Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
Covert sexual symbolism and repressed desire is everywhere. Sometimes also known as "Paging Dr. Freud..."
Not only is everyone in purgatory — everything is about sex.
Two Heterosexual Life Partners who spend a lot of time together and enjoy each other's company? They're really gay. Damsel In Distress being mentally tortured by a sadistic villain? He's really raping her. Two girls smile at each other? They're really thinking about having sex. Some dude gives a pencil to an attractive young lady? What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?! Overprotective Dad has reservations about letting his daughter date? Instant Squick! Brother and sister hug? It's symbolic of incest. Biblical patriarchs, creepy father figures and guys who just don't get along with their dads? It's about sexual rivalry between sonny and daddy.
What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic? You heard Freud.
It's annoying, but there is an up-side for the writers. A fan-fabricated Subtext can attract as large and loyal a Periphery Demographic as real Subtext — just ask the fans of Kim Possible.
The Trope Namer is Dr. Sigmund Freud, a Viennese doctor who proposed a theory of human behavior and development based on the idea that all our desires are ultimately expressions of instinctual, biological desires. Like, oh for instance, sex. Poor Freud has been flanderized beyond belief, but such is the price of fame. Died of cancer from smoking cigars. There's also the matter of his having assumed that the issues felt by his Gilded Age upper-middle/upper class, mostly female Viennese clientele were universal to all humanity...
Some say Freud was right about something else, too. Not to be confused with All Psychology Is Freudian. Frequently leads to Accidental Innuendo.
open/close all folders
Examples
General
- There's a sizable contingent of Christian critics in the United States who will automatically assume that virtually any story with a generic message of "accept others for who they are" or "be tolerant of people who are different from you" is attempting to promote acceptance of homosexuality.
- Any character with a BFS, BFG or a Really Big Gun is Compensating For Something. It can be intentional (as with the Anvilicious Lesbian Deagle example on the Really Big Gun page) or unintentional, but these days it's almost always lampshaded. If the characters don't notice, the fandom definitely will. Just ask any Final Fantasy VII fan about length versus girth and you'll find out.
- There's a mention of something to this effect in the Dragaera book Dzur. After experiencing pleasant feelings from his new Empathic Weapon, Vlad notes that he finally understands why his friends who possessed similar objects were always compulsively stroking them.
Anime and Manga
- One Piece fans have probably realized that Franky's hair becomes flaccid when he runs out of juice. Quick refill and it jumps right back up.
- Fans have frequently noted a similarity between the monsters in Blue Gender and, um... well, see for yourself
 ◊.
- Referenced in Welcome To The NHK. Misaki tries to psychoanalyze Satou's dreams. Satou purposely gives her... well, we'll just quote it:
Satou: There was a robust snake that dived into the sea, then, stabbed an apple with a broadsword, and shot it with a large, black imposing gun.
- On top of the usual Studio Gainax mind screwing, FLCL has more sexual symbolism and Double Entendre than you can shake a suspiciously phallic baseball bat at. At times, it's like What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic with sexual symbols instead of religious ones.
- Like the moment in episode 5 where a conspicuously phallic... gun hammer, forms in the back of Naota's head. Now, what makes this Freudian is the fact that there's a (nearly) naked Haruko on top of him, close enough for the little phallic... hammer in the back of his head to bring their lips together... in front of his father. Yeah, you decide.
- Continuing in the vein of Gainax and symbolism, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has drills. Epic, manly drills that will
penetrate pierce the heavens. Made the jump from subtext to text in the fight with Lord Genome, where he remarks that "your Spiral Energy is bigger than mine". Spiral Energy. Right.
- Well, we knew Simon was packin' from the Hot Springs Episode. He needed his whole damn drilling tool to hide his package.
- In the manga, Kamina actually looks at it and comments "Drill Simon!". Also, manga Leeron Lampshades the drills' symbolism by telling a frozen, blushing Simon "You thrust it in! How manly!".
- Anime Leeron does the same thing. "Just stick it in! Give it a big, manly twist!" Also, in one episode where Dai-Gurren is sinking, Simon pushes it back out of the water... by pushing it with his drill. Cut to Leeron inside the Dai-Gurren, who feels the impact in his ass.
- And not just drills. Adiane's Gunmen talked through its crotch and had eyes right about where its nipples would be. Her Gunmen's teeth (used as cockpit displays) are also rotated 90 degrees from the usual orientation. And there was a scene where the Dai-Gurren (which is really, really phallic) gets torpedo'd in the bridge... cut to the male crew members wincing.
- There's also the (definitely NSFW) fifth "Parallel Works" video which is just a very weird dream of Gimmy's.
- Done on purpose in Gintama with the "Neo-Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon" (It has a high quality finish).
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, in spades. As if that wasn't enough, the egregious sexual symbolism is almost overshadowed by the even more egregious religious symbolism. For example...
- The Elric brothers in Fullmetal Alchemist love their mommy waaaay too much. This subtext is so obvious that the third episode of Full Metal Alchemist the Abridged Series is appropriately dubbed Motherf*cker. In the anime, Al even develops a crush on Psyren precisely because she reminds him of his mother (and let's not even talk of the scene near the end of the anime where Sloth practically seduces him). In the anime, Wrath even fuses with his substitute mom and is welcomed to the Gate by Loving Naked Izumi in the movie. Ed, Selim, and the Tringham brothers have daddy issues and so do Greed in the manga and Envy in the anime. And most of the homunculi have strange mommy or daddy issues in the anime and adore almost masochistically their terrifying father/God figure in the manga. Add some Replacement Goldfish syndrome and Evil Counterparts and stir.
- And let's not forget that in a healthy (??) display of Oedipal neurosis, evil stepmom Dante in the anime explicitly tries to trick Ed into sleeping with her because Hohenheim wouldn't. But this is nothing compared to how creeped Edward would've felt.
- Roy's repeated freezing when Riza Hawkeye tells him that he's "useless by rainy weather" is bound to make us think that this statement is actually not about his alchemy skills. The Japanese word used in this context, "munou" (with "mu" meaning "nothingness", as in The Nothing After Death) also means incompetent or inefficiency — "impotent."
- In .hack//SIGN, Tsukasa, a player of a virtual reality MMORPG gets trapped in the game and is given amnesia. He is also given "the Guardian"; a giant pair of floating yellow balls that stab other players with tentacles. Shortly after Tsukasa rebels against the Guardian and it is destroyed, he regains his memory and realizes that in the real world, "he" is really a girl.
- Vash the Stampede in Trigun worships his adopted mother too much, which is particularly disturbing in the light of his hallucinations about her in the anime and apparent lack of 'adult' sexuality. When this troper read the manga scene that introduces Rem Saverem as lying by his side wearing the same clothes as him, she thought she was his dead girlfriend...
- To be fair, though, he's perfectly normal compared to Knives, who seems more interested in going after his own twin and is into slicing people (with giant blades, no less... ahem). Also note that he absolutely hates Rem and thus doesn't share in the 'ordinary' Oedipal schema of the manga (we might even wonder if, in Nightow's logic, it doesn't explain why he's so batshit insane).
- The end of the first Trigun manga dares you to see Knives 'rebirth' scene and not to think of anything involving gynaecology or rape. It actually seems to involve Death By Childbirth. Then it gets worse when Knives grabs Vash and forces him to deploy his Angel Arm. While standing nude behind him and obviously enjoying his pain very, very much — which, by the way, isn't the only time he goes full frontal. It's even more disturbing when you know that men who get raped anally by other men get an erection. And that it's his effing twin brother, of course.
- Let's not forget the overtones of sexual rivalry that his feud with Vash tends to take, especially when Dr. Conrad teaches him that "Vash's gate is larger than [his]". His face is priceless when he nearly gets overpowered by the "size" of said "gate" and, much later, when Vash calls him "a wimp with a bulldozer" once he has fused with thousands of plants, which makes him without a normal lower body but also a guy "fused" with thousands of girls. Who are all his "sisters"... Also, note that Knives's "power" tends to disturb everyone in the area (notably Wolfwood). For the sake of the argument, let's just say that pretty much everything Knives does and thinks has a Freudian subtext. This troper is vicious enough to conclude from his lack of on-screen sexuality that he's either a highly frustrated virgin or a serial rapist.
- Oh yeah, in the anime, as a one-year-old boy/the rough equivalent of a twelve-year-old human boy, he induced in one of the crew women an illusion that she was being raped by one of her fellow crew members. Where he got the background information about this type of thing is beside this troper.
- There's also the fact that Legato seems very obsessed with him. And got raped by a Gonk when he was a teenager. And is so jealous of Vash (or rather, of Knives's twisted love for Vash) and obsessed with killing him that Vash is the only one who manages to break his composure. Ho Yayyyyy! Also, don't put Elendira's explicit love for Knives in the hands of a Freudian, they hate Transsexuals and might develop crazy theories involving "psychosexual inversion", fetishism and Elendira's mom (or lack thereof).
- In the manga, Nicholas D. Wolfwood sounds creepy when he has an imaginary conversation with Auntie Melanie about what an amazing guy Vash is. Also fits into HoYay, oddly enough. Also, he has obvious daddy issues too, both in the anime and in the manga.
- The whole deal with the Humpty Lock and the Dumpty Key in Shugo Chara. One time during the series, he attempts to put his Key in her Lock. While doing so, Ikuto hilariously comments: "It looks tight, would it fit?"
- In Zettai Karen Children, when The Children are singing at a karaoke bar, the Chief's camera lens zooms in and out in a very suggestive way. Definite lolicon subtext there.
- In a scene in the Ah My Goddess manga, a dimensional door vaguely shaped like a malicious girl falls in love with Keiichi and accepts to open herself... provided he is the one who puts the key into her keyhole. Yeah, that's subtlety for you. The subtext becomes explicit when he slowly inserts the key into her, she moans, and Belldandy very nearly goes into a destructive fit of jealousy.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena. Phallic symbols abound, from swords to the tower, and Akio makes it pretty obvious we're not just imagining it. Also, this troper has read a very detailed analysis of Akio's body language that basically concludes that everything about Akio, from the way he stands to the way he holds a wine glass, is about sex.
- Not to mention that the activity in which the series mainly concentrates is people sticking swords in roses on their opponents' lapels. Can you say "deflowering"? And then there's that time Shiori polished Ruka's sword, or the one when Akio breaks his sword (ouch)...
- This troper can barely stand this trope, and even she noticed that things were getting crazy in the Black Rose arch. The scenes where duelists were pulling swords out of their unrequited love interests' chests played out very uncomfortably like sexual assault (Nanami even points this out with the line "did it hurt?!" and the victims often looking like they'd rather forget about it). Tsuwabuki's was the worst: "And with this, I become an adult". Gah!
- Studio Ghibli's Tales From Earthsea had some of the most laughable Freud Was Right moments ever seen in anime —which makes sense, given the main character manages to kill his dad in the first few minutes of the movie. Arren's shadow gives the sword to Therru and rubs it very suggestively while it is in her arms. Therru gives Arren his sword and his 'manliness' by the same token. Therru looks moved to tears when Arren draws his 'sword of light' before her for the first time. Sword of light... right.
- Mimi's giant cactus mirage. Then, later that same episode, a real giant cactus gives her her Crest. Are we sure she's only 10?
- Yes, I know that the real cactus opening up to give her the crest is supposed to evoke the beginning of Togemon's Digivolution sequence to Lillymon, but Togemon was never that big.
- Not that it should matter with that Digivolution. Anyone else see "Poison Ivy" as a plant-based Naughty Tentacles? Then, of course, there's the Fetish Fuel factor of the Ultimate and Mega form...
- Digimon is full of those moments. Girls always squee in awe when they are attacked by anything with... "vines".
- The character William Will Wo in Gun X Sword is one gigantic walking Oedipus complex. He spends most of the episodes that center on him walking around his family's mansion in nothing but a sheet held over his naughty bits wailing about his mother, whom he killed accidentally while trying to kill his father as a child. At one point, as he's thinking about her, his collapsable sword (which he is holding over his crotch) extends. When Van finally gets over his Heroic BSOD and kills him, it's a relief.
- Do I even have to start with Gundam? Let's just throw in some examples...
- Wing Zero's BFG
- Gundam Exia's and later, Gundam 00's BFS
- ZZ's BFG
- Shining Gundam's BFS
- The Strike's Launcher Striker equipment pack. Just tell me what the BFG looks like when it's being aimed.
- Also, the Cybernewtypes of UC were pretty much Mind Raped into submission. And Zeta's Scirocco wasn't just 'nice' to all the girls he talked into working for him. Amd Dorothy's admiration towards Relena is not even a little sexual. Or Treize attitude towards Milliardo and Wu Fei. Or the Tallgeese (GWING TAS is right). Let's don't even start with Domon's admiration towards Master Asia (canon's wrong anyway) or Tieria's attitude towards stupid, sexy Lockon. (Yeah, not much of an order here but Gundam's just so full of them I can't get them organized by any means not even talking about them being close to complete).
- Let's not forget the most obvious example. In Gundam Wing, Duo, in his Gundam, heads on down in the ocean to Wing Gundam. How does he shut off Wing's self destruct mechanism? By switching his scythe to a more phallic shape and sticking it into Wing's ass, that's how.
- This poster once read a line by line analysis of the Lucky Star opening song which concluded that it was all about the main girls losing their virginity. He's never been able to listen to said song in the same way again.
- If you thought all the drills in Gurren Lagann were suspicious, you should watch the also Hiroyuki Imaishi-directed work Dead Leaves, where a dude has a similar looking giant drill for a penis!
- One guy tried to prove that Pokémon should be banned because he ranted about Jigglypuff being the Pokémon representation of breasts. Oh, yeah, he tried to prove that there was an upskirt shot and that it should be banned. The scene is so fast, he could only have noticed it if he was looking for it.
- "Maximum hardness, Metapod!" Oh come on, do I really have to spell it out for you? "Metapod, harden like his." "maximum hardness, Metapod!" They aren't having a battle, folks, they are having a masturbation race. The ending proves it, they both fall backwards in defeat when interrupted. Another weird battle later, Swellow, glowing gold, using Quick Attack, piercing right through a Light Screen.
- That may have been less a subtext in Pokemon and more the translators trying to screw with you, which the translators have been known to do.
- Freud would have a field day with Dio Brando. His very reason for being evil stems from his daddy issues. Later on in Part 1, he literally wants his adoptive brother's body in order to "live gorgeously forever". The creepy obsessions many of his servants have with him in Part 3 (extending well beyond his mind control over some of them). And let's not get started on the creepy subtext in Enrico Pucci's flashbacks.
- "Do you believe in gravity, Enrico?"
- And let's not forget Gyro Zeppeli, who literally fights with a pair of balls.
- Joseph◊ did it a few times, too.
- One name: Zorc Necrophades. Really, that dragon head on his crotch has to be the most phallic-resembling thing in existence and how the hell did it get past the radar is what I'll never know.
- Both subverted and played straight in Hana Yori Dango. Akira is a Cake Eater because his mother's extreme childishness has turned him off of younger women, but one of the initial things that attracts Tsukasa to Tsukushi is that she reminds him of his older sister.
- Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo's Leopard, a living space colony, needs a pair of golden orbs (and in Japanese, golden balls also means "testicles") so that he can successfully fire his Wave Motion Gun. In the first episode, he tells Akiha, his new lady friend, to use his "golden gun". Oh yes.
- And in the third episode he looks decidedly... pleased after she does. There's really no mistaking that one.
- Venus Versus Virus's Sumire is "attracted" to Lucia's scent while in her Berserker mode. Of course,we know the real reason to this, but still, the manga/anime is yuri, subtext only but still yuri.
- Her dialogue and reactions during her trial to overcome her superpowered Berseker side in Volume 2 of the manga counts.
- Lucia dislikes Sumire's boyfriend. A LOT. So much that she kills him with a giant log object to "protect" Sumire. Of course, she does that due to the fact he is a virus.
- Lelouch from Code Geass. He hates his father, has ridiculously saint-like memories of his mother, and the only women in all of his Unwanted Harem that he openly admits his love for were both his sisters.
- And in the Grand Finale Lelouch is impaled on the long, thin sword of Suzaku, with whom he has been the subject of much Ho Yay/Foe Yay. Which he asks Suzaku to do to him (admittedly for the purpose of killing him). This has been Lampshaded by fans.
- In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Tsuna is attracted to and has a crush on Kyoko, despite hardly even talking to her or knowing her. But there's one thing that stands out as being extremely suspicious: she looks exactly like his mother. Of course, if you start analyzing and looking deeper into the Art Evolution where they both start looking exactly like each other, the possible explanations can be rather disturbing...
- It also seems to be the fact that their eyes are nowadays drawn exactly the same... Now why would the mangaka do that?
- Halibel's release form◊ in Bleach. Considering that it looks like a giant vagina, it could have been avoided had her sword been held another way.
- Full Metal Panic. Season 1's showdown between Gauron and Sousuke. Gauron's sudden grappling of Sousuke's mecha starts looking suspiciously like he's raping him and they're having hatesex. And please don't say that the thick white liquid that starts dripping down on Gauron while he's grinning doesn't represent anything at all. If one were to look deeper into it, in the novels, a very probable explanation is that Gauron was subliminally (or maybe not so subliminally) enacting out exactly what he wanted to do - fucking Sousuke up the ass. Only, he was in his mecha while he was doing it.
- Why isn't Gunsmith Cats on this list? Or is it that two rather affectionate females working together in a male-dominated enterprise with a gun shop as a front is just too blatant?
- Oh, the kicker here is while Minnie-May has Ken, Rally might have Bean (it's complicated...). Paraphrasing Minnie, Rally compensates "... with those big 'ol guns..."
- A rather blatant example: in the manga, Goldie drugs Rally with a halllucination-inducing drug. Her first halllucination? A xenomorph-looking monster popping out the hammer of her gun...
- Mahou Sensei Negima has this. Talk about your Visual Innuendo...
- Alien Nine is essentially made of sexual metaphor. Very disturbing sexual metaphor.
- The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya VI invokes this in the second half (even showing their work to set it up). Once Kyon realizes he's been dreaming about Haruhi, his almost immediate reaction is that "Sigmund Freud must be laughing at me!".
Comics
- During the much reviled One More Day story arc in Spider Man, many fans claimed that Peter Parker must have an Oedipus Complex to choose Aunt May over Mary Jane (as much as this troper hated the story, he thought that this actually was going a little too far). Keep in mind, Peter is not choosing to date Aunt May over M.J, he's choosing to save her life rather than stay married.
- Pretty much any death involving a female character getting run through by a male character with some type of long, sharp weapon, it will usually end up going right through her body, for added effect, of course. Elektra and Phantom Lady both suffered this one.
Film
- The Tremors series is basically all about this trope — giant phallic-shaped monsters that burst out at people, wiggling long slimy muscular tongues that are constantly creeping towards their victims.
- This was actually worse in preproduction, according to the DVD featurette. At one time the graboids were supposed to extrude sticky white innards to capture people, but apparently the producers (and their giggling officemates) thought it was too blatant.
- This editor was unable to enjoy watching El Norte the first time around, due to the entire class getting grossed out at the sight of the brother and sister main characters holding each other (admittedly, quite tenderly), following the death of their parents. A result of being unable to comprehend the notion of personal space standards in other cultures.
- In the Made For TV Movie, Highlander: The Source, it's revealed that "There Can Be Only One" really means that only one Immortal can have a child, so all the running around cutting people's heads off really is overcompensating for their self-perceived lack of sexual potency. I wish I could say this came out of nowhere, but the movies and TV series have mentioned this occasionally. Still, it's enough for many fans to drop it down the Dis Continuity hole.
- Alien. Even besides the alleged male rape allegories or the grotesque perversion of childbirth, according to some Film Studies scholars, it's all about a homicidal penis-headed monster chasing a strong, independent woman through the womblike tunnels of a spacecraft controlled by a computer called MU-TH-R. Clearly, Freud Was Right. And H.R. Giger was mental.
- Gee, ya think? Just go to any website that hosts the man's artwork...
- Incidentally, the same critiques also said that the sequel, Aliens, was about the Vietnam War and the strength of mothers defending their children.
- A late scene in the first movie has the Alien's tail sliding up a woman's leg, to the sound of her moaning and crying in terror. Word Of God in the audio commentary is this was actually intended to be perceived as the Alien raping her.
- Which makes sense, as, being the only only other female character, Lambert serves as a foil to Ripley. Ripley is the strong female character who can stand up to domination, by males or by symbolic monsters. Lambert, on the other hand, has done nothing but scream and dither inefficently for the entire movie. Too bad about her fate, though.
- Apparently the monster was taken from his chronic night terrors, which also inspired HP Lovecraft.
- One should also mention that Giger's original design for the alien was to include a grotesquely overlarge penis: he was talked out of it. Fortunately.
- Also, the original design for the alien egg — from which hatches the ultimate Vagina Dentata, facehuggers — had a single slit in the top, but it was changed because it was just. Too. Fucking. Obvious.
- Taking the Vagina Dentata one step further — notice anything about the facehugger's belly?◊
- Don't forget the pose◊ of the alien pilot in whose ship the eggs were found.
- In Jiri Menzel's adaptation of Closely Watched Trains, the dispatcher invites women over to the station house to have sex with them on the station-master's couch. Menzel has a nice suggestive shot of the ripped oilcloth of the couch with its filling coming out that looks remarkably like an unshaved vagina.
- Don't forget the scene where the main character talks to a woman who's stroking a chicken.
- Trains, of course, are phallic symbols (just imagine one going into a tunnel).
- Lampshaded in The Movie Star Trek: First Contact: Data and Picard are musing about the repurposed nuclear missile that later becomes the first Warp-capable Earth vessel, and stroke it in awe— whereupon Troi throws out, "Would you three like to be alone?"
- Ghostbusters. "I am the gatekeeper." "I am the keymaster." Yup, nothing symbolic there.
- In the ending of North By Northwest, there is a love scene aboard a train, and the very last shot shows the train entering a tunnel. Alfred Hitchcock actually once said that this was a phallic symbol.
- Good old Alfred did this a lot. Just watch Strangers on a Train. You gotta be sneaky to get around those censorship laws!
- Played for humor in Shrek; when they first see Farquaad's castle, Shrek slyly asks Donkey, "Do you think he's Compensating For Something?" Sure, Farquaad is The Napoleon, but Shrek didn't know it at that moment so it's more of a Parental Bonus than anything else.
Donkey: ... Which I think means he has a really small—(Shrek stomps on his hoof)
- A lot of critics have pointed out that an alien character's head in the animated kids' movie Space Chimps looks a lot like a boob.
- This troper has read several IMDB posts speculating that Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace, the Fagin-type character from August Rush, was a pedophile. Considering who plays him, this troper can only say: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
- In case the X-Men movies didn't have enough issues, has anyone looked carefully at Xavier's platform in the "big round room"? And given the size of the thing, this troper has given up trying to not see it as Not Compensating For Anything, even if it's Xavier. Admittedly, said troper's not a rabid X-Men fan, either.
- Idiocracy lampshades this by having weaponized monster trucks blatantly phallic in design. To punctuate it, Joe's small truck has a rubber, flaccid penis attatched to the hood.
- This troper, having rewatched The Matrix for the first time since taking a Film Studies class, was floored by how much sexual imagery and allusion this film is soaked in that he'd never noticed before. Machines essentially made out of Naughty Tentacles have subjugated humanity, fitting them multiple access ports, basically forcing physical Humanity to become a race of women to be raped at will by the ridiculously phallic (and misogynistic) Machines. Meanwhile virtual humanity of the Matrix can, at any time, be invaded/penetrated by the Agents, and the mark of Neo's becoming of The One involves him penetrating the Smith program. Fast forward to Revolutions and you find that the one way to finally defeat Smith was for Neo to allow himself to be "consumed" by Smith. And that doesn't even get into the giant drills or nearly half of everything that came out of the Merovingian's mouth... I realize this kind of thing is standard fare for Sci-Fi/Action movies, but this just seems beyond the pale...
- So you're saying only women can be raped?
- Parodied in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. During the scene at the mall, Freud himself is seen holding a corndog. As he meets young (hot) women, it rises, but when he gets shot down, it flops over in his hand.....
- Beautifully parodied in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, when Captain Barbossa in full, picture-perfect "captain of the ship" pose extends a telescope. Jack Sparrow imitates him and then shamefully slinks away when his telescope turns out to be noticably smaller. About half an hour later the scene repeats, only this time Jack managed to come up with a telescope of almost a yard in length.
- And again sort of, later in the movie. During Jack and Davy Jones' sword-fight, Jack's sword breaks without him notices, resulting in Davy Jones brandishing his sword at Jack, while smiling, who then tries to threaten him with his broken sword, now a quarter its original length.
- The Descent: Chicks with picks probing tight, wet tunnels.
- Death Star trench run. And the obvious Oedipal implications.
- Lampshaded in Naked Gun 2˝: The Smell of Fear. When the main characters start doing the horizontal lambada, they cut away to scenes of girders being raised, trains going into tunnels, hot dogs getting placed in hot dog buns, rocket launches, and eventually a Roman fountain.
- Dr Strangelove is full of these, including various characters names (such as...well, Strangelove), Kong riding a bomb when they drop it and the way the plane in the very first scene is being fueled.
- Kia decides to invoke this on Freddy during Freddy vs Jason, comparing his tiny knives to Jason's great big machete. Unfortunately, she wasn't paying attention and promptly meets said machete.
- Flat out lampshaded in the film Titanic:
Molly Brown: Hey, uh, who thought of the name "Titanic"? Was it you, Bruce?
J. Bruce Ismay: Yes, actually. I wanted to convey sheer size; and size means stability, luxury and, above all, strength.
Rose De Witt Bukater: Do you know of Dr. Freud, Mr Ismay? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you.
Literature
- Large swathes of the works of D.H. Lawrence. Hell, he wrote a short story where a rocking horse has Freudian overtones. His novel Sons and Lovers is pretty much a treatise on the Oedipus complex, and there's a very, very sexual nude wrestling scene in Women in Love.
- Parodied in Sharon Creech's Young Adult novel Walk Two Moons. A teacher reads a student submission complaining about the endless subtext analysis of poetry in school, and concludes The Long List with "Maybe the forest doesn't represent sex. Maybe the forest is just a forest."
- The otherwise awful high fantasy Kingdoms of Light by Alan Dean Foster deserves special mention for a truly brilliant lampshading. Each main character has a different magical power, and the self-consciously macho Rival can make his sword double in length. The first time he uses it in combat, the Shallow Love Interest thanks him for saving the group, and he responds that he's always happy to extend his sword for her.
- In Golding's Lord Of The Flies, the scene in which Jack and Roger kill the pig is written exactly like a rape scene, complete with very phallic descriptions of the boys' spears.
- Brian Jacques' Redwall fits this trope perfectly. The hero of the first book is a thirteen-year-old mouseboy, who is told in cryptic messages and the odd bizarre dream sequence, including one involving a really big snake and a rose bearing swords instead of thorns, to go hunting for a very famous Sword (with a capital S). When he has it and has finished using it to defeat the villain, his dying mentor gives him permission to marry the girl he's been chasing for most of the book. The villains are all insanely jealous of this Sword and spend half their time trying to steal it. At one point in the prequel Mossflower, the female Big Bad Tsarmina breaks the sword and locks up its owner in a very obvious case of castration symbolism. If one wants to read it this way, Cluny's recurring nightmare about being chased by the Abbey Warrior and stabbed to death takes on a whole new and deeply disturbing meaning.
- If we're going to go this route with the weaponry, Russa Nodrey's song about "me liddle stick o' wood" could be read as involving gender-confusion issues.
- Oh, and a couple of people have claimed that Slagar the Cruel comes across as a paedophile, particularly in the Nelvana cartoon. He had perfectly good reasons for choosing child captives (they last longer, they can't fight back as well, and in the case of the Abbey kids it was "revenge" on their parents), but ... And then there's Ublaz's pink pearl fixation.
- In Doomwyte, a very large blind snake gets trapped in a cave.
- As Russa Nodrey and Tammo are journeying to Redwall, the first words out of her mouth before they leave are "I hope my pancakes aren't getting squished in there." So Yeah...
- The Spenser novel Crimson Joy by Robert B. Parker (which draws its name from William Blake's poem) features a man who kills black women in a particularly "symbolic" way and leaves a red rose at each scene. His mother's name was Rose Black, and she had molested him.
- Harry Potter is full of this. The second book is called Harry Potter and the CHAMBER OF SECRETS, for God's sake. Harry travels down a long slimy tube into a mysterious, dangerous chamber in which he finds a giant snake. He uses a big shiny sword to kill this giant snake, thereby saving his friend's sister, who he later marries.
- You missed Harry stabbing the open diary with a fang that's squirting venom.
- Also, in the first and third books, everyone is jealous of Harry's new broomstick. It's so much better than all the others. Everyone congratulates him on it and wants to stroke it. Ron can't wait to ride it. Malfoy is jealous until he gets super-brooms for all the Slytherin team. Hermione buys Harry a "Broomstick polishing kit". In contrast, Ron's wand breaks in two in the second book and won't work properly. He also only gets crappy broomsticks. Prof. Umbridge has an "unusually short" wand, and she punishes Harry, Ron and Fred by locking up their broomsticks. In general, Harry likes anything phallic (towers, brooms, wands) and hates anything resembling a womb or vagina (chambers, tunnels, dungeons, lakes, eggs, baths).
- In The Tales of Beedle The Bard, Word Of God says that No witch (i.e. woman) has ever been known to claim the Elder Wand.
- Not to mention Harry spends his childhood in a closet under the stairs, forced to stay their by his intolerant family. Then, he is rescued and taken to a magical land where everyone is just like him. JK Rowling has denied that Harry Potter is an allegory for homosexuality — but come on, he was living IN THE CLOSET. Plus, Dumbledore's Gay.
- In Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, the movie, the broomstick allegories are visual. When the characters are depressed and playing Quidditch badly, they slump over their broomsticks which point downward. When they're confident and playing well, the broomsticks are long, sticking out rather suggestively, and the characters sit mightily upon them.
- Pick a story about vampires. Any story. In fact, start with the classic: Dracula forces a young woman to drink his blood, after quietly invading her bedroom. And consider the two violent stakings of female vampires.
- In Stevenson's The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Hyde is often interpreted (by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, most notoriously) as a metaphor for Jekyll's repressed homosexuality. Because we all know that "gay" is synonymous with "murderous gremlin-thing".
- Apparently, the word "degenerate", which is repeatedly used to describe Hyde, was a "coded" word for Depraved Homosexual in the Victorian era. The descriptions of this character also emphasize details that would have been seen as "androgynous" back then. Finally, in the words of one of this troper's English literature professors, "if you think about the space of Jekyll's house... Mr. Hyde enters from behind."
- You've scarred me for the rest of my life
- The Discworld novel Equal Rites really is full of this stuff. From the magic manifesting itself as "hot dreams", to the wizard reincarnated as an apple tree "innocently" commenting that the heroine likes apples, to the phallic broomstick on the cover. The Annotated Pratchett Guide gives the details here. (In a later novel, however, a footnote dismisses the idea that the broomstick is a Freudian symbol as a "phallusy".)
- In the novel Things Fall Apart, the staple crop of the igbo village is yams, they're long, cylindrical and the more you have, the more manly you are percieved. You can probably figure out the symbolism here.
- The Inheritance Cycle. Big time.
- Warrior Cats has Jayfeather, and roughly teen-aged male protagonist who is forcibly sworn to a life-long vow of celibacy and spends a lot of time playing with a stick whenever he feels anxious. Yeah.
- And Honeyfern talking about having kits with Berrynose just before being killed by a snake.
- And The Fourth Apprentice, which features beavers, and a character named Woody. Seriously.
- The Da Vinci Code. If Dan Brown sees as many phallic symbols everywhere as his Author Avatar Robert Langdon does, he surely has a problem.
- Most likely an accident (unless Stephanie Meyers is writing the world's biggest Troll Fic), but the apple on the front of Twilight is totally a clitoris (the hands are the hood pilled back, the wrists and arms... You get the picture).
Live Action TV
- Deliciously satirized in a sketch from the first season of Saturday Night Live with Laraine Newman as a young Anna Freud (Sigmund's daughter) innocently describing to her father (Dan Aykroyd) a series of dreams she had about him that are fraught with increasingly obvious "Freudian" symbolism and content. Meanwhile, Freud practically goes into seizures as he reacts to the implications he's reading into them; at the end, when she inquires what it all means, he reassures her that "sometimes a banana is just a banana".
- In a similar vein, Wolf's tail in The Tenth Kingdom. The scene in the beanstalk forest, where he practically dares Virginia to touch it, she asks why he keeps it hidden, and especially the positively orgasmic look on his face when she brushes against the fur rather than with it, is extremely Freudian in nature. In a bizarre twist, however, the size of his tail apparently changes due to the time of the month, suggesting a connection to the female menstrual cycle. (Werewolves, after all, are tied to the typically feminine moon...) The fact it is hanging out of his pants following his 'hide-and-seek' in the forest with Virginia near Wendell's castle, and that this lets Tony disapprovingly know what they were up to, doesn't help.
- And leaving aside monthly-transformation-into-a-monster cracks, the connection between menarche and the onset of lycanthropy is explored in a short story called "Boobs" where a schoolgirl deals with bullies picking on her for developing by tearing them to shreds when she turns into a werewolf. The movie Ginger Snaps covers similar ground.
- The Doctor Who Made For TV Movie has the Master take the form of a snake, overtaking the mind of a man by slithering down his gullet, then proceeding to kill the man's wife, (not long after the two had sex, no less), make a naive young man his servant, fire acid semen at an unsuspecting female, and attempt to steal the lives of his long-time arch-nemesis by tying him to a rack (in a crossover with What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic) and forcing him to stare into the gaping hole at the heart of the TARDIS while screaming "I'm alive!" at the top of his lungs. And he does all this clad entirely in black leather. Damn.
- The Master's pretty awesome when it comes to stuff like this. His name, Ainley!Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator being shaped like a dildo (and DVD commentaries rife with mentions of the cast joking about this at the time), and everything about the Simm!Master, ever, TOMTIT and phallic crystals, the HADRON web, beard jokes... really, the Master owns this trope.
- On the subject of the Tissue Compression Eliminator, let the record show that the Master invented a device whose sole purpose is to make people smaller. Nope, not Compensating For Something at all.
- The actors themselves once noted that, when hiding undercover as a human, the Master had a desire to be chauffered around in very large limousines, whereas the Doctor was happy enough to drive around in his humble little car "Bessie". It was suggested that maybe the Master was compensating for something the Doctor didn't need to...
- Sonic screwdrivers◊.
- Oh god, can I just say the above video is the funniest thing I have ever seen?
- The little rivalry that Captain Jack and the Doctor have about their respective sonic devices in "The Doctor Dances" (Jack's big, flashy sonic blaster versus the Doctor's humble little sonic screwdriver) also seemed to be a little competitive in... other ways. Amusingly, however, Jack's flashy device is revealed to be completely useless when the 'extra features' end up draining the battery, whilst the Doctor's humble little thing is a bit more... durable.
- Faith of Buffy The Vampire Slayer describes her dreams seriously, then adds with her tongue (probably) firmly in her cheek, "That, and some stuff about cigars and a tunnel."
- The Buffy episode "Doublemeat Palace", already a not-so-satisfactory venture in its own right, became downright ludicrous when the monster of the week was revealed to be... a phallic demon-thing that emerged from the back of an old woman's head and which ate people. And then it shot paralyzing gunk all over Buffy. And then Willow, a lesbian, cut it off with a meat cleaver.
- In a later episode, Willow starts to describe the monster "Well, if I wasn't already a lesbian..."
- The Freud Was Right moment the writers cite is in "Reptile Boy" where frat boys feed teenage girls to their giant snake demon that they worship. It gives them power!
- Frasier has an erotic dream about a male co-worker and tries desperately and implausibly to interpret it any way but sexually. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that his subconscious created a dream that defied interpretation just to give him a challenge. The following night Sigmund Freud appears in his sleep to congratulate him for figuring this out. Frasier is pleased until Siggy sprays breath freshener in his mouth and climbs into bed with him, arms held out expectantly.
- On Wings Lowell comes to Brian with a baffling dream about riding a train speeding into a tunnel with a cigar in one hand and a snake in the other. When a thoroughly creeped out Brian informs him that it means he is afraid of heights, Lowell agrees saying that that would explain the one about sitting atop the Washington Monument.
- Murphy Brown: Miles spends the episode worrying he is gay after dreaming about shooting out the top of the Washington Monument with a male friend and then frolicing in the reflection pool. Eventually he realizes that sometimes a long, pointy monument is just a long, pointy monument.
- In another episode, Frank mentions to Murphy how he's afraid to touch his Corvette since the therapist he's dating said it was a phallic symbol while Frank was waxing it. Later on, when she's annoyed at Frank, she tells him to "Go wax [his] car!"
- Lampshaded in an episode of M*A*S*H, when Hawkeye asks the psychiatrist, Dr. Friedman, what the rationale for gambling is during a poker game. "Sex," he replies, and when pushed on why it's always sex, he responds, "They told me to say that. Sex is why we gamble, sex is why we drink, sex is why we give birth."
- Then he takes $5 from the pot and explains, "That was a house call."
- Which is even worse considering that Freud classified money as a phallic.
- Queenie in Blackadder II is a parody of Queen Elizabeth the First, AKA the Virgin Queen. So it's not too surprising that she has dreams about being a sausage roll or sitting in this enormous tree...
- During the poker game in the "An Echolls Family Christmas" episode of Veronica Mars, Weevil comments on how comfortable Logan looks with a cigar in his mouth. As if they didn't have enough Foe Yay already... Logan, for his part, shoots back with a racist remark.
- Madan Senki Ryukendo has a bizarre example. The town is, in one episode, forced into worshiping a UFO cult whose leader takes the form of a little girl who puts collars around people's necks. Then it gets freakier when her true form resembles, by all means, a giant golden phallus.
- In How I Met Your Mother, a famous architect in Ted's firm (who also happens to be his boss) designs a building consisting of a tower of pink marble with rounded top, with two domes at the bottom.
- Not to mention he asks Ted to make sure there are a lot of trees and vegetation around the base. Specifically, brown and leafy trees. He apparently had no idea what it looked like.
- Second season finale of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. John, after being told that he needs to "understand this body", is lying on top of a shirtless Cameron, their faces centimetres apart while he's panting and exploring the inside of her with his hand. He is, of course, checking her power supply for leaks. Why, what did you think they were doing?
- One episode of Top Gear featured a discussion on the relationship between the flashness of one's car and the size of it's engine and the "endowment" of its owner. When called out on the fact that he himself had a Mercedes SL Black (huge engine, swollen wheel-arches, the lot) Jeremy Clarkson simply countered by pointing out that Richard Hammond dives a Ford Mustang, causing an extremely abrupt insistence that the subject be changed.
Music
- Just look at the list of examples on the Intercourse With You page.
- Is it just me or does the second verse of the Kool & The Gang song "Jungle Boogie" sound suspiciously like the bass singer is masturbating? (Note all the grunting and the sudden wail at the end.)
- In Pink Floyd's The Wall, most of the female symbols are depicted as twisted, horrific, carnivorous or a combination of all three. This is due to the main character Pink having a warped view of women and sexuality in general.
- The lyrics to the theme tune of Denver The Last Dinosaur. "He's my friend and a whole lot more / ... Showed me a world I never saw before / ... Everywhere we go, / We don't really care / If people stop and stare ... ".
- Similarly, the kids' show Big Wolf on Campus theme tune included the following ...Do you think/ It's just a phase I'm going through?...
- Christine's increasingly high cadenza at the end of Phantom of the Opera's title song sounds suspiciously...orgasmic to this troper.
- As does the Phantom's high note during "The Music of the Night" ("Let your soul take you/Where you long to BEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!").
- Listen to "A Whole New World" and tell me it isn't about losing one's virginity.
"Over, sideways, and under on a magic carpet ride... A dazzling place I never knew... Indescribable feeling; soaring, tumbling, freewheeling... Don't you dare close your eyes... Hold your breath, it gets better... I can't go back to where I used to be... A thrilling chase, a wondrous place, for you and me."
- Adam Duritz of Counting Crows recounted in a VH1 interview how a fan came up to him after a performance to proudly announce that he'd figured out the meaning of "Mr. Jones", their first single. "Mr. Jones is your penis!" That wasn't it, but Freud Was Right about the fan, at least.
- This idea actually constitutes Mind Rape, not least of which is the implication that the singer character is competing with his own penis. (Then there's the I Call Him Mister Happy angle, which also hurts).
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000. Dark Eldar. Sweet merciful crap, Dark Eldar. Their entire society is based around captured slaves (they're even used as currency) and torturing them so they can consume their soul energy... except every single thing they say makes them appear more like an entire society of serial rapists instead, the Haemonculi in particular continually referring to their victims as "playthings". Every single piece of their vehicles, equipment and weapons are incredibly jagged and pointy, with as many blades attached in as many places as possible. As oppossed to their mostly female Craftworld Eldar counterparts their leaders and soldiers are mostly male (the leaders having the largest and pointiest headwear), while their main female units (Wyches) wear about three scraps of clothing and prefer to fight with whips that cause extreme pain with even a single touch (Agonisers).
- Every single servant of Slaanesh lives on Freud Was Right and Nightmare Fetishist. When one of the Renegade Chapters devoted to it call themselves the Violaters and one of the Dark Eldar Cabals is named the Emasculators, it's sort of inevitable. Then there's Lucius the Eternal and his Lash of Torment...
- Slightly less blatant are the Sisters of Battle, the all-female militant portion of the resident Church Militant that use equipment (Powered Armor, bolters etc.) otherwise used exclusively by the all-male Space Marines. Then the usual level of WH40K absurdity appears with the Sisters Repentia, mobs of near-naked penitent young women equipped with two-metre long chainswords driven into a combat frenzy by their whip-wielding "mistresses".
- Space marines are all men, and they live on space-rocks with other big burly marines. They've got no lives outside of training with each other, eating, sleeping, bathing, and fighting alongside other giant bald supermen. Space marines then go to feral worlds looking for young boys to indoctrine into their chapters. They're like the army, the navy, and the clergy combined.
Theater
- Once upon a time, some guy decided to do a production of Shakespeare's classic play Hamlet with some seriously Oedipal subtext thrown in. Through a combination of Adaptation Decay, Popcultural Osmosis, and Mel Gibson, this is now frequently considered to be the official, canonical "true meaning" of Hamlet. A careful examination of the script will not yield a single quote to support this interpretation. In fact, Hamlet shows more signs of an Electra Complex. Now that would be an interesting production...
Video Games
- This is half of what makes the undead enemies of The Legend of Zelda — the mummy Gibdo and zombie ReDead — major sources of Nightmare Fuel. Their attacks involve paralyzing, grabbing, and biting you, but most people think it looks and most of all sounds like they're raping you. To death.
- Ewww.
- In fact, many of the enemies and even the bosses seem to be giant, one-eyed monsters...
- Vaati Reborn in Minish Cap. It's a narrow cylinder with a head and shoulders at the top (although the shoulders could just be part of the cape), and its one giant leg opens up vertically to reveal a giant eye between the "knees", above the ankle and below the hip-level.
- In Earthbound, the dialogue of the Eldritch Abomination at the end of the game was taken from the writer's traumatic memories of seeing what he thought was a rape scene in a movie as a child.
- It's said that Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 is the living incarnation of James Sunderland's repressed lust, among other emotions. PH is famous for raping the town's monsters and carrying a BFS so huge that he literally has to drag it behind him (and later an enormous spear). Subtle. The official interpretation is that he's a supernatural executioner out to make James realize that he Mercy Killed his wife. Note that a second one appears after James kills someone else.
- The whole game Silent Hill 2 can be seen as James having to face that his own repressed sexuality during his wives illness was the primary reason why he killed her.
- For the more explicit sexual elements of the game, the Mannequins are a pair of sexy legs attached to another pair of sexy legs, the Bubble Head Nurses are incredibly busty women in skimpy nurse outfits with horribly deformed heads, the Abstract Daddy/Doorman resembles two figures bent over a table or a bed and attacks by swallowing James' head, the Flesh Lips grab James with a tentacle and pulls him towards its vagina-mouth, and then there's the continual attention paid to holes, several of which James must jump down in order to reach the next area of the game.
- In the third game meanwhile, the Closers have vaginas for faces and penises for arms (out of which a blade extends), the Numb Bodies heavily resemble sperm, the Slurpers knock down the player character and climb on top of her in an act of quasi-rape, the Split Worm is an enourmous penis that burrows through various holes and whose head splits open vertically in a vulgar representation of childbirth, and in the latter part of the game there are pulsating walls and vertical holes everywhere, in particular the enourmous hole that leads to the "birthplace" of the Final Boss.
- The fourth game has relatively subtle examples regarding Walter and his "mother" (actually the protagonist's apartment). The entrances and exits to Walter's otherworld are long tunnels with a light at the end (more childbirth symbolism), giant worms connect the different sections of the otherworld, umbilical cords connecting him to "mother", and the first step in defeating Walter in the Final Boss fight is to use the remains of his actual umbilical cord.
- Not to be left out from the party, Homecoming has its own contributions to this trope: the Lurkers have Vagina Dentata for a face, the Needler has its head between its legs, another symbol of childbirth, the Bubble Head Nurses make a reappearance, the Schisms' head is a giant penis split down the middle, Asphyxia is a mass of female bodies fused together to resemble a centipede with arms for legs, several of which are always groping it, and as for the Siam... well, just look◊ at the damn thing. Hilariously, there are absolutely no sexual elements in the game's plot whatsoever, meaning all of this was apparently added for the lulz.
- At least one intepretation of Portal brings up the fact you're a woman fighting an alternately caring and lashing female-voiced overmind with a weapon that opens passages through space. Oval passages. 'Portal' is for Lesbians indeed.
- According to Psycho Mantis, the reason he hates all of humanity is because everytime he looks into someone's mind, he finds the same "disgusting" desire to reproduce at the heart of their motivation for every single thing they do.
- Metal Gear Solid also has a lot of sexual imagery mixed in with violence, to symbolise how killing arouses Snake more than sex (which is canon, if Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is to be believed). Snake, who is hot, smokes a cigarette after every boss battle. He punches a sadomasochistic zombie ninja to orgasm at one point. He fights the beautiful Sniper Wolf through the sniper scope of a Male Gaze, twice. Metal Gear REX has a penis that shoots lasers. The final battle is a boxing match between him and his sexy twin, both dressed only in very tight trousers with their waxed muscled chests on full display. I could go on but I won't.
- Speaking of REX, one of his combo attacks as he fights the slender, almost feminine RAY in Metal Gear Solid 4 involves biting the latter's neck and ejaculating onto its torso. There's also the Shagohod, which aside from a possible Double Entendre name which makes sense when you consider who's piloting it has an enormous phallic rocket launcher on its back and... well, look how it moves.
- Should I point out that the most horrific scene in the series involves a man, previously named Solid Snake, now known as Old Snake, crawling down a tunnel, having to use all his might to avoid going limp? Or the BB Corp members draining Snake's health when they hug him for no readily apparent reason?
- The whole plot is basically about men named after penises fighting over a fortress named after a clitoris. Solid Snake ("erect penis") destroys Outer Heaven (clitoris); let's point out that his two vague female romantic attachments both ended in him leaving them (in one case without a goodbye) and he ends up in a close relationship with a man, wanting nothing except that (and, to boot, all his outfits throughout the series draw specific attention to his buttocks). Big Boss ("large penis") builds Outer Heaven and had a female lover who he saved when she was in trouble and who was dedicated to him until the end of her life (and all his outfits throughout the series draw specific attention to his crotch). The series casts Snake in the right, and Big Boss in the wrong. I really am worried about Hideo Kojima's marriage.
- Revolver Ocelot could practically WRITE this trope.
- "There's nothing like the feeling of slamming a long, silver bullet into a well-greased chamber".
- Koishi Komeji, the Bonus Boss in Subterranean Animism, has a whole arsenal of spellcards based off of Freudian concepts... but then you get to "The Embers of Love" and then your brain just sort of shuts down. Seriously, ZUN, phallic heart bullets?
- Many, many moments in the Devil May Cry games, not to mention that every weapon and use thereof is some sort of phallic metaphor.
- Vergil's prologue in Devil May Cry 3 provides us the image of Arkham very... suggestively stroking Vergil's sword.
- Two words: Lucifer scene (does it count if it's obviously intentional?)
- Not to mention that Trish is the spitting image of Dante's mother although she was created by Mundus that way on purpose.
- Pokemon. Diglett? Cloyster? Palkia? Beedrill in particular had a rather suggestive entrance in the Pokémon Stadium game that involved thrusting its stinger...
- Two guys in Sootopolis ask you to bring them big Barboach and Shroomish. Barboach and Shroomish.
- This troper has noticed something about steel type Gym Leader, Jasmine, from the Generation II games and her choice of Pokemon. Her team consists of nothing more than two Magnemites and a Steelix. So quick recap: 2 steel balls and a giant metal snake.
- In the first episode of Sam and Max: Season One, Sam has a dream and the player can choose what he does in his dream. It is possible to make a hot dog appear in a rat hole. The therapist then says, "A weenie in a rat hole... nothing symbolic there."
- It's probably cheating considering the nature of the game but Fate Stay Night has tons of Freudian undertones. I mean, the entire "stabbing the Holy Grail" thing...
- In Katamari Damacy, one of the many Royal Cousins is Odeko, whose most striking feature is his long head. While most cousins have cute little pill-shaped heads, his extends straight up. He's explicitly very proud of his height, and is even prone to exaggerating its size. This has been the subject of many, many jokes.
- In Kingdom Hearts II, there's a heartless comprised of a small body and a golden beak which repeatedly stabs Sora if he doesn't kill them. Think that's bad enough? The name of it is Rapid Thruster.
- Wesker from Resident Evil... especially the fifth game. Lord, what to say about him and Chris? It gets to the point where, at the final battle, Wesker ends up sweaty, shirtless, and growing a bunch of tentacles. He uses these tentacles to grab ahold of Chris (which can only be described as looking like very violent tentacle rape). And each time he has a hold on Chris, he transforms his other arm into a very phallic tentacle drill that will... impale Chris if he doesn't break free. And all of this while he screams Chris' name. Wesker has issues...
- Haunting Ground. The entire game's plot was pretty much about proving that Freud Was Right. Let's see here - so it turns out that Lorenzo wanted to screw his son and clone, Urgo, because he was his preferred child and contained the Azoth. However, Urgo ended up running away and marrying Ayla, Fiona's mother. Lorenzo ends up harboring a bunch of hate towards Ayla for it. But then he finds Fiona, who inherited the Azoth, so now he wants to screw his granddaughter. And then there's Riccardo, who apparently hates Lorenzo, since he's also Lorenzo's son and clone. Except he didn't have the Azoth, so Lorenzo thinks of him as a useless and troublesome son. He also feels competitive towards Lorenzo, and wants to assert his domination and possession over Fiona, who is his niece. Riccardo's goal is to, quite simply, rape and impregnate Fiona so he can have the Azoth. This is made all the worse when one realizes that he's pretty much her father's clone, meaning that he has the exact same DNA as her father. So to put it simply - all of Fiona's remaining relatives want to screw her.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- This troper has had people explain to him that Rufus the Naked Mole Rat from Kim Possible represents Ron Stoppable's penis. It's long, pink, lives in his pants, and does his thinking for him. Not to mention the earlier episodes had consuming tacos from the inside on top of the fact that he would emerge from Ron's pocket in a very suggestive position when Kim was present. Oh snap!
- I can see this — especially when you consider that EVERY girl that meets Rufus is grossed out when she first sees him, but eventually gets used to seeing him, evenually acknowledges his usefulness, and some even go so far as to like playing with him and aren't happy when he's sick or can't do what he's needed to do for them. (I only wish that I was making this up — examples can be found throughout the series.) Do I need to go into the Ho Yay factor in the episode where Ron gets Drakken's evil (through an accident) and abandons the small Rufus in order to build ever-bigger and bigger devices (phallic symbols, every one) while the mentally emasculated Drakken becomes Rufus's new owner?
- And when that happens, Shego dumps Drakken for Ron. Though come to think it, I don't think she ever gets past a disgusted hate of the naked pink thing... no wonder she read too much into wrestling with Kim.
- He also purchased Rufus in his early teens, just before Puberty sets in. Baby Rufus is very small. Kim is initially squicked, but quickly accepts him and grows to love him. Rufus also appears as Ron reveals his feelings about Kim in The Movie.
- In "Number One" Ron is hit with a paralyzing ray, Kim checks on Rufus, and well, if you watch it enough times it looks like she's grabbing his erect penis.
- In "Virt-U-Ron" Rufus is wielding enormous sword that grows even larger throughout its appearance. Rufus himself is also referred to in this episode as "The Tunnel Lord".
- In "Exchange" Ron receives a magical sword that changes shape and size and causes him to burst into a strange blue Power Glows.
- So Ron's "Magic Wand" can't shoot "Sparkles" unless Kim grabs it. Nothing suggestive here.
- Code Lyoko: In the penultimate episode, Jeremie's Cannot-Fail-Kill-XANA-Real-Dead program is visually represented by an army of sperm. You really have to wonder what goes on in that boys head...
- Some of XANA's monsters fall into this category as well, such as the flying Manta rays that poop mines. And the Scipozoa, with its mighty Combat Tentacles. Suuuure...
- In Futurama, 31st century Washington D.C. has, right next to the phallic Washington monument, a similar but taller Clinton monument. One episode even had an alien spaceship cutting its tip off with a giant claw.
- Space aliens with Yiddish accents, nonetheless.
- Roxy Rocket from Batman The Animated Series, an stunt-themed jewel thief whose gimmick is riding a rocket clutched between her legs like a broom... or, ah...
- Or how excited she got after Batman tackled her that the rocket starts going out of control.
- A literal example, Played For Laughs in Clone High. Right after Joan's completely incomprehensible Le Film Artistique has finished at the film festival, we see a shot of the auditorium, in complete silence. Until the boy sitting next to Joan — a clone of Sigmund Freud himself — starts singing "Joan loves Abe! Joan loves Abe!"
- Used in Bromwell High, when Keisha is making a speech about the school. She begins quoting Martin Luther King's speech, and then goes on to say "Latrina has a dream about a tunnel and a series of bigger and bigger trains! Let's make those dreams come true!"
- In Invader Zim, all Irkens are judged and placed in society based on on their height. So the largest guys are the unquestioned leaders, despite being incompetent, and the main character will never amount to anything because he's "very small...he's a tiny thing." Right.
- Obligatory Avatar the Last Airbender example: In the episode where Aang has trouble standing his ground and being an earthbender, Toph steals a bag of nuts◊ from his satchel, and then uses his staff◊ to crack them◊, finally commenting how Aang's staff "isn't the only delicate instrument around here".
- In Phineas and Ferb, it appears that Dr. Doofenshmirtz was an excellent hand puppeteer, so much so that it impressed a girl. Said girl eventually left him for a guy who was a sucky puppeteer but had huge "fingers". Real subtle, Disney.
- The thousand foot cliff in Total Drama Island. The cliff in TDA might be larger.
- An episode of Total Drama Action is based off of fairy tales, and one part of the chalange involves the three males getting wooden swords. And Harold, the geek, gets one notably smaller than the rest.
- In the Simpsons episode 'That 90's Show', Marge's college professor/boyfriend view on lighthouses.
- Scrooge gives a whole new meaning to the term "Money Fetish." He has his giant money bin (penis shaped phallic symbol), which is hollow (womb symbol), filled with money (representative phallic symbol). Further, his greatest fears are the destruction of his money bin or the loss of his money (castration fear). His favorite pass time is to swim around in the money bin. His female Arch Enemy is obsessed with stealing his Number One Dime. He met his first (and presumably only) sexual partner after she stole his first gold nugget. Not to mention he has a rival who constantly competes with him over the "size of their wealth."
- How the hell is a cube◊ phallic?
- A cube on a very steep hill, but that's still kind of a stretch.
- It's not even cubic, it's longer than it is wide, and it is topped off by a dome.
- The money bin from Duck Tales is differently shaped than the one in the comics.
- In one Justice League episode, a pyromancer villain talks of a fellow bad guy's flamethrower-size symbolically. He insists that he makes up for size with skill, only to get quickly beaten and she pats his head sympathetically.
- She immediately emerges from cover and burninates everything in sight. His flamethrower discharges as he declares, "I'm in looooove."
- Time Squad meets up with the actual Sigmund Freud, whom they have to convince that psychoanalysis works better than hypnotising people into acting like animals. While there's little sexual subtext, Freud notes that Buck and Larry act like a married couple with Otto as their son.
- Venture Brothers unveiled Jonas, Jr.'s "late 60's ultra death ray"...a gigantic and blatantly phallic engine of destruction. Every man in the room desperately wants to use it.
"If that thing were a woman, I'd marry it."
"And I'd jeopardize our friendship by nailing your hot wife."
- 90% of the humor and 50% of the violence on The Powerpuff Girls is disturbingly Freudian. Just try to watch the episodes "Members Only" and "The Boys Are Back in Town" without wanting to take a cold shower. Seriously — "Whenever their masculinity is threatened, they shrink in size." Apparently, this is what happens when an action series stars little girls.
Real Life
sex~
|
|
