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alt title(s): Rule34; Rule36; Rule Thirty Six 
Even of this picture. No really
“The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you’ve got millions of pals out there. Type in ‘Find people that have sex with goats that are on fire’ and the computer will say, ‘Specify type of goat.’”
— Richard Jeni
As the infamous musical number from Avenue Q tells us, " The Internet Is For Porn". This isn't that far off.
Say you have a movie, or a TV show, or a video game, or a comic book, or some other visual medium that proves popular. Ultimately, a Fandom will be built around it. Now, generally, it's a good bet that a substantial number of those fans are living their lives on MUCKs and other web outlets for their love of the medium. Also, some of the fanbase may harbor a Perverse Sexual Lust for some of your characters — even if they were too young for such thoughts before watching the medium. As such, after a while, their interest in it may become darker, their thoughts turning towards more risqué items of note... and they will start putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write, draw, or render their fantasies for everyone to see.
Formulated in the dank depths of the 4chan imageboard, this is Rule 34 of the Internet, the ubiquitous knowledge that somewhere, some small group of your franchise's fandom is probably getting their rocks off at porn of your characters. Furries, fetishes, the innocent and the tainted—only the citation of Rule 34 is safe, a corollary known as Rule 35. This may or may not be a problem, depending on the circumstances; most Fan Art and Fan Fiction in general are posted free of charge, so unless the owner of the franchise in question fears such scandalous depictions of their life's work damaging the franchise's and the owners' public image, it's presumed to be better for them to just let it slide instead of suing for copyright infringement. After all, if the fans like your stuff enough to have those kinds of thoughts about it, then they're obviously the kind of fans you want to keep to ensure your medium's success, right? And it's not like they're going to stop making such pictures or stories, even with a court order over their head. Rule 34 does not apply to specific couplings, just a given fandom or character.
Of course, sometimes a fandom can go too far with this rule, which ultimately damages their public image regardless of how widespread the practice really is. And, if the fandom and the medium are both widely known enough publicly, there's always the threat of the Media Watchdogs coming in with threats of censors and sanctions against the medium itself for the creations of the fans. But that's just a real-life example of Viewers Are Morons, on both sides of the coin.
This is, of course, nothing new. It's just that now, in the Communication Age, all of humanity's dirty little secrets are coming out into the open. Add Memetic Mutation to that dynamic, and you get what could be considered either a revolution or a moral crisis of epic proportions. It depends on your point of view. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
Also kicking around is Rule 36, which simply states: "Always remember, it's somebody's fetish".
See also Fetish Fuel and Power Perversion Potential if you really wanna blow your mind.
Examples:
- Disney is a notorious example of a corporation actively against Rule Thirty Four, or any other "unauthorized" use of their characters, for that matter; woe be a fan artist who makes a similar character to one of theirs, or any day care centers who have unapproved murals of their characters on their walls, as they have been known to file lawsuits against such "offenders".
- An infamous (and probably apocryphal) story from the early days of the studio tells of a staff party where a cartoon was shown of Mickey and Minnie Mouse in an x-rated scene. Afterwards, Walt chuckled along with everyone else, invited the two guys who made the cartoon to come up and be recognized... and then fired them on the spot and ordered the film destroyed.
- Other versions of the story suggest that it was Snow White and her dwarfs having an orgy in the film which was shown at Uncle Walt's birthday party.
- Be that as it may, Minnie and Mickey did appear in a few Tijuana Bibles and Snow White, Jasmine, Ariel and Jessica Rabbit are favorite targets of internet porn maestro Julius Zimmerman (No, I'm not including a link, do a search if you must!)
- Equally infamous is the story of author Harlan Ellison's one and only day working for Disney; it's not apocryphal, as Ellison himself tells the story with his trademark mix of humor and outrage. According to him, the day started very promisingly but ended immediately after a lunch where he joked about — and acted out — a hypothetical Mickey Mouse porn film.
- Interestingly, Disney chose not to sue The Realist or Wally Wood when he did his infamous Disneyland Memorial Orgy (the image, while not showing explicit depictions of genitalia, is probably not worksafe), on the feeling that it was probably protected as parody (as well as the possibility that the lawsuit would bring unwanted publicity). They did, however, sue the poster company selling unauthorized copies of Wood's work.
- Wally gave us Power Girl's breasts. Disney was just giving the man his due.
- A Beauty And The Beast porn fic broke the brain of the reviewer at Godawful Fan Fiction enough that he or she could only post things like "...but he's a candle!"
- "An amorous French candle 'oo longs to be human again, mon cher!"
- And has actually gone Pepe Le Pew on a feather duster, so...
- Gadget from Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers has been subject of pornographic drawings so often that more serious fans of hers and of the show started a protest movement named Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica.
- Supposedly, some animators at Disney actually draw this kind of stuff in their free time at work and joke about it. Unlike the examples above, however, they're smart enough to keep it to themselves and their co-workers.
- There is a lot of Kim Possible art out there. But as a kickass athletic young cheerleader with the personal motto "I can do anything!", this was frankly inevitable.
- We macrophiles tend to lust after the growing scenes in Alice in Wonderland, the growth scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Marcia Strassman turning into a giantess in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. Alice is specially popular in our community.
- On the flip-side of the coin, Japanese manga and anime artists and companies have very little qualms about fans making erotic doujinshi of their worlds, or even selling them; in fact, many famous manga and anime artists started their careers doing just that, and some of them still dabble in the pastime. This is buffered by the very low print runs of such work.
- Kyoto Animation recently lampshaded the practice with a Shout Out to one of their other works. An episode of Lucky Star had the girls going to Comiket, a real-life doujinshi convention, with Konata marking all the tables she wanted to see. In the real Comiket of that year, all those tables sold Suzumiya Haruhi hentai.
- What's even worse is that she recruited her friends to pick up these doujinshi for her, including titles such as Dripping Brigade Chief.
- On the note of many famous manga and anime artists originally working in the doujinshi industry, CLAMP is notable for doing such. What did they market in? It's best not to know.
- According to some sources, the second season of Shinkon Gattai Godannar had to resolve funding problems by selling doujinshi of Godannar characters.
- Hellsing creator Kouta Hirano started off as a hentai artist — and most of the characters in Hellsing are actually recycled from his previous works.
- This Troper has read a (while not porn, not work safe) Sonic The Hedgehog Anthropomorphic Gender Bender doujin written by Koshi Rikudo.
- Koharu Biyori's omake at the end of volume 1 features the guy unsuspectingly buying hentai featuring himself with his robot maid because his friend couldn't make it to the con and asked him to load up. He never actually reads it, but his robot girl maid does.
- Even tropers have their rule 34s. In this sophisticated comment on the false image that internet people project◊, tvtropes itself is made fappable.
- For "Goreans", fans of John Norman's Gor novels, sexual deviancy is the entire purpose of the fandom — they act out in their real lives the ritualized tradition of sex slavery described in the novels (in the context of a consensual BDSM scene, of course).
- Predating the internet, I came across Star Trek porn fiction and drawings in a fanzine in 1975. I got in trouble for possessing it too, as I was only a wee kid at the time. Personaaly I preferred the actual stories, as the porn stories were IKEA Porn.
- There is a certain Image Board (that will not be linked to — if you want to find it, it's not hard to search for) with a section dedicated to challenges on this matter; they will attempt track down pornographic images of anything. In most cases, if they can't find one, they make it. Another site dedicated to collecting examples of Rule Thirty Four has managed to amass a bit over 200,000 images.
- Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo once said that if he found Megatokyo porn, he would quit producing the comic. He later understood that he had given too powerful a weapon for anybody who didn't like the comic, and changed his mind.
- Genshiken has this rule come up more than a few times, as its cast consists largely of otaku. Saki suffers a bit of a meltdown on learning there are hentai doujinshi of everything early on.
- An example of the degree to which this can get carried is also present: Since fair use provisions in Japanese copyright law are much different from those of the US, frequently all references to other animé will need to be bleeped out of the dialog. Since Genshiken revolves around a college otaku club, to avoid having to do this, the writers created a fictional animé named Kujibiki Unbalance that was chock-full of animé tropes and clichés in order to describe animé as a whole. Several of the Genshiken episodes are devoted to the craft of creating, publishing, and selling a ero-doujinshi of this fictional animé. As an example of life imitating art, now Kujibiki Unbalance is actually a real anime and manga, and every conceivable Slash Fic and hentai doujinshi featuring its characters are already being published.
- This is an example of both how spin-offs happen and of Rule #34 in action. THINK ABOUT IT.
- Through some mishap of how search engines work, the webcomic Mac Hall somehow got associated with Digimon porn. This resulted in a large number of people coming to the site for this exact purpose. As a joke, the writer posted a few spoofs to make fun of this. ...which resulted in Internet Search engines and furry sites associating them with Digimon porn even more. Then there was one last indignity that just made it look like the universe has it in for them.
- Looks like someone should copy/paste the source for the above example and place it as a real-life example of the Butt Monkey. Ouch.
- Given the height of Pokémon's popularity at one point, that there would be porn of it isn't too surprising. However, you are allowed to be disturbed by the fact that porn exists for every single species - all 493 of them, (especially of Gardevoir) not counting interspecies! Now that is Rule 34 in action.
- This troper saw a picture involving every species at once (at least he thinks it was every species; no way he'll take the time to count).
- This troper is a member of the forum that made that picture. It was done in a thread where each species was added one at a time. It started with an innocent picture of Bidoof simply standing around, then someone decided to add Cubone humping him from behind, and well, that's where things started to go downhill.
- At least there's still a good chunk of it dedicated to the humans in the Pokemon world, e.g. Misty, May, Dawn, Mrs. Ketchum...
- However, this doesn't excuse porn of said human characters "getting to know" their Pokemon buddies. (When I was a kid, I did a Pokemon image search. This was before "Safe Search" was created. I really did not need to see that...)
- Turn off safe search and do a Google image search for "missingno", then turn safe search back on and cry.
- Another Mon example! Digimon isn't exempt from this either. It seems that community has made Renamon and Gatomon their bitches of choice.
- In fact, many Nintendo games are targets. Let's not get started on Zelda OOT selfcest, or Twilight Princess furry porn. And that's when they are not attempting a crossover with Okami...
- Forget Oo T—the number of possibilities involving gender-bending, "Link-from-game-X-meets-Link-from-game-Y," pairing characters from multiple games (Nabooru and Ilia, for example), and possibly even Boss Ax Boss B, is almost enough to put squeamish gamers off the Zelda series entirely.
- This gets particularly bad with regards to Transformers. There are perfectly serviceable audience-surrogate human characters... but no, pretty much always the robots themselves being the victims of yaoi fangirls, despite some of them transforming in ways that... You know what? We're better off changing the subject very, very quickly.
- You have a problem with robot love? (This troper is embarrassed to say that she does not.)
- I don't care what the yaoi-shippers say, Megatron does not possess that organ, and as a robot, has no reason to.
- Dora from Questionable Content calls this rule "Quantum Fetish Mechanics."
- Ironically enough, this troper has seen the very same character subject to this trope.
- The webcomic Chugworth Academy is an unusual example, as most of the pornography based off it was drawn by the original artist, Scribblekid (who had an interest in pornographic art).
- This xkcd strip probably explains the process behind this phenomenon.
- Needless to say, wetriffs.com now exists.
- According to a Wired interview, it existed six months before the comic, the domain registered by creator Randall Monroe.
- There's fanfic written with Biblical characters, including slash (Jesus/Judas, anyone?).
- Oh God!
- That, too.
- Not even George Burns, although (were he still with us) he'd probably have predicted it.
- Star Wars porn is an obvious example, especially with the Princess Leia in slave girl costume. The most unusual one is probably two Imperial AT-ATs humping — a nature documentary about elephants comes to mind. Amusingly, the D6 RPR book "Fragments From the Rim" has an excerpt from a comedic news bulletin claiming to have identified an "AT-AT Stud farm". It promises pictures. There is also a kama sutra for AT-STs.
- How many fanfics do you know that have caused international incidents? "Agony in Pink" was a Power Rangers fanfic where the Pink Ranger gets tortured and killed — in lengthy detail — by a monster created by Lord Zedd. It resulted in the newsgroup it was posted on getting banned in Australia, and is believed to be responsible for the complete removal of adult fanfic from Fan Fiction.net.
- The ban was coming in any event, and crappiness was definately why, very very bad memories of stuff by aguywhoeats and similar handles coming to mind. Pretty much all of it was single paragraph horrors that weren't rated, were very explicit, and all involved highly improbable scatological content. In fact, that was all there was to it. That crap (pun intentional) and similar "Sour Lemon" content along the lines of Artemis' Lover prompted the ban.
- This Troper can't really see why only Agony in Pink is blamed, since there is more graphic fanfiction out there. However, having read the story, I can believe that maybe it was just the inherent crappiness of it that inspired the change.
- Fortunately for self-proclaimed perverts everywhere, Adultfanfiction.net remains to take the burden off its shoulders. And if Fanfiction.net ever carries out its threat of banning M-rated fanfiction too, well, its rating system can take that as well.
- The creators of webcomics College Roomies From Hell and Queen Of Wands politely asked their fanbase that if they were going to produce porn based on the webcomic to please not post it or links to it in the comic's forum as the creator didn't want to see it. Both fanbases complied.
- This editor could have lived her life happily without knowing that there is Soreike! Anpanman hentai by Zaou Taishi.
- There is also Keroro Gunsu yaoi doujinshi (furry even!) by Zaou Taishi :D
- A small subset of Radiohead fans fantasize about Thom/Jonny/Colin love triangles — it would be pretty minor if it weren't for the fact that Jonny is Colin's little brother and they're all married with kids. In the absence of love triangles, the pairings are usually Thom/Jonny and Ed/Colin. Alas, the fifth member, Phil, was already married when the group rose to fame, and thus he is left out of most of the shipping.
- Very much proven by Spore, of whom the many infamous 'penis creature' creations have been called "sporn". The troper has no idea if anyone has made a vagina creature (you're giving it a try right now, aren't you!?).
- That seems like it would be impossible within the limitations of the game engine. But if someone figured it out, they probably took it a step further and made a vagina dentata creature. (Hey, every creature has to have at least one mouth...)
- Interestingly, Cosmic Horror writer Ramsey Campbell appeared to have predicted the rise of rule 34, and even made a character that was the personification of it, Y'Golonac; a god of any possibly conceivable depravity and perversion that any being, sane or not, could think of. Simply reading his name was apparently enough to let him possess you. Methinks most people online today have built up an immunity.
- No, they have not. They're carriers, as Rule #34 proves empirically. Y'Golonac is insane by any human standard, but it ain't stupid.
- Redwall porn easily predates any visual media but the cover of a single book, and let's not even get into the years before Harry Potter ever made it to film. Even for lesser-known books, it's out there — this troper has seen more Soon I Will Be Invincible and Perdido Street Station porn than I'd ever needed.
- Oh, and Calvin And Hobbes (see the page pic)? Yeah, in Calvin/Hobbes, and even Hobbes/Hobbes selfcest. Surprisingly, the latter isn't always as bad as you'd expect.
- Don't mention the doujinshi circle M-kichibeya to Mother 3 fans. They'll start going off about Naughty Tentacles and the Pigmasks gangbanging the Masked Man.
- There is a mind-boggling quantity of porn for the Kirby animated series out there. And much of it is Dedede/Escargoon.
- A certain site, which will not be linked to here (Google if you're that curious), features an insane amount of Kirby/Kirby and Meta Knight/Kirby (bondage!) porn. And yes, they do add little Kirby penises and anuses. Even worse is that it updates every day.
- This is Older Than The Internet. Nearly every popular film or TV show has had a porn version made over the past 30 years. They usually replace a word in the title with a body part or sexual term.
- Attack of the 50ft. Hooker is seen as a dissapointment in our community simply because the giantess only appears for 5 minutes or so, and the whole scene is intercut with two (fully-clothed) guys talking.
- Before the Internet was widely used as a release valve for these thoughts, the fanzines for TV and movie fandoms had this stuff, such as gay porn for the Big Bad and the Hero in Wizards and Warriors. This was predated by Tijuana Bibles. And it's certain to survive the Internet in some other format if the 'Net fails.
- Archie Comics is another company that aggressively responds to Rule 34, threatening legal action against Fanfiction.net if it didn't take down all the slash fics featuring its characters. It's not hard to see why, when you consider that the slash in question ranged from Archie/Jughead to Archie/Mr.Weatherbee.
- There's even porn starring inanimate objects; it's called anthropomor fic and there's a livejournal community devoted to pairings such as sodium/chlorine, Ohio State University/University of Michigan, toothbrush/Johnny Depp, and Australia/Antarctica/India threesomes. If you think people can't write erotica about cornflakes and milk, you are wrong my friend.
- But Australia/Antarctica/India is canon.
- [GLaDOS] x SHODAN, anyone?
- Do want.
- Pfft, that's nothing. This troper has read fanfiction of Charley the Plant/Stepladder from the Phoenix Wright universe. I am not making this up.
- There is also Beckett/Chair from the SGA universe, involving the expedition's chief medical officer and an extinct advanced alien race's thought-controlled chair defensive platform
- Nina/Table-kun, from Code Geass. Thought technically its' canon...
- Even Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation isn't safe from this. His review of Age of Conan provoked a (TOTALLY NSFW!) hentai image of his character, complete with an out of context quote from the review itself.
- This picture was then posted in a later review of his [censored of course], making mention to his previous Age of Conan review "that inspired so much delightful porn".
- DeviantArt is rife with examples. This troper has personally experience Scrubs JD/Dr. Cox slash, Ed, Edd and Eddy (any combination of the three Eds imaginable), and more Samus/Solid Snake than he'd like to have. And this is all while not actively looking for it. He's scared of what would happen if he was.
- Samus porn? Lest we forget, poor Marty Oum had to defend/explain Haloid's reaction shot when the lady SPARTAN-II got a good clear view of Samus Aran without the outer armor. Considering the reaction in question, posting a banner saying "Lubrication is a two-way street" was technically Oum invoking Rule 34 on HIMSELF. (If he hadn't done it already explaining the SPARTAN-II was a girl as he liked lesbians.. Nah, that's Les Yay, plain and simple)
- Samus? You're lucky, this troper was unfortunate enough to bump into Aaahh!!! Real Monsters porn on that site... With the artist being so naughty as to draw Ickis with a penis and Oblina, the stick-like monster, with boobs no less! I Am Not Making This Up. Needless to say, this troper's childhood memories pretty much evaporated. Thankfully it was three years ago so it's long gone now.
- If you're looking for it? Surprisingly hard to find in any decent quality.
- Technically, Dev Art has a policy against such explicit content, especially in regards to canonically underage characters. Doesn't stop many Deviants from posting such content (often repeatedly).
- Luckily they get nuked relatively quickly.
- You wouldn't believe the quantity of macrophile pics that come from deviantart...
- Real Life example: the site VPILF.com went live within 24 hours of the announcement of the Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate in the 2008 US Presidential election season.
- In attempt to find an article from the 70's on plants responding to various stimuli (he eventualy found it was The Secret Life of Plants), talk radio host Neal Boortz searched for "Philadendren Orgasm" (as the plants were Philadendrens, and one of the stimuli was "viewing" an orgasm), when discusing this, he urged his audience "not to enter that as a search term" because it produced some "nasty stuff"
- Latter, when discussing the top ten Yahoo search terms were (and his annoyance that they were unimportant items, such as celebrity names) noted the horniness of Japanese cartoon characters
- Care Bear BDSM, anyone?
- There is not only Sonic The Hedgehog porn, but probably more of it than any other franchise in the world. Yes, there is everything. EVERYTHING.
- A writer for Something Awful once summarized the evolution of the average Sonic fan in three stages: "I love Sonic The Hedgehog!" becomes "I love drawing Sonic The Hedgehog!" turns into "I love drawing Sonic The Hedgehog's butthole!"
- There is porn of R-Type, a series with no named characters at all where it's very rare for a human to even be depicted. Rule 34 finds a way.
- In Mega Man 9, the series bends tradition a bit. Having a female Robot Master, Splash Woman, appear. Amount of time it took for porn to appear of her? About 15 minutes. When the game was announced.
- Splash Woman is an Expy of Leviathan from Megaman Zero. Try and guess how much Leviathan/Zero and Leviathan/Ciel art there is.
- This troper recently saw the suggestion that the Archon from Starcraft, which consists of 2 high templar bonded together in a ball of pure energy that says POWER OVERWHELMING a lot, says such because it is in a state of constant orgasm. Won't be long before that fanfic pops up.
- There are several pornographic ROM hacks of many games, mainly NES. Targets include Fester's Quest, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
- The Punch-Out!! one is notoriously half-assed — Piston Honda and Mike Tyson appear to only have one testicle (they have the same body), Bald Bull and Mr. Sandman appear to be transsexuals (same body again), and Soda Popinski and Super Macho Man are still fully clothed ("STUPID AMERICAN! THE GREAT POPINSKIS WILL NOT GET NAKED FOR YOU!"). And the hacker didn't even change all the frames, so the opponents are suddenly clothed when they throw punches. (Before you ask, this troper read about it on I-Mockery.)
- One particularly childhood-destroying porno hack, found on the same site as the "Punch-Out!!" "nude" "hack", is of an educational Sesame Street NES game. And I'll say that again just to drive the point home - someone made a pornographic ROM hack of an educational Sesame Street NES game and called it "Ernie and the Muppets Take It All Off". Yes, the carnival game has Big Bird sporting a visible erection, and the Rubber Ducky game has Ernie's rubber duck replaced by... a rubber dick. I couldn't make this up if I tried, folks...
- One word: OrcSlash.
- This troper believes that at some point production companies will feel the fan work has tarnished their series or movies and start a fictional pornography law. You know how greedy Hollywood can get when they think they can make money from it.
- The first two documented eroges on iPhone were both examples of Rule Thirty Four in anime — one of Strike Witches and one of Hidamari Sketch.
- This troper's childhood was permanently warped by the discovery of Anne of Green Gables erotic fic.
- Pokegirls.
- In the words of Jon Stewart: "Boy, you can put porn music to anything." (If this page has inspired a
n irrational fear of clicking on links, that is the number 9 having sex with the number 11, as an illustration of what Rudy Giuliani dreams about. Yeah.)
- Tetris slash fiction. What makes it worse is that actual effort was put into some of them.
- Impse, anyone?
- There is porn of the original Rule 34 image. Yes, the one at the top of the page. Upon its creation, the internet imploded, and we just haven't noticed yet.
- Despite only being 11 episodes long (so far,) there is a stunning amount of Superjail! porn to be found.
- "Thanks for the great sex, loser!"
- Real Life example of a sort. Anyone remember the episode of That 70's Show where Hyde helps Fez sneak Alice Cooper records into his house by hiding them in Pat Boone album cases? As a preface to the explanation of his plan, he acted out the record raping the case. "Don't resist me, Pat Boone!" "No! You're hurting me!" followed by a sigh of contentment.
- Well, This Troper has seen live action Smurf porn. Kind of traumatic experience.
- This Troper has found Yume Nikki 34. Although the copious amounts of shipping (the most popular ship apparently being Madotsuki/Masada)do not surprise him, the speed of the porn does. There is apparently only two pieces, but the game's been out for a year or so. Both pieces involve Uboa.
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