User:Lequinni/sandbox

Basuic Index Template for example sorting

Real Life
sorted examples in Imaginary_Love_Triangle

Anime & Manga

 * Fairy Tail has a love triangle existing only in the mind of Juvia, who misinterpreted something Gray said to think he loved Lucy, and thus believes her to be a rival in love. Ironically, Gray and Lucy are Just Friends and Gray doesn't seem to have an interest in love, let alone notice Juvia's affections for him. The imaginary rivalry settles down after a while, but that doesn't stop Juvia from sometimes flaunting her "progress with Gray-sama" in front of Lucy.
 * Later it's taken Up to Eleven and now she believe that she's in a Love Dodecahedron
 * Interesting example in Kannazuki no Miko: Himeko thinks she's getting in the way of Chikane and Souma's relationship. In reality, both are interested in her, and she ends up with Chikane.
 * In Virgin Love, Chiharu's knowledge of Kaoru's sex life starts to make Daigo think there might have been something between them and Chiharu decides to fan the flames. Kaoru later reveals to Daigo that Chiharu is his cousin and he's just being had.

Comics

 * Wonder Woman once laughed when a fellow Justice Leaguer mentioned the idea of Diana being romantically involved with Superman. Her heart, at the time, lay elsewhere.

Films

 * The Luke, Leia, Han love-triangle is probably the Trope Codifier, at least by the time Return of the Jedi rolls around. Once we find out Luke and Leia are siblings, their branch disappears, though Han doesn't know that until the end of the movie.
 * Played for drama in the Matt Stover novelization of Revenge of the Sith (and to a lesser extent in the movie as well). Anakin thinks that Obi-Wan is his competition for Padme after Obi-Wan visited Padme's residence once early in the morning without his knowledge. This eventually culminates in Anakin Force Choking Padme out of crazed jealousy.

Literature

 * In Harry Potter, Ron occasionally thinks he's in a love triangle with Harry over Hermione, but they see each other Like Brother and Sister. It worked itself out in the end.
 * Similarly, in Order of the Phoenix Harry mentions having to meet with Hermione about something during his date with Cho. Naturally she assumes the worst and makes a scene in the middle of the tea shop.
 * And there's the Harry-Hermione-Krum triangle in Goblet of Fire, which is entirely a product of Rita Skeeter's imagination (you'd think people would eventually take the hint that Harry and Hermione aren't like that). Harry finds it rather surreal that a professional Quidditch player three years older than him considers him an actual 'threat'.
 * In Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, the protagonist's love interest has a romantically-inclined kid sister who tells him that she's going to marry somebody else -- who turns out to be just an old friend, and already married.

Live Action TV

 * iCarly appears, even at a very long glance, to be a Love Triangle comprised of a typical Just Friends ship with Carly and Freddie, and an extreme Belligerent Sexual Tension ship with Sam(antha) and Freddie. The reality is closer to Carly and Freddie being an Official Couple as Freddie stays devoted to Carly whilst she is appearing to warm up to him romantically, whilst Sam and Freddie denying feelings for each other to the point where their First Kiss is considered Old Shame or Never Live It Down.
 * That said, there's no reason the Love Triangle can't be between Carly and Freddie, and Carly and Sam.
 * Since the episode iStart A Fan War aired, it's possible that every pairing is imaginary and none of them will happen.
 * After iOMG, it has been confirmed that Sam is in love with Freddie, so right now this is closer to an All Love Is Unrequited triangle.
 * On Dharma and Greg, Dharma's old friend visits and begins spending a lot of time with her father, Larry. Dharma begins to think she's trying to steal him away from Abbie; in actuality, the friend wanted to spend time with Larry because.
 * Noah's Arc: Interesting subversion between.
 * In Gossip Girl, Chuck assumes from spying on Blair that she and  have something going on, and so sets them up so that Blair can see   doesn't belong in their world. However, Blair is in love with Chuck, and this childishness only leads to her becoming so disgusted with him she actually does go out and find another love interest.
 * Deadly Women explore this in many episodes, where the killer will often kill the person she believes to be in love with her boyfriend/husband/stalker victim to Murder the Hypotenuse.

Western Animation

 * An episode of Alvin and The Chipmunks had one involving a Girl of the Week, Simon, and a biker boy. Alvin convinced Simon to try out for a bike competition to impress the girl, only to find out that the biker was her cousin.
 * Total Drama Island, with its numerous Ship Tease moments, provides examples. For example, both Trent and Courtney saw themselves in a love triangle when their respective Love Interests, Gwen and Duncan, became friendly during TDA. (Though this may be subverted by the Ass Pulled Retcon in season three claiming that Gwen had always had a crush on Duncan.)
 * The inversion may be even more common, when a character is in a love triangle but doesn't notice; Cody's obliviousness to Trent/Gwen in season one would probably be the clearest example (later to be replicated with Cody/Gwen/Duncan in season three).
 * An episode of The Simpsons had the family visiting a dude ranch and Lisa falling for a cute boy (voiced by Johnathan Taylor-Thomas). When she runs into a girl who is looking for the boy, Lisa tries to get rid of her. It turns out that girl was the boy's cousin, and Lisa's actions make him hate her.

To add to the so bad it's horrible/Anime page


 * The OVA adaptation of Eiken is particularly infamous. Originally a very generic harem manga whose main gimmick is that it takes place in a World of Buxom where almost every female character sport enormous Gag Boobs (and the biggest set is attached to a 12-year old girl with all the implied sexualization), it evidently appealed to someone given that it lasted 18 tomes. Its OVA adaptation, on the other side, takes all the Fanservice and the Gainaxing Up to Eleven, but its done so ineptly that it becomes Nausea Fuel. That the plot is incredibly nonsensical even for ecchi comedy standards, that the characters are all either dull or unlikable, and that the voice acting in both Japanese or English is very grating only adds to the disaster.
 * Pilot Candidate / Candidate For Goddess: Horribly-integrated CGI even for its era, plot holes practically from the start ("Only men can be Goddess pilots...except for her"), and Zero Enna is possibly the most aggressively unlikable Shonen or Seinen protagonist ever. He's like Ash Ketchum crossed with Amuro Ray, only without the redeeming qualities of either and with a failed attempt at Hot-Blooded. The greatest failing, however, is that every piece of the story is incomplete. Several characters and concepts are introduced but never explored, each battle is an unfollowable mess with key points missing, and while the focus on cadets should make for an interesting angle, the main characters are barely involved with the plot. And to top it all off, even though the story is too thin and weak to support twelve episodes, it still has a Gecko Ending.
 * Interestingly, the series was based on a longer (and much better) manga by the author of D.N.Angel, but the company who animated the series declared itself bankrupt after releasing the last episode as an OVA. It also made the author very hesitant to allow D.N.Angel to get an anime adaptation. Eventually, Xebec (producer of this series and of Martian Successor Nadesico) made a competent adaptation.
 * The version shown in America had, in top of the above problems, an awful dub and was edited to comply with Toonami standards in a way that made the series even more nonsensical. For some inexplicable reason, this version was the one emitted in Adult Swim, from where was pulled after the sixth chapter. One [AS] bumper declared "Pilot Candidate: never again".
 * Locomotion, a (now disappeared) Latin-American animation channel, gave the series a very good dub into Spanish, but that only means that the series had very nice voices saying the nonsensical plot and the terrible lines.
 * That the famous Visual Novel Tsukihime needed to streamline and sanitize a bit its plot for its animated adaptation, given the content and nature of the game, was expected. What was not expected was the butchering of the storyline (where plot points were introduced and then forgotten or decontextualized), the atrocious pacing, the low quality of the animation, and the incredibly dull and boring soundtrack (where only the opening song has some sort of quality). The result was a 12-episode mess that only got worse in localization, and you get the kind of series the fans of its source deny their existence