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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
So. You're adapting this great book for the screen. It's got action, comedy, drama, rom...what, it ''doesn't'' have romance? Well, that won't do; we can't [[Strictly Formula|break the formula]]. Looks like it's time for a previously platonic character to be
This trope is a specific kind of [[Adaptation Decay]]. The idea is that in order to appeal to a broad audience, we need romantic subplots. An original and successful work (usually not film, because that's where [[Executive Meddling|executives have a field day]]) survived all on its own without a crappy romance subplot shoehorned in. However, [[Viewers are Morons]] when they watch something on the big screen, and obviously can't like a movie if the main character doesn't get to boink a chick by the end of it.
This sort of thing [[Shipping|happens to everyone]] all the time in [[
The trope in itself is not ''necessarily'' bad, but very hard to pull off effectively. When done poorly, this may become a [[Token Romance]] or even a [[Romantic Plot Tumor]] in the worst cases.
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Oujirou in the ''[[
* This happened somewhat to Yue Ayase in the ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' anime. While it was just barely alluded to in the [[Field Trip]] arc (which is where they likely drew it from), the love triangle plot come into play much later in the manga.
* ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' anime adaptation has promoted Faldio to love interest in order to introduce a ''[[Love Triangle]]''. Not only totally unnecessary considering the existing romantic subplot, but it's become a rather large [[Romantic Plot Tumor]]. For instance, a rather epic battle in the game against an enormous overpowered tank was completely avoided in the anime to allow Alicia and Faldio time to flirt.
* In the ''[[Tokko]]'' manga, Ranmaru and Sakura don't show any specific romantic interest in each other, but in the anime they develop feelings for each other and become love interests.
* The closest thing to an original canon for ''[[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Liz Sherman from ''[[Hellboy (
** Interestingly, in the comics Liz actually has something of a romantic sub-plot with Abe Sapien, professional fish-person and Hellboy's best friend. Still, this sub-plot is extremely subdued, but it does get played up a bit in the animated adaptations.
* In ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'', Kitty Pryde is one of Spidey's girlfriends briefly, giving him a relationship with someone he doesn't have to constantly worry about the safety of. They do break up eventually.
== [[Film]] ==
* Somewhat (and very surprisingly) averted in the movie adaptation to ''[[I, Robot (
* For the movie adaptation of ''[[Watchmen]]'' it was [[Executive Meddling|originally planned]] to give Rorschach a love interest since his actions drive the whole story. But the idea was dropped.
* The 1960 film adaptation of [[
** The 2002 film goes further: not only was Weena replaced with a love interest named Mara and the Eloi made even less childlike, but the Time Traveler was given an entire backstory of building the machine as a way to save his girlfriend from being killed by a mugger.
* Isabella of France in ''[[Braveheart]]'' was in France and ten years old at the time of Wallace's rebellion. Particularly unfortunate as her romantic subplot is at cross-purposes with some of the most powerful moments in the film.
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* Ellie Sattler is given a larger part and promoted to Alan Grant's love interest in the film version of ''[[Jurassic Park]]''.
** In a rare subversion, though, her role as a love interest is only subtly hinted at and the two don't end up together. By the third movie, Ellie Sattler is married (presumably happily) to a different man, and is raising a family.
* In a move that [[Genre Savvy|savvy]] movie goers could have seen coming, the new ''[[Star Trek (
** Conversely, the movie didn't try to pair Spock up with Nurse Chapel, who had a crush on him in the series that was never developed due to the network objections (they didn't want the main male characters in any long-term relationships which ruled out both Spock/Uhura and Spock/Chapel, but which does explain why there were episodes that displayed Spock apparently flirting with both women (at different times) before it was knocked on the head).
* [[The Film of the Book]] of ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]: Prince Caspian'' creates a romance between Susan and Caspian. Guess they didn't want to wait one more movie for Caspian's marriage to Ramandu's daughter. Fortunately, it's only a mild romance, limited to flirting and a goodbye kiss. It's so minor that it could conceivably have happened "between the lines" of the book, and it gave Susan something to do while she was onscreen.
* Pretty much every movie version of ''[[
* Maggie Barnes in the ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]'' movie.
* Trillian in the film version of ''[[The
** In the original radio series, Trillian was indeed meant as a love interest but things didn't progress the way Adams intended to. That's why their romantic involvement was played up in the movie.
* ''[[Starship Troopers]]'' does this with "Dizzy" Flores who, in the book, is a guy in the same platoon as Rico, and is only mentioned in the first chapter, due to the fact that he dies during a drop, and is not romantic at all. (Per the other wiki and, you know, the book.) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film)#Comparison_with_the_novel\] Of course, Dizzy gets an upgrade with boobs and boinked. It's good both ways.
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** Um, no. Unless we're talking about different people, Winnie is 12 in the books and Jesse is either 15 or 17. Of course, nothing physical happens but {{spoiler|he does propose to her and offer to make her immortal when she's his age so they can be together forever.}}
** The book was a bit ambiguous as to exactly how romantic things were on Jesse's end. Winnie definitely felt something for him, but it could very well have been a [[Precocious Crush]]. Let's just say that in the book, the two certainly didn't go running through a field and plan to climb the Eiffel Tower together.
* [[Inverted Trope]] in ''[[Angels
** The same was done in the film of ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]''.
* This is actually inverted in the movie adaptation of ''[[Psycho]]''. In the original novel Lila and Sam become romantically involved {{spoiler|after Mary is killed and they try to solve her murder.}} Hitchcock made their relationship platonic in the film, because it would be gross otherwise.
** In the 1982 sequel, though, Lila has married Sam and had a daughter with him, called Mary.
* One of the [[Reconstruction|changes made]] in the film version of ''[[Kick
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings (
* The 1960 film version of [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s ''Fall of the House of Usher'' makes Madeline the fiancée of the narrator.
* [[Adaptation Decay|The film version]] of ''[[Queen of the Damned]]'' made the main subplot a romance between the two main characters who, in the book, do not speak.
** One of the many things altered from the book is the identity of Jesse's maker. In the book, it's her "Aunt" Maharet (a distant ancestor-turned-vampire). In the movie, it's Lestat. This was obviously meant to reinforce the bond between the characters, which was never there in the book.
* ''[[Harry Potter and
* Averted in the film ''[[Shooter]]'' which is based on the Stephen Hunter novel ''Point of Impact''. In the book Bob Lee Swagger becomes romantically involved with the widow of his old war buddy. In the movie the two become friends and allies, but they do not fall in love with each other.
* The 2009 film of ''[[Land of the Lost (
* In the 2009 film version of ''[[The Picture of Dorian Gray]]'', Basil and Dorian finally get together. This is completely justified by all the deliberate [[Ho Yay]] in the original book, as [[Values Dissonance|at the time,]] [[Oscar Wilde]] could do no more than insert [[Homoerotic Subtext]] to let the reader know what was really going on.
== [[Literature]] ==
* As reported in [[Orson Scott Card]]'s commentary on the ''[[Ender's Game]]'' audiobook, the main reason there's still no Ender's Game movie is because every producer wanted to age Ender to a teenager and/or give him a love interest, and the author rightfully refused to sign any contract that allowed anything of the sort.
* Leaving aside the <s>unfilmable</s> [[Ultimate Evil|indescribable nature]] of a lot of his stuff, this is probably the recurring problem with attempts at filming the works of [[
* Adaptations and pastiches featuring [[Sherlock Holmes]] always do this to Irene Adler, the one person to outsmart and upstage Holmes and to whom he refers to as 'the' woman. Although this is canonically along the lines of grudging admiration, when going off the source material and looking for someone to be Holmes' [[Love Interest]] it's either her [[Ho Yay|or]] [[Heterosexual Life Partners|Watson]]... despite that in the ''one'' story Irene Adler is in, Holmes comes in laughing over {{spoiler|how he helped her get married to someone else.}} Even if Holmes was into relationships, Irene seems pretty stoked with {{spoiler|her hot lawyer husband}}, but, of course, nobody cares what the woman wants. It seems that if they'd actually bothered to read the stories, someone like Violet Hunter would make more sense.
** Well Watson shipped Violet Hunter, so it does make more sense, but I guess everyone loves someone who beats Sherlock Holmes.
* Most adaptations of ''[[Dracula (
** Inverted in ''[[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]]'', in which Mina isn't paired off with Dracula- but she ''still'' left her canonical [[Love Interest]], Jonathan Harker, after he rejected her for being "ruined"... so that [[Alan Moore]] could then put her in a [[
*** Which was doubly inverted in the movie, where Mina's husband is dead and she has no affair with Quatermaine. Sawyer flirts with her a bit and she did have an affair with Dorian Grey in the past, but it's implied that her years of living as a vampire have left her unable to really love anyone.
* [[Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The TV version of ''[[Johnny Maxwell Trilogy|Johnny and the Bomb]]'' adds a bit of a [[Toy Ship]] between Johnny and Kirsty.
* Alice and the Hatter become a couple at the conclusion of Sy Fy's ''[[
** Although it isn't the same Alice as from the books.
* There have been several examples of a Saracen character appearing in ''[[Robin Hood]]'' stories: Nasir from ''[[Robin of Sherwood]]'' and Azeem from ''[[Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves]]'', but in the BBC's ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'' the character is [[Gender Flip
== [[Theater]] ==
* The play ''[[The Solid Gold Cadillac]]'' had a relatively low-key romance between Mrs. Laura Partridge and Ed McKeever, even though the narration referred to the couple as "Cinderella" and "Prince Charming," who (of course) were married in the end. The movie version is much more of a romantic comedy, playing up the romance between McKeever and <s>Mrs.</s> ''Miss'' Partridge to an extent that the [[Tabloid Melodrama]] about the characters is fairly justified.
* In the stage musical of ''[[Beauty and
* In the musical of ''[[The Producers]]'' the previously minor part of Swedish secretary Ulla is not only expanded into leading lady but she becomes Bloom's love interest and briefly is the center of a one-sided [[Love Triangle]] between him and Max.
* The musical adaptation of ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel (
* In ''[[Seussical]]'', [[Horton Hears a Who!|Horton]] gets a lover interest in Gertrude McFuzz, a character from another of Seuss' books.
* The Wicked Witch of the West and the Scarecrow are promoted to being love interests in the musical ''[[Wicked (
== [[Video Games]] ==
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** Also in the first movie, there are some incredibly obvious hints that Hahli and Jaller like each other, though this was back before the hugging/kissing rule was really brought in.
** And now that the story takes place in a world where there's no such thing as [[No Hugging, No Kissing]], one of the female characters (well, the only one to ever get a spotlight, anyway) will show feelings toward the main hero, Mata Nui. [[Word of God]] says these feeling which could barely even be called love will only get referenced in one short scene in a novel, and their so-far friendly relationship won't go any deeper, since the storyline is still intended for a younger male audience (who, according to them, are still afraid of cooties), and since Mata Nui is an outcast from the no-romance world ({{spoiler|and he also has to get his old [[Humongous Mecha]] body back sometime}}).
* Happened to Spider-Woman in the ''[[Iron Man (
** Spider-Woman's daughter was in the cartoon as well. Her feelings about her mom's relationship with Stark were not shown (except in one episode where they have a fake wedding for some reason, and she's not happy).
*** Let's face it, the first season was just a mess. The second season makes the relationship much more realistic and has more characterization, though the second season is still not special compared to many 90's cartoon series.
* ''[[The Spectacular Spider
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