Tiny Guy, Huge Girl

Mario and Peach: Defying stereotypes since 1985.

Men are usually bigger/taller than women, right? Well, most of the time, but there are cases in which a woman will be taller than her love interest, either because she's unusually tall or because he's unusually short. Sometimes it's both; sometimes the girl is a good deal wider than the guy as well. Generally the first example goes under Hot Amazon or a Statuesque Stunner, while the second goes in Big Beautiful Woman, Amazonian Beauty, or Abhorrent Admirer.

When this trope happens, the guy might feel self-conscious about dating a woman larger than him, or the girl might feel similarly insecure about dating a man much shorter/smaller than her (and let's not talk about if she wears heels...). But in other cases, the guy will find a woman attractive not "despite" how tall she is, but partly because of it.

Naturally, the Counter Trope of Huge Guy, Tiny Girl and One Head Taller. It may overlap with Hot Amazon, Statuesque Stunner, Amazonian Beauty, or Big Beautiful Woman. Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy is a Sister Trope, and the two are often found together.

Examples of Tiny Guy, Huge Girl include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, the Amazonian Beauty Dark-Skinned Redhead Wrench Wench Moira Bascht and the Butt Monkey pilot Chuck Keith end up becoming the Beta Couple (or at least are implied to do so). Moira stands head and shoulders over Keith, and is obviously more muscular then he is.
  • Krillin is noticeably shorter than his wife C-18 (who's the tallest female character in the show) and practically every other character of the series (Gohan was the same height as him when he was five years old).
  • Cibo and Killy of the manga series Blame, with Cibo being a good deal taller than Killy. At least, at first.
  • Lampshaded in Library War, in which Kasahara is noticeably taller than her love interest and superior Dojo, to his annoyance.
  • The parrot in Time Bokan has a large domineering wife.
  • In Super Dreadnought Girl 4946, short guy Makoto Tokida ends up befriending and forming a relationship with the nearly fifty-meter tall Mana Eimiya. She insists her height is 49 metres 46 centimetres; it's important to her because shorter girls are cuter, right? There's also Kotou Akemi and Isaac Montana, who both tried to win him over Mana.
  • In Shaman King, Oyamada Manta's father is about his height (in the neighborhood of 80 centimeters tall); his mother, on the other hand, is of normal height (and noticeably better-looking)
  • Gun X Sword: A mild antagonist version; Fasalina is clearly a head and few inches taller than Michael.
  • Bleach: Division 10's Vice Captain Rangiku Matsumoto (172 cm, or 5'7 3/4") and Captain Toushirou Hitsugaya (133 cm, or 4'4"), the woman being massive in at least one area... More like two areas, though. Additionally, Hitsugaya with the otherwise normally-sized Momo Hinamori of Division 5 (151 cm, 4'11").
  • Claymore: Riful and Dauf (Awakened form), and Clare and Raki (pre-timeskip).
  • The whole premise of Lovely Complex - namely, protagonists Koizumi (171 cm tall: Huge Schoolgirl) and Otani (158 cm tall: The Napoleon). The fact this is so annoys them to no end, as they found at the beginning that no one takes them seriously in terms of romance because of this. And for better or worse, they start falling for each other...
    • It's also hinted that this is a case of Generation Xerox, as Koizumi's grandparents were also like this... and they faced LOTS of hardships. This may explain why Koizumi's now widowed grandfather hates Otani so much - he fears that he won't be able to make Koizumi happy if they stay together.)
  • Zone of the Enders: Dolores, i, in a non-romantic (sorta), platonic way: The old veteran pilot stuck together with a sentient mecha with a little girl's personality.
  • One Piece: Monkey D. Luffy clocks in at just over five-foot-seven. His enthusiastic admirer, the pirate empress Boa Hancock, towers over him at a statuesque six-foot-three. (For bonus amusement, she's also 12 years his senior, making them if not a May–December Romance than at least a May August...Whatever The Heck Is Going On There.)
    • He's now befriended Shirahoshi, the biggest mermaid alive, whose size is comparable to their ship. It has yet to be seen whether she will develop romantic feelings for him, but it's safe to say that if she does, they won't be reciprocated.
    • Miss Monday and Mr 9 became an Official Couple version of this trope during the time skip; they even have a baby to seal the deal.
  • Trigun:
    • Millie and either Vash or Meryl is a platonic example.
      • Vash and Wolfwood are both rather average sized. But Wolfwood with Millie becomes this trope, while Vash becomes the Huge Guy with Meryl.
    • In the anime, the Nebraskas. Pa Nebraska is a tiny, ugly, ancient-looking man. His wife, Ma Nebraska, basically looks like Gofsef (the giant deformed cyborg who is so huge that Pa rides around in his pocket) with breasts and hair. Except she may be even bigger than her giant son, at least a head taller.
  • Macross Frontier: Michel Blanc and Kuran Kuran (often a full-sized Zentraedi). That is, if Kuran isn't Micloned. If she does, the trope is Huge Guy, Tiny Girl instead, as she looks much smaller and younger than her real age.
  • Inoue Kazurou's short story Aoi Destruction, where the titular character is a 38 years old pint-sized Hot "Loli" Dad and his late wife was a overwhelmingly hulking pile of muscle.
  • Ponyo's parents. Her mother, Granmammare, can hold her father Fujimoto in the palm of her hand, when she's at full size. He's not particularly tiny, though—she's just really big.
    • Just to make it clear, Granmammare is the OCEAN!! Fujimoto is, most likely, a regular human, or at least APPEARS to be human. Thus, it's extremely understandable that she'd be bigger than him.
  • Magic Knight Rayearth: Tiny Spirit Advisor Clef (who's Really Seven Hundred Years Old) and either Umi Ryuzaki or Presea (add Presea's Backup Twin Sierra, if you follow the anime), whether their affections for him are romantic or not (at least onesided from Presea and Sierra, Umi's case is a bit more debatable).
  • Take On Me centers on Tomonori Tsuda (scrawny and about 5' 1" (156 cm)) and Oono Hikaru (just shy of 6' (182 cm) and capable of walking off with Tsuda tucked under her arm). Since it is that sort of Manga there are a few amusingly awkward scenes that cannot be described here.
  • The main couple of Huge Schoolgirl, Ayako, and Cute Shotaro Boy, Mamoru, in Mamoru-kun Ni Megami no Shukufuku Wo is this trope. He comes a bit short of her shoulders.
    • Oh, and speaking of Mamoru-kun ni Megami no Shukufuku wo, Kanokon goes under the same vein.
  • Kaoru of Nana to Kaoru is really short and skinny, while Nana is a statuesque brunette who's two/three inches taller. One chapter shows he has to stand on tiptoe to whisper into her ear.
  • From Katanagatari we have Chouchou, who is roughly the size of a child and Oshidori, who is the tallest female character.
  • In Soul Eater, Tsubaki is noticeably taller than her meister Black Star, and both Thompson sisters are taller than Death the Kid. The girls are also quite a bit older.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh, we have Tea, who is somewhat tall, and Yugi, who is pretty much a midget. In the Pool Episode, Joey realizes how odd a ship of them would be.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Napoleon (who is indeed The Napoleon) is divorced, and his ex-wife is seen only briefly in shadow during a flashback, but that alone shows she's much taller than he is.
  • Pietro's parents in Popolocrois. Doubles as Interspecies Romance, since his Hot Mom is a dragon.
  • Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho is significantly smaller than his prospective Love Interest Mukuro with whom the BST is very present.
  • Eyeshield 21: Sena's Not Love Interest Mamori is three inches taller then him.
  • Makken and Leyte in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
  • Mizuki and Akira from Ai Ore Love Me.
  • Yui and Kei from Houou Gakuen Misoragumi.
  • Koichi and Yukako from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
  • More-or-less every straight Edward Elric pairing is this in Fullmetal Alchemist. For most of the manga he's 4'11 - 5'2, though he outgrows it.
  • Luchino from Baccano! is a smallish teenage boy. Aging, on the other hand, stands well over two meters and is described as having a build like Michelangelo's David, but with breasts and 50% more muscle. Luchino barely reaches up to her chest.
  • Steel Angel Kurumi and the 12-year old protagonist Nakahito.
  • The protagonists of Houkago Play's first volume.

Comic Books

  • DC Comics:
    • Scott Free and Big Barda. Awww, so cute.
    • Also with Scott Free's Manager Oberon and Fire.
    • Post-Zero Hour Legion of Super-Heroes had Monstress and Element Lad, which might also count as Beast and Beauty except for the fact that Monstress doesn't have a "Beast" personality.
    • Nightwing and Starfire of Titans fame. He's only short relative to other superheroes, but she is almost two meters tall. More, counting her hair.
      • They stay like this even in the animated version, where she's somewhat shorter and has normal hair.
    • Sizeshifters Giganta and The Atom (Ryan Choi) used to be an item. Even with both at normal size, she has several inches on him.
    • Similarly, Andromeda and Brainiac 5 of Legion of Super-Heroes.
  • Marvel Comics
    • From the Alpha Flight series, the towering Diamond Lil and average-height Madison Jeffries.
    • Also from Alpha Flight, when Heather Hudson briefly dated Puck, a dwarf.
    • Technically, when Ant-Man shrinks down to use his Power Perversion Potential.
    • She Hulk and Wyatt Wingfoot, when they were dating. Note that Wyatt Wingfoot is actually a pretty large fellow (he's taller than say, Reed Richards or Johnny Storm). Really, she has ended up being taller than every man she dated seriously.
    • Wolverine and almost any woman he dates.
  • Harvey Comics
    • Long-running character Little Lotta, a large Big Eater with near super strength, has Gerald, a stereotypical puny bookworm, for a guy pal.
  • Avatar Comics
    • Christos Gage's Absolution has Alpha, a female Brick, well over six feet tall and happily married to a non-metahuman man of considerably more average proportions.


Fan Works


Film

  • Roger and Jessica Rabbit. He doesn't reach her waist.
    • To be fair though, her legs are pretty long
    • That, and Roger's a rabbit.
    • Also, Dolores and Eddie Valiant. Far from as drastic and so much less noticable, but still she has several inches on him.
  • In Monsters vs. Aliens, Susan was 50 feet tall when she was engaged to her fiancé.
  • Being the titular 50-foot woman, Nancy Archer towers over her husband, Harry.
  • From Monsters, Inc., Mike Wazowski and his girfriend Celia Mae. She's roughly the height of a human adult, whereas he's basically a basketball-sized eyeball on legs.
  • Julie and Julia: Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and her sister (Jane Lynch) are both about 6'2" (in The Fifties, where the average man ls around 5'8") and both fall for guys who are a head shorter, despite Julia's attempt at setting her sister up with a guy who's taller ("What's he like?" "He's... tall"). Based on Real Life.
  • Avatar. Its only actually seen once but Jake is considerably shorter than his 9 foot tall eventual spouse Neytiri, though in all but one scene, he interacts with her through his equally tall Avatar which he eventually permanently uploads into.
  • Jason Melon and his squeeze Valerie from Back to School. She's about three inches taller than average and he's about three inches shorter than average; he practically needed to stand on his toes to kiss her.
  • Donkey and the Dragon from Shrek
  • Lux and Nim in Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of The Dragon God. They're not exactly an item, per se, but they do get several instances of Ship Teasing.
  • Ella Enchanted has Slannen the elf falling in love with Brumhilda the giant.
  • Seymour and Audrey, from Little Shop of Horrors.
  • Referenced in Ocean's Eleven, in which Saul objects to Tess being Benedict's girlfriend on the grounds that she's too tall for him. Presumably Saul finds this trope disagreeable.
  • Long Duk Dong and Marlene in Sixteen Candles.
  • Kurd and Big Girl in Take the Lead.
  • Norbit
  • Mr. and Mrs. Turnblad in Hairspray. Admittedly, the mother is played by a man in drag, but it's played straight in both movies and the theatre adaptation.
  • Oliver and Company has Tito the chihuahua and Georgette the poodle, though it's mostly an unrequited crush from Tito to Georgette until the end. At which point Tito wants to get away from Georgette.
  • Hyacinth Hippo and Ben Ali Gator on the "Dance of the Hours" segment of Fantasia.
  • Ted and Audrey from The Lorax.
  • The short gaunt Kyle and amazonian BBW Rhonda in Road Trip.
  • In the opening sequence of The Triplets of Belleville, the audience consists entirely of tiny men and their enormous wives.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood in Matilda.


Literature

  • Hagrid's parents are a normal-sized wizard and a giant woman. How, you ask? A Wizard Did It!
  • Miles Vorkosigan and... okay, the only adult woman in his life that was not at least One Head Taller than his own four-foot-ten-on-a-good-day (147 cm) height was more interested in his foster brother than him. The two most notable examples are his first crush Elena Bothari (around 5'10" (178 cm)) and the experimental Super Soldier he rescued and named Taura (around 8' (2.4m)). Speaking of Taura, in the short story Winterfair Gifts a member of House Vorkosigan's personal guard (Armsman Roic, a rather tall and powerfully built fellow by ordinary standards) has an epiphany after coming face to bustline with her and nearly dislocating his arm helping with her luggage when she arrived to attend Miles' wedding.

This must be what it's like for M'lord... all the time.

  • Discworld's rather skinny Vimes and his not quite obese but extremely well-built wife Lady Sybil.
    • Also, in Thud!, pipsqueak Nobby Nobbs dates six-foot stripper Tawneee.
    • In the Discworld, we meet greengrocer Arthur Winkling and his wife, a man suffering from late-onset vampirism who is a Henpecked Husband to his domineering human wife, who expressly forbids him from doing all that business with flighty young women in underwired nightdresses who are no better than they should be. A subversion and a Shout-Out to Gomez and Morticia Addams.
  • From Honor Harrington:
    • Honor is 6'2" (188 cm) and Paul Tankersley was about 5'6" (168 cm), but powerfully built. He spent a lot of time teasing her and giving her sexually laden grief about it before he had a bridge dropped on him. Later she got a more equal match, as Hamish Alexander is about the same height.
    • Anton Zilwicki and Cathy Montaigne just keeps the proportion. He is about 5'6" (168 cm) tall and just as broad, she's about 6' (183m) tall and extremely lanky.
  • Holly Short and Artemis Fowl. He's a human child of just below average height, she's a metre-tall elf, making her slightly shorter than him but she's visibly muscular and he's a scrawny academic. And in the sixth book she kisses him, and briefly considers becoming involved with him, but ... it's complicated. Of course, when (if?) he becomes an adult human, he should become much taller than her.
  • The Garrett, P.I. novels' Amazonian Winger and "the Remora", her shrimp of a boyfriend/biographer.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood of Matilda: Mr. Wormwood is illustrated as very thin while Mrs. Wormwood is at least twice his size (but the same height).
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Jaime's aunt Genna, who is huge in every way, and her husband Emmon Frey, a little wisp of a man.
  • The children's book Tiny and Mister Bigman, Tiny is the definition of Hot Amazon, 6'5" strong as an ox Jamaican woman with a voice like a hurricane that unintentionally frightens all the men on the island and Mister Bigman is a 5'4" scrawny almost deaf white man on vacation from somewhere. They fall in love almost the moment they meet.
  • In John Crowley's Little, Big, Smoky Barnable, height unspecified but described as short, marries Daily Alice Drinkwater (over 6 feet). Toward the end of the story, though, the size disparity becomes ... much larger.
  • In Sewer Gas and Electric, Harry Gant's mother is a tall, husky construction forewoman, while his father is a short, rather frail history buff.
  • Sera Vorder and Francis Love Skelbrooke from Goblin Moon and The Gnome's Engine. She's so tall and sturdy that she's embarassed about it, he's petite due to faerie blood and (deceptively) delicate-looking.
  • The Myth Adventures books imply that Aahz and Tananda had a fling in the past. Tananda is tall enough to have subjected Skeeve to Marshmallow Hell in the graphic novel of Another Fine Myth, and Aahz is shorter than Skeeve.
  • In the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures book Vanishing Point, Fitz's Girl of the Week is at least 6'6" (and extremely Moe—she has an odd, asymmetrical face and badly mismatched legs that give her a limp, and is extremely sheltered thanks to a benevolent variant of Madwoman in the Attic). It's never quite clear how tall he is, and he sometimes seems to feel he's egregiously tall, but in this book he's implied to be shorter than the 5'8" Doctor. They're both skinny, though.
  • Physically, Henry and Eva Wilt also fit the Tiny Guy, Huge Girl trope: in line with author Tom Sharpe's female leads, Eva is an Earth Mother, a very much larger-than-life woman who does everything to excess, including motherhood - she is mother to quad girls, also to Henry's discomfort. And they all take after Mum...
  • Anonymous Rex - Vincent, a velociraptor, is naturally much smaller than his friend and colleague, Glenda, a hadrosaur. At one point, Vincent steps onto Glenda's shoulders to reach a high drainpipe, noting that he felt "like a young son sitting on his mother's shoulders to watch a parade."

Live Action TV

  • Survivor: Gabon: Ken is the shortest, skinniest guy on the show, while his chief ally, Crystal, stands 6'3" (191 cm) tall.
  • NCIS: When Abby dates a fellow scientist who is a little person. Abby being Abby, there's no indication she even notices his height until he dumps her for being too tall (an unfortunate development due to the death of the actor).
  • On The Addams Family, Morticia is way taller than Gomez.
  • That '70s Show has two couples like this: Eric and Donna (who are also a subversion: they're actually about the same height, but Donna is way stronger), then Fez and Big Rhonda.
    • In a What If episode, Eric's Guardian Angel(played by Wayne Knight) shows Eric what his future would be like if he had never dated Donna. In said future, he actually ends up marrying Big Rhonda whose gotten a lot bigger, more homely and quite abusive.
  • Firefly: Through the use of camera angles, Wash is portrayed as being a few inches shorter than his wife Zoe. On the DVD commentaries people actually express surpirse at how this comes out, since in real life Alan Tudyk (Wash) is a few inches taller than Gina Torres (Zoe), and there was never anything blatant like standing on a box to change the height for the screen.
  • C.J. Cregg (played by the ridiculously tall Allison Janney) and Danny Concannon (who's just about normal height) on The West Wing. Lampshaded with C.J. and her Temporary Love Interest Agent Simon Donovan (played by Mark Harmon) when C.J. remarks that she really likes how tall Donovan is because "it makes [her] feel more feminine."
  • Invoked on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, with Wayne Brady, shortest of the players but highly agile, singing to... a female bodybuilder. They're actually about the same height, and she IS wearing heels but... she's a BODYBUILDER.
    • In another episode, during a playing of Greatest Hits about Xena: Warrior Princess, Wayne and Chip Esten have to sing a song called "Huge Women, Puny Men."
  • Played straight on Hannah Montana, when Miley ends up on a date with Oliver's friend Connor, who is noticeably shorter.
  • For a short time there on The Wonder Years, thanks to the vagaries of puberty, Winnie was significantly taller than Kevin.
  • Charlie and Amita in Numb3rs.
  • In L.A. Law Stuart Markowitz and Ann Kelsey became a couple and eventually got married. Stuart was short and chubby, while she was much taller. This could also be added to real life examples since the actors were married in real life.
  • Get Smart tried to avert this: In close-up shots, Barbara Feldon always had to scrunch down to avoid towering over Don Adams. It couldn't be avoided in wide shots.
  • Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy exaggerate the trope by playing on her temper (made scarier by her size) and his meekness (made funnier by his size).
  • Davy and the beautiful, tall laundromat owner in The Monkees episode "Monkees Get Out More Dirt".
  • In Working Class, Carli (played by Melissa Peterman, 5'10") gets an internet date (played by David Faustino, 5'3") to go to her boss's housewarming party with her. Numerous height jokes ensue.
  • Gaius Baltar and Six in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Reimagined - Tricia Helfer is several inches taller than James Callis, and it doesn't hurt that she often wears heels.


Music

  • Ragtime-era songs like "Can You Tame Wild Wimmen" (Sterling/Von Tilzer, 1918) tend to feature little guys terrified of their huge girlfriends/wives — who, in classic slapstick tradition, usually use rolling pins as weapons.
  • The 1930s song "Everyone Has Sex Appeal for Someone" by Ronald Frankau contains the lines: "There's the little chap who married someone statuesque and grand / He's worn himself to ribbons, at least I understand / Through climbing up to kiss her and sliding back to land / so she must have had some sex appeal for him."
  • In the animation in the video for "Fritz, Fritz, Love My Tits"


Mythology

  • An American Indian (possibly Navajo) legend features a giant who meets a human man and wants to try wife-swapping. The human woman is killed while the human man is dissolved.


Pro Wrestling

  • Somewhat with former Intergendered Tagteam/Power Couple Glamarella. Although not taller, Beth Phoenix is clearly more muscular (and more dangerous) than her partner/boyfriend Santino Marella. The irony goes on as Beth's real live husband All Knighters' Joey Knight is ALSO less muscular than she is.
    • Actually Beth denied ever being married despite the speculation. There hasn't been much word from Joey Knight, so...
      • She is curently divorced from Joey Knight, and is dating CM Punk. Who, even though is very fit, ALSO doesnt have biceps as big as hers...


Theater

  • The all-male comedy ballet troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo makes a point of casting a huge guy in the lead female role and a tiny guy in the lead male role in Swan Lake, just for the comic effect it gives to some of the traditional ballet moves.


Video Games

  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Peach is visibly (at least) a head taller than Mario, even with a Super Mushroom, mostly because Mario is shorter than average. Perhaps one of the most famous examples in all media aside from Boris and Natasha. But this is somewhat a played with trope in this case since in overall size, Mario is much bigger due to his stocky build and strong enough to throw heavy objects and enemies with ease, while Peach is slim, dainty, and feminine. However, it's still this trope at the core since anytime they're together, she puts her arm around him and when they kiss, she bends down to kiss her heroic plumber.
    • Sometimes with his brother Luigi, he alternates between being her size or shorter.
    • Oh, and the page picture is of Mario kissing Peach. Imagine where Mario's face would be if he had not been standing on those books.
    • Sometimes they like to exaggerate their size difference.
    • Princess Daisy is more or less the same height as Peach. Rosalina on the other hand, is much taller (she is approximately the same height as Waluigi). Even more so with Rosalina, who was seen as a giant at the end of both Galaxy games, and the Mario Kart series games classes her as a heavyweight despite her slender Princess Classic type delicate build.
  • In Metal Combat (the sequel to Battle Clash), the alien Zephyr has a huge and hideous wife named Pamela who is a good deal taller and wider then him. Even her mech is huge!
  • Shoma and Natsu from Rival Schools, though both have trouble expressing those feelings and spend their time arguing with each other instead.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog and Princess Elise from |Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), though any semblance of a romantic relationship is primarily one-sided on Elise's part.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • The Blazing Sword: Ninian and either Hawkeye (platonic) or Eliwood (romantic), as she's a literal dragon (okay, half-dragon). It only happens once, however, and involuntarily at that.
      • Also, Ninian (and Nils)'s parents. The mom was Aenir, a dragon woman; the dad was... Nergal, then a normal shuman shaman, and later the Archnemesis Dad.
    • The Sword of Seals: Fa and almost any male, but specially Elphin and Roy. Again, when she's in Dragon form.
    • The Sacred Stones: Myrrh and either Saleh or Ephraim when she's in her real Dragon form. If she's not, she's the Token Mini-Moe instead.
  • Warcraft:
    • Handsome stag/centaur Zaetar had relations with the four armed, three faced, giant stoney Cosmic Horror that is Princess Theradras. This also counts as an inversion of Ugly Guy, Hot Wife.
    • Alexstrasza and Korialstrasz/Krasus. Although they're pretty close in height in humanoid form (him being about a head taller), in dragon form she's at least twice his size.
    • The Wobblesprockets: Marvin, a gnome, and Tamara, a human.
  • Taupy from Sands of Destruction is a midget bearfolk who looks like an adorable pirate teddy bear. His wife Muffy also looks like a teddy bear, but is nearly two stories tall and gets summoned to throw her husband at the enemy for his Limit Break.
  • The entire Zuul species from Sword of the Stars. The top end of average height for male Zuul is 25 cm shorter than the bottom end of average height for female Zuul, and the difference in weight is even greater.
    • Also, the Morrigi, as the males are small eastern dragon creatures with psychic glamour and the ladies are huge western dragons with the ability to terrorize foes with their version of psychic powers.
  • In Dragon Age, romancing Leliana or Morrigan with a dwarf. Though in the romance scenes, the dwarf is taller.
    • Dragons in this setting also follow this. Male dragons are wingless and grow to be about the size of a large drafthorse. Females will eventually become massive High Dragons.
    • A female PC romancing Zevran also accounts, seeing as elves are shorter than humans. Even in the sequel, where elves are generally taller, Fenris seems smaller than a female Hawke (and Isabela, his potential sex-buddy), perhaps because he's both skinny and slouches a lot.
  • An odd example between Daxter and Tess, considering that Daxter's not human. Although he used to be. Creative wish-granting on behalf of some Sufficiently Advanced Precursors evened things out, though.
  • Torahime and Kisuke from Muramasa, though this might just be because of the art style, since human enemies can be absolutely enormous for no reason. Kisuke is tiny no matter what, though. Raijin and Fujin even moreso.
  • The Love Interest of Alundra 2, Princess Alexei is 2 times the height of the main character, Flint. She’s standing on a lower elevation in the kiss scene at the game’s end.
  • Nehema and Zee Tee in the good ending of Eversion
  • Ratchet is shorter than each of his Girls of the Week (by variable amounts: maybe an inch or two shorter than Sasha, One Head Shorter than Talwyn, and at least a foot shorter than Angela) -- This has less to do with Interspecies Romance than it does with Ratchet being just plain short. Additionally Dr. Nefarious gets into a fling with the utterly massive Cassiopeia.
  • While most of the Princesses in Little King's Story are taller then Corobo, two take it to ridiculous extrtemes. The Busty Princess Ferne is as tall as 4 Corobos. The obese Princess Spumoni is simply just far, far wider and taller then the poor little King.
  • The protagonist of Menace Beach and his girlfriend.
  • Ayla and Kino in Chrono Trigger. Ayla is over six feet tall, ridiculously strong to the point of outperforming even advanced robots, and towers over basically everybody except Robo (who is a lot taller and larger than he looks in-game in official art). Kino is about the same height as Marle (second shortest character after Frog), not to mention a complete wimp.
  • The wood elves in The Elder Scrolls.
    • Seeing as Skyrim introduced romance options, you can now have this, mostly if you player as a taller race (especially a female High Elf) and marry someone from a smaller race (such as a Breton).
  • The Harvest Goddess in Harvest Moon animal parade towers over the protagonist. In Harvest Moon Island of Happiness, the extremly short chef Pierre is able to be married by female players.
  • From Ar Tonelico 3: Knell of Ar Ciel, there's the diminutive scientist Katene and Mute, who towers over him in terms of both height and muscularity... well, most of the time, anyway. They're embarassingly and hillariously lovey-dovey together.
  • Nythera's parents in Dragon Fable. Her father is a human wizard and her mother is a dragon.
  • Flonne at 5'2" from the Disgaea series towers above the 4'3" Laharl, according to the supplementary artbook; Etna is also about five inches taller than him. This doesn't really come across in the game proper very well, because almost all the cutscene portraits and character sprites are the same size. Some official art does show this though.
  • Fable. In the second game investing in Strength will give you muscles, while investing in Skill gives you height, meaning than a female character can potentially end up much taller and more burly than a husband. There is also a far bit of fan art with Hammer and Garth that strongly features this trope. In the third game, the Princess is taller than almost everyone else from the outset, possibly because of her Heroic bloodlines).
  • Dragon's Dogma. Due to the the game's main feature of Pawns (you create a main Pawn to be your constant battle partner/follower) you can create a tall/muscular/plump woman as your main character, and then make a short/skinny man as your main Pawn (or vice versa).


Webcomics

He better start carrying a footstool around.

  • Wapsi Square has Owen and Lakshmi.
  • The eponymous Hot Amazon Of The Challenges of Zona makes her reasonably normal-sized boyfriend Mentl look like a freaky little midget by comparison.
  • Ruby's World has Jiro ( 6'2" ) and Ruby ( 9'1" ).
  • In Order of the Stick, 3'2" halfling Belkar has sex with normal-sized human Jenny, and neither seems at all bothered by the size difference.
  • The hyenas in Digger are all like this; hyena females are bigger and more aggressive than the males, like their Real Life counterparts. Most noticeable during Ed's backstory.
  • In Law of Purple you have Memphis, who is a notably short human man, paired up with Sabre, the much taller than him Caligulan elf chick.
  • Jeff Nobelium and his wife. Word of God is that Mrs. Nobelium is about three Terbiums...and Terbium himself is worth around two or three Jeffs.
  • Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The beautiful wonan whom they both once dated at Subway is double their height and doesn't even completely fit into the panel size (intentionally of course).
  • In webcomic The Meek, Luca is a Napoleon with Stout Strength, while his wife Phe is fairly tall woman. Guessing from the art, his forehead is about level with her nose.


Western Animation

  • Whenever Brian from Family Guy dates a woman, expect this trope to happens. Justified due to Brian being a dog.
  • Aang is shorter than Katara. However, Katara is 2 years older than he is (kinda sorta), and by the end of the series they're about the same height.
  • In Darkwing Duck, the main character is significantly shorter than his girlfriend Morgana Macawber.
  • On The Fairly Oddparents, Trixie is the tallest of the kids, invoking this trope with Timmy or whoever else you want to ship her with.
  • Betty and Barney Rubble
  • Futurama features the short, dumpy Hermes Conrad, and his statuesque, nearly-Amazonian wife LaBarbara.
  • One DCAU episode featured Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, and another had the previously mentioned Scott Free and Big Barda.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures has one episode where Jade becomes really big and it is Tohru who looks small to her.
  • ReBoot: Princess Bula and Specky, but the contrast is jarring: he's as tall as her leg!
  • Danny Phantom: Skulker and Ember as Ember is really the huge one; Skulker's real form is a tiny green ghost, but he uses a Monster Suit, thus they appear to be Huge Guy, Tiny Girl.
  • Beast Machines in the case of Obsidian and Strika, and also Rattrap and Botanica.
  • Animaniacs:
    • We occasionally see Dr. Scratchansniff with his girlfriend, who is much taller and at least three times his weight.
    • For a more extreme example, there's Pinky and Pharfignewton - he's a mouse, she's a horse.
  • Sierra from Total Drama World Tour is the tallest female contestant and has a Fan Girl crush on Cody, the shortest male contestant.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle: Boris and Natasha. One of the most famous examples in all media along with Mario and Princess Peach.
  • The Scotsman and his wife from Samurai Jack. It's not that the Scotsman is tiny - in fact he's big, ugly, and strong - it's just that his wife is bigger, uglier, and far stronger!
  • Tutenstein: Tut himself and Cleo Carter. Like Aang and Katara, it's because Cleo is two years older (again, kinda sorta), not to mention Tut is a shriveled mummy.
  • The Disney's Alice in Wonderland has the King and Queen of Hearts. The Queen of Hearts is a huge, overbearing figure. The King of Hearts is miniscule in comparison. It is lampshaded in the introductions:

White Rabbit: Her imperial highness, he... her grace, her excellency, her royal majesty, the Queen of Hearts!
Crowd: (wild cheers)
The King: (clears his throat expectantly)
White Rabbit: And the King.
Random voice: Hooray!

  • Riff Raff and his girlfriend Cleo from Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats.
  • Lucius Heinous VII and Jez from Jimmy Two-Shoes.
  • In The Angry Beavers, the twist of episode 12 is that the legendary giant river fish, Old Gramps, turns out be a shrivelled old fish who is maybe half the size of the beavers. The legends are actually due to his wife, Old Grams, who is big enough to swallow the beavers' dam whole.
  • In Toy Story Buzz is noticeably shorter then Jessie. It helps that they're both toys from different times and companies.
  • Kids Next Door, with Numbuh 3/Kuki Sanban and Numbuh 4/Wally Beatles, while Kuki is actually the youngest Operative in Sector V, Wally is the shortest, being around a head shorter than Kuki.
  • Ernie Potts, the diminutive demolitions man from Hey Arnold!, gets involved with his crush - a tall, full-figured (a.k.a. "Large and Lovely") model named Lola.
  • American Dragon: Jake Long: Jake and Rose.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Brinks from Angela Anaconda
  • Most of Rocko's Love Interests and dates from Rocko's Modern Life, with the exception of Claudette (also a wallaby). In fact, the most we ever see of Rocko's primary crush Melba is her legs.
  • Eek! The Cat: Eek and Annabelle fit this trope to a tee. She's an obese pink southern belle of a cat who's as tall as a human (in fact, her owner is only heard once as The Voice welcoming her to her new home when she's let out of her cat carrier). In fact, a running gag is others telling him that his girlfriend is fat, but he doesn't see it; to him, she's a beautiful goddess.
  • In the Harley Quinn cartoon, Dr. Psycho - a Depraved Dwarf - seems to have a fetish of sorts involving women much larger than he is. He brainwashed Giganta into marrying him and even sired a son before the brainwashing wore off and she left him. (Poison Ivy asks him in one episode how it was even possible.) In a later episode, Poison Ivy drinks some forumula that makes her grow to giant size, and Psycho quickly starts gawking at her.

Real Life

  • This is, as you might expect, Fetish Fuel for some people. This is not related to (but still can cross over with) giantism related fetishes. Even if the girl's not bigger, many of these guys like it when a girl can kick their butts.
    • There's also an interesting variation. Some men and women like to have ONLY the height and things related to height (such as who puts their arm around who) defy stereotypes and gender roles while preserving traditional dimorphism aspects otherwise, such as a 6'0" 260 lb strongman and martial arts type guy with a 6'3" 160 lb woman. It's almost like a Double Subversion in a way.
  • Sophie Dahl and Jamie Cullum.
  • Tom Cruise and either Nicole Kidman or Katie Holmes. Both are taller than he is. Of course, being taller than Tom Cruise isn't exactly that impressive, but still.

Well I can wear heels now!

  • Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
  • Frequently happens in middle schools, because girls start puberty earlier on average, while most boys haven't.
  • Dennis Kucinich is only 5'7 (practically a midget for a politician), while his wife is 6'. She's also 31 years younger, for good measure.
    • In Europe apparently they don't care as much. Silvio Berlusconi (Prime Minister of Italy), Nicholas Sarkozy (President of France), Dimitry Medelev (President of the Russian Federation) and Vladimir Putin (Prime Minister of the Russian Federation) are around 5'4"/5'5". For Sarkozy his height is a Berserk Button.
  • While the female anglerfish is the one that typifies the species in terms of size and appearance, the male is a shrimp of a fish less than one-tenth of her size that ends up fusing with the female to become a mere sperm-producing appendage.
    • Truth in Television for most arthropods, reptiles, and birds. However, for mammals, it's reversed, so we're a weird exception to the rule.
    • There are really two rules in operation here. For most animals, where mating is a simple matter, females will be larger because they have to put more energy into maternal things. Eggs require more energy to produce than sperm, need more space to store, etc. If the animal takes care of young, that is easier with a larger size, etc. Males simply have less need to be large. For animals where males compete over access to females (which includes most mammals), then males tend to be larger because it is the larger males that dominate the matings, thus encouraging growth beyond what is strictly necessary for the survival of the species. There are a few weird exceptions out there, though. For instance, some males compete more through agility than strength, and may well become hyper-small...
      • Despite having usual "harem" mating systems, female rabbits and capybaras tend to be somewhat larger than the males.
      • Cuttlefish are apparently subject to both rules. Typically the menfolk will compete with one another in feats of pure testosterone-fuelled manliness, but a smaller male will often disguise himself as one of the ladies by tucking his tentacles and sneaking right past the larger, more aggressive manly men to mate with the female they were trying to impress. Apparently cuttlefish women like their men feminine, because the cross-dressing tactic is actually as successful as posturing if not more so.
  • Tim Roth is definitely shorter than his wife (he's 5'7)
  • Martin Scorsese (5'3") and ex-wife Isabella Rossellini (5'8").
  • Maggie Gyllenhaal (5'9") and her, uh, guy, Peter Sarsgaard (5'6").
  • Harlan Ellison, a rather short man, was rumoured to "go around with gigantic showgirl types" before meeting and marrying his wife, who was closer to his height.
  • Christine Fox, the real-life model for Kelly MacGillis' character in TopGun. is over 6 feet tall and is married to a much shorter man.
  • There are many non-human examples, including most birds of prey and many snakes; a female python or viper is usually longer and heavier than a male of the same species.
  • Sonny and Cher
  • Limbless Nick Vujicic married her fiancé, Kanae Miyahara on February 10!
  1. ↑ Andrah, in fact, is based off an ex-girlfriend of Morrison's, an amateur female bodybuilder who was approximately 6'2", 200lbs.
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