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When Word Of God explains that a character's sexuality was actually gay or bisexual outside of the series, choosing to keep them Ambiguously Gay ( or even less so) in the actual story.
This may be because of Media Watchdogs or fear of backlash. It can also be due to Conservation Of Detail. On the other hand, heteronormativity states you have to mention a character is gay to establish it if the story is vague. Most readers will assume a character is heterosexual when their orientation isn't developed in text. Thus, this may be a publicity appeal to a gay audience while allowing straight people to experience the work without having to worry about getting homo cooties. Or it could just be one big publicity stunt.
To LGBT fans and allies, it can often come off as a cop-out: Saying "Oh, guess what? Bob, whom we never hinted about in the slightest? Totally gay!" after the series is safely over is not an adequate substitute for having the courage to actually include LGBT characters. For extra frustration on the part of fans, expect this to happen frequently to characters who are dead by the series' end. Because of this, the creator will probably be labelled a Rule Abiding Rebel.
It's notable that this trope, or more accurately the shocked reaction and the idea that there must be some scheme behind it, is a Double Standard. Many characters never express any romance or sexuality within a story, but if such a character is revealed to be heterosexual, nobody bats an eye.
Also see Relationship Text Upgrade for another way to out an ambiguously homosexual character.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- For Yuu Watase, creator of Fushigi Yuugi, the problem isn't that any of the series' characters might have been attracted to a person of the same sex. It's narrowing it down to which ones.
Arrow: The discussion suddenly turned yaoi.
Crowd: Yeah!! Yaaaay!
Watase: I heard there was a Tasuki x Nuriko one, but I want to read a Tasuki x Tamahome.
Arrow: What in the world was I saying...
But the truth was I really wanted to see a Nakago x Tamahome fic...but I couldn’t say that.
- Luke's relationship with Blake in Zoids Fuzors was pretty ... suspect throughout the series. It didn't help that they had a lot of amusing moments such as Luke telling Blake that he "wanted to show him something" while opening up his shirt. An interview with Luke's Japanese voice actor confirmed that Luke was indeed gay and attracted to Blake; however, whether the attraction was mutual is another matter.
- While some other members of the production crew are infamously dodgy about the subject, according to an interview with director Masaki Tsuzuki (the creator of the Nanoha franchise) and the voice actresses of Fate and Nanoha, they are indeed gay. In this article◊, the two V As mention that in 10 years, Nanoha will be a housewife for Fate. The original writer, Tsuzuki, also says Vivio "frequently keeps in contact with Fate-mama, as often as contacting the father who works away from home, with a communication tool."
Comic Books
- Stan Lee has said that he thought of Pink Pinkerton of Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos (based, he has said, on the screen persona of actor David Niven) as gay. He had created the character as long ago in the mid-1960s.
- The vain Sunstreaker from the Dreamwave Transformers comics was apparently written as being gay, although (this being a comic aimed at teen fanboys) it was never going to be used in the story itself. Oddly enough, the Ambiguously Gay Tracks was not intended to be gay. What made this a Squick for many TF fans was that the writers pointed to the bio they wrote for Sunstreaker in More Than Meets The Eye. Read without this information, it makes Sunstreaker sound like a vicious assassin who can't switch off when he's around his allies. The Word Of Gay turns it into a description of a creepy Depraved Homosexual.
- This idea has, thankfully, never been taken up by any other Transformers comic writers.
- Invisible Kid, from the "Reboot" continuity of the Legion Of Superheroes. Element Lad in the Oneboot was the inverse of this trope— his switch-hitting was a Sure Why Not after years of rampant fan speculation based entirely (at first) on his pink costume. Fan speculation probably dates back to the 1975 APA article by Jim Shooter where he says that Element Lad might be gay.
- Creator Max Allan Collins had always said that one of the regular cast of Ms Tree was gay. It was several years before it was finally revealed in story that it was Mr Hand.
- Say what you will about the Sonic The Hedgehog story "Mobius: X Years Later", if anything, it gave us two things: Knuckles' kickass Guardian outfit, and the revelation that Rotor is gay. How did this get past the censors? Would you believe Executive Meddling? Apparently, Sega approved of the relationship, but ordered the writer to keep it low-profile, to avoid controversy. The fact that the only character whose sexuality is explicitly mentioned is the one who is a nerdy, overweight Non Action Guy who isn't cool enough to get any face time for most of the series (and his most speculated "partner" is dead), Rotor's example also falls upon a completely different kind of trope. To be fair, while the guy giving the Word Of Gay here admitted to making Rotor gay to give him some character development, it's doubtful he was trying to invoke anything unfortunate regarding the decision, since neither he nor his partner were written with any of the typical gay stereotypes to them. That being said, using the gay card to give character development to an underdeveloped character, and having his partner killed off by the replacement writer shortly afterward, still makes the implications for Rotor very unfortunate, indeed.
Film
- Plato from Rebel Without a Cause.
- Gore Vidal intended Messala in Ben Hur to be Ben Hur's former lover, and explained this to the actor playing Messala, but explicitly did not tell Charlton Heston (who played Ben Hur), since Heston would not have been receptive to the idea.
- Machine Gun Joe from the Death Race remake. He does refer to his "unique hobbies", though.
- Director Louis Leterrier has openly admitted that he intended the protagonist of The Transporter to be gay. Of course, when the franchise was handed over to another director, Jason Statham instantly started making out with girls.
- Pirates Of The Caribbean: Jack Sparrow is bisexual, at least according to Johnny Depp himself. Not that Sparrow is likely to admit that in the 18th century. Most likely of the Anything That Moves type at that, given his character - much like the other Captain Jack.
Literature
- Dumbledore from Harry Potter. Rowling outed him only after the end of the series, and as a result of a fan asking her if he'd ever found love himself. This created widely varying interpretations of her reasons for doing so, but there was arguably heavy subtext about it in the last novel. There were also some more... "interesting" reactions. Another, more private outing occurred before this- during a scriptwriting meeting for one of the Harry Potter films, she handed back a script page in which Dumbledore spoke about a girl he "knew" once with a note saying "He's gay!" Author John Scalzi wrote a defense of Rowling's decision to reveal Dumbledore's sexuality in response to a critic.
- Gene and Finny from A Separate Peace. The author was widely regarded to be closeted, and did not acknowledge the homosexual romance in the story till he was in old age.
- Lalasa in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small was a lesbian, but Pierce didn't think it was important enough to put into the books. There is quite a bit of subtext around her and her "friend" Tian, though. Similarly, in Pierce's Circle books, Lark and Rosethorn were revealed late in the series to be lovers. Daja came out in "The Will Of The Empress"; this makes sense, since in the early books, she was twelve or so.
- Feral from Soon I Will Be Invincible, made even more complicated by the fact that he's a hybridized Bengal tiger person, so who knows if he can even have sex with humans? Too squicky for canon? Perhaps.
- In His Dark Materials, it's briefly mentioned that there is a small minority of people whose daemons are the same gender as themselves, but no explanation is given for it. When a fan asked Philip Pullman if it meant those people were gay, Pullman replied that he hadn't thought about it, but he liked that reasoning and now considers it canon.
- Tom and Carl, the two local Advisory Senior wizards from Young Wizards. They share a house but other than that could be mistaken for Heterosexual Life Partners. This is probably due to them being expies of the two major characters from her significantly less popular Door In To... series, in which the characters were explicitly lovers.
- The author of Wicked has said that he purposely hinted on "something" involving Galinda and Elphaba. What this "something" is, he said he doesn't know.
- Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell in A Song Of Ice And Fire - George RR Martin has confirmed that these two were lovers.
Live Action TV
- Alicia Vega, minor (dead) Stargate Atlantis character, and a male supporting character (they won't say who). Though to be fair, they had to cut the scene where she was revealed as a lesbian for time, and then decided they just didn't like the character all that much and axed her.
- Popular creator Ryan Murphy said that his plans for the third season would have included Sam realizing she was gay.
- Gaeta and Hoshi from Battlestar Galactica. They were only outed in second-hand webisodes shot after the series.
- Hugh Laurie famously said he can easily see House getting it on with Cuddy, Cameron or Wilson.
- Katie Jacobs, executive producer of House, once implied this too.
- A poll on the official FOX site, asking who House should romantically end up with, included Wilson as an option. He won.
- According to Andrew Robinson, he played his Star Trek Deep Space Nine character Garak as bisexual. He certainly seemed interested in Bashir, though there doesn't seem to have been reciprocation.
- Earlier, some of the show creators had said they originally intended to make Geordi gay on Next Generation, but backed down from it. This may explain why he consistently had little luck with women; some of the earlier Expanded Universe novels are also dripping with Ho Yay. (In A Call to Darkness, when Geordi is ordered off duty to relax, he heads to the holodeck and activates his program of Ancient Greece, and spends a lot of time walking around holding Homer's hand and talking in rather intimate fashion.)
- Dominic Keating said about Malcolm Reed: "God knows I played him gay!" No one's quite sure whether or not he's joking. However, Malcolm is easily the most-slashed character of the series in fandom. According to an interview, apparently B&B called him up and said "by the way...we're going to make your character bisexual." According to Keating himself, he thought it over, then went "Fuckit, I've played gays before" (And how!) and went for it. Executive backpedaling ensued, and they claimed it was "a joke" (Hence the excruciating "I'm straight, totally straight, totally not at all gay!" episode Shuttlepod One. He's also claimed that when playing Evil Malcolm in Through a Mirror Darkly: "I just made him gayer and evil."
- In discussing the Dumbledore issue on his online journal, author Neil Gaiman once mentioned in passing that "Neverwhere has two gay characters who are Out, as far as the book is concerned, and one major character who is gay but it isn't mentioned, simply because that character was one of many people in that book who don't have any sexual or romantic entanglements during the story." He hasn't actually named the characters, but an educated guess would suggest Hunter and Lady Serpentine as the two outed charcters. (the hinted Les Yay between them is something that both of them look back on fondly). The one whose sexuality doesn't affect the story is any fanfic writer's guess but is likely Marquis De Carabas, largely because he bears a striking character resemblence to the Cluracan from Gaiman's Sandman, who is also gay. And because he's flamboyantly fabulous.
- The writer of the Doctor Who serial "Survival" complained that her intended lesbian subtext between Ace and Karra had been censored out (although the Les Yay was still so overt in what made it to screen that it's interesting to imagine what might have been in the original version). By that point, several stories (including "The Curse of Fenric", written by the character's creator) had explicitly depicted Ace showing romantic interest in male characters, making this more "word of bi".
Radio
Video Games
- Jeff's roommate Tony in Earthbound.
- Kojima confirmed that Revolver Ocelot had feelings for Big Boss. Note that we say "confirmed" because the subtext was so blatant that most people had already made the not at all difficult leap. The part where Ocelot spends pretty much the rest of his life after meeting Big Boss working to fulfill his ultimate plan of destroying the Patriots, going so far as to brainwash himself and eventually die to achieve that goal was a bit of a tip-off, really. This wasn't unexpected as Everyone is gay for Big Boss.
- Kevin Smith from killer7 had a male lover according to the companion book Hand in killer7. That is a continuation of the whole Shout Out to Clerks (which allegedly isn't intentional.) The whole gay lover thing is a reference to Jay (who in View Askewniverse canon, has demonstrated lust for men.)
Webcomics
- The author of Megatokyo infamously said one of the regular characters (without saying which) was gay. Just who has sparked enough debate to become a Running Gag on the forums.
- Ditto for General Protection Fault, although not going quite as far.
- In contrast, there's been hardly any debate at all since T Campbell said two of the new AEGIS recruits in Fans! were bisexual. This is probably because there's no shortage of gay and bisexual characters in the rest of the cast. It's also his word that outed Guth, after a half-joking comment followed by an off-panel discussion.
- Speaking of T, in a conversation about the Depraved Bisexual trope, he talked about how it wasn't necessarily bad, especially if "played against non-depraved bisexuals or non-depraved people with bisexual leanings, like Penny And Aggie." The fans, naturally, pounced, although T didn't feel like he was revealing anything new (at a point where Penny was barely in denial, but a case could still be made for Aggie being straight).
Web Original
- Although Raimi makes snarky allusions to it, the only confirmation of Benjamin Palmer of Broken Saints being a gay pedophile is in the DVD Commentary, by writer Brooke Burgess. Also, Raimi himself is implied to be bisexual (or of "ambiguous sexuality") in another commentary track by Burgess.
- When Geoff Ramsey, one of the makers of Red Vs. Blue and voice actor of Grif, was listing some of the things the casual fan would not know about Grif in a podcast, he finished with 'And he's secretly in love with Simmons.' He then added that it was probably obvious anyway.
Western Animation
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