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alt title(s): Power Of Love 
"There are worlds beyond and worlds within which the explorer must explore, but there is one power which seems to transcend space and time, life and death. It is a deeply human power which holds us safe and together when all other forces combine to tear us apart. We call it the power of love."
—closing narration of the Outer Limits episode "The Borderland"
The Power Of Love (note the capitals) is a curious thing. It makes one man weep, and another man sing. It's also an occasionally useful Deus Ex Machina. Even more than The Power Of Friendship, the power of True Love can be applied in dire situations to make things better. Unlike The Power Of Friendship, though, it can be applied in Fan Fic to make things profoundly disturbing.
Common applications of The Power Of Love include activating an Empathic Weapon, freeing a loved one from mind control, strengthening a loved one, and converting a Real Death into a Disney Death. Even when the power of love is not literally and directly responsible, the scene is often set such that the audience is left with the impression that it was "really responsible".
Dont You Dare Pity Me can sometimes be overcome by the Power Of Love; however, it may take time, and the love itself must be purified of any pity it does contain.
The Green Eyed Monster may come into play. In more idealistic shows, it is an enemy of true love. However, more cynical shows may treat it as normal, and even let it overcome Cannot Spit It Out.
In these cynical times, this often feels like a supreme rip-off. It depends on where you, and the scene in question, fall on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism. More conventionally, Love Redeems evil. When it's not turning you evil, that is. Or, less often, supporting said baddies.
True Loves Kiss definitely falls under this trope. A more passive but no less impressive display of the Power of Love is it's ability use the Red String Of Fate to reunite the reincarnating lovers.
Not to be confused with The Power of Heart, which is mostly a tone-downed and less effective version of this, or The Power of Sex, which... yeah.
Examples
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Comic Books
- The Power Of Love allowed the Flash to come back from an otherdimensional speedster heaven that no one had ever returned from. Several times.
- For a split second, it looks as if this trope is going to be averted in the Justice Society of America arc Princes of Darkness—Jade's The Power of Love speech to Obsidian fails to halt his evil rampage—but it's really only a set up for their father, the Golden Age Green Lantern, to come in and deliver it successfully.
- In the fourth Scott Pilgrim book, The Power of Love is manifested as a giant flaming katana, which Scott yanks out of his chest.
- Ultra Boy is saved from The Blight by The Power Of Love in the Legion Of Super Heroes issues right before Legion Lost.
- The New Zealand comic Footrot Flats features a scene where the main character, the Dog, finds himself able to walk on water due to his love for Jess, the neighbour's dog
this phrase used to avoid the perhaps-inevitable misunderstandings resulting from the phrase "neighbour's bitch" *. After this initial success, he demonstrates that there is no such thing as The Power Of Lust, by sinking as soon as he moves from "Love can work miracles!" to "I'm coming baby!"
- The trope takes its name and first sentence from the Huey Lewis and the News song of the same name, which was written for and featured in Back To The Future. The film provides many examples of The Power Of Love.
- Disney's Beauty and the Beast where the Beast turns into a Prince when Belle tells him she loves him.
- The monsters in The Deaths of Ian Stone feed on human fear, but the most powerful one, Ian Stone, draws power from love.
- This is pretty much the whole Aesop of Disney's Enchanted, right down to True Loves Kiss.
- The Fifth Element, where the five central elements in the universe are earth, fire, wind, water ... and life.
- In Krull, the Power of Love manifests itself at the climax as the ability to throw fireballs.
- In The Matrix, it appears that Neo's transformation into The One is sparked by Trinity telling his mostly-dead body that she loves him.
- In The Naked Gun, Frank's power of love break's Jane's Mind Control.
- In Next, the precognitive abilities of Nicolas Cage's character only allow him to see up to 2 minutes into his own future, except, for no apparent reason, for one recurring vision that presages the arrival of his eventual love interest. Once he's finally met and slept with her, he can see further ahead than ever before.
- In Pleasantville, it's The Power Of Love (or just plain old Auto Erotica) that changes the entire TV show from black and white to colour.
- Technically, it's the Power of Change that causes people to -well- change color. It's just that most people did this by having sex, which didn't exist in their world before. The two main characters, coming from the real world, had a harder time gaining color.
- Perhaps the quintessential example of this trope is The Princess Bride, wherein the depth of the protagonist's love for the eponymous Princess saves him from certain death, grants him access to Charles Atlas Superpowers, and confers on him the ability to produce a death wail that can not only be heard across an entire kingdom but also identified as a scream caused by one losing their true love. Partly subverted in that the machine is able to kill him in the first place, though this not only produces the scream that allows his rescue.
- In the film version of Stardust, Yvaine's love for Tristan allows her to go supernova and incinerate Lamia.
- Because of her love, Tristan now "possessed the heart a star" and got bonus immortality too.
- This is basically what ultimately saved Luke Skywalker's life, prompted Darth Vader's Heel Face Turn, and brought down The Empire in Return Of The Jedi. In this case, love does much more than "just" redeem.
- A more cynical and indirect usage: In the film Ultraviolet, the heroine weeps over a dead boy, causing him to come back to life — because her tears infected him with vampirism.
- While love doesn't actually accomplish anything supernatural in the Aladdin films, the fact that genies can't cause people to fall in love puts Love on the same level of greater-than-phenomenal-cosmic-power as Life or Death.
- In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer's Tempest, the Power Of Love drives the magical rings that Oberon and Titania give Prince Rupert and Jennifer. Unfortunately, along comes a Vamp with a Love Potion and then they must soldier on without the magic.
- In Jim Butcher'sThe Dresden Files love is literally poison to the White Court, a species of vampires who feed on human lust, fear, and/or despair.
- In the Harry Potter series, love is said to be the source of the force which saved Harry from Voldemort in his infancy, and is cited as the secret power he has over You-Know-Who. In the seventh book, however, it is made clear that it is mostly a mother's love for her child, and other non-romantic types of love, that actually have concrete magical power. Romantic love has a role only for its psychological effect.
- The last part of this is a cleverly hidden deconstruction; Harry is an unremarkable wizard caught up in circumstances that are extraordinary by even magical standards and the old magic his mother protected him with via her love only does so much. Because Harry is also a normal human being compared to the soul-torn sociopath Voldemort, he does have one concrete, tangible advantage that ends up making a huge difference. It's the fact that his "power of love" is nothing more than his basic social skills allowing him to befriend and entrust others, while being befriended and entrusted back, whereas Voldemort's allies are all power-hungry sadists and sycophants who can't be trusted as far as they can be thrown. The number of times the unconditional (non-romantic) love his friends have for him have inspired them to help him, often with events that he would never have been able to handle on his own, are quite numerous.
- On the other hand, love is the reason for Severus Snape's decision to betray Lord Voldemort who never could neither understand nor detect this decision because it was motivated by love.
- In A Wrinkle In Time, Meg is able to save her little brother Charles Wallace from being possessed by IT through the power of her love for him.
- She suspects that if anyone ever offered love to IT, IT would shrivel up and die. Not sure whether that's a subversion or not....everyone else will be fine, but poor IT.
- In The Fangs of K'aath, the power of love in the heroes is able to repel the minions of the titular demon as if they are physically burned and cancel out a magic poison at the book's climax.
- Quite a few of David Eddings' novels have the goddess Aphrael. Her "real" form is an adult woman, but she always appears to everyone as a eight year old girl. This allows her to use The Power Of Love on everyone. When a cute young girl asks to sit in your lap, no one can refuse. Once she sits in your lap and gives you a kiss, she will get her way on everything she wants.
- To quote Virgil, "Omnia vincit Amor".
- "Et nos cedeamus Amori..."
- Supervillainess Sahar, in the Whateley Universe. She has a psychic ability to - once she's seduced a Psi - get so close that she can learn to copy that Psi's best 'knacks'. This makes her a ruthless femme fatale, until she falls in love with a mark, Zenith. She doesn't know how to handle that. So it takes a different kind of love - friendship - to get her to finish her Heel Face Turn. And she gets Zenith back.
- A Double Subversion in Wizard's First Rule. The subversion is in Kahlan's power which uses a person's love to make them a slave to her will. This completely destroys a person, with no possibility of reversal, and causes her to be hated and feared, despite being the de facto ruler of the land. The double subversion comes in the climax, where Richard's love for Kahlan protects him from her power, allowing them to get together.
- There is an interesting use of this trope at the climax of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. Just when it seems as if the Big Bad Storm King is about to be unleashed on the mortal world, The Hero Simon finally understands why he's been receiving Prophetic Dreams about the creature's backstory as the Sitha prince Ineluki. It is to prepare him for the realization that the reason for Ineluki's desire to destroy existence is how brutally he suffered in life trying to defend his people from the depredations of mankind. This revelation allows him to do the one thing that doesn't feed the Storm King's power — forgive him, which weakens him just enough for Miramele to kill his physical host.
- A central theme in The English Patient is the question of whether love can transcend national boundaries in wartime. The short answer? Yes. The long answer? Yes, but the results aren't always pretty, and don't necessarily last.
- Tom Holt's The Portable Door. The only way to get the swords out of the stones to get a hold of the keys on the end is to have two people who are in love pulling them.
- An even more bizarre version comes from You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here. Screwing with True Love actually causes the entire Universe to go a bit out of whack, and maths stops working properly.
Live Action TV
- In the sixth season finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Xander literally saves the world from Dark Willow by standing in front of her and telling her repeatedly that he loves her.
- It should be noted that this isn't romantic love. But having the show's only 'normal' character saving the world from the most powerful dark witch ever by way of a yellow crayon? I am not making this up.
- It's a little different though; in this case Xander is reminding Willow of who she really is by presenting her with the most powerful (surviving) figure in her "real" life and her connection with him. He was sort of "bringing her back to herself".
- Doctor Who: In "Fear Her", we meet an alien quite literally powered by a combination of love and heat — such that the Olympic torch serves as the perfect agent for restoring its strength.
- A very strange and freaky example: In Jekyll, Claire is told that the Hyde personality first emerges when the host falls in love — pure, unrestrained love, the type you are likely to kill over. And, thanks to the Hyde personality, likely are going to.
- For some reason, Cylons can only reproduce if they're in love. They have all the equipment, but it just doesn't work otherwise.
- Villain example: In Juuken Sentai Gekiranger, Mele is driven by and draws strength from the love she holds for Rio, the main villain. And with all the Character Development and Pet the Dog moments they get, it hardly comes as a surprise to anyone when, in the end, Rio discovers that he also loved Mele all along, and both do a Heel Face Turn to defeat Treacherous Advisor-turned-Big Bad Long. In the second round of said fight they sacrifice themselves as a Redemption Equals Death, after Long turned out to be immortal. It didn't take the second time either; Love may conquer all (twice), but some people just won't stay dead...
- In Babylon Five, the power of love was critical to Sheridan's return from the dead at Za'ha'dum.
- Subverted in the finale of the first series of Being Human. George THINKS the reason he was pacified when Nina saw him transform is true love but, as he muses about their 'connection' the next day, it cuts to her rubbing huge scratches on her arm, implying that it's not so much love as that she's now a werewolf and he's fixated on her the same way Tully was fixated on him.
- The court scene in "Right Ho, Jeeves" (the TV episode, not the novel which covered a different story) was interrupted by the arrival of Madeline Basset, who used the Power of Love to keep Bertie out of jail. Going into a story about how he broke into a house and "stole" a picture of her because he was "so madly in love with her," she has the whole courtroom moved to tears in about ten seconds.
Tabletop Games
- Surprising, given the style of the play, but in the final scene of Rent, death is converted to Disney Death by a love song.
- Wagner's version of the Flying Dutchman trope allows the character - traditionally cursed to sail forever, to be saved by the power of love. Pity the love interest is a total Mary Sue. Good music, though.
Video Games
- The full name of TouHou's Marisa Kirisame's "signature" Kamehame Hadoken is "Love Sign: Master Spark". (The spell is actually Blue Maged from Yuka Kazami.) The description of Love Sign: Master Spark includes "Whisper tenderly into the magical reactor, point it at someone you don't like, and release the Annihilation of Love!" There are two major reasons why Marisa would declare herself powered by love: The first is that it's part of Marisa's desire to be a "Magical Girl", even though she is technically a human witch of human blood. The second is the sheer subversiveness of declaring herself a heroine of love, even though her only motivations in any of the games seem to be to kick in the teeth of as many powerful people as she can, show up Reimu, and maybe steal even more magical powers (or anything else, for that matter,) from whatever victim she is currently harassing. It's worth noting, however, that Defeat Means Friendship in this game, and she has a lot of "friends" over years of adventuring, so there may actually be something to the name, after all.
- City Of Heroes has one mission where the reward is a temporary power; a wedding ring, filled with the love of a woman for her dead husband, that can give you resistance to all kinds of damage for a limited time.
- Subverted in Disgaea. Love Freak Flonne points out that an Alternate Universe Overlord couldn't possibly defeat the Anti Heroes, because his power of love is divided among his ten (still very massive) copies. Oh, how very, very wrong she was...
- One of the arcana powersets in the fighting game Arcana Heart is Partineas, the Arcana of Love. It revolves primarily around projectile attacks (and defense). One super, in fact, had this troper quoting Black Mage (above). Naturally, it's the default Arcana of the resident Love Freak Idiot Hero, Heart Aino.
- In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, The Power Of Love grants Bad Ass Kyosuke and faux-Bottle Fairy Excellen (she acts the way she does to relieve some of the tension that comes with war) their super-powerful combination attack Rampage Ghost, complete with witty banter. The move is not available until about half-way through the game, when it becomes obvious that Kyocellen is the Official Couple.
- And then there's the fact that Excellen refuses to call it anything but "Love Love Attack".
- Also present throughout the franchise is the Love (Ai) Seishin, which gives almost every useful Status Effect in the game all at once, for comparatively little SP cost. The only people to get it are one person per Official Couple, usually.
- Then somewhat subverted with Ring Mao and Irm Kazahara, one of Banpresto's original official couples. Irm's Ace Bonus reduces the Love Seishin's cost down to the point it costs less to cast it than cast one of the Seishins that's just a part of it. Irm and Ring, however, have not gotten along very well for quite a while and really don't have any genuine shipping sequences in OG 2, where Ring becomes a recurring member of the group.
- They still get a Love bonus, though. In fact, theirs is bigger than the bonus some of the more overt couples get.
- In OG 2, each character that is in love with another character will receive a bonus from the character they are in love with, even if that character is not in love with them ;_;.
- In Tales ofthe World:Narikiri Dungeon 3, certain characters, who are OfficialCouples from their respective games, like say Lloyd andColette for example, would get the ability "Love Love" which doubled the effects of items.
- In Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World, there's Decus. He uses The Power Of Love AGAINST The Player, and it powers his Hi-Ougi, Storm and Stress, as seen here.
- In Drakengard 2, The Hero receives a kiss from the Staff Chick and this activates his Super Mode for the final boss fight.
- Kingdom Hearts : After Sora comitted "suicide" to save Kairi, who was locked within him, his heart is changed into a heartless. Kairi, however, recognizes him and just by yelling his name and hugging him, she somehow manages to return him to normal. Sora later explains to Kairi: "I was lost in the darkness, couldn't find my way. As I stumbled through the dark, I started forgetting things: My friends, who I was... the darkness almost swallowed me. But then, I heard a voice. YOUR voice. The light of our hearts broke through the darkness. I saw this light. And I think, THAT'S what saved me!"
- In Final Fantasy X-2 it's explicitly Yuna's love for Tidus which kicked of the quest and got her to that point that allows Bahamut to do his thing. Not to mention that right before the climactic boss battle, Yuna convinces her Nakama to let her give the power of love a shot at stopping him. You still have to kick his ass though.
- In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, Penelope utilizes the power of love to gain mad sword fighting skills against Captain Le Fwee to save Bentley.
- Hell, Lucas's signature PSI attack in MOTHER 3 has the default name of PK LOVE. Fits perfectly with the game's theme.
- In Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu, having a character attack an enemy with their lover standing beside them can activate a critical hit, going so far as to do a little spinning heart animation before the actual attack sequence.
- Welkin from Valkyria Chronicles has this as his hidden potential.
- Fated Passion. In this attack, Jaster and Kisala's love for each other can cause the whole galaxy to explode. At 22 AP.
- It's strongly implied by the many endings of Brass Restoration that the only way for Ryo to recover emotionally from losing his arm and being unable to fulfill his dream of being a drummer is to find a girlfriend.
- In King's Quest IV, Rosella assassinates an evil, hateful fairy by shooting her with one of Cupid's arrows of love.
- In both installments of The Sims, pleading with the Grim Reaper appears to be a game of chance, but in reality it depends on the relationship values. If two sims love each other enough, there's literally no way to possibly fail at this. One can even keep a vampire sim through the day if he's married to a human, let him dust, have his love plead, rinse and repeat until nightfall.
- The opening narration for Super Paper Mario introduces it as a story "of love", and the Void created by the Chaos Heart is finally destroyed at the end by Tippi/Lady Timpani and Count Bleck/Blumiere renewing their vows of love towards each other.
- Hagspawns
usually always look like this◊. Gann, the female protagonist's love interest from Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer however, looks like this◊. Why? Because his mother and father actually loved each other.
- In Final Fantasy VI, both Shadow and Relm can equip an accessory called the Memento Ring, an item which protects against instant death attacks due to a departed mother's love. It is suggested that Relm's mother was Shadow's lover or wife as well.
- During Galuf's fatal duel with Exdeath in Final Fantasy V, Exdeath chides the poor man, telling him that "all the hatred in existence would never be enough to defeat me." Galuf's response is "this... isn't anger... isn't hatred... it's..." While he never manages to actually say it, it is heavily implied that he was spurred on to fight by love for his granddaughter, Krile. Exdeath is completely baffled by this.
- Hilariously twisted in this◊ Perry Bible Fellowship comic.
- In this Beaver And Steve story arc, love comes from another dimension populated with evil hearts that want to take over the earth.
- Subverted in this8-Bit Theater strip, where Black Mage's Hadoken is literally powered by love: the spell consumes love, causing a net reduction in the amount of love in the universe. Every time he uses it the divorce rate goes up measurably. Basically Black Mage has managed to use the Power of Love to cross the Moral Event Horizon.
- In Order of the Stick, Haley becomes able to pick a lock when Elan encourages her. [1]
Love makes the world go round. And has been known to provide a +2 circumstance bonus to certain skill checks.
- Not to mention the time when Haley had started speaking gibberish and breaks out of it when she tells Elan she loves him. Though, that's not really her power of love but her honestly trying to tell the truth and overcome her mental problem.
- This B Movie Comic strip and the associated rant.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, the fate of Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds Galatea, here and here.
- In Yu Me Dream, Fiona's decision to attempt to go back into the Dream World to find Lia, especially considering Sadako had banned Fiona from the Dream Land, as well as the possibility that Fiona may never return to the real world if she finds Lia.
- Used and nicely summed up in the final part of Demonology 101, when Issac Jenner and Madeline get married. Two Witnesses attend the wedding and one comments on the Power Of Love.
Aaron: What do you think it means?
Banai: It probably means the same thing it meant when you married Lily. That love is one of those annoying things that somehow manages to transcend destiny, Nature, and whether or not you were born with horns on your head. * According to Buttersafe, "love is the source of energy that fuels eye lasers."
Web Original
- Brutally subverted in Survival Of The Fittest in the case of Galen Neilson and Nadine Willowbrook of version 3. The couple meet up with one another ingame, and the romantic exchange which follows leads the reader to believe that they will stand together to the end. Moments later, everything disintergrates and the pair end up murdering each other. Graphically.
- Another subversion comes from Emma Babineaux and her high school crush J.R. Rizzolo. She appears to cause a Heel Face Turn in John, and as the two of them embrace and kiss, John impales her with a sword and shoots her in the head. Ouch.
Western Animation
- Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: Sprx is turned evil by the Object of Hate, and Nova tells him she loves him to bring him back.
- In Transformers: Beast Wars, Blackarachnia defected from the Predacons to save her own skidplate, but the power of hers and Silverbolt's love brought her to the Maximals and made her part of the team, despite her intial reluctance. Of course, since Blackarachnia was the Dark Action Girl for most of the series, this is slow going, but eventually, it does bring her around.
- Later, she's Mostly Dead until Silverbolt winds up facing the uber-powerful Rampage... At which point she's brought back to life in a new form and kicks Rampage to the curb, which is not an easy task.
- Subverted in Avatar The Last Airbender, when the power of love prevented the protagonist from getting powerful enough to defeat evil, temporarily got him killed, and had the greatest city of the world conquered by the bad guys. Then again, a wise old guy told Aang he made a good choice, so it'll probably pay him off in the end.
- Parodied in the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket", which features a very literal power of love: when a whole load of chalky Valentines heart-shaped candies are dumped into a supernova, it causes a wave of "mystical love radiation" that is powerful enough to destroy "three gangster planets and a cowboy world", but causes (or at least enhances) a wave of Valentines-inspired romance on Earth (which is far enough to see the radiation without being destroyed by it).
- In the Evil Con Carne episode "H.C.C.B.D.D.", Major Doctor Ghastly reveals during Hector's birthday party that the most powerful force in the world is the power of love. When he objects that his organization was founded on hatred, she promptly cuts the party short and screams at everybody to get back to work with as much hate as possible... 'cause she just loves him like that.
- This is essentially how Spider-Man defeats Venom in the season 1 finale of The Spectacular Spider Man. Though it's with the love of his friends, uncle, and aunt, but it still technically counts because Gwen Stacy is one of his friends, and everyone knows what part she plays.
- Ron Stoppable got his Bad Ass Chunky Updraft in the Grand Finale of Kim Possible because the aliens grabbed an unconscious Kim and gloated that she'd be a great trophy.
- Clone High had a whole episode parodying this trope as well as the power of rock. During the climactic scene where they tried breaking down the wall with love, one of the characters said "But guys, love is just an abstract concept! It can't break down stuff!"
- In the cartoon pilot, PJ Sparkles basically runs on this trope. She's transformed into a Magical Girl due to her strong desire to love someone, and can do almost anything, provided she phrases it "I'd love it if X."
Real Life
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