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"I understand that blowjobs are now a casual greeting among young people."
Tycho Brahe, Penny Arcade

Characters in contemporary fiction tend to have lots of sex, in lots of different varieties, with lots of other characters. So much so that even your typical Allegedly Dateless is liable to have as many sexual partners over the course of a series as most real people have in their lifetimes.note 

This is not particularly remarked on by anyone, as the amount of sex is considered neither unusual nor immoral. Outside of teenagers' parents, the taboo on premarital sex is all but forgotten, and if people who enter a relationship decide to wait before having sex it's a major plot point. It's also why being a Celibate Hero is a big deal.

Sometimes, of course, this turns out to hurt them emotionally or otherwise but that doesn't usually stop them from doing the exact same thing two weeks later.

Characters who do not conform to this trope can be expected to be repressed prudes, Holier Than Thou religious types, or (if male) developmentally-stunted Man Children.

While being near-universal today in Western works that deal with romance, especially sitcoms that often feature Girl of the Week characters whose sole purpose is to provide opportunities for plotlines about the perils of dating and sex, this trope is a fairly recent arrival and can sometimes create a lot of Values Dissonance for those who live in the numerous areas where sexual freedom still isn't recognized, as well as the older generations in the places where it now is.

This idea is most obvious in settings where the characters are ostensibly supposed to be "normal". If they're explicitly sex freaks, or it's a story that doesn't really involve romance, or the characters are consistently monogamous, as opposed to serially monogamous, the trope is far less relevant.

Hotter and Sexier probably has a bit to do with this, as well as the fact that more ambitious writers may be of the opinion that Sex Is Interesting. And Sex Sells, too.

For men, often ties into I'm a Man; I Can't Help It and All Men Are Perverts; whereas for women, it often ties into All Women Are Lustful and My Girl Is a Slut. Related to Eternal Sexual Freedom. The reason why everyone makes sure to say Of Course I'm Not a Virgin.

Contrast No Hugging, No Kissing, Nerds Are Virgins, and Let's Wait a While. Often results in Friends with Benefits and/or a lot of Three-Way Sex. The logical extension of this trope also tends to result in Sex Is Good.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • B Gata H Kei parodies and subverts this as part of its Aesop. The main character Yamada is an attractive and popular high school student who's still a virgin, and she's fixated on the idea of having lots of sex to the point where her goal is having 100 sex partners, but she's so clueless about sex, romance, and flirting that she can't even seduce her shy, awkward classmate Kosuda without making a fool of herself. She's Wrong Genre Savvy by trying to be The Pornomancer in a Hentai story, and when frustrated she assumes that everybody except her is having lots of sex when in reality everyone her age is going through the same kind of difficulties with the opposite sex.
  • For a harem series that wears its fanservice on its sleeve, High School D×D actually does a very good job of subverting this. While plenty of girls in Issei's harem would love to jump him if they didn't keep getting interrupted, this only starts after they've developed an emotional attachment to him. When approached by a girl without this affection (Rias desperately trying to make herself unmarriageable, Akeno trying to cope with her family issues), it feels so wrong even a grade-A pervert like Issei turns them down.
  • Hybrid × Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia justifies it by making it necessary for Kizuna to regularly perform Ecstasy Hybrid sessions with each Heart Gear to restore their Hybrid Count. If he doesn't, they can potentially die if they take damage while their HC is low. Later in the series, he learns a new technique called Climax Hybrid which enables each girl's Super Mode and their Immoral Weapons.
  • Interspecies Reviewers: Naturally, given the whole story is about the main characters going around reviewing brothels. Even the formerly-innocent angel Crim goes to a brothel on his own when the other guys are on a trip.
  • The general attitude of Kira and Rei's classmates in Mars (1996). The fact that Kira and Rei, who have been dating for less than a year, have yet to have sex is constantly brought up, partially because Rei was a known flirt. Compare them to Harumi and Tatsuya, whose sudden Relationship Upgrade is revealed to Rei and the audience by Tatsuya telling Rei they've already done it.
  • While not a Hentai series, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has quite a lot of sex scenes, some even unorthodox (like nose sex), though nothing truly explicit is ever seen.

    Comic Books 
  • ElfQuest: No elf would ever consider sex a bad thing (except possibly if it was with a troll which is how Winnowill ended up giving birth to Two-Edge). They have a version of marriage ("lifemate" is their term for "spouse") but sleeping with someone who isn't your lifemate is considered acceptable. Jealousy is considered odd, and the only elf who ever seriously got jealous of another left on his own to preserve the village's harmony. (Word of God has constantly reminded readers that the reason many of the characters' beliefs would be taboo to most humans is simply that they are not human, something that is easy to overlook.)
  • Fine Print: The Cubi and Cupids, along with human Lauren, all have frequent (often explicit) sex (making up most characters in the comic).
  • Rocky: The Swedish comic has this. Well, at least in the early years.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: In later volumes, this trope can take effect to the point where certain issues can act more as a chronicle of the sex lives of various characters than their adventures. It makes sense in some cases — such as a text in The Black Dossier which focuses on the exploits of a certain Miss Fanny Hill — but less so in others.
  • Love and Rockets: In Gilbert Hernandez's "Palomar" stories, the only characters who don't have lots of sex (shown on-panel quite frequently for a non-porn comic) are prepubescent children, the infirm elderly, and the mentally disabled. This is particularly remarkable in the Volume 1 stories which take place mainly in a tiny, isolated and somewhat conservative Central American village.
  • The Outsiders: A frequent complaint about Outsiders (2003) was that there was a lot of focus on the characters' sex lives.
  • Vanya the Lost Warrior: When not running from dinosaurs, fighting off predators, or trying to hunt for food, the few humans who manage to meet up in the prehistoric past spend their time having sex, simply because there's not much else for them to do.

    Fan Works 
  • The Overwatch Fan Fic Break My Heart, Break Your Heart, Mercy and Pharah are having sex. Mei and Zarya are having sex. Genji and Zenyatta are having sex. Soldier 76 and McCree are having sex, and 76 and Gabriel Reyes (and Reyes and Mercy) used to have sex before Reyes went off the deep end. Tracer and Emily have sex. Tracer and Widowmaker eventually have sex, and then them having sex takes up most of Chapter 62, which is called "Sex"...
  • League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Tempest Rewrite: It's based on an Alan Moore series, so of course this happens.
  • New Tamaran: With few exceptions, all young heroes are Friends with Benefits until they join a Battle Couple.
  • In New world, New life just about every chapter has sex in some way, shape, or form.
  • A side effect of having trainers start at the age of 15 in Shudo cross Modern Ash: The Trainer who Questions Humanity is the application of this trope. The consequences of this are fairly wide sweeping, including large amounts of unmarried single mothers.
  • The Victors Project: he Victors enjoy hooking up with each other. Along with several Teacher Student Romances (see below), other hook-ups include Ahenobarbus and Cora, Cashmere and Connor, (possibly Crystal and Connor), and Cecelia and Brutus, which results in a One-Night-Stand Pregnancy.
  • The Infinite Loops: The original loops, written by Innortal, used this extensively as a bunch of bored immortals stuck in time loops descended into hedonism. Later authors dialed it back significantly; there are still implications that most loopers are pretty sexually active, but nothing so explicit. In one The MLP Loops short, Berry Punch and Discord flirt by noting that while the fic is G-rated, that's only when the audience is watching.
  • In Junko's desperation to get the students to kill in The Ultimate Hope, she offers a motive that the students can lose their virginity to her if they kill. However, she forgets that she's talking through Monokuma, grossing everyone out. In order to counter her should she manage to find a supermodel to tempt them with, Makoto comes up with the idea of everyone getting laid now, which everyone agrees too, leading to most of the students having sex with each other.
  • So far hinted at rather than shown in Holly Potter and the Witching World, but the titular witching world is a very sex-positive society.
  • Vow of Nudity: Sex scenes are frequent and prevalent, especially with the protagonist herself, who can't seem to keep the side characters off her, be they heroic, villainous, or neutral.

    Films — Animation 
  • The early films of Ralph Bakshi had characters of all importance either having sex or feeling each other up in every scene.
  • This is certainly the case with King Dick, both major and minor characters are involved in coitus one way or another, whether or not they're in a private setting.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Subverted in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, where clearly everybody except the title character does have sex all the time - and not one of them are better off for it. The movie, which starts off firmly on the note of "man, Steve Carell is weird", slowly turns to the realization that he's the Only Sane Man in a world where people are so obsessed with sex that it usually clouds their better judgment.
  • Both this trope and All Men Are Perverts are subverted in 1970's What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, Alan Funt's R-Rated Candid Camera movie. He had a hippie chick ask hippie guys after a few minutes of conversation if they wanted to have sex. Just about everyone they showed said no.
  • The '90s film Kids approaches this trope as an expository/cautionary tale. The film implies 12- and 13-year-old urban Americans are commonly sexually active. While a statistically significant number are, and always have been, the large majority still certainly aren't.
  • Appears in Four Weddings and a Funeral, most obviously with Carrie who has had over thirty sexual partners and treats this fact as completely normal. More subtly, though, is the fact that Charles, in spite of being the Hugh Grant character archetype of a socially awkward middle-aged man, has had nine sexual partners. This easily puts him above the average number of sexual partners in a single lifetime, even assuming he never has sex with a different woman for the rest of his life.
  • Everybody except Gary who is the eponymous character of The Last American Virgin.
  • Despite common perceptions of the 1940's, the plot of Notorious is based on Alicia's history and experience with many men, something which is regarded as neither extraordinary or even noteworthy, and she and Alexander Sebastian sleep together before marriage (before even a proposal) after only a few weeks together.
  • No Strings Attached (2011): Played straight from beginning to end, due to its Friends with Benefits plot.
  • Woody Allen's Love and Death ends with Allen's character Breaking the Fourth Wall and sharing some of his musings about life with the audience. At one point he says, "It's not the quantity of your sexual relations that count, it's the quality. On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it."
  • Dante of Clerks is only in his early twenties and at least a bit of a loser being a pushover who works a dead end job. In a discussion with his girlfriend, he revealed he has had 12 different sexual partners which is considerably more than the average man in a lifetime. His girlfriend reveals that she's performed oral sex on 37 men, though this is not treated as a normal amount.
  • The climax (no pun intended) of Enter the Void involves the protagonist floating through a Love Motel, witnessing several acts, including gay, lesbian, and heterosexual ones. Additionally, almost every main character has intercourse during the movie.
  • Nightfall (1988): Multiple sexual encounters are shown on-screen, with several more implied. An impressive feat, given the lack of romance and female characters in the original story.
  • The Chatterley Estate in Young Lady Chatterley II. Everyone — owners, staff, guests — has plenty of guilt-free sex with multiple partners. About the only one to miss out is the Absent-Minded Professor who is too focused on his research to notice all of the sex going on around him, even when he walks in on a couple during the act.
  • Emmanuelle: Emmanuelle is told that monogamy is dead and is seduced into having sex with both men and women. Every film has many sex scenes, and virtually everyone does it. Emmanuelle herself must have had dozens of sexual partners in the films.
  • Princess Cyd: Discussed. Cyd is a big believer in this. Apparently her sex life is quite active judging by how much she thinks of this (though we only see her with one person in the film). Thus she's flabbergasted when Miranda says the last time she had sex was five years ago. Cyd tries to set Miranda up with Miranda's friend and even mocks her slightly once for this, although she immediately apologizes. Miranda replies that she finds more fulfillment in other things, and doesn't worry about it.
  • Caligula has many orgy scenes and even an infamous horse sex scene. This was because the film was co-financed by Bob Guccione of Penthouse magazine. One of the conditions for the funding was to tart the planned modest historical drama up into a flamboyant spectacle involving lots of sex (to promote the magazine). In re-shoots, some even more hardcore scenes were added. Some homosexual sex scenes were filmed, but cut on the orders of the financier.
  • Elizabeth incorporates a lot of sex into the plot. Despite Elizabeth I's reputation as the Virgin Queen, the film depicts her in a sexual relationship with Robert Dudley, and the end of it is representative of her Character Development. A sex scene between Lord Robert and one of her ladies in waiting leads to the girl dying because she's wearing one of Elizabeth's dresses that's poisoned in an assassination attempt. And of course Sir Francis Walsingham eliminates a powerful political enemy (Mary of Guise) by poisoning her after he's seduced her into bed.
  • Shortbus: All of the main characters have lots of sex. Extras get into the action too, with the orgy scene.
  • Love (2015): The film features an intense amount of heterosexual sex, as well as a threesome and homosexual kissing/oral sex.
  • Kaboom!: Most of the main cast are shown to hook up with someone.
  • Sappho: Downplayed as there are only four main characters in the film, but Sappho and Phil both have multiple sex scenes together. Then once Sappho falls for Helene, both of them have sex with her too.
  • In Mr And Mrs Smith, the beginning shows the titular duo in couples' therapy, and are asked how many nights a week they have sex. The fact that it's not every night indicates that their marriage is in trouble. The end scene, when they've resolved everything, has John telling the therapist to ask the question again, and he holds up nine fingers.
  • The 1999 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream is a Hotter and Sexier take, where the two sets of lovers are found by Theseus and Egeus having just had sex in the woods, and the ending shows all couples going to bed even though they're not married yet.

    Literature 
  • In Brave New World, the World State actually enforces this through conditioning. All citizens are expected to have casual sex constantly and if you don't (or get attached) they think you need treatment.
  • The myriad works of sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein, extrapolating the future from the '60s sexual revolution.
  • Shows up in Forever Amber, with a fair amount of Truth in Television since the story is set during the reign of Charles II in England, who was notorious for having a veritable harem of mistresses and illegitimate children. Ironically, his legitimate wife did not have any children, it's implied because she suffered mental duress and never fully recovered from the fact that the English court did not value monogamy. Further driven into the ground by the fact that Frances Stewart is the only woman who does not consent to become his mistress, and is punished with smallpox disfigurement shortly after marrying someone else.
  • The A'dem in The Kingkiller Chronicle; when Kvothe is trying to convince Penthe of the connection between sex and pregnancy by asking if she's ever known anyone to get pregnant who hasn't had sex in the preceding three or four months, she makes an incredulous remark to the effect of "Wait... people can go three months without sex where you come from?"
  • The Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward is a deliciously well-written example. The aforementioned brothers are often described as "being made for sex" or otherwise extremely attractive. And they make liberal use of said good looks and charm in order to score. Thankfully, though, at least most of their shagging is given good, even heart-warming reasons.
  • Mikael and Lisbeth in the Millennium Series. It's noted that Lisbeth has had over fifty sexual partners as of the start of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but more of Mikael's partners are depicted onscreen.
  • Conspiracy theorist Francis E Dec claimed in his rants that politicians and other "servants of Gangster Computer God" have "sodomite pool parties" where this happens.
  • Mostly Averted in The Dresden Files, in which Harry has (so far) had three girlfriends in forty-ish years with long dry spells between them. Murphy's been married twice, pre-novels, but during the course of them has an on-off thing with Kincaid and that's all. However, it's a Justified Trope for Thomas and indeed any of the Raiths, since they feed on lust.
  • There is a lot of sex in The Kingdom of Little Wounds. Syphilis is everywhere, thus averting STD Immunity.
  • Inda: Magic has eradicated sexually transmitted diseases and women can only get pregnant if they take special measures to do so. Likely because of this, most non-asexual characters tend to have sex pretty frequently, either with casual lovers or in pleasure houses with prostitutes.
  • The Egyptian: "Delighting" oneself with women is commonplace in its depiction of ancient Egypt. While the novel is tame by today's standards, a colleague of Waltari was shocked by the high amount of erotic content in it and tried to prevent the book's release.
  • In The Supervillainy Saga nothing is ever shown off camera but virtually all of the characters have active sex lives despite the main protagonist being Happily Married. He's sadly widowed and his wife turned into a soulless vampire by the second book. This results in him hooking up with two exes over the course of his mourning/attempts to resurrect her.
  • Also true in C.T. Phipps' Lucifer's Star universe where apparently the sheer monotony of space travel, cosmopolitanism, medical advances and completely effective birth control mean that it's a Free-Love Future with very little way in terms of sexual taboos.
  • Captive Prince: Veretians are horrified by the idea of illegitimate birth and heterosexual sex outside of marriage, but are perfectly willing to take same-sex pets and indulge themselves in public displays of gay sex. Akielons approve of virility and don't much care who you're attracted to but are shocked at the idea of doing it while someone is watching.
  • Kushiel's Legacy: This is the norm of D'Angeline society, with prostitution being a highly respected profession, and their religion's precept is "Love as thou wilt". Virtually Everyone Is Bi as well. It's thus considered rather strange if you don't do it, which is part of why the Cassiline Brotherhood is seen as overly strict and austere. Fantasy Contraception exists for D'Angeline women, but they never mention STDs. Note however that other cultures are far stricter.
  • Dustin Diamond wrote a scathing tell-all book about behind the scenes of Saved by the Bell called 'Behind the Bell'. Basically most of the stories involved the cast sleeping with each other. Sometimes swapping partners or doing group activities. He later came out to say a ghost writer exaggerated much of what he'd written.
  • The Teresa Knight Trilogy: Teresa has tons of sex across the books, starting just pages into the first one, while supporting characters also get into the act quite regularly.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Based on a True Story: When Tory goes out for a Tinder hookup, Ava complains about how much sex she (Tory) has compared to Ava. She then finds out that all three of her married friends are having affairs and they treat her as a prude for being surprised.
  • Charmed ran afoul of indulging in this trope with one of its lead actresses. Paige became quite the bed-hopper in Season 5 — frequently being seen with a different guy every episode and having her share of sex scenes. Rose McGowan got sick of filming these one-shot raunchy scenes with actors she literally just met and complained to the show runners — and this was toned down. Phoebe has quite a high sex drive too, but in her case the show does stress that she longs to find love and 'the one' (and she eventually gets broken from the endless string of failed relationships). Piper and Leo, the show's long running Official Couple, were actually rarely shown doing it (and ironically they had two babies during the run). In one episode where they're in marriage counselling with a soothsayer, he asks how many times a day they have sex.
    Piper: A day!? What are you, crazy? No wonder you [Leo] wanted to see this guy."
  • Game of Thrones: Combining HBO's penchant for Not Safe for Work content with the source material's mentality that sexuality is integral to the human condition definitely results in this trope. The show helped popularize the term "sexposition," many scenes are staged in Littlefinger's brothel, bastard children are common, and sex and sexuality are frequent plot points. Specific instances include: the adulterous twincest between Jaime and Cersei has vast implications for the entire continent, Daenerys' change in sexual position is her first major instance of Character Development, and Melisandre's magic is sometimes powered by sex. Even so, it's not without any consequences, since adultery, illegitimacy, and incest still have the stigma you'd expect. As the show's popularity exploded, and the actors had more clout, this lessened to the point that Daenerys usually sported a Modesty Bedsheet on the rare occasions she was shown having sex.
  • Red Dwarf: What somewhat influences Rimmer's attempt to become a crew member aboard the holoship is the requirement, in Kryten's words, "to have sex with beautiful, brilliant women, twice daily, on demand." It's a health rule.
  • Skins is perhaps the best example of this trope for depicting college students as an endless bacchanalia of sex and drugs.
  • This appears rather bizarrely in Big Love, where this attitude is held by multiple teenage Mormons. Word to the wise—just because everyone at BYU dates all the time does not mean they're having sex all the time.
  • Friends was notorious for this.
    • In the pilot episode, Monica has sex with a man on the first date, a plot point so controversial at the time that it had to be focus-grouped just to make sure that audiences didn't believe Monica to be overly promiscuous.
    • There was an episode where Phoebe was concerned that her boyfriend wouldn't sleep with her after a couple of weeks. Phoebe wonders what his deal is, and Joey suggests he's gay. It turns out that the guy was holding out so that Phoebe would essentially beg him for sex and tell him he didn't have to call her afterwards.
    Joey: And he's got you thinking this is a good idea? This man is my God!
    • In another episode one character mentions that another character's relationship "isn't serious" because they haven't even had sex yet. If you listen carefully, it's clear the studio audience isn't sure if the line is supposed to be a joke or not.
    • In an episode, Ross is going stir-crazy because he hasn't had sex in a few months.
    • In "The One That Could Have Been (Part 2)", alternate!Chandler mentions that he's had sex with two women besides fat!Monica, and the audience laughs at him. In the same universe, Fat!Monica is in fact a virgin until the events of that episode.
    • When Monica starts dating recently-divorced Richard, she becomes insecure because she and his ex-wife (whom he was married to for thirty years) are the only sexual partners he has ever had, making her reluctant to tell him how many partners she's been with. The audience never finds out the numbers (only that it's more than two), but Richard does and assures her that it's nothing to be embarrassed about.
    • The same episode has both Ross and Rachel reveal their "magic number" - for Rachel it is five (and she even names them all - her ex-fiance Barry is #3 and her Romantic False Lead Paolo is #4). We're clearly supposed to think this is a relatively small number even though - as noted above - Rachel is in her mid-twenties and has already had more sexual partners than the average woman does in her lifetime. Ross, meanwhile, has had three sexual partners - he doesn't name them but we can infer that the first two are Carol and Julie.
  • Averted in Pushing Daisies — the two leads are in a very romantic relationship where they Can't Have Sex, Ever due to an inability to touch each other, but it's mentioned that they have developed certain ways to work around this limitation. However, it's possible that neither of them ever had sex beforehand; Ned says that he had "intimate relations" with a previous girlfriend, but a) may not have meant actual sex and b) may have been lying, while we're never given any evidence that Chuck had any previous romantic or sexual entanglements of any kind. Ned, at least, can be explained because he has the power to bring anything dead to life with a touch... and once had intimate relations on a bearskin rug.
    Chuck: It didn't.
    Ned: It did enough to be distressing.
  • The television show (made for a gay and lesbian audience) Dante's Cove absolutely owns this trope. This whole town is built on attractive gay men and attractive lesbians having hot sex all the time. How the hell the residents of the town find the energy to do anything else is anybody's guess. In season one, of the first fifteen minutes of episode one, ten of those minutes are guy-on-guy action. Then there's the lesbian scenes. Then there's the villain who's after one of the heroes. It's ridiculous!
  • On Seinfeld, of the four main characters, the protagonist usually has a Girl of the Week; his friend, despite being depicted as a "loser," has one almost as often (and was engaged, and on the pseudo-reunion show depicted on Curb Your Enthusiasm, he has apparently been married in the interim); and the remaining two main characters Really Get Around, one being the Trope Namer for Kavorka Man. This was something groundbreaking at the time: typical sitcoms were either workplace-centered or family-centered; no one had ever really done a show about the lives of adults without long-term family plans or commitments before. When the series finally ended, a group of fans sat down and re-watched the entire run beginning to end over several days. Over the course of the series, Jerry alone had something like 72 sexual partners.
  • On How I Met Your Mother:
    • Ted views himself as in a sexual dry spell after going five months without sex, until he finds out his current girlfriend, Stella, hasn't had sex for five years. He actually has a mini-freakout over this, since when he and Stella do have sex, he's worried it will be her "virginity: the sequel."
      Lily: God, if I went even one year, I would be out on the street selling it for a nickel.
    • Of course, with Barney around, it's easy to feel pretty darn chaste in comparison.
    • Lily has been in a committed relationship with Marshall since she was 18 and they are currently married, so it's not like she's a Good Bad Girl. It is implied a few times, however, that while she was Marshall's first, he was not hers.
    • Zigzagged by Marshall, who replies to Barney bragging about the list of women he (Barney) has slept with by proudly saying that he also has a list of all the women he's slept with: "It's called my marriage license." However, he and Lily did the math once and determined that the two of them get it on more often than Barney does, even if all his bragging about who he's done it with is true.
    • Also zigzagged by Barney, as it's occasionally implied that he strikes out far more often than he reports, for instance when Quinn points out that she sees him in the strip club almost every night.
  • In an episode of Just Shoot Me! Finch, a disturbed, annoying pervert who repels women, is upset that he hasn't had sex in six whole months. Kevin, standing right next to him, then remarks "My life is bad".
  • Frasier:
    • A common plot is for Frasier to meet a woman, go on a date with her and end up in bed, all in a single week (although, due to the hijinks that inevitably ensue, things rarely go as planned once they get there). It's a very common plot. Made all the more jarring by the fact that Frasier is depicted as a stuffed shirt (in other words, not the kind of person you'd think would get a lot of action), and often complains about his bad luck with women.
    • There are also plenty of jokes about Roz's very healthy sex life — though this is really more of an inversion since the implication is that the other characters don't sleep around nearly as much as she does.
  • Both incarnations of Melrose Place are built on this trope; it's a large part of the series' Guilty Pleasure appeal.
  • There's a rather odd incident in CASUAL+Y where nurses Bruno and Kelsey organise a get to know you exercise involving asking their colleagues how many sexual partners they've had. While they boast about their huge number of conquests, Abs, one of the few staff members in a steady relationship, replies without a hint of embarrassment that there have been three, prompting them both to crack up laughing at what they consider a pathetically small number.
  • Arrested Development has its lead character, Michael Bluth, treated as being seriously abnormal for only having had four sexual partners. This is lower than the average, technically, but a glance at the Kinsey Institute statistics shows that he's far from the freak that Gob keeps implying, particularly as his numbers become above average only a few episodes after Gob starts pestering him about it.
  • Deputy Enos Strate on The Dukes of Hazzard was identified as the only virgin in Hazzard County.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer plays with the trope. In the seven-year series, Buffy herself has a total of four sexual partners (Angel, Parker, Riley, and Spike) and Satsu in Season 8, Willow has three (Oz, Tara, and Kennedy) and Xander has two (Faith and Anya, not counting demonic seductions with intentions on his life). Of those, only Parker and Faith were one night stands, as both of them abandoned the regular character they slept with after they were finished; all other relationships evolved out of long-term friendship and/or dating (or loathing, in the case of Spike) and each involved approaching the subject, following through, dealing with the aftermath, and all the appropriate emotions that come with. Despite all this, however, the characters treat each other and themselves as though they were playing the trope straight, complete humorous "Has anybody here not slept with anybody else?" situations when they explain their past relationships to somebody new. At the same time, it's implied that within some formed relationships, sex was plentiful. Namely: Willow and Tara; Buffy and Riley;note  Spike and Buffy; Xander and Anya. Appropriate, considering they were mostly young adults during their college years.
  • Sex and the City. It's the whole point of some of the main characters!
  • Scrubs provides pretty constant examples of this trope with doctors and staff constantly hooking up. One episode has J.D., Turk, and Dr. Cox bring up how many women they have slept with, (9, 12, and 18, respectively) and each number is above the Real Life average. J.D.'s number is still implied to be really low, though. J.D. proceeds to have sex with 6 more women as the series progresses.
  • Grey's Anatomy. There's an episode about a syphilis outbreak among the staff, and two of the main characters caught it.
  • Gossip Girl. If there's an episode where no one has sex - well, actually there are no episodes where no one has sex. Even if no one's dating anyone there's always a hooker somewhere.
  • The Secret Life of the American Teenager, to an extent that's nearly comical considering the central premise is that the main character had sex, got pregnant and it screwed up her life. You'd think that the characters might interpret this to mean that having sex all the time isn't a particularly good idea. Of course, they are teenagers.
  • 30 Rock generally plays this straight, though not to as much of an extreme as many of the shows on this list.
    • It was subverted in the Season 5 opener where Liz's boyfriend Carol, a pilot, freaks out over the licentious life he leads of dead-end sexual relationships with women in random cities all around the world, declaring that he's had so many of these torrid encounters he can't even count them all. He ends up admitting that the exact number is six- comically low by TV standards, but about an average number in Real Life (where the average is between four and eight for men), maybe even low for an attractive man like Matt Damon, who plays Carol.
    • Of the regulars on 30 Rock, only Jenna and Frank really fit the trope, as Liz doesn't like sex, Kenneth is a prude, Lutz couldn't get a date if his life depended on it, Pete's very married, while Tracey notably pretends to fit this trope because he thinks people expect it of a celebrity but secretly has never actually cheated on his wife. Jack gets around a little, but probably less than you'd expect for a single man who's rich, powerful, and looks like Alec Baldwin, although it appears he settles down when he gets married. Jenna, however, makes up for everyone, as nearly every comment she makes about her life involves a reference to some bizarre sex act, and she seems to only get worse when she finds a committed partner. Meanwhile, Frank's a lothario with the older women on the show's staff.
  • Played with in many ways (straight, zigzagged, and subverted) on Married... with Children, depending on the characters. Nearly all the characters think and talk about it more than they would in real life, but as for actually having it...Al take solace in "Big 'Uns" magazines and dirty movies, but usually doesn't want to have sex with his actual wife Peggy, who'd be perfectly happy doing the deed with Al more often (and it's implied or outright stated that she had some wild years in High School); ironically, women tend to hit on him a lot, but he always turns them down out of a loyalty to Peg that even he doesn't understand. Bud tries to have sex as much as possible, but his lack of success means he usually ends up scheduling masturbation, although it seems he's often the choice for girls who want a last fling of some sort. Indeed, for someone made fun of as a perpetual virgin who repels women, Bud has had a great deal of sex partners, including in at least one case two in a single episode. The trope is perhaps played the straightest with Kelly, who regularly does the deed with assorted sleazebags and degenerates and has a "little black book" the size and weight of a phone book. Marcy routinely had very kinky sex with both her husbands (and a man named Jamal before them). Other than that, the trope seems played straight with every single adult.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • The promiscuity of Captain Kirk qualifies for this trope if one regards kissing the space-babe of the week as shorthand for sex during an era of more conservative media standards. Much of the rest of the primary crew also had their moments of shore-leave on occasion. The ironic thing is that this only happens in a few episodes, but it's notable that it happens in just about every episode that it can, like the ones where they aren't dealing with Klingon or SpaceX, with the exception of Space Hippies.
    • In the earliest episodes, Yeoman Janis Rand was being set up as Kirk's love interest, which would have alleviated this, but then her character got Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and wasn't seen again until a cameo in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  • Invoked in the Law & Order episode "Mad Dog"; a convicted rapist was granted parole and set free about two months ago, and lawyer Jack McCoy now thinks he's guilty of another rape. So he questions him. One of the questions is, "When was the last time you had consensual sex with a woman?... You were released from prison more than two months ago, the opportunity must have presented itself." It is possibly worth noting that the episode in question gradually involves McCoy going too far in his zeal to see the rapist convicted once again and that this question can be seen as McCoy reaching for reasons to have him re-arrested.
  • All of Californication, to the point of it being rare for Hank to meet a woman and her to not be in bed with him in a matter of hours.
  • Sirens (UK) treats the guys in uniforms like they're rock stars and generally one (if not all of them) will have sex during an episode.
  • Torchwood. Yes, it's a gritty sci-fi spin-off of Doctor Who. Nobody said that should mean there shouldn't be tons of sex.
  • Nashville: It's a country music drama where characters tend to sleep with one another before dating or going steady.
  • Orphan Black: Except for Helena,note  the members of Clone Club all fit this trope to a T.
  • In a Happy Endings episode, Penny has to wear a helmet because she has a concussion. She mentions that because of this she hasn't been able to have sex with her new boyfriend and that it's really given them a chance to connect better. In the next episode, she says that they've been dating for ten days.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003) needs a chart to keep track of all of this. Well, President Roslin did say they needed to go someplace safe and start having babies, or words to that effect... However, only two couplings here actually result in a child.
  • Nip/Tuck: The show featured numerous sex-focused plots. Pretty much every character has either had sex, an affair, a threesome, or a one-night stand at least once onscreen. Though Christian takes the cake due to being The Casanova. Numerous kinks, some saner than others, were also depicted.
  • Lip Service: There's at least one sex scene each episode (often multiple ones). As you'd expect, they're nearly all lesbian ones.
  • Defiance: There is a lot of sex in the series. Many characters get laid at least once on-screen (not all that explicitly). There's a lot of diversity as well-at least three of them are bisexual, there's also an alien lesbian couple, a polygamous human woman, and various interspecies pairings (both human/alien plus also some alien/alien).
  • Killing Eve: It's constantly discussed that Villanelle has a very high sex drive, hooking up with lovers of both sexes easily; she managed to pick up the two girls on her way back from Aaron Peele's house in the middle of the night in rural England. She also had previous relationships with Nadia (who now has a new boyfriend, Diego) and Anna. Eve makes an effort to be faithful to Niko, although she's always fantasizing about Villanelle, but the minute they break up, she sleeps with Hugo. Carolyn has been married three times but had relationships and flings with men all over the globe, including many in Russia alone, including Konstantin, who himself is married.
  • Brave New World: In New London, casual sex and orgies are the norm, so it's justified. We get to see a fair amount of this.
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand:
    • Sex is shown in every other episode, with plenty of Sexposition to rival Game of Thrones. Here it is something of a plot point in that Batiatus's ludus rose through the ranks because Roman nobles enjoyed the Beautiful Slave Girls and wanted to sleep with them.
    • There are several orgy scenes, and the show runners hired a professional company specialising in sexual gatherings - and told them to do whatever they wanted on screen. They assumed the network would cut anything that was too much, but the majority of what was shot ended up in the episode.
  • Normal People quickly got a reputation for devoting lots of air time to the sexual lives of its protagonists. There are five sex scenes in the second episode alone, and the episode's climax has Marianne offering to do it in an abandoned house. Of course a big part of Marianne's insecurity is wondering if Connell actually loves her or just enjoys sleeping with her.
  • A French Village: Every main character pretty much gets at least one sex scene, or more often multiple ones, to varying degrees of explicitness, along with minor characters.
  • Sexify: A Sex Comedy series revolving around a software project meant to aid in sexual pleasure for women, most episodes feature at least one scene with either sex or masturbation, often with characters who are naked.
  • The L Word: The reason Alice created The Chart. It connects everyone they're connected with by who had sex, and is very extensive. All of the main cast have multiple sex scenes and relationships across the series, along with a number of minor characters too, all traced by this. Each episode shows at least one sex scene, and often more.
  • Dark Desire: Basically all of the cast have sex (Alma and Darío most), with every episode having at least one sex scene.
  • She's Gotta Have It: Nola has the most, as the protagonist, though all of the main cast get their fair share of sex scenes (often not only with her either). A few of the minor characters get them too. It's that kind of series.
  • Sex/Life: All of the main cast are very sexually active (though a couple had been in a sexual rut at first, this quickly changes). Most episodes have multiple sex scenes, including flashbacks to the past (sometimes sex montages from then).
  • Dates: All of the protagonists get laid, going to bed with the dates they just met too. It's not actually more than one time for anyone except Mia, but still seems like a lot as a result of the short time frame.
  • Will & Grace would vary how much any given character is doing it, but sex is on all of their minds most of the time. One episode has everyone counting how many partners they've had and Grace is unsure whether 23 is high or low. We don't hear Will or Jack's numbers but Will insists that's a lot of sexual partners while Jack disagrees.
  • Justified on the series Lost Girl, as the main character is a succubus who lives on sexual energy.

    Music 

    Podcasts 
  • About everyone in Kakos Industries has incredibly fulfilling and adventurous sex lives all thanks to submitting themselves to the seductive embrace of Evil.
  • Metamor City quite often plays on the erotic, and several of the groups and societies in the city are very sexual — the Psi Collective devote their society to breeding, the androgynes have very high sex drives thanks to the Curse of Metamor, succubi and incubi live openly in the city, and the Church of Hedonism is... well, the name says it all. For the most part, there's not a very big stigma around sex, especially since there are magic spells to hinder unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and the major religions seem to be generally sex-positive too. So people are, if not encouraged to have a lot of sex, at least not discouraged from it.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • From the Attitude Era up until the PG switch in 2008, the WWE locker room appeared to be extremely sexually active. Vince McMahon seemed to have a fresh parade of Divas willing to have affairs with him backstage. Several women in WWE had their first big storyline as part of an affair with Vince - Trish Stratus, Stacy Keibler, Dawn Marie, Candice Michelle etc.
  • Edge named himself the 'Rated R Superstar' in 2006 and engaged in a live sex celebration with Lita - which was interrupted by Ric Flair. They tried to have sex in the ring more than once again after this.

    Video Games 
  • In Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, the main character is a creepy, average-looking loner with a pet rat and yet nails several hot blonds over the course of the game. In fact, only one non-villain, man or woman, isn't openly perusing him.
  • Culpa Innata, where it's fashionable to be promiscuous. In the Union, "nuptial agreements" (what they call marriage) are illegal. Any immigrants that want to become Union citizens must first annul their nuptial agreements before being considered eligible to even apply. Family units are non-existent in the Union, with kids being raised by specially-trained people, leaving people to make as much money and have as much guilt-free sex as possible. Additionally, anyone who displays even an ounce of jealousy is considered to be a less than ideal Union citizen, as stoicism is considered a virtue there. An applicant for citizenship can be rejected for being too emotional. Not so in the so-called Rogue States (e.g. Russia, India, China), who still cling to "antiquated" traditions.
  • If you want to, you can make a town like this in The Sims. Except it's called "woohoo". The Sims 3 runs with it, adding the possibility of having "woohoo" in places like elevators, hot tubs, and treehouses. There's also a Lifetime Wishnote  to woohoo with five different partners in five different locations.
  • A Dance with Rogues. The Princess can have sex with anybody. Well, most anybody, but still...

    Visual Novels 
  • In Da Capo II, from the moment you tell robot girl Minatsu you're in love with her, the sun shall not set three times before you have sex with her.
  • Played with in Double Homework. The protagonist can sleep with all the important girls in his life, and even Henry can probably get around. However, the whole summer school class is put together out of a concern that young people aren’t having enough sex.
  • In Nukitashi, debauched sex is legalized and mandatory in Seiran Island, thanks to the perverted laws. Everyone is expected to do it in public regardless of the place or time. It's also forbidden to stick to a single partner. Infractors who don't indulge in promiscuity get arrested by the SS or SHO and punished with even more sex.
    Web Comics 
  • Big Break (2019): Once a comic, most of the adult main characters are shown having sex either with each other or with someone else.
  • Blood Bank deals heavily with the sexual antics of bourgeois vampires: Art are all but outright stated to be sex slaves, most upper-class vampires have BDSM playrooms, and feeding on humans seems to be just as much about dominating them sexually as actually drinking their blood.
  • Curvy can't seem to go more than a page without someone, somewhere having sex. It's deliberately ludicrous.
  • Dicebox is set in the future. Being that the main (married) characters tend to have sex with other people and still have a fairly good relationship, societal norms have changed a lot.
  • On average, at least one strip every week in Ennui GO! will show at least two adult characters engaged in sex (or at the very least stripped naked). Word of God states that the middle school age characters also have sex, but for obvious reasons this is never shown; since the younger characters have become the focus of the series in part 2, this aspect of the comic has faded.
  • This is the raison d'être of Ménage à 3. It was initially averted by Gary, who dreamed of joining this club. It didn't actually help much when his life underwent a dramatic shift in the first few strips, from living with two gay guys (whom he hadn't recognised as such) to having a practical harem of women around who were all very attractive, mostly very comfortable with their sexuality, and in some cases bisexual, and who were mostly living the trope. Eventually, Gary gets to have sex with several attractive women, numbers depending on your definition of "sex" (and indeed of "women"). Not only does he no longer avert the trope, but he's also one of the most sexually successful characters in the comic.
  • The Order of the Stick has this to a degree; most members of the main cast and a good chunk of the villains have been shown post-coitus at some point. Rich Burlew puts it this way: "it's a world with 100% gender equality, a known afterlife, clerics that can cure any disease, and rampaging monsters around every corner."
  • Oglaf, natch, since it's a porn-comic-turned-sex-comedy. The entire world is pretty much a free-love society, Everyone Is Bi, and only once does this lead to children (when it was actually two men in fact).
  • Pixie Trix Comix is a sequel to Ménage à 3 (above), and while it perhaps doesn't quite match its parent comic for merry-go-round promiscuity, there's no denying that every character in the comic is quite sexually active. Its Gary counterpart is Aaron, a hopeless Geek who starts the comic as a virgin, but his virginity doesn't last as long as Gary's, and he ends up in bed with various partners.
  • With all the sexual antics of the various heroes and villains of Supermegatopia, it's pretty obvious that all the conflict is really a city-wide form of fetish foreplay.
  • Mr. Boop: Alec and Betty are like bonobos in that sex is their primary method of conflict resolution.

    Web Animation 
  • Rune Adventure: The male protagonists and the female protagonists (all of whom are moms) have continuous sex with each other in every episode.

    Web Original 
  • Alternate History's Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline has the adoption of free-love social mores in America as a long-term consequence of a communist revolution in America. However, it's not entirely clear exactly how much sex constitutes "lots of sex" in this case; an in-universe discussion commenter castigates the in-universe version of Public Enemies for depicting so many threesomes, saying he can see "that sort of thing happening in the fifties, but not the thirties." It's also noted by a present-day member of a web forum from America that this is apparently exaggerated in-universe outside of America, at least with regards to how widespread it it; in something of a reflection of contemporary social mores in modern America in OTL, it's noted that while the major cities on the East and West coasts such as New York and Los Angeles tend to be very socially liberal (and thus more of a reflection of this trope), the Midwest and the South, while still perhaps more liberal than they are in real life, still tend to be more socially conservative about these sorts of things.
  • Averted in The Onion's Immoral Reality Show Sex House, where only Frank and Erin and later, Frank and the therapist have actually had sex.
  • Probably half (or more) of the content on Texts From Last Night are about hooking up.

    Web Videos 
  • Channel Awesome. But what do you expect from a site that gave us four episodes of "Spooning with Spoony"?

    Western Animation 
  • Futurama. Allegedly Dateless characters like Fry and Leela still have many sexual partners throughout the show. (Fry more than Leela.) Including each other. Then there are more liberated characters like Amy and Bender, who aren't really chastised for their gettin' around. Even the Professor gets some, although this is played for squick. Everyone has lots of sex on Futurama. Except Zoidberg. In the fifth season, Zoidberg's body has sex (while occupied by a different personality), and in the seventh season, he acquires a girlfriend with no sense of smell. He claims they've had sex, but it was established back in the second season that sex is fatal for a Decapodian - so perhaps it depends on what the definition of "sex" is.
  • Everyone in Archer with each other. It gets creepy most of the time considering Cheryl's choking fetish, Krieger's Cloudcuckoolander behavior and Malory's... well, Malory.


 
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Alternative Title(s): Everyone Has Lots Of Sex, Everybody Fornicates

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This trope is the central theme of Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, the play which will be performed for King Charles II and the French ambassador, as Wilmot explains to his theater manager, giving a moment of concern to one of the actors.

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