Fan Yay



Nobody knows quite why, but sometimes a work resonates really strongly with the LGBT community. Maybe it was intentional Fan Service. Maybe it was merely unintentional Fetish Fuel. Or maybe just relatable Character Development of an Audience Surrogate (whether intentional or not). But for some reason, a sizable LGBT fanbase develops, out of proportion to their population in the world at large. This is Fan Yay.

When Fan Yay was unintentional:
 * It can be entirely accidental.
 * It can be "acceptable" Homoerotic Subtext by creators who are otherwise straight, as with Samurai Jack. When something has its gay appeal, but has more than enough mainstream appeal for the gay appeal to blend in with the crowd.
 * Or even something that started unintentionally but was later made official to please the acknowledged fans, as famously happened with Xena: Warrior Princess.

Not all Fan Yay is unintentional; quite a bit revolves around canon gay or bi characters or relationships.

Fan Yay tends to manifest itself not just in Fan Art and Fan Fiction (not to mention the ubiquitous Rule 34), but occasionally also in Broken Base, Unpleasable Fanbase or Internet Backdraft. Ho Yay can be considered a subtrope of Fan Yay when the fans are gay, but Yaoi Fangirls and Yuri Fans do that too. But whichever way you put it, the fans are here, and the fans are queer.

When editing examples, keep in mind that Fan Yay doesn't have to be unintentional. Also, Ho Yay by gay fans should go in that article, unless there's more that the gay fanbase especially likes besides just the Ho Yay.

Advertising

 * Tony the Tiger, the mascot of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. The size of his gay male fanbase is grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Anime and Manga

 * Bleach: Sajin Komamura. A big anthro wolf. Don't let his appearance terrify you, he's actually one of the nicest guys in Soul Society. Most erotic art of him seems to be M/M. Since he's pretty shy, he works well as a bottom.
 * Dai no Daibouken: Crocodine, baby!
 * Digimon: Especially Leomon, WereGarurumon or WarGreymon. Yum.
 * Dragonball Z is also prone to bara Fan Yay, being an anime about giant muscle-bound men and filled with bromance. It's just oozing testosterone. Nappa is the most common candidate, being giant dumb beefcake. Since Goku is naive as a brick, many fantasize that they could lure him to bed with promise of candy.
 * The Furry Fandom Fan Yay seems fond of Giran.
 * On a similar note, many Furries are also a fan of Frieza, mostly for his tail and prehensile feet.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: Darius and Heinkel (together or individually) have an immense gay following. Much of the cast consists of muscular men and shirtless scenes abound for the main character.
 * Asuma Sarutobi from Naruto is a popular icon amongst bara fans, with hundreds of Fan Art and doujinshi dedicated to him.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion with Kaworu.
 * Pretty Cure Providing Fan Yay Since 2004!
 * Wild Knights Gulkeeva. Every male knight, practically without exception. They are very Stripperiffic.
 * Zettai Muteki Raijin Oh: Asuka's got both fangirls and fanboys (who are otherwise straight) in the fandom.
 * Eyeshield 21 makes for great bara material. The series already has plenty of muscular men, lots of tackling, and more ass shots then you can count.
 * Hellsing: There's a huge amount of fanart depicting the Major and Schrodinger.
 * Gurren Lagann. If Kamina doesn't sell any gay viewer on it, post-Time Skip Simon will, and then there's also the massive amounts of Homoerotic Subtext between them.
 * Nabari no Ou, unsurprisingly, has disproportionate percentage of LGBT fans.

Comic Books

 * Associated Student Bodies. Back in the 1990s, this was the first significantly successful gay Furry Comic. So much so, that later Furry Comics are a significant improvement if they can avert predictable comparisons to being "ASB with X". Though groundbreaking at the time, it has not aged well compared to newer even more successful gay Furry Comics, and new fanart seldom appears anymore. Nevertheless, considering how influential it has been, reading ASB is still something of a gay furry comics reading rite of passage.
 * Asterix has plenty of scenes where Asterix and Obelix embrace, while several of the male characters such as Fulliautomatix are bare-chested and heavily muscular. The athletes in Asterix at the Olympic Games are practically Spartan Adonises in their depiction.
 * Blacksad. Holy shit.
 * Circles.
 * Heathen City Maranatha.
 * ISO.
 * X-Men, to the point where the characters Northstar and Colossus were written as gay, and the character Beast faked being gay.
 * Northstar was conceived as being gay from the start, it just took them forever to openly proclaim it (don't forget, it was illegal to do so for most of that time). Colossus' same-sex leanings are unique to the Ultimate X-Men continuity.
 * Most male X-Men are sufficiently buff to have at least some Bara Genre-style fanart of them. While Wolverine is far and away the most popular subject of this, as mentioned below,Cable, Colossus, Beast and Cyclops get quite a bit as well, and even the more lithely-built ones like Gambit and Iceman get their share of bara-styled fanworks.
 * Westerners like to make gay fan works of Wolverine, since he's a tough, stocky, muscular, hairy anti-hero with an indestructible body.
 * Young Avengers, thanks to canon couple Billy and Teddy.
 * Though they aren't the only ones. After all, who could resist Tommy in that skin tight suit of his? Or Patriot.
 * Deadpool is starting to gain one of these.
 * Spider Man has a large gay fandom, especially when paired with Venom.

Film
"Jude Law [Watson]: I knew enough about Sherlock Holmes to know that there was a lot of unchartered material. I knew [Downey's casting] was going to be something exciting, and therefore the project was going to be something exciting. And as soon as I met him, we got on very well - which is a good sign - and we both agreed that we wanted to really make this a piece about the relationship between Watson and Holmes.
 * Three Hundred. Blatant Fan Yay bait.
 * If watching 300 doesn't make you long for mansex, you're missing the point entirely.
 * All About Eve
 * Mommie Dearest
 * Sherlock Holmes. Holmes and Watson. Most prevalent in the 2009 film where the homoerotic angle was purposefully pushed.

Robert Downey, Jr. [Holmes]: I think the word bromance is so passe. We are two men who happen to be roommates who wrestle a lot and share a bed."


 * Sunset Boulevard
 * The Women
 * The Wizard of Oz
 * What Ever Happened to Baby Jane
 * Xanadu.

Literature and Mythology

 * The Vampire Chronicles series, before Anne Rice decides to become a "good Catholic girl." Lestat, Louis, Armand, & Marius were toted for their heavy bromances.
 * Most of Classical mythology - especially Hellenic mythology - falls under this. Homosexual relations were widely accepted and practiced in Ancient Greece, and tolerated in Rome. As a result, vast swathes of Ancient Greek mythological figures have serious Ho Yay going on, and on top of that, many have explicit romantic relationships with the same-sex. Not to mention most of the Gods being Bi the Way. Things were toned down in Roman times (the original Narcissus myth had him spurning a male suitor) but a lot still lingered on. Greek mythology has subsequently inspired a lot of homoerotic art, such as this painting of Apollo cradling Hyacinth.
 * The Bible, namely the story of David and Jonathan. Though David had no fewer than eight wives, he was said to have loved Jonathan with a passion above all other people. The Ho Yay of this relationship has been acknowledged and celebrated in art at least since the Middle Ages (and likely earlier as well).
 * Ruth and Naomi have some significance in the lesbian community as well.
 * A tolerance campaign once went around quoting verses pertaining to David/Jonathan and Ruth/Naomi, with predictable reactions from people who use Bible verses to defend less tolerant positions.
 * Older Than Dirt: The Epic of Gilgamesh and its lasting appeal. Gilgamesh and Enkidu and all their abundant naked Ho Yay. It seems naked gay guys have been falling in love and "wrestling" for many millions of years, regardless of their species. And for as long as beings have been socially acknowledging, there have been those that have found it heartwarming and emotionally uplifting.
 * Nearly any mythological hero or Worthy Opponent in a world of ambiguous or blatantly homoerotic sexuality. Heracles, the Minotaur, Zephyrus and Hyacinth, Cú Chulainn, Beowulf...

Music

 * ACDC, due to what the term means in the gay community, had a large gay following, which the band embraced.
 * The White Stripes cover of "Jolene". Jack White didn't change the gender of the song (originally sung by Dolly Parton, a woman), so the song becomes about a relationship between a gay man and his bisexual lover in which the latter is going to leave him for a woman (there is of course, twice as much risk of someone leaving another in a bisexual relationship). Unsurprisingly this song earned them a huge amount of controversy, but won them a great deal of gay fans in the process.
 * Curiously, that was not the first time "Jolene" were presented in a male voice, with the lyrics performed intact. In early 80's, the band The Sisters of Mercy used to present "Jolene" in the shows, sung in the deep baritone voice of Andrew Eldritch. From this time, also, is another Sisters of Mercy cover, also in the same Eldritch's voice: Abba's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" (sporting the verse "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A man after midnight!" also without any kind of gender change).
 * Brazilian singer Marina Lima cover of the song "Mesmo que Seja Eu", originally composed and sung by a man, Erasmo Carlos. The verses "Você precisa de um homem pra chamar de seu/Mesmo que esse homem seja eu" (in english: "You need a man to cal yours/Even if this man just be me") sung on a female voice immediatly drawed attention of the Brazilian lesbian community. Is recognized nowdays as a sort of hymn of the brazilian lesbians living in prisional environments (due to the context of the lyrics as a whole: about loneliness, shattered dreams and bad companies).
 * Lady Gaga is well known as being openly bisexual and a gay icon.
 * Swedish wartime diva Zarah Leander was embraced by gay men in Germany, thanks to songs like “Kann die Liebe sünde sein,” with definite subtext coded in the lyrics from her gay male songwriters.

Live-Action TV

 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Particularly revolving around Willow and Tara's canon relationship, but the fans also leap upon the (occasionally intentional) Ho Yay between other characters.
 * Degrassi the Next Generation. Marco's storyline is blatant Fan Yay bait.
 * Doctor Who and Torchwood (the latter being rather deliberate.)
 * And in New Who, the former was hardly accidental.
 * Doctor Who had attracted a large LGBT fanbase during the original series as well, as RTD had repeatedly referenced on his previous show Queer As Folk ("Oh my God, you've got Genesis of the Daleks!").
 * Blakes Seven. All the way. It was one of the first major slash fandoms and from the late Nineties onwards, new fans have mostly trickled in because of the slash. The main fan-run Blakes Seven convention, Redemption, regularly features slash panels. This makes the somewhat homophobic, anti-slash copyright owners rather uneasy.
 * Glee, with its gay creator, several gay actors, and handling of gay story lines, has quite the gay fanbase.
 * Brittany and Santana's relationship went from background LesYay to throwaway joke to full story arc due in no small part to the Fan Yay Brittana attracted.
 * House MD does this with House and Wilson, and sometimes to a lesser degree with House and his male team members. This probably started off accidental, but by the fourth season it was obvious the writers were running with it.
 * In the 6th season they raised the tease to high art, complete with an episode where Wilson "proposes" to House as part of a ploy to keep him from sleeping with their new neighbor.
 * The Dan Schneider stable of shows include, I Carly, Victorious and Drake and Josh all managed to pick up an ongoing LGBT fanbase.
 * I Carly because of Sam's ambiguously lesbian, probably bisexual, tendencies, the Les Yay between Carly and Sam, and that pretty much any plot involving Carly, Sam and a third female, turns into a Love Triangle, or at least looks like UST, such as the Missy/Sam Foe Yay example, and the Carly/Shelby one.
 * Not to mention the guest star who kissed another girl on the lips.
 * Victorious, again, the Les Yay is piled on from the start, with the Foe Yay style UST relationship between Jade and Tori, and Cat's crush apparent on Jade.
 * Drake and Josh picked up the slash fans, with the damn near canon relationship between the titular step-brothers.
 * Back when Alex Cabot was still on the show (pick a season, any season. She's the ADA for five out of eleven of them, even after she died.), Law and Order Special Victims Unit had a reputation for having a large lesbian fanbase, due to the blatant Les Yay between Alex and Olivia, which Executive Producer Neal Baer not only acknowledged, but deliberately strung along.
 * Stephanie March (Alex) has recently said that she thinks Alex/Olivia is entirely possible - they may even have been together, a la the Grissoms, for a long while. Which is spectacular.
 * Neighbours, specifically with regard to Libby and Steph, who have a substantial lesbian following.
 * Power Rangers SPD, specifically Doggie Cruger, who became an instant Bara Genre icon.
 * His counterpart from SPD's source material, Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger, is submissive (and VERY muscular) in almost every erotic pic of him (even if it's straight!)
 * Queer As Folk.
 * Rizzoli and Isles has this in spades. Which is unsurprising, considering it's a pair of Heterosexual Life Partners played by Abbie Carmichael and Kate Todd.
 * Skins positively exploded with this during Naomi and Emily's relationship - some little thing on some British show that nobody cared about suddenly became a global phenomenon which is having a book written about it's sociocultural impact.
 * As of the third generation, there's also Franky and Mini's relationship.
 * Star Trek, believe it or not. Probably more to do with Gene Roddenberry and the blatant fanservice than Slash Fic, honestly.
 * Although Star Trek is notable for Ho Yay to the point of inspiring the first Slash Fic, the fact that there are no canonically gay or bi characters in the series has led to complaints.
 * Jadzia Dax in Star Trek Deep Space Nine could be construed as averting this. However, the nature of the Trill as a joined species leaves this open to interpretation. In the episode "Rejoined" Jadzia experiences a "bisexual" attraction to another female Trill whose symbiont had . Because of the context, this could be taken as an instance of It's Okay If It's You. Jadzia was really part of an Official Couple with.
 * Supernatural. This even happens in-series when a prophet turns his visions of the Winchesters' lives into a series of books. Our heroes are horrified to discover people are writing Slash Fic of them, and a later episode involves them going to an actual Supernatural convention and meeting a gay couple who cosplay as them. This is despite the fact that they are brothers, and each sleeps with quite a few women.
 * True Blood. The creator is gay, so there is plenty of homoerotic fanservice.
 * Xena: Warrior Princess. Xena and Gabrielle weren't lovers at first, but were made lovers by the end of the series.
 * Not just lovers, but soulmates, destined to hook up in every single lifetime, and every incarnation, forever. In fact, their future selves were married. And even clones made from the DNA of their Ancient Greek incarnations hooked up the very day that they became sentient. Even their own mysteriously similar-looking ancestors hook up. And for some reason, Joxer is always with them.
 * Merlin, with its central relationship being that of Arthur and Merlin (both played by young men in this version), and the fact that the actors Colin Morgan and Bradley James are Heterosexual Life Partners. However, there has been some Creator Backlash to this, with one of the head writers claiming that: "we don't pander to that lot."
 * And yet, in the very first episode they have the Dragon say "A half cannot truly hate that which makes it whole." Which is about as unsubtle as you can get on the subject of their relationship.
 * Not to mention, co-stars Katie McGrath and Angel Coulby both appear to ship both Arthur/Merlin and Morgana/Gwen, at least going by the DVD commentary.
 * Pretty Little Liars, a show aimed at teenagers, is ridiculously popular among adult lesbian and bisexual women thanks to lesbian main character Emily Fields.
 * The Secret Circle has a decent lesbian following. Though none of the girls are known to be gay, the close friendships between Cassie and Diana, and Faye and Melissa definitely fuel things. Plus there's also the Foe Yay between Faye with both Cassie and Diana. Les Yay ship teasing is not only played up in the show ("I would do anything for my best friend"), but also by the cast & creator on Twitter ("Fayana was here").

Video Games

 * Ace Attorney. This behavior is encouraged by the absolutely massive kink meme.
 * One of the characters in Ace Attorney is Dick Gumshoe, a buff, scruffy, battered puppy of a man who is in desperate need of some love. The fans deliver, though they aren't particularly kind to him.
 * Miles Edgeworth does tend to get the brunt of it, though, between his frilly attire, lack of interest in his masses of female admirers and constant Ho Yay with Phoenix Wright.
 * Battletoads. This now-obscure 1990s video game franchise used a Paper-Thin Disguise Excuse Plot about saving a girl to unleash one of the single most homoerotic video games in existence. For some reason, in particular, Big Blag the Lightning Bruiser Leather Man has a Fan Yay quotient as potent as Bowser, except not nearly as well known. All this from the same game that gave us The Dark Queen.
 * The Breath of Fire series, which almost seemed to be a foregone conclusion considering it was already very popular in the Furry Fandom. The greatest Fan Yay seems to go to Garr and Rei from Breath of Fire III and to Cray from Breath of Fire IV.
 * FEDA. Ain MacDougal and Arby Hcszeool have both become Stripperiffic Bara Genre icons.
 * Final Fantasy VI. Sabin René Figaro occasionally shows up in Bara Genre. Cyan Garamonde would also seem like a good candidate, but Fan Yay of him is surprisingly scarce.
 * Cid Highwind, the gruff, constantly swearing airship pilot from Final Fantasy VII, is often depicted as full-fledged beefcake in Bara Genre fanworks these days. This may be due to his appearance in Advent Children being rather brawnier than in the game.
 * The much beefier Barret has begun to get some. Here's a Stupid Sexy Flanders fully-clothed tame example.
 * Final Fantasy X, mostly Kimahri, Wakka, Auron, and Jecht.
 * Final Fantasy XI. The muscled-out Stripperiffic Galka are a One-Gender Race, confirmed all male by Word of God. Figure out the implications yourself. Needless to say, there is a lot of gay-appealing fanart of these guys.
 * The Galkas lived on an island by themselves for hundreds, if not thousands of years before they migrated to the mainland of Vana'diel. Think about that for a moment, you are either going to have nightmares or pleasant dreams from that one.
 * Also the Mithra for the yuri crowd.
 * Similarly, the Stripperiffic Femme Fatale Viera in Final Fantasy XII and related continuity. If they aren't a full-on One-Gender Race, they seem to be at least a one gender society, as there are no male Viera anywhere in evidence in their village, or referred to even in passing. As their culture is also very different from the local human societies, it creates a lot of speculation.
 * Word of God does state that Viera are a completely sex segregated society - females live in one village, males in another, and they only communicate with each other when required.
 * In a similar vein, the Bangaa race from the same game and the Final Fantasy Tactics spin offs. The Bangaa are mostly displayed as muscled lizardmen that are either jerks, brutes, or have a lot of muscle to throw around in a fight, but many people in the fandom tend to view them as hunky beefcakes, especially in Final Fantasy XII where the majority of the Bangaa are modeled with a vest and no shirt or just plain shirtless. The Bangaa are quite popular in the Furry Fandom.
 * Final Fantasy XIII seems to have quite the yuri-inclined fandom...Probably due to all the blatant Les Yay between Fang and Vanille. At one point, Fang actually looks up Vanille's skirt  and also says she would tear down the sky for her. Oh, and the skirt-lifting happened immediately after a rather close hug, during which Vanille's hand is on Fang's breast.
 * If the developers had gone with their original plan for Fang to be a male character, and nothing else about the final product were different, no one would be arguing that Fang and Vanille were anything BUT a couple.
 * Snow himself is getting this treatment from the Bara Genre crowd. He even gets paired with honorable King of Bara, Chris Redfield!
 * The Behemoths of the Final Fantasy series have become fairly popular to anthropomorphize as muscled male studs. Most examples are Rule 34, and very decidedly Not Safe for Work. The fact that they have become increasingly anthropomorphized in appearance in later Final Fantasy games has only accelerated this. Here's a (relatively) worksafe example.
 * Special mention must go to the Narasimha from Final Fantasy XIII 2. Built like a brick house, wears a pair of woefully inadequate shorts and nothing else, and you can recruit one!
 * Gears of War. All the main leads are so very, very buff and manly that it pretty much invites Fan Yay.
 * Wait, the game wasn't designed by Tom of Finland?
 * The Legend of Zelda. There's something about Ganondorf that makes him quite the Fan Yay bait.
 * However, it's the hero, Link, who was voted hottest video game character by the LGBT magazine "Out." (He's also been known to inspire Stupid Sexy Flanders moments in straight male fans.)
 * Mario. Mario himself to a degree, but far outshadowered by Bowser. A big hairy strong guy wearing spikes and leather and nothing else? Bowser oozes testosterone, and attracts tons of testosterone-y fans. Though both Mario and Bowser are portrayed as straight in a struggle over Peach, Foe Yay inevitably ensues.
 * Tali'Zorah, resident Wrench Wench and Badass Normal of Mass Effect has a substantial lesbian fanbase for her personality, close relationship with Shepard, and Les Yay in the second game. It's been hinted that Tali was intended to be a romance option for a female Shepard, but her voice actor found the idea uncomfortable.
 * Kaidan Alenko and Thane Krios too, thanks to scrapped plans for them to be romancable regardless of Shepard's gender, and the impressive amount of Ho Yay left over from that in Kaidan's case. Oddly, enough, the fan yay for Ashley Williams is quite lacking in comparison even though all this also applies to her.
 * As of Mass Effect 3, Kaidan is a romance option for Shepards of both sexes (Bioware apparently figured he was the Virmire survivor with the most Ho Yay / Fan Yay).
 * Metal Gear Solid. Damn. Though all the guys want Big Boss, there's a significant gay fandom for Solid Snake.
 * It's the source of a fair amount of Fan Yay, which is perhaps not surprising, since Solid Snake and Big Boss are both handsome, muscular military men who get involved in a lot of Ho Yay. It's basically what Wolverine is to Westerners.
 * Morenatsu. A Dating Sim always intended for a gay audience, but has spawned viral Memetic Mutation of fanart by countless different artists. People in the Furry Fandom are more likely to see lots of its fanart before ever finding out that it is actually a game.
 * Red Earth. Leo, duh.
 * Chris Redfield of Resident Evil has become a pretty huge presence in Bara Genre fanart due to his Rated M for Manly makeover in Resident Evil 5.
 * Shining Wind. Rouen sees a lot of Kemono Bara Genre fanart.
 * Norman Jayden and Carter Blake from Heavy Rain are paired together in the fandom more than Ethan and Madison,
 * Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow get this treatment a lot thanks to the fact that: a. they have fur b. in the furry circles, they're both considered attractive, and c. they have a massive amount of Foe Yay between them.
 * Sonadow is definitely a Furry Fangirl favorite, even if little between them in the games is romantic in any way.
 * Meanwhile, the Sonic / Tails pairing has had a strong following pretty much since the beginning. Though Tails tends to be paired with just about anyone.
 * Star Fox. In Japan, the most common fan-pairing is Fox with Falco, in both tame romance and in Rule 34. (Even Fox and Krystal are not paired as often overall.) Other popular Fan Yay pairings include Fox with Wolf, James with Peppy, Wolf with Leon, or Wolf with Leon and Panther. In the West, all the above also are paired to some degree, but have long been utterly eclipsed in popularity by non-Fan Yay pairing of Fox with Krystal. Krystal hasn't had quite the popularity in Japan she's had in the West, and even the writers have been increasingly unkind to her.
 * To be honest, thanks to Rule 34 and her being Ms. Fanservice Krystal gets paired up with anything...one way or another.
 * Don't forget that not only the Japanese can't stand her -- most of the Star Fox players before Adventures don't. Their substitute? Fara Phoenix. She's likable enough even when she's not being paired with anyone.
 * VG Cats illustrates the Star Fox Fan Yay angle effectively.
 * Star Fox Assault has so much Wolf/Fox stuff in it that it was really begging for it.
 * There's the famous Leon commentary scene in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
 * Star Ocean Till the End of Time. Adray Lasbard is a Walking Shirtless Scene Badass Grandpa with sex appeal. There is Bara Genre, yes there is.
 * Touhou Project. With a predominately female cast (there have been exactly six male characters out of over a hundred in the entire series--of those six, only three are even remotely human--of those three, only one is alive), the Touhou fanbase is a breeding ground for happy yuri fans. ZUN seems to be aware of this and has actually admitted that he likes the idea of his characters paired together, although he hasn't said which pairings he likes (although Marisa and Alice are hinted at in canon). Most of the Touhou fans are male by the way.
 * Wild Arms 2 had tall, dark and hunky Gentle Giant / Mighty Glacier Brad Evans, who was sweetly devoted to his war buddy Billy Pilder. While debate continues over whether they were actually intended to be gay, their Tear Jerker Homoerotic Subtext has made Brad a video game Straight Gay icon.
 * World of Warcraft. Asric and Jadaar, Koltira and Thassarian, and Quae and Kinelory are the most obvious ones that come to mind.
 * Not to mention the large amounts of gay fanart of WoW Tauren, Orcs, Dwarves, and even the occasional Draenei. From all the fanart alone, one would believe that everybody has lots of man orgies.
 * Street Fighter gets a lot of love from Bara Genre fans. Heterosexual Life Partners Ken and Ryu get the most fan works, but there's also plenty rule #34 of Zangief.
 * Blanka gets quite a lot, too.
 * Mortal Kombat, at least the early installments, is a giant Walking Shirtless Scene source for several male fighters. And thanks to the movie, Johnny Cage and Goro have a nicely developed Foe Yay potential that wouldn't have existed otherwise.
 * Team Fortress 2 anyone? The all-male cast has lead to a variety of shipping opportunities, a surprising chunk of which involve the 40 or 50-something Medic and the bulky Heavy.
 * Soul Calibur gives us Rock who is much beloved in the Bara community.

Webcomics

 * Carpe Diem.
 * Last Res 0 rt.
 * Penny and Aggie.
 * Profiles.
 * Roommates
 * Vinci and Arty.
 * Homestuck features an entire race of Everyone Is Bi trolls. Because of this (as well as a lot of Ho Yay, at least one canonically queer human character, and thoughtful treatment of queerness altogether) it has become rather popular among LGBT people. Kanaya is especially popular.

Western Animation

 * Biker Mice From Mars. Shirtless, muscular anthropomorphic mice who ride motorcycles and are fond of wrestling one another? Yes.
 * Gargoyles. Goliath, Brooklyn and Broadway are all Fan Yay favorites, and to a lesser extent even Hudson is featured. But Lexington, the only actual Word of Gay character, is too much of The Twink for the Bara Genre crowd.
 * Goof Troop. Oh Pete, you sexy beast. Rule 34 of him (sometimes even paired with PJ) occasionally pops up.
 * Jem and The Holograms has a large gay male fanbase. So much so that Out Magazine did an interview with Jem's voice actress about it.
 * Kim Possible. Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls, almost all Kim Possible Fanfic is about a lesbian relationship between Kim and Shego, so some girls must be working out some issues for one of the two.
 * My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is already known for its large adult male fanbase (Fan Nicknamed "bronies"). But there is a particular Fan Yay for Big Macintosh. Rule 34 of him is also abundant, including as a Petting Zoo Person and even Race Lifted as a human male.
 * The Ren and Stimpy Show, later aided by Word of Gay.
 * Road Rovers. Exile and his "weird boy" Blitz. Hunter seemed oddly disinterested in the flirtatious Colleen, for some odd reason.
 * Robin Hood. Specifically the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1973 Disney animated feature.
 * Samurai Jack. How can he not, when he spends half the show nearly naked (and one episode fully naked)?
 * SpongeBob SquarePants, to the point where extreme conservative religious figures occasionally condemned it as part of "the homosexual agenda".
 * Swat Kats. Take a wild guess. Fans had no trouble picking up the Ho Yay between the two main characters, even with them both being clearly interested in the opposite sex.
 * They were just too damn close, even for best friends who were also room-mates. And partners. And co-workers.
 * A lot of Fan Yay either has them being bi, or only pretending to be straight.
 * Disney's Tarzan. Admit it, you saw it coming from miles away.
 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Especially Bebop and Rocksteady. And, more controversially, the Turtles among themselves.
 * The Venture Brothers. Brock Samson's character design was totally asking for this. Patrick Warburton's voice and the occasional Fan Service helped even more.
 * Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa. More manly anthropomorphic characters, in the form of three Cowboys.
 * He Man and The Masters of The Universe gets this a lot. Considering Prince Adam is soft-spoken, likes to cook, and wears pink and lavender with furry underpants over his tights, and he transforms into a muscular barbarian when he 'holds his sword aloft'...
 * She Ra tends to attract a lot of this as well. Just look at Bo.
 * Daria is now on Logo. Granted, many fans tend to see Les Yay in Daria and Jane's relationship, but pretty much every major character is canonically straight.
 * Daria's repeated struggles with everyone who kept trying to change her just for the convenience of easily grouping her together with the other kids resonated with many Gay fans.
 * Adventure Time. Marceline/Bubblegum had quite a bit of fanart. But thanks to the "What Was Missing" episode and the Recap video, the pairing has garnered a huge following with lots of fanart. Natasha Allegri, the show's character designer, made suggestive art of the two as well.

Real Life

 * Many job occupations have earned the Fan Yay of gay men everywhere, especially the manliest, most rugged and hottest-looking careers. Bikers, bodybuilders, construction workers, cowboys, fire fighters, oil wrestlers, police, sailors, soldiers...the list goes on. Scores points if someone can be barechested or wear leather. The gay appeal of The Village People should be crystal clear. Certain careers have since been additionally glamorized in Fan Yay because of either a famous gay person or a person who otherwise achieved gay icon status -- for example, divers, after the fame of gay American diver Greg Louganis.
 * Anderson Cooper appears to have also done the same for newscasting.
 * Sometimes the Hot Men At Work don't have to be from modern times, but can be from occupations Older Than Dirt. Warriors, hunters, athletes, gladiators, blacksmiths and even fishermen, farmers and artisans from non-recent historical times have long captured the imagination of men for centuries, if they are perceived in modern times to have been particularly Hot Men At Work back then, and most especially if they are naked. Interests may also feature any combination of Bara Genre (you think all those Greek pottery paintings were just documentative?), Body Paint, Boys Love (yeah...), Carpet of Virility (men had hair back then, didn't they?), Full Frontal Assault (because I'm brave!...and too poor to afford armor), Gay Bravado, Going Commando (underpants weren't always fashionable yet), Hell-Bent for Leather (not everyone has sheep for wool!), Heroic Build (a requirement), Ho Yay (of course), Male Frontal Nudity (or get pneumonia while net-fishing?), Naked Apron (or let blacksmiths burn themselves without it?), Pec Flex, Rated M for Manly, Walking Shirtless Scene (shirt? what's a shirt?)... It doesn't always have to be perfectly accurate Truth in Television, as long as it's hot. Overlaps somewhat with Mythology Fan Yay.
 * Various famous people past and present have developed significant gay admiration today, and often believed to have been gay or bi. Examples that are either straight or of unclear sexuality include:
 * Famously with Abraham Lincoln, believed by Log Cabin Republicans to have been possibly the first gay President of the United States.
 * Either that, or Buchanan.
 * This tends to happen with medieval Arabic and Persian poetry, since in order not to ruin a woman's honour, Islamic poets often wrote odes to beautiful young boys. And in mystical Sufi poetry, God was seen as a distant, teasing beloved, also male--the poems were about agape but presented through eros. Historians and translators often throw apoplectic fits when gay readers dare love poets like Rumi because of the m/m symbolism.
 * There are a number of straight male athletes who have large gay followings, to which they respond with varying degrees of warmth; some, like rugby star Ben Cohen, go so far as to pose for nude pictures and market them to their male fans.
 * Kellan Lutz (Emment Cullen) has quite a few gay fans. He has lampshaded this in interviews, but has said that he really loves his gay fanbase.