Manic Pixie Dream Girl - Television Tropes & Idioms

Misha wants you to tell her all about your boring and dreadful highschool life. And then she'll die.

"The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family."

—Nathan Rabin, in his review of ''Elizabethtown''

"She'll make you live her crazy life

But she'll take away your pain"

—Ricky Martin, "Livin' La Vida Loca"

Let's say you're a soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone — someone female — could come along and open your heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life...

Surprise! It's the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the rescue!

A trope that has existed as long as there have been self-obsessed auteurs writing about self-obsessed losers, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies (generally including childlike playfulness and a tendency towards petty crime), and inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her kuh-razy antics until he learns to live and love. Often presented as a case where Single Woman Seeks Good Man, but the audience is frequently less impressed by the hero. She is distinguished by lacking any wants or motivations not directly related to the protagonist — a sort of Magical Negro for the loveless.

By the end of the story, she's either living out the rest of her kooky life with her newly happy loverman, or dead. Of course, such relationships seldom work out in the real world. While it is possible for her kookiness and his stability to balance each other out, she would most likely find him boring and he would tire of her nailing furniture to the ceiling and bailing her out of jail every other weekend.

May be featured as the Second Love, in order to break the character out of The Mourning After.

Coined by Nathan Rabin of The AV Club in his review

of the film Elizabethtown, which features Kirsten Dunst playing this type of character, and further expanded on in their list of other famous Manic Pixie Dream Girls

Often features a Manic Pixie Dream Girl Stare, doo-dah, doo-dah. Related to Magical Girlfriend, Cloudcuckoolander, Genki Girl, Perky Goth and Strange Girl. Compare Blithe Spirit. Contrast Yamato Nadeshiko and Yandere. Sometimes is a Sidekick Ex Machina.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Haruhara Haruko from FLCL seems like one of these, but has more duplicitous reasons for her wackiness.
Suzumiya Haruhi. She does, however, have a life outside Kyon. In fact, in her case, it's reciprocal, as Kyon also draws Haruhi out of her shell.
- Borders on Deconstruction at times, especially in the novels. Haruhi is dangerously out of touch with reality.
Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei parodies this with Fuura Kafuka, the ridiculously upbeat Cloudcuckoolander, and Nozomu Itoshiki, a man who is always in despair. However, the show is adamant about not giving anyone any Character Development whatsoever... And even if they did, Kafuka's methods wouldn't develop anybody's character, save possibly making them clinically insane.
- ... or dead.
Chrono Crusade: depressed demon is discovered by an absurdly stubborn Genki Girl just after getting trough the Mayfly December Romance from Hell. Arguably a bit on an inversion, as it's Rosette's life that goes completely pear-shaped upon the chance meeting.
Deconstructed in Welcome to the NHK with Misaki, who gloms onto the main characters because she needs to have the company of people she considers even more pathetic than herself.
In Hanamori Pink's short manga Get Nude, sloppy delinquent Subaru is the Manic Pixie Dream Boy to strait-laced Student Council President Misao.
In Hana Yori Dango, Shigeru Ookawahara tried to be this to Domyouji, her arranged fiancé. However, after he flat out tells her that he isn't in love with her and never will be, she becomes devoted to keeping Tsukushi and Domyouji together.
Shuichi Shindou from Gravitation is this to Eiri Yuki. While he's actually the main character, his life revolves around drawing Yuki out of his shell to such an extent that everything else, even his singing career, takes a backseat to their relationship.
Ai from Ai-Ren has been especially brought back to life to accompany the male protagonist during his last days. Her looks and personality follow the rules of this trope to a T, but alas for the boy she is of the variety that dies before he does.
- In a potential subversion, she's also the person the hero sees whenever he gets premonitions of his impending death.
Video Girl Ai fits this trope. She was supposed to be more angelic, but was run in a defective VCR.
Several of these show up in ef. But, this being ef, they varyingly turn out to be a Deconstruction, Subversion, and brutal subversion.
In Death Note, Misa is a rather scary version of this to Light, but Light, being a Manipulative Bastard, just uses her obsession with him as a tool for his own ends.
Flesh of Shikabane Hime is one of these; it's implied that her contracted monk likes 'em that way.
Hikari from Amanchu! is an interesting variation, since she is the protagonist and fulfills this role toward another girl.
And then there's a full-bown yuri version in ICE, where Yuki embodies this trope with regard to the quiet and troubled Hitomi.
Mihoshi Akeno in Sora No Manimani, who has a touch of Unlucky Childhood Friend running through her in addition to being a hyperactive girl who wants to get broody book-reading protagonist Saku out into the world of the Astronomy Club.
Misha from Pita Ten is this toward Kotarou. In the anime she's just doing it because she believes it's what an angel should do, in the manga it's originally because Kotarou is the reincarnation of his granduncle Kotaroh, the boy she loved who commited suicide.

Comic Books

Viciously deconstructed in the graphic novel Demo: A stressed-out businessman meets one of these girls. She encourages him to unwind and enjoys himself, as they meet over meals and he occasionally lends her money. Then one day he gets suspicious, breaks into her apartment... and finds an array of recording equipment. The reason she can say what he needs to hear is because she spies on him.
Harley Quinn/Harleen Quinzel of Batman mistakenly believes herself to be this to The Joker. Actually, she did mellow him out a bit, to the point where he didn't kill his own henchmen so often. Aww.
Ramona Flowers (come on, Ramona Flowers) of the Scott Pilgrim series. She's a little magical as well, but the whole series is Mundane Fantastic in nature, so it's okay.
- She also highlights some of the issues with this character type, particularly her capricious nature.
In Death: The High Cost of Living, Death's incarnation on Earth fills this role towards the viewpoint character (whether he's actually the protagonist is debatable, since we're here to see Death and everyone knows it), although she does it mostly by means of inexhaustible good cheer rather than engaging in wacky antics. But... she's Death, present on Earth purely because her job requires her to take in the mortal experience for one day per century. There's no hint of a romantic attraction from either side, either, and the viewpoint character realistically finds her kind of annoying.
Penny Century ("Wotta name. Wotta phenomenon") from Love and Rockets.
Subverted/parodied in The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, whose title character accidentally summons a fairy to help him with his...career. The subversion comes in the fact that the fairy is highly practical, quite knowledgeable, and will not take crap from him or anyone.
Played surprisingly straight in Charles Burns's Body Horror opus Black Hole. Trippy artist Eliza is adorable and sweet from head to tail.

Film

This trope provides the whole basis for the movie / musical Gigi. Which provided the world with Maurice Chevalier singing Thank Heaven for Little Girls. Squee or Squick, take your pick.
Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian.
Katharine Hepburn as a scatter-brained heiress who loosens up Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby.
- Although she doesn't insinuate herself into his life so much as yank him bodily into hers...
Another Hepburn, Audrey, as Holly Golightly in the movie (but not the book) of Breakfast at Tiffany's. If she seems deeper than this onscreen... well, that's because Audrey Hepburn is a very, very good actress.
Zach Braff is a magnet for Manic Pixie Dream Girls. Some of the women who taught him how to love:
- Natalie Portman in Garden State.
- Heather Graham on Scrubs.
- Rachel Bilson in The Last Kiss, who is something of a subversion in that he tires of her immaturity and returns to his pregnant girlfriend.
Skipping the "stunningly attractive" requirement is the octogenarian Ruth Gordon as Maude in Harold And Maude, who teaches young Harold (Bud Cort) to get over himself and his obsession with death. Without telling her lover, she opts for self-administered euthanasia. And then she dies.
Young Winona Ryder heals Richard Gere's broken heart in Autumn in New York. And then she dies.
Charlize Theron changes Keanu Reeves's life forever in Sweet November. And then she dies.
Giselle from Enchanted, who has the excuse of being a fairy tale character. For his part, Robert helps her find some firmer ground.
Played with and then brutally deconstructed in Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall. The title character is a cheerful Bohemian, who turns out to be a spoiled, unfocused, pseudointellectual, neurotic child in an adult's body, a horribly broken person. Which gives her something in common with Woody Allen's character, who is likewise horribly broken, just in somewhat different ways.
Clementine in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is this type of character, though the relationship plays out more realistically. She even references the "you complete me" line, to her distaste, from Jerry Maguire.
- She also Lampshades this to a certain degree, saying that Joel shouldn't expect her to "save" him, and that she's "just a fucked-up girl looking for her own peace of mind."
Juliette Lewis' character in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? may qualify as this.
Subverted with Enid from the movie version of Ghost World: told from the perspective of a sarcastic teen girl as she teaches Seymour, a shy, obsessive older man how to take chances and enjoy living; then she unexpectedly destroys his life in the process. Enid leaves to build her own life somewhere else. Seymour ends up in therapy.
Jordan in Real Genius lives somewhere between here and Cloudcuckooland. Although she's hardly the main motivator for Mitch's lightening up.
Ana from Stranger Than Fiction is a partial example — it isn't her who convinces the protagonist to start living life again, but rather the knowledge that he's a fictional character due to be Killed Off For Real.
The trailer for My Sassy Girl (I know, I know) shows Elisha Cuthbert playing a version of this. However, instead of simply being "quirky", it portrays her as being batshit insane. In that she may very well kill the protagonist for a lark.
- The original Korean movie subverts this trope, deconstructs it, and also plays it straight. Cuthbert-equivalent's character's "quirky antics" tend to have harmful consequences, but the protagonist falls for her anyway and she does indeed teach him to live and love. However, she definitely has issues and motivations unrelated to her man, and it turns out that she's been using him as a substitute for her dead fiancé, who was the protagonist's cousin. Things end up working out, but only after she (presumably) gets some help.
  - So it's Vertigo with a happy ending?
Goldie Hawn as "Gwen Phillips" in 1992's House Sitter, although a con artist and a pathological liar, plays this role for stick-in-the-mud Newton Davis (Steve Martin).
Judy Maxwell in What's Up, Doc?.
Jennifer Aniston's character Polly in Along Came Polly.
The title character of Amelie, even if she most definitely has a life apart from courting her Love Interest. Subverted in the fact that her neighbor has to tell her she's using her changing-people's-lives-for-the-better as a shell to not change hers before she realizes she has to take risks if she wants to break out of the trope.
Partially subverted in 1968's I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (and included in the A.V. Club list). Straitlaced Harold Fine, already feeling dissatisfied with life, encounters Nancy, the friend of his hippie little brother, and lets her spend the night at his apartment. As thanks, she makes him pot brownies, though he doesn't realize what they are until he's consumed them. Loosened up, he goes to thank her and they ultimately become lovers. Harold becomes a Runaway Groom to both be with Nancy and fully embrace the hippie lifestyle. After the initial bliss, the existence and his relationship with her proves unfulfilling and superficial. In the end, he chooses to Take A Third Option and find his own path to happiness alone.
Played with in Fight Club. Marla is grungy and nuts, and the Narrator initially hates her for screwing up his Support Group lies. But she keeps coming because she's in love with his alternate personality. Also, she's probably more of a Depressive Pixie Dream Girl.
Little Miss Muffet (Shelly Duvall) is this in Mother Goose Rock'n'Rhyme, a star-studded Disney Channel movie from the early 90s. Driving backwards through the patchwork landscape, she teaches the only Only Sane Man in Mother Goose Land, Mother Goose's son Gordon Gander, to relax and enjoy life. He's so dull because he's literally incomplete. Gordon's rhyme had the word "orange" in it, and Mama Goose couldn't finish it.
Allison from the film Yes Man also fits this trope, though unusually, her love interest Carl also contains elements of the character type, having been dared to "live live to the full" by saying "yes" to everything.
Chungking Express, the beloved film from beloved Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, features Faye the "California Dreamin'"-obsessed snack bar girl: to help a police officer get over his breakup with a flight attendant, she frequently breaks into (and floods) his apartment, switches the labels on all his canned foods, and rearranges his furniture. Eventually, he falls for her, but she stands him up and decides to "see the world" by becoming — yes — a flight attendant. But don't worry: everything works out okay.
The main character in May doesn't remotely fit this stereotype but the art school Bohemian type who meets her seems to identify her as one. They shelve the movie in the Horror section, so you can gather things don't go well...
Played with Happy-Go-Lucky. The main character, Poppy, is a free-spirited extreme optimist who starts taking driving lessons from an uptight, closed-off pessimist who develops a crush on her. Subverted in that she doesn't return the feelings, and stops the driving lessons so they won't see each other again after he lampshades this trope with a rant about how selfish it is - even if she ultimately doesn't fit the trope, no one could convince him differently.
The first half of the 1986 film Something Wild seems to be all about this trope when free-spirited Lulu (played by Melanie Griffith) sweeps into the life of Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) and "kidnaps" him for a weekend of unplanned adventure. However, the movie undergoes a wild Mood Whiplash when Lulu (whose real name is Audrey Hankel) and Charles encounter her very violent ex-con ex-husband; by the end, Audrey/Lulu is as much changed by her time with Charles as Charles himself.
Sam Rockwell plays the buddy-movie equivalent (a Manic Pixie Dream Guy, if you will) in Box of Moonlight. He wears a Davy Crockett costume and teaches John Turturro to love life; while there's no romance, there's certainly a lot of naked swimming.
Male version: Benny and Joon.
Sandra Bullock in Forces of Nature. Subverted in that Ben Affleck goes back to his fiancee at the end.
Tom Hanks's character in Big, who actually is a child in an adult's body, is often something of a male example of this.
Rather surprised that while Elisha Cuthbert has been mentioned, The Girl Next Door has not. The eponymous character gets our hero, Matthew Kidman, off of his overachieving ass to loosen up and have some fun for once in his life.
"What's the craziest thing you've done lately?"
FuckingÅmål had an interesting twist. It actually had a lesbian Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
And since we're talking about lesbians, Chasing Amy is a perfect example. Except it turned out that she wasn't so lesbian after all, which just goes to show how the Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists as a prop for the main character.
Gender-reversed in the Bollywood movie Kal Ho Naa Ho: Naina is an overstressed MBA student who doesn't believe in the power of love. Then wacky romantic Aman comes to her neighborhood and teaches her to enjoy life.
The whole point of the movie I Love You Man. Where Peter Klaven's repressed real estate agent is taught how to live life by the maniac pixie dream guy Sydney Fife.
Very darkly subverted in Martin Scorsese's black comedy After Hours. The MPDG the hero meets at the start turns out to be seriously disturbed and kills herself halfway through the movie.
Arguably, Maria in The Sound Of Music, at least initially.
Catherine in Jules and Jim. Played with, considering that as compelling as she is, Catherine's joie-de-vivre seems to come out of sheer sociopathy. The questionable aspects of her behavior escalate until she kills herself and Jim by driving them off a bridge in her car, arguably out of sheer whimsy.
Annie Savoy in Bull Durham is sort of consciously a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She really loves the Durham Bulls, and she knows so much about both baseball and the finer things in life that when she dates a player (she picks one per season) he has the best year of his career. She has a lot of fun with a bunch of strapping young men, helps the team improve at the same time, and makes no apologies for it.
Most definitely (descriptions of) "Regina George"'s runaway Southern girl in Whatever Works, especially considering the man she's influencing is ultimate misanthrope Larry David (they get married).
The French art film Betty Blue's title character is a deconstructed MPDG for a novelist named Zorg (not that one).
The title character in (500) Days of Summer - subverted in that Summer herself doesn't want a steady relationship, and even pulls out hints of What Is This Thing You Call Love, and at the end, she falls in love with and gets married to someone else. And the guy starts up a relationship that looks like it won't be Manic Pixie Dream Girl Land. Summer, of course, is played by Zooey Daschnell.
- Is "the guy" Summer's ex or her new boyfriend?
Subverted in I Love You Beth Cooper. Although the titular character does have a lot of these qualities, she's actually very insecure and the protagonist ends up changing her outlook on life simply by showing her that she has a lot more potential than she's giving herself credit for
Emily Blunt's "mysterious ballerina" appears to be one for Matt Damon's politician in The Adjustment Bureau, which according to the blurb is based on a Phillip K Dick story.
Elli in Up. Interesting in that she only shows up in the prologue as Carl's beloved (deceased) wife. She is a catalyst for the movie's action, as Carl takes off for Paradise Falls in order to posthumously fulfill his promise to her.

Literature

The title character of the Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl worked her magic on an entire high school. That also makes her a Blithe Spirit.
- Stargirl was interesting because her manic pixie behavior didn't make the main character more popular or comfortable around other people, and clashed with his desire for normalcy. Things didn't work out.
Daisy in Henry James' story Daisy Miller is the 1800s European aristocracy's version of the girlfriend from Planet Bizarro. And then she dies.
Hermine in Hesse's Der Steppenwolf.
Fenchurch in the later The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books, although really she's probably the only woman on Earth weird enough fall in love with Arthur Dent. And then she vanishes into an error in space-time.
It might not count, but a character in one of the X-wing novels was once in love with an actress who played manic pixie dream girls, and was shocked to learn that she was married and had children. This comes to bear on his crush on a squadronmate, as he learns to accept that she's more than a pretty face.
Colleen Minou in Ron Koertge's Stoner and Spaz. Averted slightly in that while Colleen helps Ben, Ben is unable to help Colleen and she ends up back on drugs.
Arguably one of the oldest ones in the book. Eve is this for Adam in the first chapter of the Bible. Even does the petty crime thing...
Hazel Stone for Colin Campbell in Robert A Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. A variation from the type in that Hazel and Colin are both old enough to be grandparents, and Hazel is a secret agent deliberately sent on a mission to shake Colin out of a comfortably retired rut so her agency can make use of him. She starts out by essentially framing him for murder, so they have to leave his home and become fugitives together.
Alice from Twilight is SO a MPDG, to the point that she literally uses Bella as a doll, kisses anyone, sprints and dances instead of walks, etc. To be fair she's already dead.
Leslie from Bridge To Terabithia. And then ... yes, you guessed it. She dies.
It might not count, but Generator (Jade Sinclair) to Thuban in the Whateley Universe. Thuban is a tight-assed control-freak who's trying to deal with the fact that he's slowly turning into an inhuman thing that's eventually going to end up looking like a dragon (Eastern version - he's Chinese). Jade decides he needs to lighten up, and then she decides she really likes him. Manic? Hell yes, she's the poster girl for Crazy Awesome. Pixie? Definitely: not only is she really petite, but her mutant powers give her the ability to bring things to life (apparently). Dream girl? Probably. She's cute, she's hot, she's flirty, she has a few things to work out before goes any further though. But they're still together, even if she sometimes drives him nuts. Oh, and the 'dies at the end' thing? She was stabbed through the heart. But she got better.
Laura from American Gods reads like a deconstruction of this. Her husband, the protagonist Shadow, thought of her as someone playful and spontaneous who brought excitement into his life. On the other hand, she convinced him to participate in a robbery and cheated on him while he was in prison, justifying it on the grounds that although a Jerk Ass, her lover was more exciting to be with than the staid Shadow. She plays a further deconstruction when after becoming a zombie, she helps Shadow by pretending to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl having a Meet Cute with one of the mooks. He is shown thinking about how her spontanaity has given him a new outlook on life, and is brutally murdered by her shortly afterward.
The Culture novel The Player of Games has a character, Yay, who is a love interest of the protagonist and has a markedly playful personality. There's something of a subversion, in that her Manic Pixie Dream Girl personality makes her a better fit for the hedonism of The Culture than does the protagonist's discomfort with a life without challenges.
Paper Towns has Margo, who pretty much is this trope. She goes on petty crimes, teaches Q how to love... deconstructed, however, since a major part of this book is Q's realization that she's not really this trope at all, and this trope doesn't exist.

Live Action TV

Dharma And Greg. And once the first five minutes are over, this plot's been used up and they move on to... um...
Subverted on Dexter. Lila initially seems to have all the personality traits of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and she latches onto Dexter, the main character, a forensic scientist who also happens to be an emotionless serial killer (who only kills people who really deserve it). As the series goes on, though, she starts showing the dark side of mania: her antics go from amusing to dangerous, and she stops being charming and starts being scary.
Brutally subverted on Arrested Development. Michael meets a quirky British woman whom he believes is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl but is actually mentally disabled. Her accent sounds so intelligent to Michael that he believes she voluntarily acts like a carefree six-year-old.
- Maeby also serves as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to George Michael to some extent, though played for laughs as GM is unbelievably strait-laced, and Maeby's actions go well beyond "quirky" and straight into "likely criminal." That and the fact that Maeby is kind of his cousin. Maybe.
In M*A*S*H, Winchester falls for a woman like this. She brings so much life into his existence. They're all set to make a go of it when she lets out that she's not a strong believer in marriage (and that her previous lover, of whom she talks in glowing terms, was never married to her). Winchester loses his chance at love, and not because his family would disapprove — though that's a consideration for him — but because he can't bring himself to accept this aspect of her.
Andy's girlfriend Kat in Weeds was a somewhat more hardcore version of this. She was much crazier than usual — he even told a story about how once she stabbed him because she thought he'd kicked her "spirit animal," although he hadn't figured out what that was. And he admitted that he didn't actually love her, and implied that he was still with her because she made life interesting.
- She's played by Zooey Deschanel, the queen of this trope in many media.
Parodied by Jennifer Aniston's character in the 30 Rock episode "The One with the Cast of Night Court", who ensnares powerful men like Jack Donaghy and, um, Scottie Pippen with her MPDG antics (designing bizarre hats, breaking into houses while wearing French maid outfits, singing inappropriately sexy renditions of "Happy Birthday to You", and frequently and emphatically "riding the F Train"). Everyone not currently sexing her up finds her completely insufferable.
Saffron seems to play this a bit with Malcolm in Firefly, at first. But we all know how that turned out.
Subverted on True Blood with Amy, who is homicidally crazy.
Phoebe in Friends seems to act as this to the rest of the group, as well as in most of her relationships. Notably, the group occasionally finds her actions annoying or intrusive, and in the 10th season, Phoebe admits that she has never been in a relationship which lasted more than a month. Occasionally, being an MPDG seems to actively work against her, such as the first time she was ready to move in with a man, and then broke up with him shortly after for shooting a bird. On another occasion, she ends a relationship because her boyfriend is even more of a Manic Pixie Dream Guy than she is, and she can't stand him.
- You can't really blame her for breaking up with the bird-shooter, though. To add some context, this wasn't a guy who liked to go out hunting pheasants. This was an NYC cop who impulsively decided to use his gun on a bird that was annoying him by chirping during early morning hours. Use of deadly force on minor inconveniences = major red flag.
  - And look how he ended up. Drooling in a wheelchair.
Frasier had one of these in the form of a Girl Of The Week, Caitlin the quirky artist, but the trope was subverted by having their relationship not work out because they shared no similarities - just very hot sex.
In Dollhouse, Topher makes himself one of these to play with every year on his birthday.
- Without the sex, of course.

Music

The Dead Milkmen song Punk Rock Girl plays this trope enthusiastically straight, with a dweeby narrator describing a series of playfully violent encounters with an unnamed female other. "We got into her car, away we started rolling; I said how much you pay for this, she said nothing man it's stolen." "We went to the Philly Pizza Company and ordered some hot tea; the waitress said no we only have it iced; so we jumped up on the table and shouted anarchy"
- And it is the best song ever.
Tess from the song with the same name by Peter LeMarc is a classic example.
The girl described in the song Her Eyes by Pat Monahan
Cyndi Lauper

Theater

Deconstructed as far back as Ibsen's A Doll's House, in which the heroine Nora is a flighty, vivacious, kooky child-woman who gradually realizes that she's been so working so hard at playing this role for her more conventional husband — even through bearing him three children — that she has never really grown up and has no idea of her true self, and that their relationship is thus only a game, not adult love. She leaves him to try and learn how to be a fully formed human being.
- Variants are present, or at least played with, in other plays of the same era. In August Strindberg's Miss Julie and arguably Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (the latter is a much darker variant, as Hedda is downright vicious at times), the titular characters at least resemble the type, but their free-spirited ways have severe consequences: both plays end with the title character's suicide. Or they're critiques of 19th Century gender roles. Your Mileage May Vary.
Rent is very fond of this trope. Mimi and Maureen are both MPDGs for brooding Roger and uptight Joanne, respectively. And then there's Angel, who acts as MPDG for the entire group as Collins is quite the free spirit himself.
- Joanne, however, winds up more and more annoyed with Maureen as the show goes on, culminating in the duet "Take Me Or Leave Me" where they hash out their incompatible differences.
Deconstructed, or at least subverted, in the musical Cabaret: Sally tries to be a Manic Pixie for Cliff, but her determined spunky optimism and unwillingness to grow up make her ignore the threat of Nazism and drive Cliff away from her.
Susan Hollander from Woody Allen's Dont Drink The Water is borderline the definition of this trope as her only personality trait other then that she is a Shallow Love Interest for major screw-up Axel is that she is somewhat of a hippie (the fact that the show was written and set in The Sixties helps).
The titular character of the opera Carmen brutally deconstructs this: she's a gypsy woman who seduces and enchants the lead male, Don Jose, with her free-spirited nature, but quickly tires of him as he proclaims his everlasting love for her. Turns out she's not so much for the forever love, and she leaves him for someone much more exciting. As a result, he kills her out of jealousy at the end of the opera.

Video Games

The titular character in the interactive fiction game Violet is a MPDG; she's the PC's quirky Australian girlfriend who has a limitless supply of pet names, makes gifts like origami trophies or custom snowglobes, is indefatigably supportive, and loves the PC despite the PC being a complete schmuck.
Excellen Browning of Super Robot Wars towards her boyfriend. Towards other people...slightly the same, but a different story.
Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII has shades of this, but then again, while she has a quirky side, she's only really especially footloose and free when compared to the neurotic, emotionally repressed lead Squall. She's also told by the man himself to grow up and act more responsible.
- Tweaked in Final Fantasy IX when the carefree male hero, Zidane, plays this role to Princess Garnet, even giving her lessons on how to speak less formally.
Marta Lualdi of Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Perhaps not the typical MPDG in that there are some...rather important other concerns as well, but she seems to tie just about everything back to her unrequited crush on Emil.
Shiki Misaki of The World Ends With You has the job of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl: she gets Neku to begin to come out of his moody, loner shell and learn the game's Aesop about trying to connect with other people. She's cheerful and kind and fights using a stuffed animal of all things. But her own, personal problems with jealousy and self-confidence are far more important to her character than her friendship with Neku, getting Neku to trust in others is essential to their mutual survival, and there is no reason to believe Shiki and Neku ever become romantically involved, so in the end she's something of a subversion.
Milla Vodello in Psychonauts appears to be this, but once you find her memory vaults and her nightmare room, and uncover her tragic past she turns out to be a bit of a deconstruction. However, she and Sasha Nein are heavily implied to be a couple, despite the fact that they could not be more opposite in personality.

Web Comics

Critiqued in xkcd 122: Quirky Girls.
Blossom in Rhapsodies. This may or may not be literal.
In the rather obscure webcomic A Girl and Her Fed, said Girl is indeed manic, and said Fed is rather unsurprisingly a stuffed shirt. However, she didn't so much break him out of his funk so much as break him out of a brainwash given by the government agency that is now likely to kill them for it at some point, as the super intelligent koala pointed out. Also, her antics were kept under control in the past by the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. It's that kind of comic.
Subverted in Shortpacked!, where Robin's attempts at this usually do just wind up annoying the hell out of Ethan, Amber, and whoever else she might decide to latch onto.
Missi from Misfile. Of course, this puts her directly between Ash and her canon love interest, leading to Missi catching a lot of flak from some fans.
- It probably helps that she's really rather irritating at times.
Several male characters in Ghastly's Ghastly Comic initially thought that Freddie would be this for them. Surprise!
- The series also has the appropriately named Kwerki, a Cloud Cuckoolander who acts like she's looking for someone to play this role for. In her more lucid moments.
This Sex, Drugs, and June Cleaver◊ strip does something with the trope, with Bree (the comic's author) imagining herself in this role.
Nils in Platinum Grit. Though honestly, Given all the weirdness in Jeremy's life, it's actually up to the other girl, Kate, to be the inverse of a MPDG and pull him back to reality.
Maytag from Flipside is an unabashed hedonist and nymphomaniac who takes it upon herself to break shy people (of either gender) out of their shells. She's also an interesting variation because her outgoing personality is largely a function of her outfit; when she doesn't have her jester uniform on, she's meek and shy.
- Also, she has a very high pain tolerance, up to the point that she'll allow the Monster Of The Week to eat her arm to get a chance to talk to her.
Maple from Hazards Wake is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in her own mind. (In reality, she's more a Manic Girl with romantic delusions.)

Web Original

Amy in John Dies At The End became this for David. He initially avoided her because she was strange and he figured his life was weird enough, but after she became important to the plot, the single night he spent protecting her made it clear that they complemented each other very well, and she ended up being the only girl mentioned in the book he actually loved rather than lusted after.
Due to Alternate Character Interpretation, Ginny from A Very Potter Musical ends up like this. However the show subverts this as Harry is pretty much annoyed by her when she behaves like this in the beginning and ignores her for another girl. He only returns her affection once she calms down. When she does inspire him it is through maturity and genuine love rather then whimsy.

Western Animation

Dory in Finding Nemo, although a romantic relationship with Marlin isn't suggested. (They are different species, after all. And woe betide Dory should she ever forget that she's physically incapable of surviving a visit to Marlin's house...)
- She does, however, teach him to love in a paternal way: the creators of the film stated on the DVD's audio commentary that she was meant to be a surrogate child figure for Marlin while he tried to find his own son.

Real Life

Kari Ferrell, the Hipster Grifter. Cute, funny, supercool girl approaches guy for sexual innuendo, partying and intense conversation. Mentions that she's broke and dying of cancer. Scams the guy for everything he's got and skips town. Ouch.
Male (???) example: the late guitarist of X Japan, hide. Whether he was this way in real life (reportedly he was, except quieter and more toned down balanced against deep depression/possible bipolar disorder and an eating disorder among other issues) is unknown, but onstage, in interviews, and pretty much anytime someone was watching, one could say he lived, breathed, and embodied this trope as his persona and life.
Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier-Beales of the Grey Gardens documentary / musical / HBO movie certainly seemed to be this: she loved to sing and dance and host parties, to the annoyance of her staid lawyer husband. Unfortunately she was as stubborn as she was "manic" and refused to leave the title summer cottage even after the money ran out and she and her daughter "Little" Edie (a creative MPDG herself) became total recluses.
Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of the new PM of Japan. While her effect on her husband is unknown, she has said that she would like to meet Tom Cruise because he was Japanese in a former life and that she visited Venus in a triangular space ship. Her handlers insist this is all out of context.
- "handlers"?