History Main / ImmortalityBeginsAtTwenty

* Averted by [[ComicBook/ThePantheon Pantheon leader Agamemnon]]. Although he likes appearing to people in the holographic form of a very old man with a long white beard, his immortality kicked in when he was 16. Played straight with his descendants the Pantheon, who all had their immortality hit as young adults.

* Averted in Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatchSeries''. The [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual Others]] remain human until they undergo Initiation, involving their first trip into the [[AnotherDimension Twilight]], at which point they are able to tap into their magical potential. If they are of a mature age, their aging process is slowed down to a crawl. If they are children, they continue to age normally until maturity, at which point their age freezes (mostly). This applies even to [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]] and [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]] children. Inverted in the case of {{witch|Species}}es, who age to an "old hag" state in a mere decade, although all witches use spells to maintain a youthful appearance. This also applies to their ability to bear children. Once an Other witch is Initiated, she only has a few years to have children, before her body is no longer able to do that. There are potential Others who refuse to undergo Initiation and live out their lives normally (although both Watches agree to keep them and their loved ones perpetually healthy and off the list of vampire/werewolf hunting licenses).

* ''Manga/FlyMeToTheMoon'': [spoiler:Tsukasa has this thanks to her father forcing her to drink the immortality elixir he was meant to burn at the top of Mount Fuji on request of the Emperor (aka the real story behind the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter). As Tsukasa ''strongly'' clarifies, she isn't 1,400 years old, she's "been 16 1,400 times"]].

* ''Manga/FlyMeToTheMoon'': As explained in the final chapter, [[spoiler:Tsukasa has this thanks to her father forcing her to drink the immortality elixir he was meant to burn at the top of Mount Fuji on request of the Emperor (aka the real story behind the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter). As Tsukasa ''strongly'' clarifies, she isn't 1,400 years old, she's "been 16 1,400 times"]].

* ''Webcomic/{{Outsider}}'': Downplayed. Loroi live for about 400 years; they reach physical adulthood at around eight years of age, and don't enter decrepitude until very shortly before they die. Consequently, their lives consist of several centuries of physical health and outward youthfulness -- the only reliable way of telling old and young Loroi apart is that elders have longer noses and ear-tips -- capped by a short maturation at one end and a short period of failing health at the other.
* ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'':
** Rankers are people who have both climbed the tower high enough and mastered Shinsu enough they are completely immortal. Almost all of them look extremely young when in fact each and everyone of them is at least ''500'' years old, that being the average time it takes to become a Ranker in the first place.
** Anaak Jahad is an extremely short and child like [[LizardFolk lizard person]] who is in fact ''300'' hundred years old.
%%* ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'': Read [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/09/16/episode-330-dial-b-for-murder/ this page]]; the lower left panel is fairly creepy.%%Weblinks aren't examples.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Inverloch}}'', elves seem to age at the same rate as humans do up until they are fully mature, and then they stop aging. Except for the Severed, who are mortal and continue aging at the same rate as humans until they are cured.

* Genetic elites in ''Webcomic/TheCyantianChronicles'', though their age catches up to them quickly as they reach the end of their lifespan (ranging from 120 years in foxes to nearly a millennium in wolves).
** Also elite wolves don't reach their full height of about 7'6" for several decades, as Darius and his classmates are teenagers or mid-twenties they tend to be pretty short (~6 feet) by their species' standards.
* Very common with the long-lived races in ''Webcomic/DanAndMabsFurryAdventures'', pretty much every creature race that looks like beings effectively stops aging in their 20s.
** In the case of the Cubi their major abilities do not awaken until their early 20s, and as one of those abilities is shape-shifting they can look any age they wish for the rest of their lives.
** As demonstrated by Cyra herself [[http://missmab.com/Comics/Vol_1213.php here.]]
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'':
** Averted amongst elves, according to Vaarsuvius:
--->'''Haley''': I can't really see the downside of --\\
'''Vaarsuvius''': Twenty years in diapers.\\
'''Haley''': Oh.
** At one point, we meet a pair of elven children who are stated to be twenty-five years old. We're then told they're in kindergarten.
** In a side story, an elven ghost mentions children breastfeeding for seventeen years. The humans she's talking to are horrified.
* ''{{Webcomic/Homestuck}}'' gives us another long-lived example via FridgeLogic: higher-blooded trolls live much longer than lower-blooded ones with hundreds or even a thousand years difference between their expected lifespans, but all of the trolls we've seen so far appear to have aged at the same rate.
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'' has [[spoiler:Jones, who has existed since the Hadean eon (the formation of the Earth itself), and still appears to be a human woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She is not sure where she came from, what she is, or why she appears human at all, as it was obviously several billion years until she saw any creature that looked like herself]].
%%* Amical from ''{{Webcomic/morphE}}''.
* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', this holds true for elfs, the children of Immortals and humans. Adrian Raven, the son of Pandora, has been [[http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2439 stuck in his early twenties for multiple lifetimes]]. He also spent those lifetimes in his twenties thinking he was incapable of conceiving children, which causes some awkwardness when it's discovered that isn't true and two characters in the present day are [[spoiler:his distant descendant and his biological daughter]].
** The same also applies to immortals themselves. Even when they "reset" (which they need to do every couple of centuries to minimize SanitySlippage), their reset form will usually be physically and mentally a young adult. This even applies to immortals who reset improperly, and thus do not inherit any memories from previous incarnations.
* ''Webcomic/DragonSanctuary'' has this for half-elves, at least. For full blooded ones, they must spend 100 years aging before looking the equivalent of a twenty year old human.
* Toivo (and presumably Rosemary by extension) in ''Webcomic/IngressAdventuringCompany''. Toivo claims he's "almost 70" but looks like he's in his mid-twenties. Contrast to his human ex Aidan, who's the same age and looks it.

* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Zigzagged. Rukia and Renji are implied to grow from children to young adults in a roughly normal amount of time, but then don't age at all over the next fifty years. The epilogue, which takes place tens years after the series shows [[spoiler:their daughter]] who looks to be about eight or nine years old. On the other hand, Toshiro looks like he's twelve and doesn't age at all for over thirty years.

* Deconstructed in ''ComicBook/{{Shazam}}'' fanfiction ''Fanfic/HereThereBeMonsters''. Billy, Mary and Freddy all but stopped aging after becoming the Marvel Family fourteen years ago. Legally and mentally they are young adults who physically do not look one day older than fifteen. They are not happy about it, specially Mary and Freddy who want to get married.
-->The old wizard had told them all that, after receiving the Shazam powers, their aging processes would be slowed to a crawl. The three of them would be nearly immortal, to ensure that the Universe would have three guardians of their caliber for as long as possible.\\
The big drawback was that they stayed kids.\\
Shazam had admitted once that, if they wanted, he could remove that factor from them and they would age normally. But he had no idea how it would affect their powers in their other bodies. None of them had opted to age, as a result.\\
Mary and Freddy had been wanting to get serious for years. But they still looked like kids. It drove Mrs. Bromfield, Mary's foster mother, up the wall that Mary was still a young girl in appearance.
* ''Fanfic/TheReapingOfHatsuneMiku'' specifically averts this with the [[VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou Reaper's Game]]; you don't age in the Underground, full stop. [[Music/{{Vocaloid}} Ryuto]] looks like a little kid, but has been a Reaper for ten years; the next-youngest body, Una, has inherited a sushi restaurant just outside the purview of the Game.

* Played with in ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}''. Alucard was in his mid-forties when he died (just like the RealLife Dracula), but has the appearance of a man in his twenties [[ShapeShifterDefaultForm because he is powerful enough to assume pretty much any form he wants.]] When his full power is unlocked, he resumes his original appearance (complete with [[BadassMustache mustache]]), but quickly resumes his usual form (and later the form of a [[GenderBender fourteen-year old girl]]). The artificial vampirization process used by [[{{Ghostapo}} Millenium]] also restores their soldiers to a youthful state [[spoiler: most notably with Walter]].

* In the ''Literature/MercyThompson'' books, all werewolves look to be in their early or mid-twenties, no matter old they were when they were turned (either continuing to mature if they were children, or reverting to the appearance of youth if they were past their prime). The only naturally born werewolf stopped aging in his mid-twenties, as well. This is stated to be part of their healing and disease resistance magic.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Rankers in ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'' are people who have both climbed the tower high enough and mastered Shinsu enough they are completely immortal. Almost all of them look extremely young when in fact each and everyone of them is at least ''500'' years old, that being the average time it takes to become a Ranker in the first place.

* Read [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/09/16/episode-330-dial-b-for-murder/ this page]] from ''WebComic/EightBitTheater''; the lower left panel is fairly creepy.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'', fae age at 1/2 human rate and stop aging at around 60, thus making them the physical equivalent of a 30 year old human. A fae can wind up aging more than this due to a condition called mana deprivation if they go outside of the mana pool for too long, and if not treated quickly this condition can be terminal and eventually kill them, and even if it's corrected in time they can still look older than average.
* Averted and lampshaded in ''Webcomic/IrregularWebcomic'', when one of the characters in the ''Fantasy'' theme (Mordekai) asks the elf Alvissa why her race hadn't outbred everyone and overpopulated the world. Her answer: "Elven children breast feed for 30 years, teethe for 20 years, throw tantrums for about 100 years, and don't take to toilet training until they're about 200... Elves invented effective contraception before we could use fire."

* Martians in ''ComicBook/WarlordOfMars'' are very immortal, or at very least age slowly after reaching physical maturity. The female lead Dejah Thoris, is at least 400 years old by the time she meets John Carter, with the prequel series that she starred taking many centuries before their meeting, yet she is physically in her early twenties. A few exceptions exist with [[EvilOldFolks Issus]] and Tardos Mors, who clearly show signs of aging, but its possible that they are ''really that old''.

* Franchise/{{Wolverine}} of the ''ComicBook/XMen'' aged normally until sometime during his prime, when his aging slowed down significantly. Stories set a couple hundred years in the future often show him looking like a normal person would at 50 or 60.

* Averted by [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Pantheon leader Agamemnon]]. Although he likes appearing to people in the holographic form of a very old man with a long white beard, his immortality kicked in when he was 16. Played straight with his descendants the Pantheon, who all had their immortality hit as young adults.

* Averted by [[ComicBook/ThePantheon Pantheon leader Agamemnon]]. Although he likes appearing to people in the holographic form of a very old man with a long white beard, his immortality kicked in when he was 16. Played straight with his descendants the Pantheon, who all had their immortality hit as young adults.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Literature/GuardsGuards'', when it's mentioned that dwarfs live up to around 300 and only hit puberty around 55. The human Carrot's adopted dwarf parents find it hard to cope when he reaches young adulthood at what, to dwarfs, is "playgroup age".

* Played with in the film ''Film/InTime''. People are genetically engineered to stop aging at age 25, and continue to look the same until their time - which has become the new currency - runs out and they drop dead on the spot. At one point, Vincent Kartheiser's character introduces his wife, daughter and mother-in-law, all of whom look around the same age. It's also possible to kill yourself through, say, [[spoiler: alcohol poisoning]] even if you still have years left.

* Played straight in ''Literature/TheGuardiansOfTimeTrilogy''.

* ''Manga/YonaOfTheDawn'': When a young man drank the blood of the dragon and became the Ouryuu he became immortal and stopped aging at 17. Since [[spoiler: Zeno]] [[ObfuscatingStupidity behaves like a goofy kid]] and kind of looks like a hobo, Yona and her companions have a hard time believing he really is the 2000 year old dragon warrior.

** Played straight with the Krogan, who are considered battle-ready at a fairly young age and ''stay'' that way for at least a thousand years. They're also explosive breeders, which is why the turians and salarians resorted to the [[DepopulationBomb genophage.]]

* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' Aes Sedai use an Oath Rod (originally produced as a RestrainingBolt for criminal channelers) as part of their InitiationCeremony. As a side effect, it makes them "ageless" (essentially, wrinkle-free). It also cuts their lifespans in half, which they don't know until they meet wrinkled (though not ancient-looking) channelers who are over 400 years old. It also causes an UncannyValley effect in the eyes, since these apparently continue to age, even if the skin around them doesn't.

* * Ann Hodgman's ''Literature/MyBabysitterIsAVampire'': Naturally-born vampires age normally until they reach a certain point, which varies depending on the individual. Vincent Graver, the titular vampire babysitter, was sixteen when he stopped aging. Subverted with his younger brother Grebiv, who stopped aging when he was just ''three''.