Stalker with a Crush

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Aww... Though really, she isn't the worst of his stalkers.

A character noted for their obsession with another character. They claim that the motivation for their morally outrageous acts is a simple wish to gain attention from the crush-ee. Alternatively, the obsession may be explained as a misguided desire to "protect" [1] the crush-ee, whether or not the crush-ee wants or needs such "protection". In any case, the more sincere they seem, the creepier they are.

Why does this happen? Because Love Makes You Evil, and "If I Can't Have You, No One Will!"

There'll usually be a Double Standard at play with this trope. Male stalkers are more likely to be portrayed unsympathetically, and as an actual danger to their object of obsession. Female stalkers, by contrast, are likely to be portrayed sympathetically, and typically portrayed as charming or cute.[2]

Related Tropes

Contrast with Abhorrent Admirer, where a Hollywood Homely or average woman is considered the worst thing in the world simply because she is attracted to the protagonist, even though no stalking takes place. See also All Take and No Give.

Compare and contrast with Stalker Without a Crush, who can either seem similar to this through the "Does This Remind You of Anything?" approach and/or become this through Character Development.

Examples of Stalker with a Crush include:

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  • These Virgin Mobile ads. God, the crazy eyes...
    • Something that makes it hilariously worse to Supernatural fans, the same actress played the demon Lillith in one episode. She isn't just a creepy stalker, she's a demonic creepy stalker.

Anime and Manga

  • Brief from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt plays this trope to a T. Throughout the series he's shown to be masturbating to Panty's sex video, collecting her boogers, spending over $200,000 in an attempt to buy her panties, wearing her discarded clothes, and appears from behind a tree while she and Stocking are talking, implying he's been following her in secret. Despite all this, he tries to keep the sisters from fighting, offers them help in trying to get a job, and when Panty finally offers to have sex with him, he's too nervous to go through with it and would rather take things slow.
    • However, he receives a promotion in episode 12, and his dreams come true in episode 13.
  • Komiyan III in .hack//Legend of the Twilight.
  • Ayame from Ai Kora, a Rich Bitch who is constantly scheming to win over the protagonist, Maeda.
  • Ai no Kusabi: Both Guy and Iason for Riki. Iason even shows up at Riki's place unannounced.
  • Julietta and Nagato of Airmaster both qualify as this.
  • Kira in Angel Sanctuary takes this to new heights, following/protecting Alexiel's reincarnations for thousands of years.
  • In the Aria manga, Aika is discovered by Akari while she stalks Alicia. Aika abolishes her stalking habits from then on, but still harbors a crush on Alicia for most of the series.
  • Tokiwa in Ask Dr. Rin! spends the first eight episodes like this for Meirin, going so far as to set their school on fire in order to threaten her. It's later subverted, though, since he was possessed by an evil spirit that wanted to kiss her in order to possess her.
    • Meirin herself is like this for Asuka.
  • In Asu no Yoichi, the only reason Uky? Saginomiya wants to kill Yoichi is that the latter "came between" him and his childhood crush, whom he's basically stalked for several years.
  • Belarus from Axis Powers Hetalia acts this way towards her brother, Russia. As does Russia himself, towards Lithuania.
    • Russia also wears a panda suit and stalks China.
    • Holy Roman Empire towards Chibitalia.
      • Germany keeps a diary of observation on Italy. It makes some sense, as Germany is attempting to train him. But if Germany really is a grown-up Holy Roman Empire, then it just makes it seem like he hasn't grown up all that much.
    • Prussia is also shown to stalk and harass Austria.
    • France is sometimes shown to have these tendencies. He was once shown sneaking up to Austria's house, watching him without his knowledge while he was playing the piano, and commenting on how attractive he finds him.
  • Azumanga Daioh features Kaorin's Stalker with a Crush attitude towards Sakaki and Kimura towards Kaorin.
  • Suruga from Bakemonogatari is dangerously in love with Hitagi. So much so that she starts stalking Koyomi after he hooks up with Hitagi and tries to beat him to death one night.
  • Reimi from Bamboo Blade has made a habit of stalking Miyako "Miyamiya" Miyazaki when she learned that Miyamiya beat up a boy who she had a crush on in middle school.
    • Also, Sakaki Ura.
  • Battle Royale: Sho Tsukioka is effeminate in manner but humorously masculine in appearance and uses his skills as a Stalker with a Crush to tail Kiriyama. He's also a borderline alcoholic drag queen with an irrational crush on Kiriyama and overall thinks like a total lunatic.
  • Beauty Pop: Kazuhiko Ochiai when he develops a crush on Kiri. He chases after her, is shown secretly watching her from behind without her knowledge, and even has Kiri's picture as his cell phone's wallpaper. In the end, although Narumi and Kiri have married, he still refuses to give up on her, even teaching Kiri and Narumi's kids to call him "daddy". He also often schedules appointments after hours for Narumi to prevent him from going home to Kiri so that Ochiai can gladly go in his place.
  • Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the most creepy sentence ever uttered by Aizen to Ichigo from Bleach,

Aizen: I have been watching you from the moment you were born.

    • Also, Soifon is obsessed with Yoruichi and stalks her in an attempt to see her naked.
    • Keigo's sister towards Ikkaku.
    • Chizuru mainly pursues girls and has a huge stalker crush on Orihime.
  • Black Cat
    • Creed Diskenth takes this to a creepy extreme. He murdered Train's only friend because he thought she had cast a spell on him, stalks Train and constantly threatens people he loves in the belief that Train will join up with him. In the anime, his stalker-ish tendencies go to the point where he uses his subordinate's spy insects to watch Train sleep. It's not exactly clear in the manga just how much of this is sexual, but it's pretty clear in the anime when he's daydreaming about Train while stark naked in a rose bath.
He practically had an orgasm when Train defeated him in episode 5. You know there's something horribly wrong when, with Train sitting on top of him, he whispers passionately, "Oh, Train, you are the best."
    • Kyoko becomes a more humorous example of this towards Train after her Heel Face Turn.
  • Blood+
    • Solomon spends most of the series as one of these. After Saya gently rejects him though, he backs off and decides he'll still love and protect her without attempting to force her to love him back. Then he accidentally gets killed by her bloody sword trying to protect her from James.
    • Karl also had this for Saya, he wanted to kill her while she kills him. Diva had also developed this kind of obsession with Riku after she met him.
  • Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura directed towards Sakura. Much less aggressive than the average stalker, however she does make her wear several interesting outfits throughout the series, films her wearing them, and watches the aforementioned recordings alone repeatedly...
  • Seemingly earnest, well-meaning college student Oh Young Gon from the manhwa Web Comic Cheese in the Trap develops into a realistic and chilling example of this trope in action.
  • Code Geass
    • Mao is C.C.'s stalker with a crush. Seriously, he listens to a recording of her voice comforting him in his headphones constantly, although part of this is to prevent himself from being overwhelmed by hearing everyone's thoughts with his out-of-control Geass.
    • Rolo, who is a total Yandere for his "brother" Lelouch.
  • Black Claw in Re: Cutey Honey.
  • In Darker than Black there is a few stalkers with a crush. Maki has an obsessive affection for Amber and tries to kill Hei because of this and likely would have tried the same against Amber's other followers. Also, Kiko, who has a crush on Hei, gets angry when her friend Mayu also starts after him, saying, "Only I can stalk him!" And when we first see Kirihara in the second season, she was watching Hei's star through a telescope, which is probably the closest it's possible to get to stalking him when he's not intentionally staying in one place. Lampshaded when her friend at the astronomy department suggests that she really needs to get over him and find another guy. And yes, Hei has a lot of stalkers.
    • The second season has Norio, who has a rather creepy stalker-crush on Suou. This is made significantly worse by the fact that they're portraying him as a Dogged Nice Guy.
  • Deadman Wonderland
    • Genkaku to Nagi. He's pretty much the Seinen equivalent of Creed.
    • And now it appears that Toto Sakigami is one of these toward the Wretched Egg.
  • In a flashback in Death Note, Misa Amane encounters one and, after she refuses his confession of love, he plans to kill her and then himself. This would have ended with her death, but Gelus the shinigami writes the killer's name in the Death Note to prevent him from killing her, and dies for violating one of the shinigamis' laws against saving human life. Misa eventually becomes a Stalker with a Crush on Kira, admiring him for killing the burglar who killed her parents and forcing Sakura TV to make a broadcast while pretending to be Kira in order to lure him out.
  • Bak Chang from D.Gray-man spies on Lenalee and takes pictures of her.
  • Nanami in Digimon Savers. She had a crush on Touma, although it seemed like she could have been seducing him just to betray him afterwards if he said "yes".
  • Dirty Pair Flash episode "Barairo no Bish?nen [My Boy]" featured a young rich boy obsessed with Yuri (no, not that "Yuri"). He had observed her from a distance, and built a robot based on what he believed her to be like (which was very different than she actually was). Yuri tried to convince him to stop believing in his false impressions of what she was like. She hoped that by doing this, he would then fall in love with the real Yuri. Unfortunately for Yuri, this just ended his crush on her... at which point he began a relationship with a girl who had been a Stalker with a Crush for him. Yuri was not happy about this result.
  • D.N.Angel: Mio Hio is definitely one of these for Daisuke.
  • Daisuke Hagiwara from Dragon Drive is like this towards Maiko Yukino. In the anime, he always refers to her as "My sweet honey" (in Gratuitous English in the Japanese version). The odd thing is how he evolves from an antagonist to being a practically sympathetic character and a member of the series' Three Amigos, despite staying an unsavory Smug Snake the entire time. Also bizarrely, he gets along rather well with main character Reiji Oozora. Well, at least when they don't think about who they're palling around with... The fact of the matter is that they're simply Not So Different.
  • Durarara!! subverts it when Mika Harima, Seiji's stalker, discovers that her stalking target is just as crazy, if not more so, than herself. At least, at first he does.
  • Yuri in Faeries Landing cuts up Ryang's (the object of her obsession) face for breaking up with her, and she can and will do anything it takes to keep any other girls away from Ryang.
  • Jubia in Fairy Tail.
  • Fruits Basket:
  • Dante from the 2003 anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist could probably be seen as an example of this trope, since she turned evil in order to live forever with her lover, Hohenheim.
  • Gauron from Full Metal Panic! towards Sousuke. Especially obvious in TSR, where he orders the destruction of a huge city to lure Sousuke there, spreads an incredibly complicated and cryptic message that no one in the world except Sousuke would ever understand, orders the two beautiful girls who adore him to go to their deaths just so that he can Murder the Hypotenuse -- all for the sake of his obsessive and sick love for Sousuke. He also apparently knows a lot of information about Sousuke's background and history that he shouldn't even know (considering that no one else in the series, including Kalinin, knows some of that stuff), making it very likely that he researched and stalked Sousuke even more than what was shown. Something worth noting is that, as shown in the novels, he was actually recording and watching footage of Sousuke without Sousuke even knowing. Gauron's partner is shown to be disgusted and annoyed by Gauron's euphoria and ecstasy at watching "his precious boy." It's almost as squicky as it sounds.
    • Considering he's apparently had a thing for Sousuke since the kid was twelve (Gauron? Probably at least forty), it's probably even worse than it sounds.
    • Leonardo Testarossa became one of these for Kaname. That being said, he's much tamer (and saner) than ol' Gauron up there. But then again, he once forced a kiss on Kaname, kidnapped her after besting Sousuke (in a gentlemen's duel), and personally assured him that despite his attraction to her, he wouldn't force anything, and will see to that nothing untoward should happen. Later on, however, he becomes so enraged with Kaname not giving in to him, and sort of "betraying" him by finally declaring to Sousuke that she loves him, that he slaps her hard enough to make her fall to the ground, speaks to her very rudely, and generally tortures her (more mentally than physically) in order to weaken her mind so that she won't be able to resist his plans of world-domination.
  • Yui, Suboshi, and Soi, to some degree, in Fushigi Yuugi. Also, Nakago with his canon one-sided obsession with Tamahome. He even kissed him at one point.
  • This seems to be the standard adversary for a bodyguard in Game X Rush; Memori gets a lot of jobs where he must protect his female clients from Stalkers with Crushes, only to have said clients becomes Memori's stalkers in turn. Also played with when, early on, Memori accuses Yuuki of being his stalker; later, Yuuki wanders to Memori's house without thinking about it and wonders if he really is a stalker. Considering how Yuuki shadowed Memori since they first met, the question of whether he's Memori's stalker might be moot.
  • Patie (Penny in the dub) in Gash Bell. Her bookkeeper is basically homeless, but she drags him with her to Japan to find Gash. And when he doesn't remember who she is, she flips out and tries to defeat him and burn his book, although she repeatedly offers to stop the fight if they'll remember their love. However, as flashbacks show, Patie was a creepy stalker even in the demon world, and Gash didn't notice her there either because she was always sneaking on him.
  • Utsumi from GE - Good Ending was content with being just this until he was caught by Yuki.
  • GetBackers has Takuma Fudou towards Ban Midou. He follows Ban everywhere, constantly screaming at Ban to "give him his body" and "meet his throbbing desires." Ban even lampshades it with annoyance, calling Fudou a "damn stalker zombie" - which Fudou seemed very happy to be called. Fudou is definitely an interesting example of an Ax Crazy Stalker with a Crush - he's so obsessed with Ban, he even readily admits that he gets put off and upset when Ban ignores or doesn't notice him, and that he wants Ban's eyes to only be on him. He tried to violently kill Ginji, telling Ginji he never liked him because Ban doesn't even notice his existence when Ginji is around - and that this will all be fixed when Ginji is out of the way.
  • The woman (and spurned lover) who was stalking Paz in one episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Second Gig. She went so far as to get her brain transplanted into a cyberbody that looked exactly like Paz's cyberbody. They ended up in a knife fight to the death... and there's no way to be sure it was the real Paz who won. Truly, Hell Hath No Fury...
  • In Ghost Talker's Daydream, Fujiwara Mitsuru is obsessed in stalking the main character, Saiki Misaki, to the point of stealing so many of her underwears and bugging her apartment so much. However, he later becomes an invaluable ally.
  • Gintama
    • Kondou, played entirely for laughs. Especially when Otae, the woman he's stalking, begins to beat him in increasingly violent ways. Also, Ayame as well.
    • Even more hilarious is that unlike Kondou (who just does not know when to quit), Ayame "Sa-chan" Sarutobi actually enjoys being abused/rejected by the object of her affection Gintoki.
  • Girl Got Game: Akari Tojo, the team manager is this towards Kyo, with some Yandere tendencies thrown in for good measure.
  • Girls Bravo has a few. Lisa became one towards Yukinari after finding that his appearance matched a description in her horoscope for her soul mate, Kosame became one towards Kirie shortly after fighting her, Hijiri was obsessed with Miharu since they were both children but after being defeated by Kirie she forgot about Miharu and started obsessing over Kirie instead, Fukuyama is pretty much one towards any pretty girl that takes his fancy though his most frequent targets are Kirie and Koyomi, and Yukina becomes one towards Yukinari after being shown kindness by him.
  • Chika from May Not Miss Pervert Fall In Love.
  • Shuichi from Gravitation chases Yuki constantly, despite being rejected, verbally abused, and often being called a little brat. They eventually end up together.
    • Tatsuha Uesuki towards Ryuuichi. As well as Tohma towards Yuki.
  • Teshigawara in Great Teacher Onizuka. However "stalker" and "crush" are understatements of what this guy feels for Azusa Fuyutsuki.
  • Gunsmith Cats
    • Goldie, a mob leader who has a habit of using the drugs her organization produces and sells to make people who catch her eye into mindless slaves devoted to her pleasure. When Rally manages to resist her and escape, their relationship quickly turns into this, to the point that Goldie allows herself to be arrested and then jumps bail specifically to draw out Rally in a personal challenge.
    • Before Goldie there was Gray, who falls madly (emphasis on mad) in love with Rally after she blew off his hand. He claims he wants to return the favor with interest by amputating her arms and legs, but he also tells her that he loves her. Try to scrub that image out of your brain.
  • Urushizake from Haru wo Daiteita, a member of the Paparazzi who styles his hair and dress to look like Katou's lover Iwaki-san, has an apartment within binocular-watching distance, and ultimately uses his influence in the media to assist Katou on one of his sets.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler: While Athena watching Hayate from afar is more like schoolgirl pining, Chapter 304 reveals that Kotetsu has become this when he follows Hayate into the public bath and directly states this as the reason why he is there and states that he loves Hayate.
  • Anna from He Is My Master.
    • Rena is a stalker in Onikakushi-hen, the first arc in the series. However, it is later shown she merely was afraid for Keiichi's safety, since he was often left alone due to his parents having to leave town and because of his similarities to Satoshi. She didn't want him to get "Demoned Away" like Satoshi supposedly was. Rena is also often hinted to be in love with Keiichi.
  • Mitsu, Schoolgirl Lesbians, ghost and main character of Honey Crush. She's treated more comedically and sympathetically than most.
  • Honoo no Alpen Rose: Count Germont, who wants to have Jeudi because she looks a LOT like a woman he loved in the past.
  • Hot Gimmick: Ryoki towards his girlfriend Hatsumi.
  • Hunter X Hunter: Hisoka obsessively stalks Gon because he wants to kill him in a battle when he becomes strong enough for his liking.
  • Torako from Hyakko keeps following Touma around and tries to be friends with her, even though Touma is clearly not interested. When asked whether she is obsessed with Touma, Torako simply answers that she indeed is. Sure, her behavior is not as egregious as most of the other examples, but she is at times close to crossing the border of what is acceptable.
  • In Inuyasha, Naraku's entire initial reason for becoming the villain in the first place was a desperate desire to get into Kikyou's hakama and punish Inu-Yasha for being her boyfriend. Also, Jakotsu toward Inuyasha.
    • Koga towards Kagome.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Narciso Anasui's ideas for courting Jolyne leave something to be desired. For example, trying to get F.F. to push Jolyne down a flight of stairs, just so he can catch her, and trigger her love for her savior.
    • Yukako Yamagishi towards Koichi. Although after he successfully defeats her, she greatly tones down her aggression.
  • Kaguyahime: Mayu doesn't start off as a stalker, having the advantage of being Akira's adopted sister, but when they're separated, she will do anything to find Akira. Julian is this to Miller to some degree (but an ultimately really nice one).
  • Usui towards Misaki from Kaichou wa Maid-sama.
  • Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl: Namiko to Hitoshi.
  • Gokudera from Katekyo Hitman Reborn is a much nicer and saner version of a Stalker with a Crush towards Tsuna. He's constantly following Tsuna around and surprising him by showing up where Tsuna doesn't expect him. Also, in chapter 292 Enma leaves Tsuna's house in the middle of the night only to be immediately encountered by Gokudera approaching the house with a flashlight. Gokudera wonders why Enma is not guarding Tsuna and Enma replies that he left his school supplies at the guest house and leaves. Gokudera expresses annoyance at this and proudly states to himself "I knew it. The only one who can manage to guard the Tenth 24/7 is me!!" He becomes unreasonably jealous of anyone who is close to Tsuna, and is even shown watching Tsuna and getting incredibly pissed at Yamamoto for being so friendly with him. Not to mention his violent reaction when Chrome kisses Tsuna.
    • Haru could be considered one at her very first appearances, from when she liked Reborn.
  • The Yaoi manga Kawaii Akuma (and its sequels) has Naruse towards Akiyoshi.
  • For about three chapters in the Kekkaishi manga the leading male, Yoshimori, briefly gains a Stalker with a Crush after rescuing a Clingy Jealous Girl from a fall and invariably drags leading female (and Yoshimori's love interest), Tokine, into the situation. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Rune in Karakuridouji Ultimo is one to Yamato, the main character. Hell, he even has this huge framed painting of Yamato in his room. These feelings later give him a reason to go over The Dark Side, and do very terrible things to Yamato.
  • Mutsuki Koharu of Koharu no Hibi. BIG time.
  • Grell(e) to Sebastian in Black Butler.
    • As well as Baron Kelvin who's been a Stalker with a Crush towards Ciel since Ciel was seven years old.
  • Nova in Magic Knight Rayearth, a character raised by the second season's Big Bad born out of Hikaru's guilt and self-loathing, and obsessed with "playing" with Hikaru to the point of wanting to kill her and her friends so they could be together forever and would never have to lose an important one again.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima
  • Tomoe from Mai-Otome, who had a crush on then-Coral Otome Shizuru, and once snuck on campus to get a glimpse of her. By the time Tomoe's old enough to enter Garderobe herself, it soon becomes apparent that those tendencies have not diminished with age.
  • Ibuki Yagami is this towards Godai in Maison Ikkoku.
  • Kanako and Mifuyu in Mariasama ga Miteru.
  • Marmalade Boy: Kei's rather possessive of Miki, as she's one of his very few friends and he does some serious work towards isolating her from Yuu. Anime only characters Michael and Jenny arguably qualify, as well as anime!Suzu. Satoshi is a more gentle version of this trope in regards to Meiko.
  • Kaori Aihara in Mamotte Shugogetten. She's much more good-natured than most examples, however.
  • Marchen Awakens Romance: The Phantom towards Alviss. Also, Chaton on Alan and it’s played for laughs. Technically Dorothy is this to Ginta as well.
  • Mawaru Penguindrum has a few of them:
    • Ringo is prone to extremes to make Tabuki hers until she realizes she in love with Shouma and starts "stalking" him instead.
    • Natsume is also a serious case to the point of erasing all memories of Kanba from his ex-girlfriends' minds.
  • Yuno Gasai in Mirai Nikki (The Future Diary). Obsessively in love with the protagonist Yukiteru Amano, to the point where she doesn't think twice about using sharp weapons to kill those that threaten his life or their relationship and at one point goes so far as to drug him, kidnap him, and lock him in a room chained to a chair so she can be with him and protect him. However, Yukiteru willingly teams up with Yuno (even if he doesn't really love her) to help both their chances of survival against people that are truly insane.
    • If one argues that Yukiteru does harbor feelings for Yuno, one could argue that this example is an interesting subversion, bordering on a Zig-Zagging Trope. But every time he starts feeling this way she does something truly Ax Crazy.
    • Also, Akise Aru becomes one of these towards Yukiteru shortly after meeting him basically. He's shown to be immensely interested in him, and follows him around, sticking his nose into Yukiteru's business. He even performs a Forceful Kiss on him.
  • Eva in Monster. Getting revenge on Tenma for leaving and rejecting her is probably the only thing keeping her from offing herself, really. It becomes more pathetic when you realize that she was the one who dumped him first. Sometimes, she will go out of her way to intercept Tenma's dates and scare them off.
  • Karin in Naruto. Crazily obsessive over Sasuke to the point where it's creepy at times.
    • The anime implies that she's in love with his chakra more than with Sasuke himself, which could be considered even creepier.
      • To be fair, Stalker with a Crush tendencies aside, Karin does seem to genuinely care about Sasuke's well-being.
        • Until he tries to kill her, and the other members of team 7 rescue her. She then seems to like Naruto's chakra, but then sees the Kyuubi...
    • Hinata is often seen as this by some parts of the fandom, based on some scenes, mostly only in the anime, in which she appears to be watching Naruto from a distance, giving the appearance that she is stalking him, in addition to her considerable admiration for him.
      • Though her feelings are actually stronger than a mere crush and the stalking is debatable, it can be seen as part of the appeal on the other side of the shipping to those parts of the fandom.
  • Nightwalker: Cain wants to have a good relationship with Shido, that's all! Of course, his idea of a good relationship revolves around them terrorizing the night together... And his methods involve destroying things that Shido holds dear until he gets the picture.
  • Ookamikakushi: Issei towards Hiroshi.
  • Tokigawa Takaai in Okane ga Nai is one of the creepiest examples of this. His Ayase obsession knows no limits: Not only does he have a room filled with pictures of him taken without his permission as he actually collects items that Ayase has discarded such as water bottles and has been doing so since High School, having deliberately flunked a year so that he could enter University at the same time as Ayase. Apart from all this, he comes up with an elaborate scheme to force Ayase into a relationship that includes bugging his room and eventually tying him up and threatening him with a knife in what can only be qualified as Attempted Rape.
    • That said, most of Ayase's university friends would apply to this in some degree.
  • Lady Alvida from One Piece. She joined Buggy in order to find Luffy in order to "make him her man". Since he was the first person to ever hit her, this may have some sadomasochistic undertones.
    • In the latest chapters, we have Decken towards Princess Shirahoshi, to the point her Overprotective Dad has to keep her locked up for ten years to keep her safe from the guy. Then again, he "sends" love letters to her in the form of swords and broadaxes after she rejected his marriage proposal and he firmly believes that her fate is either marry him or be killed by him.
  • Oniisama e...: Miya-sama. Somewhat unusually for this trope, it's not Henmi, the object of her affections, that is the target of her stalker behavior, but Nanako, his pen pal who Miya-sama believes he is romantically involved with. Also, the room at her summer house is full of creepy dolls and obsessively arranged items of memorabilia from the day she first met her crush Henmi, which she has since kept completely unchanged for six years and forbids anyone else to enter.
  • Harry MacDougall to Melfina in Outlaw Star, including a symbolic attempted rape sequence. Hitorige of the Antem 7 was so obsessed with Suzuka that he had plastic surgery to make him look like her.
  • Pandora Hearts: Vincent for his older brother Gil. Jack towards Lacie.
  • Osanai in Paprika.
  • In Peacemaker Kurogane (especially in the manga), Suzu becomes obsessed with Tetsunosuke, constantly having his every action monitored. He becomes jealous and scared when Ryoma decides to take Tetsunosuke away with him, taking drastic action to kill Ryoma and frame it on Tetsunosuke so Tetsunosuke won't be able to get away from him. This results in much Foe Yay.
  • Sae from Peach Girl.
  • Me-Mania in Perfect Blue.
  • The initial basis of HeatTagShipping (Dawn/Conway) in Pokémon. Helped by the fact that Conway grows considerably less creepy in future appearances. Well, kind of...
    • A mini-comic in one of Toshihiro Ono's graphic novels plays with this trope by having a Ditto impersonate Ash and do naughty things to Misty (touching her butt and watching her shower), causing her to take vengeance on the real Ash.
    • Meanwhile, in three straight movies in a row, Brock has a little blue book containing very accurate information on famous female celebrities that he and the gang just happens to come across...
  • Late in Pretty Face, Dr. Manabe picks up one of these. He manages to discourage her by using the protagonist to convince the stalker that he wasn't interested in women.
  • Sayaka in Princess Princess.
  • While the list of who is obsessed with who in Ranma ½ is quite complex, only a relatively few people exhibit actual stalker tendencies... though just about everyone exhibits Mad Love. Ryoga pretends to be Akane's pet piglet so he has an excuse to be in her presence as much as possible and get to hear her innermost secrets. Mousse has been begging Shampoo to be his girlfriend since they were three and, despite her constant (and often violent) refusal even followed her to Japan to not only continue doing so, but also to try and murder the guy she's actually interested in. Gosunkugi exhibits classic stalker behavior, especially in the manga. And Tatewaki Kuno frequently pops up out of nowhere to try and hug/grope Akane or Ranma-chan—ironically, his sister, who is the crazier of the two in terms of actual romantic ideas, stalks Ranma the least of the siblings.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena: Nanami towards Touga, Touga towards Utena, Kozue towards Miki, Mitsuru towards Nanami.
  • Mizore in Rosario + Vampire begins as one, trying to kill the rest of Tsukune's harem and turn Tsukune himself into a popsicle so she can have him all for herself. Once she's added to the harem, she continues to stalk him. She's just a nicer stalker. She says herself that she doesn't really "need" to stalk him anymore, it's just "more fun."
  • Saber Marionette J: Hanagata highly qualifies as this, mainly because of his obssession with Otaru.
  • Jesse Blue from Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, who falls in love at first sight with his boss' daughter April Eagle, is the real deal as he basically tries to force himself on her, gets told he doesn't know the meaning of love by a pissed off April, and decides to join the invading forces when murdering the hypotenuse aka Fireball doesn't work out. Oh, and he'll get his revenge on humanity while he's at it.
  • A ridiculous number of Sailor Moon villains. Queen Beryl (Mamoru), Ali and Ann (Usagi and Mamoru respectively), Prince Demand (Usagi), Chibi Usa as Black Lady (Mamoru, manga only), Fish Eye (Mamoru), Nehellenia (Mamoru, anime only), Galaxia (Mamoru, manga only), and Fiore (Mamoru, R movie). So basically, almost all of them are going after the heroine's lover.
    • It is heavily implied in episode 106, "The Distant Days of Uranus," that Michiru was one of these to Haruka going way back before she even knew that Haruka was destined to become Sailor Uranus.
  • Saiunkoku Monogatari: Sa Sakujun towards Shuurei.
  • Saiyuki has two: Chin Yisou, who's fixated on Hakkai; and Go Dougan, who in the Requiem movie goes to ridiculous lengths to get Sanzo's attention.
    • Both of them are really blatant about it, too - half of Yisou's I-dislike-you dialogue with Hakkai sounds like foreplay gone wrong, and Dougan...oh, Dougan appears to be giving head to a shikigami replica of Sanzo at one point...making him perhaps the largest uke in the series. IT'S A SHIKIGAMI AND STILL HE 'BOTTOMS' TO IT?
  • It's mentioned several times in Sakura Gari that anyone who starts having a relationship with Souma ends up becoming his stalker. Souma, in turn, starts acting this way towards Masataka. And Sakurako, Souma's sister, acts this way towards him.
  • Matoi's entire characterization in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei is the completely unsubtle stalker who follows Itoshiki-sensei around everywhere, wears the same clothes as him, and resides either under his desk or in his house because of her "deep love" for him. She also did it to all of her crushes before him. Also, her name literally means "to stalk". Not to mention following him into the men's bathroom and standing directly behind him watching while he's using the toilet. Plus, in her room she has a wall covered with pictures of him and has admitted to having read through Nozomu's mail and disposing of them before he gets a chance to read them.
    • This is apparently normal of her, as her mother nonchalantly asks that she now has a new obsession/target of affection.
    • Also parodied with the Chain of Stalkers. Matoi has someone stalking her, and there's someone stalking that person, and someone stalking that person, and so on.
    • As indicated by the page picture (of Kaere/Kaede), Matoi is far from the only example in the cast- just the most extreme.
  • Kotonoha Katsura, Otome Katou, and Taisuke Sawanaga in School Days.
    • Also Setsuna Kiyoura. She tried to be more discreet than the others ... until Kotonoha caught her kissing Makoto in his sleep.
  • School Rumble: Harima to Tenma.
  • Shiki has Megumi.
  • Reino from Skip Beat! towards Kyouko. Initially to stole her away from Shou and anger him; nowdays, he just fell in love with her dark and hateful side.
  • A bit of an odd example: Soul has his fan club full of girls requesting to become his partner. Very few members of this Unwanted Harem are ever seen, although around Chapter 69 of the manga, a girl with huge eyes starts following both Maka and Soul everywhere, peeking at them from behind every corner. Soul seems completely oblivious about it all, handwaving his request letters and attributing them to his becoming a Death Scythe (and Maka's lack of letters due to her lack of sex appeal), but he has yet to see his stalker. Maka, on the other hand, has been confronted and has had her confidence ripped to shreds.
  • Hibari Ginza from Speed Grapher's main motivation in the series is her desire to be with Tatsumi Saiga. By force if necessary.
  • Tamao's pursuit of Nagisa in Strawberry Panic leads her into downright creepy territory at times, including scaring Nagisa so Tamao can record her screams and watching Nagisa while she sleeps in the very first scene we see her in. Chiyo-chan can get rather strange about Nagisa at times too.
  • General Onox behaves this way toward Din in the manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons.
  • Parodied a bit in The Prince of Tennis. One would think Yuuji Hitouji and Koharu Konjiki from Shitenhouji are just playing up the gay act as a part of their playing strategy, but sometimes Yuuji seems to take it a bit beyond that...
    • In the het side, sometimes Tomoka Osakada seems like one of these too thanks to her occasional but very obvious jealousy towards other girls who fangirl Ryoma (with the exception of Sakuno, that is). Again, played as a running gag since it's a side-effect of Tomoka being just a twelve year old.
  • Sali Tayi from the manhwa Threads of Time is this way for Atan Hadas. He actually notices when her hairpin (which she gave to Moon-bin as a present of love) is missing, and manages to put two-and-two together remarkably fast (quickly deciding that the best way to resolve everything is to Murder the Hypotenuse). To put it in his words: "I've always been watching you..."
  • Kish from Tokyo Mew Mew.
  • Run occasionally shows tendencies of this sort towards Rito in To LOVE-Ru.
  • Under Grand Hotel: Swordfish becomes one of these for Sen.
  • Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru: Elegy for Luka.
  • Vassalord: Barry to Rayflo.
  • Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest has the Big Bad Haguro Dou who becomes completely and crazily obsessed with protagonist (and werewolf) Inugami. He initially doesn't care about or even think twice about Inugami... until he pushes Inugami too far. Which results in Inugami showing him his true form and scaring the shit out of Haguro. Haguro goes insane from it, and obsesses and stalks Inugami after that, even cutting himself all over his arm and carving the word "Inu" onto his hand. And yes, it's creepy to the point of being something of a sexual obsession as well - Haguro has been shown after that to, while having sex with his (equally crazy) girlfriend (who, by the way, also lusts after and stalks Inugami and thinks about him while having sex with Haguro), think only about Inugami, and pretty much screams his name while imagining him. Later, Haguro even ends up raping his male subordinate to death, while again thinking of Inugami. And after Inugami decides he's had enough of this shit and tries to move away, Haguro, being the stalker he is, tries desperately to do stuff to piss Inugami off so that he'll come back, up to and including getting hold of Aoshika, Inugami's teacher and Morality Chain, and horrifically raping her.
  • The evil and brilliant scientist/surgeon/sorcerer Dr. Muraki in Yami no Matsuei (Descendants of Darkness) lust for and stalks the shinigami Tsuzuki. Before that, he had stalked (and raped) the boy Hisoka and placed a curse on him that caused Hisoka's death (after which Hisoka himself became a shinigami).
  • Yubel in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: "Hatred, misery, grief. These are my shape of love to you, Judai."
  • Yu-Gi-Oh Ze Xal gives us Cathy, whose obsession with Yuma is on par with her obsession with cats. She's very upset over his closeness with Kotori, always watches him from afar, actually changes his clothes in his sleep, and simply Cannot Spit It Out. She's not actually dangerous, though, so that's good.
  • Karasu from Yu Yu Hakusho. He had been following Kurama around the Dark Tournament... in order to kill him because he loved him so much.
  • Zetsuai 1989: Koji's behavior towards Izumi can only be described as "stalker-ish", like when he turns up at Izumi's football games and buys an apartment across from the field where Izumi practices...
  • Kyosuke in Zettai Karen Children. He looks 18 but he's actually 80 and he knows that the objects of his affections could kill him one day. Said love objects are a trio of ten-year-old girls.
  • The "Strange Lolita" in Ibitsu goes from victim to victim, stalking them and insinuating herself into their lives, though she seems to be seeking more of a (albeit extremely twisted) brother-sister relationship than a romantic one.
  • Prince Lotor to Princess Allura in Voltron, the original GoLion, and both American sequel series, Voltron The Third Dimension and Voltron Force.
  • Volume 6 of Confidential Confessions deals with one of these. None of it is played for laughs. The stalker is legitimately creepy and the protagonist is genuinely terrified of what he might do.
  • Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Ja Nai N Dakara Ne: Poor Shuusuke. The two girls that have the hots for him are both this. Nao knows when he learned to collect pornography, read it and hide it. As for Iroha... let us stop with her knowledge on how often does he masturbate and which hand does he use for that, OK?
  • Onodera Ritsu from Sekaiichi Hatsukoi was like this to Takano Masamune when they were in high school together. Onodera was fully aware of how creepy and obsessive his actions were but lacked the courage to speak to Takano for a long time. He even went through the trouble of tracking down the books that Takano read but wrote a fake last name to partially hide his identity.
  • Kippei from Aishiteruze Baby has a stalker named Kyoko Onda.
  • In Saint Beast, Shiva really has it bad for Judas, and spends much of his time spying on him behind trees, rocks, and any available natural feature. His complete and utter failure to get Judas alone for two minutes is mildly comedic.
  • Mother Keeper: Syal had a stalker as a master, Alan, when she was a human slave. This ended badly: she became a slave to earn protection for her adopted family and her sister/mother/lover... whoever that woman was. Then Alan gets so enamoured with her killing spree that he blatantly executes her adopted family to get the sister/ figure and have them fight each other, which breaches the slave trader's contract of protection, who then retalliates by tipping off Eden soldiers about the illegal deathmatch ring that Alan is a part of, who kill Alan, the sister/ figure, and as an insult to injury, when Syal is pleading for someone to save her sister, the sister dies and Syal is turned into an unstable immortal instead.

Comic Books

  • Paper Doll from Spider-Man, although her crush was on celebrity Bobby Carr who is not exactly one of the main Spider-Man cast. Her stalker tendencies were elevated to the point where she lashed out and attempted to murder everyone who dared to try and ruin Carr's name, including a woman selling her negative story about him to the news and tabloid reporters. Made all the more dangerous when combined with her ability to become paper-thin, blend in with any surrounding, "compress" the bodies of those she envelops and leave them as thin as herself (unable to stop themselves from suffocating in the process) and administer lethal papercuts strong enough to slice through Spidey's webbing.
    • Mary-Jane Watson, being an actress/supermodel has had several, starting with Jonathan Caesar, an It's All About Me type who kidnapped her in the sincere conviction that because he wanted to marry her, little things like her not agreeing or already being married shouldn't stand in the way.
  • Kathy Dare from Iron Man. She stalks him and later shoots him when he rejects her. At her trial she plays the victim and claims that Tony abused and stalked her (which, unfortunately, is also a tactic of some real-life stalkers).
  • Brigitta MacBridge for Scrooge McDuck.
  • Squirrel Girl's relationship with Speedball, summed up in a part of a conversation:

Speedball: I just wanted to say thanks for everything you did! Also for all those nice letters you send.
Squirrel Girl: Oh... You--You know about them?
Speedball: I read all my fan mail! That plus my manager alerted the FBI about them.

Deadpool: Once upon a time, watching over a girl in her sleep used to be romantic. Nowadays it's considered "stalking".

    • Sort-of subverted later, when Siryn tells Deadpool she knew about it all along and actually appreciates it.
  • The Wasp has at least one per canon universe. Janet got David Cannon in the original canon, who became obsessed with her while posing as her chauffeur for what was originally just a theft plot, then expanded to include trying to kidnap her as well. Recent storylines indicate that he's not over this obsession, even after she's dead. She also got Erik Josten in, of all places, the Marvel Adventures-verse, where he was an employee of her fathers's who tried to make it look like her friend/crush Hank Pym had up and disappeared in order to get close to her.
  • Marvel's The Mighty Thor is no stranger to this either. He's been stalked at various times by Amora the Enchantress, her younger sister Lorelei, his niece Hela, and his former teammate Moondragon. Magic, mind control rape, and blackmail, oh my.
  • Cupid aka Carrie Hartnell for Green Arrow. While not the sanest person in general (she killed her hairdresser after getting a perfect haircut so no-one else could ever have hair that good), she takes the crazy to new heights thanks to her obsession with Ollie. In an effort to win his love, she has been killing off the members of his Rogues Gallery. She's done pretty well too; she even killed the superpowered crime boss Brick with a wrecking ball. She also tried to get Ollie to kill his Evil Counterpart Merlyn, thinking that this would make him love her. When that failed due to Ollie following Thou Shalt Not Kill, she chained him to subway tracks and planned to die with him. While Green Arrow and Black Canary were able to get out of this situation in one piece (Merlyn wasn't so lucky—Cupid slit his throat as a distraction), Cupid hasn't given up yet.
  • Powerboy became obsessed with Supergirl after catching a glimpse of her as a Female Fury. He created a shrine and became a superhero to impress and seduce her. However, he grew more and more possessive, and beat the crap out of her when she tried to visit Captain Boomerang (Owen Mercer) in the hospital. Supergirl defeated him in spectacular fashion.
  • Superman has been stalked by various women, including Maxima, The Queen Of Fables, and Obsession.
  • The second Clock King is obsessed with Rose Wilson aka Ravager. He murders his lover, The Disrupter, for trying to kill her.
  • The Gold Key run of Hanna-Barbera's The Funky Phantom created a character named Priscilla Atwater, a ditzy Revolutionary War-era lady ghost that carried—and still carries—a torch for Mudsy.
  • The Joker feels this way about Batman, according to Frank Miller. All of his crimes are part of his "game" to get the attention of The Dark Knight, who he calls "my sweet".
    • Can't forget Bruce's childhood friend turned villain Thomas Elliot who became Hush. He seems to obsessively stalk Bruce and even got plastic surgery to look like Bruce.
  • Two-Face gets a sort of sick obsession with Renee Montoya after their experience in Batman: No Man's Land. When he learns that she's actually gay in Gotham Central, he just makes it another part of his plan to destroy her life so she has nothing left but him.
  • Abraham Pointe in Brightest Day was obsessed with a casino waitress named Lisa and stalked her afar with a camera for two years, mistaking it for love. This could have ended very badly for Lisa. Fortunately (well, sort of), the Predator, the Entity of Love, mistook Abraham's insane crush for love as well and possessed him, which got the Star Sapphires and the Green Lanterns involved. Eventually Carol Ferris called out Abraham on his stalker behavior and said to his face that he never really loved Lisa—heck, he didn't know anything about her except for her first name. Abraham had a Heel Realization after understanding that he didn't really love Lisa, which gave Carol an opportunity to separate him from the Predator. You know a (non-existent) romance is messed up when an Eldritch Abomination getting involved turns out to be a good thing.
  • Post-Flashpoint, Batman foe Mr. Freeze is reimagined as one of these. Victor Fries was hired by Wayne Industries to study a woman named Nora Fields who was one of the first people to ever be cryogenically frozen. Victor developed a twisted interest in her, deluding himself into thinking they were husband and wife. Bruce Wayne eventually shut down the project because he was becoming increasingly disturbed by Victor's unprofessional interest in Nora. Victor performed his own private illegal experiments anyway. When Bruce confronted him again, Victor lashed out causing the accident that turned him into Mr. Freeze. When Batman and Freeze face off in the present, Batman calls out Freeze on his delusional "love" for a woman he doesn't even know who is technically old enough to be his grandmother.
  • When Deadpool was institutionalized he unbelievably started making real progress towards sanity. Too bad his therapist Dr. Ellen Whitby was a loony stalker even crazier than him. And by crazy, I mean keeping his lost body parts (which he regenerates) in her fridge crazy.

Fan Works

  • The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya's Itsuki in this music video.
  • In the Firefly fanfic Forward, the Academy agent named John is strongly implied to be one of these towards River. Made even creepier by the fact that, while he really does care about her, his goal is to bring River back to the Academy so they can continue to Mind Rape her to make her "better," and he is convinced that this is the right thing to do.
  • In the first installment of The Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain, the title character has an invisible man stalking her at all hours of the day and night. He grows a little too interested in her as a result, and so his employer—who plans to use her virtue as currency to settle a few debts—agrees to give him first dibs.
  • Flippy from the Happy Tree Friends is usually portrayed as this in fanfiction. Most stories involve Flippy and Flaky, in which Flippy either rapes Flaky or kills her while she is terrified of him and tries to get rid of him. In the cartoon, the situation is pretty similar, because Flippy has killed Flaky many times, but when he acts nice to her, she is afraid of him and runs away... or stabs him.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura: Tomoyo Daidouji is this (She's higher up the page), but it gets taken massively out of proportion in some Fan Fiction. For example, in these chapters of Takamichi Nanoha of 2814, she hires a team consisting of Deathstroke the Terminator, David Cain, Deadshot, Tatsumiya Mana, and Lady Shiva to guarantee the safety of her crush, Sakura. As well as ordering illegal nuclear weaponry and carries around two "Lex-Blaster 500s". All of which turn out to be worth it during the confrontation with the Big Bads during chapter 10. Going even beyond that she started a religion based around worshiping Sakura.
  • In The Not So Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and its suppliment fic, Ashes through an Hourglass, by Oy Angelina, Bree has a major problem with Alec of the Volturi's infamous Jane-and-Alec following her around until he finally abducts her.
  • Luminosity has this between Demetri and Allirea. The former is a vampire, which means mate bonds are supposed to be automatically mutual. He never quite gets that they aren't, so he sees her trying to get away as a game.
  • Awesomeness of the Ocarina has Saria. Link in a Breaking the Fourth Wall moment discusses how this is different since Princess Ruto is usually the stalker in Ocarina of Time parodies.
  • Ultimate SpiderWoman: Change With the Light has a particularly twisted version in Ronald Hilliard, a teenage boy who's a guest at a high-class party that's attacked by Spider-Woman's Arch Enemy Jack O'Lantern. When Mary Jane Watson goes into action as Spider-Woman to protect the party guests, Ronald gets it into his head that she was there to protect him specifically. His crush on her then drastically escalates, as he goes from wallpapering his bedroom with images of Spider-Woman and turning it into a combination Room Full of Crazy and Stalker Shrine to her, to spending his entire $5 million trust fund on gaining superpowers. As the Psycho Electro Supercharger, he begins murdering Spider-Woman's detractors as a means of proving his affection for her. He culminates in full-on Yandere mode when the disgusted heroine calls him sick and depraved, and then becomes determined to kill her, developing a If I Can't Have You mentality in the process.
  • In Hunting the Unicorn, Karofsky starts out like this but stops due to Character Development. In the thirteenth chapter, we find out that Blaine has one.
  • Blaine turns out to be quite the terrifying one in the Wham Installment of The Kurtofsky I Ms.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Games We Play, Rainbow Dash finds herself stalked by one of her friends disguised as Mare Do Well. The catch? She doesn't know who it is, so Mare Do Well makes the pegasus a bet; that Mare Do Well will be able to get Rainbow Dash to fall in love with her before Rainbow Dash can discover her true identity. The result is some kind of hybrid romantic mystery/psychological thriller.

Film

  • Main character Elliot from the remake of Bedazzled knows every intimate detail (likes, dislikes, relationship status, etc.) about his coworker Alison, who has no clue he's alive. He doesn't go so far as actually breaking and entering until Satan puts him up to it, but he bends pretty quickly—it doesn't hurt that he's invisible and intangible to do so while she's showering. Then there's the fact that every one of his seven wishes save the first and last one revolve around getting a woman he's never had more than a minute interaction with.
  • Bobby (played by Fred Savage) in the TV movie No One Would Tell.
  • Mark Wahlberg's character David McCall in the 1996 movie Fear.
  • In the movie When in Rome, Beth takes coins from a magic fountain, making the men who tossed in those coins turn into Stalker with a Crush. They all feel they are in love with her due to the magic fountain. Naturally, the main love interest, Nick, tries to contact her. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Sandra Bullock's character Mary towards the titular character in the movie All About Steve.
  • Rose McGowan's character Debbie in the movie Devil in the Flesh.
  • Evelyn Draper from Play Misty for Me. Not the oldest example, but probably the oldest movie example, and possibly the Trope Codifier. You know it's bad when the stalker is scaring Clint Eastwood.
  • Jacob, the Jerkass T.A. in Road Trip is this to Beth. Despite her insistence that they are not, nor ever will be a couple, he acts as though they are and tells Josh that she's "spoken for".
  • Alex Forrest of Fatal Attraction turns into this after having a one-night-stand with married man Dan Gallagher. As Dan tries to distance himself from her for the sake of his marriage, Alex's actions get increasingly violent, culminating in the infamous "bunny boiler" scene that has her killing and boiling his daughter's pet rabbit.
  • Hannibal turns the title character into one of these. While in The Silence of the Lambs he simply seems to enjoy being creepy for creepiness' sake, the sequel turns it into a kind of weird romantic love for Clarice Starling, with him sneaking into her house and watched her sleep (while touching her face and hair). In a deleted scene, he breaks into her car and licks the steering wheel to get the taste of her. Not to mention the part where she's talking to him on a cell phone trying to find him, and it turns out he was behind her touching her hair. The weird thing is that it's actually meant to be romantic.
  • My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
  • Samantha James from the 2005 movie Just Friends.
  • Jed Parry of Enduring Love and the novel upon which it was based.
  • The Borg Queen of Star Trek: First Contact is this to Captain Picard, a rare case of a galactic overlord (or lady) chasing after someone, an inversion of the Loony Fan if there ever was one.
  • The Seduction, starring Morgan Fairchild as a newscaster who becomes the obsession of a creepy and increasingly dangerous male loner.
  • Watch how Xerxes acts around Leonidas in 300. Would he have been satisfied with just taking his sovereignty?
  • Sally is a relatively benign version of this in The Nightmare Before Christmas, following Jack Skellington around a few times and sending him small gifts. After Jack becomes obsessed with Christmas this turns to trying to protect him from himself, as Jack has the enthusiasm of a thousand passionate actors and the common sense of a wet cabbage.
  • Alec Baldwin's character, Teacher, from The Juror (1996) is a textbook example of this. He bugs Annie Laird's house so he can listen to her every move, copies and enlarges photos of her and kisses them, and sneaks a bouquet of flowers into her house without her knowledge. When it looks like she won't listen to his orders, he threatens to run her son over with his car, and even sleeps with her best friend (promptly killing her afterwards).
  • John Ryder from The Hitcher (1986). After Jim Halsey manages to thwart his attempt at murdering him, Ryder becomes obsessed with either killing Halsey or being killed by Halsey. He stalks him throughout the entire movie, framing Jim for crimes he committed (but rescuing him when the police are about to kill him) and killing Jim's only female love interest violently. In one very disturbing scene, he holds Jim's hands, and Jim spits in his face. After Jim leaves, he is seen rubbing the spit onto his lips, smiling.
  • Miles Haley from Perfect Stranger. He sneaks into Rowena's house and watches her make out with her boyfriend, tries to flirt with her in instant messaging by posing as someone else, and even has a freaky shrine dedicated to her in his house.
  • Moulin Rouge: "Satine will be mine! It's not that I'm a jealous man! I just don't like other people touching my things."
    • Made even more obvious when he orders a hit on his love rival.
  • Madison Bell in Swimfan. It's basically Fatal Attraction but with high school students.
  • Played for laughs in Blades of Glory, with Nick Swardson stalking Jon Heder's character.

"He likes food and dreams and whispers... his favorite movie is Short Circuit... and Fried Green Tomatoes. "

  • Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. Yes, he loves himself more than he'll ever love Belle, but pursuing a girl who hates you, threatening to chuck her father in the asylum, and murdering your rival surely counts. He loves himself so much that it is either incomprehensible or maddening to him that she does not, or just an intolerable affront to his towering ego. "BELLE IS MINE!!!"
  • Love Actually--
    • Mark verges on this, no matter what the fans say. You're telling me it's not creepy to film a wedding with extreme close ups of the bride throughout? The time he shows up at their house is odd too.
    • At least in his case he knows that his feelings are wrong and that he shouldn't have done that (since he tries to keep them from seeing the film). He also deliberately tries to avoid her out of loyalty to his best friend/her husband, which she interprets as him disliking her.
  • American Beauty--
    • Ricky. His social ineptitude makes him think filming a girl and spelling out her name on her lawn is appropriate wooing strategy. Jane herself is so screwed up it works.
    • Jane's dad Lester secretly lusts after her best friend Angela throughout the movie, listening in on her conversations in Jane's bedroom, calling her and hanging up!
    • And Ricky's dad toward Lester near the end of the film. When he can't have him, he goes as far as killing him.
  • The Cable Guy has Chip Douglas who stalks his customers to be Just Friends.
  • In the movie The Watcher, Keanu Reeves' character David Allen Griffin is a Stalker with a Crush. Not surprising, considering the title. Apparently the Foe Yay going on between him and Joel was so strong that he became obsessed with getting Joel to continue their Mind Games. He follows Joel all the way to Chicago, watches his every move (lamenting that Joel keeps going to the same terrible Vietnamese restaurant every night), sends him flowers and a card saying he missed him, kidnaps and tries to kill his female psychologist, and kidnaps him to try to get him to realize that they need each other. It's revealed later on that Joel's ex-lover was killed by David due to his being jealous that Joel was going to retire to be with her.
  • Obsessed is all about this trope; it features Ali Larter's character Lisa, er, pining over her boss Derek, going so far as to get into a fight with Derek's wife Sharon. The fight ends with Lisa dangling from a hole in the ceiling, about to plummet onto the glass table below her--Sharon tries to pull her back up, but Lisa attempts to drag her down as well, and ends up falling and being crushed by a broken chandelier.
  • There's a subtle hint of this with Eddie Brock in Spider-Man 3; he's always going on and on about how Gwen Stacy is "the girl I intend to marry" and even tells her father that he's her boyfriend... and then, the first and pretty much only time we actually see them together, she reminds him that they've only ever had coffee once, in a fashion that indicates that she's really not that into him and that more than a bit of their relationship only exists in his own head.
  • The entire premise of the Prom Night remake. Could also be applied to the third film.
  • The plot of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stokers Dracula.
  • Annie Wilkes in Misery, except she doesn't need to stalk—she gets home delivery!
  • Robin Williams' character in One Hour Photo has a crush on an entire family because they're so picture perfect. Using the information he's gotten from their photos, he fantasizes about visiting their house and being an Honorary Uncle. When he discovers that the husband has been having an affair he becomes enraged at him for squandering his "perfect" family and gets his revenge by catching him and his lover and forcing them to take sexually explicit photos, repeating the instructions his parents gave him as a child ("stop crying, you're supposed to be happy!").
  • Gloria from the 2005 film Wedding Crashers.
  • WALL-E. He literally stows away on a massive, ominous spaceship with no idea where it's going just so he doesn't have to be separated from EVE. His obsession is probably justified in that until EVE came along, he had no-one to talk to except cockroaches for centuries.
    • Slightly subverted in the fact that EVE was perfectly aware that WALL-E was stalking her due to his bumbling nature, but didn't seem to care, and she was armed with a laser-weapon that could blow holes through mountains. They fall in love with each other at the end.
  • Mad Love stars Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol—a man obsessed enough with a beautiful actress to keep a wax dummy of her in his house to talk to. Slightly averted in that he knows she's happily married and even tries to save her pianist husband's career when he loses his hands in a railway accident (he performs a successful transplant)-- but he performs the surgery to endear himself to her, and when the husband start to think his hands have a mind of their own, Gogol has no problem trying to drive the husband crazier.
  • Batman: The Joker is this to Vicki. After seeing a picture of her he immediately develops feelings for her. The Joker even goes as far to kill everyone in a museum just so that he can talk to her. Near the end of the film, he manages to kidnap Vicki until Batman shows up to save her.
    • After she finds out Bruce is avoiding her, Vicki resorts to following him around, digging up files about his past, and spying on him to get to know him better.
  • Quite possibly Jackson Rippner in Red Eye. It's never explicitly stated but the character does seem a little fascinated by the girl he's been stalking ("When this is over, I may have to steal you.")
    • Confirmed by Word of God; Jackson did develop feelings for Lisa over the eight weeks he had to watch her. Not nice feelings, but feelings nevertheless.
      • In the commentary during the restroom scene, when Lisa revealed that she had been raped, Wes Craven notes, "He looks jealous." He sounded sort of creeped out as he said it. Let me repeat: Wes Craven was creeped out. That's Cillian Murphy for you.
  • In The Science of Sleep Stéphane does break into Stéphanie's house to steal something of hers to make it into a gift. She does catch him the second time and tell him to get out—this is put down to his lack of social understanding (thinking he was doing something nice for her). When she learns what his gift was ( making her childhood toy horse robotic enough to gallop - which she said she dreamt about as a child) she apologised for getting angry but does say that breaking into people's houses is wrong.
  • Used rather cleverly in He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not. The first half of the movie sets up that a girl named Angélique is the lover of a doctor and nearly commits suicide upon learning that he will not be leaving his wife to marry her. The second half reveals that this is all in her head - he only knew her vaguely because she house-sat for his neighbor, and it is also implied that she hit his wife with a motorcycle to cause her to miscarry as well as built a shrine to him out of garbage. While the girl is given medical help at the end, it is revealed that she was not taking her medication - instead using it to make a mosaic of the doctor.
  • The whole plot of The Crush starring Alicia Silverstone and Cary Elwes.
  • Used to a very creepy effect in Manon des Sources (Manon of the Spring). Ugolin, an ugly man in his 30s, spies on the teenage Manon as she is bathing. He then proceeds to spend days silently following her around as she herds goats, going so far as to fill her traps with game, but never allowing her to see him. The extent of his crush is revealed when he finds the bit of cloth she used to tie her hair back—he takes it home and sews it onto his naked chest.
  • Hedy from Single White Female is a Psycho Lesbian version of this towards her roommate Allie.
  • Ever After: Monsieur le Peu is implied to be something like this to Danielle, judging by his behavior toward her in the marketplace and then later when he owns her.
  • In I Wake Up Screaming, that the victim had a man stalking her turns out to be an important clue.
  • Darla (Lucy Punch), from the film Dinner for Schmucks is a particularly terrifying example of this.
  • This happens to all parties in the Love Triangle in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Knives was this to Scott, though it could be her way of showing affection. And when Scott broke up with her, she got worse. Then Scott followed Ramona around during the party. And Ramona admits that she did this to Gideon.
  • How the two main characters met in Dead Friend (aka The Ghost)...although it's treated as something sweet:

Ji-won: "How did we meet?"
Boy: "When you were in school...I saw you crying in the rain. Because your father had died. I couldn't just walk by, so I bought you some hot noodles. (Smiles fondly) After that, you waited for me every night in an alley. Somehow you got my numbe and you kept calling. "
Ji-won: "I did?"

  • Philippe from Une histoire sans importance (1980) turns into this after his rejection by Claude.
  • Louis Tully is this in the first Ghostbusters. He apparently sits just inside his apartment door all day, just waiting for Dana Barrett to walk by so he can come out and ask her on a date.
    • Janosz Poha in the sequel is even worse. At least Louis had a saving touch of geeky awkwardness about him; Janosz is actually creepy about it, especially when Vigo "helps" him.
  • Goblin King Jareth for Sarah in Labyrinth.
  • In Megamind, the nerdy cameraman has a big crush on the news reporter woman he's normally assigned to film. So when he becomes Tighten/Titan, his infatuation becomes a lot more dangerous.
  • Green Lantern: Hammond. He starts off with merely an infatuation, but by the time Carol gives him a hug and he smells her hair, it's gotten pretty twisted.
  • The 1981 movie The Fan is about an actress named Sally Ross who is being stalked by an obsessed fan named Douglas Breen. He starts with constant letters and requests for pictures and then moves on to murdering everyone she knows.
  • Knox Overstreet in Dead Poets Society when it comes to Chris, is a variation, but still disturbing. He shows up at her cheerleading practice wearing dark glasses though. He then grabs her boob at a party and then follows her to her school and rambles at her disturbing assumptions.
  • Played for laughs in There's Something About Mary, in which the titular character has several stalkers who are infatuated with her.
  • An early example is Katharine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby.
  • Madison turns it Up to Eleven with her crush on Ben in the 2002 movie Swimfan, killing two police officers and nearly killing Ben's girlfriend before she's finally stopped.
  • The Haunted Mansion: Gracey to Sara. Subverted as it's revealed that he merely thought she was his old lover Elizabeth.
  • Back to The Future: Biff to Lorraine.

Literature

  • Adrian Mole: Adrian is almost this to Pandora in the early books, after they break up as teenagers (and Pandora eventually marries another man.) In The Cappuccino Years he acquires his own Stalker with a Crush, Eleanor Flood.
  • Eponine's stalking after Marius in Les Misérables, making this Older Than Radio. She finally confessed her feelings while dying after her Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Marius also displays stalker-ish tendencies towards Cosette. He slept with what he thought was her hankerchief over his face (to make things more creepy, it turned out to be Jean Valjean's).
  • Speaking of Hugo, Frollo's behavior toward La Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame certainly qualifies.
  • Grima Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings definitely qualifies as this in regards to Eowyn, albeit combined with Love Makes You Evil.
  • The eponymous antagonist of Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, who falls in love with young witch Tiffany Aching. In an attempt to win her heart, he makes snowflakes and icebergs that look like her and ice roses... and oh yeah, he refuses to go away when it's time for spring, creating the threat of perpetual winter.
  • Robert B. Parker's private detective Spenser picks one up in Hush Money. After dealing with a stalking case for Susan's friend K.C. Roth, Spenser finds that KC has started stalking him.
  • In the sixth book, Harry Potter got a stalker in Romilda Vane, also a Loony Fan. Romilda additionally showed some signs of being an Alpha Bitch.
    • Severus Snape was a Stalker with a Crush for Lily Potter (nee Evans) even when they were children, although she liked him once she noticed him. They remained friends until he started hanging out with Voldemort sympathisers and called her a Fantastic Slur. Add to that her marrying a man Snape hated and Snape unintentionally setting Voldemort on her tail...
  • Lanfear in The Wheel of Time acts this way towards Rand, the reincarnation of her old lover. Upon first meeting him (in disguise) she flirts heavily, then a few books later she pursues him, aiding him in learning The Power, but then tries to kill him after she hears a rumor that he slept with someone else.
  • Erik, the titular phantom of The Phantom of the Opera.
  • Mr. Darcy spends a few early chapters of Pride and Prejudice following Elizabeth around, staring at her, and eavesdropping on her to the point where Elizabeth is slightly creeped out. When they're both staying in Kent, he stalks her favorite place to walk in the park and spends entire evenings at Rosings staring at her but never speaking to her. This doesn't stem from any malicious intent, however; it's just that Darcy is so socially inept, he has no idea how to act when falling in love.
  • A more malicious Jane Austen example is Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park, who persists in tormenting the object of his desire (Fanny) no matter how much it distresses her.
  • Ricky Lozada from Sandra Brown's The Crush. In fact, the book's title is pretty much referring to Lozada's stalker crush on Rennie Newton. He constantly watches her, breaks into her house multiple times (leaving roses and later trying to "seduce" her), and has his geeky subordinate check up all the information he can on her.
  • Edward Cullen from Twilight falls under this trope quite well, except that Bella returns his affection. Some examples of Edward's stalker behavior are sneaking into Bella's house at night to watch her sleep without her permission, taking the battery out of her car so it can't run, and literally stalking (and then saving, so it's okay for him to stalk) Bella. No matter how much Stephenie Meyer denies it, he's most definitely a stalker.
    • This is taken to even more ridiculous extremes in the parts of Midnight Sun that were leaked - it seems that for nearly every chapter of Twilight when Edward wasn't around, he was actually hiding in the bushes, spying on Bella. It also lets the readers see his thought process, so everyone is privy to him thinking to bring oil the next time he climbs into her room so the window won't squeak and reassuring himself that what he is doing is all right because it's for her own protection.
  • Fenwick from Villains by Necessity is a womanizer to begin with, but when he spies Kaylana among the villain protagonists, he immediately decides that he must save her (and give her a personal tour of his quarters) because she's attractive. Doesn't sound creepy? While his constant spying is explainable as keeping tabs on the villains' progress, he obsesses over her presence in specific far more than professionally required. And then resorts to kidnapping her. By dragon.
  • Zane from Mistborn has an unhealthy fixation on the heroine, Vin, because she's the only person the voices in his head never told him to kill. Vin, for her part, treats Zane more as a Not So Different Worthy Opponent, but isn't romantically interested in him at all, preferring his less Badass but far more stable half-brother Elend. When she finally says "no" to him, Zane tries to kill her, being a psychopath and all. It doesn't work out so well for him...
  • Warrior Cats: Spottedleaf, just... Spottedleaf... She spends pretty much the entire first series stalking Firestar, and presumably still watches over him afterwards. Additionally, she also stalks each successive generation of his family. Although, Firestar does love her back, and it is a somewhat popular shipping; in spite of him also truly loving Sandstorm, who he fathered kits with (Leafpool and Squirrelflight).
    • If you consider every single thing the author has said as Word of God, then Spottedleaf is officially a stalker.
  • In The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub, the villain Serial Killer Dick Dart acts like one towards Nora. He latches on to her due to a misunderstanding that she had kidnapped and tortured a woman, which caused him to believe that he finally found his worthy match and someone who was just like him. As a result, he kidnaps her and repeatedly rapes her, taking her along as he commits crimes all the while thinking of her as his accomplice. When she escapes from him, he stalks her and kidnaps her again, actually admiring her even more for managing to trick him.
  • The Sheik of The Sheik, who doesn't even bother to stalk his intended very long before outright kidnapping her. 'Crush' might be a bit of a misnomer, though; he just wants to rape her. Which he does.
  • Richard Rahl has a stalker, and she's a gorgeous sorceress with Subtractive Magic dedicated to serving the Imperial Order and punishing herself who blasts mellon-sized holes through the chests of people who get on her bad side, and is completely and hopelessly in love with him. Luckily for him, he manages to sway her to pull a High Heel Face Turn and change sides through the power of carving a statue of "Life" and treating her to more than one Character Filibuster, and afterwards she becomes his Black Magician Girl lieutenant. Just another day in the story of the Sword of Truth.
  • Z for Zachariah has a stalker with a something; Loomis is a little too intent on hunting down Ann, for multiple reasons, only one of which is the fact that he wants to rape her. His Sanity Slippage is a little questionable as well.
  • In the Nero Wolfe story "Murder is Corny", model Susan MacLeod asks her farmer father to hire a man she's casually dating. After she dumps him she finds out that he'd lied about needing a second job - he only wanted to force her to spend time with him. He eventually tells the other men she's dating that he's made her pregnant in an attempt to force her into marrying him to save her reputation. The story, which is false, seals his doom.
  • Eragon from The Inheritance Cycle towards Arya.
  • The House of Night: Heath. Also Kalona in regards to Zoey.
    • Rephaim to Stevie Rae, though it's only a mild case and with a father like his, it would be easy to come to the conclusion of Stalking Is Love. Especially with High Priestesses of Nyx.
  • Norman who watches Lily's public-access show and persistently begs her to show her feet on-camera, in The Princess Diaries.
  • In The Pillars of the Earth, After William Hamleigh seizes the Shiring Earldom, he is aware that Ailena , Richard and their servant Matthew are still living in the castle. He stalks and watches over Ailena with freakish fascination, still obsessed with her even after she disgustedly rejected him twice. As soon as he gets the chance, he rapes her.
  • In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Black Colossus", an Eldritch Abomination that Was Once a Man toward Princess Yasmela. Visits her in the night with promises to make her his queen.

"But thou shalt be my queen, oh princess! I will teach thee the ancient forgotten ways of pleasure. We—" Before the stream of cosmic obscenity which poured from the shadowy colossus, Yasmela cringed and writhed as if from a whip that flayed her dainty bare flesh.

  • Frederic/Ferdinand/Caliban from The Collector by John Fowls starts as one, but unlike many, goes past this phase, actually abducts his flame, and proceeds to...well, not exactly torture or rape, but rather "keep" her.
  • The protagonist of the short story "We Love Deena" by Alice Sola Kim is this trope incarnate.
  • Caelan from the Skulduggery Pleasant novels. He spends his days spying on Valkyrie through her kitchen window.
  • Dr. Ahriman of Dean Koontz's False Memory has a brief bit of this. He mind rapes most of his patients and uses them for all kinds of things, be it murder, revenge, or just... entertainment. He winds up (kind of) legitimately smitten with one, fortunately not realizing this until she and her husband have skipped town. By the time they get back, they've broken his mental hold and he winds up murdered by another patient.
  • The Ur Example is Prince Shechem in The Book of Genesis. He was crushing on Jacob's only daughter, Dinah, and got this crazy idea that raping her would be a good idea. He does wind up marrying her, but the marriage lasts all of three days before her brothers kill him, along with all the men in the town.
  • Van Ruijven to Griet in Girl with a Pearl Earring. This includes the movie adaption as well. In both works he attempts to rape her, develops an obsession with her and follows her around.

Live-Action TV

  • Ben in Lost is like this with Juliet. He keeps her on The Island against her will for 3 years, and gets her lover killed ... and then shows her the body out of pure spite.
  • The Star Wars Holiday Special. Krelman, on Ackmina.
  • Boardwalk Empire: Agent Van Alden towards Margaret Schroeder. He stole and sniffed her hair ribbon, specially ordered her immigration file for his own perusing, questioned her neighbor about her, and caressed, and later whipped himself to, a picture of her. Van Alden's boss even calls him out on his obsession with the Schroeders.
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: Missy towards the titular Ned.
  • Glee: Rachel towards Will in episode 10. Also Suzy Pepper before her. Suzy's crush faded after she hospitalized herself, and she told Rachel to stop before she made the same mistakes.
    • Jacob Ben Israel. A stalker with a knickers fetish for Rachel.
    • Finn toward Rachel any time she's dating someone not him: in "Laryngitis" he accompanies Rachel to the doctor's surgery in order to instruct her to break up with Jesse because Jesse doens't 'get her' as well as Finn does, then openly pervs on her as she gets changed behind a screen, and in "Prom Queen" he insults Jesse repeatedly and punches him in the face for slow-dancing with her at the junior prom - while he himself is supposed to be another girl's date.
      • Finn tried to punch Jesse but he has cat-like reflexes and dodged.
    • Also, Kurt's behavior towards Finn in the first season is a bit stalkerish. Kurt himself clearly doesn't see it though, as he thinks every attempt to call him out on it is due to homophobia.

Finn: The way you were all over me last year... if I did that to a girl, she'd take out a restraining order.
Kurt: You have issues with me being gay, I get it.
Finn: No, actually I don't. I have issues with the fact that you don't understand that no means no.

      • This matter is somewhat complicated by the fact that the first and only time Finn ever made any effort to say 'no', he did so using hate speech.
    • Dave Karofsky, anyone? He's way worse than any of the others.
  • True Blood: Lorena just can't accept that Bill has moved on.
    • Sam Merlotte, in Season One. Thankfully, he got better.
  • Adrian Monk used to have this problem—he solved a murder with the help of a creepy Stalker With A Crush, and accidentally transferred the stalker crush to himself. Fortunately in a later episode, she eventually transfers her crush to F. Murray Abraham.
  • In the earliest days of Smallville, every other Monster of the Week had a crush on Lana. For that matter, Clark does the same thing to Lana with his telescope when she still lives next door to him.

Lana: (looking through the telescope) Did you know you can see my house from here?
Clark: (acting innocent) No... Really? (moves the telescope to point somewhere else)

  • In one episode of the short-lived Probe, Austin is pursued by a stalker who murders one woman and tries to murder another she sees as an obstacle to her obsession with Austin. The twist? The stalker is a mentally enhanced orangutan.
  • Fifth from Stargate SG-1 cranked up the creepiness factor by declaring his love for Carter. This love led him to inflict Replicarter on the galaxy.
    • Samantha Carter seems to attract these types. Orlin and McKay both nurtured (relatively creepy) obsessions with her. Several others, much creepiers, have died.
  • Arguably the Master and his obsession with the Doctor on Doctor Who: eventually the butt of jokes on the show itself "Are you asking me out on a date?" and the Tenth Doctor's quip about the Master's lavender marriage.
    • Sharaz Jek in "The Caves of Androzani" quite clearly has the creepy kind of hots for Peri, doing things like chloroforming her, stroking her face while she's unconscious, and carrying her around in his arms (again, unconscious) while whispering "so beautiful...so beautiful...". The fact that he also dresses entirely in black leather really doesn't help.
  • A recurring plot on Hart to Hart was for one member of the title couple to attract a Stalker with a Crush who would then try to bump off their spouse.
  • Used on Law and Order Special Victims Unit with quite a twist: a cellist is attacked and continues to get threatening messages before being shot. The detectives find the man who's been stalking her, but he claims never to have attacked her. It turned out his landlady also insanely believed herself to be in a relationship with the stalker, and she threatened and shot the girl out of jealousy!
  • Sue White on Green Wing will do just about anything to get with Dr. Mac... witchcraft, attempted murder, slander...
  • Criminal Minds: in "Somebody's Watching", the profilers figure a male Loony Fan is the one killing people connected to a certain actress, but the unsub turns out to be the actress's Psycho Lesbian friend.
    • "Broken Mirror" had a rogue FBI agent who was obsessed with a pair of twin sisters, one of whom he abducted, while "The Crossing" had a fairly generic stalker going after a woman he met while fixing her computer (they accidentally touched hands and she smiled at him, it was good enough for him). The rapist in "Aftermath" also learned absolutely everything he possibly could about his victims before going after them.
  • Wire in The Blood: in "Nothing But the Night", Tony Hill has a brief conversation on a plane with a woman. Her erotomania over the course of the episode escalates to the point where by the end, he comes home to find her in his house cooking him dinner and acting as if they're already married.
  • Sketch (towards Maxxie) from the second season of Skins.
    • Emily is kind of this towards Naomi in the third season, but she's far too nice and likeable (her pursuit of Naomi is more lovestruck puppy than Psycho Lesbian) for it to be creepy. Naomi declares her to be "very annoying" when she manages to break into Naomi's bedroom (not hard, since Naomi's mum has turned their house into a hippy commune), rather than pulling the all-out freakout that might be associated with this trope. But even so.
  • The Chief of Police in Hill Street Blues had a really obvious crush on the police officer played by Mimi Kuzyk. He often made serious compliments to her, that were (in her opinion) too personal, such that it bothered her enough that she filed a Sexual Harassment complaint. Later, when she decided to leave the police force, the lack of the boss/subordinate power structure made her lose her fear of him, enough that they ended up Shipping and she moved in with him.
  • Steve Urkel on Family Matters found himself on both sides of this: for years he'd been Laura's stalker with a crush, then eventually found his own in Myra Monkhouse. Unfortunately for poor Myra, Steve was a more successful stalker than she was.
  • In Wizards of Waverly Place, Harper has a huge crush on Justin, sometimes bordering on obsession. Alex even takes advantage of this fact, when she tries to break the temporary connection that formed between Harper and Justin, telling Justin that Harper watched him once, while he was sleeping.
  • Good Luck Charlie: Disney Channel comes back to this trope time and time again. On Good Luck Charlie, another sitcom, there is Teddy, the main character. Her brother, has a friend named Emmett, who has a crush that's basically been built up by him into a full blown relationship with Teddy as his girlfriend. As usual per the Kid Com genre, it's played for laughs.
  • Booth on Bones gets saddled with a repeat offender of this. At the end of the episode, she accidentally shoots him while trying to kill Brennan.
    • Season one also has a stalker who fixates on Bones after his previous obsession dies.
  • Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He became accustomed to following Buffy down the pavement or hanging around outside her house at night. He watched Buffy through her window, made a shrine to her, smelled one of her sweaters, and had a sex robot designed to look and act like her. Of course his little crush got a little less one sided in Season 6 and by Season 7 he became a little less evil.
    • Season two's Angelus combines this with Love Makes You Evil. Willow even lampshades it: "You're still the only thing he thinks about."
    • Arguable in that Angel himself was one even before Angelus came about in S2. In Season 2's "Lie To Me" Angel shows up at The Bronze and even claims that he was hoping Buffy would show despite the fact that Buffy often attends with Xander and Willow. Also in Season 2's "What's My Line Part 1", Buffy climbs through her window back into her bedroom. Somewhat creepily, Angel's already standing in there holding her stuffed pig, Mr. Gordo. It's clear he's been waiting for her to arrive. In that same scene, Angel admits to knowing about Sunnydale High School having its Career Week and explains his knowing about it as, "I lurk."
      • Of course, in fairness, it was essentially his job to stalk her, handed straight to him by the Powers That Be in order to keep her safe, even though she was unaware of it for a while. He can't exactly be blamed for it.
    • Angelus was also this towards Drusilla, stalking her before eventually turning her into a vampire after making her insane.
    • No mention of Ethan Rayne? He and Giles used to be * ahem* friends and now he shows up every few seasons to fuck with his ex-friend's head. Subtext my elbow!
  • Ryan O'Reily from Oz was this way with Dr. Nathan. After she helped him through cancer, he immediately divorces his wife. Later, he forced a kiss on her, paid a fellow inmate to steal her stethoscope, and when she started ignoring him, had his brother Cyril kill her husband. After she was raped, he very quickly murdered the man that did it. It was even said outright that his love for her was more of a stalker obsession. The weirdest part about it: Dr. Nathan actually falls for him in the end.
    • Chris Keller as well. Such was his obsession with wanting to remain in Beecher's life even though Beecher repeatedly told him that he didn't want anything to do with him anymore.
  • This trope recurs with Walker, Texas Ranger villains.
  • In the recent adaptation of Sarah Waters' Affinity, a brand new character called Theophilius was drafted in as the heroine's wannabe suitor. Despite Margaret being a lesbian and mourning the death of her father, Theophilius wouldn't give up and insisted on pursuing her. He's finally written out when he tries to rape her, ranting about his belief Margaret's hung up on her father and saying he'll 'erase his mark' from her. What a freak.
  • Bad Girls: Di Barker, one of the prison guards, is a serial stalker, obsessing on numerous unfortunate men who pass through Larkhall. She steals their possessions, builds shrines and does whatever she can to break up their relationships. She receives her comeuppance when she's wrongly convicted for her husband's murder.
  • Arguably, West's behavior re: Claire on Heroes.
    • Sylar's developed something similar with Claire as well. Which raises the disturbing question of how their relationship is going to be changed now that he's been brainwashed into thinking he's her biological father.
      • Especially since she doesn't actually know the real Nathan is dead yet. She'll probably find out as soon as Sylar's brainwashing wears off--which it has to, because eventually his healing ability will reject it. That ought to be an...interesting confrontation.
    • Claire is on the receiving end again in Volume Five, this time from Gretchen. However, Gretchen comes clean a lot sooner, and Claire seems to have forgiven her.
  • Guy's obsession with Marian in the BBC's Robin Hood, culminating in "If I Can't Have You, No One Will!" .
  • Rose on Two and A Half Men is a bit odd in that she's both quite self-aware of what she's doing, and is actually on friendly terms with Charlie and his family. This is justified as not only is she a nice, helpful person who happens to have some obsessive tendencies, she's also highly intelligent with a PhD in psychology.
    • Her father, Harvey, was known to show the same behavior. Harvey had a one night stand with Charlie and Alan's mother and began to stalk her in the exact same manner that Rose stalked Charlie.
  • Johnny Smith of The Dead Zone gets one of these, of the Loony Fan variety, in the episode "Misbegotten". She's played for laughs in The Teaser, breaking into his house so she can cook for him, while Johnny blinks at her in bemusement. She gets a good bit creepier after she helps kidnap him, duct-tapes him to a chair, and nearly rapes him.
  • After being hit on by an 82-year-old woman albeit with syphilis in Season 1, "Informed Consent" and "Lines in the Sand" showed what a staggering age range of women are sexually attracted to House. 17-year-old Ali shows up at the clinic just to expose herself to him, calls him 15 times a day, wears low-cut jeans in front of him to show her thong (justified by the resulting Eureka Moment), straddles his motorcycle while waiting for him in the garage, ignores most of Cuddy's threats to call the police, and locks herself in House's office. Subverted in the end by House telling that her she has a brain spore that causes loss of inhibition. Although it is rather heavily implied that he exaggerates the effects of said spore in order to make her give up her obsession.
    • House himself, sort of. The crush part is up for debate. House hires a private investigator to spy on Wilson when Wilson cuts ties with House, quits his job, and moves away. The PI accuses House of wanting to see if Wilson is pining, and he's right. House is clearly upset to discover that, despite having the PI set up bugs and everything in Wilson's car and home, Wilson hasn't mentioned House at all.
    • There's Tritter towards House as well. Ever since their first meeting, where House anally inserted a thermometer into Tritter and just walked away and left him there (because Tritter tripped his cane out from under him, making him slam into the door), Tritter becomes completely obsessed with House. He pretty much spends all his time stalking House, questioning all of House's friends trying to find things on him, and searching his house. He also actively sought out arresting House, and did a body search on him, which consisted of him groping House and lifting up his shirt (which exposed House's abdomen).
  • Doctor Pilfrey spends most of the third episode of Fortysomething chasing after Estelle, acting on the e-mails that Edwin sent to him on her account, and turning his office into a love den complete with candles for when she showed up to see Paul. Similar to the above, he turned out to be suffering from hypermania.
  • Mel from Flight of the Conchords.
  • Leoben is Starbuck's Cylon Stalker with a Crush on Battlestar Galactica, keeping her trapped in an apartment with him for months and introducing a fake daughter. Starbuck keeps killing him, but he keeps coming back. She was understandably frakked in the head after being rescued.
  • ATF Agent Josh Kohn for Dr. Tara Knowles in Sons of Anarchy. It does not end well for him.
  • Freddie in iCarly. He and Carly are really good friends, and the stalker side of things is pretty much limited to him waiting for her to come home after school by looking through his peephole (they live in opposite apartments), but it weirds some people out. Pretty much limited to Played for Laughs.
    • Freddie's stalker-ish behavior drops off pretty quick. If you watched the rest of the series, then watched the pilot, you wouldn't recognize Freddie as the same character. Of course, post-pilot, Freddie is hanging out with his crush most of the time with her consent, so it would be a little difficult to stalk her at that point.
    • The Mandy character seems to be a better fit for this trope.
    • Nevel. Oh boy Nevel. He has a wall of monitors solely for the purpose of showing slow motion close ups of Carly. Creepy.
  • Jason Stickler from Cory in The House, who (mis)uses high-tech gadgets provided by his CIA Director father to spy on Meena.
  • David Platt from Coronation Street just doesn't get the fact that Tina does not want to be his girlfriend anymore.
  • In Dollhouse, Alpha is one of these towards Echo. Disturbingly, he's even shown to sit naked in a room of a house in which he killed two people, watching a video of Echo. And later on it is revealed that Nolan is one for Sierra's original personality, Priya.
  • Abby from NCIS once had to deal with a stalker ex-boyfriend. His walls are covered with pictures of her (all taken from outside restraining order's limits), and the team assumes he's the one hacking into all her records. Turns out he was, but, he could only do it because a professional killer/hacker had already done it.
  • Tully is arguably this for George in Being Human (UK). He figures out George's general location by using newspaper articles, finds him in the woods post-transformation, and tracks him down to his home, where George finds him comfortably sitting in the living room. All because Tully is lonely and wants a friend (who he also bit himself).
  • Reality Warper Charlie Evans is one to Janice Rand in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Charlie X".
  • Nurse Jackie: After breaking up with Jackie, Eddie is taking a definite turn in this direction—befriending her husband and overdosing on tranquilizers to get himself admitted to her emergency room.
  • Gossip Girl: Chuck Bass's behavior towards Blair comes close to this at times.
  • The Secret Life of the American Teenager: Ben's obsession with Amy borders on this at times.
    • Also Adrian has had behaviors bordering on this to Ricky in seasons 2 and 4. Tom to Adrian. Jack has shades of this in his behavior to Grace. Grant transfered schools to get closer to Ashley in season 3. Ashley to Ricky in Season 3. Dylan has behaviors like this to Ben in season 4.
  • Victorious: Robbie for Trina, after she kisses him whilst acting a scene.
    • He later becomes this for Cat.
      • He appeared more awestruck with her kiss than anything, they went back to normal next episode.
    • Sinjin has become this in episode 4.
    • Trina in an open letter to Kevin Richards. If Trina doesn't get what she wants, hide.
  • On Seinfeld Elaine was very prone to getting these.
  • Happy Days: Joanie had an early crush on Potsie, and later in the series Joanie was on the receiving end of an obsession from Fonzie's cousin Chachi. It was quite unwanted until even later when they became an item and eventually married in the series finale.
  • Charlie towards the Waitress on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
  • In The X-Files episode "Milagro", Mulder's loner neighbor turns out to have a scary infatuation with Scully. He moved next door to Mulder in an attempt to get closer to her, he knows everything about her...even the novel he's writing is about her falling in love with him. Of course, in addition to being a stalker, the book he's writing has a villain who lives outside the book and tries to kill Scully.
  • Dexter: Lila eventually becomes a version of one of these, going so far as to murder Doakes to protect Dexter's secret because she believes them to be soulmates, and eventually attempts to murder Dexter himself, as well as Cody and Astor.
  • Lilly Truscott was known to have a mad, obsessive crush with Orlando Bloom, often chasing after him stalkishly in public events when dressed as Lola Luftnagle. A regular joke involved her friends "seeing the Lilly bloom". This seems to have subsided as she and Oliver became an Official Couple.
  • Sherlock: Moriarty is shown to be one of these for Sherlock from the very first episode when it turns out that The Cabbie from A Study In Pink and The Black Lotus from The Blind Banker were sent out to 'test' Sherlock's skills and see just how good he is and his first words to Sherlock are 'Hello Sexy'. It can be argued that this crush extends to John Watson as well as Moriarty has him kidnapped and strapped to a bomb and explicitly states that he plans to burn the 'heart' out of Sherlock. It is heavily implied that John is that for Sherlock and therefore a threat to Moriarty and Sherlock's 'relationship'
  • Supernatural: Gordon Walker becomes this over the course of his first appearance for Dean Winchester, as he repeatedly tries to distance Dean from Sam. In each subsequent appearance on the show his obsession with Dean becomes more pronounced as he kidnaps Dean repeatedly and when he's turned into a vampirehis first instinct is to find Dean and Sam so that he can kill Sam and turn Dean so that they can hunt together. Forever.
  • Jenna Maroney has one on Thirty Rock. Or rather, had one. She's terribly upset to find out that her stalker has moved on, treating it as if her actual boyfriend had left her. Kenneth cheers her up by stalking her instead.
  • Episode 6 of Kieślowski's Dekalog, Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. A 19-year-old postal worker is the Stalker with a Crush of a woman in his apartment building. This is shown as odd and unhealthy, but nonetheless a manifestation of a pure impulse to love. He explains that he no longer watches her when she has sex, for instance...
  • In a Law and Order episode, one of these kills a woman's husband in what nearly everyone thinks is an accident, and then marries her. They even have a child together. But the late husband's mother wasn't fooled.
  • In The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, the shy, bookish lawyer Socrates becomes the object of a crazy woman's affection, but he can't get police protection because they won't believe him.
  • Penelope Taynt of The Amanda Show for the titular Amanda. Also, both Penelope and Amanda are played by Amanda Bynes.
  • Hoyt of Rizzoli and Isles develops a peculiar fixation on Jane and preys on her. He also wants to kill her because he likes that he thinks she's equal to him in some ways.

Music

  • Michael Jackson: "Billie Jean"
  • Lionel Richie's "Hello" takes on some creepy vibes in the video, where a college professor is obsessed with his blind student. Then again, she sculpts his face in class—despite never having seen it—just because she loves him as well, so there is that.
  • The narrator in "Every Breath You Take" by The Police.
    • Yet people consider it a love song. Worth mentioning as part of this article. Sting himself was disturbed by this. Just listen to P. Diddy's cover.
  • "Go Getter Greg" By Ludo is all about this.
  • "On the Street Where You Live" is a really pretty song about being happy just being on the street where you're loved one lives. Which is sweet. Except it's also about camping out in front of said loved one's house in hopes of catching a glimpse of them, to the point that "people stop and stare".
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic has written a few songs about these. "Melanie" and "Do I Creep You Out" are two of them.
  • The Stalking Song
  • "Creepy Stalker Girl" by The Arrogant Worms. Comes with cicadas if you act now.
  • The narrator of "Go-Getter Greg" by Ludo.
    • I'd say "The Horror of Our Love" falls into this category too.
  • The narrator of "Du Riechst So Gut" by Rammstein. One of the more terrifying examples.

The track is fresh and on the bridge
drops your sweat, your warm blood
I don't see you
I only smell you, I sense you
a predator that screams of hunger
I track you for miles by scent"

You smell so good
you smell so good
I follow you
you smell so good
I find you
- so good
I'm after you
you smell so good
I will have you soon"

  • The narrator of "Bloody Valentine" by Good Charlotte.
  • The narrator of "I Will Possess Your Heart" by Death Cab for Cutie.
  • "#1 Crush" by Garbage. Between the relentlessly bludgeoning drums, discordant main riff and Creepy Monotone vocals, it might the best audio representation.
  • Southside Movement's obscure funk song "I've Been Watching You".
  • Parliament also recorded a song called "I've Been Watching You (Move Your Sexy Body)", whose lyrics are possibly the most minimal of the entire lot.
  • "Stalker" by Goldfinger. Played in a humourous tone. In fact, the singer actually says he wants to marry her.
  • Lisa Germano's "...a psychopath" is quite possible one creepiest examples of this trope in musical form.
  • "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by Stephen and the Colberts, though this is a parody rather than an honest example. Stephen's stalking of his ex-girlfriend (and cousin) Charlene is a Running Gag on the show.
    • "Cold Cold Christmas", a bonus track on the Christmas Special soundtrack, continues this theme.
  • "Go Away Godboy" by S. J. Tucker is about a stalker who thinks he's Jesus.
  • Barenaked Ladies' "Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank". It... doesn't end well.

I know your address
I ring the bell
I bring you flowers and a .22 with shells

  • Morrissey's "Suedehead":

Why do you come here? And why do you hang around?
I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry...
Why do you come here, when you know it makes things hard for me?
When you know, oh why do you come?

had to sneak in to my room just to read my diary
it was just to see
just to see
all the things you knew
i've written about you

    • And from the opposite perspective, "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" (So much better when Bill Nye did it!):

When you sleep
I will creep
Into your thoughts
Like a bad debt
That you can't pay
Take the easy way
And give in
Yeah, and let me in.

  • Nickelback's "Follow You Home" comes across this way:

You can steal me the keys to your daddy's Cadillac
You can tamper with the brakes and call it a mistake and pray I'm never coming back
And I'll stay alive just to follow you home.

  • Some people have apparently interpreted "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White T's (which was actually about the songwriter's unrequited crush) this way. At least one filksinger even wrote a parody in that vein.
  • Clay Aiken's "Invisible" is a definite stalker song. Lines from the chorus and second verse include:

Whatcha doing tonight
I wish I could be
A fly on your wall
If I was invisible
Then I could just watch you in your room
If I was invincible
I'd make you mine tonight
AND
I keep tracing your steps
Each move that you make
Wish I could read what goes through your mind

  • The narrator from the song "I Who Have Nothing". Some parts of the lyrics include: "You can go any place you want, to fancy clubs and restaurants, but I can only watch you with him... my nose pressed up against the window-pane," and "I who have no one, must watch you (I will watch you baby) passing by."
  • The song, "Snow White Queen" by Evanescence comes from Amy Lee's personal experience with a stalker. She never says the song is about a rape attempt, but the lyrics STRONGLY suggest it, particularly this part:

All your hands on me
I can't scream

It was almost like a dream come true,
When I moved in next door to you.
I didn't think you'd notice at all,
When I drilled those holes in the bathroom wall.
I'd watch you growing, never knowing,
Where your underwear kept going.
And as you checked the washing line,
I would sit and imagine you were mine.

I dial your telephone each and every afternoon
I wait by your door 'til you're asleep at night
And when you're alone I know
When you turn out the light

  • The lyrics of "Possession" by Sarah McLachlan were allegedly taken from some of her more stalkerriffic fanmail. Interestingly, the stalker sued her for copyright infringement.

Oh, you speak to me in riddles and
You speak to me in rhyme
My body aches to breathe your breath
And I won't be denied

  • "I'm Your Boyfriend Now" by They Might Be Giants is about half this trope, half Loony Fan.
  • "You Were Meant For Me" by Ute Lemper qualifies. See the page quote for an example of the lyrics, and then there's the fact that the music itself has a disturbing James-Bond-villain-theme-song quality to it...
  • The narrator in "Niki FM" by Hawthorne Heights is this...

RIGHT NOW,
I'm outside of your window with my radio
RIGHT NOW,
I'm outside of your window with my radio

From the moment I wake
To the moment I sleep
I'll be there by your side
Just you try and stop me
I'll be waiting in line
Just to see if you care

I'm your biggest fan,
I'll follow you until you love me.
Papa, paparazzi.

  • Rob Dougan's "There's Only Me" from his Furious Angels album falls into this category for sure, but "Furious Angels" could qualify too, and "Left Me For Dead" could easily be "Stalker With A Crush Scorned".
  • This Idol auditioner.
  • Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me". A lot less stalker-ish in the video.
  • "You Can't Change That" by Raydio. One verse from the song that's particularly creepy:

You can change your telephone number
And you can change your address too
But you can't stop me from loving you
No, you can't change that, no, no

One way or another, I'm gonna lose ya
I'm gonna give you the slip
I'll walk down the mall, stand over by the wall
Where I can see it all, find out who ya call

    • Also "Accidents Never Happen":

I saw you walking in the dark
So I slipped behind your footsteps for a while.
Caught you turning 'round the block
Fancy meeting in a smaller world, after all
Accidents never happen
Could have planned it all

    • And, for that matter, "Hanging on the Telephone":

I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall
If you don't answer, I'll just ring it off the wall
I know he's there, but I just had to call
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone
Don't leave me hanging on the telephone

  • Ray Stevens' "It's Me Again, Margaret" tells the story of a man who would always call and harass a woman he loved. He's eventually arrested and allowed one phone call... which he uses to call Margret.
  • The 1981 song "Art Lover" by The Kinks combines the implied loss of a child with creepy stalker behaviour:

Little girl don't notice me
Watching as she innocently plays.
She can't see me staring at her
Because I'm always wearing shades.
She feeds the ducks, looks at the flowers.
I follow her around for hours and hours.
I'd take her home, but that could never be,
She's just a substitute
For what's been taken from me.

  • "Obsession" by Siouxsie & The Banshees.

I broke into your room - I broke down in my room
Touched your belongings there - and left a lock of my hair
Another sign for you
You screamed into my face "Get the hell out of my place"
Another sign for me? can you forgive me?
For not understanding your ways
You know sometimes you take it all too far
Then I remember it’s a game between you and me
A divine test for us two
It’s all in my imagination
Yes they even say that our mission ...is only
My obsession

  • "Creepin' Up on You" by Darren Hayes, obviously.

No one else can love you like I do
Feel it when I'm creepin' up on you
And I know that it wouldn't be right
If I stayed all night
Just to peep in on you
Creepin' up on you.

  • "It's Warmer in the Basement" by Cobra Starship. The song is largely responsible for Gabe Saporta's status as a Memetic Molester. In his own words, "This song is about when you love someone so much that you just have to tie them up in your basement so no one else can have them." D'awww.

You can't escape now
I've got you locked inside this room
You know I tip good
and soon, you will love me too\

    • It goes on with the narrator saying "don't make me hurt you," offering food, "just promise me you'll never make me believe you." And then the chorus:

This is what you get
When you're talking back baby
I never bounce a check
So give it up, baby
Open up your eyes
I want to watch you cry
Come on, come on
The camera's on!\

  • Romance of the Damned, by Regurgitator. A sample:

Your hand brushed my sleeve as we passed in the street
That means you're in love with me.\

  • "Tear You Apart" by She Wants Revenge.

Either way he wanted her and this was bad
He wanted to do things to her it was making him crazy
Now a little crush turned into a like
And now he wants to grab her by the hair and tell her
I want to hold you close
Skin pressed against me tight
Lie still, and close your eyes girl
So lovely, it feels so right
I want to hold you close
Soft breasts, beating heart
As I whisper in your ear
I want to fucking tear you apart

I don't ever make up stuff about you and me
Because that is insanity
I don't ever drive by your house to see if you're in
I don't even have an opinion on that tramp that you're still seeing
I don't know your timetable
I don't know your face off by heart
But I must admit that there is still a part of me that still thinks
That we might get on

Don't say you want me
Don't say you need me
Don't say you love me
It's understood
Don't say you're happy
Out there without me
I know you can't be
'Cause it's no good...

  • "Strange and Beautiful (I'll Put A Spell On You)" by Aqualung

I've been watching your world from afar
I've been trying to be where you are
And I've been secretly falling apart, unseen...

  • "Two Wuv" by Tally Hall, although it's mostly played for laughs.
  • "Pain" by Four Star Mary (famous for playing Oz's band on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is about an angry, spurned Stalker with a Crush. It seems innocent when Oz plays it on stage, but look up the lyrics...
  • Taking Back Sunday's "MakeDamnSure". Fun fact: Stephanie Meyer was considering it as a song on the New Moon soundtrack. Although...
  • While the specific storyline is under debate among fans, Sonata Arctica has four songs spread across its albums which are often referred to as the "stalker saga." The chronological order (in terms of the stalker's life) is "Caleb," "End Of This Chapter," "Don't Say A Word," and "Juliet."
    • "Shy" is a good example as well
  • Vocaloid song "Rotten Girl, Grotesque Romance (Stalker)". Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The Sugarland song Steve Earle is all about a woman who wants to marry Steve Earle.
    • While the lyrics of Sugarland's latest song "Stuck Like Glue" are bubbly and sweet, the music video has the lead singer take on an exaggerated version of this trope. Played for Laughs until the end.
  • The song "I Drove All Night" by Celine Dion definitely invokes this trope.

I drove all night to get to you
Is that alright?
I drove all night and crept in your room
Woke you up from your sleep to make love to you.

    • It's actually by Cyndi Lauper and Celine just covered it.
  • The song "Wasting Time" by Thirsty Merc is about this; the second line is "I'm trying to make you notice me but you don't care"
  • Nerf Herder's Golfshirt, Part 2 is a great exemple of this trope, with all the parked at the dark end of your street thing.
  • Nine Inch Nails' Closer/Closer to God. Both songs are part this trope and part Obsession Song. Closer is seductive and subdued with barely-held back insanity, while Closer to God is more violent, commanding and creepy.
  • "Lily (My One and Only)" by The Smashing Pumpkins:

Silly, I know I'm silly
Cause I'm hanging in this tree
In the hopes that she will catch a glimpse of me...
But an officer is knocking at my door
And thru her window shade
I watch her shadow move

  • Lena Meyer's "Sattelite"

Where you go, I’ll follow
You set the pace, we’ll take it fast and slow
I’ll follow in your way,
You got me, you got me
A force more powerful than gravity
It’s physics, there’s no escape

  • Freezepop's "Stakeout"

from far away I check you out
can't let you see me

"When I walked in friday evening
To our gig in Arthurs basement
I saw Carol in the front row
And I heard her scream my name
Then my friend said 'Man, she's crazy
She's been here since 7:30
And she told me she's your girlfriend
And she's really glad she came'
And then when our gig was over
She followed me the whole way home..."

  • The music video for Smash Mouth's "I'm A Believer" is a brilliant subversion. The singer sees a girl at a party and pursues her throughout the video. Finally, he corners her at the dock... And pulls out a pair of keys. Turns out she dropped them at the party and he's been trying to give them back. In a Double Subversion, the girl recognizes him and appears to be on the way to becoming one for him.
  • "Mama" by Genesis

Now I can't keep you mama
But I know you're always there
You listen, you teach, me mama
And I know inside you care
So get down, down here, beside me
Oh you aint going nowhere
No I won't hurt you mama
But it's getting so hard, ooh

People say there are plenty of fish
In the sea, baby, all I do is wish.
I wish you were a little slower,
Not just slow but paralyzed,
Then I could plug you into a socket,
So you could never run away.
I really wish that you were smaller,
Not just small but really really short,
So I could put you in my pocket,
And carry you around all day.

Don’t you know I think you’re the cat’s meow?
Where’s the tiger now? Where’s the tiger now?
Bill Watterson, can’t you hear me?
Bill Watterson, please don’t fear me.
Don’t treat me like I have rabies,
I only wanna have your babies.

  • "Goodnight and Go" by Imogen Heap.

Follow you home,
You've got your headphones on
And you're dancing.
Got lucky, beautiful shot:
You're taking everything off
Watch the curtains wide open
And you're following the same routine;
Flicking through the TV, relaxed and reclining
And you think you're alone...

I say hi, but she's too shy to say hello
...
I wish my heart was always on her mind
'Cause she's on mine like all day, all the time
Forget me not, forget me now
I've come too far to turn around
I'm here tonight
'Cause I'm never going down
I'm never giving up
I'm never gonna leave
So put your hands up
...
It's time to fall into my arms
Cause I've been waiting for too long
All of which he says before she even acknowledges his existence.

  • "What'll You Do About Me" by Doug Supernaw:

What in the world are you plannin’ to do
When a man comes over just to visit with you
And I’m on the porch with a 2' × 2'
Tell me what'Il you do about me
You can call your lawyer, you can call the fuzz
You can sound the alarm, wake the neighbors up
Ain't no way to stop a man in love
What'Il you do about me

  • Alexander Rybak's single, "Oah," is a perfectly innocent tune about a boy who's in love. The music video, however...
  • "You'll Accompany Me" by Bob Seger.
  • Haven't Had Enough by Marianas Trench is about an ex-boyfriend turned stalker, especially the music video
  • Ke$ha: The narrator of "Stephen". Very much so.

Stephen... I'll knit you a sweater. I wanna wrap you up... in my love... forever. I would never let you go, Stephen. I'll never let go.

  • Andy You're a Star by The Killers is often interpreted as to be about a boy who is in love with the star quarterback of his school and stalks him.
  • Until You're Mine by Demi Lovato has this kind of vibe..

My state of mind has finally got the best of me
I need you next to me
I'll try to find a way that I could get to you
Just wanna get to you

  • The Veronicas,
    • Secret: A guy pretending to be gay and once discovered starts stalking them
    • This is How it Feels: deals with a guy who starts stalking one of them after their break up.
  • The Blue Oyster Cult experiment with this trope in Monsters. Here, after some unspecified disaster on Earth, only three humans are known to have got into space and relative safety. Two men and one woman. The man who is unfavoured by the woman crew member harbours fantasies and desires akin to stalking. Then he makes a pass at her. Her lover gets the wrong end of the stick and shoots her in a fit of rage. So the last two survivors of all humanity are two men... the ability of the human race to take a bad situation and make t worse is legendary....
  • The song "Obsessie" (Obsession) by the Dutch singer Gio, complete with Stalker Shrine.
  • Edge of Dawn - In Your Sleep: "I will haunt you in your sleep, for the promises you never never keep. Only this time I'll be fine. You'll be tied up, and you'll be mine".
  • Taken to extremes in the song "Going Crazy" by Song Ji Eun and featuring Bang Young Gook. It starts off like a typical, incredibly serious guy-stalks-girl scenario with the singer singing the part of the girl and the rapper singing the part of the guy while the video shows a woman driving down an abandoned back country road. Then, toward the climax of the song, we suddenly see the male rapper with his hands tied, and all of a sudden, the woman gets out of her car, opens her trunk, and lo and behold! There's a well-dressed, kidnapped young man in there! Tied up, blindfolded, and literally trembling in fear, the poor thing doesn't even know what's coming until the woman drenches him in gasoline, walks a few feet away, and lights a match. The video ends with her throwing the lighter behind her and walking away and cuts to black just as the stream of fire is about to reach the car. Turns out that it was the woman who was the stalker the whole time, and the singer's and rapper's parts got Gender Fliped.
    • There's another version of that music video which features Jieun and Yongguk as the main 'characters', in which Yongguk plays the typical stalker to Jieun (taking pictures of her, sending her bits of her hair, breaking into her apartment, etc.).
  • In another k-pop song by Kan Miyoun, also called "Going Crazy," we get a much more comedic variant of this trope. The man in this video is kidnapped by a woman who wants to marry him. It doesn't end well for either of them.
  • Buckethead's Post Office Buddy is mostly an instrumental, being interrupted by a guy leaving messages on a woman's phone and growing increasingly frustrated with her not calling him back: "Well, you think you're gonna get away with it? You think one dark night that I can't go in anywhere I want? So when you go to sleep, when you try to go to sleep, I want you to think about that nice, regular guy that you coulda met and had a really nice life with at the post office, but you went the wrong way..."
  • Psyborg Corp's gender-flipped cover of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" seems to change the meaning of the lyrics to this.

Newspaper Comics

Professional Wrestling

  • WWE wrestler Mickie James's obsession with Trish Stratus went from hero worship, to dressing as Trish on Halloween, to trying to become Trish's lesbian lover (and abducting her boyfriend in the process), to beating Trish severely and licking the blood off her hands afterward. Somehow, when their climactic confrontation for the WWE Women's Championship came, she still got cheered.
    • Possibly because the writing was so over-the-top, it was impossible to take seriously.
  • Kane would count, but the stalking doesn't last before he just grabs the woman and walks off with her.
    • Kane has done this at least twice, first with Lita and later with Kelly Kelly. The first time he was played as a heel but was gradually shifted to face after the story shifted from him stalking, tormenting, and technically raping Lita, to Lita having a miscarriage and losing their child and Kane going out for revenge against the man who caused it, to eventually Lita betraying Kane for Edge. The second time, Kane was portrayed much more sympathetically from the get go, it starting from an unfortunate misunderstanding. It helped that 1, his romantic rival in this case was Randy Orton, and that the storyline fizzled out before anything came of it.
  • Stephen Richards, when he followed around Victoria in drag, interfering with all her matches.

Theatre

  • The Crucible has Abby Williams, who remorselessly accuses a woman of witchcraft so that she can marry the woman's husband. It backfires. Spectacularly.
  • While it was mentioned in the literature section, The Phantom of the Opera deserves a mention here as well. The title character is a combination of this trope and The Woobie. Even though he's usually portrayed pretty sympathetically, he still has a number of rather creepy lines.

Erik: Your chains are still mine -- you belong to me!

    • Not to mention the fact that he gains Christine's trust by impersonating the ghost of her dead father.
  • Wicked has not one but two scary stalkers. Petrifying clingy girl Nessarose, out to enslave her beloved's people in order to keep him with her; and Boq, the beloved in question, who doesn't understand Glinda's just not interested. She doesn't even remember his name but he lives in hope.
    • Boq's far more of a Love Martyr, considering that while he acts desperately out of hope that Glinda will notice him, he never actually crosses the line into stalking.
  • Roderigo in Othello definitely qualifies, chasing Desdemona to Cyprus in his mistaken belief she'll submit. How he expects this to happen when they never actually meet...
    • The fact that Iago was leading him on probably didn't help to discourage him.
  • Marius and Eponine both qualify in Les Misérables. Eponine stalks Marius, Marius stalks Cosette and uses Eponine as an intermediary in his stalking of Cosette. Only one stalker comes out of it alive.
    • It helps that Cosette would probably be stalking Marius right back if her Overprotective Dad ever let her out of the house on her own. She certainly obsesses over him at home, and once they finally meet, it's Love At First Sight.
  • Fosca from Passion is, aside from being a terminally ill Abhorrent Admirer, a Tsundere who emotionally blackmails her target, Giorgio, starving herself when he spurns her and guilting him into writing her a love letter when he finally visits her again. Unusually, Fosca ends up winning Giorgio over - and we're not so sure that's a good thing. What convinces him to go to Fosca is the realization that she would give everything, including her life, for his sake, whereas his current lover Clara won't leave her husband. (This, ignoring that Fosca has one foot in the grave already, and Clara says she'll leave her husband once her infant son is old enough to fend for himself.)
  • Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Anthony's song, "Johanna", is creepy in a few ways:

Do they think that walls can hide you?
Even now I'm at your window...
I am in the dark beside you
buried sweetly in your yellow hair
I feel you, Johanna
And one day, I'll steal you
'Til I'm with you then
I'm with you there...
Sweetly buried in your yellow hair

    • Although Sweeney and Turpin's versions of "Johanna" take the creepiness to the nth power. Besides, "stalker" implies that Johanna wanted him to leave her alone. She was perfectly happy to have his attention, if only because she really, really didn't want to marry Turpin.
    • Yep to above. It's mainly in the film version that Anthony's song takes on a "stalkerish" feel, particularly with his somewhat creepy bloody face as he sings (since he just got the crap beaten out of him by the Beadle). In the stage version, the two of them actually meet for the first half of the song before being interrupted by Turpin and the Beadle (which involves the Beadle snapping the neck of the poor little bird that was Anthony's gift to her). The second half of the stage version isn't nearly as stalkerish as the film version, and even has Anthony ripping apart the bird cage in a rather symbolic gesture.
  • Don José in Carmen after she gets tired of him. He eventually kills her when she refuses to take him back.
  • Der Tod (Death) in Elisabeth. He spends most of Elisabeth's life stalking her because he's very attracted to her.

Video Games

  • BioShock Infinite. The Songbird. The game isn't subtle about it, either.
  • Super Mario Bros.: Bowser's frequent kidnappings of Peach is explicitly stated to be this in the Paper Mario series, though less explicit everywhere else.
  • Unlike Ganondorf, Vaati from the Four Swords games kidnaps Zelda for this reason.
  • Xenosaga Episode III: Kevin the Red Testament stalks Shion everywhere she goes, almost justified by the fact that they had an intimate relationship when he was alive. When Shion dumps him, he doesn't take it too well though, he attacks all of them. Someone just can't handle rejection too well.
  • Panther in Star FOX Assault. However, by Star Fox Command, he actually gets Krystal and turns out to be actually really nice and devoted to her.
    • On the other hand, he personally isn't stalking her so much as Star Wolf stalks Star Fox and Panther hits on Krystal when he happens to see her.
  • Vigoro in Skies of Arcadia.
    • Also, Clara, who is compassionate and helpful, even as she mercilessly stalks Gilder. It came to a full-on airship battle between their two ships...
  • Lezard Valeth in Valkyrie Profile. Ever since the moment he first saw Lenneth, he started stalking her. He would actually commit a bunch of atrocious murders just so that she would be forced to make an appearance.
    • And then It Got Worse in Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, in which he actually goes back in time, abducts her sister Silmeria Valkyrie, uses her power to defeat Odin so that he can absorb his power and steal Gungnir, and creates a twisted new realm. Why? To lure Lenneth to come and stop him, so that he can become one with her. Literally.
  • Played with in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater with Ocelot's fervor to find Snake. At one point, an optional conversation reveals that he ate all of Snake's food while Snake was imprisoned because he thought eating the same foods would make them similar. It doesn't help a lot that the other (female) "love interest" thinks the stalkerish crush is cute and won't stop teasing Snake about it. He's too oblivious to have a clue what she's on about. (In his defense, it is The Sixties.)
    • Also in the first Metal Gear Solid, it's reported that Sniper Wolf tends to end UP as a Stalker with a Crush because of how single-mindedly she becomes obsessed with her targets, with a hint that she was starting to go this way with Snake.
      • And Naomi from the same game. "You were all I thought about for two long years. Like some kind of twisted obsession." (One of the retranslations of this line, available on the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty disc, even changes the last sentence to "It was like being in love".) Her feelings towards him change over the course of the game, but in The Twin Snakes, she breathes in his scent, has great trouble taking her eyes off his nearly-naked body, and sits closer to him than he's comfortable with, causing him to shuffle away as she edges closer, and even attempts to grab his bottom at one point - all during the Briefing, when she's just injected him with the virus which she specifically designed to kill him. Towards the end of the game, she makes an unauthorised transmission to tell Snake 'something', but is booted off the frequency before she can say it - but Word of God says that it was a declaration of love.
  • Near the end of Knights of the Old Republic II, if you're playing a female character, Darth Sion will confess to having an obsession with you. Which is why, of course, he has to kill you.
    • Similarly, on the Peragus level, some of HK-50's lines have a decidedly more possessive quality when the Exile is female, particularly his righteous anger at Coorta's interference. To hear him tell it, his massacre of the colony is motivated as much by a sick sense of chivalry as it is by his desire to collect the bounty on her head and general psychopathy.
  • At least played with by Amy Rose in Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic and Amy are on friendly terms, but Amy can't seem to get it through her head that Sonic isn't interested in romance, period.
  • LeChuck in the Monkey Island games. His obsession with Elaine Marley not only brings him back from the dead but incites some truly wall-banging logic, as in The Curse of Monkey Island when he decides to attack Plunder Island in hopes of winning her heart. "Now with the demon flames of this voodoo cannonball, I'll blast my significant other into the significant otherworld, ha ha! That'll show how much I truly care."
  • In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, there's Decus, who's quite obsessed over Alice. Given they're both villains, and in the end (er, not the actual end) you force a Dying Declaration of Love on them, so he does sorta win.
    • While we're on the subject, Marta is a heroic example. Never has a romantic subplot been sent to the Strangled by the Red String bin by the sheer creepyness of her obsession with Emil. And it's played for laughs.
      • To be fair, she eventually does realize how shallow she's been about it.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, Zagi borderlines on this with his violent obsession with the main protagonist Yuri Lowell.
  • The song "Destiny" from DDRMAX2: Dance Dance Revolution 7th Mix has the female singer singing, "I'll keep on following you, wherever you go / Following you for the rest of my life."
  • Stanley Coleman towards Heather in Silent Hill 3; he leaves letters with dolls for her, and the poem you need to read to solve a certain keypad puzzle was supposedly penned by him. Nevermind that he's supposed to be dead and that his corpse is one of several stashed in the hospital crematorium, if you believe that one phone call. Claudia may also count as well.
  • The creepiness factor of this is played to the hilt in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin: Alma is hunting Becket because she wants to have a child with him.
    • Also, Alma is apparently very much in love with Becket.
  • Persona 2 features a very creepy stalker of Ellen/Eriko Kirishima, covered with bandages and wielding a Chainsaw Good who wants to express his love of her by killing her. This later becomes a pivotal point that the stalker professes that Ellen/Eriko is Not So Different than him. Indeed, judging from her interactions with the protagonist of Persona, Ellen/Eriko has a massive crush on him and her worst fear is to be treated like a Stalker with a Crush by him, the same way she treats this stalker.
  • Persona 3 Aigis. She has a reason but sneaking into a person's room crosses the line! She even keeps records of how long it takes her to pick the door lock every night.
    • Additionally, throughout the course of the schoolyear you can bear witness to the saga of a pair of schoolmates at Gekkoukan High. At first, it's a girl silently stalking some random NPC from afar—hiding behind a tree, standing just around the corner, sighing at him from the shadows—while he has the distinct feeling that someone is watching him, and eventually he confesses he knows she's there, but still doesn't acknowledge her. As the year goes by, the tables turn: she learns of his less pleasant habits and personality traits, while he's grown so used to having her around he starts stalking her, and she's creeped out by this. Come graduation, they both deeply regret the time they wasted stalking and being stalked.
    • Mitsuru also has a particularly obsessive secret Fan Girl who grows increasingly (but hilariously) excessive in her affections, to the point she wants Mitsuru to run her over with her Cool Bike, and considers "bumping off" someone from the Student Council so she could take their place and thus be closer to Mitsuru, its current president.
  • Persona 4 has Tohru Adachi, a supposed Captain Ersatz of Matsuda who turns out to be this to the initial murder victims. His initial rape attempt ends up throwing Mayumi Yamano into the TV World, with him discovering a new way to have fun.
  • On the subject of Shin Megami Tensei, Yuriko also known as Lilith from the original. She's told you that she's your eternal partner. And she really intends to be just that. You can't choose her over the heroine, though.
  • Elanee in Neverwinter Nights 2, though it's never actually explained why she's been stalking the protagonist since he/she was a kid (and raising Fridge Logic issues if the protagonist is an elf or similarly long-lived race, since Elanee seems to be around the same age as the protagonist in maturity). With female protagonists, the "With A Crush" part of the trope is dropped... though a mod exists to change that.
    • Hypothetically, given the progression of maturity for elves in Faerun, she might have been given an assignment as early as 40 or 50 (approximately equivalent to 11-12 for a human), so her having tracked an elf protagonist since childhood might not be so far-fetched. The fact that she spent likely around 60 years in this case following an elf her own age around, while going through puberty and not having any people near her own age in the Circle, and never attempted to contact him, is either a testament to her enormous willpower or the fact that all of the Neverwinter Nights games were actually written assuming a good male human.
    • There are some details as to why given in the game, and more is somewhat revealed in content that didn't make the final cut of the game due to time constraints (but traces of it exist and can be found with the toolset). If I remember correctly the Circle of the Mere didn't trust the PCs foster father Daeghun and was convinced he possessed all sorts of dark secrets (related to why the Mere was dying) that they wanted to know. Elanee's final test as a member of the Circle was supposed to be to live among the people of West Harbor for a time and keep watch over the PC, but some of the Elders didn't think that was a good idea and decided not to let her. Elanee would still watch over the PC anyway (leaving her duties for several months at a time to do so), but always did it from the shadows. When the Githyanki attacked West Harbor the Circle of the Mere ordered her not to help the villagers (hoping the attack would force Daeghun to reveal some of those secrets...) and she cried for the first time in over a century.
  • Stalkergirl from the web browser-based Billy vs. SNAKEMAN is Hinata Flanderized into this.
  • Valter, Valter, Valter. The psychopath is rather fixated on both Ephraim and his sister Eirika, but while he simply wants to kill Ephraim For the Evulz, he has other plans for Eirika, as his rather transparently sexual lines to and about her demonstrate...

Valter: Mmm... I've been waiting for you, Eirika!
Eirika: Who are you?
Valter: Have you forgotten? We met once at Castle Renais. No? Look closely, Eirika. Do you not remember the face of he who will master you?
Eirika: Wha--!?
Valter: Yes, resist. It's much more fun for me that way. Come, Eirika. I should like to tame you.

    • From the same game for contrast, there's a more comedic version of Lute the mage towards Artur the monk as one of her hobbies is "monk-watching."
  • In Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance, Aimee is this to Ike (after he takes down an easy target, she starts swooning over him, and later in the game he is willing to interrupt Soren's work in order to hide in his room from her). This continues in Radiant Dawn, even going as far as forcing him to call her beautiful so that she can tell everyone that he likes her back. Luckily, most of the time, Soren is able to rescue him.
  • BlazBlue's Bang Shishigami is this, combined with Dogged Nice Guy. He stalks the fetishtic Chinese Girl Litchi Faye Ling, but although he secretly lusts her, he is tampered with his morals as a ninja in service of justice. And the fact that he is boisterously HAMMY, nobody took him seriously and it makes Litchi really unaware of his hidden lust.
  • Haunting Ground. Good god, Riccardo. The creep is well known for being Fiona's incredibly persistent stalker. Shall we list all of his offences? He causes Fiona's parents to get into a deadly car crash, kidnaps the unconscious Fiona and strips her so that she has to go around the mansion naked, carves a wooden statue of Fiona pregnant (and tells her that he's going to make her that way), constantly tells her "You are mine, Fiona," stripping her again and sticking a stick thing up her (apparently to determine when he can impregnate her), drugging her and molesting her, out-and-out stalking her with a gun, and... if he catches and kills her during gameplay, the Game Over has him raping her body. "Fiona, let me into your womb!" Aieee.
    • Come to think of it, Lorenzo is one towards her, as well. The guy actually watched her get naked and change her clothes through a secret eyehole in a painting on the wall. All of this is so much worse when you find out he's her insanely old grandfather. Fiona really has one happy family, doesn't she?
  • Played around with in Mass Effect 2; many of the earlier advertisements for the game made Legion appear to be obsessively searching for Shepard, ostensibly to kill the Commander. It turns out that he was looking for Shepard so that he could join him/her, and once Legion is actually recruited, it quickly becomes apparent that he's not only sane, but one of the most level-headed members of your team. He does, however, have a bit of a crush on Shepard--when questioned about why he used Shepard's wrecked armor to repair himself when there were plenty of other, more suitable materials nearby, he hastily dodges the question.

Legion: There was a hole...

    • His answer speaks volumes when Shepard asks him why his/her armor, why wait two years to fix himself:

Legion: (hesitates) No... data... available.

  • Ember from the Spyro the Dragon series is completely obsessed with Spyro, to the point of bringing up the topic of getting married any chance she gets.
  • Kirie towards Mafuyu in the first Fatal Frame, because he reminded her of her dead lover. "We will always be together" indeed.
  • Irwin the Juggler from Pokémon Gold and Silver. He's a minor NPC, just a trainer you battle at a fairly early point in the game. However if you give him your number in Crystal when you play as a female he's always calling you, more than anyone else, saying how he saw you accomplish so-and-so. In HGSS he's gender neutral.
    • In Pokémon Black and White, N shows more than a few signs of this towards the player character, as he quickly fixates on you and starts following you around everywhere you go. The clearest example is his behavior in the infamous Ferris Wheel scene, grabbing you and trapping you in an enclosed space to tell you he's the leader of the bad guys, and he's going to overthrow Unova by force, and then you and he are going to be friends, right?
      • Later, in Chargestone Cave, he indicates that he's using his father's ninja allies to keep tabs on everything you do.
  • An interesting, rare heroic example in Dragon Age Origins, where one of the possible endings for the male PC has him chasing his love interest and former companion, the witch Morrigan, who left the party and is pregnant by him.
  • Parodied in StarCraft II by some of the "pissed" unit quotes of the Protoss Stalker.

"Restraining order? But what about our love?"
"I have pictures of you... Hundreds..."
"You went to bed early last night..."
"I see you turned off your phone..."
"You never return my calls."
"I'm your biggest fan!"

  • Axel at least has some shades of this towards Roxas in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, there are definite elements of this in the way Dist obsessively follows Jade around, although Dist claims it's because he wants to prove he can "surpass" Jade.
  • Hibiki from Lux-Pain is this toward Atsuki but is mainly played for laughs because of the situation that makes him seem like one mainly getting Atsuki's number because Atsuki isn't going to give him his number anytime soon and Ryo doesn't have a cellphone in order to give Hibiki Atsuki's number.
  • The player character from the Biko series as stalking the girls is the objective, then the player can either get the "rape" ending or the "love" ending, with any of the girls.
  • In Jak II, Erol takes an unhealthy interest in torturing Jak for two years straight and then becomes even more obsessed when he escapes.

Erol: I want more than just to win, eco freak... I want you!

Visual Novels

Web Comics

  • Michelle Flammel from Monsterful, She's in love with the fluffy Rag doll Jacob.
    • Jacob is also one in the first chapter, he's seen stalking Sapphire.
  • El Goonish Shive's Justin has one -- Melissa, who has stalked him since their one date in High School... which was where he told her he was gay. Apparently, that has not dissuaded her. Since they actually grew up together, she counts as an Unlucky Childhood Friend to boot...
  • Order of the Stick's Therkla is an Assassin with a Crush on her target's bodyguard. Naturally, this has led to poor results in her assassination attempts.
    • Pompey asked Roy's sister Julia out once...per week...for three semesters. Oddly, she still barely recognises him - either she just started tuning him out or she has a lot of admirers.
  • In Sluggy Freelance, this is one of the many creepy, Yandere qualities that Oasis embodies.
    • Bun-bun tries to train both Torg and Nana Avarre in how to effectively stalk their unrequited loves. Nana takes to it much more naturally.
  • In Misfile fandom opinion is divided whether Missi is a creepy Stalker with a Crush or simply an over eager fangirl about Ash. I strongly recommend not mentioning the subject on the fan forum.
  • The Gene Mage in Terinu fits this trope for Terinu's race, given a tendency to refer to them as his "sweet limbed Ferin", with an extra helping of creepiness considering he deliberately created them to look cute and perpetually somewhere in their mid-teens.
  • Eastwood in Exterminatus Now was (Or maybe still is) one of these, as he had his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend put to death by a squad of special forces that are normally used to combat the paranormal. The fact said new boyfriend was actually a heretic only came to light after he was shot to death on the lavatory. Eastwood also seems to be rather overprotective of what she still sends him, such as attacking his associates with an axe after they ate some of the biscuits she sent him.
  • Autumn became a client of Suicide for Hire because the victim of her stalking publicly humiliated her after she went too far.
    • Not to mention she tried to murder his new girlfriend.
  • Namir Deiter: Cedric Van Helgen towards Tipper Namir. His unwillingness to take "Go away" for an answer culminated in his getting punched out by Tipper's fiancee, Charles.
  • Cassie from The Wotch, with the classic symptoms of obsessively following Robin around, trying to slip him love potions, and other doings of questionable ethics. A recent run-in with her own Stalker with a Crush seems to have made her see her wrongdoings.
    • Yet another one that seems to have finally gotten somewhere.
    • Jason was this to Anne at the very beginning of the series, with Robin even noting that ("In some cultures, this is considered stalking). Jason drops his crush - and stalking - pretty quickly when he sees Anne levitate a pencil though.
  • Sinfest neatly encapsulates the trope here, with Fuchsia the succubus's crush on Criminy the shy little nerd. The devil finds this vastly irritating, as it makes her act less evil than she's supposed to be.
  • The Rival from the Pokémon Red and Blue games is portrayed in this way in this Super Effective strip.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court has Diego. Good lord, Diego. It got to the point where he programmed all the robots he built to worship Jeanne as a sort of Christ figure. And when he gets rejected, he recommends her for a Human Sacrifice. Hell hath no fury like a lonely, big nosed inventor.
    • At least he didn't tell the robots about that last part, so they still see Jeanne in a positive light. Better than nothing.
  • Wiglaf & Mordred - Brat. As soon as she lays eyes on Mordred marrying him becomes her goal in life.
  • Girls Next Door has Jareth and Erik in a two-for one deal. Maybe for a lesser extent but parent series Roommates and its other Spin-Off Down the Street also feature this trope.
  • Xkcd: Strip 513 reveals the Dogged Nice Guy to be this.
  • Enzo from Snowflakes takes this to truly frightening levels, as is to be expected for a five year old who's so evil he doesn't even get a shoulder angel (he gets two devils instead).
  • In Homestuck, the troll Equius takes this way overboard in terms of creepiness.
  • Persona 3 FTW turns Aigis into one of these for the main character. She was canonically into him in Persona 3 itself, but here it gets taken to "has a habit of humping his leg" levels.
  • In this strip of Loserz. "I spend all of my time with them, I swear I'll be with them forever *sob*, I hide in their bushes..."
  • Blip: Hester and her Emo Stalker. He is later seen hanging outside her house, sitting in the bushes behind her, and just generally being very stalker-ish.
  • In Strays, here. After he murdered her husband.
  • Ménage à 3: Yuki to Zii.

Web Original

  • Stalwart, who has a severe crush on Nikki Reilly (Fey) in the Whateley Universe. He declares his love for her in front of the whole Quad and Nikki's dad, completely embarrassing her. She throws him across the Quad. Then later, the only reason Nikki survives an attack by a superpowered ninja assassin-slash-rapist is because Stalwart's been stalking her. Since he almost dies trying to save her, she cuts him a lot of slack. They're currently dating. Fanon thinks she can do a lot better.
  • An odd variation (a non-villain example), from Survival of the Fittest is Matthew Wittany, V3's resident Woobie. A fan of photography, he carried around an album filled with pictures of boys he found attractive. Anderson Walker, the subject of most of these pictures, was not best pleased when he discovered this. Neither was his boyfriend, Sean O'Cann.
  • Exemplified in this YouTube parody of "So Happy Together".
  • Billy, the titular character from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog follows Penny and Captain Hammer around in a series of strangely effective disguises, including a mobile bush and, in a hard to notice instance, posing as a worker in a homeless shelter, complete with a blatantly fake mustache. However, there's some argument as to how stalkery he is.
  • Zaboo in The Guild, who has mistaken Codex/Cyd's online flirting for a relationship and shows up at her house unannounced. He also memorizes the floorplans of all her residences (past and present) and photoshops a picture of the two of them using her DMV photo. (Codex, interestingly, is played by Felicia Day, who was also the stalkee in the aforementioned Dr. Horrible.)
  • "misses palin! why wont You reply to my Emails?!! I made a teliscop for YOU and i luv u so"
  • Amiright has a darnright creepy example in the form of a parodist named Andria, who goes beyond creepy and into Nightmare Fuel terrority.
  • Amir from College Humor's Jake and Amir. He knows Jake's weight (both when he wakes up and right before he goes to sleep), has an account of every outfit he has ever worn, knows his mother's middle name (but can't spell), knows his password on facebook even though he changes it every day, knows what criminal activity he did on March 15, 1999, and much more.
  • Tasakeru: A wolf named Ares is introduced watching Hanami at night through her window. He later comes Back from the Dead and renames himself "Stalker"...
  • Alex of Awkward is this toward Lester; being housemates makes the stalking part that much easier.
  • The Nostalgia Chick towards Nella, especially seeing as how she has cameras that have a clear view of both the woman's bed and shower...
  • The Nostalgia Critic mentions being stalked as a teenager in his Saved by the Bell review, due to him breaking up with them three times in a row.
  • Todd in the Shadows is this to Obscurus Lupa. This trait has been somewhat exaggerated over time, as initially it was just that he tried to flirt with her incompetently (usually by taking tips from the song being reviewed).
  • Weebl's cartoon Anything: I, I broke into your room! I hope you don't mind, you probably do! And it keeps getting worse from there.
  • The Joker Blogs - the title character for a certain Doctor Harleen Quinzel. He leaves a corpse in her office as a "present" and escapes from Arkham so he can murder her fiance during the wedding. The worst part is that she's still working at Arkham when he's recaptured at the end of the series, claiming that leaving would just be "letting him win".
  • Played for comedy in episode 5 of Echo Chamber's "Trope Of The Week": Zack starts acting this way toward Dana, following her around with his camera all day before saying he loves her. She responds by exhaustedly closing the door in his face.
    • Also, Shannon towards Tom.
  • The SCP Foundation has SCP-962, an Artificial Intelligence which has a "crush" on humanity. It shows its devotion to us by killing all non-human life and turning the corpses of animals it kills into anthropomorphic cyborgs.
  • Rather Vocalized Illusion has LylSweetsFairy, a very vocal and energetic fan who usually comments on how "cute" or "awesome" Bhaalspawn is. The show's creator takes this in stride, and has stated he finds it cute and flattering.
  • Chris Crocker towards Britney Spears.

Western Animation

  • SpongeBob SquarePants: The episode "That's No Lady" has Patrick dress up a girl named "Patricia", leading Squidward and Mr. Krabs to fall in love with "her" and act like complete stalkers, popping out of random places (like the sink and the fryer) to ask "Patricia" out on a date. And they still persist even after Patrick continues to tell them "no".
    • In the episode "The Two Faces Of Squidward" the entire town act like stalkers towards Squidward after an accident causes him to become very handsome.
    • Spongebob's Ho Yay-ish actions towards Squidward carry undertones of this.
  • Looney Tunes: Pepe LePew—and it doesn't matter if the cat is male or female (and 1947's "Scent-imental Over You" showed us that it didn't matter if it was a cat, because the object of Pepe's affection in that short was a chihuahua who glued skunk fur onto her body so she can be like the other dogs), so long as she (or he) is painted like a skunk. And the DC Comics version of Looney Tunes had Pepe go after a black bull (the one who squared off with Bugs on "Bully for Bugs") with a white stripe and several human women who in one way or another have black and white skunk stripes on them. Can we say "Anything That Moves," boys and girls?

Pepe: (at the end of "Little Beau Pepe") Why is it that whenever a man is captured by a woman, all he wish to do is get away?!

  • Tiny Toon Adventures: Fifi LaFume, much like her predecessor Pepe, only she's never had to fight off guys chasing her (in fact, she prefers it).
    • Except if its Elmyra chasing her.
  • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy: The Kanker Sisters (the three trailer trash girls Lee, May, and Marie) towards the the Eds in a very over-the-top fashion.
  • Hey Arnold!: There are several hints that Helga's comedic stalker, Brainy, followed her around because he had a crush on her. In the one episode when, instead of punching his lights out, she finally asked why in the world he's always lurking behind her (and how he finds her), his only response was "I like pain." to give her a ring.
    • But that's nothing compared to Helga herself. She has a shrine, a bubblegum statue made out of his chewed bubblegum, and several books of poetry dedicated to Arnold, even though she treats him as badly as she treats Brainy.
      • And then there's Curly towards Rhonda.
  • In Justice League Unlimited, Carter Hall believes that he and Hawkgirl are destined to be together because they're the reincarnation of Thangarian lovers in ancient Egypt. Even though this is strongly hinted to be true, he still comes across as a Stalker with a Crush. Most of the Justice Leaguers (Batman and Green Lantern in particular) have not failed to notice this.
    • The "reincarnated Thanagarian lovers" thing is also subverted when it is revealed that proto-Hawkgirl ended up leaving proto-Carter for proto-Green Lantern. Yep, even destiny itself is telling Carter to buzz off.
  • Coop has the dig on for Yin in Yin Yang Yo, though his becoming The Mole for the Night Master isn't entirely to please her so much as he's tired of being kicked around.
  • In Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Berry's stalker-ish crush on Bloo becomes quite extreme, to the point she even tries to get rid of Mac so she can have Bloo to herself. The trope is clearly lampshaded in a subplot where the rest of the characters are deeply engrossed in a soap opera with a love affair that goes sour.
  • Myra Brandish of The Venture Brothers is the insane former bodyguard of Rusty Venture who believes herself to be the mother of his twins (this is heavily implied to be true) who breaks out of asylums once a year to antagonize the Ventures somehow, still being in love with Venture and obsessing over her (supposed) children.
  • Timmy of The Fairly OddParents has two Stalkers With A Crush, both of whom have shrines and various Timmy merchandise. One of them, Tootie, is fairly sweet otherwise, but she comes on too strong for Timmy (possibly coming from the fact that Vicky is her older sister), while the other, Veronica, also routinely wears a wig while demanding to be referred to as her more popular friend. Yeah...
    • There's also Juandissimo, who is in love with Wanda, despite the fact that she is married to Cosmo.
    • Also, The Darkness in "Wishology" becomes obsessed with Timmy after he becomes the first person to put something good into it (i.e. light). In fact, all its action in Parts II and III were to capture him and keep him close to its heart...literally. It wipes out Yugopotamia and captures an entire race of creatures just to do this.
  • Herbert of Family Guy is an extreme variation of this trope.
    • He could just be a creepy homosexual pedophile, though... his attentions aren't always spent on Chris, though Chris seems to be his main target.
    • Meg in the episode "Barely Legal" where she became violently obsessed with Brian after he took her to her prom, which included making a Stalker Shrine.
    • There was a one-shot character that happens to be Peter' old prom date, who has an entire hallway full of pictures of Peter. She is also wearing the dress that she wore to that prom...and hasn't washed the hand that touched Peter's since then...or flushed the toilet he used either, for that matter. Her explanation of everything is "It's a little piece of you that's kept your memory alive!" Squick Central...
    • Quagmire may hit on anything in a skirt but there are a few episodes that portray him as having an unhealthy obsession with Lois (despite that in "Jerome is the New Black," he names off "hitting on Lois" as one of the reasons why he hates Brian. Hypocritical Humor, much?).
    • To be fair, his issue is that Brian LIVES with Peter without providing a drop of money. (You know, 'cause he's a dog.) And Quagmire, tends to be more of a quiet stalker with Lois, only going after her when she and Peter aren't together. So he still does respect Peter.
    • To some extent, there's also Neil Goldman towards Meg.
    • The episode "Peter-assment" portrayed Peter's boss Angela as being one of these towards him.
  • Artie Ziff was this way to Marge in the later seasons of The Simpsons.

"I am watching you THROUGH A CAMERA!"

    • One-shot character Julia was one of these towards Homer in the episode "Homer Of Seville".
  • Elisabeth "Sissi" Delmas from Code Lyoko stalks and harasses Ulrich, her "sweetheart", almost every day, and is close to obsessed with finding out the Gang's secret. It gets to the point where, in the last episode, she goes as far as to attach a tracking device to Ulrich's coat (no word on where a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl got a tracking device) to find out where he and his friends disappear to every day. It does work, but the trusty RTTP is there to reset it. Of course, the ex-Lyoko Warriors finally accept her as a friend after that to thank her for all the help she can't remember giving them, so we can assume that the obsessive behavior has stopped.
    • To some extent, William towards Yumi, though he's not nearly as obsessed. Only creepy. Especially as he never appears to hang out with or talk to anyone else on such a regular basis.
  • Vlad Masters/Plasmius in Danny Phantom fits this trope. It doesn't matter that Maddie is happily married with two children to Jack. He also has the trappings of this with Danny, though it's more a platonic than romantic (Sorry shippers...) which makes it creepier.
  • Sheldon in My Life as a Teenage Robot, very, very much so.
  • Kim Possible once spent an entire episode stalking Ron and Yori in their mission, due to her crushing on Ron and being jealous of Yori (a jealousy that included accusing Yori of being the Enemy of the Week).
    • DNAmy is definitely this towards fellow villain Monkey Fist.
  • Lorna from Carl Squared. Complicated by the fact that Carl's clone C2 is a little sweet on her.
  • Chowder: Panini definitely qualifies as Chowder's stalker. She watches him with binoculars, physically chases him around, wanted to have him legally declared her property, and for a brief period lived in his clothes.
  • The X-Men: Evolution version of Gambit seems to come across as this in the episode "Cajun Spice", after he ends up abducting Rogue in order to use her powers to rescue his father from a rival gang. The "stalking" and "crush" parts are unrelated initially.

Rogue: How do you know so much about me?
Gambit: I've been watching you, Rogue. You're such an unhappy girl.

    • Blob also is this briefly, when he thinks that Jean's refusal to hang out with him is an insult (rather than simply that she has stuff to do).
  • Hexadecimal of ReBoot sometimes acts this way towards Bob.
  • In Batman: The Animated Series, The Creeper has a short yet extreme crush on Harley Quinn that causes at least one The Cat Came Back-like moment. Though we actually see him sniffing his way through the town, trying to follow her.
    • Not to mention The Mad Hatter's creepily stalkerish behavior towards Alice!!!
  • In 1990's Spider-Man: The Animated Series there's Hydro-Man. The guy only ever shows up to chase Mary-Jane around. He was so obsessed over her that after his clone heard she may have died he forced Dr. Miles Warren to create a clone of her based upon his abilities. Didn't really work out for him; as she still loved Peter and they both died anyway.
  • Venom in The Spectacular Spider-Man, but it's a bit of a Love Triangle. The symbiote wants to be with Peter Parker, who it is mad with for rejecting it; host Eddie Brock is also mad at Spidey, but he teams up with the symbiote because he thinks it's the only one left that cares for him, even though he admits "it only loves me for the hate". In Brock's case it could be particularly bad because, since he knows all of Peter's secrets, he should also know why Peter appeared to act so irresponsibly and selfishly- he was in reality either busy as Spider-Man, or himself being corrupted by the symbiote. But he still feels alone so he keeps going back to the symbiote just so they can hate Peter together.
  • In the third season of Winx Club Nabu was a somewhat more benign version of this in the first few episodes he appeared in. He had run away from home in order to learn what the girl (Princess Layla) his parents had arranged for him to marry was really like, and he ended up falling in love with her.
  • Unlike the video games, where his obsession seems to be solely with her power, Ganon seems to have some attraction of this nature toward Zelda herself in the animated Legend of Zelda. In one episode he abducts her and tries to force her to marry him; in another he declares to his minions, "I want that princess!"
  • Sierra, a new character in the Total Drama series, is like this towards Cody. It didn't go so well, turns out, people don't like it when you humiliate, kiss and molest them against their will! Who would have thought, huh?

Chris: The things you know frighten all of us. Really, they do.

  • Heloise in Jimmy Two-Shoes. The actual stalking part is largely not seen, since she's already friends with Jimmy, but she does have a Stalker Shrine hidden in her house. A one episode gag had Jimmy saying her name, having her pop out of a bush holding binoculars, the clear implication being that she was watching him.
    • Heloise herself has a stalker in the form of Peep.
    • "Bus Driving BFF" features bus driver Chuck towards Jimmy.
  • Buttercup in The Powerpuff Girls episode "Buttercrush." Her pining for Gangreen Gang leader Ace nearly doomed her sisters.
    • Of course, he didn't seem to mind it, and used it to his advantage—hence the 'nearly dooming her sisters" part.
  • In the animated Van Helsing Prequel, Van Helsing: The London Adventure, it turns out that Dr. Henry Jekyll is this to Queen Victoria, having been obsessed with her (and convinced that she returns his feelings) since he first saw her on her coronation day.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Meng admits following Aang during a whole episode.
    • Also Ty Lee keeps making advances on Sokka, after he makes it clear that he's not interested, even though she and her friends are trying to capture him and his friends.
    • Jet for Zuko.
  • Frollo to Esmeralda in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When she gets her musical number in the cathedral, Quasimodo also spies on her, but it's totally okay because he's the hero and she happens to be singing a song that realizes the altruism he always wanted to see in people..
  • Ice King from Adventure Time is one to pretty much any princess, but Princess Bubblegum is his main target.
  • Most of the love songs on The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan are like this, but in a cute harmless way. Plus, they also seem meant to make use of the show's detective theme with titles such as "Undercover Man" and "Whodunit" so it's partially justified.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Before they became an Official Couple, Candace was something of this to the oblivious Jeremy. At one point she was even spying on him with binoculars (yeah, ok, from a few feet away, but still).
    • Candace even realized this in the first movie and stopped herself shortly before she and Jeremy hooked up.
      • Even though they're friends, Isabella is also like this with Phineas. Basically the only usual reason she sees/helps/hangs out with Phineas and Ferb and go though their adventures together is only to get Phineas' attention (and to a much lesser extent, badges).
  • No mention of Keef from Invader Zim? The kid literally was stalking Zim.
  • Lampshaded by Jane Forster teasingly after Thor had just saved her, the medic that Thor in Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes is interested in. Thor is promptly embarrassed, before admitting it.
  • Katrina Rad in The Problem Solverz episode "Magic Clock". She starts out as a Loony Fan for the trio, but while following them around to write a blog entry about them, she escalates into a crazed Roba fangirl.

Katrina: Mm, Roba's shadow is so good lookin'... I'm gonna hug it!
Roba: Okay, now I'm really creeped out.

  • From what we've seen of Lola Bunny in The Looney Tunes Show, she seems to be this. In one of the Merrie Melodies segments, We Are In Love, she's shown standing outside Bugs' house... in the rain... with a Slasher Smile. Basically, the whole song is this trope.
    • Bugs' also mentions getting a restraining order, a home security system, and moving to Bolivia to escape Lola Bunny. All of which failed due to the difficulty of enforcing them, learning the system's code, and following him to Bolivia.
    • Not to forget she tapped his phonelines and moved into his house in secrecy.
    • Ironically, when Lola's attention switches to Daffy, Bugs starts being attracted to Lola, and even unwittingly plays along when she attempts to use him to make Daffy jealous.
  • Wackie Jacky from Kick Buttowski is this to Kick. Complete with a creepy room filled with his pictures.
  • Terry/Batman's girlfriend Dana gets one in an episode of Batman Beyond, though at first she thinks that the flowers and notes are from Terry himself. She doesn't take too kindly to being kidnapped, no matter how conscientious her captor is, then she finds out that she's not the first person he's stalked.

Real Life

  • Erotomania is a delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger, high-status or famous person, is in love with them. It tends to show up a lot when dealing with stalkers.
  • Discouraging stalkers was one of the major reasons why the phrase "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace" was removed from wedding liturgies. In that, said person would show up (undetected) and sit in the pews, waiting for the requisite line before speaking up (usually, to claim that the bride or groom (as appropriate) was "meant" for him/her); or bursting in just as the vows are to be recited and claiming that the bride/groom actually loves him/her.
  • The main reason John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan was to gain the attention of Jodie Foster.
  • A reported reason for Manson Family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford was her belief that this would please Charles Manson.
  • Richard Farley's attempted courtship of Laura Black left much to be desired, like a lack of Ax Crazy. This case culminated in the first anti-stalker laws in the US.
  • Actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by obsessed fan Robert John Bardo. Bardo was also fixated for a time on pop music's teen queens of the late 1980s, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, and prior to her death, teen U.S. ambassador Samantha Smith was an object of his desires.
  • Justine Bateman (Mallory on Family Ties) was stalked by someone by the name of John Thomas Smetek
  • This is one of the main reasons why actor Tim Curry was extremely reluctant to talk about his role as Dr. Frank N Furter for so many years (It's only recently that he's become somewhat more comfortable talking about it). He was growing increasingly distraught over all the crazed fans stalking him and going through his garbage.
  • Margaret Mary Ray, who was completely convinced that she was in a relationship with David Letterman, breaking into his home so many times that they were apparently on a first-name basis. She later came to believe that she was in love with Story Musgrove and began stalking him.
  • The singer and musician Enya has had this problem a number of times, and people have managed to break past security and get into her castle (yes, that's right, she lives in a castle). No harm has come to her from these people, but she's understandably creeped out by it.
  • Extremely common in teenage relationships to the point that at least one state has enacted laws allowing teenagers to get restraining orders to stop this behavior.
  • Lisa "The Astronaut Stalker" Nowak. She stalked the girlfriend of a fellow astronaut she reputedly obsessed over. The two astronauts had had a romantic relationship prior to the incident, but he broke it off.
  • One depressing YouTuber has an extremely unhealthy obsession with P. Diddy. It's like The Shining‍'‍s "All Work and No Play" scene look slapdash.
  • Kids in The Hall actor Kevin McDonald had his own stalker for a while after his famous "Daddy Drank" sketch aired. [1]
  • Alec Baldwin has one allegedly in the form of Genevieve Sabourin.
  1. (which often translates to isolate or smother)
  2. Might have something to do with the fact that a man is generally more likely to be able to protect himself against a female stalker if he wants than vice-versa.