True Love's Kiss



""Before the sun sets on the third day, you've got to get dear ol' princey to fall in love with you. That is, he's got to kiss you. Not just any kiss - the kiss of true love.""

- Ursula, The Little Mermaid

The Power of Love times Over Nine Thousand.

Fairy Tales, especially the edited Disney versions, usually have a few things in common: The Rule of Three, and True Love's Kiss.

Finding your true love will cure 99.9% of magical maladies and curses, or your money back!

This trope is so ingrained in the psyche of western audiences it will never really be discredited, but often subverted. Its actually a Dead Unicorn Trope that's Newer Than They Think -- notice how many of the original versions of the stories listed below had nothing to do with a "kiss". It is also often modified to True Love's "First" Kiss as an Anvilicious lesson about chastity. Has a tendency to be a Big Damn Kiss.

Subtrope and most common form of Magic Kiss.

Advertisments

 * Spoofed in a Capital One credit card commercial, where a princess kisses a frog... and he turns into a ferret, who starts rattling off legalese and provisos as the princess keeps trying to kiss him, turning him into different creatures. At the end, she leaves in disgust, leaving him as a portly centaur who protests that she's "just one kiss away" from a rich, handsome prince.
 * Also spoofed in a beer commercial, the (Australian) girl sees a frog and hopes that if she kisses it it will turn into a handsome sheep shearer. The frog does change, but then when he kisses her, she turns into a pint of beer.
 * Yet another spoof: a pretty girl kisses the Sci-Fi channel logo for no apparent reason and is turned into a giant frog.

Anime & Manga
"Nakago: But how? How did you manage to break the spell? There's no method known in the world for curing Kodoku poisoning once it has entered a person's body and affected them!
 * The ending to Prétear . It is no surprise considering that it's explicitly based on Snow White. It only happens in the anime version, though, not in the original manga.
 * Seen numerous times in Sailor Moon. Near the end of the first manga story, Mamoru brings back to life a seemingly dead Usagi by kissing her (Luna comments on this, saying that the princess has been woken up by the prince's kiss). The anime version uses this at least two times: in the Tear Jerker Sailor Moon R episode 69 (which actually contains a Sleeping Beauty reference), and later near the end of Sailor Moon SuperS (this time with Chibi-Usa and Helios). The ending of the Sailor Moon R movie may or may not count -- it was technically more of Intimate Healing, with Mamoru giving Usagi the life-saving nectar that way; but to the rest of the team it definitely looked like another instance of the Power of Love in work.
 * The Grand Finale of Tokyo Mew Mew uses two or three of these in succession.
 * In the last airing-order episode of the first season of Haruhi Suzumiya, Confused? Watch the series.
 * The hints that Asahina and Nagato give to Kyon are textbooks examples of this trope:.
 * The finale to Martian Successor Nadesico. Need a really large Boson Jump field in a hurry? Just get the leads to get over themselves and "initiate membrane-to-membrane contact" (thank you Ms. Fressange) already, saving themselves and the rest of the crew from explodey death.
 * However, at the end of The Movie, Akito pointedly ignores people suggesting the obvious Sleeping Beauty homage because he has been turned into a standoffish Stoic asshole by that time, and just wanders off.
 * C.C. uses this to reverse  Laser Guided Amnesia at the start of Code Geass R2, depending on who you ask. Others (including Word of God) claim she made effective use of Save States. Still, quite the Ship Tease.
 * In Gankutsuou's finale, Your Mileage May Vary, but apparently Albert  and thus saving the day.
 * The somewhat obscure Sabans Adventures Of The Little Mermaid had the villain Hedwig turn the title character's boyfriend (who was, of course, a handsome prince) into a vicious monster. Guess how Marina finally broke the curse?
 * The Kodoku arc in Fushigi Yuugi ends with this trope. Nakago, of course, being the horrendously evil jerk that he is, doesn't know this.

Tamahome: You'll spend your whole life trying to figure that out!"

": Just as I expected... It was like a rough, dry wilderness. Also, it was really warm... Hey, it's cold, so let's do it one more-- *gets Shut Up Kiss'd by * One more... *they kiss again* One more... *they kiss again and the camera pans out*"
 * In To Love Ru, when Oshizu accidentally possessed Haruna's body, she thought one of these from Rito might wake Haruna's consciousness and free Oshizu.
 * Toradora- Last episode, between . Can be a tearjerker and a CMOH all at the same time.

"Kagome: "Inuyasha, I love you. I love you as a half demon." (Kisses him)
 * Genderflipped example:  was kinda awakened from a Convenient Coma by  's "warm kiss" in the Space Runaway Ideon movie, Be Invoked. Kinda, because   It Makes Sense in Context, we swear.
 * In the second Inuyasha movie, Inuyasha had has human half sealed, causing him to turn him to turn into a full demon and go completely insane.

Inuyasha: (Snaps out of it) Kagome... (Kisses her back)

Fangirls: Squee!"


 * In the movie only of Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie breaks the curse on  by giving him a True Love's Kiss. However, Sophie is already in love with Howl, so how can she be his True Love as well? Then,   cheerfully notes that there's no reason someone can't have more than one True Love. So he's fine with Sophie being with her other True Love, Howl, while he goes to look for his own
 * Final Episode of Eureka Seven whereby Renton and Eureka kissed for the very first time and
 * Parodied in a Pokémon episode. Ash and the gang along with Team Rocket, are trying to wake a Snorlax up and Jesse suggests that a kiss from a "noble" Pokemon should wake it up. Well, Psyduck tries, it doesn't work (and Misty gets angry at it). So Meowth is forced to kiss it. However, instead of waking up, poor Snorlax is poisoned!
 * In Brigadoon Marin and Melan, kissing is powerful stuff indeed.
 * restores 's memories via this in Towa Kamo Shirenai. Sort of a justified trope in this case:
 * Spoofed in Ringo's Imagine Spots in Mawaru Penguindrum.
 * Played for Laughs in Beelzebub. This is supposedly the cure to Hilda's, and everyone at Ishiyama have reason to believe that the Prince Charming with the magic lips is her "husband", Oga; he doesn't want anything to do with it. Hilarity Ensues.

Comic Books

 * Parodied in Fables: Frau Totenkinder had a major problem with princes, and went around cursing them and their loved ones left, right and centre. Over the years, she became particularly fond of transforming them in a manner where they needed to persuade a human to fall in love with and kiss them to cure them. But they were all temporary cures, and the prince would find themselves transforming back when their wives became mad at them. Over the course of the story she takes responsibility for almost all of the situations where "True Love's Kiss" was needed to cure a curse. Just because she liked it.

Parodied again with a porcupine who goes around telling human girls he was cursed by a witch and must be kissed to transform into a handsome prince... he's lying. He was cursed, all right, but he was always a porcupine and the curse was a perverted attraction to human girls. He learned the kiss-me-I'm-a-prince "scam" from a frog he met once.

Parodied yet again -- Fables enjoys playing with this trope -- by a talking snail who meets young Prince Charming and tells him that she is a transformed princess. When Charming offers to kiss her, she replies that her curse is much more proper and will require a wedding first. Charming brings the snail back to currently flooding their kingdom.

Fables also inverts this with a rabbit cursed by a rabbit witch to become human -- unable to transform back, unless he can make another rabbit fall in love with him and receive True Love's Kiss.

To neutralize an apartment building, Bigby Wolf has Sleeping Beauty prick her finger within, causing herself and all within to fall asleep. Only, when they try to use Prince Charming to wake her, it becomes apparent that he no longer qualifies...  Another time, she was woken from the spell by an affectionate police dog who happened to be named 'Prince'.

Flycatcher, the Frog Prince, occasionally reverts to frog form when excited, nervous, or scared. Only his wife, unable to help, no less. When he "Aquaman: You're of no use here anyway... not for this. As Superman has just informed me, this is a job for a handsome prince.
 * In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comics, Buffy needs one of these to awaken from a magically induced nightmare.
 * In the 50th issue of Sonic the Hedgehog comic, Sonic's kiss wakes Princess Sally from a coma.
 * In one Justice League of America run, the Queen of Fables has made all the fairy tales come to life and warped them so she can rule the world. This includes making Wonder Woman into Snow White. The heroes know they need a Prince Charming to wake her up with a kiss, so Aquaman (King of the Seas) volunteers to do it.

Green Lantern: I thought you were the king of Atlantis.

Aquaman: Which means I was once a prince. Close enough."


 * How do you save someone from the Anti-Life Equation when it pops up in Final Crisis? Well if you're Barry Allen, you kiss your wife. And maybe the Speed Force does something, too.

Film

 * The film Shrek used it straight as part of a larger subversion. The female lead had a curse that turned her into an ogre by night, which could only be broken by True Love's Kiss. However, when said love, the ogre Shrek, kissed her, she became an ogre permanently -- which she preferred. Of course, there is the opening monologue, which mocks this trope lightly; you can see how seriously Shrek takes it.

In the sequel this is mentioned twice. Once as the only thing that can seal a "Happily Ever After" potion, and again in relation to Fiona's father,

When Shrek first meets Fiona. Fiona is faking a "sleeping beauty" post, and expects Shrek to wake her up by kissing her. Instead, he violently shakes her.
 * And then in the fourth movie, the only way to undo the Bad Future was a True Loves Kiss. Shrek spends a great deal of the movie trying to get Fiona to fall in love with him all over again and kiss him.
 * Enchanted, Giselle has an I Want Song called "True Love's Kiss", and expresses her beliefs that "it's the most powerful thing in the world."

It's also played straight near the end of the movie, when, like a good Disney princess, she's hexed to sleep. She needs a Troperriffic True Loves Kiss before midnight (of course) in order to wake up.
 * The Matrix:
 * The conclusion of the film The Brothers Grimm (based as it is around the Beethoven Was an Alien Spy trope) has Jacob rescuing twelve girls trapped in an enchanted sleep by giving this to the oldest one of them, Angelika, the woman he spent the film pining for. At first this seems to be the only thing that can save his brother Will as well, but discovers as he's about to do it that Will is alive and well and he'd rather have Angelika do the honors here (she obliges).
 * At the end of Legend, Lily awakens after Jack kisses her.
 * At the end of WALL-E
 * Buckaroo Banzai. Buckaroo uses this (with a little help from the Black Lectroids) to resurrect Penny Priddy.
 * Parodied in Amanda Bynes' Sydney White, where Sydney was simply exhausted from staying up all night for her paper and fell asleep in the library, causing her to be late for the presidential debate. The Love Interest finds her and treats it as if she would never wake up, culminating with the kiss to "break the spell".
 * In Snow White and The Huntsman, the most recent film adaptation of Snow White, it's subverted and played straight. Snow gets into a coma caused by a poisoned apple, and the  kiss fails to revive her. Then the   kisses her, and she gets better. It's nowhere explained about the meaning of this, though. Supposedly the filmmakers thought the audience would recognize this trope on their own.

Literature

 * In Talking to Dragons, a book in a series famous for modernizing fairy tales without subverting them, Daystar uses this to transform Shiara back from being turned into stone.
 * His Dark Materials: Lyra and Will save the multiverse from falling apart with their First Kiss.
 * It was a bit more involved than that.
 * There's no evidence of that beyond possible subtext.
 * Squick
 * In Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, this get subverted all to hell (since the 'hook' of the series is that there is an ambient magic in the land trying to make events turn out like fairy tales). One unfortunate prince was a frog for decades and was restored to human form when an infant princess picked him up and kissed him. Not that there was any love -- she just liked animals and liked to kiss things. Close enough, apparently.
 * Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman plays with this. A kiss can't directly cure transformation into a monster, but it restores the transformation victim's flagging morale and keeps her from giving up on a cure.
 * Shusterman also did this is the second book of the The Skinjacker Trilogy, Everwild. Allie brings Mikey Mc Gill, who reverted to his monstrous state out of jealousy, back to human form by kissing him even when he looks his most indescribably hideous.
 * In Beastly, the terms of Kyle's curse are that he must genuinely love a girl, she must genuinely love him back, and both must prove it by kissing. He tries to end the curse early by having his Shallow Love Interest of a girlfriend show up and kiss him in the dark. Since neither love each other, it doesn't work.
 * Deconstructed in Greg Costikyan's short story "And Still She Sleeps". No one can wake up the maiden who's been asleep for centuries, because no one can truly love her when they can't get to know her. In the end, they put her in a museum until some future wizard can figure out how to wake her.
 * In Esther Friesner's Majyk By Design, the magician-protagonist's estranged wife asks him to turn himself into a frog, so she can use this to prove her point that she still loves him.

Live Action TV

 * In Haven Audrey's cheek kiss to Nathan
 * Subverted in My Hero: George, attempting to break through a villain's mind control over Janet, announces that he's giving her a True Loves Kiss, but later confesses that what actually broke the mind control was him using the kiss to covertly slip her the antidote to the Phlebotinum the villain had been using on her.
 * Subverted in Eureka, when Carter's hippie sister suggests that he kiss Allison as a way to stop a time loop. Since they live in Eureka, Land of Science, this doesn't work the way it does in the movies (or at all).
 * Justified with Techno Babble in another episode, "Primal". Rampaging Nanomachines who are trying to take over the world, as they are being controlled by Stark's subconscious. The only way to defeat them is to piss Stark off, so Carter needs to kiss Allison to achieve this.
 * On an episode of Merlin Arthur is put under a spell that makes him fall in love with a spoiled princess. The only way to break the spell is if he is kissed by the woman he truly loves. Cue Guinevere and a rather spectacular kiss...
 * On an episode of Terra Nova, Jim kisses Elisabeth to infect her with a virus that will help cure her memory loss.
 * Subverted often, and usually in a nasty fashion, in Once Upon a Time. In the pilot, Snow White kissing her mortally wounded husband doesn't do a thing. In the third episode, Mary Margaret (the brainwashed Snow White) tries it to revive "John Doe" (said husband again), and while it brings him back, he immediately goes back to his estranged wife (who isn't her). Lastly, Sheriff Graham kissed Emma, remembered everything about his past life in the fairy tale world...right before Regina decides to kill him.
 * And when Belle tries to invoke this, it actually ruins her budding relationship with Rumpelstiltskin. Ouch.
 * In the series finale of Chuck,
 * In the series finale of Chuck,

Fairy Tales

 * An actual literary version can be found in the Grimms' "The True Bride", in which the heroine breaks the spell over her prince (an evil princess bewitched him to forget her) with a kiss. This little tidbit was retained when the story was adapted for The Storyteller.
 * "Snow White": As with many fairy tales, the product of many rewrites (especially Disney's); originally, the dwarfs dropped the coffin and the poison apple fell out of her mouth. It is also worth noting that The Brothers Grimm themselves rewrote this one, changing the wicked mother to a Wicked Stepmother (a trope in of itself now) so as not to terrify children.
 * "Sleeping Beauty" (a.k.a. "Briar Rose"), in the Grimms version. In the earlier Perrault version, Sleeping Beauty simply wakes up after 100 years, and the prince just happens to be there. In an earlier Italian variant, the prince raped her and she gave birth to twins. One of the babies crawled up to her body and suckled the flax out of her finger, reviving her. Then the princess took her children to see the prince, who had returned home to his wife. (That is, in the versions other than the ones where, ashamed and enraged about her rape, she eats her children.) Then, Perrault rewrote it.
 * "The Frog Prince": In the original Brothers Grimm version, the prince turns back to normal after the princess throws him against a wall. They still get married even after the attempted murder.
 * There's a Scottish version, "The Well at the World's End", where she kisses him and then cuts his head off (though he did ask her to). Apparently he needed a girl who was both kind and brave. And possibly crazy.
 * There's a similar one but with the genders inverted and princess cursed in a white cat form instead of a frog.
 * "The Queen Who Sought a Drink from a Certain Well" and a whole bunch of others, with the chop off my head approach in the lead.
 * "The Little Mermaid" zig-zags this in the Disney version of the story, in which Ariel needs the "Kiss of True Love" to become human permanetly, though it does not work out that way.The original version of the story required that she actually married the prince to become human forever, on the condition that if he betrayed her, she would die. It also does not work out well either...

Tabletop Games

 * The third-party D&D supplement The Book of Erotic Fantasy has a lesser version of the Resurrection spell that requires the caster to kiss the target. Unlike most examples here, it doesn't require the two to be in love, however.

Video Games

 * Subverted in the first game of the Dark Parables series, which is based on the story of Sleeping Beauty. The prince did kiss the sleeping Princess Briar Rose to break her enchantment, successfully waking every person in the entire castle - except her. A thousand years later, at the time of the game, she's still asleep.
 * Subverted in Devil May Cry 4. The Big Bad has been defeated, Dante and Nero have made their peace, and Kyrie is safe. Nero and Kyrie lean in, sunset in the background, for the big moment... and suddenly Nero pulls out his gun (no, seriously, the revolver) and blasts a demon. He looks up to find a horde of the game's weakest enemy coming at himself and his love, asks her to wait, and then spends the credits kicking their asses. You never actually see the kiss happen.
 * A rather darker and less PG-rated version shows up in Dragon Age, in which having sex with Morrigan can . Though it is something of a subversion, as love is in no way required.
 * At the end of Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp, Dirk uses this to resurrect Daphne. That's The Power of Love.
 * Played with in Final Fantasy VIII when Squall finds the rest of the party waiting for him after carrying  across Horizon Bridge to find the person who can help her. Quistis teases that all   might need is a kiss from "the prince". Squall is not amused.
 * Subverted again in the Fan Remake of King's Quest II. Kissing Valanice won't break the spell, leaving Graham to resort to another method to break the enchantment.
 * Played with in Odin Sphere when Odin places his daughter Gwendolyn in an enchanted sleep and promises her to Oswald in return for Oswald slaying a dragon. Oswald ends up refusing to kiss Gwendolyn in order to wake her until he's sure that the spell on her won't force her to love him.
 * Subverted at the end of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II:
 * This happens in the climax arc of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Although it was more of a Sacred First Kiss combined with the Chaos Emeralds.

Web Comics

 * Pibgorn An attempt

Western Animation

 * Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang and Katara are lost in a maze and a folk tale says they have to "let love lead the way" to get back out. One of them suggests a True Loves Kiss, but they don't decide to go for it until their torches are almost gone. They lean in, the light goes out... and crystals in the ceiling begin glowing, marking a path. Katara guesses that the lovers from the folk tale just put their torches out to see the crystals and find their way, and love had nothing to do with it. (We weren't shown if they actually kissed or not - can you say Ship Tease?)
 * Katara's voice actor claims they kissed, but whether this really qualifies as Word of God is debatable.
 * Later, the Genre Savvy Sokka teasingly suggests Katara can cure the Manchurian Agent Jet by kissing him, a suggestion Katara and Aang vehemently shoot down.
 * The Animated Adaptation of The Legend of Zelda satires the Frog Prince example. Ganon turns Link into a frog, and a witch informs him that the only cure is the kiss of a princess (Ganon apparently "knows the classics well"). When Link points out that he tries to get Zelda to kiss him Once an Episode and never succeeds, the witch gripes "I said it was simple! I didn't say it'd be easy!"
 * In The Flight of Dragons, Princess Melisande wakes from the semi-coma which occupies her for about a third of the movie. Her foster father, the wizard Carolinus, thinks it was a magic relic which awakened her, but she corrects him with the information that it was a kiss from Designated Hero Peter. (Unlike many of the examples on this page, it was not their first kiss.)
 * Spoofed in a Garfield and Friends U.S. Acres two-part episode, 'Snow Wade and the Seven Dwarfs' near the end between Roy Rooster (as the prince) and Wade Duck (as Snow Wade). Though, Orson Pig tried kissing Snow Wade before this.
 * Disney canon:
 * Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs.
 * Sleeping Beauty is arguably the Trope Namer.
 * The Little Mermaid plays around with the trope: Ursula informs Ariel that she must receive True Love's Kiss from Prince Eric in order to remain human. Thanks to Ursula's meddling, Eric fails to do this before Ariel's three days are up. Things work out in the end, no thanks to any kissing.
 * The kiss shown in the page image occurs in Beauty and The Beast, after Belle's Dying Declaration of Love resurrects the Beast as a human prince. Their kiss transforms the castle's servants back into humans.
 * And of course The Princess and The Frog. Naveen can kiss any princess, even the Princess of Mardi Gras  No masquerade princesses for him!
 * In one Aladdin episode, Dark Magical Girl Sadira tried to take Aladdin away from Jasmine by altering everyone's memories so that she would seem like the princess engaged to Aladdin, while Jasmine would become a street rat. However, Aladdin and Jasmine still experienced Love At First Sight. After Aladdin realized Jasmine might make a better true love for him than Sadira, he and Jasmine kissed, restoring everything to the state preceding Sadira's spell.
 * Subverted in Frozen. The only way to save Anna after her heart becomes frozen is with an act of true love. Despite what everyone thinks a kiss is not required.

And they all lived Happily Ever After.