A common situation in rom-coms. Bob has prepared some delicate flowers for his love interest Alice. He hopes she'll like them, but when he presents them to her — WHAM! — she destroys them.
It turns out Alice doesn't reciprocate Bob's feelings. Bob may either take the hint and accept she doesn't like him, or come back strong and try to win her again. If done regularly, this can fall into an Overly Long Gag.
In some cases, Alice is a tsundere who's too bashful to admit she likes Bob, though in most scenarios, Bob is an Abhorrent Admirer.
This is often Played for Laughs and the rejected person is Always Male. It's also very common in Western Animation where "Bob" is often portrayed as a Butt-Monkey.
For a trope involving the rejection of food rather than flowers, see Tastes Like Disdain.
See also Faked Gift Acceptance, where someone would accept the gift of flowers and then wait until the giver was out of sight to destroy them.
Overlaps with Flowers of Romance, That Poor Plant, Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male, and Grand Romantic Gesture. Ill-Fated Flowerbed is its sister trope.
Compare That Was the Reward (another trope about destroying a gift).
Examples:
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Advertising
- A rollerblades commercial
from The '90s depicts a woman reading a letter from her boyfriend, where he explains that while he would like to pay her a visit, he can't because her sidewalk is too steep. The woman reacts by throwing out the bouquet of flowers he had delivered. Her boyfriend suddenly glides by in rollerblades, screaming her name as he crashes. Then four other men, all holding bouquets and wearing rollerblades with advanced braking technology, stop right in front of her house. Moral: buy their rollerblades, or your supermodel girlfriend might dump you.
Anime & Manga
- Ghost in the Shell: In one chapter, Section 9 leaves flowers on the grave marker of an officer killed in the line of duty. A couple of panels later, they look back and see the bereaved family of the deceased angrily knock the bouquet off the grave marker.
- Isabelle of Paris: Jean has a ritual of "daily marriage proposals" where he asks for Isabelle's hand in marriage, even though she's made it clear she doesn't like him. When Jean proposes to her with a bouquet of flowers right before they leave for Versailles, Isabelle throws them back in his face and kicks him out, yelling:
You're ten years too young to be hitting on me!
- Lady!! has a platonic example with Lynn and Sarah Russell. When Lynn shows up at the Marble Mansion for the first time, Sarah refuses to acknowledge her as her little sister. Lynn decides to earn Sarah's friendship by surprising her with some flowers and spends the day in the Russells' garden picking out the prettiest ones. When she gives them to Sarah, Sarah, who at this point is angry that Lynn won't take the hint, smacks them away and causes them to burst all over the room. Lynn is so hurt she runs away crying, while Sarah tries to hide her own shame. When Arthur retrieves a fainted Lynn, Lynn once again presents Sarah with the flowers she picked. This time, Sarah accepts.
Fan Works
- A variant in My Immortal. Hagrid gives Ebony a bouquet of flowers. This enrages her, since they are pink (“You know I fucking hate the color pink anyway, and I don’t like fucked up preps like you.”). Seeing her displeasure, Hargrid then casts a spell (by singing My Chemical Romance lyrics combined with broken Latin) to turn the roses into balls of black fire.
- The Rigel Black Chronicles: As a Veela, Fleur is accustomed to having admirers, so the bouquet from rival competitor Jacob Owens is annoying but doesn't mean much to her. Until Rigel recognises the species and warns her that once the flowers bloom, they'll smell like a corpse — presumably a message and warning from Owens about her chances against him. Fleur screeches and Vanishes the flowers with her wand while bursting into a torrent of angry French that starts with "Zat boy is a-" before Rigel loses track.
Films — Animated
- Elemental (2023): Clod the earth elemental tries to flirt with Ember the fire elemental by growing flowers under his armpits, which he (painfully) plucks and offers to her. She's not at all interested and he's far too young for her; her reaction is to incinerate them.
- The Simpsons Movie: When the Simpson's house is besieged by an Angry Mob, Lisa sees her crush Collin in the crowd holding a bouquet for her. It gets burned when Carl offers to light his "torch" for him.
Films — Live-Action
- Kidnapping, Caucasian Style has a famous scene where Saakhov enters Nina's room carrying a tray with some fruit, wine, and a vase with flowers. A few seconds later he comes out without the tray, with the wine all over his clothes, and a broken flower behind his ear.
- In Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer's mistress Jean asks him to stop giving her flowers after their meeting at a party and immediately bins them. It becomes part of their trysts; he gives her flowers, she chucks them, and they get down to business.
Literature
- In The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma, Mr. Pressius—claiming that Constance is his long-lost daughter—gives Mr. Benedict a bouquet for her. His first reaction is to throw it out, but he changes his mind, deciding that it should be Constance's decision, not his own. When he gives it to her, she immediately destroys it.
Live-Action TV
- Cheers: An episode has Carla celebrating her anniversary and expecting a gift from Eddie. At one point, she receives a bouquet of flowers addressed from him. Then Carla throws them on the floor and wrecks them. It turns out that Eddie always signs letters to her with his real name, Guy, and she knows they're not from him.
- Friends: In the episode "The One With All the Kissing", Ross has sent roses to his estranged bride Emily. The aftermath...
- Rachel: What's that? [points to the box]Ross: It came in the mail today, it's uh, 72 long-stemmed red roses, one for each day that I've known and loved Emily, cut up into mulch!Rachel: Oh, honey, that's awful.
- iCarly: In the episode "iSaved Your Life", Freddie gets injured when he pushes Carly out of the way of a truck (hence the title). Carly and Spencer visit him when he gets home from the hospital, bringing flowers. Mrs. Benson, who blames Carly for the accident, takes the flowers, and...
Carly: What happened to the flowers?Mrs. Benson: I soaked them in bleach and pounded them with a mallet.
- Northern Exposure: At Adam and Eve's wedding, the bride and groom act so disagreeably that when Eve does the traditional bridal bouquet toss, everybody shies away like she had tossed a dead skunk and the flowers crash to the ground with nobody even attempting to catch them.
- Sadakatsiz: A Running Gag is Volkan trying to win Asya's heart by giving her a bouquet of white roses. Asya always throws them in the trash.
Music
- "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" by Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, a song about being rejected by a lover, has the lyric "I pour the drinks and crush the flowers".
Webcomics
- Poppy O'Possum: On Poppy's first day as opossum ambassador she finds a vase full of roses on her desk, and once she finds out they're from Mr. Chicadino she dumps them straight in the trash. Given the later revelation that Chicadino can essentially turn anything he touches into a magical bug that was a smart move.
Web Original
- This video showing an unnamed wrestling fan going around on Valentine's Day presenting numerous WWE stars with a bouquet of red flowers, asking whether they want to take the flowers, or double them and pass them on to someone else. After being turned down by Big E, Tyler Bate, Dakota Kai and Xavier Woods, they finally appear to have success with Bayley, who takes the flowers and says, "They smell good"... Only to then throw the flowers on the floor, stamp on them, and laugh, "NOT! (Evil Laugh) Idiot." Because Bayley is still in-character as a Heel, and heels do evil things like this, however minor.
Western Animation
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: A non-romantic example occurs in "Seeing Red"; Terrence creates his own imaginary friend named Red to smash Bloo, Mac's imaginary friend. However, Red is very bad at being bad, preferring to sniff flowers instead of smashing Bloo. When he brings Terrence a flower, Terrence destroys the flower to show him what he should be doing to Bloo. After Bloo causes a series of Amusing Injuries to Red, Red breaks down in tears. Bloo then realizes he went too far and gives Red some flowers to apologize to him. However, Terrence witnesses this and destroys the flowers while calling Red out for being useless. It is at this point that Red has had enough of Terrence bullying him and turns against him, beating him up.
