Make-Out Point - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Ah, Makeout Reef. Good times. Good times."

— Squidward, Sponge Bob Square Pants

A standard teenage hang out where all sorts of canoodling takes place in cars. Usually features a father and/or police finding young people there to "break it up" and drag people back home. Depending on the broadness of the comedy (and the innocence — or lack thereof — of the setting), Don't Come A-Knockin' may be in play.

Often involves a tourist-trap-type scenic bluff, so as to overlook the city lights at night... as if you're looking at that when you're up here. Also a standard set up for Death by Sex in horror movies, as the people in the car are... distracted, to say the least. Similarly, it seems being at Make-Out Point makes you immediately a Weirdness Magnet — the first people to see the falling meteor, the mutant escapee, or the alien invasion force tends to be such a couple; see Terror At Makeout Point.

Often in The Fifties, the makeout place is a Drive-In Theater.

Examples:

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Film

Scary Movie of course makes fun of this by having a news crew go to the scene where they suspect a killer to appear. Naturally he does show up and kill a girl waiting for her boyfriend to come back, and then the whole thing turns into a Blair Witch Project spoof as the news crew runs away.
Pleasantville had Lover's Lane, which before the Trapped in TV Land girl got there was apparently for hand-holding.
- That sounds like the Lover's Lane from Anne of Green Gables, which was simply a path in the woods where a couple can walk around and be alone for awhile (it, like many of the other locations around Avonlea given names by Anne and her friends, was named more for the sake of giving it a suitably romantic-sounding name than for any other reason).
Night of the Creeps plays with the trope. The police officer who goes patrolling at the Make Out Point is there because there's a serial killer loose in the area, so he's warning kids to go home. One of the couples he interrupts is made up partly of the girl he loves, cheating on him.
The Lost Boys David rips the roof off a car where two kids have pulled over to make out, and eats them.
Grease - the place is actually a no-parking zone.
Monsters vs. Aliens has two teenagers trying to make out in their car out in the woods when they are interrupted by the giant alien robot. In a hilarious Gender Inverted Trope, the cheerleader is trying to force her attentions on the high-school jock, and ends up Bridal Carrying him to safety when the alien spacecraft lands nearby.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space has three brothers driving around the local make out point, trying to sell ice cream to the couples there. They aren't successful.
The Music Man is set in 1912, so cars aren't quite widespread enough for this trope to be played straight. However, an invitation to "the footbridge" automatically implies canoodling.
Briefly shown in Saved, where the large SUV owned by the Christian protagonists is the only car not rocking.
In The Mothman Prophecies, the Mothman inevitably shows up at one of these. The teens walk away mostly unharmed, but the boyfriend somehow gets red burns around his eyes from the encounter.
The infamous "Disco Boy Scene" in Maniac takes its place on one of these.
Visited repeatedly by the Omegas in Animal House. Curiously, the same song is always playing on the radio when they do.
An early 20th century period-piece version appears in Lady and the Tramp; this is where the title couple end up at the end of the "Bella Notte" scene. As the camera pulls back, a number of couples in carriages can be seen.

Folklore

The setting of two popular Urban Legends. Both are thought to have originated as cautionary tales in the 1950s or thereabouts, given their Cant Get Away With Nuthin vibe.

Literature

Fanon has it that this is the true purpose of the astronomy tower in Harry Potter.
- The Room of Requirement has also been known to fulfill this purpose.
Briefly featured in Good Omens as the road behind the military base, noted as appearing to be "paved with rubber".
The novel Chase by Dean Koontz (collected in Strange Highways) concerns a murder that occurs at such a place.
In The Face on the Milk Carton, the Scenic Overlook is nicknamed "Sexual Overlook" due to the amount of amorous teenaged couples.

Live Action TV

Happy Days had Inspiration Point, where the cast were always desperate to get to, although they seldom did... at least not after the show began being filmed in front of a live audience...
- Early seasons also mentioned going to the "submarine races."
Mr Belvedere: The episode "Homecoming" saw Heather and her boyfriend, Keith, go to a Make-Out Point to, well, make out ... until Keith tries to take things a step too far. (The scene itself was filmed on a soundstage, with a nighttime backdrop used to set the scene.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- "Phases". Xander and Cordelia are making out in her car when a werewolf attacks them. The following night Buffy and Giles are searching for the werewolf and Giles suggests knocking on a few car windows and asking if anyone's seen the creature. Buffy gives him a What an Idiot look. "Giles, no-one's seen anything."
- "All The Way". Dawn and a schoolfriend sneak out of the house to canoodle with a couple of boys, only for them to turn out to be vampires. The Scoobies track them down only to find themselves surrounded by carloads of teenaged vampires.
Buffy: Didn't anyone come here just to make out? [two human teenagers raise their hands] Awww... that's sweet. Run.
- One of the books revisits this point, again at night and again, horrible monster attack and death. Stop going out at night, people!
Mystery Science Theater 3000 once mocked a film called Hobgoblins during which some of the characters visit "Reputation Road." One of the riffs made is how the area is surprisingly well organized, including helpful signposts to tell you where to park if you want to just make out, or if you want to "go all the way".
- Mocked repeatedly in The Creeping Terror, as the titular monster repeatedly "sneaks" up on teenage lovers.
- The road leading to the house in �Manos�: The Hands of Fate is a Lover's Lane - the police spend all their time driving up and down stopping teenagers from kissing... and yet hardly bother with the family who've gone missing in the creepy house at the end, even when the teens tell them to.
"Beep-beep, way to go Speeeeeeeeed!"
Later seasons of That '70s Show have Mt. Hump, lampshaded when Donna wonders if it's called that because of why people go there, or if people go there because of what it's called.
In the British murder-mystery series Jericho (not that Jericho), a movie theater screening The Bridge on the River Kwai is full of teenagers crassly making out, indifferent to the portrayals of death and heroism on the screen, as part of the series' general deconstruction of 1950's British society.
The 7th Heaven episode "Let's Talk about Sex" featured a "MacArthur's Point," which served to demonstrate that this trope is not very convincing when set in the present day.
Degrassi has "the ravine", and, in later seasons, the boiler room.
On The Partridge Family, Danny once asked the eldest son where he intented to go on a date. "If I'm unlucky, the pizza place. If I'm lucky ... Muldoon's Point."
- On one episode, the family (as part of a bet — for charity) has to evade a private eye for 24 hours. They park at Muldoon's Point on a busy night. The first gag is that Laurie chides Keith for bringing them to this place; but when asked what the place is, she answers "Muldoon's Point" a little too quickly.
  - Then they see the private eye's car pull into the crowded parking lot. They need a distraction. Reuben, their manager, honks their car horn, then yells out the window: "All right! I know my daughter is here and I'm going FIND HER!" Every car starts up.
Tom Paris whips up a Holodeck version of one (on Mars no less!) for the Doctor's date with a Vidiian woman on Star Trek: Voyager.

Video Games

Final Fantasy VIII Balamb Garden has a secret area in the Training Center which is clearly one of these.
Referenced in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which has a region south of Las Venturas called Hankypanky Point.
There's one in Halo Reach, of all places: an area called "Boardwalk" has one of its Call-outs named this. Granted, the invasion doesn't start there, but...

Web Original

Parodied in Berserk Abridged: Statutory Point is "the most romantic spot in all of Midland". Really.
Also parodied in Homestar Runner. When Strong Bad and The Cheat get trapped in an old car that doesn't open from the inside, Homestar comes along to "break it up." "All right, young lovers. Move it along! What do you think this is, Make-out Point?"
Chakona Space: There's a "Lover's Lane" in the city where Forestwalker lives. And to quote Lupu, "It's 'Lover's Lane', not 'Kissing Korner'".

Western Animation

The Simpsons on multiple occasions. Marge and Artie Ziff went to one after their high school prom, though it didn't turn out quite as planned. In another one, when Apu and his wife were having fertility problems, Homer brings them here. "This scenario is guaranteed to cause pregnancy."
- There's also a "Make-Out Creek" referenced in one episode.
- And parodied as "Contraception Overlook" in another episode, one that takes a peek at a possible future, obviously by then they'd run out of names.
- Not really. One 20th season episode features 3rd Base Point.
- Another episode features "Holding Hands Peak".
Blatantly abused in Clone High as "Teen Sex Cove".
In the robot propaganda film in Futurama the robot teens go up to one of these spots and are attacked by a "human".
"Relax, Wendy. Humans will never come to our defenseless little town. It's perfectly safe to let our guard down, even for a second."
Spongebob Squarepants actually has a really funny episode with this — it's the one where they all get superpowers. To quote Squidward- "Ah, Makeout reef. Good times, Goood times."
- The Crowning Moment of Funny of that episode has to be when the villians are terroizing the kids making out there...and inexplicably come across a guy making out with a PILLOW. "Hey man. That's not cool..."
Appears in a Kids Next Door episode as a Double Subversion. The KND are investigating something called "The Point", which we think is a makeout spot and the kids think it's a factory turning teenagers into adults. They call in a Kill Sat but it turns out to be a roller rink.
Parodied in the Family Guy episode "McStroke" where teens go to "Anal Point".
Inspiration Point from Moral Orel, where Orel and his sweetheart go to... pray. No, really.
In the Adventure Time episode "Trouble in Lumpy Space", a MacGuffin needed to cure Jake of "the lumps" is found in Lumpy Space's Make Out Point.
The Replacements features a Make-Out Point in the in-universe B-Movie Splatter Train. The plot revolves around a ghostly train killing teenagers who have been making out at the local Make Out Point. The climax of the movie involves the protagonist luring the train to the Make Out Point and then jumping out of the way, so that the train goes over the edge and smashes itself on the rocks below.
King of the Hill plays a version of this trope when Hank takes Ladybird to a moonlit bluff to practice dog dancing.
- There's also a place in Arlen called "The Caves": a place where teens went to make out, drink beer, and do drugs back in The Seventies.