"V" Sign

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
An ironic twist

"V for victory, dot dot dot dash
Hitler lost his little mustache
If you find it, let him know
And he'll give you lots of dough"

Sometimes, a character, feeling victorious and all, just feels like yelling "VICTORY!", or busting a few moves. But for one reason or another, they want a less ostentatious method to celebrate. In that case, they stick their middle and index fingers upwards, as if forming the letter "V". Sometimes, they'll do it with some exclamation, but not necessarily.

In Japan, the "V" sign can also signify that the person making it is being photographed. This pops up in anime quite a bit, sometimes accompanied by the character saying "V". May have been popularized as a result of the occupation after WWII.

In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries, when done with the palm facing inward, it is an offensive gesture—slightly less offensive than Flipping the Bird in the United States—sometimes known as "throwing the deuces" or "[flipping/flicking] [off] Vs".

During World War II, Winston Churchill popularised its use as a "Victory" sign (for V as in victory) initially with palm inwards and later (once informed that inward was offensive) in the war palm outwards. (This would later lead to a frequently used joke about the result of World War II being due to Hitler always choosing paper)

The palm-facing-outward version of the sign has also been used to mean "peace", especially by the 1960s/1970s counter-culture.

Contrary to popular belief, the "palm-inwards" version has nothing to do with medieval English (or Welsh, depending on the story) archers showing defiance. Maybe. Nobody really knows for sure, but it'd be cool if it was true.

A form of Crazy Cultural Comparison. Compare Victory Pose and Happy Dance, where someone wants to be a bit more showy with their celebration. For the single-finger version, see Flipping the Bird.

Examples of "V" Sign include:

Anime and Manga

  • Vash the Stampede is the poster guy of this trope in anime. He gives out the V-sign in addition to his hammy line: THIS WORLD IS MADE OF, LOVE AND PEACE!!
    • It's actually a really weird inverted version. He uses the same fingers, but crosses them. Presumably it is nonetheless of similar meaning.
  • Ichigo Kurosaki does this when he sends a Menos back to Hueco Mundo after Uryu's little bait trick, complete with a yelled out "VICTORY!"
  • Lina Inverse from Slayers
  • Japan offers to do this instead of smiling in Axis Powers Hetalia.
  • Yurika Misumaru from Martian Successor Nadesico practically debuts her day as a captain with this.

Yurika: "I'm the captain of this ship, Yurika Misumaru! V!"

  • Nena Trinity from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is prone of doing this almost all the time when she's in a good mood. She stops doing it for awhile after Ali killed her brothers, but in the second season, she did it again after screwing Wang's plan in a form of Take That.
  • Taken not as a hand gesture, but as a symbolic phrase in Combattler V. Usually used to get the spirit up.

Believe in the sign of victory: V!

  • Ash of Pokémon sometimes does this when he catches a Pokémon. Pikachu uses it too, though he has short little toes instead of fingers.
  • In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure Hareta gave a "V" Sign right after he beat Mitsumi.
  • In Ranma ½, Gosunkugi (in the manga) or Sasuke (in the anime) followed Ranma taking pictures in an attempt to find a weakness; once developed, Ranma is shown with the V sign at the camera, implying that Ranma knew he was being stalked.
  • Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan does this. Also, she seems to pronounce "V" as "vi" (rhymes with "eye") instead of "vee".
  • Ringo Seto in Angelic Layer gives this sign to Misaki before their match, and even says "V!". After the match, they get a photograph of both of them taken while both giving the sign.
  • Played with in Kinnikuman, where Kinnikuman utterly fails at making the V-sign after an important victory. How do you screw something like that up? Well, you see, Kinnikuman's such a loser he's never had a reason to do it before.
  • Misuzu from AIR uses it
  • Ichigo Mashimaro: When Miu sees it on TV, she wonders why kids always "do that finger thing every time they're in front of a camera". Nobue replies that they're "probably trying to get some attention". When she shows Miu a picture she took on her camera in which Miu herself is doing "that finger thing", Miu doesn't understand what Nobue is pointing out.
  • Minako uses it a lot as Sailor V and quite a bit as Sailor Venus in Codename: Sailor V and Sailor Moon, Usagi uses it a fair bit as Sailor Moon too often holding her hand horizontally across her face and looking through the V with her eye.
  • Chris in the Manhwa Demon Diary strikes this pose several times... after being pummeled into the dirt, causing Erutis to question, "Victory? On whose planet!?"
  • Asuna of Mahou Sensei Negima, such as after she does a Big Damn Heroes moment for Negi in the climax of the Mahora Festival arc. Even back when she was an Emotionless Girl, she was shown doing this after demonstrating the Kanka technique to Takamichi.
  • Ataru in Urusei Yatsura accidentally summons a demon called "Velial" (or Belial) by giving the V sign after winning a tennis match against Mendou. (In the Japanese version of the manga, Ataru even says "V sign" when he does this.)
  • In Hell Girl episode "Tragedy of V" when drunks make the V sign in the background of a news report about the deaths of a mother and son, the father hunts them down, kills them and leaves their hands in the V sign.
  • In the anime version of Prince of Tennis, Kikumaru Eiji shows of his Keet-ness by doing about thirty of these in a row while jumping hyperactively around the room and posing for a camera.
  • Hilariously, the agents of AEGIS in Gate Keepers do the "V" Sign with the palm inward (which, as mentioned above, is a rude gesture in the UK).
  • V-mon from Digimon Adventure 02 is named for and vaguely themed around the V-sign, although he doesn't often make it. Shoutmon of Digimon Xros Wars also seems to be themed around it, especially in his later Xrossed forms.
  • Mobile Suit Victory Gundam.
  • Caro strikes this pose in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Vi Vid after she and Corona managed to take down two members of the opposing team in a training battle. Then Nanoha shoots her down. "Complacency over a small victory is a big no-no on the battlefield~!"
  • Transformers Victory.
  • The end credits of the first three parts of the Birdy the Mighty OVA series ended with the title character flashing this.
  • Cure Peace from Smile Pretty Cure, obviously.

Comic Books

  • Inverted in V for Vendetta. The title pretty much says it all, but more specifically, the mockery of "V for Victory" is an underlying theme.
  • In an issue of Invaders, a Marvel Universe Retcon World War Two Comic Book, a character's hand doing this is The Reveal that he's Sir Winston Churchill. Except that we (and the other characters) are seeing him from behind, so...
  • In Warren Ellis' Crecy the main character is an archer who does this at the end of the book. This refers to the urban legend that the offensive V-sign came from the French cutting off the fingers of captured English longbowmen.
  • In Mark Millar's first arc on The Authority, the Engineer flashes the palm-inward version as an Expy of The Incredible Hulk exploded in space.
  • In "Astèrix in Britain" Notax makes the V-sign after the Britons defeat the Romans alongside Asterix and Obelix.

Fan Works

  • Haruhi and Sakanaka to each other in Kyon: Big Damn Hero as a symbol of victory, after Kyon and Haruhi return from a Student Council session discussing the fight between Kyon and Ryuugu Ryo earlier that day (Kyon acted in defense of a schoolmate). They decided not punishing nor rewarding Kyon for that.

Film

  • On the poster for the film Victory (aka Escape to Victory) Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, and Pele jointly make the "V" sign with their bodies. It's also used at the end of the film.
  • In Forrest Gump, Jenny gives it to Forrest before he leaves for Vietnam.
  • The logo used by the back-in-business Ghostbusters in Ghostbusters II has the ghost making a "V" sign, which serves the dual purpose of being a Take That to the authorities that shut them down and denoting that it is the second movie in the franchise.
  • In the second Hellboy movie, one of the confiscated pictures Manning has of Hellboy is of him flashing the V Sign at the camera. He presents it with an exasperated "He posed for this one."

Literature

  • The character Didactylos in Small Gods refers both to the offensive version of the V sign ("two fingers") and to the word "didactic". (Ephebe is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of classical Athens.)

Live-Action TV

  • The miniseries V was pretty much named after this trope.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike does the palm-inward version and the WB censors not only let it through, they let it on the opening credits after that.
  • Rescue Sentai Go Go Five had a V logo in a lot of places. Of course, it's hard to know if V means victory or roman numeral 5 (possibly both... in which case the name means Five Five Five. Which is Japan's 911, befitting the Rescue theme and making it possibly the most multi-layered sentai name pun ever.)
    • In Mahou Sentai Magiranger/Power Rangers Mystic Force, the Pink Ranger's V-sign becomes a plot point (showing the others that she's only pretending to still be brainwashed. In the sentai version she continues to flash the sign every so often, while her power rangers counterpart drops it.)
    • Perhaps due to the prevalence of the Five-Man Band, the V sign shows up in many series of both versions.
  • In The Thick of It Malcolm flicks the offensive version to the journalists who gather outside his house after his sacking. He flicks another naughty V at Olly for not answering his phone.
  • X Factor judge Louis Walsh got into trouble for flicking a V at the audience during one of the live finals.
  • The Goodies create a Winston Churchill robot, who is seen in a newsreel giving the "Up Yours" sign to the troops before Graeme quickly turns his hand around.
  • Early in its run, Eastenders managed to achieve notoriety after ending an episode on the palm-back variety.
  • A Blackadder met Winston Churchill whilst he was doing this. He took it wrong.

Music

Wheels are turning, take me far beyond
Holding out my hands in victory

Professional Wrestling

  • Jeff Jarrett throws up the "V" Sign with both hands at the end of his version of the Fargo Strut.
  • This was pretty much the justification behind Nelson Frazier, Jr.'s gimmick when he became Big Daddy V (the "V" stood for "Victory," although it had originally stood for "Viscera").

Video Games

  • In Wild ARMs 2, after beating the boss in her prologue, Lilka Eleniak strikes this pose.
  • Every time Mario gets a star in Super Mario 64, or completes a level in Super Mario World.
  • Super Mario RPG: Mario, Mallow, and Toadstool get one of these as their victory pose after a battle (Bowser either clenches his fists or does a Bicep-Polishing Gesture [1] while Geno just nods).
    • And Mario does it when he goes down pipes.
  • Wario typically has his own versions of this: he holds up two Vs (overlapping them to make "W") or (as in Super Smash Bros. Brawl) he holds up three fingers (again, to represent "W").
  • Ness does it whenever he gets his picture taken by the Recurring Traveler photographer.
  • This is Chun-Li's Victory Pose in the Street Fighter series. "YATTA!"
    • Cammy is also making this gesture in the iconic poster of her.
  • The box art of Left 4 Dead 2 has the palm-inward version; predictably, the UK version has a outward hand instead.
  • Kid Ryu does this when catching a fish in Breath of Fire III.
  • Pokémon Black and White: Victini is based around this.
  • "V for peace" - the irony of the 'V for Victory' also representing 'peace' - is a recurring Motif in Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. So is the palm-inward version, which is used symbolically by the villains and by Snake when he decides to abandon his old ideals. The characters do just about everything the gesture can mean - holding it up to represent the two things required for nuclear deterrence, transforming the singular pointing finger (pressing the nuclear button) into the peace sign, even 'walking' two fingers along a surface to represent legs...
  • The boss Kunino-sagiri in Persona 4 weaponizes the peace sign. His physical attack involves thrusting out his hand in this pose, and he flashes twin peace signs when he uses his "Unerring Justice" attack. He also has a halo that consists of several Y-shaped peace signs. Kunino-sagiri is the Shadow of Taro Namatame, who has developed a messiah complex after spending the game abducting people and hurling them into the TV world under the mistaken belief that he's rescuing them from a serial killer.
  • In Mirror's Edge, Faith can do the offensive version. There's an achievement for doing it in front of an enemy.
  • Cream does this in Sonic Advance 3.

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • Commonly used at the end of Wartime Cartoons. Often accompanied by the opening phrase of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was used to represent V in Morse code (dot-dot-dot-dash).
  • Starfire of Teen Titans does this once.
  • Parodied in an episode of Total Drama Action, where Izzy does the V sign... before she gets eliminated the second time.
  • The Venture Brothers tend to do this at inappropriate moments whilst shouting, "Go team Venture!"

Real Life

  • This pose is so popular in Japan it's been suggested (in jest) that Japanese women have a genetic predisposition to striking this pose if a camera is pointed at them.

Politics

  • Apparently, Sir Winston Churchill did do it the wrong way around initially, until someone told him what it meant to the working classes. In fact he did it both ways round, arbitrarily at different times.
    • It's been suggested that he knew what it meant, and had Hitler in mind when he made the gesture.
  • Richard Nixon, as seen in the picture above. Oddly used in that he did so after resigning from the Presidency rather than face impeachment due to Watergate.
  • George H. W. Bush faced his hand the wrong way doing this while on a state visit to Australia during his presidency.
  • The overuse of the victory gesture (and, somehow, Vangelis' Conquest of Paradise) by the guys who took power in Madagascar in 2009 has led to massive contentions - do it in front of the right people and you'll be smiled at. Do it in front of the wrong people and you'll eat knuckle sandwich (if lucky).
  1. ↑ In the Japanese version, Bowser was actually flipping the bird
  2. ↑ (said to be the facial expression of someone who is being fucked silly.)
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