Hates Being Touched

"Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me."

— Guts, Berserk

This is a character who just doesn't like being touched, whether it's by a stranger or someone they know. In fact, it's their Berserk Button. They may be this way as a result of a bad experience, simple shyness, or because they just don't have the tolerance/patience for such things. Sometimes there's something wrong with them in a dangerous way and they know it. There's a good chance that they may be something of a loner as well. Sometimes they change for the better later on, sometimes they don't, and sometimes the fact that they don't like to be touched isn't treated as a problem in the first place.

If it's treated like a problem, expect their Love Interest to attempt to fix it at some point. Most of the time, they succeed but the number of blunders and the time it takes depends greatly on the genre and nature of the story. At other times, they may already have a special person whose touch doesn't trigger any adverse reaction, indicating a particularly trusting relationship.

In Real Life, this is called tactile defensiveness and is common in abuse victims and people with conditions like ADHD or autism spectrum disorders, and especially with OCD or if the person is Terrified of Germs, but even then, some people just don't like it and can't explain why. The perception that someone hates being touched can also be a result of a Culture Clash: if someone believes that touching is an intimate gesture to be shared among close friends and lovers, then the American custom of shaking hands with someone the first time you meet them would be overly intimate, akin to walking up to a complete stranger, grabbing their face, and frenching them. Depending on culture and personality, attempting to touch the person could result in a Handshake Refusal, the person stepping back to regain some sense of personal space, or an attack on the Personal Space Invader; however, adequately befriending them usually removes the touch taboo in this case.

May even be a result of It's Not You, It's My Enemies, because the character wants to keep others at arm's length for fear of getting them hurt by their enemies to get to them.

If someone like this actually lets someone else touch them, you can rest assured that something serious has just happened. Or the person they allow to touch them may be the only exception whether in a romantic sense or otherwise.

For instant hilarity, pair them up with someone who has No Sense of Personal Space or is a Cuddle Bug. However, if you don't want them to punch you in the face, Air Hugging may be a better choice. May sometimes be a trait that Tsundere share. Compare and contrast the Affection-Hating Kid, who does hate hugs, but touching isn't the issue— the sentiment is.

A sign of Character Development is when they tell others they're Now Allowed to Hug them.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Subverted. Kishika actually likes being touched, but pretends that she doesn't because if she stays in physical contact with someone for too long, she mentally regresses to infancy.
• In Afterschool Charisma, Mozart hates being touched by non-clones, as Shiro finds out at least three times. Once Mozart discovers that Shiro might be a clone, he does a 180 and has No Sense of Personal Space with Shiro instead.
• Ao in Asteroid in Love doesn't like people coming close to her. She gets fully blushed when Misa gets close to her during Chapter 7/Episode 3, while during Episode 11/Chapter 35, she's acting defensive when Shiho comes close to her. In the latter case, Shiho concluded from this that Ao is a rather shy person. The only person she doesn't have a problem getting close to is Mira.
• Guts from Berserk, as mentioned in the quote above, as a result of being raped by one of his adoptive father's men during his childhood. The only exceptions are his Love Interest Casca and Griffith, and even Casca almost got strangled to death during their first time together due to Guts flashing back to what Donovan did to him.
  • During his stay with the Band of the Hawk, Guts did appear to be getting over this, as he became more chummy with his comrades and became more trusting of others close to him. Then the Eclipse happened. You can guess what state he reverted back into.
    • Based on this information, you can say that Guts' issue with people touching him has a lot to do with his trust in others, not just a single traumatic physical experience. After his time with Casca, Guts really doesn't talk about his childhood after that, but after the Eclipse, he goes back to hating being touched. It goes to show how much he felt betrayed by a man that he trusted, the second time in his life.
  • Once used for hilarity rather than drama, though. When he refuses to join the Hawks in a huge celebration after his first major battle with them, Pippin just grabs him, hauls Guts over his shoulder, and drags him to the group kicking and screaming.
  • And as for Casca, after being raped into insanity by Femto during the Eclipse, she has shown signs of this herself. When Guts tries to touch her following the ordeal, she responds quite badly, both when she and Guts are with Godo, Rickert and Erica immediately following the Eclipse, and later in the Millennium Falcon arc after Guts' personal Beast almost gets him to rape her, where she bites Guts' hand and then hides behind Farnese, the only one who she seems to allow to touch her. Which only adds to Guts' misery, considering how close they were before everything went to hell.
• Hinako from Bitter Virgin has this in regards to men due to suffering several years of sexual abuse by her stepfather.
• Ciel from Black Butler. He appears to not enjoy physical contact and has been shown slapping and insulting individuals for being too comfortable with touching or speaking to him. However, he tolerates Sebastian and does not complain when the demon picks him up or holds him. If he is stressed, he will also slap someone touching him away, proclaiming, "Don't touch me so easily!" This is a negative influence of the trauma he underwent during his time as a slave, which is implied to have included rape. Ciel tolerates Elizabeth's physical contact, as well. The fact she's his fiancee and has known him since they were little may have something to do with it. In chapter 90, Ciel goes back to being this way towards everyone except Finnian after being cursed by poisonous gas and being reminded of his awful childhood.
  • Ciel's hatred for being touched first shows up in the manga shortly after the death of Madame Red, with him pulling a gun on Sebastian after being woken from a nightmare.
• Revy of Black Lagoon has a Hair-Trigger Temper and as such can be quite violent about being touched at times. It doesn't help that she was raped as a teenager by a cop.
• Jeremy in A Cruel God Reigns which is understandable, considering he is repeatedly raped throughout the series. Also falls along the lines of "Don't Look At Me" later on both when he is working as a prostitute (he refuses to let customers see his back) and with Ian, although the latter eventually gets him to get over it because of the scars on his back.
• Aoyama from Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun despises being touched and avoids it like the plague; it's a Running Gag. He plays a sport where clashing with the rival team is inevitable, but he still avoids all and any physical contact even from his teammates when they celebrate a match they won. However, it's Zigzagged with Odagiri being the only exception from this rule, where he willingly goes to touch her much to everyone's surprise. This extends to Moka as well, when they become a couple, and he holds her hands for more than 11 seconds beating his own record.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Yamcha in the original series, due to his immense shyness around beautiful women freaks out and almost crashes the flying car when Bulma nuzzles his face with her own. He appears to get over it by the end of the Pilaf saga though finding the courage to pick Bulma up and carry her to safety.
  • Blonde Launch unlike her affectionate dark/blue haired side violently dislikes men touching her and was even disgusted by 12-year-old Goku just sleeping in the same bed as her. She does make a notable exception with Tien Shinhan though.
  • Vegeta in stark contrast to the very cuddly Goku appears to dislike physical contact that doesn’t invoke punching and kicking due to his prickly personality. Even after joining the heroes on Earth, he bats Gohan’s friendly handshake away. This even extends to his family members as he punches and elbows Future Trunks away when his son tries touching him and Vegeta clearly wasn’t a fan of Bulma putting infant Trunks on his back◊. In the Dragon Ball Super manga when Bulma kisses his cheek, Vegeta flips out and tells his wife to warn him before she does stuff like that. Averted in the Buu Saga as regretting that he never held Trunks in his arms, Vegeta hugs Trunks before knocking him out and performing a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Canon Broly, at least when it comes to his waist where he wears his old friend Ba’s fur pelt. Cheelai learned this the hard way when she reached to take it off as Broly reacted violently and bellowed at her that "IT STAYS ON!". He does let her feel the pelt after though.
• D.Gray-Man:
  • Yu Kanda. Considering he spent his childhood up until about the age of 10 being used as a guinea pig for Body Horror-tastic experiments by the Black Order, this isn't surprising.
  • Allen now qualifies as well, if only in one instance so far (chapter 215). He repeats, "Don't come near me!" after nearly killing Johnny as the Fourteenth. Quite a bit of self-loathing there.
• Hisoka from Descendants of Darkness. Explained to be due to his messed up family history, Muraki raping him, and the fact that he's able to read the memories/feelings of others when he touches them. Yeesh.
• Death Note:
  • Light Yagami, especially when Misa is around.
  • L is probably one too, as hinted by the fact that he doesn't like touching either objects or people and will only use his fingertips to do it. Though L does tend to plant himself awkwardly close to other people, especially Light, and has no problem leaning straight into him - much to Light's blatant annoyance. L might be something of a subversion; he doesn't like touching objects, but people are fine.
• Downplayed in Destiny of the Shrine Maiden: Himeko cannot stand anyone touching her hair—unless it's Chikane.
• Kouji Minamoto from Digimon Frontier. He even says out loud in episode two that he hates being touched by strangers.
• Heine from Dogs: Bullets & Carnage has a bad reaction to being touched by women (except Nill for some reason that no one knows). Although his aversion to women is part of his traumatic backstory, it's played for laughs once when Naoto assumes that it's because he and Badou are in a homosexual relationship, and twice when Naoto faints and Heine should catch her but... doesn't.
• Elfen Lied:
  • Lucy became like this as a result of her terrible childhood, though she doesn't mind if Kouta touches her.
  • Mayu also follows this to a degree; the manga implies that her traumatic experience with her stepfather has soured her on men in general, and finding Kouta in the bath groping Nyu doesn't help. Ironically, she appears to bond most closely with Bandou, who generally treats her like crap, except for when he saved her from the "Unknown Man".
• The Fox & Little Tanuki: Senzou (the titular fox) despises being touched and snaps at Manpachi (the titular tanuki) whenever he tries to cuddle with him. The attitude does dissipate with time.
• "Father" in Fullmetal Alchemist has a mentality of not letting inferior humans lay a hand on him. Eventually, however, he did get physically ass-kicked by Edward in the finale due to his powers weakening.
  • Downplayed by Roy, who tolerates his best friend's Cuddle Bug nature but doesn't seem pleased about it. His genuine physical affection seems reserved for Riza, and even then only under certain circumstances.
• Satellizer from Freezing, due to the abuse from her half-brother Louis. Touch her and she'll beat the ever-loving shit out of you with her big blade. Unless you're Kazuya Aoi. This change when she got her Character Development but still show some signs of it.
• Kyo of Fruits Basket is like this because he changes into a cat due to the Sohma curse whenever he gets hugged. He more or less mellows out about this in regards to Tohru who he falls in love with and eventually marries.
• Galaxy Angel Rune's Apricot Sakuraba is like this around men in the sense that she can interact with men without difficulty, but if a man touches her, her super-strength kicks in and she literally reflexively kicks the man's ass.
• Memori from Game×Rush. Possibly as a side-effect from his youth, where his family tended to treat him more like a beloved pet (dressing him up, teasing him until he cried) than is probably good for a kid. Completely ignored in the second half of the manga, at least where Yuuki's involved.
• Madarame from Genshiken is a bit uncomfortable around acts of physical affection.
• Kyuubei Yagyu of Gintama is bad with being touched by men, however slightly. More often than not, she'll hurl any such unlucky guy.
• Girls Bravo:
  • Yukinari is heterosexual so he hates it if another guy touches him and he hates it if girls touch him because he has a bad allergic reaction that flares up whenever he is touched or beat up by girls. Miharu being the exception as she seems to be the only girl in the world that doesn't set off his allergy.
  • Kirie at times, especially if the touching is meant to be perverted.
• Daryl Yan of Guilty Crown. He mentions a fear of infection at one point, but since he's just as leery about physical contact with clearly uninfected people, that seems to merely be one of many excuses.
• The h-manga Hands-On Draining with Three Succubus Sisters revolves around three sisters that are considered the most beautiful girls in school, and anytime someone tries to interact with them, they bluntly tell them to stay away from them and not touch them, earning them a reputation of having cold personalities. The reason is because they are succubi who are trying to survive in the human world, and the only way to do so is to remain undiscovered by refraining from getting too close to people, as touching them will cause the touched human to orgasm uncontrollably, and if they continue to touch a human for prolonged period of time, than that human will die. Once the effects subside, if they cannot erase a person's mind, then they would have to kill them. After living for centuries without the touch of a person, the eldest sister has resigned herself to an existence without touch, but her two younger sisters crave human affection, and when they find the one guy that doesn't go into convulsions when he touches them, they happily use him to satisfy their needs for physical interactions.
• Hellsing: One of the things that sets off Seras Victoria is being attacked in this manner (in the anime at least).
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Japan does not react well to Italy hugging and kissing him. Or to Korea trying to claim his breasts. Or waking up naked next to Greece. It's one of the surefire ways to make his stoic exterior crack, really.
  • Germany fits this to a lesser degree. While he lets himself being touched by Italy when Italy wanted to hug someone and Japan didn't want to be hugged, Germany didn't seem too fond of it, either.
  • Due to their Tsundere personalities, Romano and England can be like this too.
• Dio of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure due to his Jerkass personality and Hot-Blooded temper will usually hit people he doesn't want to touch him. Even Danny, JoJo's dog, is not immune. As Dio kicked Danny when he tried to act friendly and get close to him.
• Kazuma from Kagerou-Nostalgia either lashes out or shakes when touched by another guy after being attacked (and implied to be raped) by the demon Shimari.
• Karakuridouji Ultimo: Jealous/Jealousy. Considering he nearly sliced off Yamato's arm after he touched his shoulder...
• Kaze to Ki no Uta: Rosemarine, by everyone except Jules and later Serge. Blame it on Auguste raping him when he was fifteen.
• Miu from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple though not as extreme doesn't like to be touched. She got a little ticked that someone touched her so easily. Also, anyone who approaches her from the back will be flipped over.
• Tsukasa from the oneshot Kuroneko Guardian due to being raped by a burglar.
• Gems of Land of the Lustrous typically don't touch each other any more than they can help. Rather than a distaste for being touched, the reason is more pragmatic. Gems come in varying degrees of hardness and physical contact runs a very real risk of the harder gem damaging the more fragile one. The exception to this are gems of the same type, like the Amethyst twins, who regularly do things like bang each other's heads together. The fact that the Amethysts can do this, and do so regularly, is considered just a tad creepy by the others.
• Loveless: Love and touching is an uncomfortable subject for Ritsuka. He is wary of compliments and affection, and early on in the series is troubled when Soubi says "I love you" frequently. Ritsuka doubts this is true and has trouble tolerating it, and because of Ritsuka's cynical reaction, Soubi stops saying it altogether after volume 2 of the manga. Still, Ritsuka's inner conflict over whether he believes what Soubi says becomes a source of great tension and bitterness in their relationship. However, as the story progresses, Ritsuka realizes how much he needs Soubi despite his rash attitude at times; when he tells Soubi to leave him alone, he is often seen staring at his cell phone waiting for a call or a text message.
• Lyrical Nanoha: Due to having been neglected for most of her childhood and subjected to physical abuse for about half of that time, Fate Testarossa is notably uncomfortable with physical displays of affection in a parental context (something that both Linith and Lindy discovered). The movies change this a bit, as she is shown to enjoy when Lindy caresses her face but recoils when the Precia created from the Book of Darkness tries to do the same thing, showing that Fate has finally come to accept Lindy as her mother over Precia.
• Kira of Mars (1996) was raped by her stepfather when she was fourteen years old. As a result, she became averse to male touch and shy to the point of muteness.
• Maiden Rose: Taki in some scenes, where his reaction is either a slap or saying something along the lines of "Don't touch me with your filthy hands!" or "Know your place!".
• Setsuna of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is a Captain Ersatz of Sousuke of Full Metal Panic! (similar background as a Child Soldier) and shares Sousuke's aversion to being touched. Surprisingly, he extends this behavior to his Gundam as well, although he later grows out of it to the point he hugs Feldt and Marina without any sign of discomfort.
• Overhaul from My Hero Academia has an extreme distaste for germs which leads to him despising contact with other people, to the extent of blowing Mr Compress' arm off when he went to touch Overhaul
• Urabe of Mysterious Girlfriend X slips out of her boyfriend's hugs and tells him not to do that without asking first.
  • Right after using her (as Tsubaki called them) Panty-Scissors and uses awesome moves to cut whatever conveniently located poster next to or behind of him into tiny shreds.
• Nabari no Ou: Yoite. Though he ends up allowing it of Miharu sometimes, "'Don't touch me" is easily the phrase he says the most.
• Naruto: Sasuke and Gaara are the most prominent with Sasuke often proclaiming "Don't get so close!"/"Don't touch me so familiarly!" and Gaara threatening to kill people and/or giving the Death Glare. Gaara eventually got better about this, and Sasuke seemed to have stopped caring (maybe he just got used to Orochimaru grabbing him with snakes, and everything else seems minor by comparison).
• Neon Genesis Evangelion weaponizes this trope as the "Absolute Terror Field", a metaphysical barrier that renders Angels and EVAs alike impervious to damage from conventional means. Near the end of the series, and in End of Evangelion, it is revealed that all humans have AT Fields, which are formed from their fears of intimacy and rejection. They are also what allows living beings to maintain their physical forms: without them, people would dissolve into orange liquid.
• Christina of New Game! can't handle having people touch her, or even come too close to her. Apparently this caused some (mostly played for humor) trauma, as she grew up in France but couldn't handle the traditional kiss on the cheek greeting.
• One Piece:
  • Downplayed but Nami occasionally dislikes being glomped by male crewmates she once beat up Usopp for clinging to her leg, slaps Sanji's hand away when he tries to put an arm around her (and outright beats him up when he tries hugging her) and also beat up Luffy for clapping her on the back (to be fair he was being way too hard). Nami was also very grossed out at Brook hugging her, though that's quite understandable. Averted at other times as Nami has no problem being has no issue hugging or getting hugged by her male friends or being carried by them. Played straight in Ocean's Dream Arc though this is due to Nami having amnesia. Her horrific childhood being physically abused by the Arlong Pirates might have something to do with it.
  • Zoro similar to Nami dislikes his crewmates being overly touchy with him, getting very annoyed at Chopper for clinging to his head when scared. In the Zou arc, Zoro also yells at the Minks (who are the compete opposite of this trope) for nuzzling up to him.
  • Sanji when it comes to his male crewmates also doesn't appreciate them getting grabby with him, he pushes Usopp away when the sniper clings to him in fright in Jaya and like Nami, is especially disgusted when Brook cuddled him tightly in the Wano anime. On other hand Sanji has no problem with Chopper hugging his leg (even patting him on the head in response) and he occasionally joins in Luffy and Usopp's rough and tumble. Completely averted with Nami and Robin's touch.
  • Variation with Kyros as he can't stand letting his baby daughter Rebecca touch him, this is because he feels Rebecca is too pure and precious for his dirty "bloodstained" hands and insisted on wearing gloves before cradling her. Ironically a Flash Back shows Kyros's wife Scarlett originally didn't want Kyros touching her since he was a violent gladiator, but when Kyros saved her from pirates she fell for him and gave him a hug.
• Psychic Squad: Inverted trope. People go out of their way to avoid physical contact with psychometers. Sakaki expresses open jealousy that Shiho has people willing to hug her and hold her hand.
• Reborn! (2004):
  • Hibari Kyouya. If you try to touch him, chances are he'll "bite you to death" or give you a Death Glare.
  • This was also how Gokudera acted whenever Yamamoto, who has No Sense of Personal Space when it comes to anyone, got too close. At first.
• Inner Moka of Rosario + Vampire doesn't like to be touched. As Tsukune found out the hard way very early on in the second serialization.
• Genjo Sanzo from Saiyuki is the grouchy antisocial type who is usually averse, rather violently so, to both physical contact and small talk even with his close friends, much less random strangers. This is because in the years he spent traveling, he was forced to kill to protect himself from bandits, and more relevantly, rapists. It's also notable that the only one he really lets touch him is Goku, and even then it'll put him in a pissy(er) mood.
• Mika and Yuu of Seraph of the End get touchy about their personal space being invaded following the tragedy where they lost their family and each other when they were kids. Yuu is explained as being cold and afraid of getting close to people due to this because he doesn't want to lose anyone else, and Mika is like this around everyone except Yuu following becoming a vampire. After finding out Mika is alive, Yuu sheds this, however. Yuu would also get like this around Mika and other people after his parents abandoned him, called him a devil, and tried to kill him.
• Serial Experiments Lain: Alice gets this reaction, understandably, after witnessing the Big Bad turn into a giant gooey monstrosity, grab her and Lain and try to eat them. When Lain tries to touch her afterwards the poor girl is so terror-stricken she takes a swing at Lain resulting in a scratch on Lain's cheek and rears backwards while shaking. When Lain manages to get her in a Cooldown Hug she can only sit there limp in a Heroic BSoD.
• Shirotani from Ten Count has extreme mysophobia, so touching is basically an impossibility for him.
• Ichise of Texhnolyze can get like this at times. If he's not comfortable with someone getting too touchy or close for his tastes he either gives them a Death Glare or has a tendency to go berserk. Also, whenever he is shown having sex he only does it if he can get something out of it and he looks to be bored by it. It seems that Ran's the only one who can touch him without provoking some violent response and even then he tends to tense up a bit. He gets better, somewhat.
• Tokyo Ghoul:
  • After becoming more ruthless from torture, Kaneki gets like this around people who are a threat to him or whom have unsavory intentions towards him like Tsukiyama though he was creeped out by his attentions even before the torture.
    • When Eto clung to him, licked his eye, and professed her fondness for him he was none too pleased and responded by cutting her in half.
  • Mutsuki gets uncomfortable when it comes to people giving him predatory Male Gaze attention or when Torso touches him. This is implied to be a result of his father possibly raping him when he was younger. In fact, it's described he has a disorder that shows up if he feels something or someone is a threat to his existence. It's implied Torso molested him and he cut off Mutsuki's arms and legs so he wouldn't leave. In revenge, Mutsuki dismembered Torso and decapitated him as well as mutilating the corpse's face and putting his cut-off penis where his nose used to be.
• Due to his shy nature, Rito from To Love Ru doesn't like it when Lala or any members of his Unwanted Harem cling to him.
• In Tsukigasa, Azuma can't stand contact from other people ever since he was raped by his uncle. Since he never told anyone why, his Love Interest Kuroe was always trying to force him to get used to it.
• Inami from Wagnaria!!. At least, towards people of the male variety.
• Seto Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh!, due to few reasons either related to his pretty bad childhood, loner tendencies, or his superiority complex. Generally, he acts more disgusted than afraid though.
• YuYu Hakusho: Played with for Hiei. When Botan tries to put a sticker on him he does say, "Touch me and I break your wrist," but when Kurama places a sticker on him he merely looks down on it. Also in one of the ovas for the picture being taken Hiei stands away from the group, not wanting his picture taken at all. Kurama and Yusuke both grab him and carry him away, with him saying, "Get off me, fools!" However, Kuwabara grabs Hiei menacingly by the collar a couple of times throughout the series and he doesn't flinch; this is most likely because he doesn't actually deem Kuwabara as a threat because of how much stronger he is compared to Kuwabara.

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • Bruce Wayne in most of his adaptations. Averted when it comes to his loved ones as he has no qualms hugging them; perhaps the most heartwarming moment in The Killing Joke is when Batman comforts Barbara (who isn't even one of his adoptees) in the hospital after she was shot by the Joker.
  • Barbara herself as Batgirl used a gadget to make sure Bart Allen couldn't glomp her.
  • The Riddler is uncomfortable with any form of physical contact, especially violent contact, due to his abusive father.
• The Boys: Only the Frenchman can touch the Female, and even he is only just barely allowed to. Anyone else... well, if she doesn't hate them, they might get away with nothing worse than several badly broken (or missing) fingers.
• Sharon Ventura, the second Ms. Marvel (and later "She-Thing"), was once captured by the criminal scientist Dr. Karl Malus, and while she was locked in restraints, some of Malus' henchmen groped and molested her, if not outright raped her. After escaping, she found that she couldn't stand even the slightest touch from any male, even men as noble and upright as Captain America (her rescuer) and the The Thing (her old friend). Things came to a head when after being recruited to join the Fantastic Four by Ben Grimm, her apprehension for the touch of men prevented her from leaping to save her teammate the Human Torch, whose flame had been extinguished and was plummeting to his death (he was saved by the Inhuman Crystal, another new teammate).
• The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk occasionally exhibits this, as people touching him when he’s either The Hulk or Banner will often cause a strong reaction. Not too surprisingly given Bruce was terribly abused by his father Brian and developed the Hulk identity to cope with the trauma, he especially hates Brian touching him as an adult as seen in comics and Hulk (2003) where he literally curls up defensively at his dad entering his personal space. Hulk doesn’t have a problem with his friends and loved ones (such as Betty Ross) touching him though, he also lets Spider-Man climb on his back and take a ride on his shoulders.
• The fear of being touched is the Achilles' Heel of Christopher Chance in Human Target.
  • The original version of the Human Target had no fear, which can be a problem for someone who is setting himself up to be murdered.
• Invincible: For a good while, the titular hero Mark reacts strongly to his wife Eve just trying to make love to him, he knocks her off when she straddles him in bed and rubs his chest and later while asleep on the couch Eve after taking their daughter Terra away lies on top on him and tries kissing him causing Mark to wake up violently and back away from her. This is because Mark had only recently been violently raped by Anissa and still had a lot of trauma over it, he does tell Eve about it and eventually they are able to recover their sex life but Mark still reacted violently to Anissa touching his shoulder which is completely understandable.
• Johnny of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. This is actually one of his main arguments when someone incorrectly accuses him of rape.
• Rorschach from Watchmen, this due to his violent mother who abused him throughout his childhood.
• Rogue: A variation with the title character; she dislikes her friends touching her and used to flee from Gambit when he'd get too cozy. This is not because she has a phobia of being touched, but due to her mutation, she risks putting them in a coma or killing them. One time Rogue got handed a baby while she had her gloves off and completely freaked out. Rogue actually yearns for physical contact, though. When her mutation is nullified, Rogue is very familiar with her teammates (including kissing Bishop), but especially with Gambit.
• Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom: When discussing matters with Darkseid, Maelstrom makes the mistake to touch his face in seductive fashion. Angrily, Darkseid shoves her away, warning her against touching him again.
• Wolverine: Logan definitely invokes this in earlier comics. People (especially strangers) getting overly familiar with him is a surefire for him to go *SNIKT* i.e pop his claws out and warn them to back off. Wolverine does mostly avert this when it comes to his friends on the X-Men whom he can be quite chummy. In the first Fox movie he accidentally stabs Rogue when she made to touch him while he was having a nightmare flashback to the Weapon X program.
• X-23 is this too, to the extent of lashing out with her claws when a friend touches her shoulder, and generally shows an aversion to physical contact, especially from those she's not close to (which is a very short list), justified by the abuse she suffered in the facility (see Real Life below). Laura has also described herself as "not a hugger" in All-New X-Men, which shows just how badly she's handling things when Laura is shown throwing herself into O5 Cyclops' arms to stop from entering a Heroic BSoD after being confronted with Arcade's footage of herself in a Trigger Scent-induced rage while in Murderworld. This becomes a bit of Character Development when she initiates one to try and comfort Teen!Scott, who is overwhelmed by Jean's kidnapping by the Shi'Ar, and the revelation that his father is alive (Scott was brought to the future from a time before he learned his father was Space Pirate Corsair). Amusingly, Laura rejects a relieved hug from Teen!Warren later in the series for the same reason. Despite the fact they may have slept together.
• In the first issue of The Question, a Mook tried making the moves on Lady Shiva and she applied some specific force to his wrist. After he finished yowling in pain, Shiva said, "If you touch me again, I shall shatter three bones in our arm: the Humerus, the Radius, and the Ulna. I shall shatter them in such a way that shards will protrude into the nerves causing intense pain. I shall shatter them in such a way that no western doctor will be able to repair them. Your arm will thereafter dangle from your shoulder like a dead fish. Do you understand?"

Fan Works

Crossovers

• Child of the Storm:
  • A downplayed form in Carol, who dislikes being touched by non-related men and boys, unless she initiates. This comes from a long history of sexual harassment, and when she starts snuggling with Harry (who is a good friend and rigorously chivalrous) towards the end of the first book, this is taken as a major indicator of how close they're becoming.
  • Harry, despite being a Cuddle Bug, sometimes gets like this when he fears his developing Super-Strength (which undergoes sudden jumps from time to time) might lead to hurting someone. In the sequel, after regaining his memories of his experiences at the hands of the Red Room, he becomes somewhat warier about being touched (especially considering the Red Son's (his) sexual abuse by Yelena Belova, which was more or less everything but technical rape).
• Xenith, in Fallout: Equestria. Of course, given her history of brutal mistreatment as a slave, it's understandable. When she befriends Littlepip, she begins to warm up to the others, but never quite grows out of her phobia, to the point of using a smoke grenade to escape a loving hug.
• The Haddock Chronicles: Elsa has an immense fear of being touched, worried that she could accidentally go off without warning and hurt someone with her magic. She slowly opens up to Astrid and Hiccup, but even still won't take off her gloves.
• Last Child of Krypton: In chapter 9 of the rewrite Kaworu introduces himself, lifts Asuka hand to kiss it... and Asuka reacts brusquely, stepping back and telling him never to touch her.
• Bill in A Triangle in the Stars has this characteristic, as first shown when he squirms out of Steven's hug and yells at him in Chapter One. He doesn't like it when humans touch him. This fades by Chapter Thirty, when he finds just how valuable and helpful hugs are.

Calvin and Hobbes

• Bob in Retro Chill has a tendency to get startled whenever one of the aliens touches him... despite the fact that he's working with them.

Daniel Boom AKA Loud Boy

• Loud Boy: Altered: Daniel really doesn't like being touched.

Death Note

• Seigikan: When Light gets touched against his will, he fantasizes about killing the culprit right then and there:
  Light: She placed her hand on my shoulder in a flirtatious style before she left. If I had the Death Note on me, I would have opened it up and would have written her name on it for touching me so freely. The first thing I would need to do when I got home is burn my clothing.

Disney Animated Canon

• Dawn Bellwether in A New Dawn specifically hates being touched by predators. This is brought up several times throughout the story, and it becomes increasingly clear that she has a deep-rooted fear of them. (And in chapter 17, we learn why.) It actually becomes an important plot point; Gideon Grey allows her to touch him first, is very gentle when he makes his own moves, and even trimmed down his claws to make her more comfortable - all of which play a big part in Dawn turning over a new leaf.

Harry Potter

• In The Awakening of a Magus, Draco disliked prolonged contact with other people for a long time due to his Scanner ability.

High School D×D

• Issei has a downplayed case in Go Away I'm Watching Porn. He can handle being touched provided he is mentally prepared for it. Otherwise, he enters a Heroic BSoD ranging from panic attacks at best to attempting to murder the person at worst.

Invader Zim

• The Sobrekt in The Smeet Series associate physical contact with intimacy, so they refrain from touching unless they're very close, like spouses or mates.
  • Foxtrot gives Purple the tip of his tail instead of his hand to shake.
  • Captain mistakingly believes that Lena is Red's wife when he sees her on top of his legs after they tripped backward trying to pull a weapon out of a log, and later as Red is holding her close to rub some warmth into her.
  • Blue asks Ilk for a simple hug, which is considered the equivalent of a kiss in Sobrekt culture.

Jem

• The one-shot Touch (2005) deals with Stormer trying to understand her girlfriend Roxy's disdain towards being touched. She can't tell if it's a personality quirk, a sign of distrust, something brought on by past abuse, or what. As it turns out, Roxy has a Dark and Troubled Past filled with abuse, so she always feels the need to keep her guard up and she hates being touched.

Kill la Kill

• At least a few fics have this with Satsuki, who was canonically molested by her own mother Ragyo.
• Played straight in Bad Touch. For fairly justifiable reasons.
• This is downplayed in Concerning a Drifter; Satsuki doesn't like being touched but, but tolerates it from Mako and her infant niece. In one early chapter, she decides against hugging a traumatized Ryuuko despite wanting to comfort her, as she assumes Ryuuko would share her aversion.
• In The Crimson Garment, it's very much Played for Drama: due to her mother's "affection", Satsuki has been conditioned to absolutely despise being touched.

Maleficent

• Emphasized in lots of Maleficent fanworks, especially those where the bad thing that happens to her in the movie is turned into sexual assault.
• Turned up to eleven in Your servant, Mistress - Maleficent and Diaval are into BDSM and he is her sub. She eventually deigns to let him kiss her hand, but that is about as much touching as she can endure.

My Hero Academia

• In Karma in Retrograde, Touya is instinctively averse to being touched due to years of physical and emotional abuse. He makes exceptions for his siblings because he wanted them, especially Shouto, to have the physical affection they could never get from their parents. He starts growing out of this as he befriends more and more of 1-A, letting Mina touch him (albeit not without a Luminescent Blush), shaking people's hands, and high-fiving without a fuss.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: Artemis, due to an incident in his past that involved mares (and was apparently his brother's fault), is very shy and doesn't like being too close to any mare who isn't Luna.
• In Diaries of a Madman, Navarone generally dislikes being touched, though he does make more of an exception for more intimate touching. He tolerates it from some ponies more than others as well, and he does get better about this over the course of the story.
• Living The Dream: In Dali's culture, it's highly offensive to touch anyone else without being close to them, and they treat it as if they've been raped if someone so much as taps them.
• Quizzical: Thweet Geniuth - The Trial of Quizzical Greystone:
  She then went to Quiz, and enveloped the little filly in a huge hug. "Thank you, Quiz. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us."
  Quiz went stiff as a board. "Well... um... oh, dear me... you are... welcome... Miss Bon Bon."
  "Yes, I know, you hate to be touched. I'll let you go, now," said Bon Bon.

Naruto

• A Demon In The Hyuuga Clan: Since Hinata has the Kyuubi sealed into her in this AU, she's accustomed to others going out of their way to avoid her as much as possible. Much to her dismay, Naruto enters her personal bubble with little to no warning. Since the story is from her perspective, the reader gets running commentary in these situations and she's shown as very unnerved yet confused by Naruto's exuberance.
  Hinata: (thinking) I turn around to see him running toward me, and he grins as he wraps his right arm around my neck, leaning on me like a good friend. I feel my cheeks flush at the sudden expression of friendship, and the close... personal contact the boy so willingly entered into with me.
  Naruto: Is something wrong Hinata-chan? You look flustered...
  Hinata: (thinking) He doesn't seem to his notice his right arm resting on my right shoulder, wrapped around behind my neck...

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• The Child of Love: After getting pregnant, Asuka does not like being touched, especially on her belly. When Hikari tickles and squeezes her stomach in the first chapter, she reacts badly:
  Asuka: (suddenly shouting) DON'T TOUCH ME THERE!!
• Ghosts of Evangelion: Right after Third Impact Asuka doesn't like being touched, not even by Shinji. Since she'd been mind-raped at least twice and Shinji tried to strangle her twice, it's understandable.
  She sank to her knees, shivering despite the heat. "This is such a fucking joke," she mumbled. "I should have let you finish me off when I had the chance."
  He leapt toward her, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Don't say that!" he cried.
  A look of fury crossed her face. She brought a foot up between them, planting it on his chest, and pushed, hard. He flew back, sprawling in the sand. "Don't touch me!" she yelled. "Not now, not ever! Do you understand? Do not touch me!"
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: Asuka doesn't like being touched, especially if she thinks she's showing weakness. When she is offered a chance to be reinstated as a pilot, Misato brings her old neural connectors along. Asuka hesitates to put them on, so Misato moves to clip them on for her, but this provokes Asuka to angrily shout at her not to touch her.
• Scar Tissue:
  • Asuka does not like being touched due to Arael Mind Raping her, Shinji masturbating over her comatose body, the MP-Evas chopping her into pieces and eating her alive, and literally everyone seeing her memories, thoughts, and emotions during Instrumentality. This complicates further her feelings towards Shinji: on one hand she wants to touch him and get comfort and warmth from him; on the other hand, she remembers what he did when she was in a coma and the thought of him touching her sickens her. After the start of the story, she gets over her hatred of Shinji touching her, but she is still frightened of him.
  • Shinji hates and fears other people touching him due to getting daily abuse for eight months straight. He slowly gets better, though.

OMORI

• Hands: Sunny is averse to physical intimacy from his old friends, because in this fic series, his older sister, Mari, sexually assaulted him multiple times when he was a kid.
  • False Heaven, a Recursive Fanfic for Hands, delves into how badly this affects Audrey. Not only did she used to deeply admire Mari before learning the Awful Truth, she's frustrated by how this complicates her fledgling relationship with Sunny.

The Smurfs

• Empath in Empath: The Luckiest Smurf was like this during his first visits to the Smurf Village, particularly by Papa Smurf, who was Mistaken for Pedophile by Empath. Also Grouchy, dealing with issues from the 1980s cartoon show's "A Hug For Grouchy" in "The No Hug Zone".

Star Trek

• In the Star Trek: The Original Series fanfic Once Upon a Farmhouse, Spock cannot stand being touched by anyone for most of the fanfic because his Touch Telepathy overwhelms him.

Touhou Project

• In Gensokyo 20XXIV, Ran has a case of this after she was raped, and it was to such an extreme that she almost put a small child through a wall. To a lesser degree was Yukari, after her experiences during imprisonment, that, at first, she didn't like to be touched, preferring to limit if she wasn't going to not be touched but her behavior was comparatively different than Ran's, in that she behaved more like an autistic child would, stiffening and or pushing the person away, rarely if ever accepting it without feeling obligated or trying to imagine something else. However, she also had weakened vision at time, thus it would make more sense as she would startle easily.

Undertale

• Blooming Dreemurr: Flowey rather strongly dislikes being touched, especially without asking.

Whateley Universe

• Domoverse: Estelle, because she wasn't used to being touched as she was cursed to be unable to be touched by her parents.

Films — Animation

• Beauty and the Beast:
  • Beast is like this. Belle changes that part about him.
  • Gaston gets like this around resident Butt-Monkey Le Fou who adores him. Le Fou is usually the recipient of Gaston's abuse whether for acting like an idiot or touching him.
• Coraline Jones in Coraline, mostly because it is the Other Mother who initiates unwanted hugs and placing her hand on Coraline's shoulder, much to Coraline's discomfort.
• Kuzco from Disney's The Emperor's New Groove.
  Kuzco: No touchy!
• Finding Dory: Hank detests physical contact and wanted to be sent to quarantine so that he can live peacefully in an isolated glass box without having to be mishandled by anyone.
• Elsa in Frozen doesn't like being touched and doesn't touch other people because she is afraid of accidentally hurting someone with her powers. By the end of the movie, she has no problem touching people. However, her reluctance to be touched does come back in the first official post-Frozen novel (Anna & Elsa: All Hail The Queen) when someone kisses the back of her hand, causing her to jump back in surprise.
• How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Toothless' reluctance to let Hiccup pet him is used to indicate the dragon's lack of trust in Hiccup. When he finally presses his head against Hiccup's hand, it's a sign they are bonding.
• Inside Out: Anger is Hot-Blooded and as such dishes out fire and punches to Fear when he clings onto him, telling him "Don't touch me!"
• King Julien from Madagascar and The Penguins of Madagascar. Specifically, his feet.

Films — Live-Action

• In Three O'Clock High, this is the reason why Buddy challenges Jerry to a fight after school. Buddy clobbers several other people who touch him.
• From The Apple Dumpling Gang:
  Bobby: Clovis don't like to be touched.
• Melvin Udal from As Good as It Gets to start with, with the exception of his love interest. He softens as the movie progresses.
• In Bedtime Stories (2008), Skeeter's boss Barry is a germophobe and hates being touched, and fires Skeeter after getting cake all over him. However, he eventually gets over this, and in the epilogue, it's said that he became a school nurse.
• Used hilariously in Buffalo '66. The main characters are posing as a fake married couple for a picture (long story). The main character reveals he hates being touched and angrily tells his fake wife, "We are a couple who don't touch!". The fake-wife in question? Christina Ricci.
• The Cat in the Hat: Hank Humberfloob, if a person he suspects is dirty touches him that is. He forces his employees to wash their hands constantly, and when a new recruit shakes his hand, he fires him on the spot before scrubbing his hands with hand sanitizer.
• In Change of Habit, the autistic child Amanda resists physical contact, which is explained as her hiding behind a "wall of rage" to cope with her mother's emotional and later physical abandonment of her.
• In Claras Heart, the eponymous character freaks out whenever the main character touches her. This is because years ago, her son raped her.
  • It wasn't just any touching, though. In his particular instance, she said her feet hurt so he started rubbing them. It was fine until he got up to her knees; THAT'S when she freaked out.
• Yul Brynner from Cool Runnings, largely because he hates everybody. He gets over it.
• Cries and Whispers: The ultra-repressed Karin has a strong aversion to being touched by anyone, even her sisters and husband. But it's also implied that she's starved for affection, so she lets her younger sister Maria run her hands over her face after some resistance. When things nearly turn more than sisterly, Karin has a meltdown and withdraws completely.
• The former half of David and Lisa is in an asylum because, among other things, he's afraid that touching people will kill him.
• In Les Diables, Chloe is severely haphephobic, likely part of her autism.
• Christopher from The Drummer and the Keeper is very protective of his personal space. His first interaction with Gabriel involves being upset that Gabriel broke the rules of Association Football by shoving him.
• Rodrick Usher, in The Fall Of The House Of Usher. He claims he has "overheightened sensitivity".
• Implied with Hanna, she damn well floors a guy when he tries to kiss her.
• Tony from I Was a Teenage Werewolf isn't fond of being touched without warning, and has a very short temper. At the beginning of the film, he's seen beating the living hell out of someone; it turns out that the person in question had given Tony a friendly slap on the back, which caused him to flip out.
• Lars from Lars and the Real Girl. Due to childhood trauma, he feels physical pain whenever he is touched by anyone... except, of course, Bianca.
• Maleficent, who jerks back if anyone gets close (and in the novelization shoots a look when her servant tried it). Of course it makes sense, considering. She does grudgingly tolerate little Aurora pawing all over her horns, probably because you just can't be mean to an innocent toddler
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Rocket does not tolerate violations of his personal space, with his Heterosexual Life Partner Groot being the only one who’s allowed to get away with it on a regular basis. When Mantis naively tries to pet him, he nearly bites her off in a minor fit of rage and only lets Drax touch him in an extremely unusual circumstance (when he thinks Groot is dead and Drax is comforting him). Given his backstory of being torturously experimented upon in order to uplift him, it’s not surprising he’s so touchy about it.
  • Nebula doesn't flip as bad as Rocket, but she also hates touching and almost certainly for similar reasons as him (namely, the horrific cybernetic implants that were forcibly put in her by her own father). Kraglin giving her a friendly pat on the shoulder earns him a mildly terrifying Death Glare and she flinches defensively as if under attack when Gamora gives her a hug.
  • Gamora, though not to the same extent as Nebula, similarly dislikes being touched without permission. When Mantis tries using her empathic abilities to determine what Gamora feels, Gamora (who already hates her on sight) grabs her hand and tells her if she tries, Gamora will break her jaw. In Avengers: Endgame, an alternate reality Gamora is hugged by Peter Quill (who thinks it's regular Gamora). Even knowing who he is and why he's hugging her, her immediate response is a double Groin Attack.
• Ardath Bey (alias Imhotep, the Mummy), from the original The Mummy (1932). In his case, it's probably a pretext to hide his undead nature.
  Ardath Bey: Your pardon; I dislike to be touched — an Eastern prejudice.
• The Mummy (1999) remake has a Shout-Out to the original. Imhotep is meeting with the Egyptologist who tries to shake his hand. Beni, acting as Imhotep's interpreter, stops him, saying, "Prince Imhotep does not like to be touched. Silly Eastern superstition, I'm afraid."
• Bart from The Night Clerk (2020) is okay with being touched on the hair or through clothing, but not on his skin. When a barber accidentally touches his neck, he leaps out of his seat.
• Duncan from The Odd Way Home jerks away from touch.
• The Demon from Paranormal Activity 3. When Katie accidentally bumps into it, it...doesn't take it very well.
• Leo Bloom from The Producers (1968 version) when he's having a panic attack, screaming "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" when Max Bialystock tries to calm him down.
• Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man doesn't deal well with being touched, as part of his cluster of autistic behaviors.
• Pierre from The Sense of Wonder pulls away whenever anyone tries to touch him. He cleans the cut on his head himself because he won't let Louise do it.
• Both India and Charlie in Stoker, as part of the bundle of vaguely antisocial traits they both share and that distinguish them as something of kindred spirits. India's discomfort may have something to do with her unusually acute senses, her uncomfortable home situation, or the sexual harassment she suffers at school; Charlie's might well have something to do with growing up in a mental institution.
• In The Story of Luke, Luke stiffens or flinches whenever anyone tries to touch him.
• Psycho from the movie Stripes announces that he'll kill anyone who touches him.
• Nanon in The Unknown has a phobia about being hugged. This helps fuel Alonzo the Armless' insane belief that he is the perfect man for her.
• Suzie from Wild Things although it's possible she's just faking the trait like she is with a lot of others.

Literature

• In Animorphs, the Yeerk Temrash-One-One-Four, currently in Jake's body, screams "Get your hand off me, Andalite filth!" when Ax reaches out to acquire Jake's DNA. If the others had any doubts that Jake was infested, Temrash just killed them.
• The Kni'lina in Mikhail Akhmanov's Arrivals from the Dark books value their personal space called "kono" to the point of obsessiveness. Kono consists of an area of roughly 5 paces. Only family members, sexual partners, doctors, and servants are allowed to violate one's kono. Any other violation of personal space is a big cultural taboo. The Kni'lina can be easily spotted by their behavior, as they constantly look around them to make sure there's no one in the immediate vicinity. The prevailing theory for this behavior is likely a plague that wiped out much of their civilization centuries prior and the need to maintain quarantine.
• Asperger Adventures:
  • Ben. Troy and Scot take advantage of this by shoving him.
  • Lisa cringes away when her uncle ruffles her hair.
• Magsarion from Avesta of Black and White. He is incapable of being touched, because his Commandment forbids any kind of non-hostile physical contact. If anyone were to touch him without killing intent, his Commandment would break, and the punishment for breaking one's Commandment is usually death, sometimes something even worse.
• Bakemonogatari: Nadeko hates being touched, and looked at, and meeting people's eyes. On the other hand, she doesn't care at all when Koyomi flips her skirt up (he proclaims her lack of a reaction to be "boring"), and doesn't mind getting yelled at.
• Relg from The Belgariad, a religious fanatic obsessed with his personal purity, is like this due to his fear of being defiled. His aversion to physical contact, and his companions' complete disregard for it, are something of a Running Gag. He gets better about it in the sequel, though - as his numerous children attest.
• Sparrow from Emma Bull's Bone Dance. It's because Sparrow is neither male nor female, and the only such person zie knows, so zie is sort of self-conscious. Unfortunately, one of Sparrow's best friends has No Sense of Personal Space, and Sparrow maintains this trait throughout the story.
• Adam from The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War doesn't like being touched, so he and his family show affection by blowing kisses instead.
• Jack Peter from The Boy Who Drew Monsters used to be an affectionate boy, but since he almost drowned three years ago, he only reluctantly tolerates touch. At the beginning of the book, his mother touches him to wake him, and he's so startled he attacks her, leaving a bruise on her cheek.
• Takano in Company (Ibuki Yuki). Despite being a world-famous ballet dancer, he cannot stand being touched by other people off-stage.
• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. "Don't touch me!" is virtually Thomas' catchphrase, and his aversion to being touched is a good yardstick of how alienated or hopeless he feels at the time.
• Christopher Boone in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime. Justified in that he has some sort of autism spectrum disorder.
• Daystar and Shadow: As a young child, Robin struggles to escape every time his mother picks him up. When he and Shadow are adults, Shadow flinches from him and only touches him when necessary, such as when they're helping each other over rough terrain.
• The Demon's Lexicon: Nick. Attempts at familiarity (unless you're Alan) will probably end with a knife in the offending body part.
• Dibs from Dolphin Boy doesn't normally tolerate touch. His sister Amy is surprised to see him petting the dolphin Baby Blue, and even more surprised late in the book when he snuggles up next to her and tries to get her to read him a bedtime story.
• In the Dragaera series, Vlad Taltos' jhereg familiar, Loiosh, doesn't like physical contact with strangers. In Iorich, he thinks it's punishment to be petted by a young boy, and he expresses his distaste for being touched by a sorceress with a mental "Ewwwwwww!".
• Raistlin Majere from Dragonlance tends to dislike physical contact.
  • Once to the point of snarling "Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me!" when his friend tugged on his sleeve. The poor guy just wanted to give him a present, too.
• In The Dresden Files, a side effect of magically-enhanced empathy is that touching or being close to others makes the empath very uncomfortable. It's a sign of empath Molly Carpenter's character growth between books 13 and 14 when she goes from refusing hugs to initiating them.
• In James Michener's "The Drifters", Gretchen won't let even her closest male friends touch her, after being sexually assaulted by the police in Chicago. Eventually she does get over it.
• Olivia from The Evolution of Emily hates having her personal space invaded, and hits or kicks people who touch her. She describes the feeling of skin as hot, sticky, and gross. She doesn't even like the feeling of her own skin, which is why she doesn't wear shorts.
• Due to her Tsundere persona, Louise of The Familiar of Zero often reacts violently and/or coldly when she's touched (especially if it's in a perverted manner) or has her personal space invaded. Saito, being heterosexual, could get like this around guys but he doesn't mind if a pretty girl touches him (though he does mind if Louise is around when a girl touches him because that usually means he'll get punished by her).
• Full Metal Panic!: Sōsuke Sagara, due to his highly paranoid nature. Most people know better than to try to get too touchy-feely with him. This is particularly obvious when Kaname drags him out to get a haircut and he ends up holding the barber at gunpoint when his reflexes act up. However, he is utterly calm about being touched by Kaname herself (who ends up being his personal hairstylist this way). Ironic, seeing how Kaname has probably single-handedly dished out more corporal punishment to him than all of his enemies combined.
• The main character of Roald Dahl's short story "Georgy Porgy". (He also has a Freudian Excuse.)
• Vivy from Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen! hates touch, especially light touch. When Kyle grabs her ponytail during practice, she screams, leading her mom to almost pull her out of the team.
• Matthew from The Goldfish Boy is Terrified of Germs and avoids touching people because they're germy.
• Drea from Harmonic Feedback finds touch painful from anyone but her mom.
• Harry Potter: The Dursleys have no tolerance for people they don't know touching them, specifically if the person is abnormal or magical in any way. They have big hang-ups about magic. In the first book when Mr. Dursley is randomly hugged by a strange man he freezes up and thinks about how uncomfortable it made him feel. Also, Draco and his family are purebloods and thus can't stand if someone who is half-blood, muggle born (mudbloods they call them), or blood traitors touch them. Harry has this reaction to people grabbing him suddenly whether it be Neville in the first book in a Security Cling or in the third book when Peter Pettigrew grabs his legs prompting Harry to give him a look of disgust. Though having grown up deprived of love he Desperately Craves Affection and if it's someone he actually likes touching him he's all for it.
• The Bug, who is autistic, in Matthew Reilly's Hover Car Racer will only tolerate being touched by his mother and his brother. A crowning moment of heartwarming is when he throws his arms around his very surprised father.
• In the Hurog series, people develop this after being raped. In one case, Ward himself shows symptoms of it after he was touched by a woman he hates, unable to do anything about it, and lampshades that it's probably because he couldn't get away from her, he now avoids the touch of someone he likes.
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: This is a common stereotype of elves within the setting. Whether or not this is true tends to vary between culture to culture and character to character. Lyu/Ryu is known to be an example of this trope.
• From Jack Reacher we have Francis Neagle, the eponymous character's sergeant when he was in the army, who actively avoids touching other people and having them touch her.
• The Japanese Lover: Seth notices this about Irina, his grandmother's personal assistant. Even if touched by accident, she cringes. It takes a very long time for her to trust him enough to reveal the reason: her stepfather forced her to participate in child porn, and she remains traumatized.
• Charlotte from The Key to Charlotte normally hates the feeling of other people's skin, and resists the urge to wipe her hand off after shaking it with Pastor Ed. To her surprise, she finds that she doesn't mind being touched by her Love Interest Zakaria.
• Ginny from The Kitchen Daughter doesn't to be touched by anyone other than her family, and even then not very much. Before Ma died, Ginny never went out in public without her, because she sometime screamed if a stranger brushed against her.
• Anthony from Love Anthony hated being touched because he could only pay attention to one sense or mental activity at a time, and being suddenly jerked into his sense of touch was intensely unpleasant.
• MARiiMO: To Tammy, touch feels like a painful electric shock that she can't recoil from. At the same time, she craves it and feels like there's an aching void in her chest. Mariimo turns out to be the one being who can touch her without it hurting, allowing her to achieve the closest thing to happiness she's felt in years.
• Mercy Thompson: Charles in the Alpha and Omega series is his father's hitman. Given that werewolves occasionally go crazy and need to be mercy killed, he shuts himself off from social contact, especially physical contact, to prevent heartache if he ever has to kill them. The other werewolves all notice and give him his personal space. This causes complications in his relationship with his mate, who misinterprets his stolid demeanor.
  Anna: Someone told me you don't like to be touched.
  Charles: Not usually. But I love your touch. Touch me any time. Any place. Anywhere.
• In Midnighters, Melissa hates being touched at the beginning of the books, anyway because she's a mindcaster. Physical contact "turns up" the person's thoughts.
• Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium Series, as a result of a lifetime of abuse and suffering.
• MM!: Arashiko hates to be touched by males and will Megaton Punch anyone who dares. Played for Laughs at first until her traumatic past with her ex-boyfriend is revealed.
• In Miracle Creek, Kitt is very surprised when TJ hugs Young as soon as he sees her, since he normally hates touching people. Young think's it's because her shirt is the same shade of purple as TJ's beloved Barney, so after that, she starts wearing the shirt every time she sees him.
• Mirror Project: When Lynn lashes out physically, Bill reprograms her to be unable to touch people. When he touches her in such a way that she can't pull away, the conflict in her programming manifests as a visceral revulsion. She screams and thrashes, but that only encourages him.
• All of the psychics in Motherland are terrified of physical contact. Probably because it inundates them with other people's unwanted memories and drives them insane.
• The Murderbot Diaries: The titular Cyborg was never socialized with humans in any physical way, so it doesn't get the point of being touched and finds it very unpleasant. Pin-Lee even draws up a contract which explicitly says Murderbot is not to be hugged. It's a big deal when Murderbot likes someone enough to offer to be hugged in a stressful moment.
• In the V. C. Andrews novel My Sweet Audrina, Vera says this verbatim when double amputee Billie tries to comfort her as she cries. Whether this is a genuine feeling or if she's merely freaking out at being touched by a disabled person is unclear.
• Nero Wolfe: Wolfe is not fond of shaking hands, and will only usually do so reluctantly if strict courtesy demands it.
• In the Night Huntress series and spinoffs, Vlad Tepesh (Dracula, but don't call him that) was beaten and raped for years as a political prisoner when he was a boy. Five hundred years later, he's still choosy about who he allows to touch him.
• Shotgun Suzie from Nightside can't bear to touch or be touched, due to ugly events in her childhood. As of Just Another Judgement Day, she's finally starting to get over this hang-up.
• The October Child: Even as a baby, the autistic boy Carl stiffens when he's picked up. As he grows larger, he sometimes tolerates touch but sometimes resists violently.
• August from Of Fear and Faith mentions he doesn't like being touched and will always squirm or dodge out of the way before anyone makes contact. This does not apply around his stepsister Scarlet, however, whose touch he enjoys and goes into some detail about in his narration.
• Adam Appich from The Overstory hates being hugged, even by his family.
• Pact: Blake Thorburn lived on the streets for a period of time, and has an aversion to even friendly contact from people he trusts, like his landlord and friend. It's revealed that Rose programmed this into him as a vestige, as touch weakens him.
• Peter Pays Tribute has the germaphobic Matt, who may be a hypochondriac.
• Done twice in Phenomena:
  • In the 1st book, where it's Played for Laughs because Arol; a big, fluffy, kind, and dangerous winter bear, had been hugged so much that he got tired of it.
  • In the 6th book, where it's Played for Drama because Mijam had been held captive. She used to be a Genki Girl but turns really silent and hates it when her Childhood Boyfriend touches her, even when her father touches her, even it's just the shoulder and she starts to scream. It's never said what happened but there is plenty of Fridge Horror...
• Tara from The Place Inside the Storm normally recoils from physical contact, especially from a stranger, although she finds that she doesn't mind touching Loki.
• Nova from Planet Earth Is Blue hates the feeling of anyone's skin on hers except her older sister Bridget's.
• Aella suffers from this in the Red Reaper works by Ragnarok Publications. This is due to years of abuse she suffered at the hands of demons.
• Kiara from Rogue usually stiffens or flinches when people touch her.
• Patrick from Rubbernecker has a violent hatred of physical contact. He eventually learns to tolerate it for short periods of time, although he still dislikes it.
• In Save the Enemy, the autistic teenager Ben never let anyone touch him except his mom, and now that she's been murdered, he won't let anyone touch him at all.
• In the Schooled in Magic series, Emily is described as being very uncomfortable and self-conscious with anyone's non-sexual touch (i.e., brushing past her), especially the touch of a man.
• Jonah from Shtum usually bites people who try to touch him, although he will sometimes initiate touch and is surprisingly tolerant of Georg's affection.
• Kaz Brekker from Six of Crows is never seen without his gloves because he feels extreme revulsion to skin-on-skin contact. The reason: he was left for dead on a boat piled with corpses after the plague swept through Ketterdam. He used his dead brother's decomposing body as a float to get back to shore, and since then he feels sick and experiences PTSD flashbacks at the feeling of human touch. Here's the kicker: he was only nine years old when it happened.
• The Someday Birds: Being touched makes Charlie's skin crawl, especially without warning.
• Reek (actually Theon Greyjoy) in A Song of Ice and Fire hates being touched as a result of his torture at the hands of Ramsay Bolton.
  • To a lesser degree, Stannis Baratheon doesn't like when his wife Selyse touches him and coldly rebukes her with "Stop clutching me, woman". It is unclear, however, if this is also due to their unhappy married life.
• Kahlan Amnell, and by extension all Confessors, in the Sword of Truth series are an inverse of this: Nobody wants to touch them, because their powers work through physical contact. Because of this, Kahlan is initially very surprised that Richard offers to help her up when they first meet since ordinarily nobody would want to touch a Confessor willingly.
• Spenser is a downplayed example. He doesn't mind touching with people he knows, but if someone else touches him, he can get very unpleasant.

  Spenser: I felt the little switch go that always went when people put their hands on me.

• Strawberry Panic!: Hikari is targeted for Attempted Rape thrice. (Twice by Kaname and once by Yaya) Both experiences terrorize her and make her withdraw into herself expressing Hidden Eyes. Although Hikari forgives Yaya for her previous sexual harassment, she's naturally still scared to get close to her after that. The way she visibly flinches around her, and Yaya's guilt ends up in her refusing to go to the Etoile competition, with Tsubomi comforting her so she won't have to be all alone.
• Downplayed in Touch (2017). James was raped shortly before the story opens, and while he doesn't seem to mind physical contact in general, hugs bother him due to the feeling of having his arms constricted. It's merely uncomfortable if he knows it's coming, but on at least two occasions he gets an attempted Cooldown Hug from someone whom he's not looking at and instead violently lashes out on instinct.
• In Void City, due to sexual abuse as a child, Greta hates to be touched and tends to instinctively lash out with her vampiric speed and strength in response.
• Jos from the Warchild Series hates being touched and will flinch or jerk away if someone tries to, due to the abuse he suffered at Falcone's hands. He also has a tendency to back up if someone moves closer to him.
• When My Heart Joins the Thousand: When Alvie was a child, she was willing to let her mama touch her. But since she became a Foster Kid at age eleven, she doesn't like anyone touching her at all. She's okay if she's doing the touching, as long as she's in control.
• Being autistic, Xandri Corelel generally dislikes touch, although she doesn't mind being touched by her love interests.

Live-Action TV

• Gary from Alphas hates being touched, due to his autism. Rachel's ability lends her to having issues with extensive physical contact.
• Angel:
  • In "Untouched", Bethany's discomfort with being touched clues Wesley in to the source of her telekinetic powers: she was a victim of rape by her father.
  • Connor is so hard-wired that he reacted strongly to anyone but Holtz touching him, he almost killed Cordelia for trying to comfort him forcing Cordy to use her demon powers to calm him down.
• Astrid: The title character is autistic and gets overstimulated easily, with physical contact being a particular stressor. This causes a problem in season 3 when Astrid begins contemplating a First Kiss with her boyfriend Tetsuo. She finally works up the courage to try kissing him in "Golden Blood", asking him to close his eyes and not move so that she can control the contact.
• According to Lennier, the entire Minbari race from Babylon 5. Although some seem to be a bit more relaxed than him.
• Hal from Being Human (UK). He doesn't like being touched at all, for very good reasons. Due to being a vampire in a series where blood-drinking is akin to never-ending drug addiction, he has an extremely specific, extremely OCD routine. Things like being touched, or having his things screwed with, or drinking Kia-Ora can cause him to fall off the wagon. And when Hal falls off the wagon, he jumps.
• Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, though that's more due to his germophobia. He once mentioned that if the person he was talking to put on latex gloves, he'd let them do a proctology exam on him. When he hugged Penny, it was the highest possible expression of gratitude for him. Even then, it was the most awkwardly made and hysterically tentative hug ever.
• In Black Lightning (2018), Todd Green's sexual preference is "not being touched".
• Detective Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
  • From Season 4, Episode 14:
    Jake: Rosa, we will never not be friends.
    Rosa: Thanks, man. Now get your hand off me.
    Jake: Yep. Forgot the Rosa rule. No touchy.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Little known fact about Faith...she finds physical contact uncomfortable, due to her abusive parents. When she switched bodies with Buffy she was not used to Joyce hugging her, at all. She doesn't like Riley near her unless it's for casual sex. And she stabs Giles with a fork, before apologetically saying she doesn't like being pawed unless she paws first.
• Ben from Carnivàle, mostly due to being raised by a cold and uber-religious mother who told him he was "marked by the beast" because of his touch-based healing powers.
• Criminal Minds
  • In the episode "Haunted", the UnSub doesn't like being touched because it brought him traumatic childhood memories.
  • "The Big Wheel" has an UnSub hates it because he was extremely obsessive-compulsive and germophobic.
  • Interestingly, in both episodes listed above, the killer touches or is touched by someone they're emotionally close to near the end of the episode, and for once, doesn't mind.
  • A few very observant fans have pointed out that Hotch almost never touches anyone (Jack, Hayley, and occasionally Rossi, and sometimes Reid) and when he does, it's usually a very emotional scene. He also tends to move away quickly when someone else touches him unexpectedly (the scene at the end of "Revelations" where Reid gives him a hug and his subsequent surprised reaction to it is the best example of this). It's implied that he was abused as a child in "Natural Born Killer":
    Hotch: You were just responding to what you learned, Vincent. When you grow up in an environment like that, an extremely abusive and violent household... it's not surprising that some people grow up to become killers.
    Vincent: Some people?
    Hotch: What's that?
    Vincent: You said some people grow up to become killers.
    Hotch: ...And some people grow up to catch them.
  • Reid himself, as he can usually be seen side-stepping any offered handshakes with an awkward wave and only seems to let people he trusts (i.e. his team) touch him in any way.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Twelfth Doctor starts out like this, unlike most of his predecessors (even Nine, often regarded as the angsty one, was ready to hug anyone who asked). Interestingly, this seems to encourage Clara to hug him at least once an episode.
    The Doctor: No, no, not the hugging! I'm against the hugging, please...
    • In the finale of his debut series, the Doctor explains it's not the touching he minds, but the fact he can't see the other person's face.
    • In "Last Christmas", however, the Doctor is back to not wanting to be touched, with Clara being given a free pass.
    • In Series 9 (Twelve's second series), the Doctor no longer minds being touched as he now hugs Clara of his own free will, enjoys her hugs, and Clara adopts face-stroking as a sign of affection.
  • The Thirteenth Doctor also has this trait, but it's not as noticeable as it was with Twelve because Thirteen is much more outgoing. But as of Series 12, her second season, she has yet to hug any of her companions even once and generally tries to avoid touching people.
• Justified in Elementary: Kitty Winter avoids physical contact and pulls away when Marcus Bell innocently tries to warn her about a tripping hazard at a crime scene. Her backstory involved her being kidnapped and repeatedly raped, giving her a Freudian Excuse for why she doesn't want people touching her.
• In Everything's Gonna Be Okay, autistic Matilda does not like receiving hugs. She will show people affection by dancing with them.
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Young-woo dislikes physical contact, which makes it difficult for her as Geu-ra-mi and Soo-yeon are prone to cuddling. It's justified in her case because she's autistic and people on the autistic spectrum don't process affective touch the same way as neurotypical people do. For them, it gets processed by the discriminatory touch system, which has the purpose of alerting us when something is impinging on our skin (reference here).
• The Flash (2014):
  • Harrison Wells tends to react to the rare occasions when people touch him by frowning slightly at the point of contact. About the extent of the contact he is willing to have with other people is handshakes, although very rarely he will put a hand on someone's arm to add emotional weight to what he's saying.
  • Harrison Wells of Earth-2 reacts badly to Cisco touching him, shoving him off and telling him in no uncertain terms not to touch him again. However, this is largely because he doesn't want Cisco using his Vibe powers on him.
  • Leonard Snart (Captain Cold) rarely ever lets people touch him. He death-glares at Barry when Barry grabs him, shifts aside when his father makes to put a hand on his arm, and punches Ray Palmer when Ray grabs his arm in the first season of Legends of Tomorrow.
    • As opposed to his Earth-X counterpart Leo who is practically a cuddle bug.
• Claire in Flesh and Bone dislikes being touched because of an unfortunate childhood. Her ponytail is a particularly sore point when it comes to this.
• In one episode of Full House, Joey gets an audition to replace a legendary local children's show host who hates being touched (though it's more of a psychological/medical condition). Joey does not know this and after he gets the job, he gives the former host a big hug and then leaves happily, but the touching gets the retiring host to fire Joey on the spot. Joey does not find out he had been fired or about the host's condition until after he had sent him a hug-or-gram as a thank you and rushes to stop it. There IS a happy ending here though; although the hug-o-gram does send the host into another fit, Joey quickly fills in and gives the host time to recover before his secret is revealed. Ranger Joe (the host in question) is so grateful he re-hires Joey just as fast as he fired him and is even implied to have let Joey give him a tentative handshake.
• Glee:
  • Emma Pillsbury. It's the reason she's a virgin.
  • Kurt Hummel (though not the virgin part after episode 3x05), who frequently dresses so that he is covered up from the soles of his ankles to the wrists and top of the neck, and who visibly flinches and pulls away from almost any contact with any character who isn't his father, his boyfriend or Mercedes, and has to brace himself and prepare to be able to give his other female friends hugs.
  • Quinn Fabray also seems to have this, to a lesser extent. She lifts her hand between herself and Rachel when she touches her arm the first time and, of course, whenever her boyfriends try to get sexual with her, she puts a stop to it. She is also usually seen leaning against her boyfriends' arms when in contact with them, indicating that she is usually the one to initiate touching.
• Hannibal:
  • Clark Ingram shrinks away from Alana when she reaches out to touch his arm.
  • Whenever someone reaches out to touch Francis Dolarhyde, he flinches away.
• Theo from The Haunting of Hill House (2018). She wears gloves 99% of the time to avoid triggering her Touch Telepathy.
• On the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Baggage", they learned from his file that a suspect hates being touched. So Elliot and Fin hold him down and threaten him with how he'll be treated in prison after he tries to get a lawyer. All this accomplishes is making the suspect wet himself and commit suicide with a small knife they did not take away from him. In case you were wondering the guy was a petty thief but completely innocent of the rapes and murders SVU was accusing him of.
• Leverage:
  • Parker has no problem with getting up in people's space to distract the guards when necessary, but she once broke a guy's fingers for putting a hand on her leg. Parker certainly had abusive foster parents.
  • Eliot's background is more mysterious, but with him being the fighter of the team, it makes sense that he wouldn't want to let his guard down too much. (And like Dean below, he has no problem with touching women.)
• Stuart from MADtv (1995).
  Stuart: Dooooooon't!
• The Master's Sun: Joo Joong Won doesn't really like being touched. But when Gong Shil makes physical contact with him the ghosts disappear. Cue conflict.
• Patrick Jane on The Mentalist, though in a more passive-aggressive way than most examples. People who touch him uninvited can expect repercussions ranging from being mildly inconvenienced at a security checkpoint to being framed for murder and used as bait for a serial killer.
  Patrick: You ever smell a dead mouse? You remember that smell? Well, I just now put a dead mouse in your jacket pocket, and no matter how many times you clean that jacket, you will always smell that dead mouse. And you will remember that you should never put your hands on me.
• The Mighty Boosh: Howard says he doesn't like people touching him, and though he'll occasionally put up with it from Vince he's just as likely to snap at him or shrug him off.
• Beatrice Mason, as part of her ambiguous mental disorder, in the Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries episode "The Blood of Juana the Mad".
• Modern Family: Mitchell.
  • Barry, the handsome and homeless aspiring "Reiki" master in ''Slow Down Your Neighbors".
• Monk has issues with being touched because he hates germs.
• Elliot of Mr. Robot has severe social anxiety dislikes any sort of physical contact. He's willing to do it in serious cases, such as giving a hug to comfort a close friend, but unless he deems it absolutely necessary, he will go out of his way to avoid it.
  Ollie: (tries to give a friendly pat to Elliot, who moves away) Oh, forgot about your... no touching thing.
• Tix, Rae's friend from the hospital in My Mad Fat Diary, can't stand being touched for any reason, to the point that she attacks Danny Two Hats when he innocently touches her arm in the canteen.
• The OA: After Prairie returns from a seven-year disappearance, she hates being touched, which is eventually revealed to stem from being held captive in a cell for seven years and never touching another human being during all that time.
• Orange Is the New Black: Pennsatucky initially started out as a Jerkass who was trying to become a better person and open up more. She genuinely tried to help people in her own way and loved animals, namely ducks. However, after she was raped by a guard, she goes to treat him with appropriate disdain, keeping to herself, and hiding under her hoodie. She also states in an emotionless manner about how she used to like ducks but not anymore.
• Oz:
  • Tobias Beecher became like this because of all the abuse and horrible stuff that happens to him while he's in Oz. It's apparent in one scene where Keller comes up behind him, and he flinches when Keller touches him, much like an abused and frightened puppy would.
  • Chris Keller wasn't abused or hurt to the extent that Beecher was, but he does tend to shrug people off or shove them away whenever they try to touch him.
• In Persons Unknown, Joe (post-reprogramming) is this, to the point where he attempts to kill anyone who touches him. In one case (The Night Manager's), he succeeds.
• Arnold from Please Like Me has issues with anxiety, and touching him during a panic attack, even to try and calm him down, will only make it worse.
  Josh: No, you can't touch him while he's freaking out!
  Tom: Can't touch him when he's relaxed, can't touch him when he's freaking out. When can I touch him?
• Princess Silver: Wu You, especially if the person touching him is a woman. He goes as far as wrapping a woman in a scroll so he doesn't have to physically touch her.
• Ned from Pushing Daisies doesn't like to be touched, even though he can touch living people with no problem. Not that surprising given he re-killed his mother by touching her, has spent his entire life having to avoid touching his dog, and that touching the wrong (dead) thing can have very unpleasant results. Also, Aunt Vivian for reasons unexplained.
• Reba: Kyra often has a disgusted look on her face when her relatives hug her, and she has mentioned that she doesn't like being hugged (especially if it's Reba or Cheyenne who's doing it). Though she's okay with it if she initiates.
• Red Green from The Red Green Show, especially from other men, and Harold.
• Sonny with a Chance: This is Tawni's reaction to Sonny's hugging in the pilot episode.
• Malcolm Reed of Star Trek: Enterprise. Good God. Unfortunately for him, Captain Archer has No Sense of Personal Space.
  • Also in Star Trek, Vulcans in general dislike direct physical contact with non-relatives. Justified due to their psychic proclivities and respect for privacy.
    • It's implied that Vulcans have some measure of tactile telepathy. Skin-to-skin contact without consent is implied to be viewed as an extreme invasion of privacy because it's tantamount to forcing your way into the other person's mind.
  • On the planet Capella women regard any physical contact as a mortal insult (presumably exceptions are made for husbands) punishable by death. The wife of the late Teer (chief) is furious when Kirk pulls her out of the way of a sword thrust. "He laid hands on me! It is my right to see him die."
    • When McCoy touched her stomach while trying to examine her (as she was super preggers, just about to go into labor), she slaps him. Twice. But he gets around this by slapping her right back.
  • The sentient and extremely dangerous space probe Nomad doesn't like to be touched, as Scotty found out the hard way.
• Dean Winchester from Supernatural starts out touchy about his personal space, and gets worse as the show goes on. Of course, he has a pretty good excuse.
  • Although he doesn't mind when his personal space is being invaded by a hot woman. Well, as long as she's not an evil demon or monster who wants to kill him.
  • You can usually tell how his and Sam's relationship is by how close he lets Sam stand. No chick flick moments, though.
• James May of Top Gear (who might also have OCD) apparently dislikes physical contact, especially "man-contact".
• Jake Bohm in Touch (2012) will thrash and scream when touched, often accompanied by curling into a ball and breathing heavily, much to the sadness of his father, though on rare occasions he will touch someone voluntarily.
• Jade from Victorious will quickly and loudly point this out if the person touching her is anyone other than Beck, her boyfriend. Surprisingly enough, she's allowed Tori to touch her without screaming at the top of her lungs and has even invited it on occasion.
• Daryl Dixon of The Walking Dead (2010) — he flinches back defensively when his best friend Carol leans in to give him a comforting kiss on the forehead. Word of God states that he's "constantly expecting to be hit" because of his abusive childhood. In later seasons he's comfortable with hugs and touches, especially he adores to cuddle with Carol and Dog.
• Michael from The Wire, due to being molested by his stepfather.
• On Without a Trace, the search for a missing autistic boy is complicated by this trope, as he fled from people who might otherwise have helped him whenever they made the mistake of touching him.

Music

• Nicole Rich of Doll Skin and her "touch me and die" shirt◊. With a little heart over the I.

Myths & Religion

• Eastern dragons are said to fly into an Unstoppable Rage against anyone who touches the "reversed scale" on their throat, to the point where "[touching a] reversed scale" has become an idiom for "[incurring] the wrath of a powerful person".

Puppet Shows

• Benny Rabbit from Sesame Street isn't exactly the friendliest character on the show, but he especially hates being touched, to the point where he sang a whole song about it.

Pro Wrestling

• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. As part of his persona, he's been known to stare daggers at anyone who touches him, even if they meant it as a friendly gesture like patting him on the back after sharing a beer. If it's the latter, he'll usually have a quick laugh with them before Stunning them. It's gotten to the point that you can set your watch to it.
• A.J. Lee in Real Life is a little sketchy in this area with fans due to being inappropriately groped by a perverted fan. In kayfabe, just look at her face after Bayley hugged her from behind.

Roleplay

• Ti'Cira Hawk and Ryori Holloway of The Gungan Council hated any physical contact due to their time as slaves. It's become less of a problem now, though.
• River Applewhite of Honorable Hogwarts cringes every time someone touches her, and occasionally has full-on panic attacks if she doesn't see it coming. The only person who can touch her without this happening is Vix. Which gives a whole new meaning to If It's You, It's Okay.
• Survival of the Fittest:
  • Isabel Guerra of v4 seems to have problems with this. Flashbacks show her recoiling from touch and she screams and falls into a bush after brushing hands with Dave Morrison. It even has been shown to extend to other people being intimate, such as her pretty much having a panic attack when trapped in the restroom with Rosa Fiametta and Felicia Carmichael making out during prom.
  • Version three's Endgame also shows Maxie Dasai to be like this, not reacting well at all to being hugged. Given what happened to the character, it's understandable.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: The Bard spell disquietude (from Spell Compendium) inflicts this state of mind on its victim. The subject will avoid contact with any creature, even allies trying to help him, and try to keep his distance from both friends and foes. If he can't move away from an enemy, he won't fight back but solely defend himself.

Theatre

• The title character in Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll tells Silva Vacarro, "Please don't touch me. I don't like to be touched."
• Peter, from Peter Pan, is never touched by another character in the play. This trope is highlighted in the dialogue and stage directions shortly after he first meets Wendy.
  (she leaps out of bed to put her arms round him, but he draws back; he does not know why, but he knows he must draw back)
  Peter: You mustn't touch me.
  Wendy: Why?
  Peter: No one must ever touch me.
  Wendy: Why?
  Peter: I don't know.
• Takano in the Takarazuka musical Company. Which makes his life complicated, given that he's a world-famous ballet dancer.
• A Streetcar Named Desire: Blanche desperately desires to be touched and fears it as well, especially after Stanley rapes her.

Video Games

• Alice of Alice: Madness Returns. Early in the first real-world sequence, there's a small side area where you can go. If you do, one of the children will mention this about her. Given what the "good" doctor in whose care she's been placed has been doing, it's small wonder.
• Connor from Assassin's Creed III doesn't like being touched, especially by people he doesn't know very well, at one point shoulder-tossing one of his friends who approaches him from behind. A point of character development occurs when he learns and accepts to shake hands.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • Xzar of Baldur's Gate has a "Stop touching me!" line.
  • Baldur's Gate III: Despite the fact he Really Gets Around, Lovable Rogue Astarion occasionally expresses this due to a mixture of elven haughtiness and his Dark and Troubled Past. One of his lines upon switching to his character is "Don't touch me.", and at the end of his storyline Team Mom Karlach comments that she could kiss him, but he'd never let her.
• In BlazBlue there's Hazama/Yuuki Terumi, whose grapple cancel is accompanied with a snarled exclamation to this effect. Unlike many other examples on this page that are to various degrees sympathetic, his reason for hating being touched is pure, unsympathetic hubris: The fact that his opponent is about to perform some painful throw on him doesn't matter, but the fact that an inferior being dares to touch him fills him with disgust. As a demonstration, in BlazBlue: Alter Memory, he is content to dance around Noel and Makoto teasingly, but after Noel trips him and Makoto decks him in the schnoz (hard enough to dislodge his Fedora at that), the fight rapidly goes downhill for both of the girls.
• Simone Cole of the Jericho Squad in Clive Barker's Jericho.
• In City of Heroes the flavor text on the Wisps of the Rularuu state that they do not like the touch of another living being.
• Sam Porter Bridges from Death Stranding suffers from aphenphosmphobia, the fear of being touched, and it deeply affects his lifestyle. He works an incredibly dangerous job as an independent courier because it requires little human interaction, and rarely interacts with people directly, instead communicating through radio or holograms. Over the course of the game, circumstances force him to touch and be touched anyways, and almost every time is like torture; it's not until near the end of the game that he's able to overcome his fear completely.
• Dragon Age:
  • Morrigan of Dragon Age: Origins, who was raised apart from society and is creeped out even by handshakes: "And the TOUCHING! All the touching, even as a simple greeting!"
  • Fenris of Dragon Age II. Though in his case, given his history as a sex slave/bodyguard, and the fact that skin-to-skin contact causes him physical discomfort, it's understandable that he avoids it.
• Squall in Final Fantasy VIII, as a symptom of his desire to avoid making emotional connections with people, usually ignores attempts to shake his hand and goes as far as to clock Zell on the head with the butt of his gunblade when Zell won't stop hugging him in gratitude for his timely rescue. When Rinoa sits in his lap on the Ragnarok, he awkwardly admits that he's not used to affectionate physical contact.
• Collei from Genshin Impact freaks out at any unexpected or unwanted physical contact, having spent the better part of her upbringing as a Fatui lab rat.
• Pokémon:
  • Implied with Mesprit in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, who is often thought to flee from humans to avoid being touched, since touching it would drain every last drop of emotion from a person.
  • Stufful in Pokémon Sun and Moon doesn't like being touched or held, despite looking and feeling like a bear plushie. On the other hand, its evolved form, Bewear, loves embracing and hugging, though it tends to cause serious injury and even death in the process because of its immense strength. The official site says that Bewear has to be taught restraint to be properly affectionate.
• Resident Evil:
  • In Resident Evil 2 (Remake), Ada pulls her arm away when Leon goes for the Standard Female Grab Area as she walks away from him and his questioning, and later on she refuses to be carried by him despite her wounded leg. Averted later as Ada kisses Leon on the tram, albeit as a ploy to get him to get the T-Virus samples for her.
  • Similarly in Resident Evil 3 (Remake), Jill (mainly due to distrust) bats Carlos's hand away when he tries to put it on her shoulder in comforting fashion, though she does warm up him gradually letting him carry her around and hold her close when she's weakened.
• The Boss from Saints Row has a few moments where s/he pulls away from physical contact. It's impossible to say why, considering the character's intentional lack of a back story before the series began.
• In The Secret World: The Headmaster of Innsmouth Academy, Hayden Montag, constantly wears gloves because "body heat makes [his] skin crawl."
• Angela from Silent Hill 2, as she nearly stabs James just for reaching towards her. As it's revealed Angela has been repeatedly raped by her father and brother, it's perfectly understandable why she'd act that way. She does touch James's face in her last scene due to mistaking him for her mother.
• In The Sims 4, as of the Get Famous expansion, it's possible for famous Sims to get the "No Touching" fame quirk, which causes them to hate being touched by strangers with less fame than them.
• Urien in Street Fighter V flips out at Rashid for grabbing his arm just as he is about to kill Charlie, furious at a "commoner" for daring to put his "filthy hands" on him and throws an Aegis Reflector at Rashid in retaliation.
• Variation of this, Tales of the Abyss with Guy, who doesn't like being touched by females only. Later discovered to be the result of him being buried under all his female servants and sister's dead bodies who protected him during an attack on his home. This is still played for laughs, because he's also, openly and paradoxically, a Handsome Lech par excellence.

Visual Novels

• This is Wolfgang Schreiber's defining character trait in Dies Irae. He so utterly despises being touched that he warps reality in such a way that he is always faster than those around him no matter what so that no one may ever lay hands on him. This all stems from his rather unpleasant childhood where he was castrated and then forced to work as a prostitute all while being physically and emotionally abused by both his mother and patrons. And deep down all he really wants is just to be embraced and loved, a contradiction that is a major source of his insanity.
• DRAMAtical Murder: Aoba feels pain whenever people touch his hair, not to mention when it's cut. This is why Aoba keeps his hair long. It vanishes after Toue is defeated and Aoba even lets Koujaku cut his hair. He also freaks out when he's kissed by Noiz.
• Tsugumi Komachi from Ever17 often uses the "Don't touch me" line. Which is why it's so horribly sad at the end with "Don't leave me alone!"
• Satoko of Higurashi: When They Cry has been abused by her Evil Uncle so long and has such severe emotional trauma regarding the disappearance of her older brother that sometimes even the mere action of patting her on the head can lead to her having convulsions or reacting violently. Hate Plague is an ugly thing. Poor kid.
• Hajun from Kajiri Kamui Kagura despises being touched, due to the presence of his brother The Tumor constantly giving him the feeling as if he is being touched. And since he sees the entire universe as his body, all those within it are invasive bodies, constant irritants, like insects buzzing through the air.
• Darren, one of the potential Love Interests in Nicole, just about has a heart attack when Nicole asks for a hug when she realizes that he's Voix, the Rollr user she's been messaging back and forth with. He improves as the story progresses, though.
• Suzushiro from Princess Waltz, although it only really applies to men, but it's not quite Does Not Like Men because she just believes she should save everything of herself (including skin contact) for Chris.
• Hisui of Tsukihime, in honor of her sister. This is one of the reasons it's hard to realize the Twin Switch.

Web Animation

• In Chikn Nuggit, Hawt Saus flinches back when Chikn Nuggit tries to touch him, disgusted.
  Hawt Saus: EW! DON'T TOUCH ME!
• Helluva Boss: Loona, the hellhound receptionist, has a strong aversion to being touched, reacting either with threatening growls or violence. Unfortunately, her adoptive father Blitzo has No Sense of Personal Space and frequently tries to hug and kiss her. "Seeing Stars" reveals her hate of being touched may stem from her Dark and Troubled Past, and she can handle being touched when she's the one initiating the contact, as shown during her hug with Octavia.
• Ashe of Thrilling Intent is a somewhat downplayed example. She carefully removes the hands of anyone who tries to touch her, but otherwise shows no signs of discomfort.

Webcomics

• Underplayed in Agents of the Realm, but Norah is visibly unamused and not in celebrative spirit when the others close in a Group Hug around her out of joy.
• Jessica from Candi cannot stand to be hugged because, in her childhood, her clinically psychotic brother repeatedly tried to vanquish the demon he thought she housed by strangling her with, you guessed it, hugs. She got better after she was (allegedly) about to break her crush's arm for hugging her unannounced.
• Cherrys Cure: Cherry will flip out if she is touched.
• Daughter of the Lilies: Thistle reacts with panic when people touch her, presumably because her experiences with Torches and Pitchforks have left her unused to friendly contact.
• Dr. Kinesis from Evil Plan hates human contact. Even the nice kind.
• Dr. Bowman in Freefall, as seen here (note: strip has potentially spoilery content). Even in his old age, he tries, but can't cope with it.
  Dr. Bowman: Nope, this is as unpleasant as I remember! Let go, let go, LET GO!
• Cookie from Furry Fight Chronicles doesn't like Muko's hugs, often protesting with the gesture. As of Part 3, it's subverted when Cookie becomes more receptive to Muko's hugs.
• Kin from Goblins can't stand to be touched by humans, and will absolutely freak out. Of course, this is totally justified, as she was raped and horribly abused by Dellyn Goblinslayer. She seems to be getting better, though.
• El Goonish Shive has Susan and Vlad. Though some friends forget this (see also the next page).
  • It's telling that Susan's main forms of physical contact have either ended in violence (seen above) or started as it (getting into a Wimp Fight with Tedd over the better sci-fi series).
  • She's decided to start working on this, though, because she thinks she'd be happier if she didn't hate physical contact.
• Mituna Captor of Homestuck really, really doesn't like it when Cronus touches him, and tells him several times, with an unusual degree of coherence, to stop doing so. He doesn't seem to mind being touched by Latula, but since Latula is his girlfriend and Cronus is the single sleaziest, creepiest dirtbag in the comic...
• Lackadaisy has hitman Mordecai Heller, who shows extreme discomfort at being touched. In a flashback, he initially refuses to let Elsa treat his injuries and only consents after she injects him with morphine. In another flashback, he's stiff as a board and visibly uneasy when a woman pressures him into dancing with her at the Lackadaisy. When Asa affectionately elbows him, he pulls away. When he meets the Maitre Carrefour cult, his skin crawls when Zulie touches him. While carrying out a mission at Gracie Grumbach's speakeasy, Mordecai frowns and folds his arms when Gracie places a hand on his shoulder.
• The Last Days of FOXHOUND gives Psycho Mantis this characterization, especially towards women.
• Life of an Aspie has Susan Graham, who in true nature of someone on the spectrum isn't fond of being touched in general. Her new friend Mizuki finds this out in Chapter 3 when she pats Susan on the back comforting her after a jerk classmate got her riled up causing her to embarrass herself in front of the whole class. Also, in true aspie nature, Susan misreads Mizuki's attempt to comfort her as a sign the latter is coming on to her.
• Downplayed in MoringMark - TOH Comics. Enna and later Milan suffer from the Grom curse, which transforms them into the worst fear of anyone that touches them aside from each other. As a result, they both try to avoid physical contact with others as much as they can to avoid scaring people even if they have no personal aversion to it (though this doesn't stop Milan's girlfriend Ayzee from hugging her when she really needs it no matter how scary it may be).
• Joey Von Krause from Mortifer freaks out if someone touches him. William Aussek's freaked out reaction to a female prisoner coming onto him was originally theorized by fans as due to him being gay but was eventually shown to be this trope when he was revealed to actually be Joey in disguise.
• In Our Little Adventure, Angelika's revealed to hate being touched when Jordie hugs her in this comic here.
• Muneca Powell from Pacificators hates being touched so much, she'll slap you with a sexual harassment charge.
• Questionable Content:
  • In early strips, Faye was extremely uncomfortable with any physical affection when she didn't expect it, including hugging.
  • Due to her extreme OCD, Hannelore cannot stand being touched by anyone, but this seems to only apply to humans (or perhaps creatures in general), presumably because biology is gross. When Momo hugs her unexpectedly, she starts screaming, until Momo points out that she's a robot, at which point Hanners immediately calms down.
• Downplayed by Lalli in Stand Still, Stay Silent. Shoulder touching and grabbing is okay if one is not a complete stranger, but the older cousin who raised him has to make a last-second switch from Bear Hug to shoulder-patting when reunited with him via mage dream-space.
• String Theory (2009): Dr. Schtein can't stand physical contact and wears gloves, even while incarcerated, to avoid touching germs. The extreme sensitivity turns out to be a side effect of genetic manipulation by his Mad Scientist grandfather, which lets him Mind Probe people by touch.
• In unTouchable, Jiho has crippling germophobia, and cannot stand being touched due to all the germs he imagines being transmitted.
• Clifford of Wilde Life isn't too big on being touched. Word of God says that he's afraid people will be able to somehow discover his condition if they touch him. Unfortunately for him, his mom is very much a hugger.
  • Played for Drama in these strips, when Eliza tries to comfort him after he realizes that the monster he just killed Was Once a Man.

Web Original

• Aces: Elle looks so terrified after getting hugged by Tom's mother.
• Downplayed with Eliza Cortly from The Neverkind Saga. She cannot stand physical contact, largely due to the trauma the Shadows' Consultant has inflicted upon her and her abusive marriage with her former husband Stefano. She gradually softens up later on after her interactions with Hardestadt Delac, to the point where she allows him to hug her in Sangue Serenissima, and eventually have sex in Empty Memories and Cold Graves and The Wolves of War.

Web Videos

• Ashton from Critical Role does not enjoy physical contact in the slightest, to the point that he declines a spa worker's offer of a massage with "Don't fucking touch me", and has the words "Just don't" embroidered on the back of his jacket. It's later revealed that Ashton suffers from severe chronic pain, which is likely where this aversion stems from.
• Carl Copenhagan from Demo Reel doesn't even like the camera getting too close to him. Part of this is his Shell-Shocked Veteran past, but mostly it's because he's a Good Is Not Nice dick.
• Colin the Computer from Don't Hug Me I'm Scared hates being touched. When Red Guy tells him to shut up and bangs on his keyboard, he screeches not to be touched before making everything glitchy and horrifying.
  Colin: DON'T TOUCH MEEEEEEeeeEEEEEEE
• Cindy Trueman, barbarian girl in Flander's Company, is rather volatile anyway, but touching her without authorization is a good way to get the blade of her axe pressed against your throat.
• Stephen Quire of The Greatest Freakout Ever, to the extent that him shouting "DON'T TOUCH ME" tends to happen at least Once per Episode.
• One of many cases of Hypocritical Humor coming from The Nostalgia Chick. She herself has No Sense of Personal Space and doesn't mind it when a certain man in a red tie gets close, but looks ready to freak when anyone else does it.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Lemongrab is angered by being touched. When he raises his voice at Princess Bubblegum, Finn gives him a light slap on the hand and scolds him: "Watch your manners with the princess!" Lemongrab's eyes widen, and he screams in sheer outrage while clutching at his hand. Then he glares at Finn for a little bit, gasps, and rubs his hand some more, acting like nothing happened. Later, when he sends the candy castle staff to the dungeon, he gives Peppermint Butler five extra years because Peppermint Butler pulled on the leg of his pants.
• Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender, but only when it comes to her feet. A staff member at a spa in Ba Sing Se found this out the hard way.
• One of the catchphrases of Beavis of Beavis And Butthead is "Don't touch me, asswipe!"
• Codename: Kids Next Door: The Delightful Children From Down The Lane, Father, and Numbuh 363 can't stand being physically touched.
  • Numbuh 363 in particular was so agitated about people touching him that it became a plot point. Numbuh One put a hand on Numbuh 363's shoulder while trying to teach Numbuh 363 a lesson about teamwork, and Numbuh 363 screamed "Don't TOUCH ME!!!" so loudly that it tipped Father off to their location.
  • According to the adult Numbuh 5, his reaction to people touching him is what led her to decommission Numbuh 363 once she became Supreme Leader.
• Dan Vs.: Barry Ditmer, CEO of Omnicron, is afraid of being touched by humans. His phobia is so severe that he is married to a robot named Ilsa.
• Sam Manson from Danny Phantom has this in Flirting With Disasters; when Valerie hugs her Sam mentions that human contact does not agree with her. Yet, in other episodes, she shows no issues with touching people or being touched.
  • It's probably more Valerie contact that doesn't agree with her.
• The title character of Daria; the main reason she and her boyfriend Tom don't sleep together in "My Night at Daria" is because she finds the idea of that much physical contact overwhelming. More surprisingly, this also seems to apply to her boy-magnet sister Quinn; she once chickened out of a modeling class that required suggestive poses with shirtless boys and claims that she only slow-dances after the fifth date. It's notable that we almost never actually see her kiss/hug/touch a boy she's dating.
• Norma from Dead End: Paranormal Park dislikes being touched by others because it overstimulates her due to being autistic. Being forced into a human knot as a "trust exercise" is enough to bring her into a brief meltdown, and her response to Barney assuming a puzzle's solution is to cuddle is one of clear revulsion.
• Eddy, Sara, Nazz, and Kevin from Ed, Edd n Eddy. Also, do not touch the Kanker Sisters, unless you're one of the Eds.
  Eddy: (to Edd, after the latter accidentally grabs him and sounding genuinely affronted) Are you touching my face?
• The Fairly OddParents!, had Timmy meeting a girl named Molly who threatened him and others to never touch her and would freak out as a result. It turns out she gets it from her fairy godparent.
• Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, though he doesn't seem to have this problem around Brian. Chris too, though this is mentioned once and only once. (And it had been to persistent Chew Toy Meg.)
  • God Himself (it's explained he is mildly autistic).
  • "The Peanut Butter Kid" has a gag where Stewie becomes a child star, and Peter tells Chris that he's now the less-favored son. We don't hear what they're saying, but Peter puts his hand on Chris' shoulder, Chris starts crying and screaming, and then suddenly attacks Peter, slamming his head into a glass window until it breaks. When Peter hobbles back to the others, he comments "I didn't even tell him. He just does not like to be touched."
• Mandy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.
  • Although she tends to give Billy a certain amount of leeway. Billy once hugged her and all she did was let him before gently (yet irritatingly) pushing him away.
• Hey Arnold!: Helga Pataki. Though due to her Loving Bully and tsundere tendencies, it's unknown how much of it is real.
• Home Movies - Coach Mc Guirk tries a team-spirit exercise where they all put their hands together - Fenton anxiously blurts "I don't like to be touched!" Brendon adds "I think we all have space issues..."
• Zim from Invader Zim, although he'll occasionally put up with it from Gir.
• Reagan of Inside Job reflexively punches anyone who tries to hug her, which proves a problem when she has to meet with the quite touchy-feely Reptoids, so she makes a pair of robot arms that can hug for her. It turns out to be caused by repressed memories of the terrifying bear-bot her dad built to hug her in place of him.
• Techrat of Jem and the Holograms hates being touched with a passion and will loudly exclaim "Don't touch me!" if anyone does. It's heavily implied he has some sort of disability, but this is subverted because there is one exception. Getting touched is ok when it's the aptly-named "Minx" doing it... Although the series didn't last long enough for them to establish any kind of relationship.
• Heloise from Jimmy Two-Shoes is like this, unless it's Jimmy touching her, whom she has a crush on.
• Mr. Cat from Kaeloo, to the extent that one episode had him threaten to kill Kaeloo and Stumpy with a bazooka and a knife respectively if they touched him.
• Hank Hill from King of the Hill dislikes the idea of interpersonal contact, which stems from being raised by his Jerkass father who preached that Love Is a Weakness. In the episode where he meets his mom's boyfriend at the airport, she uses both hands to shake his and he tells her not to do that in public; when her boyfriend, a jovial old man, gives him a hug, he starts freaking out. One early episode mentions that he thinks holding hands with his wife in public is showing too much emotion.
• Francis from The Secret Saturdays. To the point that he has a forcefield that delivers an electric shock to anyone that invades his personal space.
• The Simpsons:
  • When Mr. Burns runs for governor in one episode, one of his PR men tells them (the Simpson family), "Mr. Burns wants you to appear veeeery affectionate towards him. But we must remind you, he hates being touched."
  • One episode has Lisa put a friendly hand on the homeless/orphan boy you see from time to time, only for him to angrily pull away and yell "Don't touch me! Nothing gives you that right!" Played for Laughs despite coming off as mildly unsettling.
  • Another episode had Homer dealing with a new supervisor (played by Jane Lynch) who was riding him hard. Ned Flanders recognizes her and tells Homer that she becomes violently angry when hugged, so he has Mr. Burns hug her during a ceremony. She responds by folding Burns into a ball.
  • The episode "Lisa goes Gaga" has Lady Gaga trying to console Marge by taking her hands to Marge's obvious displeasure. Lady Gaga then kisses her on the lips instead.
  • Early on, Marge's sister Patty is said to be this way, which is part of why she's celibate by choice. With later development, it's hard to know how much of this was true aversion to affection and how much of it was just the fact that she was in the closet.
• The Smurfs:
  • Grouchy hates being hugged in The Smurfs (1981) cartoon episode "A Hug For Grouchy" and tries to avoid hugs from those who don't respect his feelings, particularly on his most hated day of all, Hug-A-Smurf Day.
  • Gargamel's mother hates getting hugs in a Mother's Day episode of The Smurfs (2021).

Real Life

• Horror film producer Val Lewton was known for a fear of being touched and served as the inspiration for the character Irena in his film Cat People, who was afraid of sexual arousal.
• Retired baseball star Adrian Beltre does not like having his head touched. All he's ever said about it was "It doesn't hurt. It's just discomfort."

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