PT Palpatine's appearance

Agreed 100%. I've assumed that he was hiding his yellow eyes since 1999.

 

I'm continually bothered that he looks so much older in ROTS than ROTJ. I'm more inclined to believe he, oh I don't know, AGED between the trilogies.

 

How does he look older in ROTS than ROTJ? I'd say he looks like he lost a few pounds, but still aged definitely

 

In the DVD version of ESB, Palpatine looks the same as he does in ROTS. I believe this indicates that canonically, Palpatine's appearance never changed after the events of ROTS.

 

I just figured George just didn't care about too much continuity to match his appearance with that of ROTJ he figured "hey look it's Ian Mcdiarmid as Palpatine like you've always wanted instead of that lady with the monkey eyes"

 

I noticed that too. Palpatine does look older in AOTC. I'm certain it's just mistakes made with the makeup and such, but as for an in-universe explanation, non can say. Maybe he started feeling self conscious and started using anti-aging creams? XD

 

Rick McCallum said that it's his true appearance brought out with the lightning. I recall having read something that GL indicated it was damage done by the lightning being magnified by the lightsaber. It's almost sort of like the Plagueis and Anakin midichlorian thing... you can decide for yourself. I tend to prefer the lightning magnification idea.

I think the difference between AOTC and ROTS is simply that they altered course from what was likely supposed to happen. Palpatine looks older in AOTC since he was being migrated to his ROTJ look. When it came down to it, they decided to scrap that idea and go with a dramatic change instead. While not a necessary change, I think it adds more dramatic effect (and possibly makes Palpatine seem more evil) than if he basically looked as he did in AOTC while he fought Yoda.

Yeah... I chalk it up to the possibility that perhaps they tried getting the Sidious makeup as close to ROTJ as possible, but for obvious reasons, they probably weren't able to match it 100%.

 

It's nice to have some mystery. Was his disfigurement the result of Sith lightning or his true face at that time? Why does he appear older in Clones than in Sith? It's fun to speculate. Perhaps he still IS as ancient as he was meant to be during the making of Jedi. The Darth Plagueis novel presents a version of his history where's he's not ancient, but that is a part of Legends and is only one possibility.