- Alias: Sydney and Vaughn participate in this trope multiple times, including during season one's "A Broken Heart" while standing at the pier, and during season two's "The Counteragent" when Vaughn is dying from the virus.
- American Gods makes heavy use of this trope to illustrate the connection between Salim and the Jinn (which culminates in an extremely explicit and romantic sex scene). The camera lingers on their hands when Salim touches the Jinn's shoulder and the Jinn covers Salim's hand with his own, and again when Salim very tentatively reaches for the Jinn's hand as they ride the elevator to Salim's hotel room.
- Austin & Ally: Austin and Ally held hands many times even before they became a couple.
- Best Friends Whenever: Cyd and Naldo hold hands while hiding in the corner.
- The Boys (2019): Hugh Campbell is holding hands with his girlfriend Robin when superhero A-Train runs into her at Super-Speed, instantly liquefying Robin except for her severed hands which Hugh is still holding.
- Bridgerton: Given this is Regency England where physical contact between unmarried men and women is heavily meted, Simon and Daphne's hands approaching each other and touching while they stare at a piece of artwork is all the more significant.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Buffy and Angel do this a lot in Season 3 because they Can't Have Sex, Ever, and kissing gets them too worked up.
- "Hush": Willow and Tara's scene ends up with the girls holding hands and looking each other in the eyes, surprised by the strength of their combined magic. They end up doing this a lot; at first when "casting spells", then openly after they come out as lesbians. Earlier in the episode, Buffy and Willow do this for mutual comfort after losing their voices along with everyone else in Sunnydale, which leads to an increase in non-verbal communication, sexual or otherwise.
- "After Life": Willow and Tara hold hands to cast a spell, but Willow breaks free to finish the spell because she's much more powerful than Tara now. Spike holds Buffy's hands while waiting for Dawn to fetch antiseptic to patch them up. As the season continues, Willow and Tara will break up over Willow's abuse of magic, while Spike and Buffy start a Secret Relationship.
- "Once More, With Feeling" ends with a group song in which the Scoobies and Spike all join hands, then let go of each other, foreshadowing them drifting apart as the season continues.
- Call the Midwife uses this frequently between Sister Julienne and Shelagh Turner, who have an incredibly close Intergenerational Friendship.
- Doctor Who:
- The Doctor frequently grabs their companion's hand while running, either to lead them or just because they're having fun. The Tenth Doctor considers having "a hand to hold" to be an essential part of travelling the universe.
- The Second Doctor and Jamie do this a lot. It generally had something to do with them facing a "scary" situation. Like jumping off a very low ledge. Played for laughs in one episode where the Doctor reaches to take Victoria's hand without looking and ends up taking Jamie's by mistake.
- The Third Doctor and his companion Jo always hold hands while running... because actress Katy Manning was so short-sighted that, during the filming of their first adventure together, she ran straight into a tree. Called back to humorously in "The Five Doctors" where he and the Second Doctor are about to run away, so Three (apparently instinctively) grabs Two's hand. Two is not impressed, but gets pulled along anyway.
- It'd be more surprising if there was an episode of revival series 1 and 2 where the Doctor and Rose don't hold hands. It seems to be their preferred form of displaying affection and support.
- Amy asks Rory to hold her hand when they're trapped in a crazy alien-controlled TARDIS in the dark. Since they're already married though, it's hardly a unique occurrence.
- In "The Snowmen" Clara ends up pulling along the Doctor while fleeing danger, with the Doctor complaining that's always been his job.
- Twelve does this with Clara as part of their general Ship Tease, platonic or otherwise, despite claiming that he Hates Being Touched; they spend several scenes in "Hell Bent" holding hands. An image of the two holding hands while running from danger was one of the main publicity images used for Series 9.
- Played for Drama in "Hide". While searching a dark Haunted House for the Monster of the Week, Clara assures the Doctor that however scared she might be, there's no need to hold her hand. The Eleventh Doctor informs her it's not him holding her hand. An Ironic Echo occurs two seasons later in "Sleep No More" when the Twelfth Doctor asks Clara to hold his hand. She once again says she doesn't need to, but the fact is this time he does.
- Much like in "The Snowmen", River drags Twelve along by the hand in "The Husbands of River Song", not knowing who he is. Twelve once again protests that he's the one who does that.
- Fellow Travelers: In 1986, Timothy Laughlin reaches for his ex-lover's Hawkins Fuller's hand and holds it when they're standing outside of the venue of the fundraising gala. This is the first (and last) time they join hands in a romantic manner in public.
- Firefly: In the funeral scene in "The Message", Kaylee holds Simon's hand. It was an ad-libbed move on the actress's part, and Whedon loved it.
- Friends:
- Monica and Chandler did this a lot, even before they get together. Many scenes have them simply sitting together with their hands entwined. They end up Happily Married so it's not a big deal though.
- A cyber-instance of the trope happens to Chandler when he's texting with a girl who texts "HH" to him. His friends ask what it means, and he tells them it's cyberspeak for "Holding Hands".
- Fringe: In "Bad Dreams", Peter holds Olivia's hand in order to calm her during while she's in the dream state.
- Game of Thrones:
- In Season 6, Sansa Stark urgently grabs her brother Jon's hand while trying to convince him to fight again so they take back their family home and rescue their brother. When Jon believes Ramsay has their brother, he agrees.
- In Season 7, there is some seriously non-platonic (though secretly familial) hand-holding between Jon and Daenerys as he comforts her over the loss of her dragon and as she swears to be worthy of his allegiance as his queen. They end up falling in love. Continues into Season 8. Jon holds Daenerys's hand when, after learning the truth about his parentage, he tells Daenerys. Later, they hold hands when they discuss others knowing the truth as well: Daenerys believes the truth will end up leading to disaster while Jon believes he owes his family honesty over who his parents were.
- Gossip Girl:
- One episode has Blair saying to Serena (re: her non-relationship with Chuck), "Did you know it's not a real relationship if you can't hold hands?" Naturally, this is brought back later in the episode, when they've fallen asleep in his limo, holding hands in their sleep.
- Blair's comment is actually a callback to something Chuck said earlier in the season, about why they couldn't be together.Chuck: Think about it. Chuck and Blair going to the movies? Chuck and Blair holding hands?
- Chuck seems to have gotten over his aversion of hand-holding by the time they start dating, as they are often holding hands in season three.
- How I Met Your Mother: Ted wrote Marshall and Lily's wedding toast, but, because Marshall didn't want his younger relatives hearing any naughty stuff, Ted bowdlerises a story taking place at the bar so that Lily and Marshall sneak off to the bathroom to hold hands.
- In From the Cold: Anya and Faina holding hands is the first sign of their budding attraction.
- Interview with the Vampire (2022):
- "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self": Averted when Lestat de Lioncourt is unable to join hands with his boyfriend Louis de Pointe du Lac at the opera even though he really wants to, but the rampant homophobia in 1916 means that all he can do is brush his pinky finger against Louis' for a few seconds.
- "The Thing Lay Still":
- Louis and Lestat walk hand-in-hand from the balcony to the ballroom of the crowded Mardi Gras ball venue because they're coming out of their Transparent Closet.
- Later, Louis and Claudia hold hands in solidarity as a screeching Antoinette Brown is being consumed by the incinerator's fire. They both wanted her dead for a long time, so this gesture is their unspoken "We finally did it."
- At the end of Season 1, Louis and Armand clasp each other's hands in front of Daniel Molloy to make it clear to him that they're a couple.
- Kamen Rider OOO: "Reaching out with your hand" borders on Arc Words, since a lot of the show revolves around the concept of desiring things, in both positive and negative ways. It also has literal meaning, since Ankh is literally a disembodied monster hand. Hina gets Eiji and Ankh to hold hands with her several times, showing their bond, and in the finale Eiji ends up holding hands with Ankh in his disembodied monster hand form, symbolising their genuine friendship despite everything that's happened.
- Kevin Can F**k Himself:
- The last scene of the first season shows Allison and Patty holding each other's hands after Patty smashes a bottle over her own brother's head to save Allison's life, showing both that they're officially a united front again, and that they might be able to move past their argument from before.
- This gets a Call-Back in the Grand Finale. Allison and Patty sit on the porch of Allison and Kevin's destroyed house, and vow to "die alone together," joining hands once more. It's unclear if this signifies a Relationship Upgrade or a vow of lifelong friendship, but either way, it signifies that the two will stay together, come what may.
- Legion (2017): In "Chapter 22", Charles Xavier and his Love Interest Gabrielle stroll around the psychiatric hospital hand-in-hand during their Falling-in-Love Montage.
- Loki (2021): Sylvie and Loki doing it yields unusual results.
- She takes his hand when they are waiting for their doom on Lamentis-1, a moon that is about to collide with its planet, and he reacts in kind. The TVA immediately register a new timeline branch that is rapidly growing amidst an apocalypse, which was previously discussed to be impossible. Mobius theorizes them falling in love is enough to break reality.
- Sylvie realizes that she lacks the power to subdue Alioth by herself, so she takes Loki's hand and asks him to help her do it. They both close their eyes as they find strength within each other, and while Loki becomes an Instant Expert in Sylvie's core skill, enchantment, Sylvie then suddently starts using his skills (Hand Blasts and telekinesis) in the finale.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Beside all the eye-fucking, other significant Body Motifs for Galadriel and Halbrand are holding hands, in their case, symbolizing Sauron's desire to bind himself to Galadriel. On the sea, the save each other from drowning by at least three times by grabbing each other hands. After Halbrand accepts to sail for the Southlands and reclaim his birth right, he shakes hands with Galadriel. After revealing that he is Sauron, he easily grabs Galadriel hand and disarms her.
- Lost:
- Jin and Sun do this quite a few times to show affection. They even die while holding hands, and it shows as their bodies float away from one another.
- During Season Six, Claire and Sayid are shown to be doing this in a few blink-or-you'll-miss-it-moments, which could be due to the actors being friends in real life, or their common experience of being on the Man in Black's side and not quite "sane," to say the least.
- Claire also holds hands with Kate during three separate occasions in Season Six, including during their final present timeline scene, when they fly off the Island together in the newly fixed plane.
- Happens between Sawyer and Juliet as well, as he reaches out to hold her hand and she happily accepts, both of them believing they're finally getting off the island together.Juliet: I love you.
Sawyer: I love you back.
- Mad Men: This is a recurring motif between Don and Peggy, illustrating the different stages of their relationship over the years. At the end of the first episode, when she's his new secretary and still The Ingenue, she puts her hand on top of his (having been told basically that part of her job is flirting, and not knowing that Don keeps all of his affairs outside the office), and he removes it and tells her he's her boss, not her boyfriend. "The Suitcase" in season four is a whole episode about their relationship, and in it, Don also finds out that Anna has died and describes her to Peggy as "the only person in the world who really knew me," to which she replies, "That's not true." At the end of that episode, they're standing at his desk in a pose echoing the first one, and he puts his hand on hers. Lastly, when she finally responds to his Sink Or Swim Mentoring and quits in "The Other Woman" for a job at a rival agency, she goes to shake his hand, and he takes hers and kisses it instead, both of them visibly trying not to cry.
- The Mentalist:
- Bosco and Lisbon, they're only physical contact, just before he dies. They were in love.
- "The Crimson Hat": Jane and Lisbon tenderly hold hands after another attempt to catch Red John goes horribly wrong.
- Merlin (2008):
- A frequent motif between Guinevere and Lancelot. Lancelot turns Gwen's handshake into a chance to kiss her hand, they touch each other's hands through the bars of a grating whilst Gwen is being held captive, and when they are facing death together, they link their fingers together. Arthur notices that there's something between them when he sees that Lancelot has offered Gwen his hand to help her to his feet, and is rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb.
- Crops up in season five when Morgana is trying to induce Stockholm Syndrome in Gwen. Morgana spends a lot of time trying to hold Gwen's hands to comfort her (after tormenting her mercilessly) and the camera tends to linger on those shots.
- Mimpi Metropolitan:
- In episode 23, Melani holds Bambang's hand (while claiming he is her boyfriend) to convince the gossiping media that she is not in relationship with Alexi. Bambang, being in love with Melani, happily accepts it.
- In episode 48, when Melani finally admits she has requited Bambang's feelings, Melani holds Bambang's hand to show she is serious about it.
- Discussed in episode 54, when Pipin sees Bambang and Melani holding hands and is unsure about what it means, so she asks Prima, Alan and Juna about it (without mentioning any specific name). Juna shoots down the other answers and says that the two people must be in a romantic relationship. He's right, though considering the two people in context, he probably wish he is not.
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters:
- Cate and May hold hands at the end of "Parallels and Interiors", relieved that they both made it out alive, and May thanks Cate for not leaving her behind.
- "The Way Out" isn't at all subtle about trying to visually emphasize that Cate and her colleague in the flashbacks are girlfriends even after they unambiguously kiss — they do a lot of perpetual hand-holding.
- The Munsters: While spying on Lily, Grandpa mistakes her giving a palm-reading to her boss as a more romantic type of hand-holding, causing Herman to jump to conclusions and go to confront the guy.
- NCIS: In "Berlin", Tony and Ziva are back in the United States, Tony is driving, and Ziva talks about her father's lover, Orli. She mentions how things would have been different had her mother not found out about the affair, and that she [Ziva] would be a different person, and probably would have never joined NCIS. Tony tells her he should catch Orli before she leaves, and thank her, resulting in a heartwarming moment, and a Squee moment for the Tony/Ziva shippers. Ziva smiles at him and they hold hands. She is about to tell him something, when they get hit by another car. To make it even more heartbreaking, he reaches for her hand after the accident. She doesn't move.
- Tony: Then I should catch her before she leaves, and you know, thank her.
(Ziva smiles, he reaches for her hand. They entwine their fingers.)
Ziva: Tony, I...
Tony: Yeah?
( They are interrupted by the car crash)
- New Girl: In season one, Schmidt and Winston have a bet on who can "close" on Cece, and when the episode ends with Schmidt and Cece holding hands in bed, Schmidt insists it "feels a lot like closing."
- The Outer Limits (1963): The ending of "A Feasibility Study" has a group of human test-subjects holding hands as they commit suicide to prove to their alien captors that humanity is "unsuitable" to use as a slave-species. (Actually, the hand-holding spread the contagion that killed them, but the subtext is open and blatant..)
- Phil of the Future: Used for laughs. Phil and Keely try to hold hands after deciding to be a couple, but find it hard to get the logistics right.
- Pushing Daisies: Ned had a plastic wall with a rubber glove extending from the passengers' side built into his car, allowing Chuck to hold hands with him while driving without her dying, although it's sort of hard to imagine them holding hands while Ned was driving, given his hyper-cautious personality.
- Rome. The final shot of Season One is Eirene taking Pullo's hand as they walk through the countryside, showing she's forgiven him for killing her fiance.
- Sex and the City. Smith was holding Samantha's hand when she lost her balance and she fell down a flight of stairs.
- Sherlock: As a HoYay heavy show, the one instance when John and Sherlock hold hands does not go without lampshading.Sherlock: Take my hand.
(They join their handcuffed hands while running from the police.)
John: Now people will definitely talk. - Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod ends up holding the Golem's hand as it lies dying from the wound he inflicted upon it.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- "The Naked Time": Nurse Chapel clasps hands with Spock during her Anguished Declaration of Love. Unfortunately, this means that she passes on the disease she's been infected with to him.
- "Turnabout Intruder": Kirk is unwillingly body-swapped with his jealous, insane ex-lover. Spock holds "her" hand when the two are confronted with said ex-lover, who is in Kirk's body.
- Hand stroking and holding seems to be a very important part of Vulcan mating — akin to foreplay. It should be noted that this is distinct from the examples above, and is a very recognizable, possibly ritualized prelude to sex.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Offspring", Lal learns about the practice of humans holding hands and holds Data's hand.Lal: I learned today humans like to hold hands. It is a symbolic gesture of affection.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- Tales of the Gold Monkey. Jake Cutter sees his Love Interest holding hands with a New Old Flame in the back of his Grumman Goose, so he sends his co-pilot to get something from the cargo area to keep making them let go of each other.
- Teen Wolf: The coach starts scolding Scott pretty harshly in front of the entire class. Stiles sees that Scott's heart rate is starting to speed up which means he'll wolf out if he doesn't calm down. Luckily Scott's heart rate does start slowing down. Stiles notices it's because Allison, who was sitting behind Scott, reached out to hold his hand.
- When I'm Sixty-Four: The first time Ray tries this with Jim, it goes down like a lead balloon. On the second attempt, Ray's much more receptive.
- The X-Files: Mulder and Scully do this as a gesture of solidarity and support, notably in "Little Green Men", "One Breath", "Pusher", and the 1998 movie "Fight the Future".
