So Happy Together

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"I have no armour left."

—James Bond, Casino Royale

"I can't see me lovin' nobody but you, for all my life..."

—The Turtles, "Happy Together"

Those whom the gods destroy, they first make happy.

In every doomed relationship, there is always one serenely happy moment for the couple that highlights the beginning of the end. She's not just about to dump his ass. She's going to turn into a traitor and sacrifice herself for their love. He's going to end up a conman drug dealer who was just keeping an eye on you. She could be the Femme Fatale. Generally, if you suddenly hear the Turtles' "Happy Together" refrain in your head when your favorite ship finishes a scene, it's a good chance your ship is sinking. After being hit by an orbital railgun. In shark infested waters. During a category 5 hurricane.

It's not so fatal as Retirony, but just as tragic. Sometimes heralds someone getting Stuffed Into the Fridge.

Examples of So Happy Together include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, George and Shannon are particularly prone to this. In every scenario, the murders begin the night George proposes to Shannon (Although the scene itself is only shown in two arcs, it's implied or stated to have occurred in all the others as well). And you can bet that if one or the other isn't one of the ones killed in the murders immediately after that scene, they're going to die right after having done a pledge of love to each other that seems designed to try to make the audience burst into tears. Particularly brutal in the third arc, where Shannon of them dies immediately after the proposal, George resurrects her using the Power of Love, only for them both to be killed right next to each other not even ten seconds later.
  • In Deadman Wonderland, Shiro and Ganta.
  • Macross Frontier toys with it some between Sheryl and Alto in the last couple of episodes. Note that the fleet ecology can only sustain the fleet for another few months due to significant war damage and Sheryl's days are numbered and they know it.

Comic Books

  • The X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga featured a deepening of Cyclops and Phoenix's relationship, with several memorable romantic scenes, before she is consumed by power, goes insane, destroys a solar system, and ultimately commits suicide as a Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Making the intrusion of one Emma Frost down the road that much worse.
  • Colossus and Shadowcat got all those bedroom scenes before Giant-Size Astonishing... DARN YOU, WHEDON!

Film

  • The page quote comes from the beach scene in Casino Royale.
    • James Bond has done it also in the novel and film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Here, the So Happy Together moment is his wedding to Teresa/Tracy de Vincenzo. Blofeld kills her in a drive-by shooting as the two are embarking on their honeymoon drive. The Cartwright Curse hit Bond hard in that movie.
  • Serenity had hints of this for Zoe and Wash but no real stand-out moment. This was fixed in a comic series that takes place before the movie, just to twist the knife.
  • In The Punisher (2004 film), Frank Castle and his darling wife Maria share a lovely scene on the beach at night. Come on, tell me you know what happens next.
    • Hell, this is always the way it is for Frank Castle. Comics, he's in the park with his family on a picnic, he's finally decided to stop reenlisting to fight in Vietnam, and then, well, you know what happens.
  • Not exactly the same as the other examples, but arguably still counts. In The Dark Knight Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes have a nice little moment together just before Harvey is taken away by the police for claiming to be Batman- part of a Batman Gambit to catch the Joker. Harvey gives Rachael his lucky two-headed silver dollar. Of course, It's the last time he sees her alive.
    • A similar moment happened between Bruce and Rachel a little earlier. It's also the last time Bruce saw her alive.
  • Practically mandatory in every Bollywood movie that doesn't end with a wedding or Relationship Upgrade. Most recent is My Name Is Khan. We were so happy together, until 9 11 happened, you lost your customers, our sister-in-law got assaulted, our best friend died, our son got killed, you went off the wall, kicked me out, and told me to tell the president I wasn't a terrorist.
  • In Don Juan Demarco, the title character and the beauteous Dona Ana are blissfully happy together, until he tells he something he should've kept to himself; he had over a thousand lovers before her. She promptly dumps him. "Truth is a terrible habit."

Literature

  • The main character in The Death of the Vazir Mukhtar marries his beloved Nino halfway in, and they are very happy for all of their time together. Then he dies.
  • In Animorphs, Marco's dad confided that he and Marco's mom had a brief period of ideal, perfect love before she disappeared and was presumed dead. Of course, this period of perfect love occurred only because she was under the control of a parasitic alien.

Live Action TV

  • "You Think You Know Somebody" from Veronica Mars. Troy and Veronica serenely hold hands and walk down the hall right before he turns out to be a drug dealer who never told her about his shady past.
    • In "Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough," Mac and Beaver are totally cute the entire episode. The season ends with Beaver being a sociopathic molestee who may or may not have used Mac as The Beard.
  • In Lost, Sayid and Shannon spend a romantic evening in the Iraqi Love Shack. Then blammo, Ana-Lucia accidentally shoots and kills Shannon the next day. Sayid doesn't get nice things. Also, same couple, in the first season. They're gone for awhile on a romantic evening while Shannon's brother slowy dies. Needless to say, this throws a hitch into the relationship.
    • Sayid has a horrible time with this. As the Cartwright Curse page says, sleeping with him is an excellent way to get dead. Although the worst is probably when Nadia gets hit by a car eight months after they got married. This is the girl he was searching for for YEARS and finally got to be with... but of course the Crowning Moment of Heartwarming can't last.
    • Also, Libby and Hurley.
  • In Lois and Clark, Clark Kent has married Lois Lane after battling the evil frog-eating clone of Lex Luthor. They have a sweet scene together, and Clark goes to the bedroom to await his bride. And then we watch Lois eating a frog, heralding how exactly this is gonna go all wrong.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow spends half of season six trying to get her magic under control and get Tara back. Eventually Tara comes back. For one episode, Tara and Willow are really happy and have lots of make-up sex. At the end of the episode a stray bullet kills Tara
    • At the end of "Bad Eggs" in Season 2, Buffy and Angel are shown kissing through Buffy's bedroom window. A very "awwww" moment. Of course, the next episode is "Surprise" and if you're a Buffy fan, you know what that means.
      • In fact, this is literally how the curse operates: Perfect Happiness = No soul.
    • In fact, just about any relationship in the Whedonverse has this one. The most brutal one that comes to this troper's mind is Wesley and Fred singing "You are my sunshine" to each other, and Fred's collapse during the song, foreshadowing her imminent demise at the hands of Knox. It's Joss, though- what can you expect?
  • Dollhouse has Topher and Bennett, right before Bennett gets shot by Whiskey.
  • Doctor Who-- "The Stolen Earth" has a moment between Rose and the Doctor.
  • The reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Dee and Lee go on a date, both seem happy, poised to get back together, and it's a nice moment in the sea of bleakness that is the show...and then Dee goes back to her quarters and shoots herself dead.
    • We also know, right from the end of the pilot, that Boomer is a Cylon, and we know that she's going to be found out at some point, which makes those happy moments with Tyrol all the worse.
  • Heroes Season 4, Hiro and Charlie.
  • In Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars Chiana and D'Argo have finally made up after two seasons of drama and Chiana says she wants to settle on Hyneria with him. Moments later D'Argo is fatally wounded and stays behind to cover the gang's retreat.
  • In the Torchwood miniseries Children of Earth, various characters keep bringing up the fact that Ianto and Jack are a couple and drawing a lot of attention to it. Ianto himself points out this out and seems very happy at Jack's nonchalance about the fact that they are, in fact, together. And then Ianto dies.
  • Clark and Lana of Smallville manage to pull this off more than once:
    • Clark finally reveals his secret and proposes to her in season five, which she happily accepts, right before knowledge of the secret leads to her being involved in a fatal car accident. Once the day is undone, he continues to lie to her in order to keep the accident from happening again, leading to her breaking up with him.
    • When she returns in season eight and gains superpowers, they rekindle their relationship and it seems they can finally be together as equals with no secrets or lies. Then they discover that one of her powers is Kryptonite absorption, and once she disables a Kryptonite bomb planted by Lex, they can never go near each other again.
  • The West Wing has a storyline in season three where CJ is assigned a bodyguard, Simon, due to death threats she'd been receiving. Despite an obvious mutual attraction, they're unable to pursue a relationship until the person sending the threats is caught, and when he is, Simon and CJ kiss, agree to meet later, and he is shot and killed after walking into an armed robbery in a convenience store.
  • Arthur and Guinevere finally get engaged on Merlin and the celebrations are getting underway, only for a Brainwashed Lancelot to return from the dead as a tool sent by Morgana to destroy the happy couple. Because Gwen no longer reciprocates his feelings, Morgana has Lancelot give her an enchanted bracelet that effectively Mind Rapes her into meeting with him at night. She's caught in a compromising situation, leading to her public humiliation and exile from Camelot, and Lancelot's suicide.

Video Games

  • In Final Fantasy VII, the carnival scene, if you get Aeris for the date, serves as a So Happy Together moment.
  • Because they're going on a suicide mission, this is a possibility for every romance in Mass Effect 2; however, this trope comes into full play with Thane and female Shepard—during the culmination of their romance, Thane finally admits he's afraid of death again because he's found something (and someone) to live for. There is a very real possibility of one or both of them dying very shortly thereafter, and even if they both survive, Thane has a terminal illness and six months to live. If he survives to Mass Effect 3, Thane is one of the two former party members who is guaranteed to die over the course of the game--he's mortally wounded by Kai Leng while trying to prevent him from assassinating the salarian councilor.
  • Comes into play in Xenoblade Chronicles. Shulk and Fiora share a peaceful moment at Outlook Park, with Fiora enjoying the breeze and wishing such a moment could last forever. Shulk constantly flashes back to this memory as his last happy moments with her as he tries to cope with the fact that she's gone from his life. Reason being, because the day after, Colony 9 was invaded by the Mechon and Fiora brutally murdered by the giant Mechon known as Metal Face. But eventually she turns out to be Not Quite Dead.

Web Comics

Western Animation

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