Love Letter Lunacy

aka: Secret Admirer

Traditionally, a love letter is quietly placed in the recipient's locker, or even handed to them in person. But due to teens being unsure when it comes to love, things can start getting... weird. Such as by giving the letter to the wrong person, forgetting to sign the letter, signing the letter with the wrong name, or maybe deciding that lockers are outmoded, and shooting the letter at the recipient instead. Or it could be a fake letter and a cruel joke, a la Twelfth Night.

And that's just the insanity on the sender's side. The recipient might mistake the letter for a death threat, miss finding it altogether, or even just assume the letter couldn't have possibly been addressed to them, and give it back.

Subtrope of Mistaken Message. Compare Obsessive Love Letter, where everything goes according to plan, except the letter is crazy. Also see Irrevocable Message.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• In 1994, Fiat (now known as Fiat Chrysler) tried running an ad campaign in Spain to market their new Fiat Cinquecento towards the "independent, working woman". 50,000 Spanish women received a "love letter" which personally addressed them by name, claiming that they crossed each other on the street, that she glanced interestedly in their direction, and inviting them to go on a "little adventure". The purpose of the letter (advertising a car) was only revealed in a second message which would arrive a few days later. The ad campaign was a horrible failure because of this since the first letter did not even remotely hint that it's meant to be an ad for a car, leading its recipients to believe they were being targetted by a Stalker with a Crush, refusing to go outside without someone to protect them or even locking themselves indoors out of fear. It's also been reported that some of the women targetted by the campaign were already married, causing misunderstandings and arguments.

Anime & Manga

• In Attack on Titan: Junior High, Jean receives a love letter in his locker that has no signature. He nearly goes crazy trying to figure out who wrote it. Eventually, Annie confesses to writing it. He tries to hit on her, but she beats him up and clarifies that she wrote it... for a female Titan who was his real secret admirer. He then goes crazy at the revelation.
• CLANNAD: Sunohara writes an anonymous love letter to Kyou, telling her to meet in a certain place after school. Upon arriving, she finds a message left on the chalkboard, saying that her admirer is actually waiting someplace else. After four or five iterations of being sent to a new location, Sunohara's prank ends when Kyou catches him in the act of writing the next message.
• The Dangers in My Heart: Adachi (with Ichikawa as his begrudging accomplice and witness) tries to put a "thank you" letter in Moeko's locker as thanks for the (friend's) chocolate she gave out for from the Valentine's Day Episode. Adachi botches his attempt to act cool by throwing it in the locker without looking, resulting in it being put in Yamada's locker instead and a misunderstanding where Yamada and Moeko think Ichikawa was secretly giving a love letter to the former. Ichikawa has to sit them both down for a talk while he thinks of way to clear things up... which is never done even after Adachi's mom drags her son along to thank Moeko himself. Yamada still ends opens the letter thinking it's from Ichikawa.
  Dear lovers, the chocolate was totally delish. SUPER thanks. Keep on doing all the stuff I love. Kiss kissy kiss. (Imagine Spot of Ichikawa blowing a kiss)
• The Devil Does Exist begins with shy Kayano trying to give her crush a letter but handing it to another guy instead, prompting a lot of harassment.
• One of the Digimon Adventure Drama Cd's revolves around the Digidestined discovering Izzy typing up a love letter on his laptop. They try to force him to tell them who it is, and when he doesn't, he tries to escape, leading them to tie him up and gag him. They spend the rest of the CD discussing who they think it could possibly be while the poor boy squirms. At one point they actually come to a conclusion that it has to be Mimi, to which he protests as loudly as he could whilst being gagged. He eventually tells them who it is...Too bad the name is edited out. They can hear it, we can't.
• Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure:
  • Early in the show, when Kazuki is easing into the new world, alternate versions of the people who tried beat the crap out of him in the first episode for talking to Mitsuki use him as a medium to deliver their love letters.
  • In the final "bonus" episode', Kazuki becomes the victim of a mostly benign kidnapping when he responds to what, from his reactions, is the first love letter he's ever received.
• In the first episode of Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, Sousuke receives a love letter in his shoebox. His perfectly sensible (from the perspective of a former Child Soldier who grew up in an area where IEDs are a common problem) response is to blow up the school's entry hall because his shoebox has been opened, and interpret the scorched fragments of letter he retrieves from the ruins as a death threat. To make matters worse (or more humorous), the Student Council President agrees with Sousuke that his actions were the most correct ones (Kaname's reaction look at this is hilarious), and the poor girl that wrote the letter becomes disturbed by the fact that the entire time she was waiting for Sousuke to appear at the meeting place she set he was camouflaged in a nearby bush aiming at her with a sniper rifle.
• In an early chapter of Happy Happy Clover, Shallot falls in love with Mallow and wants to give her a love letter. He asks Clover to deliver it secretly, but she loses it after getting sidetracked. Cue her asking for help, with word spreading across the entire forest about the missing letter. Even after it’s found, Kale’s siblings fight over who will deliver it, causing it to rip apart. Luckily, the present inside helps get Shallot’s message across.
• K-On!: Ritsu spends an episode wondering about some mysterious love letters she receives. Then her friend Mio (bassist-songwriter) asks her opinion about those song lyrics she left in Ritsu's mailbox. Mugi would be disappointed—nor not.
• Kaitou Saint Tail has an unusual example in that Meimi/Saint Tail does this to deliver her calling cards to Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist Asuka Jr.; they're delivered with stage magic in ways ranging from a doll with a note popping out of nowhere on his head (Saint Tail was improvising and was flustered) to a blimp. (The anime takes it a step further by adding even more flirtatious and over-the-top delivery methods, a message written on his bath towel as he was getting a shower.) It was actually her way of taunting him back when they were on mere Worthy Opponent status, but after he'd nearly hitting the Despair Event Horizon from believing everyone had given up on him, he'd gotten her to make a promise to keep sending them so he could always have a fair shot at trying to catch her during her heists. Once Meimi actually falls in love with him, she starts sending them as her way of keeping her promise and asking him to come see her. Eventually, when Maju mocks Saint Tail's most recent card by calling it a "love letter", it backfires spectacularly because Asuka Jr. had been spending the entire series wondering what Meimi thought of him, only for the answer to have been in the cards he'd been getting the entire time.
• In episode 3 of Kamen no Maid Guy, Naeka receives a love letter at her school and spends the episode wondering if she should meet with the sender. At the end, she decides to go and even warms up to the idea that she could have a boyfriend, until she discovers that her admirer is actually a female classmate named Saki and when she tries to leave the scene her crazy male butler traps them both in a room together that resembles a hotel love suite so that she can "move forward" with her dilemma. It's not hard to tell what happened next.
• In episode 4 of Kiniro Mosaic, Youko receives what appears to be a love letter in her shoe locker. Turns out Shinobu wrote a letter to Alice's parents, hoping Alice would translate it into English. However, it seems like it was Aya who has a problem with that for the whole time.
• Lucky Star:
  • Kagami finds a love letter in her locker, and worries about it. Seeing that, Konata can't bring herself to admit it was an April Fools' Day joke.
  • In a later manga episode, Kou finds a love letter in her desk, again addressed to Kagami. It passes through Hiyori's hands to Tsukasa, who delivers it to Kagami (not without some teasing from their older sisters). Later, Konata calls and admits that she left a fake love letter in Kagami's desk at graduation, but Kagami went home without noticing it.
  • As if Kagami didn't have enough fake love letter issues in the manga, the anime has her receiving a note while on their Class Trip, leaving her distracted the rest of the day. It is actually from a boy this time, and he does actually want to talk to her... about begging the Yatsuhashi doll she bought off of her.
• Part of the backstory in Marmalade Boy. A couple years before the series began, Miki had a crush on her best guy friend and fellow tennis club member, Ginta. Her best girl friend, Meiko, convinced her to confess to him, so she wrote a love letter and stuck it in a magazine in his book bag. What she didn't know was that the magazine actually belonged to someone else, who took it back and read the love letter out loud to a very embarrassed Ginta and a bunch of other boys. Ginta loudly denied that he had any feelings for Miki. What he didn't know was that Miki and Meiko had come back to the classroom to get something they forgot, and Miki heard every word, breaking her heart. Ginta comes to school the next day with his hair cut drastically shorter as an apology, since cutting the hair short is a way that women mourn a lost love. It's taken until the time of the actual series beginning for Miki and Ginta to recover their friendship, and Miki starting to develop feelings for Yuu is what causes Ginta to 'fess up and tell her that no, he's actually been in love with her all along. He only denied it because she was popular with the other boys and he was embarrassed.
• In the Anime of the Game for Mega Man Star Force, Cancer Bubble tries to infuriate Luna by "accidentally" delivering spurious love letters from Mega Man to Harp Note. He does this because he's mistaken her for a Barrier Maiden whose powers are awakened by wrath, but he only succeeds in getting her angry at him.
• Kana gets one from Fujioka in the first episode of Minami-ke, but then makes a horrible mistake: she asks her sisters for advice. Chiaki, apparently sincerely, manages to interpret the letter as a challenge. Kana is convinced, and meets with Fujioka in order to kick him. (This is just the beginning of Fujioka's trials; at one point, Chiaki even finds an aggressive way to interpret his out-and-out saying "I like you" to Kana.)
• Nyan Koi! plays with this one interestingly. First Junpei receives a letter, which he thinks might be a love letter, from Nagi, but it turns out to be a challenge letter. Then he receives a second (handed to him) by Kotone, which he thinks is about another challenge, but is surprised to find is an actual love letter, only to get it ripped out of his hands only moments after he's read it by who he thinks is Kotone, but is actually her twin sister Akari who challenges him to meet her at a shrine by his house. He finds that Kotone actually does like him (to the point of being a complete stalker) and Akari is trying to keep from being requited. The challenge was more about his curse though.
• In one episode of Pokémon: The Series, Misty and Casey misunderstand the meaning behind a love letter sent to Misty. In the Japanese version, Casey thinks it's a death threat by an angry person who lost at Misty's gym. Misty declines the boy's offer for a date, potentially because she likes someone else.
• Shows up almost as often as cooking duels in Ranma ½
  • Very early in the series, Kuno sends what appears to be a challenge letters to Ranma's girl form. It turned out to be a love letter, much to Ranma's distress. Kuno goes on to do this several times over the course of seven seasons.
  • Ryoga pulls this at least twice in both the anime and the manga. One story has Ryoga send Akane a love letter written in green ink (it's complicated). The letter gets wet and the ink bleeds so Akane never actually gets to read it. In another, Ryoga's dog Shirokiro actually manages to deliver a love letter to Akane and return with her reply, which says she's already in love with somebody else. Ryoga is devastated until Ranma points out that "somebody else" could just as well be him, since both letters were anonymous- the adaption of this story is actually Ryoga's final appearance in the anime, up until the OAV series.
  • In Ukyo's first story after being introduced to the cast, she tries to set up a blind date between Ryoga and Akane using a love letter written on an Okonomiyaki, which Akane naturally mistakes for a challenge from Ukyo. Of course, this isn't helped by the fact that Happosai took a bite out of it (manga)/Ranma stepped on it while chasing Happosai (anime) before Akane could read it, thus blotting out some key kanji.
• School Rumble:
  • In the first episode, Tenma Tsukamoto spends all night writing a long love letter to Oji Karasuma. He spends all day and night reading it, and finally ignores it when he realizes the letter wasn't signed. Later in that same episode, Kenji Harima writes a (considerably shorter) love poem to Tenma, and she adores it. Naturally, someone else she just happens to meet in the park after school (who is big enough to pound Harima into paste without a second thought) finds out about the poem and takes the credit for writing it. Later Harima beats the guy to a pulp.
  • A few episodes later, Tenma is watching a period drama and gets the wonderful idea to shoot a love letter at Karasuma with a bow and arrow. She follows him across town as he nonchalantly dodges every attack, unintentionally makes Harima parody The Matrix, and follows Karasuma into a bank just in time to FOIL A BANK ROBBERY.
• Shrine of the Morning Mist bases one episode largely around a misunderstood love letter.
• Strawberry Marshmallow:
  • Nobue receives a love letter asking to meet her in front of the Hamamatsu Station. The girls try to change her dress and rehearse the meeting... it doesn't go well. It was Miu all along (explaining the feminine handwriting), having gotten the idea from a manga she was reading. Miu crafts another letter from "Junya" saying that he's flying to India... but makes the mistake of signing her own name to the envelope.
  • Ana gets her love letter too, after the first day of school. With the plus of being written in Gratuitous English because the writer didn't know she could read Japanese (when in fact the opposite was true).
• Early in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Dr. Crowler leaves a fake love letter from Alexis in Jaden's locker as part of a plan to lure him into a trap. Unfortunately, Jaden is currently sharing a locker with Syrus who ends up getting the letter and sending Crowler's plan completely Off the Rails.

Comic Books

• In WJHC On The Air, Sandy writes a love letter to Janie but doesn't put either of their names on it. It gets passed around the entire main cast and Hilarity Ensues.
• Blue Monday: Victor decides to send a mushy letter to Clover asking her to the Valentine's Day dance, but he sticks it in the wrong locker and it ends up in the hands of the incredibly homely Sally instead. Clover then takes the opportunity to mock the letter with her friends.

Films — Live-Action

• 8 Women: Augustine wrote a love letter to Marcel, which she misplaced in a book that she returned to the library, which gets discovered by Pierrette, who reads the letter out loud for the benefit of the other women, exposing Augustine's interest in her sister's husband.
• In Atonement, the lead male is frustrated trying to write a letter to the lead female, and writes a vulgar, sexually charged one to work out this frustration. Afterwards, he writes a perfectly lovely one and gives it to his love's young sister to deliver. Guess what? Remarkably, rather than wacky hi-jinks ensuing, the vulgar letter works. Well, hi-jinks ensue. They're just not hilarious. More like downright depressing.
• The Classic: Much of the plot is based on the love letters written under others' names. Ji-hye wrote love letters to her crush Sang-min under So-kyeong's name as a favor to her, while Joon-ha did the same thing for Tae-soo to Joo-hee.
• Prom Wars: Joseph writes nerdy love poems to Jen B. that he's embarrassed by and never has the guts to send.
• In The Science of Sleep Stéphane puts a note under Stéphanie's door while he's asleep sleepwalking. Except a) he believed it was actually a dream, b) she saw him do it and c) it was asking for her roommate's phone number even though he isn't interested in her. The next morning he goes to get it back, realising his mistake, except she's already read it.
• The 1940 movie The Shop Around the Corner is about two people who are conducting a romance by sending anonymous love letters to each other... and who also happen to hate each other in real life. In 1998, the movie You've Got Mail used the same basic plot, with AOL and the Internet replacing the post office. Both films are based on the play Parfumerie.
• In the 1942 musical You Were Never Lovelier, Eduardo Acuña wants his daughter, Maria (Rita Hayworth) to get married, but she's very picky with her suitors. Eventually, he invents a mystery admirer for her and starts sending flowers to her, accompanied by anonymous love letters, with the intent of presenting his choice for her husband as the writer of the letters. His plan goes awry when she sees the guy delivering the flowers and thinks that he's the writer.

Literature

• In All Men of Genius, Volio tries to blackmail Miriam, who's playing a Matron Chaperone role for the younger Cecily, into carrying love letters between himself and Cecily. Miriam responds by working with her friends to create fake letters from Cecily, fabricating Cecily's side of a drawn-out "correspondence". Volio is pleased at the Purple Prose he's fed (which the real Cecily would consider horrible). They make sure that "Cecily" tells Volio not to approach her directly for the sake of secrecy, but he eventually does so anyway. The real Cecily's simple explanation that someone's been playing a joke on him, making his whole romance with her imaginary, causes him to snap and trigger the book's finale.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • In a side story, Seria gives a love letter to one of Touma's classmates in order to pass it on to him. It ends up being passed through a series of people, eventually ending up in Touma's letterbox. However, it gets stolen by a spy who thinks that it contains important information (as Seria is the adviser to one of the city's leaders). And then Seria appears, revealing that she sent the letter to lure the spy out so she could catch him.
  • Touma finds a letter in his locker telling him to come to the roof, which he thinks is a love letter. He rejoices at having "finally" found someone interested in him, while the aforementioned Seria is next to him and Mikoto is nearby. Ignoring the former's blatant hints of her own feelings, he rushes to the roof. It turns out that the letter was never a love letter after all, but was merely an invitation by the High Priest. Considering the High Priest's personality, he may have made it look like a love letter on purpose.
• In Emma, Mr. Elton writes a love riddle for Harriet's collection and claims it was written by a friend, but he means it as a way of courting Emma, who thought it was meant for Harriet.
• In Jane Flory's Faraway Dream, Charlotte Sutcliffe receives what she believes is a request from a friend to become his business partner. In fact, it was a marriage proposal. Justified, in that English is Mr. Curcier's second language. They marry.
• Haruhi Suzumiya.
  • Kyon gets two in quick succession. The first is anonymous, and it turns out that Ryoko used it to lure him somewhere private so she could kill him without any witnesses. The second leads to a confusing encounter with Mikuru from the future.
  • Kyon reads out a heartfelt confession and marriage proposal to Yuki Nagato in the 6th novel, but he's only relaying the words of a classmate. Then it gets thrown out of the window and read by Haruhi. Oh dear Yare yare.
• Little Women. Jo and Laurie are, respectively, horrified and amused by the growing UST between Meg and Mr. Brooke, so they play a few pranks on Meg involving love letters and rumors. "They" being just Laurie, considering the fact that Jo just wants it all to go away and swears most solemnly to her mother that she had no idea of Laurie's hijinks.
• P. G. Wodehouse' characters would often write these, but accidentally leave them in the wrong rooms.
• In The Red and the Black, the cynical, self-centred protagonist obtains a collection of prewritten love letters from an acquaintance. From then on, he doesn't even bother reading his mistress's letters when they arrive, instead simply copying out another letter, inserting her name in the right places, and sending it to her without another thought.
• Sean Bateman receives these in The Rules of Attraction. He doesn't even know the girl who's sending them to him is alive, and she eventually commits suicide. Nobody cares.
• Shimoneta: Tanukichi turns to Ayame for advice after he starts receiving love letters from a potential stalker. So she posts a response on his front door to lure the stalker out of hiding. The note said he reciprocated and that he'd left the door unlocked to invite them in. Except it backfires when the stalker turns out to be Anna, who tries to rape him under the assumption that the note meant he wanted to have sex with her.
• In Toradora!, the plot is kicked off when Taiga attempts to leave a love letter for Yuusaku in his bag—but accidentally puts it in Ryuuji's instead. When he finds it later and attempts to look inside, he discovers it's a sealed, empty envelope. She's so klutzy she forgot to put the letter in.

Live-Action TV

• Cold Case: This happened to the victim’s Hopeless Suitor in the episode “Almost Paradise”. Her Jerkass boyfriend left him a love letter that was supposed to be from her as a cruel joke. He told her he returned her feelings at the senior prom, only to have the boyfriend and his friends start laughing and reveal the prank.
• Our Miss Brooks: The plot of the episode "Bones, Son of Cyrano". A love letter gets misdirected and misinterpreted multiple times. Hilarity Ensues. Especially, when Mr. Conklin believes Miss Brooks is in love with him!
• In the season one finale of Caroline in the City, Richards writes a love letter to Caroline telling her to meet him at Remo's if she accepted. She coincidentally ends up there at the expected time without having read the letter causing Richard to humiliate himself and flee to Paris. Annie finds the unread letter in season two which leads to comical blackmail mayhem.
• The British 1970s-era TV Series Are You Being Served?. In the first-season episode "Dear Sexy Knickers", a saucy note is delivered to the wrong person, who misunderstands who it's from. And when the sender is identified, the recipient is misunderstood. In the meantime, innocent people are cussed out and much Hilarity Ensues.
• In the teen show California Dreams, resident slime ball jerk with a heart of gold Sly wrote these for Lorena.
• In an episode of Full House, Rusty, the jerky son of Danny's girlfriend at the time decides to screw with DJ by writing a love letter to her and having Michelle deliver it in the name of a third party. Michelle dutifully delivers it to "her sister" (Stephanie) but honestly admits that it's from Rusty. And since the note has no names on it, it gets passed around several times, until nearly everybody thinks it's about them. DJ ends up one of the few characters that never sees it.
• In an early season episode of Smallville Chloe writes a love letter to Clark and reads it to him while he's unconscious and in the hospital. Several seasons later (after Chloe is married to Jimmy Olsen) Clark finds the letter while helping Chloe clean up.
• An episode of Mama's Family revolved around this trope. Vint wants to do something to make Naomi happy, so he has Bubba help him write her a love letter. The letter gets misplaced a few times, and soon Naomi thinks Bubba has an incestuous crush on her, Iola thinks Vint wants to leave Naomi for her, and Mama thinks her refrigerator repairman is coming on to her.
• In Wizards of Waverly Place this happens with one from Alex to Justin.
• In The Adventures of Pete & Pete, the episode "Pete and Pete S2 E12 "Yellow Fever"'" has Ellen receiving an anonymous love letter, much to Pete's annoyance. In season 3 episode "Crisis In The Love Zone", a sweeping epidemic of amore has Ellen writing a love letter to Big Pete, only for Little Pete to wind up with it and thinking it's from his crush, Eunice, since Ellen had only signed the letter as "E".
• On Schitt's Creek Moira is incensed to find Johnny has been reading old love letters from an unknown woman while she was away. The letters become a minor town scandal, but Johnny eventually informs Moira that she was the author of the letters during a time when she was working on Sunrise Bay and was in a plot-related body cast, which explains why the handwriting was different. Moira then advises Johnny to let the townspeople think the letters were from a mystery woman to give him an edge.
• In the Valentine's Day Episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Ned writes a letter to his crush Suzy and is prompted by Moze to write another one (anonymously) to the Huge Crew. Unfortunately he put them in the wrong envelopes, meaning Suzy got a simple "Happy Valentines Day" and the Huge Crew got a beautifully written love confession.
• So Awkward: When Jas enters Mrs. Griggs into Martha's compatibility software in "Love Machine", she is horrified to find out that the perfect match is her own father! She becomes worried when Mrs. Griggs gives her a letter to give to her dad and hides it thinking that it was a date offer. However, when Lily has the same envelope, Jas finds out that it was just a request to help out at the school fair.
• Game On (2015): In "Toby's Valentine", Toby puts a valentine in the wrong girl's locker and Hilarity Ensues.

Music

• The subject of Garth Brooks' "Unsigned Letter" from In the Life of Chris Gaines receives a mysterious three-word letter that just read "come to me" and she ends up traveling to Boston to find out who wrote the letter, with no specific outcome mentioned.

Newspaper Comics

• In one FoxTrot storyline, Peter plays a practical joke where he leaves anonymous notes for Paige, pretending to be a secret admirer. He eventually arranges a meeting where Paige spends several hours sitting in the rain waiting for her secret admirer who never shows. Somehow Paige fails to see the funny side of this.
  • Another storyline had Jason, wanting to butter his mom up so he could get a new computer, writes a mushy card meant for her. Unfortunately the notes ends up in Eileen Jacobson's hand. Hilarity Ensues.
  • One Sunday strip showed Roger giving Andy a Valentine's Day card which is full of juvenile and insulting Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue... variations, with her getting angrier by the second while he remains blissfully unaware. In the last panel, Paige is reading a card from Jason that's your standard mushy Valentine's card; as Jason says "Uh oh...", we hear Roger screaming in pain from off-panel.

Professional Wrestling

• The storyline between Heidi Lovelace and Taeler Hendrix in OVW started in April 2013, when Taeler was receiving gifts from a secret admirer. Taeler thought they were from either her boyfriend Dylan Bostic or from Ryan Howe, leading to many pull-apart brawls. On the April 24th episode, Bostic and Doug Williams fought Howe and then-OVW Heavyweight Champion Jamin Olivencia to a double-countout. After Williams and Olivencia left, Bostic and Howe continued fighting until Taeler ran in to stop them. Both guys denied sending Taeler the presents. Then Heidi walked to the ring and said that she was the one who sent them. The following week, Heidi confronted Taeler in the ring and said that Bostic and Howe didn't care about her but that she, Heidi, really does. Taeler said she'd need some time to think about that. This would eventually lead to the reveal that Taeler was manipulating Heidi to make it easier for her to regain the OVW Women's Title (which she never did.) Heidi eventually gave Taeler a "Take That!" Kiss after realizing that Taeler had been manipulating her.

Theater

• A variation occurs in Much Ado About Nothing. When it is revealed that Benedick and Beatrice only said they loved each other because they each thought the other loved them, love letters they wrote earlier are produced as "evidence" that they truly are in love.
• In Love's Labour's Lost Berowne sends a love letter to Rosaline via country bumpkin Costard; meanwhile Don Armado sends one to Jaqenetta, also through Costard. Naturally the wrong letters get into the wrong hands.
  • Later the King, Dumaine, and Longaville are all seen writing love letters, overheard one by the next with Reveal after Reveal. Berowne calls them all out on it until his own love letter is revealed.
• In Twelfth Night, several characters decide to bring Malvolio down a peg and write a fake love letter to him from their mistress. Because he is a proud fool, he immediately falls for it and believes Olivia is infatuated with him. When he follows the ridiculous instructions left for him in the note, Olivia thinks he's gone mad and has him locked up as a lunatic.
• Cyrano de Bergerac: This trope is a plot point in the play. In Act II, Cyrano, a man with a ridiculously long nose, loves beautiful and eloquent Roxane but is utterly afraid of her rejection. So he writes a love letter to her, hoping to give it to her and run. When Cyrano discovers Roxane is interested in fair but ineloquent Christian, he realizes that Roxane will be disillusioned with Christian and he cannot let that happen. So he proposes to teach Christian to be eloquent, and lends Christian the love letter he wrote to Roxane to so Christian can send it to her in his own name. In Act III, Cyrano realizes that the eloquence Roxane admires so highly is shallow and decides to speak of his real feelings in the letters he keeps sending her in Christian’s name from the Battlefield twice a day. The whole point is that these new love letters are so powerful in expressing Cyrano’s love to Roxane, that Roxane evolves into a full-fleshed heroine, deciding to save Christian from peril in Act IV.
  Cyrano (striking his breast): Ay—a single word of all those here! here! But writing, 'tis easier done…
  (He takes up the pen): Go to, I will write it, that love-letter! Oh! I have writ it and rewrit it in my own mind so oft that it lies there ready for pen and ink; and if I lay but my soul by my letter-sheet, 'tis naught to do but to copy from it.
• Kabale und Liebe and its opera adaptation Luisa Miller. Luisa is blackmailed into writing a love letter to a cowardly pompous idiot (Schiller’s original) or to an extremely creepy villain (Verdi’s version). Her real lover sees that letter, promptly believes its contents, and goes absolutely mad. He ends up poisoning Luisa and himself because she doesn’t reveal to him the truth until it’s too late.

Video Games

• In Final Fantasy IX, Eiko got help from the Doctor Tot to write a love letter to Zidane, and when hung on a peg she's forced to ask Baku to deliver it to Zidane. Baku accidentally drops it and forgets to mention the whole thing to Zidane. This leads to Beatrix believing the letter is from Steiner and vice versa; the two do wind up becoming a couple, and no one's the wiser. Even if Eiko, Blank, Markus, and Baku do witness their first tentative meeting. The music that plays during that scene is even entitled, "Foolproof Love Letter Scheme." A nice alternate title for the trope...
• Narrowly averted in Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood. A rushed courier in Kugane mixes up a large technical manual meant for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and a love letter addressed to the barracks of the Sekiseigumi (samurai law enforcers), leaving the latter at the Scions' headquarters in the Ruby Bazaar. Fortunately, Hancock notices the scent of perfume coming off the package before it's opened, realizes the mistaken delivery, and sends the Warrior of Light after the courier to get the manual and see the letter to its intended recipient. Fortunately, the item description of the letter makes up for the missed hilarity.
  "Letter" is perhaps a charitable description, as the weight of this parcel rather suggests a lengthy treatise on why a certain Sekiseigumi ought to accept the undying affections of a certain admirer.
• Final Fantasy Type-0's secret ending features Sice trying to work up the courage to give one of these to Kurasame. She apparently believes that a good way to deliver it is to wait around the corner after she sees him walking towards her and wait until the footsteps sound close, then turn around blindly and hold it out with a loud and nervous "Here!" without checking to see if the one standing there is Kurasame and not her classmate Seven.
• Shows up, of all places, in La-Mulana. The dating-sim homage game Lemeza can play on his MSX features one of these that drives the plot. It's anonymous, and asks the nameless protagonist to come to the "legendary tree." It's all perfectly cliche from there on out. Until it turns into a Snatcher homage.
• In Capcom's self-parodying game Pocket Fighter, one of Chun-Li's combo enders is her turning into a schoolgirl and shyly handing her opponent a love letter. If she hits, the target reads the letter and then rockets across the screen with hearts in their eyes. If she misses, she gets stunned as she cries rivers of tears.
• There's a quest at the beginning of Fable II called "The Love Letter". In it, a poor man asks the Hero to deliver a love letter with a proposal to his girlfriend without her bitter mother finding out. The good option has the Hero deliver the letter to the girlfriend without a hitch. In the evil option, however, the hero gives the letter to the mother who gets angry. When confronted by the mother the man lies and tells her the letter is for her to get out of trouble; she then quickly becomes enraptured with him and accepts his wedding proposal, much to the man's horror.
  • Fable also has a quest involving the delivery of a love letter. The evil option in that one is to tell the recipient that you wrote it yourself.
• On the path to Undertale's Golden Ending, Undyne asks you to deliver a love letter to Dr. Alphys, since whenever she tries delivering it herself she backs out because she thinks the letter needs to be rewritten. Unfortunately, she forgot to sign it, and Alphys assumes the letter was from you — so she takes you on a date to the garbage dump, despite obviously only having eyes for Undyne. Undyne, having decided her love letter needs to be rewritten, is looking for you in an attempt to get it back. Hilarity Ensues as you try to get the two of them together.
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School has its ghost story One-Sided Love. A student develops a crush on a teacher and wrote a love letter, putting it into the attendance book, so he would find it during the next class. Instead, a substitute teacher finds the letter, reads it out loud to the class, mocks the love-struck student over this, and lets the classmates laugh at her. Then her beloved teacher comes into the room, reads the letter himself, and looks at her in disgust.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • In the third game, series Butt-Monkey Larry Butz leaves a love letter for his latest crush. However, being the doofus he is, he manages to write it so it looks like blackmail.
  • Larry fails at the same task in Ace Attorney Investigations when his sloppy handwriting causes the name of the recipient to be misread as "Wendy" instead of "Mindy."
• In Miku's route of A Profile, Masayuki gets a love letter that his friends immediately assume is a prank until he gets mad at them for instantly assuming bad will. Their position is helped along by the fact the sender forgot to include her name. The sender, for that matter, is annoyed with those friends later because she heard them laughing about it.
• In Rin's route in Little Busters!, Riki receives a very generic love letter in his shoe locker one day. When he waits after school, very confused and curious about who could have left it, the last person to leave is Suginami, a shy girl he's never really talked to. But when he confronts her she clearly didn't know anything about it, and it's revealed that her friends left it on her behalf. Riki is a little relieved...and then she explains that she does like him and that her friends apparently did it to force her to say something. Riki is flattered and polite but not really interested, and it's this event that leads to Rin asking him out later that day.

Web Animation

• Ultra Fast Pony: In the episode "How Not To Train Your Dragon", Celestia sends a letter to Twilight to finally say exactly how she feels. The letter winds up in the possession of a dragon named Chet instead. And when Twilight overhears Chet reading the letter aloud, she manages to miss the point entirely.
  Chet: [reading the letter] Dear Twilight... Can't hold it in any longer... Blah blah blah blah blah. [puts the letter away] Aw, it's just a boring love letter.
  Twilight: That doesn't make any sense. Why would Celestia send me a glove letter? I don't wear gloves.

Webcomics

• In Penny and Aggie, Aggie tries to get Duane a date with Penny by leaving a note and concert tickets in her locker. Unfortunately, Penny walks up to the wrong guy at the concert (the note only gave a vague description to identify the secret admirer, which coincidentally applied to two boys) and doesn't see Duane at all. Plus Penny's friend Sarah spots Aggie planting the note, leading her to believe that Aggie is a lesbian with a secret crush on Penny.
• In one of the early arcs of College Roomies from Hell!!!, the guys have Roger send a note to the girls next door asking them out. Roger forgets to bring a pen, so he writes the note using blood from a paper cut. The cut clots before he finishes the message. As a result, the girls end up with a note with "We're coming to get you" written on it in blood slipped under their door. Violence ensues.
• A high-school-era Namir Deiter Valentine's strip had Cedric, whom Tipper was dating at the time, competing with Gabby (her crush on Tipper not yet known to the audience) to see who could leave the more impressive note, bouquet, and chocolates in Tipper's locker.
• In Cardboard Angel, when Mayuko's friends find out she has a crush on Satoru, they insist she write him a love letter as it is "the way it's done." Mayuko is coerced into putting over-the-top things in it and is forced to try to hand it off to him. Unfortunately, Aya intercepts the letter and uses it to publicly humiliate Mayuko.
• Our World: A Stalker with a Crush left a letter in Art's locker, mentioned watching him sleep, invited him to a date, asked to leave the answer in the same locker. To top it off, she was his runaway sister.

Western Animation

• In an episode of American Dragon: Jake Long, Spud writes a letter to his crush Stacy. Trixie finds it and thinks it's to her from her crush Kyle. She goes to the location determined and enters a dark storage locker where Spud is waiting. You can see where this is going.
• In an episode of Arthur, Francine and the Brain create a fake love letter and give it to Muffy to get back at her for insulting their science fair projects.
• In the CatDog episode "Shriek Loves Dog", Cat writes a love letter to Shriek, so that she and Dog will fall for each other, hoping that the Greaser Dogs will thereby leave him alone. It works until Dog marries Shriek, which causes the Greaser Dogs to move into their house and generally making Cat's life a living hell. Luckily for him, it turns out to be All Just a Dream.
• In an episode of Doug, Doug receives several letters in his locker from a secret admirer, but when he goes to meet her at the time she requested, she never showed. He later finds out it's Beebee sending him the notes. He feels like it wouldn't work between them, and tries to talk to her about it, only to find out she thought it was somebody else's locker. She's initially embarrassed, only to realize it meant that this was the reason why the guy she really liked kept ignoring her. She's then overjoyed but also apologizes to Doug, and tells him who the notes were actually for. Turns out they were for Skeeter.
• The Fairly Oddparents
  • One episode had Timmy write a love letter e-mail to Trixie, but lacks the courage to send it. So his parents do it for him. Since magic can't interfere with love (including love letters) he has to enter Cyberspace to get it back. In the end, Trixie reads the letter for real and to Timmy's surprise, she loves it, only to reject him because she assumes the letter thinks she's even prettier than his mom.
  • Done as part of a quick gag. After Timmy receives a threatening note from Francis that he initially thinks is from the nerdy kid in front of him, he gets a flirty note. Francis points behind him to a pretty girl. When Timmy tries to flirt, she points to an Abhorrent Admirer sitting behind her.
• In a House of Mouse short, Mickey buys a fax machine and decides to test it out by sending Minnie a love letter and sending an angry letter to Mortimer Mouse. But Mortimer receives the love letter, making Mickey think Minnie got the angry one. Hilarity Ensues as he tries to retrieve it before she reads it. (She didn't receive it in the first place. Roy Disney did.)
  Roy Disney: ...What'd I ever do to him?
• An episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes had Jimmy writing a love letter for Cerbee to Jez's dog, the plan was to give it to Jez to read to Jasmine. However, when Beezy gives it to his father, he says "This is from Jez," and it's only after they part that he wonders "Or was it for Jez?"
• In Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, Po tries to break Monkey's interest in Ming by forging an angry letter in her name and giving it to Monkey. Monkey mistakes it as Ming inviting him on a date. Needless to say it does not end well.
• In the Looney Tunes Mouse-Warming, a teenage mouse falls for a girl mouse who's moved in across the hallway with her parents. Claude Cat notes the situation and leaves him fake love notes (along with fake threat notes to her parents) in hopes of a quick meal. The mouse soon gets wise to it and fakes a note to Claude to visit and make friends with the vicious dog in the yard.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • In "Dark Cupid", after finding a love letter that Adrien threw away that doesn't have a named recipient but seemingly describes her (it's actually meant for her hero identity Ladybug), Marinette decides to write him a similar letter. She manages to deliver it, but forgets to sign it; when Adrien finds it, he assumes that Ladybug found his trashed letter somehow and decided to respond to it.
  • In "Backwarder", Marinette writes Adrien a love confession and puts it in an envelope, but mixes it up with two other envelopes — another love letter she's supposed to deliver to Master Fu's old love Marianne for him, and a prescription Fu's doctor wants her to drop off at the pharmacy. Naturally, she ends up jumbling them up; as a result, the pharmacist gets the letter meant for Marianne (ending up confused but touched), Marianne gets the letter meant for Adrien (she takes it to mean that Fu no longer wants to see her, leaving her vulnerable for akumatization), and Adrien gets the prescription (and goes out of his way to get the requested medicine for Marinette).
• A mix-up version of this trope happened in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Break-up Breakdown." Big Macintosh delivers a pie to his girlfriend, Sugar Belle, but a mix-up at the post office causes the pie to be delivered to Sweetie Belle, who believes that she has a secret admirer.
• In the Disney short film Paperman, the hero realizes the cute girl he met earlier is just on the opposite side of the street from his workplace. He tries to get her attention with a paper airplane, then two, then three... and ends up creating over a hundred out of his work papers trying to get them to reach her. By the time he decides to just screw it and run over there in the middle of his work hours, she's already gone. But all his paper airplanes turn out not to be in vain, as they seemingly come to life and direct them both to each other.
• Phineas and Ferb: In "Operation Crumb Cake" Isabella writes a love letter to Phineas—then as soon as she sends it, she changes her mind, regrets it, and spends the rest of the episode trying to get it back.
  Isabella: I just mailed a letter stating my true feelings to Phineas and we need to stop it before he reads it!
• In an episode of The Simpsons, Lisa sends a love note to the school bully Nelson, via Milhouse. Thinking that Milhouse is the author, Nelson pummels the crap out of him.
• Total Drama:
  • Gwen and Bridgette find a love poem in "X-treme Torture" and spend much of the day trying to figure out both its writer and its recipient. They first think it's for either of them by respectively either Trent or Geoff, but those two are quickly proven not to be the writers. DJ and Owen also are not the writers and Duncan and Harold are dismissed right off the bat. The duo eventually discovers that the poem is meant for Leshawna, who's been getting them throughout the season, but she also doesn't know who wrote them. That evening, Harold is voted off and he takes his last moment on the island to admit to being Leshawna's secret admirer and the writer of the love letters.
  • In "A Blast From the Past", Dave takes a deep breath, tells Sky that he likes her, and asks if she likes him too. Sky is dismayed he would go about it like this, because as she explains, one is supposed to write "I like you" on a note and give it to a friend of the addressee. Then said friend will pass it on, but the teacher will notice, confiscate the note, and read it out loud in class. Sky's confused Dave doesn't know this is how it goes.
• Wander over Yonder: The episode "The Matchmaker" has Wander finding a love letter to Lord Dominator in Lord Hater's trash, and decides to deliver it. Sylvia, not wanting Wander to approach a dangerous villain (with the addition hooking up two villains in a romantic relationship could lead to even more chaos), tries to stop him; he miraculously manages to resist every effort, to the point he realizes she's against him and won't let anything get in his way. In the end, though, it's revealed he wasn't really going to deliver the letter to Dominator; he was just putting it in the mail.

---