Destructo Nookie - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Sometimes Women are Just Plain Better than Men", and sometimes beds get destroyed

Sex is always better when you're breaking something.
— Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau

The relationship dynamic between Bob and Alice has always been stormy. Maybe they're in love but have been fighting lately over this or that. Maybe they're doing The Masochism Tango. Maybe they're enemies with chemistry and magnetism they're trying to resist. Maybe they're attracted to each other but seem capable only of Slap Slap Kiss.

One night — because it always happens at night — Bob and Alice get into a fight. But this is not just any fight; it's a knock-down, drag-out brawl where anything goes — literally. The location they've chosen for their battlefield breaks up around them as they display their rage physically. They may even actively be trying to kill each other.

Then at one point during the fight, their attraction — admitted or not — turns their rage into sexual passion. Amidst the broken timbers, falling plaster, rattling floors and shattered furniture, they can't get into each other's arms (and/or pants) quickly enough. They can barely keep their hands off each other long enough to clear a spot against a wall or on the floor to do the deed.

It makes an interesting precursor to the obligatory Love Scene and frequently leads to an Aw Look They Really Do Love Each Other.

Like Slap Slap Kiss, it's a safe bet to say that this almost never happens in real life; when it does, though, it's usually in dysfunctional relationships or cases of Domestic Abuse. In terms of Unfortunate Implications, Destructo Nookie can be just one rung below Rape Is Love on the Squick ladder. (Fortunately, the couple engaging in Destructo Nookie are both consenting to the act with each other).

Examples

Comic Books

Explicit in the background of a pair of minor characters in the Powers comic: a married superhero/ex-supervillain pair got together through these kinds of moments. Of course, readers only learn of this because Powers tends to bring its background characters to the fore to mix A Day In The Limelight with Monster Of The Week, meaning that having their backstory filled in involved the ex-supervillain husband (among others) being brutally murdered by the demon that gave the superhero wife her powers, and then her own suicide to keep the demon inside her from using her to kill further.
In the CrossGen comic Negation, Evinlea of the First switches sides from the protagonist's Nakama and seduces Emperor Charon of the Negation Empire. As they're both cosmic-powered immortals and Charon's been without sex so long that he's literally forgotten what it was like (and is thus a tad over-enthusiastic when Evinlea finally... reminds him), their moment of... mutual fulfillment... involves a destructive energy release that literally vaporizes half the planet they're having sex on. Pity that it was an inhabited planet, but they were the villains.
In the short-lived Penthouse ComiX line, every encounter between Captain Adventure and Hericane caused varying levels of property damage (up to and including a tornado-like trail of destruction if Hericane is worked up enough).
The captioned pic above features She Hulk and X-Men villain-turned-member-turned-villain-again-but-was-faking-it-the-whole-time, Cain Marko, The Juggernaut (bitch). She-Hulk, herself, vehemently denied doing the deed with Juggernaut. Turns out it was a (very pleased-with-herself) double from an alternate Earth that nailed him.
- This Troper could never figure out just why Dan Slott hated the fact that they slept together - He's a huge dude, she's a Huge dudette, he was on the side of the angels, why not?!
  - You mean apart from the whole He Tried To Kill Her Cousin Bruce Several Times thing?
  - And the fact it would be a very serious breach of professional ethics as she was his attorney at the time... You could protest that they had only just met too but at the time, She-Hulk's promiscuity made her the Marvel Universe's village bike... Dan Slott clearly thought that she still had taste, if not self-control. That or merely took issue with Chuck Austen making a character act horribly out of character.
The Hoffmanites of Buck Godot: Zap Gun For Hire have all their relationships like this. Courtship begins with high explosives and presumably progresses from there.
In The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Superman and Wonder Woman have sex, resulting in earthquakes, tidal waves and more forms of destruction on a massive scale.
In an issue of Daredevil set during the Inferno storyline, Kingpin gets into a fight with Typhoid Mary—whom he hired to kill Daredevil—that ends in sex. After the deed is done, the office is half-pulverized, half burned-down (from Mary's mutant powers), and they both think about how clueless the other is.
The Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck: Read these pages from "The Prisoner of White Agony Creek" and try to tell us this trope didn't happen.

Film

Mr And Mrs Smith - John and Jane Smith are trying to kill each other for plot-related reasons. But despite the fact that they're trying to kill each other and hate each other for the mutual betrayal, they still love each other. They're using guns, and when the bullets run out, they go hand-to-hand. They throw each other bodily all over their marital home, floor to ceiling, room to room (not necessarily using doors for it), and finally give into their desires. They make love on the single clean spot left on the floor, unconcerned that the house is completely destroyed, and that they have other problems.
- Which made for quite the awkward moment when a police officer knocked on the door...
  - Not the police. Their poor, confused neighbor.
A Streetcar Named Desire. That is all.
The only good part of the Duff feature Raise Your Voice is when the Goth Pianist stormed into Kiwi's room to scream at him that he's the loudest fucker in the whole damn school, in which Kiwi responded by pushing her into the wall, then she pushed him back, kissing him as they knocked over lamps, send all the drum sets flying, and otherwise causing a huge mess and quite a bit of noise. And it was friggin' hot
In an interesting twist of this trope, in the John Wayne boxing film The Quiet Man, he and his new bride fight so vigorously that they break the bed (It Makes Sense In Context) and end up not consummating the marriage on the wedding night. This trope is subtly invoked, though (this was the days of the Hays Code, after all), when a neighbor comes in the next day, sees the smashed bed, and shakes his head while muttering "Disgraceful!" in a disgusted tone.
- Ummm, no. It's the matchmaker who got them married (played by the fabulous Barry Fitzgerald who sees the collapsed bed, and his actual comment is "Impetuous! Homeric!" in an amazed tone...
Parodied in Shoot Em Up, in which Clive Owen and Monica Belucci have sex during a gunfight.
The sex scenes in My Super Ex-Girlfriend - one of them just breaks the legs of the bed. One sends it through the wall into the next door apartment. One ends up with a large shark thrown at it, but that's something of another story...
Done for pure slapstick in the film The Tall Guy, in which the central characters demolish a flat the first time they have sex. Not that there's any fight involved, they just lose control a bit.
The act performed by the possessed Dana Barrett and Louis Tully in Ghostbusters could be considered an extreme example of this trope, as it was supposed to bring about the END OF THE WORLD. Sex doesent get much more destructive than that.

Literature

Vampires in Twilight all have destructo sex; the resident hulk says he and his ice queen wife have broken multiple houses.
- Incidentally, having a human in the mix makes things unfortunately implicated: Edward breaks the bed and bruises Bella all over when they have sex for the first time.
The Dresden Files:
- In a twisted inversion, sex takes place to prevent destruction in Death Masks.
- Bob the Skull cheers Harry on from an unfortunately mistaken notion of Destructo Nookie in "Something Borrowed," the short story written for My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding.
One of the Aliens vs Predator novels (which may not be canon) indicated that the Predator females are even larger and stronger than the males and have a penchant for rough sex. One Predator reminisces about his lover getting carried away and hurling him across the room.
Subverted in Catch-22 with Yossarian and Nately's whore. First she's trying to kill him, then for a bit it really looks like it's going to be this trope... aaand then she goes for the knife. This troper, she will admit, was fooled.

Live Action TV

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Buffy and Spike get into a brawl in an abandoned house. At some point in the fight, they go from trading blows to kissing, and they end up having sex up against a wall before the floor gives out beneath them.
- And even that doesn't stop them - they just keep going and going...
Moonlighting - Dave and Maddie have a brawl that leads to throwing things and the destruction of Maddie's living room before they end up with an afterglow romantic shot in bed several minutes later.
In Burn Notice, Fiona challenges Michael to a fight when Michael refuses to talk about their relationship. Halfway through the fight turns into a fight/gropefest and a few minutes later it just turns into flat-out sex.
In the Star Trek universe, this is pretty much a Klingon's idea of a hot date (the violence being less "trigger" and more "foreplay")
- A broken collarbone during the wedding night is considered a sign of good luck for the newlyweds.
- Curiously, the same appears to be true of Vulcans. You'd think it was a match made in Sto-Vo-Kor, but the pairing's uncommon at best.
  - Only when they're in Pon Farr mode. Or getting married. Really.
  - It's more a matter of their mating urge is so strong that they'll kill anyone who tries to stop them. Vulcan marriages are actually arranged during childhood with the two forming a telepathic link that draws them together years later during Pon Farr.
  - There are unbonded Vulcans (Vorik from Voyager being an example) that are an example of Anything That Moves when Pon Farr hits. Hence Vorik's grab for Torres.
Star Trek Enterprise. Hinted at in "Babel One" when Captain Archer notices that Commander Shran is having a relationship with his Number Two Talas.
Shran: Andorian women are far more aggressive than Earth females. She made a…an overture. I had a choice — charge her with assaulting a superior…or mate with her.
An early episode of Roseanne has Dan and Roseanne's fight over a tacky souveneir clock degenerate into furniture-throwing. After they heft the couch out onto the front lawn, they lock eyes and go straight for the bedroom. The scene cuts to a steamy afterglow shot.
Happened a few times in Hercules The Legendary Journeys and Xena Warrior Princess.
There was a line in the TV series Wiseguy where the villain played by Tim Curry says to his wife "You call it fighting, I call it foreplay!".
Battlestar Galactica. Happens between Colonel Tigh and his wife Ellen in one episode, but it's made perfectly clear their relationship is seriously disfunctional (actually the writers specifically included the scene to show there was in fact some attraction between the two).
In Smallville Lana Lang temporarily gains super powers identical to Clark's. This means they can finally have sex without him destroying her. Earthquakes ensue.
- Then there's that time Clark and Maxima get it on in an elevator, rocking it.
Subverted on Desperate Housewives. Edie and Carlos have been having trouble with their sex life, and an argument appears to be leading towards this trope. She throws him against the fridge to make out and a pepper grinder falls on his head. He throws her onto the table and it collapses from their combined weight. Cut to them at the doctor's office, getting stitches for their injuries.
In the final season of The West Wing Democratic candidate Matt Santos and his wife destroyed an antique bed in a hotel room that they were staying in.
Weirdly enough, a dance routine on the sixth season of So You Think You Can Dance was intended to portray this. Also, it was freaking amazing.

Video Games

Parodied in /flirt emotes in World Of Warcraft, particularly the Draenei, Night Elf, Troll and Orc ones. Sadly, some of the Draenei Noodle Incident emotes were not present in the released version.

Web Comics

Jaegers in the Girl Genius universe seem to think this is just how it's done, since they consider being physically wounded by Von Pinn as not so much "Emphatic, murderous NO!" as "A bit of teasing."
- "Fight vit me, fightink gurl!"
Walky and Joyce's first night together. Lampshaded by the motel clerks who recognize their SEMME uniforms:
Clerk 1: They got "the stripe," man.
Clerk 2: So what? You mean like "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex?"
Clerk 1: More like "Man of Steel, Woman of Steel, Bed of Kleenex."

Western Animation

The Venture Bros, Brock Samson and Molotov Cocktease's entire relationship
- Hell, Brock has a rule against killing women and children... but such things as cutting out Molotov's eye or getting handcuffed to a bed in a burning building are nothing more than foreplay to them.
  - Handcuffed? Moltov pinned him there with knives, as well as attacking him with blades embedded in her heels.
  - I thought the eye thing was more of a real fight than sexual.
  - The two never seem distinct in their case, and the only time I recall it being brought up went like this:
  Molotov: You took my eye!
  Brock: After you took... my heart.
Mortal enemies Aeon Flux and Trevor Goodchild have been known to make out on the battlefield.

Music Video

The music video for Beyond Here Lies Nothin', by Bob Dylan

Real Life

The actress Elizabeth Taylor was known for enjoying "a huge fracas as a prelude to a heavenly roll in the hay," as the singer Eddie Fisher put it. This may not be all that uncommon in real life; as the main article says, the key distinction between this and (the much less realistic) Rape Is Love is mutual consent.
There is something known as a Love/Hate Relationship. This tends to involve lots of fighting, though it isn't always physical, and usually in the middle of the fight sex will get initiated. This pattern then continues repeatedly, with both people alternating between wanting to kill the other and wanting to rip their clothes off. Fortunately, it's usually in sync.
I heard that the Saora tribe has a taboo against making love when gods are at it - during earthquakes.
- Head, meet desk. I would think there would be better things to do during an earthquake.
  - Not really. Not all, or even most, earthquakes are the ones were everything crashes, burns and falls. Some you can notice the movement but not much more happens.
  - I feel the earth, move, under my feet...
  - Did The Earth Move For You Too?
I remember this story when Brad and Angelina first hooked up, they were in a hotel room, and people in other rooms said it sounded like someone was getting killed.