game are clearly old men with heads full of grey hair, but they're every bit as willing and able to kick your ass - or, if they're Aldo's Corleone brothers-in-crime, help him kick ass - as their younger underlings.
• Master Li of Jade Empire fame. He's your tutor in the martial arts, and when a weird evil-lookinng bloke turns up in your village on a ship, Master Li arrives and jumps onto the ship, punching it so hard that it sinks. Then you find out he's actually the Emperor's brother, Sun Li the Glorious Strategist- and boy, does he deserve that title. Just after you kill the Emperor (did we mention he is, at that point, powered by a God?), Sun Li kills you. With a single punch. This is his way of telling you that he's been playing you right from the start.
• It's rather relative to species in Mass Effect. For example, krogan can live over a thousand years, and Urdnot Wrex is old even for one of them. He's got the battle philosophy of a seasoned old wardog, and is packing Biotics to boot. There's also Mordin, who is 38 (approximately 88-ish in human years). Most salarians don't live past 40, and looking at his face you can see the wrinkled, dry skin and numerous injuries.
  • Asari have an entire stage of life devoted to this; Matriarchs are explicitly stated to be some of the most powerful biotics in the galaxy. In the second game, your asari squad member, Samara, is technically a marginal case of this trope: she hasn't entered the matriarch stage of her life, so she's probably only middle-aged. That said, she can devastate much younger opponents, and you can level up her class ability to the point where her biotic power is equivalent to a matriarch's. One can only imagine what she'll be capable of when she actually does reach matriarch status.
• Detective Badd in Ace Attorney Investigations. He wears a trenchcoat pockmarked with bullet holes and is the only person to sucessfully dodge Franziska's whip. By the final case of the game, he's over sixty years old but still manages to keep up the Yatagarasu tradition on his own, where previously the job was done by three people, not to mention his dramatic Click. "Hello." to Shih-na when she takes Kay hostage.
  • There's also Quercus Alba in the same game, not from a physical standpoint (though he does have an imposing physique), but from a mental standpoint. Using the facade of a frail, overly apologetic old man, he's a steel-hearted criminal mastermind and former military veteran who runs a highly successful smuggling ring from the shadows and has destabilized the economy of at least one country. When Edgeworth catches on to his true intentions and intends to expose him for the criminal scum he is, Alba drags him through the mud and dismisses almost every bit of potential evidence against him and comes dangerously close to being able to walk away a free man. When he is finally exposed, it's only after a dauntingly long and tough series of cross-examinations.
• Zeus in God of War. He looks like an old man, but is still more physically imposing than Kratos. When you fight him at the end of the game, Kratos has a half-dozen weapons, including a supposedly-ultimate weapon called the Blade of Olympus, and Zeus is still a tough opponent even though he's only using his bare hands for most of the fight. And towards the end of their fight in III, Zeus officially quits screwing around and unleashes his full power, overwhelming Kratos completely, and at that point would have killed him had Kratos not used the power of hope.
• Cassidy of Fallout 2. Of all the recruitable NPCs, he is arguably the most helpful in a fight, with enviable amount of experience using small arms, melee weapons and unarmed combat. He's well into his 60s and suffers from a heart condition that prevents him from taking combat drugs, but considering how good he is to begin with there's not much reason to try.
• Fallout: New Vegas has the Enclave Remnants, former members of The Empire from Fallout 2. While it's been a long time since the fall of Navarro and all of them are probably in their sixties at least if convinced by The Courier to participate in the final battle for old time's sake will prove that even now they can still be utterly deadly in combat (especially if you're wearing Power Armor).
  • Joshua Graham, AKA the Burned Man. While his age is never outright stated, as the co-founder of Caesar's Legion he would have to be in his mid-fifties by the time of the game. He's considered one of the biggest in-game Memetic Badasses renowned for surviving almost anything, be it the NCR's elite snipers or being burned alive and tossed down the Grand Canyon.
• Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos has Lucrecia Johnston. While she's dead by the time the game begins, she was apparently one hell of a Space Pirate in her day with many followers, even having set up an elaborate base of operations capable of constructing ship parts at a molecular level and receiving communications without giving away its position, among other things. Cal Johnston is impressed to learn this side of his grandma's life, to say the least (note that his recently murdered father was just a miner trying to make an honest living who presumably wanted the same for his son), and it's even lampshaded by his fellow escaped inmates when they see the base for the first time.
• Sprout from Phantom Brave. Despite his name, he single-handedly kills and absorbs the essence of a monster responsible for the deaths of three of the main characters in the prologue, comes into at least two Hopeless Boss Fights and wins the battle, is the largest humanoid character in the game (he's about the same size as a dragon), and attacks Sulphur, the Big Bad, and weakens it to about 1/20th of its full power before, unfortunately, having his body taken over by it. He commits suicide to weaken Sulphur further..
• Kainen from Tomba 2 definitely counts during the cutscene between dongolin woods and Circus Town.
• Touhou is almost entirely composed of Little Miss Badasses, almost all of whom are over one hundred years old. Hell, one of the oldest ones is Yukari Yakumo who is at least 1200 years old and also essentially unstoppable.
  • Suwako Moriya is an actual badass grandma (with lots of grands at that, as she is over 3000 years old), despite looking very very young and Moe.
• How about dear old Conrad Marburg of Alpha Protocol? Psycho for Hire, veteran of dozens of field operations, and still prefers to punch you to death.
• The Chinese explorer in Age of Empires III is an aged Shaolin master armed with only his bare fists.
• Ford Crueller from Psychonauts. Before he retired, he was known as one of the greatest Psychonauts in the world. He can't help you much (because a psychic injury fractured his mind, making him senile when he's away from Psiantium), but he still manages to show up to help Sasha and Milla battle Oleander, a huge hunk of Psiantium tied onto his back.
• Landon Ricketts from Red Dead Redemption certainly qualifies. Not only is he someone John Marston somewhat looks up to (for being famous back in the day), but he teaches you the third level Dead Eye aiming and keeps pace with you for a few missions.
  • It gets better in Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. There are three towns in the game that will NEVER come under zombie attack. Two of them are fortresses with tall walls and only ladders to access it. The third? A brothel in Mexico with no tall walls. Landon Ricketts is single-handedly keeping the zombies down in Casa Magruda with nothing but his trusty-six shooter. He also has the idea of combining the zombie bait and dynamite into a weapon that draws the zombies in before blasting them into red mist.
• Boyd in The Rumble Fish. He's old and short, yes, but he is an assassin. And he'll fry you with his Finger Poke of Shock and Awe.
• McBain in Legend of Heroes V: Song Of the Ocean. Sure, he's a troubadour, but he's a troubadour who can punch through solid rock. At age 62. And, while Forte is the designated protagonist, it's really McBain that is leading the party to save the world.
• Valkenhayn R. Hellsing from BlazBlue is a werewolf butler working for the Alucard family who also happens to be one of the legendary Six Heroes.
• Sam Fisher of Splinter Cell is practically an embodiment of this trope. Let's see what's on the menu! A S.E.A.L vet? Check. Capable of taking down numerous Special Forces operatives more than half his age? Check. Can and WILL take these operatives on without a weapon? Check. A fan of the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique? As every victim knows (assuming they're still alive), check. Oh, Dear Lord, check.
• Does Tung Fu Rue of Fatal Fury qualify? I certainly think so!
• Team Fortress 2: Radigan Conagher, mechanical genius, possessor of Hotblooded Sideburns, became even more Badass after he came in contact with Australium. Exhibit one, Radigan with a robot hand and chest hair in the shape of Texas.
• Colonel Victor Hoffman from Gears of War definitely qualifies. In world where almost 99% of the human population has been killed off and average life expectancy can't be far past 30, Hoffman is canonically 60 years old at the time of Gears of War 3. Despite being almost twice as old as the other player characters, he hoists heavy machine guns and rocket launchers easily. His character is essentially R. Lee Ermey plus 100 pounds of muscle.
• In Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim, you can easily make a badass grandpa.
  • Skyrim also has the Greybeards. To put things in perspective, most of them don't talk because if they did they'd take out half of the mountain they live in with their voices. That's how powerful their Thu'um is.
• In Icewind Dale II, the description Light of Cera Sumat tells the story of its previous owner: an 80 years old paladin who slain 6 followers of Bane with just his wits, skills and a battered blade.
• Prototype2 has Dr. Koenig. At first, he just seems like a regular Mad Scientist working for Blackwatch. He's easily pushing into his 70's, looks like a typical frail old man and speaks like a kindly grandpa. Then he proves he's not quite such a nice grandpa after all. He successfully manipulates both Heller and Blackwatch into helping him with his goal, playing both sides against each other until Heller gets wise to it. And this is before his arms turn into guillotines.
• Anarchy Reigns has Douglas Williamsburg who's stats says that he might be 180 years old. that doesn't prevent him from kicking alot of ass though

Webcomics

• The Beast Legion -- Master Surya unleashes a powerful Ice spell to stop Xeus's Beast form.
• MAG-ISA—Fr. Jose fits this trope. He can beatup a guy half his age.
• Feng from Sluggy Freelance is supposed to be one of these, but his combat skills remain an Informed Ability.
  • Until he fights Kusari on even terms.
• Thaco from Goblins.
• Old Man-Man from Dresden Codak.
• Clark from Shape Quest, who is a wizard.
• Ten Winds, from Keychain of Creation.
• Raven in a more recent story arc in El Goonish Shive.
• Ol' Man Death from one of the Girl Genius side stories qualifies as this and as a (semi-)Retired Badass. The guy 'rode with the Jägers' in his youth, is referred to by Maxim as the greatest warrior ever, and despite his advanced age can toss a Jäger (Maxim again) through a window without breaking a sweat.

"No. Listen to me. I'm just a human. Rode with the Jägers. Never. Lost. A . Fight."

• Jade's Grandpa was this in Homestuck before he died which didn't happen yet as far as the Timeless Expanse in which many of the events take place is concerned.
• Soul Symphony: Although physically a normal old man in real life, in Eric's Soul World his deceased grandfather is a dark, evil monster who fights in a shadowy suit complete with fedora and cane.
• Discussed in this page of Real Life Comics.

Do not underestimate the power of old-fu.

• Remus gives us Marcus Laurent, a gruff, Two-Faced CIA agent who's part of Williams's grab squad.
• Errant Story has Ichiro. He even tells one excessively arrogant "superior" being to get off his damn lawn flying city. As a filler strip says, "go, cranky old dude, go!"

Web Original

• LessThanThree Comics' Uncle Sam manages to hold his own against a horde of ninjas...at around 80 years of age. Sure, Mr Perfect helped him out, but the <3-Verse's oldest superhero held his own.
• Semi-retired mystery man The Stranger of Red Panda Adventures would prefer to stay retired but Nazi Germany and other magical forces won't let him.
• Sensei Tetsuo Ito of the Whateley Universe is a little old (non-mutant) man, but a master of martial arts who is capable of beating the snot out of mutants in his classes, or even taking out a Syndicate battle-team.
• The Greatest Freak Out Ever videos on Youtube. In one video, the always-angry older brother is whacked in the face by his grandmother!
• Burt from We're Alive fits this trope to a T, as is befitting a crazy Vietnam vet who has been stocking everything from claymore mines to automatic rifles since the 60s, and kills 20 or more zombies with a single clip.
• Tasakeru: The decrepit old wolf called Drake delivers a savage beatdown to a Complete Monster in the opening chapter of Book III. Said beatdown involves throwing his opponent against a very large tree at a high velocity.
• Yamauchi-sensei of Greek Ninja.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender has this in spades.
  • AVATAR ROKU.
  • Uncle Iroh. For most of the series, Iroh seems an overweight, over-the-hill, past-his-prime wise man who would rather spend his days sipping tea, playing music and Pai-Sho, and generally forgetting about his past warrior-exploits. Early inklings of his badassness are shown, though, when, after being captured, not only does he manage to lead Zuko to him, but also nearly escape by himself; finally, with Zuko's help, he completely frees himself, and both fight off a band of half-a-dozen Earthbender soldiers with nothing but a pair of chains and martial skill (they didn't even have to Firebend...that would've been unfair).

Earthbender: Stay where you are! You're clearly outnumbered!
Iroh: That's true...but you are clearly outmatched!

• • You also have his line when they were about to be captured by Azula in Season 2...

Iroh: Picks up some tea and sips at it calmly, surrounded by soldiers Do you know why they call me "The Dragon of the West?" Stands up and breathes fire at his enemies.

• • Not to mention smoking his niece Azula, one of the most feared Firebenders in the world, in two seconds flat. Or tearing apart thick prison bars with his bare hands. Or using the Sozin's Comet powerup to blast through the functional equivalent of the Great Wall of China like it was tissue paper. Or leading a hand-picked team of four other Badass Grandpas to defeat an entire Fire Nation army, which leads to...
  • The over 100-year-old King Bumi: "You thought I was just a frail old man, but I'm the most powerful Earthbender you'll ever see!" While Toph is arguably close to his level, this is a man who can earthbend with his FACE, launch buildings, and stack tanks on top of each other like dominoes.
    • "Escape? I didn't escape! Everyone ELSE escaped!" (When he escaped imprisonment using only his chin and highhandedly retook an entire city in under eight minutes)
  • Next is Master Pakku, one of the greatest waterbenders in the world. Howzabout his waterspout when he's empowered by the full moon in "Siege of The North"? Or the waterfall/freeze it/unfreeze it thing for his party's grand entrance into Ba Sing Se?
  • Followed by Jeong Jeong, another Badass Grandpa firebender. He shows off his skills by creating walls of flames to destroy tanks while flying using jet feet.
  • Last is Piandao, who looks like he's at least 50. He tends to use his sword as a cane (although that might just be for effect). He's also touted as the best swordmaster in Fire Nation (that is, the militaristic, imperialist, industrialized capital of the world) history. One may wonder why the man has not been recruited into the military. One will learn that they TRIED to recruit him. 100 of the Fire Nation's best soldiers went in, and were promptly defeated. It's unclear whether they were actually killed or just chased out by a 50-year-old man with a sword, but they still lost.
    • The previous five Badass Grandpas are members and leaders of the Order of the White Lotus, AKA Badass Grandpa: The Conspiracy. During the Grand Finale, they decide to retake Ba Sing Se, the largest city in the world, from the Fire Nation. They conquer the largest city in the world in less time than it takes to resolve Aang and Ozai's final battle.
  • And rounding out the bending arts is Monk Gyatso, Aang's long since dead teacher. The man's a pacifist, but when Aang finds his corpse a hundred years later, it immediately becomes apparent why he was the master. His corpse is sitting in a simple hut...surrounded by PILES of Fire Nation soldier skeletons. Skeletons that, when alive, were likely powered by Sozin's comet.
  • The creators actually commented about this propensity in an episode commentary: There are either prodigious kids or badass grandpas; Martially exceptional young or middle aged adults are rare. The only major examples are Firelord Ozai, Admiral Zhao, Chief Hakoda (who's still only a clever Badass Normal in a world of superpowered martial artists) and apparently Sparky Sparky Boom Man Combustion Man. While there are plenty of young/middle-aged opponents who are relatively proficient fighters, they're just not up to snuff with the kids or the old badasses.
• Master Splinter of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame quickly comes to mind. Not only does he train otherwise normal mutant turtles to be freakin' ninjas, he also manages to kick his own fair share of ass on several occasions in the comic books and the television series.
  • Otherwise normal?! And sadly, at least in the 1980s series, his job was all too often to get captured or otherwise indisposed. That being said, he was pretty much the only character who could take Shredder in a fair fight.
  • The more recent series sees Splinter kick butt a lot. The first time they fight Shredder, he waits until it's clear the Turtles can't take him on their own, then proceeds to beat him without any help (except for gravity, perhaps).
  • Also, later in the show they all go to a multidimensional fighting tournament, and the Turtles learn from a contest veteran that Splinter once won the whole thing...with a broken leg, no less.
  • One time, there was a villain doing the Body Surf who had taken over Master Splinter, but moved on earlier unbeknownst to the Turtles, who dogpile on Splinter...and two seconds later, are sent flying away by Splinter, who stands up, looking only mildly annoyed while asking them "What is the meaning of this?"
• American Dragon: Jake Long. Despite his old age, Grandpa Lao will still take on his dragon form to fight side by side with his grandson on frequent missions. This is the opposite case in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee where Grandma Jasmine only assists Juniper Lee in extreme circumstances or when she is absent during a mission.
• Nana Possible from Kim Possible. While only making a few appearances in the show, the two times she's been directly involved in one of Kim's adventures, she's shown remarkable martial skill for anyone of any age. In fact, Dr. Drakken revealed that, in her prime, her exploits apparently dwarfed even Kim's (in fairness to Kim, it's implied Nana's career was much longer than Kim's has been so far), and after he uses a mind-controlling transition on Nana, he has her fight Kim herself. Nana had one clean hit on Kim, but when Kim quickly ended the fight by shutting off the said transition. After everything is back to normal, we see Nana beat Kim in a sparring match, and the end.
  • Think that's badass? She was the first woman to complete the Navy's Underwater Demolitions Training program, the training Navy SEALS go through with a low success rate, complete with five days of sheer endless torture during Hell Week. Never, ever, mess with granny.
• Master Fung in Xiaolin Showdown.
• The Senior Citizen Squad in Codename: Kids Next Door, but then again, pretty much everything is considered badass there.
  • Even more so with Grandfather, the greatest evil in the KND universe.
• Max Tennyson in Ben 10—the protagonist's literal Grandpa, a former Plumber. The fact he's voiced by the same guy who bossed Solid Snake around just puts the icing on the cake.
• Atomic Betty's grandma Beatrix was a famous Galactic Guardian in her day, and still kicks butt as needed. Bakes great pies, too.
• Transformers features many. Primus, practically as old as the Universe is the friggin' creator-god of Transformers, and the size of a Planet, so he could take on anything! Landmine from Transformers Cybertron took out a super-sized Starscream; granted, he was the same size, but bear in mind he was built before Optimus. Vector Prime from the same continuity was the keeper of space and time! Just a little younger than Primus, he could use his transformer-scaled Claymore-sized mystical Infinity Plus One "Rhisling" which could teleport all the 'Cons into a black hole. Ironhide is usually old, but he's tougher than any other 'bot on the Autobots, except maybe Omega Supreme, who's a friggin' spaceship for crying out loud!
  • Transformers Animated has Ratchet, the old war veteran medic who can kick your ass and then put you back together again. Also known as the person who had the ball bearings to call out the Autobot Elite Guard on their unethical practices.
    • It could be argued that Brawn is this, but seeing as he was only on screen for a small part of the opening of one episode it's a little hard to tell. In that time he did rip out a chunk of the ground and nerly take out two Decepticons single handed. Oh, And did I mention he's tiny?
  • The Ratchet of Transformers Prime follows suit. His advice for dealing with a small army of undead robots? "I recommend dissection."
  • Kup is another triumphant example.
• Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond. A bat-shit Crazy Prepared old man who can beat up street thugs with nothing more than his cane, and who can still beat supervillains as well (in fact, Terry has stated that Bruce was the only person who could beat his toughest foe, Inque). Subverted in the fact that Bruce is Terry's father, not his grandfather but now we're just playing with semantics. Made all the more awesome when the writers make him believably old—when he gets riled he needs a dose of his heart meds and a nap afterward, but you're lucky if you survive him getting riled. Oh, and he's still got pinpoint accuracy with batarangs.
  • In one episode, Old Bruce and young Bruce team up. Old Bruce is so bad ass that young Batman HAS. TO. PLAY. GOOD. COP.

Henchman: "I've told you everything I know."
Old Bruce: "Everything?"
Henchmen:' "I wet my bed until I was 14"
Old Bruce: "I'm losing my patience".
(Batman puts his hand on Old Bruce's shoulder, pulling him away from the perp)
Batman: "I can't control my friend here much longer, you better give us something we can use."

• • Static even comments on the dynamic.
  • Immediately preceding the above example, young Batman, trying to get information on the Villain of the Week, holds the henchman over the edge of a skyscraper.

Batman: "Where's Cronos? My arm's getting tired."
Old Bruce: "I can't believe I was ever that green." (throws Henchman back onto rooftop and advances on the terrified Henchman holding his cane) "This is how you interrogate someone." (Cue cut to the above exchange.)

• • • Both examples can be seen here At approximately 3 minutes in.
• Not actually an example, but the Beast With A Billion Back four-episode Futurama special has Dr. Farnsworth describe Electromatter as "matter's badass grandma".
  • Hell, Farnsworth himself sometimes qualifies, when he stops acting like a Senile Old Loon and starts breaking out the Doomsday Devices.
• The last surviving member of the Blackhawks in Justice League Unlimited. Has what looks like a modified (to have two heavy cannon) F-4 Phantom-II in his barn. Shoots down a robot-vulture (part of the subverted Blackhawk Island defences) that was giving Hawkgirl, Flash, and Fire serious trouble. Gets taken hostage by Lex Luthor, which is not so Badass, but manages to get away and get back to disable the island self-destruct, which is.
• In the Adventures of Sam and Max Freelance Police episode "Christmas, Bloody Christmas", Sam's Granny Ruth is a former prison warden who manages to both spread holiday cheer at the prison where she used to work and thwart a prisoner's escape attempt.
• Grampa Abe Simpson from The Simpsons is for the most part a crazy old man, but he showed he still had it in "The Flying Hellfish."
  • When he helped Bart in "Bart the General" that was pretty awesome too. It's quite sad that this this side of Abe is rarely shown, and nowadays is all but forgotten.
• Hudson and the Archmage of Gargoyles. Macbeth is certainly a Badass. His aging may have been magically done, but now he's one step removed from immortal due to said magic, and as such he's been alive for about 1,000 years.
  • Halcyon Renard manages to pull this off while riding around in a wheelchair. Said wheelchair has a laser gun built into the armrest, potent enough to knock out a full-grown gargoyle like Goliath.

"I'm trembling in my chair."

• • • After capturing Goliath and calling him out on the destruction of his last airship, he responds to Goliath's denials with "You sound like every whiny employee I ever fired!"
• Both Carl Fredericksen and Charles Muntz of Up, which is played for laughs at one point when they both throw their backs out in the middle of their climactic duel.
• One More Thing...Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures appears to be your typical elderly Chinese man obsessed with the cleanliness of his shop...but he's also the local expert on the mystic arts and no slouch in the martial arts, either. Not that he cares...if he had a choice in the matter, he'd rather just run his shop.
  • He gets even more Badass in The Dog and Piggy Show, when powered up by an immortality/youthful energy talisman. Not so antique anymore...
  • Do you want a piece of uncle?
• Claude Frollo of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Although he mostly makes his soldiers do all the work, he's quite capable of going after anyone himself. He's almost as physically strong as Quasimodo.
  • Hell, in the climax he manages to cut through stone gargoyles with a sword.
• The Vulture and Silvermane from The Spectacular Spider-Man.
• Lucius Heinous VI on Jimmy Two-Shoes, if "Team X-treme Team" is anything to go on.
• Papa Smurf in The Smurfs. He often saved the day and would often volunteer for dangerous physical tasks.
• The nurse from The Thief and the Cobbler, beating up the thief when he tries to steal her bananas and attacked some of the banits. The witch in the Re Cobbled version, swinging around the mountain like Tarzan.
• Both Saladin and Hagen have shades of this. Hagen is THE Smith of the Universe, willing to take on six Enchantix fairies and Saladin can stop massive burns as if they were simple campfires. He also is roughly equal in power to Faragonda and Griffin
• Mr. Herbert from Family Guy fought possessed trees and Nazis to save Chris.
  • Peter's "father" Francis retired from one job, was hired at Peter's factory, and immediately worked circles around everyone. He was also on the Pope's road crew, punching out photographers and such.
• Brother Blood from Teen Titans never has his age specified, though going by both his appearance and general personality he's unlikely to be younger than late middle-age. He's also probably the most individually powerful villain in the series barring Trigon and some of his minions.
  • Yes, but he has a couple of incredibly ridiculous outfits and is voice by Dr. Drakken, so YMMV.
  • From the fifth season, General Immortus is allegedly this (guy's at least several millennia old and looks every day of it), but he hardly ever does anything.
  • Hell, Trigon himself is probably several hundred years old, despite being Raven's father. He took out a suggested many, many worlds on his own, aside from the portal thingie that may have happened with any or all of his children.
• Cotton Hill is in his mid 70's, and "Had his shins shot off by a Japan mans machine gun" but he's still easily capable of kicking the asses of men several decades his junior.
• Ruel from Wakfu.
• Jaga from ThunderCats (2011) is old, but he's also the head of a Church Militant order of Kung Fu Wizard Magic Knights, fully capable of dispatching a Walking Tank on his own.
• Sheen must fight a karate champion on Jimmy Neutron and is trained by an old person. Sheen asks the trainer "Arent you a little bit old to be teaching karate"? so he beats up Sheen to show him.
• Nearly every old person in The Boondocks. Grandpa's belt-fu, Rukas' being able to take on Huey, Stinkmeiner after his death (where even Satan had to give him his props) and Stinkmeiner's squad of friends who are basically a badass grandparents trio.
• Grampy counts as this since he's often seen being resourceful. When he has his thinking cap on, expect him to get to action, even Saving Christmas for a group of orphan while taking on the role of Santa.

Real Life

• Possibly your own grandparents. If they're still around, talk to them. Your Grandpa may have fought in World War II. Your Grandma might have helped rivet together Flying Fortresses. You'll never know unless you ask.
• Jean Parisot de la Valette, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallier. He led the Knights from the front during the Great Siege of Malta, refusing all of his advisers arguments that he was too valuable to risk and killing a good score of Turks with his own sword, all without taking a wound. At age 69. In a time period in which the average life expectancy was around 35. And he lived on to die peacefully at 74 years of age. Valetta, the largest city on Malta, is named after him.
  • While he is undeniably badass, living to 69 in an era with a life expectancy of 35 isn't that special. Infant/child mortality often deflates life expectancies by a huge amount, since life expectancy is the average age a person in a society dies at. If a bunch of people are dying before their first birthday, it's going to drag that average down. One analysis of ancient Roman life expectancies says that surviving your first five years would nearly double your life expectancy. I'm not sure what the life expectancy tables looked like for 16th century Europe, but it's fairly likely that somebody who lived to 18 could expect to see 70.
  • Social standing also plays into the average life expectancy. Once the initial infant mortality hurdle mentioned above was overcome, most members of the nobility had life expectancies that wouldn't be considered out of place in many of the high-end HDI countries today given that they 1) tended to get better-quality food and medical care (such as it was back then) and 2) with the exception of warfare generally did not perform the heavy manual tasks that tend to shorten most people's lives in any era. However, since commoners vastly outnumber the nobility, the average is more heavily weighted toward that segment of society.
• William Marshal. Most badass knight that ever lived. Skipping his seriously epic early life, as with the above example he lived in times when the life expectancy was around 30. He died at 72 or 73, peacefully in bed, only a year or so after having fought in a battle where the other knights were about to abandon the fight. Not good ol' Will, though; no, he charged straight into the attacking enemy lines, and it was said that the knights then followed him because they couldn't be seen to leave when the 70-something was berserker mad and kicking ass. The battle then swung in their favour and was won, this troper likes to think, entirely due to one William FUCKING Marshal.
  • He'd been griping that he was too old for this. Then when he actually saw the enemy, he straightened up, his eyes lit, and he said, "The Lord has delivered them into my hands."
• Sir John Talbot, KG. Commanded the English army in the battle of Castillon 1453 at age of 80. He got killed in the battle...by a cannon ball!
• Any tenth-degree black belt. Since almost every martial art requires at least half a century of study before you can try for tenth-degree, these are some of the most dangerous old men/women alive. (Apparently, martial arts is second only to swimming for exercise, as proper training will work every muscle group.)
  • Keiko Fukuda just advanced to tenth degree black belt in Judo. Age? 98.
  • Many of the Medieval knights fought actively until their fifties and sixties. They were professional soldiers, after all, and if they avoided to avoid getting killed, crippled, plague, dysentery or gout, they were usually in incredibly good shape even old.
    • One of the original founders of SCA, Sir Paul of Bellatrix, who participated in the crown tournament 2011 in the age of 73. He still teaches SCA heavy combat.
• Keith Richards. It's been over forty years since The Rolling Stones formed up; after all the drugs, sex, trials and blood transfusions, Keef Riffhard can still kick your ass.
  • And his role models, both in music and longevity? Many of the classic blues, R&B and rock icons who influenced Keith, like B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, James Brown, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, who were alive and well and still active into their seventies and eighties (and some of whom are still with us today). Many of them had also cheated fate with wild lifestyles and hard living.
  • "Listen, sunny Jim. Sleeping like this will add ten years to your life. I learned it from Keith Richards when I toured with the Stones. This may be the reason why Keith cannot be killed by conventional weapons."
  • Or witness this Rolling Stones concert in which a rogue fan runs onstage. Keith takes off his guitar, whangs the guy in the face, then calmly puts his guitar back on and picks up exactly where he's supposed to in the song. Best part is that the rest of the band continues playing "Satisfaction" like nothing out of the ordinary is going on.
• Buster Martin. Kicking the butts of young muggers at the age of 101?!
• Actors: Harrison Ford, Jackie Chan, Willem Dafoe, and Chow Yun Fat are HOW OLD and STILL do almost all their own stunts?
  • Sifu Lau Kar Leung. Veteran Hong Kong martial arts actor, director, and choreographer. Practitioner and Grandmaster of Hung Gar style Kung Fu (a.k.a. "earthbending".) He's old enough to be your grandpa but he can still kick your ass. His last starring role (as of yet) is in the film Drunken Monkey and he's not mellowing with age. He's nearing 70 in the film, for crying out loud!
• Lemmy Kilmister. He has taken more drugs than you or I have cells in our body, he's been in Motorhead since the beginning and he still owns every stage he walks on.
  • As a former Jimi Hendrix roadie, he's even older than you think.
  • Some of the people who know him personally have remarked that even though he's in his sixties, he still parties like he's in his twenties.
  • Fellow rocker Ozzy Osbourne (who is close to the same age and did just about as much drinking and partying as Lemmy but came out much more damaged) stated that he wouldn't be surprised if Lemmy outlived him and Keith Richards.
• Recent example from Florida. 75-year-old man has just bought a computer (he plans to take classes to learn how to use it) and is waiting to be picked up. 6'1", 230 lb., 29-year-old grabs the goods and takes off. Rightful owner of said goods throws a flying tackle and takes him down. For extra Badass Grandpa goodness, off-duty cop who assists in the capture is himself a senior citizen at 68, per comments.
• Chuck Norris. In Real Life the man has a 10th-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do, an 8th-degree black belt in Taekwondo (one of only 3 Americans to ever achieve this), black belts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Shito ryu Karate, belts in Muay Thai and Shotokan, invented his own martial art style incorporating all of these, and has a tournament record of 183-10-2.
  • Those "losses" are lies!
    • Or were against Bruce Lee.
• Ronald Reagan, I mean come on. A 70-year old man who was shot by an insane young man, rushed to the hospital still healthy enough to crack jokes, and lived for another 20 years before dying at age 93? Not something an average grammy can accomplish.
• This real story's even better than the would-be-computer-thief saga. This one features two attackers vs. 84-year-old. 84-year-old is a WWII veteran and retired prison guard. 84-year-old kicks two butts (along with other body parts) and sends the offenders fleeing (they were later captured by police).
• Never mind bringing a knife to a gunfight, Never bring a gun to a handbag-fight!
• Daniel M'Mburugu is a 77-year-old grandfather who earns his living by farming. On June 2005, M'Mburugu was tending to his farm in Kenya when a sneaky leopard suddenly attacked him. When the leopard sank its teeth into M'Mburugu's wrist and started mauling M'Mburugu with its claws, M'Mburugu did NOT take the machete that was in one of his hands and start striking the animal with it. Instead, M'Mburugu decided to take care of business by reaching his hand into the leopard's mouth and pulling the animal's tongue out. Think about that. Simply hacking the cat into bits with a machete wasn't good enough for him; he jammed his fist down the creature's throat and ripped out its tongue.
• Mark Shuey is not only a Badass Grandpa himself, he's out teaching other seniors the art of Cane Fu, so they can ALL be Badass Grampas and Grannies Not to Mess With.
• Tom Wanyandie, a 78-year-old man who, when confronted with an enraged Mama Bear attacking his son, proceeded to beat the bear with his walking stick, shove the stick down its throat, punch the bear in the face, take a solid blow from said bear across the face, and then tackled the goddamn bear and beat it into retreat with his stick while screaming every single profanity of his native language.
• A former junior boxing champion by the name of Frank Corti showed that, at age 72, he could still throw one HELL of a punch. When a man less than 1/3 his age tried to attack him at knifepoint, Corti responds by beating the man so hard that he appeared to have been hit by a train. With only TWO PUNCHES. See for yourself.
• Bass Reeves. Got his job as a Deputy Marshal in the Indian Territory when he was in his late forties, early fifties. Kept going until well into his eighties. Thousands of arrests, many gunfights, never wounded. Lotsa kids, lotsa grandkids. The best part? Escaped slave. Though he didn't get his cushy government job until after the Civil War,
• Back when America was a British colony, an elderly farmer named Samuel Whittemore was America's oldest fighter in the Revolutionary War. The 80-year old man killed one guy with a musket, two with dual pistols, and tried stabbing his way through a platoon of British soldiers with his favorite French sword. In the end, he got shot in the face, butted by a musket, and bayonetted several times to the point where any young man with those injuries would be dead, especially in an era with no first aid on the battlefield. But the old man was found not only alive but ready to fight as he was found attempting to load his musket while injured badly. Hell, even his doctor thought he wouldn't make it. Some shitty doctor he was. The grammy lived to see American independence and for another 18 years before dying of natural causes. Just goes to show, you're never too old to fight for your country.
• At age 96, Jack Ury broke his own record and became the oldest person to ever play in the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2009. Despite the fact that he's blind in one eye, nearly blind in the other, and deaf in one ear, he's still played in the past three Main Events (with the aid of his grandson) and even more incredibly, has made it to Day Two every time. Moreover, this year he pulled off a Crowning Moment of Awesome by beating his opponent's full house with a full house of his own. Jack Ury is the man.
• Konrad Adenauer wasn't known for physical prowess, but for crying out loud, look at the dude!
• Vladimir Putin's well on his way to becoming a Badass Grandpa.
• Bolo Yeung. He was 50 when he was in Bloodsport.
• Shih Kien played the Big Bad in Enter the Dragon when he was sixty years old, and still managed to look like a fearsome adversary for Bruce Lee (who was about thirty years younger at the time).
• This grandpa really don't like shoplifters.
• 97 years old man takes a bike and chases the mugger that had just stolen his retirement pension until he's arrested by the police.
• Epic Beard Man doesn't take shit from young "gangsta" types.
  • Unfortunately, that's not at all the case. Epic Beard Man turned out to be a bipolar and racist 67-year old man who tried his damnedest to instigate a confrontation with a drunk, slightly younger man (the young "gangsta" turned out to be 50), as Cracked will attest to. But a video entitled "Crazy Homeless Geezer Fights Drunkard" wouldn't get as many views without the racial slant.
• Genghis Khan was out conquering until he died at 65.
• Tom Savini. Hard to believe the guy's in his mid-60s.
• Walking Stick defense classes
• Bob Crowley: He may not be as old as some of the guys on this page (57), but in a game dominated by fit young 20-somethings, he proved himself not only to be the most able survivalist in the game (a lifelong outdoorsman, he was mostly responsible for building the shelter and keeping the fire going), but when it came down to the endgame, when many strong older contestants are usually picked off, he not only managed to win the game (becoming the oldest winner ever by over 15 years) but he did it by beating contestants half his age in physical challenges!
• British ex Formula One driver Sterling Moss has stated he's glad he was racing in the era he did because it's too safe now for his tastes.
• Ciriaco "Cacoy" Cañete, one of the grandmasters of the Doce Pares School of Eskrima and developer of Eskrido (Eskrima, Aikido, judo combination). Born in 1919, he is still quite capable of kicking ass. Go to youtube and search for "Cacoy Cañete" and you'll find many videos of him in a demostration almost nonchalantly disarming and/or knocking down his students or fellow eskrimadors. Some of those guys have been doing Eskrima for years, even decades, and he still knocks them down without even moving from his spot.
  • He's also had experience as a guerilla against the Japanese during World War 2.
• George Carlin, truly a BadassOldFuck.
• Buzz Aldrin When a conspiracy nut jumped his shit about the "faked" moon landings and called him a coward (because it takes a lot of bravery to pick on a 78-year-old man) Buzz simply countered the Jerkass's arguments with the ultimate argument counterer: Granpa Astronaut Super Mega Face Punch of Awesome!
  • And that is why you do not pick fights with a USAF Lieutenant Colonel with a doctorate from MIT.
• Andrew Jackson. Aside from being a grizzled old war veteran, he also personally foiled the first attempt on the life of a sitting US President (himself, no less). A would-be-assassin fired two pistols at him at point-blank range, both of which miraculously misfired. At almost seventy years old, Jackson nearly beat his attacker to death. With a cane.
  • That's half of the reason he got the name "Old Hickory." One, he was a very tough, stiff, wooden man. Two, he carried around a hickory cane to beat people with. One of his most famous quotes was "I have only two regrets: I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun." For the record, Calhoun was his vice-president.
  • Andrew Jackson had survived being shot in so many duels (mostly over insults to his wife) that he was reputed to rattle when he walked. He is was also reputed to have once been so bored in a cabinet meeting that he took out a knife, dug one of the slugs out, and sent it back to the man who put it in him in the first place with a note to the effect of 'I believe this is yours.' It is also said that in the incident above where he foiled his own assassination, the only reason the assassin survived is that other people restrained Jackson to prevent him beating the man to death.
• Bo Svenson finished second place in the 2009 USA Judo Championships at the age of 68. Oh, and he did it with three broken ribs.
• Nelson Mandela, also a Cool Old Guy.
• Ridley Scott, 72 and still on the blockbuster business. Attached to at least 9 projects right now!
• Clint Eastwood. Survived the Great Depression and the Korean War, this former lifeguard became respected actor, then respected director, and did two simultaneous war films at the age of 76! He's also a talented jazz musician (and his son Kyle is a professional), a licensed pilot who still flies a chopper to his studio in order to beat the traffic, an avid supporter of animal rescue efforts (he and his wife have actually adopted dozens of animals to live on their ranch, and anytime Clint talks about his beloved pets it ends up being a huge Crowning Moment of Heartwarming), and has kept physically fit ever since his youth. He still practices meditation and exercises regularly. All this on top of making some of the best movies in Hollywood. And he can kick your ass any day. Truly one of the most badass people in the world
• Just about any old guy with a cane could easily qualify.
• Haim Zut ^{[dead link]} .
• This may be stretching it a bit, but in April 1940 the new 31000 ton German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau intercepted the 25 year old, 27000 ton HMS Renown...and were sent packing by the WW 1 veteran battlecruiser, a badass (metaphorical) 'grandpa'.
  • The American battleships commanded by Adm, Jesse Oldendorf in the battle of Surigao Strait 1944, were all over 23 year old and the youngest (USS West Virginia) was launched 1921. Those battleships also all were Pearl Harbor veterans. Surigao Strait was the last battleship vs battleship action in history.
  • USS Enterprise (CVN-65), which was launched 1961 and is scheduled to be phased out in 2012, making her 51 years old in continuous service.
• Leroy "Satchel" Paige, the oldest baseball player in history with a 40 year career that he only ended at age 59. In 2010 he was named the hardest thrower in baseball history, having garnered praise from the likes of Joe Di Maggio, Bob Feller, Hack Wilson, and Dizzy Dean.
• When German Emperor Fredrick I Barbarossa went on the Third Crusade, he was 70 years old and hacked his way through the Balkans.
  • He died at River Taurus, Asia Minor in 1189, not by drowning, but from heart attack.
• Sir Christopher Lee. Was in the SAS in World War II (and instructed Peter Jackson on the proper reaction to have when backstabbed based on his experiences), expert fencer, uncredited stunt driver in The Man with the Golden Gun, is fluent in four language (and conversational in five others), recorded several Power Metal albums including one about his ancestor emperor Charlemagne, and is actually a fan of the genre- He still headbangs regularly. HE WAS BORN IN 1922. If this doesn't make him a candidate for the title of awesomest human being alive, there is no hope for the world.
• Jack LaLanne. He once swam handcuffed, shackled, and fighting strong winds and currents, towed 70 rowboats, one with several guests. At the age of 70. And he also maintained a healthy lifestyle until the end of his life.
  • To clarify: he only did what's described above once because that was what he did to celebrate his 70th birthday. He performed lots of similar feats of strength and endurance throughout his life.
• Don Alejo, Nov. 2010, 77 years old. The drug cartel comes to his ranch telling he has one day to leave. He warns them he'll be waiting for them if they come. The next day the drug gang arrives armed with assault rifles and grenades. Don Alejo is alone, barricaded in his home, armed with bolt action hunting rifles. Don Alejo greets the gang with gunfire, starting a gun battle during which he kills 4 gunmen, and wounds 2 more so badly they were left for dead. Finally the drug cartel breaches Don Alejo's home with grenades and kill him. The authorities show up on the scene and describe him as riddled with bullets and with two guns by his side.
• The Winnebago Man. In the words of an audience-goer interviewed for the namesake documentary, "He's everyone's grandpa."
• Aleksander Doba. Crossing the Atlantic in a kayak with no pitstops? Crowning Moment of Awesome for anyone.
• This guy. A monk who fronts a heavy metal band.
• Capoeira is a relatively young art and some of the founding mestres are still around. These are 80-90 year olds who are still doing flips and cartwheels...
• Minoru Saito. Japanese solo sailor, who in 2008 in the age of 73 left for his eighth solo circumnavigation
  • via the Roaring Forties...(that is: 40th and 50th South, where there is no land masses to hinder the westerlies from blowing, and wind speeds are often 40 kn or more)
    • against the prevailing winds. That means he had to sail around the Cape Horn from east to west, which is extremely dangerous, even if done following the winds from west to east.
    • Saito arrived home in Japan 2010 in the age of 76, making him the oldest solo circumnavigator.
• Yasuteru Yamada singlehandedly organised a group of retired engineers and others to help clean up radioactive waste from Fukushima power station, on the grounds that the elderly had less to lose than the young. Even if the government doesn't let them do it, it's still a Crowning Moment of Awesome AND a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming for each and every volunteer.
• 6 Old People Who Could Kick Your Ass. Includes a 70-year-old retired Marine who throttled a 20-year-old bus hijacker to death, and one Badass Grandma who beat up armed robbers with her purse.
• Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, a french racing cyclist, born 1958. Won her first french championship title in 1979 - she started riding a few months earlier. Has since won 57 more titles (including some world and olympic medals), the last one being in 2011. Today, her rivals are 20 or 30 years younger than her. And she still beats'em.
• Does Mr. T count?
  • Hell yeah.
• Theodore Roosevelt went on Safari at age 50. While he wasn't literally a grandpa (his only daughter didn't have children until 1925, 19 years after her marriage) he was old enough, and certainly a badass.
• Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Born into a Prussian family shortly after the unification of Germany, he served in the army since Hitler was in preschool. He was critical about the Nazi regime, but managed to pull off some impressive strategy during World War II, such as leading German armour through the Ardennes forest to knock out the French military, and later charging across Russia even while suffering a friggin' heart attack. He even had the courage to speak against Field Marshal Keitel; after the landings at Normandy, Keitel asked Rundstedt for options and he replied "Make peace, you idiot!"
• John L Burns, a 69 year old (pushing 70) War of 1812 veteran lived in Gettysburg at the time of the battle. When the battle started, he, a pro-northerner, began heckling the rest of the townsmen, who were mostly pro-southern. Not content with hectoring younger, stronger men, he decided the best course of action would be to grab a rifle and start shooting. He joined the Union and was wounded multiple times. His comrades left him behind, and he could have been executed for being a non-uniformed combatant. He crawled away from his rifle and buried his ammunition before the Confederates arrived and he convinced them that he was a noncombatant who just so happened to be wandering the battlefield, looking for aid for his wife. They treated him and brought him back to his house, and he lived 9 more years.
• Armen Amerigian, an 82 year old antique store owner, chased a fleeing robber in his car through three different towns in Massachusetts, and only stopped chasing him because the robber was running red lights and he didn't want to endanger anyone else, but got enough of the license plate number that the robber was apprehended.
• Margaret Cho's grandpa: He was badly burned after his house caught fire and he kept going back in to save his 19 adopted children who were orphaned by the Korean War. He was the only person in the family who gave Margaret any encouragement or even told her she was pretty ("All those people who say you're ugly, [look at me,] they don't know shit"). When she got her own TV show he started watching two hours early to make sure he wouldn't miss it and when it was cancelled he was so angry he fell into a coma. When he died he his coffin was filled with love letters from his many, many girlfriends—not bad for a guy who was disfigured from running into a burning house 19 times.
• Mahatma Gandhi proves this trope applies to BadassPacifists as well.
• Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the martial art Aikido. Even at an advanced age, five grown men in their prime were unable to take him off his feet.
• Every single old person who willingly lines up to clean radiation in Japan ^{[dead link]} qualify as a Badass Grandpa or Grandma for exposing themselves to radiation so younger people won't have to.
  • It should be noted that due to the manner in which radiation harms people that older people are exposed to less risk than younger people, other things being equal.
• Pretty much any Israeli over the age of 40 has fought in multiple wars, and many of the elderly were able to make it through the Holocaust.
• Canadian actor Hume Cronyn was in his youth an amateur boxer. In one of his last films, Cocoon: The Return, his character Joe Finley has to help his friend Bernie escape from the retirement home, so he punches an orderly. Fine, you might say. But Cronyn was blind in one eye and therefore had little depth perception. When you see that guy playing the orderly fall down, it's because Cronyn had literally just knocked him out.
• And another list from Cracked.com.
• The masked bandit Black Bart terrorized the stagecoaches of The Wild West for ten years. During this time, he became famous as a "gentleman bandit" who, despite brandishing a shotgun left poetry at the scene of his robberies, was exceedingly polite and never fired a shot even when being shot at. At the end of those ten years, he committed his last robbery and was traced to a boarding house in San Francisco. He was discovered to be a 53-year-old man named Charles Earl Bowles. Bowles was a 49er and Civil War veteran who was thought to have died years back. 53 may not seem old, but to compare, Billy the Kid died at the age of 21 and Jesse James' life ended at 34.
• Brian Blessed is the oldest man to have walked to the magnetic North Pole (aged 64), has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and made his THIRD attempt (all unsuccessful, sadly) to climb Mount Everest aged 55. In doing so, he set the record for the highest distance climbed by the oldest man without carrying additional oxygen (28,000 ft) and only stopped to turn back so as to save the life of one of his fellow (younger!) climbers.

1. ↑ his age is never really specified
2. ↑ Kind of,the time flow in the warp is very strange so there could be only few hundred years for them since Horus Heresy or their fight lasted longer than Imperium itself