Everyone Is Gay



"Master Eraqus: But don't you know, Terra? EVERYONE is gay in fanfiction!

Terra: NOOO! I hope I get shipped with Aqua..."

- A YouTube comment on Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep.

The tendency for Fanfic and other fan works to include characters that are homosexual/bisexual/pansexual in an improbably high amount, even if the original work contains no indication of such a thing. Works possessing a Cast Full of Pretty Boys or an Improbably-Female Cast are especially susceptible to this, as there's virtually no choice for shippers to avoid this route other than applying a Gender Bender or Rule 63, or adding in their own original character. Often considered a form of Canon Defilement and Character Derailment, although obviously those perpetuating it mostly disagree.

Het Is Ew can be the culprit, and unfortunately in these cases any remaining heterosexual characters often fare poorly, if not ending up suddenly evil or dead.

Compare and contrast Everyone Is Bi. If this occurs in official works and sanctioned adaptations, then it's a Cast Full of Gay.

Anime & Manga

 * Axis Powers Hetalia, thanks to there being only one major female character (who happens to be a Yaoi Fangirl) and the continual Ho Yay Ship Tease throughout. Although, the Word of Gay has only come down for one character.
 * Azumanga Daioh, with only two recurring male characters (a Dirty Old Man and a floating mythical cat thing).
 * Ranma One Half, mostly as a side-effect of Ranma being the Launcher of a Thousand Ships regardless of the gender of him/her or his/her partner.
 * Digimon Frontier for the same reasons as Azumanga Daioh. The Smurfette Principle is the name of the game.
 * Fushigi Yuugi. Not that the author seems particularly interested in discouraging this...
 * For a very similar situation, see Yu Yu Hakusho.
 * Get Backers. There are a few women, but they are often shrugged off as "Ban's sister", "Ban's surrogate mom", "too old & too tall to be with" & "hologram tomboy". The rest of the cast is guys, some with very die-hard clingy relationships, & Akabane who only hits on a couple of guys while showing no interest in Hevn.
 * Death Note. It helps that there are only 2 important female characters and both are disliked immensely. L/Light and Matt/Mello are the main pairings, but ALL the pretty boys on this show have been shipped with each other.
 * Gundam Wing, in complete defiance of the show's 1-to-1 gender parity (and the fact that about half those man/woman pairs are Official Couples or extremely close to it). Rarely this also applies to the women, usually by authors too kind-hearted to give them the usual treatment. This isn't helped by the director supposedly saying "I can't write boy-girl romances" (he actually said he couldn't write romance period, not distinguishing boy-girl from boy-boy, boy-robot, and robot-humongous centipede) in an interview (though he also said that didn't mean it was impossible).
 * All Gundam gets this, pretty much. Even the ones where the characters are paired with (in Kira Yamato's case, actually have sex with) women...
 * In certain older circles, Amuro and Char from the original are considered to be the first couple of yaoi. And that's not even mentioning Char's Ho Yay with Garma Zabi...
 * Hunter X Hunter. Many of the boys are pretty, friendships range from overprotective obsessed friend to acts-like-an-old-married-couple, there's a pedophile, very few women, & lots of fanservice pandering in the live musicals.
 * K-On!, as there just aren't many other options, along with Tsumugi being a Yuri Fangirl.
 * Kyo Kara Maoh has very few females and one half-canon gay couple, and is set in a world where homosexual marriage is not uncommon but so far completely unobserved, and has only peripheral, minor character canon couples. Lots and lots of gay shipping ensues. The inclusion of Prince Sara & Wolfram actually kissing Yuri only serves to egg them on.
 * Lucky Star, with its Improbably-Female Cast, compounded by Konata playing erotic bishoujo games, Kagami's (non-romantic) Tsundere attitude, Yutaka & Minami, and then there's Hiyori lampshading this trope for comedy.
 * Lyrical Nanoha, further fueled by the enormous amounts of Les Yay Ship Teasing within the Improbably-Female Cast.
 * Mai-HiME, for the same reason as Nanoha.
 * Maria-sama ga Miteru. The core cast is female, and while there's loads and loads of subtext that doesn't appear to go anywhere, it's easy for fanwriters to take it one or two steps further.
 * Monster. Never mind that Tenma was engaged to a female. Nevermind that Grimmer had a wife and a son. Nevermind that Runge has a daughter. Nevermind that none of them, in any possible light, look remotely Bishonen (except for Johan, but he's, well, you know...)
 * Almost every series published in Shonen Jump (Naruto, Bleach, Death Note, Yu-Gi-Oh, The Prince of Tennis, Katekyo Hitman Reborn, etc.), exacerbated by the marginalisation or almost complete absence of female characters. In the case of Prince of Tennis for example, males characters outnumber females by hundreds-to-one.
 * The Pokémon anime is as rife with this as it is every Shipping Trope on the list.
 * Every senshi ever in Sailor Moon has been paired with every other in at least one story, with poor Mamoru often getting the short end of the stick.
 * Saint Seiya. There is no limit to the gay pairings in that one, since, well, about 95% of the characters are guys, and about 90% of them look effeminate in the manga. Never mind all the Bronzies are half-brothers. Everything's possible, even twincest with characters like Kanon and Saga who are hugely popular.
 * The anime also added its fair share of fuel to the fire by boosting the androgyny of characters like Lizard Misty and Aphrodite Pisces several levels, and by adding gratuitous instances of male fanservice. And then there's the infamous Ep. 59 at Libra Temple, featuring the most Ho Yay overloaded scene on the whole Anime.
 * Weiss Kreuz was one the bastion of all shonen-ai fandom, with an extensive male cast (at least 8) with which to form many crack pairings.
 * Yami no Matsuei. You can't throw a rock in that fandom without hitting a slash fic, and given that there are only three or four female characters that play a somewhat bigger role and/or appear more than once, shippers don't have much of a choice.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh, not helped by the few female characters having small roles. Naturally, Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series even gets in on this, ranging from hints to outright having characters proposition each other.
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Of the three male characters with names, two are the main character's relatives, one is an unrequited love interest, and none have any idea what's happening around them. Over half the female characters come off as lesbians (something that official art is only too happy to encourage). That this trope takes effect surprised no one.
 * Endemic in the Black Butler fandom, because of all the Ho Yay (although that isn't a requirement).
 * Bleach fandom with its Cast Full of Pretty Boys rife with Ho Yay, and the amount of female characters that don't get any Ho Yay themselves can be counted on one hand.
 * All over the place in the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle and Xxx Holic fandoms, which is sort of inevitable given that they're both CLAMP products.
 * This is happening more and more in the Durarara fandom, much to the author's dismay. Which didn't stop said author writing their own Yaoi Crack Fic.
 * The Idolmaster to the point where some fans were enraged that a male was put into the show as the producer. Being the only male in an otherwise Improbably-Female Cast however means he can still be largely ignored.
 * Slam Dunk: Never mind that the protagonist starts playing basketball to impress a girl, 99% of fanfics and fanart for the series is slash.
 * Ai no Kusabi: Women are rare in the setting so the characters are mostly gay in a justified case of Situational Sexuality. Lots of fanfiction likes to play this up even more and pair up characters that in canon, would never get together.

Film

 * Happens incredibly often in the Inglourious Basterds fandom. Aldo, Donny, and Stiglitz are usually portrayed as Manly Gay, Wicki is Straight Gay, and Utivich is The Twink (though that occasionally happens to Omar, too). Col. Landa may or may not be a Depraved Homosexual in Fanfic.
 * Also very common in Tron fandom. There's justification in that, out of two films, eight video games, an Alternate Reality Game, and two graphic novels, there are maybe ten female characters. Uprising has yet to air, but there's only one known female among regular cast members. Out of those, three (Mercury, Ma3a, Eva Popoff) were sent to Canon Dis Continuity. Lora was Put On a Bus to Washington DC. There's no word on what happened to her program, Yori. And Jordan Canas (Flynn's wife) is barely a footnote before getting Stuffed in The Fridge. Meanwhile, both films have handsome men and lots of Sensual Spandex. It's like the Yaoi Fangirl all-you-can-eat.

Literature

 * Harry Potter fandom isn't this trope in general, but is large enough that enormous subsections exist that embrace this trope wholeheartedly.
 * The Lord of the Rings, partly because of the lack of female characters, partly because of Values Dissonance (Tolkein was genuinely perplexed that Frodo and Sam's relationship and Legolas and Gimli's relationship could be interpreted as homosexual).
 * That also goes for The Silmarillion. Again, there are many more male characters... oh, many are supposed to be married, but they're such a footnote often enough not even their name of the spouse is given.
 * About half the fanfics of the Jeeves and Wooster stories only feature Jeeves and Bertie anyway...
 * Same goes for Sherlock Holmes fanfic.

Live Action TV

 * Blakes Seven. One of the most-slashed shows ever, mostly because the show deliberately avoids making the characters' motivations 100% clear, so you never know what they're thinking and who they are really attracted to. Blake/Avon is the most charged, but it was an early femmeslash pioneer with Cally and Jenna.
 * The Daily Show. It doesn't hurt that Jon has described it as "the gayest show on television".
 * Heroes' poor track record with canon ships leads to a lot of Het Is Ew, and most ensemble fics with any slash at all slashes most if not all the cast. To be fair, though, a lot of it is Crack Fic.
 * The Star Trek the Original Series fandom are the ones who created slash as a concept in the first place, the ENTIRE main cast has been slashed together, no matter how weird the pairings have to be in order to Tie Up Romantic Loose Ends. The two main female characters, Uhura and Chapel, are shipped together just to even things out.
 * Happens more and more often in the Power Rangers fandom, but Het Is Ew only comprises about half the fandom's opinion, so there's still a wide range of fic.
 * Merlin, due to the insane amounts of subtext in the show between almost every character, which also results in this being one of the most peaceful conflicting-ship fandoms out there.
 * I Carly has fics where everyone comes out as either outright gay or bisexual. Apart from the ever-popular Sam and Carly, Spencer often tells the girls that he is bisexual, usually with his best friend Socko, Wendy is often made gay so one of the girls can go out with her as part of the story's drama, Freddie comes out and admits he has a crush on Spencer, as well as admitting his crush on Carly is overcompensating to look normal.
 * Victorious can have this done, so that Jade can be hooked up with either Cat or Tori, whilst Beck and Robbie give in to their obvious UST and Trina just goes both ways because she's crazy like that and it lets Cat hook up with her if Tori ends up with Jade. Weirdly, Andre often gets left as the sole straight character.
 * Very common in Law and Order fanfic, which generally pairs up Olivia/Alex, Abbie/Serena and Tracey/Kelly. Oddly, the men are generally left alone.
 * Frequently the case in Glee fanfiction. This is helped by the fact that the show has numerous canon gay and bisexual characters, yet in fanfic even the canon straight characters are often shipped in same-sex pairings. For example, one of the most popular couples in the fandom is Rachel/Quinn, both of whom have only shown interest in boys on the show. By contrast, the gay characters are rarely shipped with opposite-sex characters once their sexuality is established on-screen, especially those who've had Anvilicious Coming-Out Storylines like Kurt and Santana.
 * Supernatural. This show, with Shipping Goggles on, is one big gay playground, and every possibly pairing has its following, even if only as a Crack Pairing. And don't even get started on the Actor Shipping; a lot of fans truly believe that Jared, Jensen, and Misha's wives are all beards.

Professional Wrestling

 * It's actually ridiculously easy to do. What with all these big oiled-up hard bodies in very few clothes rolling around together in compromising situations and probably something like a 10:1 ratio of men to women...

Theater

 * Half the cast of Rent is canonically gay anyway... and getting rid of Mimi to pair Roger up with Mark is more common than one might think.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy VII and beyond.
 * Final Fantasy III DS remake.
 * Fire Emblem justifies this entirely with the support system. Half of the time there's going to be a Gay Option (or two, or three...) available, and .ore than once, the Gay Option has won an ending over the het ones.
 * Kingdom Hearts. In the fandom's eyes, there are practically no women or Disney characters, just Sora, Riku, 12 of Organization XIII, Cloud and Leon. And even if they are recognised, the girls are often shoehorned into being with each other anyway.
 * Touhou fandom pairs everyone with everyone else, and this trope is inevitable when the cast is well past one hundred and the number of males with actual screen/page time is three (a turtle, a cloud, and a non-combatant shopkeeper). And this despite No Hugging, No Kissing being very much in effect.
 * Rumble Roses, because of its all female cast.
 * Mega Man and its other series have a cast that is mostly 99% male, making this pretty much inevitable. Can be averted if you think that robots wouldn't care about or even have sexual orientations anyway.
 * This is most certainly not assisted by the works of Hyadain for Mega Man 2, in which virtually every Robot Master is gay for Rock. Crash! Let's do it, indeed.
 * Sengoku Basara - though, given the heavily lampshaded enormous levels of Ho Yay and Foe Yay in the Anime of the Game, the creators probably agree.
 * Team Fortress 2, with its overwhelmingly male cast, has plenty of this trope. However, Scout's Mom (whom the BLU Spy is screwing), Miss Pauling, and the Pyro's Ambiguous Gender, along with the frequent application of Rule 63, occasionally averts it.
 * Star Fox fanfics. Fox and Wolf are almost always openly gay. It doesn't help that, until Assault and Adventures, the cast was almost entirely male (with one un-determinable gender).
 * There's a potential option for Tatsuya and Jun to be romancing partners in Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Guess which option everyone seems to go with?
 * Despite the slowly growing female presence in Sonic the Hedgehog, gayness is still eerily popular in its fanfiction.
 * Neptunia, which has an all-female cast, plenty of Les Yay, and even a Tsundere all help facilitate this.
 * Much like the anime, the Pokémon game fics often pull this. The lead male and the (male) rival are very commonly paired off, with the lead female- when she does appear- being paired off with another female (for instance, Hilda and Bianca).

Web Comics

 * Fans of comics in The Walkyverse have a saying: "A character is assumed to be gay unless proven otherwise. And even then, it's suspect". It's mostly a joke... mostly.

Web Original

 * For Eternity, a web remake of Rainbow Brite, has all the Color Kids (as well as its versions of Rainbow Brite, Stormy, etc) as male. Considering that the only females in that universe are childlike temple guardians or the four mother Goddesses, this is justified.
 * Ha! This page needs the X's World Woke Up Gay Meme.
 * The most recent video on Jandrew Edits has taken their TNG video edits directly into this, by bringing LaForge into the existing Triang Relations between Picard and two Rikers.
 * Red vs. Blue slash fic often goes along with this. Partly because there are very few female characters in the series, even if you include the tank, and
 * Homestar Runner fandom tends to do this quite a bit, although considering that the only girl resembles a broomstick, doesn't get along with her canon boyfriend very well, and is the textbook definition of a Granola Girl, this is perhaps understandable.
 * Ladies and gentlemen, proudly presenting Everyone is Gay.com.
 * Youtube Poop uses this a lot.

Western Animation

 * The Penguins of Madagascar uses this in canon and fanfiction. All the penguins have ambiguously gay moments, and we're still not sure if one or more of them is female. Meanwhile King Julien is almost certainly Bi the Way. Short of transferring OC female penguins, or going with Anybody/Marlene, gay is your only choice.
 * Metalocalypse, with its nearly all-male recurring cast, is ripe for this trope. While all of Dethklok does show interest in women (specifically, ladies), and Skwisgaar and Nathan actually shown in bed with a few, all of the notable women they date look like the other band members. Combine that with the mountains and mountains of gay innuendo, the band's canon relationship as True Companions, and the rampant substance abuse in the show, it doesn't even necessarily have to be a matter of Everyone Is Gay as much as No One Is Straight.
 * South Park, probably because there are so few important girl characters other than Wendy and Bebe. This despite how every one of the boys (including Butters and Cartman) have shown attraction to woman, many (including Butters) have stated that they're straight, and Stan had an off and on relationship with Wendy.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants. Bikini Bottom is the gay district.
 * Transformers, for all of your CLANG CLANG CLANG action. Granted, giant alien robots are technically sexless, and the few female gendered Transformers are heavily outnumbered by the male gendered ones.
 * When the My Little Pony fandom isn't shipping the ponies with OCs or genderswapping the characters, they ship them with each other, and inevitably this trope is the result. The Improbably-Female Cast in all series certainly helps, with G3 lacking any male characters aside from Spike.
 * The My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fandom deserve special mention for the sheer size of the fanfiction community and its adherence to this trope. However, while Spike and Big Macintosh are the only male characters who regularly feature in shipping fics, they are paired with a lot of mares (occasionally at the same time).
 * Due to the team mostly being very attractive guys, Young Justice fanfics are full of this.
 * Common with the Static Shock fandom. Irony kicks in however because the comic actually dealt with Virgil coming to terms with his homophobia.

Radio

 * Cabin Pressure. With a core cast consisting of three men and one older woman (who is moreover the mother of one of the men), what else are frustrated fan fic authors to do?

Real Life

 * According to the comments sections of any given celebrity gossip blog, every attractive male celebrity is gay. No exceptions. If he has a girlfriend, she's The Beard. If he's seen in the company of another male more than once, this other man is his secret lover. If he marries a woman and even gets her pregnant several times, it's a calculated move to protect his career by appearing heteronormative (which gives us the bonus Unfortunate Implications that all famous closeted homosexual men are perfectly happy to callously use other human beings, even their own children, for material gain). If he has stated on the record that he is actually bisexual, he defaults to gay because male bisexuality doesn't exist. If you point out that there is nothing beyond unfounded gossip to indicate his sexual orientation one way or the other, you are automatically a fat, ugly fangirl who is deluding herself and the sole reason gays are terrified to come out of the closet. Not surprisingly, no one ever questions the sexuality of, say, Steve Buscemi, Ernest Borgnine or any other male performer who is not conventionally attractive.
 * Read the page for Ambiguously Gay. Half the examples on that page are confirmed to be canonically straight but listed because they have only one or two of the qualities required.