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{{examples}}
== [[Advertising]] ==
* Spoofed in a Capital One credit card commercial, where a princess kisses a frog... and he turns into a ferret, who starts rattling off legalese and provisos as the princess keeps trying to kiss him, turning him into different creatures. At the end, she leaves in disgust, leaving him as a portly centaur who protests that she's "just one kiss away" from a rich, handsome prince.
* Also spoofed in a beer commercial, the (Australian) girl sees a frog and hopes that if she kisses it it will turn into a handsome sheep shearer. The frog does change, but then when he kisses her, she turns into a pint of beer.
* Yet another spoof: a pretty girl kisses the Sci-Fi channel logo for no apparent reason and is turned into a giant frog.
== [[Anime]]
* The ending to ''[[Prétear]]'' {{spoiler|where Hayate kisses Himeno to revive her after she wins the final fight at the cost of her life}}. It is no surprise considering that it's explicitly based on ''Snow White''. It only happens in the anime version, though, not in the original manga.
* Seen numerous times in ''[[Sailor Moon]]''. Near the end of the first manga story, Mamoru brings back to life a seemingly dead Usagi by kissing her (Luna comments on this, saying that the princess has been woken up by the prince's kiss). The anime version uses this at least two times: in the [[Tear Jerker]] ''Sailor Moon R'' episode 69 (which actually contains a ''Sleeping Beauty'' reference), and later near the end of ''Sailor Moon SuperS'' (this time with Chibi-Usa and Helios). The ending of the ''Sailor Moon R'' movie may or may not count—it was technically more of [[Intimate Healing]], with Mamoru giving Usagi the life-saving nectar that way; but to the rest of the team it definitely looked like another instance of the [[Power of Love]] in work.
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* Spoofed in Ringo's [[Imagine Spot]]s in ''[[Mawaru Penguindrum]]''.
* [[Played for Laughs]] in ''[[Beelzebub]]''. This is supposedly the cure to Hilda's {{spoiler|magic-induced memory-loss}}, and everyone at Ishiyama have reason to believe that the Prince Charming with the magic lips is her "husband", Oga; he doesn't want anything to do with it. [[Hilarity Ensues]]. {{spoiler|Especially when it turns out that ''Baby Beelzebub'' was Hilda's Prince Charming!}}
* The official ''[[Mahou Girls Pretty Cure]]'' manga has Mirai and Riko kiss ''[[Yuri|on the lips]]'' to break a curse. This would be [[Kissing Under the Influence]], if not for the body language (before ''and'' after), that it's earlier shown it doesn't need to be ''that'' kind of kiss, and the two having their names under an [[Together Umbrella|Aiaigasa]] in the anime.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* Parodied in ''[[Fables]]'': Frau Totenkinder had a major problem with princes, and went around cursing them and their loved ones left, right and centre. Over the years, she became particularly fond of transforming them in a manner where they needed to persuade a human to fall in love with and kiss them to cure them. But they were all temporary cures, and the prince would find themselves transforming back when their wives became mad at them. Over the course of the story she takes responsibility for almost all of the situations where "True Love's Kiss" was needed to cure a curse. Just because she liked it.
** Parodied again with a porcupine who goes around telling human girls he was cursed by a witch and must be kissed to transform into a handsome prince... he's lying. He was cursed, all right, but he was always a porcupine and the curse was a perverted attraction to human girls. He learned the kiss-me-I'm-a-prince "scam" from a frog he met once.
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** To neutralize an apartment building, Bigby Wolf has Sleeping Beauty prick her finger within, causing herself and all within to fall asleep. Only, when they try to use Prince Charming to wake her, it becomes apparent that he no longer qualifies... {{spoiler|but when Flycatcher, the former Frog Prince tries, it works.}} Another time, she was woken from the spell by an affectionate police dog who happened to be named 'Prince'.
** Flycatcher, the Frog Prince, occasionally reverts to frog form when excited, nervous, or scared. Only his wife {{spoiler|died, badly, back in the Homelands, while he was trapped in frog form}}, unable to help, no less. When he {{spoiler|reverts to a frog in modern-day New York, there's no possible fix until Christmas, when Santa Claus brings his wife back to life, just long enough for one kiss.}}
* In the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' Season 8 comics, Buffy needs one of these to awaken from a magically induced nightmare. {{spoiler|Assuming that at least one person in the group must be in love with Buffy, Willow instructs everyone to close their eyes so that whoever that person is can cure Buffy while maintaining their privacy. The panels leading up to the kiss imply it will be Xander, but the kiss itself is not shown. As Buffy awakens, she mumbles something about the taste of cinnamon. A bit later, Buffy ask a fellow slayer to lend her some
* In the 50th issue of ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' comic, Sonic's kiss wakes Princess Sally from a coma.
* In one ''[[Justice League of America]]'' run, the Queen of Fables has made all the fairy tales come to life and warped them so she can rule the world. This includes making [[Wonder Woman]] into [[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (novel)|Snow White]]. The heroes know they need a Prince Charming to wake her up with a kiss, so [[Aquaman]] (King of the Seas) volunteers to do it.
{{quote|'''Aquaman:''' You're of no use here anyway... not for this. As Superman has just informed me, this is a job for a handsome prince.
'''Green Lantern:''' I thought you were the ''king'' of Atlantis.
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== [[Fairy Tales]] ==
* An actual literary version can be found in the Grimms' "[[wikipedia:The True Bride|The True Bride]]", in which the heroine breaks the spell over her prince (an evil princess bewitched him to forget her) with a kiss. This little tidbit was retained when the story was adapted for ''[[The Storyteller]]''.
* "[[Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (novel)|Snow White]]": As with many fairy tales, the product of many rewrites (especially Disney's); originally, the dwarfs dropped the coffin and the poison apple fell out of her mouth. It is also worth noting that [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|The Brothers Grimm]] themselves rewrote this one, changing the wicked mother to a [[Wicked Stepmother]] (a trope in and of itself now) so as not to terrify children.
* "[[Sleeping Beauty]]" (a.k.a. "Briar Rose"), in the Grimms' version. In the earlier Perrault version, Sleeping Beauty simply wakes up after 100 years, and the prince just happens to be there. [[Sun, Moon, and Talia|In an earlier Italian variant]], the prince [[Dude, She's Like, in a Coma|raped her]] and she gave birth to twins. One of the babies crawled up to her body and suckled the flax out of her finger, reviving her. Then the princess took her children to see the prince, who had returned home to his ''wife''. (That is, in the versions other than the ones where, ashamed and enraged about her rape, she eats her children.) Then, Perrault rewrote it.
* "[[The Frog Prince]]": In the original Brothers Grimm version, the prince turns back to normal after the princess ''throws him against a wall''. They still get married even after the attempted murder.
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** There's a similar one but [[Dissimile|with the genders inverted and princess cursed in a white cat form instead of a frog]].
** [http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/frog.html "The Queen Who Sought a Drink from a Certain Well"] and a whole bunch of others, with the chop off my head approach in the lead.
* "[[The Little Mermaid]]" zig-zags this in the Disney version of the story, in which Ariel needs the "Kiss of True Love" to become human permanetly, though it does not work out that way.[[Hans Christian Andersen|The original version]] of the story required that she actually married the prince to become human forever, on the condition that if he betrayed her, she would die. [[It Got Worse|It also does not work out well either...]]▼
==
* The film ''[[Shrek]]'' used it straight as part of a larger subversion. The female lead had a curse that turned her into an ogre by night, which could only be broken by True Love's Kiss. However, when said love, the ogre Shrek, kissed her, she became an ogre ''permanently''—which she preferred. Of course, there is the opening monologue, which mocks this trope lightly; you can see how seriously Shrek takes it. (In the sequel this is mentioned twice. Once as the only thing that can seal a "[[Happily Ever After]]" potion, and again in relation to Fiona's father, {{spoiler|the Frog Prince.}}) When Shrek first meets Fiona. Fiona is faking a "sleeping beauty" post, and expects Shrek to wake her up by kissing her. Instead, he violently shakes her.
** And then in the fourth movie, the only way to undo the [[Bad Future]] was a True Love's Kiss. Shrek spends a great deal of the movie trying to get Fiona to fall in love with him all over again and kiss him. {{spoiler|She does (angrily and only to get him to stop asking her to do it) in the middle of the film, but it doesn't work because now she doesn't love him. It works the second time though.}}
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** It's also played straight near the end of the movie, when, like a good Disney princess, she's hexed to sleep. She needs a Troperriffic True Love's Kiss before midnight (of course) in order to wake up. {{spoiler|Robert, of course, manages to rouse her in the nick of time with a True Love's Kiss.}}
* ''[[The Matrix]]'': {{spoiler|Smith kills Neo in the Matrix, but when Trinity kisses him in the real world, [[Unexplained Recovery|he gets better]].}}
* The conclusion of the film ''[[The Brothers Grimm (film)|The Brothers Grimm]] '' (based as it is around the [[Beethoven Was an Alien Spy]] trope) has Jacob rescuing twelve girls trapped in an enchanted sleep by giving this to the oldest one of them, Angelika, the woman he spent the film pining for. At first this seems to be the only thing that can save his brother Will as well, but discovers as he's about to do it that Will is alive and well and he'd rather have Angelika do the honors here (she obliges).
* At the end of ''[[Legend (film)|Legend]]'', Lily awakens after Jack kisses her.
* At the end of ''[[WALL-E]]'' {{spoiler|a "kiss" from EVE restores WALL-E's apparently lost memory. Note that this is one of the few straight examples that can be explained beyond [[The Power of Love]]: EVE's "kisses" are literally electric.}}
* ''[[The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension]]''
* Parodied in Amanda Bynes' ''[[Sydney White]]'', where Sydney was simply exhausted from staying up all night for her paper and fell asleep in the library, causing her to be late for the presidential debate. The [[Love Interest]] finds her and treats it as if she would never wake up, culminating with the kiss to "break the spell".
* In ''[[Snow White and the Huntsman]]'', the most recent{{when}} film adaptation of ''[[Snow White]]'', it's subverted and played straight. Snow gets into a coma caused by a poisoned apple, and the {{spoiler|Prince's}} kiss fails to revive her. Then the {{spoiler|titular Huntsman}} kisses her, and she [[It Got Better|gets better]]. It's nowhere explained about the meaning of this, though. Supposedly the filmmakers thought the audience would recognize this trope on their own.
* Subverted in ''[[Maleficent]]'', where the teenaged hormones between Phillip and Aurora are insufficient for the task, but {{spoiler|Maleficent's own kiss of ''maternal'' love breaks the curse she laid on the girl sixteen years earlier}}. And Maleficent made that the condition for breaking the curse as a deliberate [[Take That]] to Aurora's father because he had claimed to have given her one when they were both teens, but had afterwards backstabbed her for his own advancement while claiming that "true love's kiss" did not actually exist.
▲*
==
* In ''[[Enchanted Forest Chronicles|Talking to Dragons]]'', a book in a series famous for modernizing fairy tales without subverting them, Daystar uses this to transform Shiara back from being turned into stone.
* ''[[His Dark Materials]]'': Lyra and Will save the multiverse from falling apart with their [[First Kiss]].
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* In [[Esther Friesner]]'s ''Majyk By Design'', the magician-protagonist's estranged wife asks him to turn ''himself'' into a frog, so she can use this to prove her point that she still loves him.
== [[Live
* In ''[[Haven]]'' Audrey's cheek kiss to Nathan {{spoiler|awakens his ability to feel touch, though only hers.}}
* Subverted in ''[[My Hero (TV)|My Hero]]'': George, attempting to break through a villain's mind control over Janet, announces that he's giving her a True Love's Kiss, but later confesses that what actually broke the mind control was him using the kiss to covertly slip her the antidote to the [[Phlebotinum]] the villain had been using on her.
* Subverted in ''[[Eureka]]'', when Carter's hippie sister suggests that he kiss Allison as a way to stop a time loop. Since they live in Eureka, Land of Science, this doesn't work the way it does [[This Is Reality|in the movies]] (or at all).
** Justified with [[Techno Babble]] in another episode, "Primal". Rampaging [[Nanomachines]] who are trying to take over the world, as they are being controlled by Stark's subconscious. The only way to defeat them is to piss Stark off, so Carter needs to kiss Allison to achieve this. {{spoiler|It works.}}
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* In the series finale of ''[[Chuck]]'', {{spoiler|It's implied by Morgan that this kind of kiss will help restore an amnesiac Sarah<ref>who had lost her memories thanks to some mind manipulation and a faulty Intersect.</ref> back to normal. Chuck decides to put this to the test after Sarah invites him to kiss her, and it's left to the viewer to decide if the kiss truly did work.}}
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* The third-party D&D supplement ''The Book of Erotic Fantasy'' has a lesser version of the Resurrection spell that requires the caster to kiss the target. Unlike most examples here, it doesn't require the two to be in love, however.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Subverted in the first game of the ''[[Dark Parables]]'' series, which is based on the story of [[Sleeping Beauty]]. The prince did kiss the sleeping Princess Briar Rose to break her enchantment, successfully waking every person in the entire castle - except her. A thousand years later, at the time of the game, she's ''still'' asleep.
* Subverted in ''[[Devil May Cry]] 4''. The [[Big Bad]] has been defeated, Dante and Nero have made their peace, and Kyrie is safe. Nero and Kyrie lean in, sunset in the background, for the big moment... and suddenly Nero pulls out his gun (no, seriously, the revolver) and blasts a demon. He looks up to find a horde of the game's weakest enemy coming at himself and his love, asks her to wait, and then spends the credits kicking their asses. You never actually see the kiss happen.
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* Parodied in the ''[[Nodwick]]'' strip [http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2004-09-08|seen here]{{Dead link}} where one princess is savvy enough to offer this service for a profit.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'': Aang and Katara are lost in a maze and a folk tale says they have to "let love lead the way" to get back out. One of them suggests a True Love's Kiss, but they don't decide to go for it until their torches are almost gone. They lean in, the light goes out... and crystals in the ceiling begin glowing, marking a path. Katara guesses that the lovers from the folk tale just put their torches out to see the crystals and find their way, and love had nothing to do with it. (We weren't shown if they actually kissed or not - can you say [[Ship Tease]]?)
** Katara's voice actress claims they kissed, but whether this really qualifies as [[Word of God]] is debatable.
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* Subverted in ''[[Frozen (Disney film)|Frozen]]''. The only way to save Anna after her heart becomes frozen is with an act of true love. Despite what everyone thinks a kiss is not required -- nor is ''romantic'' love.
* Spoofed in the ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' cartoon "Bewitched Bunny". Bugs is drugged with a carrot full of sleeping potion by Witch Hazel, and is rescued by Prince Charming showing up and kissing him on the hand. Though Bugs is grateful, he points out to the prince that they're doing a parody of ''Hansel and Gretel'', not ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs''.
* In one ''[[Underdog]]'' cartoon, an unnamed [[Wicked Witch]] kidnaps [[Action Girlfriend| Sweet Polly]] and put her under the typical thousand-year sleeping princess spell that had this type of cure, but it had a twist; the witch knew that, but she only tells Polly, lying to Underdog later (saying that only she could reverse the spell) so she could blackmail him into doing her evil deeds for her. Underdog finds loopholes to complete two of her demands without hurting anyone, but with the third - helping her conquer the world - he sees no way to do without compromising his morals, so he decides he has no choice but to leave Sweet Polly as she was... After beating the tar out of the witch, of course. A fierce battle later, the witch perishes when her broom - a [[Soul Jar]], of sorts - is destroyed - and her now-free formerly oppressed subjects make a promise to Underdog that they and all their descendants would watch Polly for as long as they had to until the thousand-year curse expired. Believing that was the best he could hope for, the hero decides to leave with a final kiss. By pure luck, he
* Deconstructed in ''[[Harley Quinn (TV series)|Harley Quinn]]''. {{spoiler| Poison Ivy has been turned into a [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] slave by Dr. Psycho and is trying to strangle Harley, and with no other options, Harley tries this. It works... But only because [[Girl-On-Girl Is Hot| Dr. Psycho is a pervert]] who lost his concentration by seeing it. Nonetheless, Harley and Ivy proceeded to beat the crud out of him, and [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain| the experience ''finally'' got Harley to confess her love to Ivy]].}}
----
And they all lived [[Happily Ever After]].
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