Films routinely deal with Love Triangles. Fans sometimes disagree with the resolutions violently.
Films with their own pages
Animated films
- Balto: There is an obnoxious tendency on the part of Kodi/Dusty shippers to kill off the characters Ralph and Kirby; in the first case Dusty/Ralph is canon according to Word of God with Kodi/Kirby just being a consequence of mild Ho Yay. And don't think about shipping Kodi/Dusty and Kirby/Ralph; it's a ticket to the afterlife. That said, many people also kill Stella (the female goose from the second sequel, which is also from where all the characters mentioned in this paragraph come from), and whereas they pair Boris with someone else or not is irrelevant.
- Technically, this trope is inverted for Corpse Bride: Victor/Emily shippers want Victor to die — because Emily is dead to begin with. That said, there has been a fair amount of vilifying of Victoria in post-film Victor/Emily fanfics, portraying her as a gold digger or just plain mean to Victor. (And leaving Victoria to Barkis's tender mercies in some AUs is a Fate Worse than Death.)
- A great number of fans of the movie Felidae are huge fans of the Francis/Felicity pairing even though Felicity is brutally decapitated only minutes after she's introduced in the film and the cat Francis had sex with in the film is the one who becomes his mate. It probably has something to do with the fact that Delicate and Sickly Felicity is set up as a sweet naive girl shortly before she dies. By contrast, Nhozemptekh - exotically pretty as she may be - is unfortunately given little character development beyond being a Nubile Savage in kitty form.
- Frozen (2013):
- Kristoff is often hated for ending up being the Official Couple with Princess Anna. Fans sometimes exaggerate his gruffness into callousness, but unfortunately, he is rather often depicted as having...relations...with Sven, so that Anna could be together with Elsa or Hans.
- Shipping Elsa with Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians is an odd case of a non-canon Crossover Ship inspiring this treatment. The pairing grew very popular, frequently featured everywhere from fanfiction to cosplay, so some perceive Jack as getting in the way of whatever other Elsa ship they prefer. To let her hook up with someone else, quite a few fanworks kill, humiliate, and/or rewrite Jack into an insolent egotistic jerkass, a far cry from the All-Loving Hero he is in the movie.
- Before Frozen came out, Jack was often shipped with Rapunzel from Tangled, so to make way for Jack/Elsa ship, some fanworks turn the kind, intelligent Action Girl Rapunzel into a clingy, whiny ditz. Or just have her killed.
- In fact, shipping anyone with Elsa in the wrong place could lead to a terrible backlash. That is not getting into the Self-Insert Fic where fans very commonly pair themselves with Elsa. Yes, even the girls.
- How to Train Your Dragon has a portion of fans who want to hook Hiccup up with Ruffnut (who's rather similar to Astrid but, unlike her, is not Hiccup's official love interest), Tuffnut (Ruffnut's twin brother), or even Toothless (yes, the dragon). For that, Astrid gets bashed and labeled as shallow for showing interest in Hiccup after finding out about his dragon, even though she was the only teen that did not actively mock/tease Hiccup in the beginning and thus had less of a personality shift than the others would have.
- Phoebus, from the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, gets this a lot from people who prefer Esmeralda to be with either Quasimodo or Frollo. Instead of being the wry, sensible man he is, Phoebus is portrayed as an abusive Jerkass (completely accurate in the novel, where Phoebus is the only main character without a single redeeming quality, but not in the Disney film). Quasi/Esme shippers especially seem to think that having Esme end up with Phoebus is a betrayal of the film's "Looks don't matter" message.
- Mona from Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas gets a lot of hate from A Goofy Movie fans for having the nerve to be Max's current girlfriend. Nevermind it's been years since Max was a high schooler, and Roxanne wasn't even present in An Extremely Goofy Movie so they could have broken up due to college or even beforehand, and thus it's not abnormal for Max to have dated more than one person. There's even dubiousness about where the movie is even canon to the Goof Troop-verse.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas:
- Sometimes, Sally gets some of this so Jack Skellington can get with the writers' original characters, the writers themselves, Emily, or Victor.
- Jack isn't treated any better when it comes to those who ship Sally with Oogie Boogie, as Jack is often derailed into a jerk who shamelessly flirts with Sally while he bullies the poor, innocent, shy, and sweet Oogie. Keep in mind that Oogie tried to kill Sally after she failed to save Santa Claus from him.
- Disney sequels are already mostly despised, but there's one sequel that really takes it too far, according to most fans. Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World has the audacity to break up the Official Couple of Pocahontas/John Smith and make the protagonist fall in love with John Rolfe instead! It's only logical that Disney fans would have this kind of reaction, and most refuse to acknowledge the existence of the sequel in the first place.note
- Toy Story:
- Bo Peep is constantly bashed on, sometimes for getting in the way of the Woody/Jessie pairing. In Toy Story 3, Bo is mentioned to have been sold to someone else at a yard sale, leaving her out for good... but it's in the same movie that the Buzz/Jessie couple becomes more apparent. The fact that Toy Story 4 ends with Woody leaving the others to be with Bo Peep has only made the Bo hatred worse in some corners.
- The Woody/Dolly pairing has also become quite popular with some fanfic authors. There are at least a couple of AU human fics that have turned Bo Peep into an Alpha Bitch so that Woody could break up with her and pair with Dolly, his artistic childhood friend.
Live-action films
- Due to Bollywood marketing being dependent on which combo of actors and actresses is the screen couple (referred as a "jodi" by Indians and the Industry), fans of a particular screen couple (who often do several movies together if successful) will fight fans of another couple. Shah Rukh Khan/Kajol is the quintessential example these days.
- The Devil Wears Prada: Nate is generally hated by Andy/Miranda shippers. Most fanfictions portray Nate as sexist, while also making him verbally or physically abusive towards Andy. These same fics will also downplay or ignore Miranda's negative traits, in order to make her a more reasonable choice for Andy. This also happens quite often to Christian and Stephen as well. The former is often made into a creepy stalker, who doesn't get that Andy isn't interested. While the latter is often turned into a cheater, who divorced Miranda to sleep around more.
- It: Chapter Two: Myra, Eddie's wife (who is played by his mom's actor from the first movie) is not very popular in the fanbase, with the overwhelming majority of fans shipping Eddie with Richie and generally ignoring her existence.
- Fanfics of Kick-Ass often vilify Dave's actual love interest and all around Nice Girl Katie and make her more like her comics counterpart, who was genuinely a bitch. They tend to make her a cheater, or a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, in order to facilitate the Dave/Mindy ship. It does not help that in the film's sequel, Katie Took a Level in Jerkass and revealed she really was a bitch all along, who was cheating on Dave between the movies. This effectively made all of the fandom's vilifying canon.
- Many fans of A Knight's Tale would have preferred that William ended up with Kate rather than Jocelyn. Also uses "feminist" bases since the fans like to take the Plucky Girl Wrench Wench and then "give" her William as a "prize" for being a "strong female and so unlike that Jocelyn bitch"... when if they believed in Kate's strength as a character as much as they said, they wouldn't feel the need of making Kate's overall happiness depend oh so much on whether the hero liked her or not rather than on other things like her own blacksmith work. That's not even keeping in mind the movie's implication that Kate still loved and missed her dead husband and that Jocelyn, despite playing the obligatory "fair lady" love interest role, is shown to be quite a strong female in her own right.
- One particularly nasty Labyrinth fanfic had the author's Self-Insert have Jareth declare that he never loved Sarah and marry her and then literally has Sarah die for the ship. Yeah.
- The Lord of the Rings
- Arwen has been loathed by Éowyn teenyboppers who see her as the obstacle for Éowyn to get Aragorn's love, or as a "bad, bad, girly girl". (To be fair, Aragorn/Éowyn was actually a fairly popular ship long before the movies came out.) The Aragorn/Legolas slashers also have it against her. The movie adaptions exacerbated this. But cheer up, it cuts both ways! Arwen teenyboppers saw Éowyn as a scheming hussy trying to steal away the true love of their pretty elf princessnote (never mind that in the movie Aragorn and Arwen had broken up at the time) and hated her for it.
- Faramir also gets some flack from rabid Aragorn/Éowyn fans, who see him as being less worthy of her than Aragorn. Never mind that Aragorn himself sank that ship by pointing out how unhappy Éowyn would've been if she married him, and later was very happy when she and Faramir became the Beta Couple...
- And both Éowyn and Arwen catch heat from the fans who ship their original characters, often self-inserts, with Aragorn or Faramir. They get even more from the Yaoi Fangirl contingent who must have Aragorn sidling up to Legolas. (Or Boromir, which is a doomed relationship if you don't go severely AU.) Éowyn is likely to get written off as "that butch chick".
- Adding to the weirdness factor of the whole Aragorn-versus-Faramir argument is the reason that Tolkien didn't stick with his original Aragorn/Éowyn. Faramir is an Author Avatar, and according to one theory, Tolkien grew to love the character of Éowyn so much that he changed his plans just so she would end up with his Middle-Earth doppelganger. (Another theory is that he matched Aragorn with Arwen so that they could echo the couple featuring his other Middle-Earth doppleganger, Beren and Lúthien.)
- Not to mention, Aragorn himself sunk the Aragorn/Éowyn ship by telling Éomer after he heals the almost fatally injured Éowyn that she was more in love with the *ideal* represented by Aragorn, rather than Aragorn himself. And to put the final nail on the coffin, Aragorn also adds that Èowyn would've been incredibly frustrated and even unhappy in the end, if she married him. The book (and a scene in the movie's DVD edition) shows that Éowyn and Faramir fell in love after they bonded over their emotional troubles and got to know each other better.
- The Matrix: Persephone got some of this back in the day by certain Neo/Trinity shippers due to the whole 'kiss' thing (bear in mind, Persephone told Neo to imagine he was kissing Trinity rather than Persephone herself).
- In some Newsies fics, Sarah is portrayed as whiny and annoying so that way Jack can get with someone else like David.
- Pirates of the Caribbean:
- Ever since Will Turner married Elizabeth Swann, many viewers who wanted Elizabeth to be with Jack Sparrow are making him out to be a rapist, an abuser, too "nice" so the Super Bad Boy is OMG better, or any/all of these together.
- Elizabeth gets bashed repeatedly for driving a wedge between the Jack/Will relationship.
- Calypso gets this from Davy Jones fangirls, who make her a horrible bitch. Granted, as a pagan goddess and physical manifestation of the ocean, she was hardly the most sympathetic character in the movie; but that's ignoring the fact that Jones himself wasn't very nice in turn (having her magically bound to human form, which she describes as "torture") as well as the fact that she clearly did still love him and was horrified to hear what he did to her. One Self-Insert fic has the heroine actually kill Calypso, and be treated as a heroine for it. Which goes against everything in the trilogy's universe, but logic be damned.
- Re-Animator. One would hope that a character dying tragically at the end of the film would spare her from the rampant character derailment generally associated with this trope. One, sadly, would be wrong. Tip for becoming unreasonably intoxicated in a very short amount of time while reading Re-Animator fanfiction: Take a sip every time Meg and Dan are referred to as "friends" (in the movie they were engaged and had sex on screen), a swig every time Meg is characterized as bitchy and shallow (in canon she is sweet and supportive of Dan, but immediately finds Herbert creepy which isn't understandable at all) or unreasonably jealous of Dan's friendship/blossoming relationship with Herbert (even though in the movie and especially it's sequels, Herbert is the one that acts overtly jealous), drain your glass every time a fanfic writer manages to kill her off in a way even more brutal than her canon death. Do not get in the way of the Ho Yay, ladies; even if you pay for it with your life, the fanfic writers won't let you rest in peace.
- Amber Sweet from Repo! The Genetic Opera gets this from many Shilo/Graverobber shippers. Granted, she's hardly a good person, but what the fangirls tend to forget is that Graverobber is only slightly better.
- The School for Good and Evil (2022): Rafal is the Big Bad and wants to destroy both schools (which would kill the students), but that is not why a lot of fans dislike him. Rather, most fans hate on Rafal for getting in the way of the Dovey/Lesso ship. This often ignores the fact that while Lesso is in love with him, Rafal only sees her as a pawn at most. However, to a lot of shippers, that is enough to hate on him, even more than his villainy.
- Sky High (2005) fandom is small and pretty much dead, but it had a bit of this in its heyday, usually going after either Gwen or Will. Gwen was typically bashed for being "too girly" to justify Will/Layla (interestingly, the fact that she ended up betraying everyone rarely gets brought up here, nor does Lash doing the same thing stop him from having an armada of fangirls), when Will himself isn't torn into for being "bland" or falling victim to speculation that he'd be a neglectful boyfriend to Layla, in favor of Warren/Layla. (Incidentally, one of the film's creators stated that Warren/Layla was actually planned to become official in the sequels, though the circumstances weren't explained.)
- Star Trek: A certain portion of Kirk/Spock fans have had quite a bit trouble dealing with the fact that in the reboot movie Spock/Uhura is canon, and some rather nasty stuff
has been said about Uhura as a result. Though Uhura is a popular enough character in her own right - enough so that the majority K/S shippers would just show Uhura and Spock as having broken off their relationship amicably offscreen. - Star Wars:
- Almost immediately after the release of A New Hope (then referred to as just Star Wars), Ship-to-Ship Combat broke out between Luke/Leia shippers and Han/Leia shippers (as well as a small, but vocal, contingent of Luke/Han shippers.) Fanzines were flooded with letters of comment demonizing one or both of the men in favor of the opposite ship, and fans started pejoratively dubbing each other "Luke-lovers" and "Han-haters" in their letters and fanfiction. Han/Leia becoming canon in The Empire Strikes Back despite multiple Luke/Leia Ship Tease moments took the shipping wars to new heights, and the terms "Church of Ford" and "Cathedral of Luke" were coined to describe certain subsets of highly militant fans who obsessed over either Han or Luke to the point of zealotry. Come Return of the Jedi, the conflict had escalated from a shipping war to a full-on fan war over which male character was better, with Luke fans dismissing Han as a shady, immoral smuggler and Jerk with a Heart of Jerk and Han fans dismissing Luke as a wide-eyed idiot who didn't deserve to be the hero of the franchise. One can only imagine how bad it would have been if the Internet existed in the early 80s.
- Many Rey/Kylo fans demonize Finn, claiming that Finn doesn't actually respect Rey because he lied to her about being a member of the Resistance. They also tend to up-play his initial distrust or impatience of her into outright abusive behavior (going so far as to claiming him grabbing her hand and pulling her away while they were running was a sign that he doesn't value her consent: baffling in itself, when Rey and Kylo's first significant interaction was a torture scene. In some particularly infamous cases, this dips into outright racism. It doesn't help that John Boyega, Finn's actor, is openly not fond of the ship.
- Kylo Ren gets this a lot from Finn/Rey shippers after The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker made the Foe Romance Subtext between him and Rey canon. They often portray Kylo in fanfiction as a sadistic, abusive, fascist brat who is Entitled to Have You towards Rey, completely ignoring his Hidden Depths and his Heel–Face Turn and Heroic Sacrifice for Rey in Rise of Skywalker.
- The Finn/Rey shippers also locked target onto Rose, Finn's canon love interest in The Last Jedi, portraying her as a Clingy Jealous Girl who wants Finn all to herself, a Domestic Abuser who mistreats Finn, or literally killing her off for the sake of Finn getting with Rey. This died down after she was Demoted to Extra in Rise of Skywalker, which caused the hate she was receiving to be redirected towards Kylo.
- In the Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street movie fandom, Lucy Barker gets some serious hate from Sweeney/Mrs. Lovett shippers and Sweeney/OC shippers. The OC who somehow manages to become Sweeney's truest of true loves ever, even though (A) he was utterly devoted to Lucy throughout the movie and (B) Sweeney was very much anti-touch. One actually got Sweeney to denounce his love for Lucy and Mrs. Lovett after both were dead in favor of her.
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Poor poor, poor Carly Spencer. It's bad enough that fanboys want the actress who plays Carly (Rosie)'s head chopped off for replacing Megan Fox, but according to hardcore SamxMikaela shippers, she is ugly (yes, the Victoria's Secret Model is ugly), evil and the anti-christ who should be burned. It doesn't help that Mikaela is only mentioned in passing in the 3rd film, and it's implied that she dumped Sam because she only liked him for his involvement with the Transformers...
