Yoko Oh No

The Beatles break up: Countryball edition

Tommy: You say every girl that I date is going to break up the band.
Barry: Yeah, that’s ’cause you only date band-breaker-uppers.

— The Wedding Band

Basically Die for Our Ship, but aimed at the love interest of a celebrity. She (and it almost always will be a she) is a lightning rod of hatred from the fanbase, and will be Misblamed: either for negatively affecting the quality of his work, upsetting group dynamics, or just “stealing him away” from them. And if he's a member of a musical group that later disbands, she will be blamed for it whether she had anything to do with it or not.

It’s most prevalent among musicians, followed by actors and athletes. Most of the time (but not always), the hatred is entirely undeserved and just goes to show how obsessed and delusional fans can be. At its worst, it amounts to an invasion of the celebrity’s privacy; after all, famous people are still human beings entitled to pursue romantic relationships in their personal lives.

The Trope Namer is artist Yoko Ono, whose marriage to John Lennon has been frequently cited and parodied in pop culture for her perceived role in The Beatles' breakup. It's worth noting that the Beatles themselves have always defended Ono and maintained that they started drifting apart long before she entered the picture; she just happened to be there when it all imploded. Public opinion never lets reality get in the way of good old-fashioned scapegoating.

Related tropes include Mis-blamed, Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend (if the other bandmates think she gets special treatment); Contractual Purity (where the fans demand that the celebrity not date anyone to keep an image of virginal “purity”); Love Makes You Uncreative (a common consequence); Apple of Discord; Parent with New Paramour; and Couple Bomb. Contrast Creator Couple, where the pair becomes more creative after hooking up.

No family relationship to Taiichi Ohno, inventor of Just in Time (the production method, not the trope).

noreallife

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No Real Life Examples, Please! and In-Universe Examples Only:

Anime & Manga

• A lot of Shoujo and Josei series involve a new girl catching the eye of the resident hottie, causing all the other girls to get enraged and gang up on her. And people wonder why the resident hottie opted to stay single:
  • In Sensual Phrase, Aucifer songwriter and lead singer Sakuya's girlfriend Aine has to deal with overzealous, whiny, and sometimes downright violent fangirls more than once. Once she befriended a girl named Sakura, only to be dumped by her new "friend" once she learned that she was dating Sakuya. Sakura later gets to briefly date Sakuya — but then we learn it's a Batman Gambit from him since he wants to "punish" Sakura for taking Aine's friendship and position for granted.
  • Miyako Sakuragawa from Private Prince got to meet up with Prince Wilfred in a high-class party that her friend Chiri smuggled her into. The next day, a bunch of bitchy girls were already on her case, and Wilfred's valet Robert had to bail her out.
  • In Peach Girl, Momo got attacked (and her locket with a picture of her crush smashed) by a bunch of Kairi fangirls. She had just had a very short, antagonistic conversation with the guy, and still that's enough for them to warn her to "stay away from our man" — what was actually said isn't important to them.
  • In Lovely★Complex, Risa Koizumi is attacked by a girl named Mimi due to her closeness to the basketball captain Ootani, whom Mimi has her heart set on. Mimi goes as far as almost stabbing Risa in the hand with a pen out of jealousy. Fortunately, she later gives up on it.
  • In Akuma na Eros, Miu is attacked by Amamiya's fangirls after they spot them speaking in the school grounds.
  • Kyō, Koi o Hajimemasu: Tsubaki was a victim of this when it came to being close to Kyota, even more so when it got out that they'd started dating.
• The Gentlemen's Alliance has Haine be reprimanded and intimidated by Shizumasa's fangirls, after she becomes his girlfriend. Played for Laughs, as they were just fine with Shizumasa dating Maguri.
• At the start of Haunted Junction, A female ghost attempts repeatedly to possess Kazumi to spend a whole night with her boyfriend. It turns out that said boyfriend was a rising rock singer and, the night she died, the poor girl was running away from three rabid fangirls who had been bullying her for dating him, getting accidentally hit by a car in the middle of her escape. They get a Literal Ass-Kicking by the Ghost Giant, who punishes meddlers like that among Saitou High students, and the girl is reunited with the boyfriend without needing to possess Kazumi.
• In The Legend of Black Heaven, Oji's wife Yoshiko (or "Yokko"), a groupie of the metal band Oji fronted in his glory days, is broadly hinted to have caused the breakup of the band by conceiving Oji's son Gen. Yoshiko is largely hostile and unsupportive when Oji takes up the guitar again to the point of moving out of their house and filing for divorce when Oji won't quit the band. However, when Oji explains everything to Yoshiko through an answering machine message, she rallies fans of the band together to cheer him on.
• It's basically the plot of NANA; Nana O is perceived as a Yoko due to her relationship with Ren, with far-reaching effects on her life and career.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Simon and Kamina are blood brothers and an unbreakable duo in combat. A girl and their attraction to her (and, most importantly, Simon's confusion and resentment over it) is the wedge that cracks them apart and causes a disastrous failure in battle. It's probably no coincidence that the girl's name is Yoko.
• Penguindrum:
  • Three girls who were dumped by resident hottie Kanba Takakura (Asami, Yui, and Chizuru) form a club named "Heart-Broken Victims of Takakura Kanba Association". As such, Yui and Chizuru corner Kanba at some point, asking him if he has a new girlfriend. Then Action Girl Masako then shows up and wipes their memories away, just like she did to a hospitalized Asami right beforehand.
  • Averted in the case of the in-story famous Takarazuka actress Yuri Tokikago, who is dating Kanba and Shoma's teacher Keiju Tabuki and hasn't had problems coming from fans as far as the story shows. This doesn't change when they get engaged, Yuri retires from acting, and Tabuki moves into her Big Fancy House. The only one really objecting is Ringo, a Yandere with a Precocious Crush, and even she gets over it.
• In The World God Only Knows, when popular idol Kanon publicly confesses to Keima, several of her fanboys are not pleased.
• Zetsuai (1989):
  • When Koji helps Izumi's sister Serika, people mistakenly believe they're dating. This really pisses off Izumi, who not only doesn't want his little sister in the spotlight and subjected to this trope but also out of fear that it would bring the family's Dark and Troubled Past out in the open — which it did.
  • Koji's announcement that he's in love with Izumi doesn't go over very well with his fans, especially the already unstable Eri.
• In Bakuman。, when it comes out that Miho Azuki, now a very popular voice actress, is dating the main character, Mashiro, there is a massive amount of fan rage. And it leads to quite the consequences for Miho's career, as she must outperform everyone to voice the female lead in the anime version of Mashiro's manga because of her relationship with him.
• In Kodocha, Sana (already a child star in her own right) gets her leg broken by obsessed fangirls of another famous child star, Naozumi Kamura (who happens to be her friend), because of rumors running around that they'd hooked up on an extended film shoot. At first, they managed to convince these girls that it was pure gossip, but the rumors were too strong for them to think otherwise.
• In Pokémon Adventures, a lot of Elesa's fanboys assume that Black is her boyfriend when they see him with her and get pissed, apparently forgetting that she's a Gym Leader along with being a model.
• In Destiny of the Shrine Maiden, when Chikane's fangirls learn that she has her eyes set on her best friend Himeko, they take to bullying poor Himeko out of jealousy. Chikane and Souma are very displeased by this.
• Case Closed:
  • A case featured an Idol Singer who hid her romantic relationship with a guy in the TV industry because of this trope. For worse, the Idol Singer died in very shady circumstances — and one year later, the boyfriend became the case's killer, trying both to have revenge and to find her body, hidden inside a Big Fancy House.
  • Both Kogoro and Ai Haibara invoke the trope when rumors suggest that Kogoro's favorite Idol Singer Yoko Okino and Ai's favorite soccer player Ryuunosuke Higo are dating. Specifically, the Detective Kids notice that Ai, who normally likes Yoko's songs, has deleted them off her cellphone out of jealousy. Since Yoko and Higo were actually Mistaken For Dating and a high school friend of the two was murdered, the cast focused on finding the culprit instead, and the matter remains as a mere Running Gag. Once everything's cleared up, a calmer Ai re-uploads her favorite Yoko songs to her 'phone.
  • In Yoko Okino's introduction story, it's revealed when she became an Idol, her manager blackmailed her boyfriend into breaking up with her for fear of a boyfriend hurting her popularity.
• Yuri!!! on Ice has the eponymous character being subjected to this in a professional way. Because the best skater in the world, Viktor Nikiforov, stopped skating to be his coach, skaters that still want to compete with him and Viktor's legion of fans that wanted to watch him skate again all started hating Yuri, something that Chris reiterates. Yuri though states that he wants to be hated as the man who stole Viktor from the world. Interestingly, everybody seems to ignore or not be aware that Viktor and Yuri are in a relationship as of episode 7, despite the fact that they kissed on international television.

Comic Books

• During the Guys story arc in Cerebus the Aardvark, when Bear's obnoxious girlfriend Ziggy shows up and it's clear that he's going to be leaving the bar with her, almost everyone else there makes plans to leave for good the next day because it shatters the already-tenuous atmosphere in the bar.
• An early issue of Grim Jack had him trying to protect a No Celebrities Were Harmed expy of John Lennon. In the end, he finds out too late that the stalker's target was the wife, not the musician as everybody had assumed. The killer had blamed her for 'ruining' her husband — but her death resulted in him quitting singing and music all together.

Fan Works

• The Moaning Myrtles, a Wizard Rock band (i.e. they write about Harry Potter), referenced the trope in a song called "Choko Ono", about Moaning Myrtle, her crush on Harry, and what she thinks of Cho.
• Enoby Darkness Dementia Tara Raven Way in My Immortal hates Hilary Duff, probably because, at the time, she was dating Joel Madden, and she seems to have a major crush on any singer in a "goffic" band.
• A fanart that mentions this [1]
• Absolute Trust describes this was Fire Lord Ozai's plan to keep Ursa to himself; cutting her off from her family and her beloved Ikem should she try to run away simply because Ursa was the Granddaughter of Avatar Roku.
• The primary premise of Dekugate. The radical factions of the Mighty Shield, Night Might, and End Might shipping fangroups all hate and despise Parakeet for being All Might's wife and interfering with their preferred ships, with many sending her death threats and even a few actual murder attempts from the most extreme. And as All Might and Parakeet's child, Izuku is the focus of just as much irrational hatred as his mother.

Films — Animated

• In The Lion King (1994), Timon initially sees Nala as a danger to their carefree little family.
  Timon: I can see what's happening—
  Pumbaa: What?
  Timon: —and they don't have a clue.
  Pumbaa: Who?
  Timon: They'll fall in love, and here's the bottom line: our trio's down to two.
  Pumbaa: Oh.

Films — Live-Action

• David St. Hubbins' girlfriend from This is Spın̈al Tap, Jeanine Pettibone, is naturally intended to be a parody of Yoko Ono.
• Emily Wang in Clean gets blamed for the fall into obscurity and drug-related death of her boyfriend, a former rock star.
• In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Scott's friends, especially his ex-girlfriend Kim Pine, are turned off by Knives Chau's presence, especially when you consider that Scott is 23 and Knives is 17^note Canada's age of consent is 16, so he wasn't breaking any laws, but his band saw it as a sign of desperation and immaturity to go after someone that young
• In the British romantic comedy Confetti, one of the main characters is in a low-level rock band. He's getting married, and his best friend and bandmate has taken to writing songs which are thinly veiled rants about how much of a bitch he thinks the main character's fianceé is and how she's breaking up the band and splitting them apart. She is, however, a perfectly lovely and sweet woman, but is savvy enough to get the references to her in his music and does not appreciate them.
• America's Sweethearts is one huge parody of this trope. When a Hollywood couple that has made several romantic comedies together breaks up prior to the release of their latest movie, interest in the film plummets, so the studio's promotion team tries to make it look like they're getting back together so the fans and press will care again.
• In Crazy Sexy Cool, Lisa, at one point, gets a boyfriend named Gary who starts encouraging her to break away from her band-mates, though the relationship doesn't last long.
• Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, being a massive parody of music biopics, has this in a fictitious version of Madonna, who is portrayed as a gold-digger who inflates Al’s ego to dangerous proportions in order to get him to parody her songs.

Literature

• In the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series, Georgia considers this trope the reason why Robbie's bandmates dislike her.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Diper Överlöde: When Bill enters a relationship with donut shop assistant manager Becky, his love for her begins affecting his work as he starts writing corny love ballads that don't exactly fit in with the band's sound. She also encourages him to see himself as the band's face and even rewrites Rodrick's "Can You Smell Us Now?" into the less abrasive "Can You Hear Us Now?"
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book Legends of the Ferengi, one of the stories recounts how the popular Ferengi music group "Success" broke up after Grymi Success skipped the Isle of Grubs music festival to spend the evening in a tube grub sack with his wife, a Bolian performance artist named Pino.
• Kings of the Wyld: Valery, Gabe's wife, is often credited with breaking apart Saga by poisoning Gabe's ear and talking about coexisting with monsters. Clay notes that while Valery didn't really help, in the end, she didn't have much to do with the band's troubles, and especially not with them breaking up.
• A platonic version in The Baby-Sitters Club book Claudia & The New Girl, the very tagline of which is "Claudia might give up the Club — and it's all the new girl's fault!". As indicated by the title, Claudia befriends Ashley, a new student at school, and begins spending more time with her than her other friends, as Ashley, like Claudia, is an artist. Eventually, enough tension rises for both Ashley and the other club members to demand that Claudia choose one or the other. By the book's end, Claudia makes it clear that she will not give up either and that both parties were out of line to ask such a thing. Ashley reappears in several books, and while she never again suggests that Claudia give up babysitting or the club, it's still obvious that she holds them and it in contempt.
• In Durarara!!, Izaya's younger sister Mairu has a brief Heroic BSoD when she reads in a tabloid that her favorite actor (Shizuo's brother Kasuka) might have a relationship with Idol Singer Ruri Hijiribe.
• How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Souma is very much aware of the possibility of this trope happening, due to Juna's popularity as an Idol Singer. As a result, when she requests for the right to marry him, he tells her to wait until other singers can replace her, and keeps their engagement a secret until the wedding.
• Son of Interflux: Simon and Phil disapprove of the effect that dating Barbara has on their Clueless Chick-Magnet friend Sam as he feels too insecure to express interest in all of the stuff that once made him so fun to hang out with. Sam agrees with them and decides he and Barbara are Better as Friends.

Live-Action TV

• The exact title of the trope, "Yoko Oh No", occasionally appears on TV, such as in the All That sketch "C.J. and the Cloudy Knights", where one of the Cloudy Knights has a girlfriend named Yoko who threatens to leave him if he doesn't become the lead singer.
• 30 Rock:
  • Jack almost married a manipulative, vampy Gold Digger. She defended her actions thus:
    Phoebe: You know how John Lennon was better than the rest of the Beatles but he didn't realize it until he met Yoko Ono? Well, I'm Jack's Yoko.
    Liz: You want to be Yoko?
  • Jenna, as part of a "sexual walkabout", tries to do this with the singer from The Woggels, a color-themed Australian children's band who are totally not The Wiggles.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • In "The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorem", Sheldon's graduate student Ramona Nowitzki seeks to isolate him from the group and curtail his leisure activities in an effort to improve his scientific work. The soundtrack lampshades this by covering a montage of this activity with "Be My Yoko Ono". Sheldon eventually cuts ties with Ramona in order to avoid sharing credit with a lowly graduate student.
  • In Season 9, Raj and Howard start a "filk music" band. Raj starts playing songs for Emily and listening to her ideas, to which Howard accuses him of trying to break up the band by doing whatever Emily says.
• The Bold and the Beautiful: When younger brother Thorne Forrester marries Darla, she encourages him to take on a larger role in the family's fashion company and stand up to his bullying older brother Ridge. This eventually causes such tension that a huge blowup results in Thorne quitting to start his own company. A similar scenario played out several years earlier with brother Rick and his wife Amber.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Discussed in "The Yoko Factor." Spike, now allied with the season's Big Bad Adam, purposefully makes himself "Yoko" by pushing all the right buttons to get the Scoobies fighting each other. He's been close enough to them for most of the season to notice all the rifts growing between them. Unlike in other examples, however, they figure out what's happening and defeat Adam in the end.
    Spike: And when [the Beatles] broke up everyone blamed Yoko, but the fact is the group split itself apart, she just happened to be there. And you know how it is with kids. They go off to college, they grow apart. Way of the world.
  • In that same arc, Riley's friend Forrest views Buffy as the Yoko (with the Beatles represented by the Initiative).
  • Anya sees Willow as Yoko for her relationship with Xander. You can't say she's wrong. It's a big plot point for the season 5 episode "Triangle".
• Daredevil (2015):
  • Over the course of season 1, Wilson Fisk begins a romantic relationship with art curator Vanessa Marianna. Unfortunately, his associates Leland Owlsley and Madame Gao see Vanessa as distracting Fisk from the day to day needs of his criminal enterprise. Thus they try to have her killed at a charity gala that Fisk is throwing by poisoning her wine. She barely survives due to Fisk immediately rushing her to an emergency room. When Fisk learns of Owlsley's role in the attempt, he throws him down an elevator shaft. Gao leaves town before Fisk can do anything to her.
  • In season 2, it's established that Foggy sees Elektra as bad news, as Matt's relationship with her in college got to the point that he almost failed out of school.
• Coco from Flight of the Conchords: She's actually perfectly nice, but Jemaine insists that she'll break up the band, and compares her to the Trope Namer. As it happens, Jemaine worrying that she'll break up the band is exactly what makes Bret quit.
  Bret: Why did you say that? ‘Cause she’s nothing like Yoko.
  Jemaine: Ono, she isn’t.
  Murray: Jemaine, you’re putting "oh no" together to sound like "Ono".
  Jemaine: Ono I didn't.
  Murray: You did it again.
  Jemaine: Ono, did I?
• Israeli sitcom The Foxes, revolving around a group of friends making a poor quality horror series on YouTube, made an ersatz-Yoko girlfriend for the group writer and director Schmuckler. Her skin had a rather dark complexion and her eyes were always covered by sunglasses, making her appear more Asian. She frequently meddled with the production, whispering "suggestions" to Schmuckler (who took the habit of wearing round sunglasses) and never uttering a word besides that. The rest of the group hated her guts, but let her stay because Schmuckler was a virgin and they wanted to give him an opportunity to finally get lucky. This got so bad she made him declare their break up (and smiled in Schadenfreude as he obeyed) but was soon allowed to be in the group’s new short instead. The actor playing the murderer in the scene was extra-cruel to her and wound up legitimately hurting her, leading to her leaving the group for an acting gig (apparently, no one could play a dead body as well as her). And Schmuckler never got it on with her anyway.
• Freaks and Geeks: After Lindsay criticizes the group for sucking, they break up, and Ken calls Lindsay "Yoko."
• Friends: Shortly after Phoebe starts dating David the Scientist he turns down a once-in-a-lifetime job offer that would require him to move to Minsk in favor of staying in New York with her, a decision that causes a rift between him and his lab partner Eric. When they run into him at Monica's New Year's Eve party Eric greets Phoebe by spitefully calling her "Yoko" and rubbing it in David's face that he's still going to Minsk.
• In an episode of Full House, Joey's latest girlfriend senses that he isn't happy with the way Jesse always takes the lead and makes decisions in their partnership/friendship and urges him to stand up for himself. Sure enough, this causes considerable friction and tension between the two, culminating in a huge fight in which Jesse outright refers to the woman as "Yoko" (a bit of Fridge Brilliance, given what a rabid music fan Jesse is).
• Game of Thrones: Talisa marrying Robb was already widely frowned upon while they were still alive. Years after the Red Wedding, even previously loyal Stark bannermen don't remember her as their late queen but instead as a "foreign whore" (Robett Glover) who brought the bane of House Stark and the whole Northern cause^note In this case a rather justified example, though ultimately Robb's fault rather than Talisa's; Walder Frey broke hospitality and allowed the Red Wedding to take place because he was so deeply insulted by Robb breaking his vow to wed one of the Frey daughters (marriage contracts, like in the Real World during medieval times, being very Serious Business).
• Gilmore Girls discussed the Trope Namer:
  Rory: Yoko Ono? Really?
  Lane: A very misunderstood artist and The Beatles would’ve broken up anyways.
  Rory: Have you shared this theory with anyone?
  Lane: I know it, Yoko knows it, Sean knows it. Julian’s still in denial — but what can you do?
• Good Luck Charlie: Bob brings back his old band "The Bob Duncan Experience" and his bandmate reveals that it was because of Amy's meddling that the band broke up in the first place.
• Nina from Just Shoot Me! is a serial Yoko. She forced her boyfriend of the week, Huey Lewis, to quit his air band (he came back). She also broke up The Jackson Six (yes, there were six).
• Discussed in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "F.P.S." The one game developer believed that his partner's "girlfriend" (and the victim) was this, prompting him to kill her, but she was just a fan whom he had a platonic relationship with and wasn't trying to break them up, making the murder pointless. Interestingly enough, the other developer's wife plays the trope more straight, being rather jealous of their relationship status well as the third wheel in their successful business.
• The Middle: Axel accusing Sue of "Yokoing" his band when she starts dating Sean and giving him advice on his music and changes he should request for the band.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: In Gamera vs. Guiron, they reference Yoko Ono. During a closeup on young Tomoko, one of the SOL crew quips, "I'll show you! I'll grow up to break up the Beatles!"
• Quantum Leap. When Sam leaps into an investigative reporter, he falls in love with the psychic helping him investigate a series of murders. His partner is displeased and tells her, "Well, if we're going to break up, I guess you're a pretty good reason." She sincerely tells him that that's she not trying to ruin their partnership/friendship, but he doesn't believe her—"Really? Because it seems like that's what been happening." ^note  It turns out he doesn't just resent her supposed interference, he's worried that she'll figure out that he's the killer they're looking for.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): When Count Olaf's girlfriend Esmé Squalor joins the troupe's schemes in season 2, it's quickly apparent that she's disliked by the majority of the troupe, who are always in various states of irritation or boredom as she blathers on about herself. Except for the Bald Man, who seems very interested in her chatter, and even supports her in her endeavors to get the sugar bowl. In The Hostile Hospital Part I, the Hook-Handed Man even complains, "I liked it so much better before Yoko showed up."
• The Shield has Mara, Shane Vendrell's girlfriend and ultimately wife. Introduced at the start of the third season without bothering to show how she and Shane hooked up, Mara instantly shattered the loyalty of the members of the Strike Team with her existence, ultimately causing the group to break apart and to put Shane and Vic Mackey at bitter odds with each other. On the other hand, Mara is routinely written as being the only character who knows full well the true dark nature of the Strike Team and their crimes, and as such, reacts to their insane illegal/morally unethical schemes in a sensible fashion. Unfortunately, this in turn led to Shane murdering his best friend, Detective Curtis "Lem" Lemanski, due to Mara lecturing Shane earlier in the season that he needed to put his family ahead of protecting Lem and his friends in the Strike Team, much to the horror of fans of the Lem/Shane slash pairings. Ultimately, Shane kills Mara and their child, starting the chain of events that brings the Downer Ending on.
• Alluded to in That '70s Show. When Eric and Donna find out that Hyde and Jackie are dating behind Kelso's back (even though Kelso did run out on her for a while), Eric freaks out over the effect of the deal in their common friendship and tells Jackie, "You'll be breaking up the band, Yoko!" Earlier, in the episode "The Third Wheel", he also calls Hyde's Girl of the Week Yoko ("What? We're kind of the Beatles.")
• In Whitechapel (TV Series), a band groupie is asked about any jealousies or rivalries within the band, to which she replies: "I'm no Yoko."
• On Youngers, Davina is a Yoko despite being a member of the band; the Love Triangle between her, Yemi, and Jay essentially breaks up the band. In series 2, when they are Putting the Band Back Together, Yemi worries about this trope when they are trying to get Davina to join them again.

Music

• Barenaked Ladies has a song called "Be My Yoko Ono" that discusses this trope, painting it in a positive light rather than a negative one. The narrator says that he would be glad to give up musical genius for true love, and the third verse openly criticizes people who blame Yoko Ono for the Beatles' breakup.
  • Also, this lyric:
  Oh no, here we go
  As Yokey sings— (cacophonic wailing)

Pro Wrestling

• The Kings of Wrestling hit a major stumbling block in Pro Wrestling Guerilla when Chris Hero saving Candice LeRae from her abusive pimp, The Human Tornado, led to them dating. Hero's partner, Claudio Castagnoli was none too fond of LeRae, to the point he joined The Human Tornado's Power Stable in an effort to get rid of her. When Hero and Castagnoli met up again without LeRae around they ended up working together just fine again.

Radio

• Inverted in Old Harry's Game: One of the characters violently hates celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh because he fancies Titchmarsh's wife.

Video Games

• In The Prince of Tennis Dating Sim Gakuensai no Oujisama, if the player gets the main girl (default name: Shizuka Hirose) to attend Hyoutei and she becomes close to Atobe, she will be threatened and physically attacked by his rabid fangirls. When Atobe finds out, he will lecture Shizuka harshly for not telling him about the incidents; later he'll protect her from his fans and, if the main girl manages to successfully woo him, in the end, he announces that she will be his girlfriend in front of the whole school, much to the dismay of the attackers.
• Parodied in one of the loading screen messages for Guitar Hero: "When in doubt, blame the singer's girlfriend".
• In The King of Fighters XIII:
  • If the player defeats Benimaru Nikaido with Athena Asamiya, the latter (an Idol Singer in addition to being an Action Girl) will allude to how female celebrities are treated in Japan:
    Athena: "As an idol, scandals are taboo, so I can't go on a date with you! ♪ "
  • In the Story mode, when the player uses the Women's Team and they face the Psycho Soldiers, Yuri starts the talk by asking about the trope:
    Yuri: Hey Athena... isn't it too hard to be an idol? I mean, you can't hang out with friends in public or date and stuff, right...?
    Athena: Yeah, there are some restrictions in my personal life... but I'm happy to be an idol so I can accept these inconveniences!
  • The trope is directly used in the Days of Memories Dating Sims, if Athena is the girl that the MC wants to romance. In Boku to Kanojo no Atsui Natsu, she's kidnapped by some Loony Fans and the main boy must save her; in Boku no Ichiban Taisetsu na Kimi e, there's the Running Gag of her fans interrupting the MC and Athena's dates but later it's played more seriously when her manager threatens to resign if her image is "tainted"; and in Boku to Kanojo to Koto no Koi, a scandal does take place when photos of the MC and Athena are taken and leaked to the Internet, but it's a misunderstanding and the fan who did so (Kaoru) apologizes for it.

Webcomics

• Ménage à 3: Zii’s relationship with DiDi destroys Zii’s band, not so much through anything that DiDi does deliberately as because of Zii’s obsession with her. It was inevitable that there’d be trouble with bassist Sonya, who has her own obsession with Zii, but the relationship makes Zii careless and thoughtless, angering drummer Yuki. One smart move from Sonya later, and the band is defunct.
• Polandball: In this strip, the band The United Kingdom breaks up over their lead singer (Scotland) entering a relationship with Japan and choosing to try a solo career.

Web Original

• Parodied in Gaia Online's Famestar Hero RIG: the fail scenario in the Pascal route has the band break up over a girl that looks like◊ Yoko Littner.
• The Hard Times: In "Modern Day Yoko? This Woman’s Boyfriend Is in a Shitty Band" they interview a woman who has a negative reputation and is frequently compared to Yoko Ono purely because she has a boyfriend in a band. In a critique of the trope, the article makes it clear that she is much cooler than her boyfriend or his band.

Web Videos

• In Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Captain Hammer's fans hate Penny:
  Fan 3: So they say he saved her life.
  Fan 2: They say she works with the homeless and doesn't eat meat.
  All The Fans: We have a problem with her!
  Fan 1: This is his hair.
• The Eleven Little Roosters: The Europop boy band/assassin group Sex Von Shaukel Boyz hits a rough patch when one of its members, Koko, starts dating the actual Yoko Ono.
  Brüce: I mean, that's not even a metaphorical Yoko! That's literally Yoko Ono! She's 83!

Western Animation

• In Chozen, after the title character reconnects with his prison boyfriend Jamal, Ricky and Crisco are less than thrilled. That Jamal starts pushing for Chozen to abandon rapping altogether doesn't help.
• On Drawn Together, after finding out he was going to be forced into an arranged "battle," Ling-Ling exclaims "Yoko Ono".
• On Family Guy, Stewie threatens Brian with doing the same thing to him he did to John Lennon. The Cutaway Gag shows Stewie making the introductions.
• On King of the Hill, Dale (acting as the manager of John Redcorn's band Big Mountain Fudgecake) calls Luanne "Yoko" and blames her relationship with Lucky for hurting their success; Luanne doesn't get the reference. The band does break up shortly thereafter, but due to Redcorn going "mainstream" (becoming a children's entertainer) and not Luanne's influence.
• Metalocalypse: Nathan Explosion's woman is, to say the least, a nuisance. There were mass suicides when news of him having a girlfriend broke out. (And open warfare between fangirls once they broke up.) And the band nearly broke up after a love triangle between Nathan, Pickles, and their new band manager Abigail goes horribly wrong.
• Parodied in Milo Murphy's Law, when Zack gives an Unreliable Voiceover about his time in the Lumberzacks. He mentions "a girl came between us" — meaning a girl literally got between the bandmates when they were in line at a store, leading to a small argument about whether or not she cut. The girl, for her part, wanders off.
  "And just like that, we drove her away."
• A Pinky and the Brain episode featured The Brain introducing a "singer" named Yoyo Nono (who can't sing at all) to the popular '60s band The Feebles. The result?
  George Harrison lookalike: She's awful.
  Paul McCartney lookalike: She's terrible!
  Ringo Starr lookalike: She can't sing.
  John Lennon lookalike: I love her!
  • Then the band breaks up so "Jim Lemon" can pursue a relationship with Nono, and The Feebles' fanbase immediately run Pinky and the Brain out of India for introducing them.
• Moko Jono, Mojo Jojo's girlfriend in The Powerpuff Girls (1998)'s Beatles spoof "Meet the Beat-Alls". She helps the girls split up the villainous band. Here, she's a good gal who is sent in as The Mole of sorts. She was a non-sapient female ape of the same species, "cross"-dressed as a sentient being, brought in by the PPG to break up the four supervillains whose powers combined could beat all three of the girls.
• The Simpsons:
  • Barney's girlfriend from "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" is a direct Yoko parody.
    Moe: What'll it be?
    Barney: Gimme a beer.
    Barney's Japanese Girlfriend: I'll have a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat.
    [Moe immediately places both requested drinks on the bar]
  • The band's manager in the same episode gives Homer this advice. "I would prefer if we kept your marriage a secret. You see, a lot of women are going to want to have sex with you, and, er, we want them to think they can."
  • In another episode, when someone mentions Yoko Ono, Homer says, in all sincerity, "Ew, she totally ruined the Plastic Ono Band!"
• In the episode "Fallen Arches" of The Venture Brothers, the trope is discussed when Dr. Venture attempts to have The Talk with his son Dean. The Time-Compression Montage inexplicably ends with him ranting that Tawny Kitaen broke up Whitesnake. (David Coverdale did replace most of the band around the time she appeared in their videos, and they got married and divorced sometime later.)

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