Black Canary and Batman
Traditionally, when a woman and a man kiss, the woman tends to lift her leg to show just how hot and heavy it's getting or to demonstrate how much she trusts the man to hold her up.
Something of a
Discredited Trope nowadays, and mostly crops up only in parody, as often a man will do this to emphasize his effeminate side, or both people will do it at once. The
Trope Namer is the film version of
The Princess Diaries.
The origins of this trope actually date back to the
Hays Code, which required that women, in love scenes, at all times have "at least one foot on the floor" (in other words, no love scenes in bed). Thus,
Foot Popping. This may be an example of
Getting Crap Past The Radar if it's combined with
Something Else Also Rises.
See also
Stock Kisses.
Examples:
- As shown in the picture, Black Canary and Batman once indulged in this.
- Apollo of The Authority (a man married to Midnighter, another man, mind you) did the leg lift thing while they kissed once
◊. This notably inverts the One Head Taller rule as far as the two of them are concerned.
- In the video game GoldenEye on N64, the ending has James Bond and Natalya kissing, and she does this. It's sort of distracting because the whole credits sequence is just orbiting around them for several minutes.
- Gender inverted in the KateModern episode "The Hen Night", when Lee kisses Sophie. He is in drag at the time, though (because he's attending a hen night, so obviously he had to dress as a woman... well, It Makes Sense In Context).
- At the end of the Futurama episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" his wife does this as he kisses her, the Obstructive Bureaucrat does this earlier in the episode while kissing Fry.
- Scrubs did a gag in which JD and Kim both lift their legs while kissing.
- National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 had a scene where both the man and the woman stick one foot in the air as they kiss. Then each puts the other foot in the air at the same time. They just sort of hover there.
- Shows up in the Disney version of Hercules, where Megara, naturally, is not a victim of Pater Familicide but a Femme Fatale.
- In Heroes, Isaac's prophetic painting of Peter and Simone kissing under an umbrella in the rain has Simone with her leg up.
- Beautifully done in issue 3 of All Star Superman.
- Homer Simpson has done this a few times while kissing Marge.
- Done by Sam in the last episode of Danny Phantom when he finally kisses her.
- In X-Man comic from The Nineties, Nate Grey meets a mutant who uses her life-consuming powers to commit mass euthanasia. After they "hit it off", he takes her on a flying ride and kisses her. She lifts her foot. While flying.
- This Non-Adventures of Wonderella strip.
- Pushing Daisies has an Daydream Surprise from Olive Snook where she is literally swept off her feet.
- The most recent Sims 2 expansion pack, Apartment Life, includes a new kiss called 'Suck Face'; the receiver's foot pops if the interaction succeeds (regardless of the gender of said Sim).
- In the first Princess Diaries movie (the protagonist's life dream is to meet a guy, fall in love at first sight, and kiss him like this. She expressly specifies the foot pop. Subverted three times and then played straight.
- First try: Daydream sequence, when the protagonist is kissing the boy and she can't pop her foot because it's cemented to the sidewalk but used gum.
- Second try: protagonist and boy are hiding in a shed. kiss is attempted, foot gets caught in fishing net and she falls over.
- Third try: guy forces her into a kiss with paparazzi surrounding them. She starts to do this, then takes off her sandal and beats the guy over the head with it.
- Fourth try: protagonist is (finally) kissing the boy she likes outside, her foot pops properly. Her foot pops such that it turns on the fountains in the garden as well as all the lights, demonstrating that when one kisses the right person, foot pops go perfectly.
- In one episode of Happy Days, the boys watch a kissing scene involving an actress with whom they might have a chance to win a date and discuss how much they'd like to raise that foot up.
- In the episode of Living Single where Overton and Sinclaire finally Spit It Out, they both pop their feet when they finally kiss.
- Used in one ending of Lucas Arts adventure game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, in what is probably a throwback to the Hayes-code era adventure serials that inspired it.
- Truth In Television: The famous picture of VJ Day, Times Square ("The Kiss") [1] features a nurse Foot Popping with the sailor kissing her. It's funnier when you realize that the two are strangers, and the latter was kissing everybody.
- Gender-inverted (and mostly off-frame) in Excalibur, in a sequence where newly arrived alien hottie Cerise decides to try out kissing with Nightcrawler.
- Parodied in Chicken Little, right before the titular character leaves to go stop aliens from destroying the town; he grabs his friend Abby, the Ugly Duckling, delivers a rapid-fire confession of his love for her, and kisses her. Her foot pop is immediate and rather funny.
- Mork did this while kissing Mindy in the episode "Mork The Prankster".
- In Bully, once a certain level of suavity is achieved, the protagonist can kiss girls For Health(tm) and there will be foot-popping involved. Of course, then the leg-pop progresses to more intense making out, so it's not so much a "cute" move.
- This happens during Bob and Dot's first kiss in Reboot.
- First and only kiss, unless you count Dot kissing the fake Bob several times over the course of the My Two Bobs movie.
- Spoofed in The Naked Gun when Frank Drebin and his Love Interest do this at the same time.
