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The Trash Man’s Mystery Height (Aka: The Height Ref) ((AKA Aka: Too Much Time On My Hands))

TAGS BECAUSE I’M PROUD AND WANT PEOPLE TO SEE THIS: @wrathwritesthings @themissimmortal @hypaalicious @louisvuittontrashbags

SO, this question has always bugged me? Is Ardyn tall or short? Or a nice inbetween? Now in actuality it’s never been a doubt in my mind that Ardyn is at least six feet, but that still begs the question, how many inches do I need to shave off or add? Welp, let’s take a look, shall we?

(HERE GOES MY ATTEMPT AT BEING DEDUCTIVE.)

I would like to introduce you to height template number one of this little journey, this is the official heights of all four main men in FFXV, down to the Centimeters, I also added a pixel wide bar to show from Prompto to Gladio just how much shorter Prom is than Gladdy, which frankly surprised me, I honestly expected there to be a bigger height difference than that, what with how much of a behemoth Gladio is, and yet Prom comes up to just below Gladios jawline.

Now that you have some perspective on how short (or not short) our sweet muffin turns out to be, lets take a look at some screenshots I got while meticulously searching through letsplays and speedruns of the game, starting with: Episode Prompto.

Soooooo.... correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s a big fucking height gap right there, isn’t it?

Here, lets’s take a little measurement:

Return of the angry red measurement line: The tip of Proms beanie manages to reach the weird frilly bit on his seven billion layers of clothing. Things to take into consideration: Prom is leaning forward, Ardyn is mid movement, Ardyn has his head tilted down to look condescendingly at Prompto. In general it’s a good gist of their respective heights but there are things to consider before making it the Magnum Opus on his height.

Blue is where the tip of the beanie starts, red is where I think I can’t stress enough I only THINK his head would start, give or take a few pixels in width, Ardyn is tilted to the side and in this image the red bar is below his jawline, they aren’t moving as much but they also aren’t facing each other, something to (again) take into account.

Now for the great pain: We all know that Prom is the shortest, so what’s above is almost moot in finding out specifically how tall this guy is, therefore I’ll move to the next extreme, the tallest guy we know. Gladio.

Fair warning; some of these pics are very blurry because I was going through and finding individual frames that I thought looked best for this. Almost all of these are at weird angles and just in general kinda bad.

Lets start with this one here, in Galdin Quay:

Gladio is VERY close to the camera (for example, Prompto’s (who is next to him in this scene) head alone takes up the entire screen for a moment), and yet Ardyn still manages to keep up height next to him, but this is a bad angle and can make everyone look way taller or shorter than they really are, lets move on:

This is the next frame after Ardyn walks past them, it’s the closest I could get Ardyn next to Gladio and the guys, and as I said before: He holds his height against Gladio. And an argument could be made But he’s wearing large boots! Yes, I’ll give you that, but I counter with this: Gladio, the man who frequently gets into battles, who loves to go camping and hiking, prooooooobably isn’t wearing flip-flops, so the height difference there is so slight it’s pointless.

Let’s move on: The Lestallum Scene!

Here’s the only good frame I could get of Cutscene!Ardyn next to Gladio, and personally: I think it says a lot: They’re pretty close to each other, Gladio’s posture is mostly straight whereas Ardyn is bent in a funky way toward Prom and Noct (who look about as big as children here) and yet... He’s still pretty damn tall next to Gladio. Once again boots/shoes are not going to be playing a part in this and a thick trench coat and hood is not gonna make him gain inches in height, or any height at all, really. 

So for the next and final big gripe: Cutscene models and live models’ heights have a tendency to differ WILDLY in this game, making incredibly tall people seem short and incredibly short people seem tall, I personally think that Cutscene body types should be regarded as the “real” character sizes, but for the sake of thoroughness, I got some while they’re walking around too:

This photo is meh, it catches a general feel for their height and it’s pretty amusing. This is Ardyn, he covers his face with his own name and doesn’t like standing. But yeah, he’s mid step and still about as tall as Gladio who hasn’t moved yet.

NEXT. The Big Kicker:

It’s blurry, but they’re right next to eachother. Ardyn is moving just slightly and is the exact same- if not taller- height than Gladio, he’s not a short dude.

And so, for my final height model, I present this:

The general height I think Ardyn is: one or two cm taller than Gladdy.

So how tall should I say he is???: I don’t know exactly. These are all eyeballing guesses at his height, he really could be a lot shorter than Gladio, or he could be a seven foot tall man-giant. It’s all up to you and your own preference, if big Daddy Gladdy is still the reigning Height King, then go Gladdy! If you think that Ardyn as become The Usurper of more than one throne, then daaaaamn congrats Ardyn you’re a big dude!

IN CONCLUSION: I hope this helps people trying to understand the stature of their beloved characters and trash man. Cya guys later! -Jo

((EDIT: Fucking tunglr posted this before I finished it so NOW it’s done.))