Stewie "Are you... You're getting some kind of sick, sexual thrill off this, aren't you?"
—
Family Guy
1. If it exists, it is someone's fetish.
2. If it has ever crossed your mind, someone out there has a fetish for it.
— An Internet rule sometimes known as
Rule 36.
In a nutshell,
Fetish Fuel is when something in a work isn't explicit nudity, sexual activity, or something else pornographic, but
still causes sexual arousal in the viewer.
Usually the cause is that this sets off something sexual for a viewer, particularly a
Fetish a viewer has, hence the name. But unlike
Nightmare Fuel, this can be intentional just as often as not. See
Fanservice and
Author Appeal.
Of course, from all that has been shown on the internet, it can seem that
anything can end up being
someone's fetish (see
Rule Thirty Six for more about this). So even if there is no actual sexual subtext in something, a viewer can still be turned on. Yet even this can still cause some
Squick moments for some people (like
Lolicon).
Of course, as varied as the tropes Fetish Fuel covers are, some of the most interesting kind are unexpected and often downright bizarre.
You readers will also notice that a lot of the following examples will be shows the tropers (and probably yourself) have watched as children. So yes,
Harmful To Minors is
Truth In Television, just not in the way the
Moral Guardians get worked up over. This usually doesn't manifest until the onset of puberty or adulthood, although many people report being vaguely aware of their fetishes during their childhood, or at least being excited by them even then. Also, be warned that one troper's
Fetish Fuel can be another troper's
Nightmare Fuel, and vice versa.
It can also sometimes accidently (or perhaps purposely) border on
Does This Remind You Of Anything.
A
Sister Trope to
Fetish (which is when someone on the show has a fetish),
Perverse Sexual Lust.
Compare with
Fanservice,
Freud Was Right,
Parent Service (Something deliberately sexy is thrown in, but for the grown ups. If it turns on the kids as well...),
Playing To The Fetishes (something meant to deliberately appeal to anyone turned on by these),
Fetish Fuel Station Attendant (a character loaded with common fetishes),
Not Safe For Work (what many of these pages can be).
Contrast
Fan Disservice (which is supposed to
not turn you on, with varying degrees of success).
See
Turn On Tropes for a list of tropes that are often fetish fuel.
These are some other common forms, that are not yet tropes:
Important: To avoid clutter, we kindly ask that any examples don't just mention a work and leave it at that. What specifically about the work turns you on, turned someone else on, or that you are just sure is someone's fetish?
Page Index
References to Fetish Fuel in works:
