Heart Symbol

Now you know it's serious.

El Lambeda: We love our brother! Our brotherly love is so great, the love pours out of us! See how these little hearts emanate from me! That is how much love I have! For my brother!
El Mariacho: And look! There is a big heart coming out of my head right now! It's kind of painful, actually, but I shall endure the pain... for my brother!

— Girly

The stylized heart shape, ♥ (or <3, a.k.a. the "happy cyclops with a Playful Cat Smile" face, as an emoticon), is a classic visual metaphor. But, that's for the tropes in the Take These Tropes to Heart index. This page is for when the heart symbol appears and isn't part of any of those tropes.

Something of note: According to Wikipedia, the exact origin of the ♥ symbol remains controversial, since it doesn't take a doctor to realize that it looks nothing like an actual human heart (and exactly what it's meant to look like is unclear); however, its existence as a stylized symbol seems to go back at least to medieval Europe, or maybe ancient Roman North Africa.

Wicked Heart Symbol is a subtrope, for when the heart symbol is associated with villainy. Say It with Hearts is one as well, as is Heart of Happiness. The ♥ symbol is the only symbol that works with that trope. No anatomical hearts can be used for that, unless it's being played with.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The very popular I Love NY logo, of the advertising campaign with the same name, uses a stylized heart in place of 'love'.
  • Parodied and played with by the advertising team of the Seattle Mariners in an ad from 1999 called Roof Opener, where the bumper sticker on Edgar Martinez's car reads "I ♣ NY" referencing his extremely good batting career against the Yankees.

Anime & Manga

• AKB0048: Every member of the AKB0048 has a heart-shaped shine in their hair and in their eyes as well. This feature in particular seems to be a manifestation of the potential of a girl to be a future Successor, as it shows up the young Lancastar girls after they witness their first concert. It happens again to another set of young girls after they see their first 00 performance as well.
  • Former members have diamonds instead. Justified by the fact that there are tons of characters, makes it easier for people to just identify who is in and who isn't.
• The Japanese logo for Kaguya-sama: Love Is War features a heart which is usually superimposed over someone's eye on the volume covers. Hearts are also a major motif during the culture festival arc, as there is a legend that if someone give another a heart shaped object during the festival the two of them will be granted eternal love. Said arc's climax has Shirogane showering the school in hundreds of heart shaped balloons as a Grand Romantic Gesture for Kaguya.
• In Kaiju Girl Caramelise, Kuroe Akaishi turns into a Kaiju called Harugon whenever she experiences strong emotion, usually in relation to her crush Arata Minami. Harugon looks mostly like the standard Notzilla, except with noticeable heart shapes in her eyes and on one pair of wings. Similarly, her Kaiju-crazy classmate Manatsu has a sleeping bag and a fancy costume that look respectively like the larva and imago forms of Mothra with added heart designs.
• Heart symbols are among the most common motifs seen in Pretty Cure outfits, usually the leader's outfit, as the series-wide theme is fighting with The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure: Leader Cure Black has pink hearts on her belt, arm-warmers, and leg-warmers, to show off the "heart of gold" in her Jerk with a Heart of Gold personality.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star: Like Cure Black before her, Cure Bloom has all the same hearts in her outfit, plus one more in her hair, showing that she's a bit kinder and bubblier than Black.
  • HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!: Cure Lovely wears a heart charm in her hair, as she wears her heart on her sleeve (er, hair).
  • Go! Princess Pretty Cure: Pafu's tiara has a heart-shaped gem in the middle, mainly due to Rule of Cute.
  • Maho Girls Pretty Cure!: Cure Miracle's hat has a tiny heart charm on it, matching her excited persona.
  • KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode: Cure Chocolat's Sweets Pact has a heart on it, representing her love for her family.
  • HuGtto! Pretty Cure: Hugtan wears a heart-shaped charm on her head and has a heart on her bib, as she's The Heart holding the Hugtto Cures together.
  • Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure: In the opening, Lala's background is covered with a heart pattern, plus one lone star to represent her alien heritage.
  • Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure: Latte's head charm has a blue heart gem, as like Hugtan, she is The Heart of the Healin' Good team.
  • Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure: For Rule of Cute, Kururun's ears are shaped like hearts.
  • Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure: Cure Precious wears a heart-shaped brooch, fitting her warm personality.
  • Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure: Cure Prism, the most gentle and kind-hearted of the Cures, has hearts on the trails of her dress.
  • Wonderful Pretty Cure!: Cure Wonderful, a Genki Girl who loves everyone and everything, has hearts on her hat, bow, and pact.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: Several heart symbols appear on Sweet S.'s helmet, fitting for the heart and nurse of the team.
• Noonbory and the Super 7: Lunabory's Chest Insigna is a simple yellow heart symbol, representing her gentle, kind personality.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 5, Wolnie blows some kisses at Wolffy when she congratulates him for digging up a water fountain for them. Heart symbols emit from Wolnie's lips as she blows kisses, and Wolffy's head emits heart symbols as he faints from the kisses. Wolffy's cousin then appears and grabs one of the heart symbols which came from Wolffy's head, cracking it as he makes fun of Wolffy's fountain for being nothing more than a ditch.

Fan Works

• In Cave Dancers Pretty Cure, Cure Wisdom's staff has a heart-shaped tip, as her ability is The Power of Love.
• In the Gunslinger Girl fanfic Bullets for My Love, the other handlers mock Jose over the H♥J that his cyborg Henrietta has engraved on the concrete wall of the Killing House.
• The narrator of Pokémon Strangled Red mentions seeing a heart symbol when the protagonist of the eponymous hacked game shares a kiss with Daisy Oak.

Films — Animation

• Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper: Erika wears a charm necklace in the shape of a heart, representing her strong heart and refusal to give up on her dreams.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Heart symbols appear on-screen when Calhoun plants a kiss on Felix in the finale.
• In Turning Red, hearts appear in the background during Abby's introduction.

Films — Live-Action

• I ♡ Huckabees: A heart symbol is used in the title, and is the slogan of the Huckabees company.
• The Pale Blue Eye. Gus Landor is investigating a cadet who was hung against his will, then had his heart removed postmortem. A young cadet by the name of Edgar Allan Poe comes forth with a theory that the killer was a poet, Waxing Lyrical on the symbolism involved (though given the last quotation Poe cites, Landor points out that a religious maniac could also be the culprit).
  Poe: Oh, you cannot pretend that this act of savagery did not startle the literary resonances from the very crevices of your mind! Lord Suckling’s charming song, “I prithee send me back my heart Since I cannot have thine.” Or.. or the Bible even: “Create in me a clean heart, O God. A broken and a contrite heart thou wilt not despise.”

Literature

• In Conor Kostic's novel Saga: Ghost's symbol is a ♥, and is always represented that way. Why is it that symbol? We don't know. As she says in Saga when painting aircars:
  I settled for a pale blue sky with fluffy white clouds as my background, and then filled it with floating red ♥s. Not much of a statement, I know, unless you think about how there are millions of aircars out there, and they are all a standard simple monochrome. To introduce playfulness and individuality is in itself a kind of subversion. Well, that’s if my choice needed any justification.

Live-Action TV

• The thirteenth episode of Glee's third season is titled "♥"—officially called "Heart", but referred to by the symbol in all official materials.
• The 2019 reboot of Press Your Luck featured a Whammy that blew kisses at the contestants' score with hearts floating over knocking out each digit.
• Punky Brewster: During the first two seasons, Punky had a small heart embroidered on the right side of her vest.

Music

• Naturally, the ♥ became the band logo of Seattle-based rock group Heart, at least in their original Seventies incarnation as soft-rock country/folk band fronted by hippie chicks. The ♥ became synonymous with sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, who fronted the group and wrote most of its material. The symbol was downgraded a little after their make-over as 1980's big-haired rock chicks performing stadium rock.
• Hello! Project loves to use these in song titles... Koisuru♡Angel♡Heart, ♡Momoiro Kataomoi♡, Icha♡Icha Summer, Honki Mekimeki♡Toki Mekimeki, Hare Ame Nochi Suki♡, Zettai Tokeru Mondai X = ♡, Renai♥Rider, Ona no Ko no Torishirabe Time♥...
  • Then there's the group Odoru♡11.

Professional Wrestling

• The Harts, such as Bret or Owen, typically have a heart symbol with a winged skull in the middle of it.
• Luchador ATM has two heart symbol eye holes cut into his mask.
• Just to emphasize how much of a Girly Girl she had become in Fighting Opera HUSTLE, Erica had these symbols painted on her cheeks.
• Sassy Stephie has gear with the letter S twice on her chest. One is backwards so it forms a heart.
• Shazza McKenzie has a one piece with heart symbols cut into it, baring the sides of her midriff.
• "La Chica de la Actitud" Roxxy has her name sewn into her ring gear with the "O" being in this shape.

Video Games

• Castlevania:
  • The various games use hearts as ammunition, mana pickups, and/or money.
  • Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: Hearts are represented by a red heart symbol in the upper left of the screen.
  • Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: In the character summary menu, Juste's hearts stat is indicated by a white heart symbol instead of a word.
• Conjoined: Hearts will move back and forth across the platforms. Stanley needs to collect whole hearts to get the next item to appear. He must also avoid broken hearts, or else he'll lose health.
• Do It For Me: The collectibles are giant hearts, representing the love between the protagonist and his girlfriend. Or so it seems, but it actually represents the protagonist's unhealthy "love" for his psychotic and manipulative abuser.
• HuniePop:
  • The Passion tokens are pink puzzle tokens in the shape of a heart symbol, which increase your score multiplier as you match more of them in the match-three dating segments. Purple broken heart tokens may also appear on the board, and, naturally, you generally want to avoid matching these, on pain of a penalty to the points you'd earned up to that point in the date.
  • After a successful third date with secret character Celeste, she will send a picture and a log entry detailing a time in which she was molested by a tentacle monster while on an intergalactic bounty hunting mission. She suggests in the log that she isn't too bothered when this happens, however, and she signs it off with a heart emoticon.
• Hearts are used as currency in the Kid Icarus games. They're also used as part of Kid Icarus: Uprising's Dynamic Difficulty system, by which you wager the hearts you have to raise or lower the stages' difficulty.
• Kingdom of Loathing: It has a "Less-than-three-shaped box", which is aptly named. It is shaped like a heart, and can hold up to 2 items.
• Kingdom Hearts. Hearts are everywhere. They pop up in symbolism, menu icons, and whenever you kill most enemies. The "true" Kingdom Hearts (the combined heart of all worlds) is a heart-shaped MOON!
• The Legend of Zelda series features hearts as a motif symbolizing the player's/Link's health. Many games feature recovery hearts and more rare and significant Heart Containers, which permanently extend the health meter; many of the games also have Pieces of Heart, a number of which can be collected to form a Heart Container. The odd one out is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which briefly moved away from the heart-symbol health in favor of a run-of-the-mill rectangular health bar and recovering health with red potions. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom also got rid of recovery hearts and replaced them with eating food, though the heart health meter still remains.
• In NOISZ, the heart within your soul represents your hitbox.
• Neurodeck: The Heart bonus that can be acquired to increase max hand size by 2, is presented by a outline of the heart symbol.
• Panel de Pon: Heart-shaped panels are a staple.
• Pokémon Black and White introduced Woobat and its evolution Swoobat. They're bat-like Pokémon with snouts shaped like hearts. One of their attacks is even called heart stamp.
• Shantae: Risky's Revenge: One of the mermaids' possible attacks is them blowing a kiss and little heart symbols float off above them, damaging Shantae if she touches the hearts.
• Sunset Overdrive: The Bottoms Body Art "Eighteen Ninety One" has two overlapping filled in heart symbols on front of the upper left thigh.
• Transistor: The Charm-inflicting Switch()'s icon is pink, with a big pink Cardiovascular Love-style heart symbol in the center with smaller ones around it.
• The Tree of Life: The Minigame sidelayer has a classic heart symbol as its icon.
• Undertale doesn't have a heart symbol in the game's logo for nothing. Character's souls are depicted as heart symbols, including the one that represents the menu cursor and player's hitbox in fight scenes. The broken heart symbol is used to symbolize dying.
• Hearts can be picked up as an item in Who Framed Roger Rabbit; they're used on Dolores to get a hint on where to find a piece of Marvin Acme's will, because you're giving your heart to her.

Visual Novel

• Murder by Numbers (2020): Becky's outfit has heart symbols all over it. Heart-symbol glasses frames, and necklace, coat buttons and skirt button of the same design.

Web Animation

• DSBT InsaniT: Martha gets a blue heart hairpin as part of her Clothing Switch in 'Store Story'.
• The ghost and his smaller ghost minions the deadbeats from Mystery Skulls Animated all have glowing beating heart shapes on their chests. The ghost's is revealed to be a heart shaped locket which contains a picture of him with his girlfriend from before his death.
• Extra Credits: Multiple times in "The Division - Problematic Meaning in Mechanics":
  • First, it's used to symbolize the "heart" of The Division.
  • Second, it's used as part of Cardiovascular Love that's being emitted from a woman's head to portray her affection for a player character.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Summertime Shorts: In "Pet Project", heart symbols start flying all around Sunset Shimmer when she meets her soon-to-be pet gecko Ray.

Webcomics

• In Ava's Demon, once Ava agrees to the pact, we get a heart split in half, with two colors, one side shattered.
• Girl Genius: Used as part of Cardiovascular Love:
  • Agatha has several floating hearts when she sees Gil defending her town.
  • Agatha is accompanied by floating hearts when she launches herself at Gil to give him a hug when he says he's revived Punch and Judy.
  • Violetta produces floating red heats when describing what Agatha and Gil's potential relationship would be like.
  • Bangladesh DuPree, of all people, gets a huge floating heart when she meets Vole, a Jägermonster of her taste. More specifically, from hearing his jubilant, bloodthirsty anticipation regarding a war that would devastate the continent.
  • The Wasp Eaters gain a cloud of floating little pink hearts when they decide they like Tarvek.
  • Queen Larana and Jiminez Hoffmann fill the entire background with floating hearts in the panel where they exchange their first kiss.
• Questionable Content: Dale floats into the coffee shop with trailing floating hearts after he and Marigold get together. The background behind Hannelore fills with floating hearts when she's talking about all the romance around her.
• Zita the Spacegirl has an alien species named Star Hearts (featured in both the web and print versions). They resemble the heart symbol in shape, but are anything but loving, especially when they launch heart attacks.
• In El Goonish Shive a couple extras get hearts above their heads when they think Grace is thinking of playing Undertale only for their hearts to become broken in the next panel as Grace reveals she'll play Deus Ex: Human Revolution instead.
• Sleepless Domain: It shouldn't come as a surprise that the magical girl Heartful Punch is heavily associated with the classic heart symbol. Her Sigil, a type of unique Power Tattoo that every magical girl has, is in the shape of a heart with an explosion inside of it. Stylized heart shapes are also incorporated into her costume, her magical attacks, and on occasion, they can be seen very subtly in her eyes.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe: There's "an adorable little blonde kid in curls" whose codename is Less Than Three, but if it's intended to be this symbol or not, is unknown, and we don't know why she picked that codename either, presuming that she didn't have it assigned involuntarily.

Western Animation

• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: A very common motif in Pure Heart Valley, right up to the mysterious Ruby Pure Heart that protects it. Outside the city, it's seldom seen.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) series debut episode "Monkey See, Doggy Do" featured a variation of the Bat Signal which used pulsating hearts (the standard ending title card for each episode). Also, Blossom's ponytail barrette brandishes a heart on it.
• Punky Brewster: Punky had a small heart embroidered on the right side of her vest.
• The opening titles of Ruby Gloom include some shots of heart symbols with faces and pirate-style crossbones, singing the the title while zooming toward the camera.

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