Question Shrinking my blender mesh character

So I realized too late that my character - made in blender - is way too big. I just need to know the best way to shrink him, without messing up his animations. It seems I can jus shrink the armature, which is the parent of all the other objects, and when I do this, the animations are still fine, but the second I apply scale, suddenly the feet get weird. I believe this is because I’m using an IK bone for the walking animations, and when I apply scale, the positions get messed up. Please help, is it not possible for me to apply scale in this situation?