Tropes A to H (Big Bad, Chekhov's Gun, Deconstructed Character Archetype, Foil, Foreshadowing, Hidden Depths) | Tropes I to P | Tropes Q to Z (Red Oni, Blue Oni, Running Gag, Ship Tease, Shout-Out, Shown Their Work, Wham Episode)
Examples of Ship Tease for Avatar: The Last Airbender.
- The writers love yanking the chain of the Zutara (Zuko/Katara) shippers.
- Trailers for the second season teased a hookup between the two - they get Locked in a Room, but they don't go the route most characters go afterwards (despite her hand on his face). Followed in the same episode by a thorough and brutal Ship Sinking.
- The four-part finale, in which the ship teasing is as brutally epic as the storyline itself, threw out more bait to the Zutara fans than the entire rest of the series combined. It even includes such classics as She Is Not My Girlfriend and Taking the Bullet, only to shoot it all down in flames with two heartfelt love scenes - Aang/Katara and Zuko/Mai - in the very last minutes of the last episode. (And they still have time to start a Toph/Zuko Ship Tease.) The amount of ship teasing present in the finale actually confused many casual watchers as to the ending pairings, since Katara and Aang don't interact except for the start and the very end of the finale.
- The Season 3, Part 2 trailer, which one Katara/Aang shipper described as "a giant kick in the groin," proved that the PR staff were still up to their old tricks, and the shippers still hadn't learned their lesson.
- Lampshaded (like everything else on the show) in "The Ember Island Players", where the actors playing Katara and Zuko have them declare their undying love for each other.
- The writers teased the Kataang (Katara/Aang) shippers multiple times before they eventually got upgraded to Official Couple status.:
- Katara's realization that Aang is a powerful bender in "The Fortuneteller" had a romantic subtext.
- In "The Cave of Two Lovers", where they set up a True Love's Kiss plot - but had the lights go out at the crucial moment, leaving viewers to wonder Did They Or Didn't They?
- "The Headband": Katara has a moment of jealousy; also, Aang and Katara share quite a hot and steamy dance with Katara looking at Aang in a more-than-friendly way.
- The way that Aang and Katara hold on to each other in "The Beach" while on Appa and trying to escape Combustion Man.
- The writers apparently enjoyed the Ship-to-Ship Combat somewhat, as evidenced by their Super-Deformed Short "School Day Shipping."
- A marathon of Avatar reruns had pop-up jokes and factoids appearing on the screen (one pop-up quips "Love at first sight" during Aang and Katara's first meeting, and another teases "Zuko was originally going to be a love interest for Katara.")
- Sokka/Toph
- The moment in "The Serpent's Pass" where Toph gives Suki a peck thinking she is Sokka, only to tell her "You can just go ahead and let me drown now" in embarrassment.
- In "Sokka's Master," when Sokka returns to the group, Toph dismissively says that the others missed him... and then turns around so he can't see her, smiles, and blushes.
- Most of the Azula/Zuko shipping can be chalked up to the fact that she's The Vamp and acts vaguely seductive toward everyone as opposed to intentional teasing, but the bedroom scene is a bit much...
- The scene where Zuko dreams about a dragon with Azula's voice that says some very suggestive things to him an a very seductive tone goes a little overboard as well.
- There were some hints at Mai/Zuko before the two actually got together, like Ty Lee's suggestive "It'll be interesting to see Zuko again, won't it Mai?" in "Return to Omashu" and their behavior during the flashback in "Zuko Alone".
- There were hints of attraction between Ty Lee and Sokka. In The Chase, Ty Lee finds Sokka cute and she continues to teases him every time they meet in Book 2.
