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Sam: You are the nuttiest, the stupidest, the phoniest fruitcake I ever met.
Diane: You, Sam Malone, are the most arrogant, self-centred...
Sam: Shut up! Shut your fat mouth.
Diane: Make me.
Sam: Make you? My God, I'm... I'm gonna... I'm gonna bounce you off every wall in this office.
Diane: Try it and you'll be walking funny tomorrow... or shall I say, funnier.
Sam: You know, you know I always wanted to pop you one, maybe this is my lucky day huh?
Diane: You disgust me. I hate you.
Sam: Are you as turned on as I am?
Diane: More!
(They kiss.)
This is a trope of both anime and manga, and is all but universal in romantic stories. It frequently brings to a close the Will They Or Wont They phase of a Romance Arc.
When a male and female character spend a lot of time bickering, it is all but inevitable that sooner or later he will interrupt her in mid-rant by suddenly grabbing her and kissing her. (Less frequently, she grabs and kisses him.) The kissed one rarely resists, and usually responds wholeheartedly.
Usually this is triggered by their hostilities reaching a crescendo that results in an exchange of slaps, followed by a moment where both stare at each other in combined confusion and shock, after which they dive into the kiss.
Either way, the kiss prompts both to realize that they've been in love all this time - the rationale being that they wouldn't argue so much if they didn't give a damn about each other. Normally results in some kind of permanent change in their relationship. Like sex, or everything implied by a First Kiss in Anime.
This trope dates back to some of the earliest motion pictures.
Compare Shut Up Kiss, Love At First Punch, and Destructo Nookie. Kiss Kiss Slap is this in reverse (kissing, then fighting).
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Niles and C.C. in The Nanny triggered a quantum leap in their relationship this way.
- Can you say Moonlighting?
- Buffy and Spike on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Although that was more a case of "roundhouse kick, punch to the face, kiss."
- Also Cordelia and Xander.
- The first several seasons of Cheers centered around the Will They Or Wont They relationship of Sam and Diane that seemed eternally poised to trigger this trope.
- Hawkeye and Margaret's brief liaison under fire in M*A*S*H is a variation on this trope.
- Pretty much the entire plot of every instance of "The Needlers" , a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live.
- Happened in the penultimate episode of Two Guys And A Girl to set Pete and Ashley together.
- Happened completely literally in the late first season of Rome. Slap. Pause. Slap. Pause. Kiss.
- The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air: This pretty much sums up Will's relationship with one of his longer-lasting Girls Of The Week, Jackie.
- There was also a Girl Of The Week who was rude to everyone, and Will wasn't getting along with her for that reason. Carlton had better luck, however, and after the "kiss" part of the trope kicked in, he was able to get her to treat people in a civil manner. After discovering that Carlton was able to assert himself, Will tried doing the same thing as Carlton did...however, Will was just as unable as ever to get past the "slap slap" stage of the relationship.
- Drake And Josh: Josh and Mindy share the following heated exchange...
Josh: So today, you were just messing with my head?
Mindy: I think you deserved it after the way you screamed at me.
Josh: I still think that was a really obnoxious thing for you to do!
Mindy: I think you acted way more obnoxious.
Josh: Well, I'm just glad we're broken up!
Mindy: Not as glad as I am!
Josh: Oh, really?!
Mindy: REALLY!
(They make out.)
- Maddie shares one such scene with a one-shot character, Trevor, a "merit scholar", on The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, ending with the most passionate make out scene ever on children's programming:
Trevor: I don't need a vote from some tree-hugger.
Maddie: If you have it your way, there won't be any trees left to hug.
Trevor: Oh, next you're going to blame the oil companies for global warming.
Maddie: Yeah, 'cause they're to blame!
Trevor: Oh, cry me a river!
Maddie: If I did, you'd just pollute it!
Trevor: You bleeding-heart liberal!
Maddie: You establishment puppet!
Trevor: Do you wanna kiss me as much as I wanna kiss you!?
Maddie: I'm surprised someone as smart as you would have to ask!
- One episode of Frasier subverts it by having Frasier in the slap phase with a coworker, but when (in a Continuity Nod to the Cheers example) he asks if she is as turned on as he is, she just says no and looks disgusted. Since the station manager saw the situation, everyone in the station has to attend a sexual harrasment seminar.
- The rebooted Battlestar Galactica has raised this to the level of an art form; nearly every canonical couple has engaged in it at some point and to some degree, often in the most literal sense (see -- unsurprisingly -- Adama, Lee, and Thrace, Kara; also Saul and Ellen Tigh).
- Burn Notice takes this and runs with it, since both of the "combatants" are trained covert ops. After a short fight with heavy subtext, one finally gets the other in a choke pin... but then they start making out.
- Ellen from Slings And Arrows does this twice within three episodes of each other: the first time with Geoffrey, the second with her brother-in-law Eric.
- Worf and Ezri Dax from Star Trek Deep Space Nine have a heated argument while stranded on a forest planet, intensified by the feelings shared between Worf and Jadzia Dax, Ezri's symbiont predecessor. It eventually degrades into name-calling and fisticuffs, and a passionate kiss with (implied) off-camera relations.
- In all fairness, Klingons are shown to have extremely aggressive mating rituals, to the point that name-calling and fisticuffs is their foreplay.
- The Tick (live-action): Batmanuel and Captain Liberty
- Scrubs: Jordan and Dr. Cox. Although it's more of a Stab Stab Sex sort of thing.
- Gene Hunt to Alex Drake in Episode 1 of Ashes To Ashes (immediately after grabbing her breast in the supply room):
Gene: Now then, Bollinger Knickers. You going to kiss me or punch me?
- (She did not, needless to say, kiss him. Nor has she yet, but let's face it -- it's only a matter of time.)
- Dick and Mary from Third Rock From The Sun have this quite often. Most bizarrely, the first episode has Dick kiss Mary, she slaps him, she kisses him again, then he, confused, slaps her back.
- Receptionist Amanda and Nick Pepper of Ugly Betty revert to this after quite a few scenes of sexual tension, coming to a close when both tag each other out of a game of company paintball -- and consequently decide that their catfights actually turn them on.
Anime
- Tenshi Na Konamaiki can be fairly described as forty-nine episodes of slapping, followed by a kiss.
- Ranma 1/2 stretched out the trope to breaking point by doing seven seasons of increasing romantic tensions (and slaps -- and punches, and roundhouse kicks, and exploding ki attacks), but never getting to the kiss.
- A tradition proudly carried on by Rumiko Takahashi's later series, Inuyasha. Though Kagome is a bit more level-headed than Akane, she's still ready to yell "Sit boy" at Inuyasha if he pisses her off...
- Practically every series with a Tsundere as the winning girl.
- Kousuke and Ryoko in Spiral Suiri no Kizuna and Alive. One of their fistfights actually scared away a bear.
- Kazahaya and Rikuo of Legal Drug seem to be heading in this direction (considering that both their bosses and the rest of the universe seem to be nudging them together), but since the series has been on hold since Vol. 3 it is impossible to tell.
Film
- Blades Of Glory has this between Stranz and Fairchild van Waldenberg. Um...right.
- Father Goose does this. The first time, Leslie Caron slaps Cary Grant, he calmly slaps her back, and she dissolves in tears and runs away. The second time, she slaps him, he slaps her back, she slaps him back ... cut to Trevor Howard, reaction to the news that they want to be married.
- Taken to a ridiculous extreme by Mr. And Mrs. Smith''. The two main characters practically demolish a house in an attempt to shoot each other. They then proceed to punch, kick and smash objects onto each other, demolishing even more furniture in the process, until they grab their weapons again and get to a Mexican Standoff. Surprising nobody, little time passes before they put down the guns and start kissing and ripping each other's clothes off (although to be fair, as a married couple they were already long past the Will They Or Wont They stage).
- In Whitecoats, this is done with out the will they or won't they, in this case the Slaps were a fist fight where they gave as good as they got, with the rest of the cast trying to pull them apart. It ended when they started making out.
- Iron Man has an argument between Tony Stark and Christine Everheart cut directly to them having sex. However this is a one night stand and isn't a set up for a relationship.
- The more subdued scene later on with Tony and Pepper is more standard.
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has a classic example of this: Indy and Elsa are arguing. Indy goes on about how "Since I met you, I've nearly been incinerated, drowned, shot at, and chopped into fish bait" blah blah, then kisses her. She slaps him, says, "How DARE you kiss me?!" then kisses him back. Etc.
Literature
- This situation very accurately describes the relationship between Aravis and Prince Cor in The Horse and his Boy:
"Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently."
- There's a similar case with a young Vulcan couple in Diane Duane's Star Trek novel,Spock's World. The chapter is set pre-Sarek, after all.
- How about Stab Stab Kiss? Vlad of the Taltos series and his wife, a former assassin, fall in lust/love after she kills him and he is revived from the dead. This is subverted later, when the series takes a more realistic perspective toward this kind of tumultuous relationship by having their marriage fall apart very quickly when the two discover how different they really are.
- Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter series, set up much the same as the above, but with more teenage angst.
- Alluded to in the prequels to Eddings' Belgariad. The heirs of Astur and Mimbre were Locked In A Room "to kill each other without disturbing honest people", with the sole purpose of having them accept marriage.
- Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Pride And Prejudice.
- The real ur-example is most certainly the Sumerian poem The Courtship Of Inanna And Dumuzi, in which the Tsundere goddess Inanna spends most of the story berating the shepherd Dumuzi for not being a farmer, until they have a good argument and Inanna becomes smitten. They spend the rest of the story having awesome sex. Yeah, one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.
- Averted in Animorphs, where Marco and Rachel exhibited many symptoms of this trope...but it turns out that they really couldn't stand each other. Rachel's romantic pursuits instead led her to the Troubled But Cute Tobias, with whom she had a very pleasant relationship.
Theater
Webcomics
Music Video
- Used in Muse's Knights of Cydonia music video
 (which is done in the style of a 70s Sci Fi movie). The love interest slaps the hero in a bar, then the slap is shown again, but they're now in a bedroom and wearing less clothes. Again, with less clothes, but he grabs her arm and they kiss.
Comic Books
- In the Frank Miller-written comic book Allstar Batman, a retelling of the Batman mythos that is slowly becoming more and more of a parody of the 90s Dark Age of comics that Frank Miller helped create (it is fervently hoped, anyway), Wonder Woman is characterized as a man-hating shrew, someone who thinks men do nothing but destroy the planet and even calling some random onlooker in the street a "sperm-bank". She meets up with the rest of the Justice League, including Superman and, after saying that she hates their guts (several times, using the same wording) she suddenly starts making out with Supes. After that she returns to her ultra radical feminist self with no explanation given for the two heroes suddenly massaging each others' tonsils.
Video Games
Theatre
- Played absolutely straight in Thoroughly Modern Millie:
Millie: Skirt-chaser!
Jimmy: Gold-digger!
Millie: Womanizer!
Jimmy: Jezebel!
Millie: Casanova!
At which point he grabs her, snogs the hell out of her, and dashes off... whereupon she bursts into song. This is Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Music
- The whole point of the 80's Latin-American pop song "Dame un beso" ("Gimme a kiss") by Yuri, which plays it up as comedy.
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