Jealous Romantic Witness

If you ignore love, don't be surprised when it moves on.

I can see you standin', honey
With his arms around your body
Laughin' but the joke's not funny at all.

— Bon Iver and Taylor Swift, "Exile"

Being in love can be hard, mostly for one reason: There's no guarantee your crush will feel the same. Indeed, in fiction, it's far more likely that you'll at least have to deal with a Love Triangle or two before you can be happy, but the rule with a love triangle is that they run on drama and angst from all characters involved. One easy way to add some tragedy is for a love-struck character to be an unwilling witness to their love and their rival doing anything from flirting and blushing, to outright doing the dirty.

This is almost always Played for Drama. The witness is usually the protagonist or a character whose insecurities are already familiar to the audience, making the sting that much more painful. A particularly nasty rival will subject them to this intentionally, especially if the triangle is between the "school loser" and the Alpha Bitch. Other times, the lovers won't know they're being watched, making it less malicious but still hurtful for the watcher. In all cases, it's a slap in the face to the witness, who will more than likely use this moment as proof that they've "lost" the love competition. Expect tears to follow...or a Green-Eyed Epiphany, if they react with jealousy rather than anguish. If the jealousy is the intended reaction, it's Operation: Jealousy. All that said however, antagonists can be on the receiving end too, which will either be seen as fitting karma or an explanation for their bitterness later on.

While this is usually reserved for characters who aren't already dating, established couples can have scenes like this, especially if someone is attempting Relationship Sabotage. In cases like these, it shows that the relationship is shaky or plagued by doubts and jealousy. Secure partners are more likely to break the moment up or shrug it off, while an insecure partner would internalize it and see it as a sign of trouble to come. These cases can also be entirely platonic, with the witness interpreting them as something more; this variant has overlap with Mistaken for Cheating, Not What It Looks Like, or even Relative Error.

Non-consensual moments only count if the lack of consent isn't immediately obvious to the witness. A tricked or brainwashed love-interest, for example, may play into the flirting without actually wanting to. A victim of blatant sexual assault, on the other hand, is very obviously not in control of what they're doing, so the impact comes from a different source. Beyond that, the extent of the "flirting" is quite broad, as this trope is more about the reaction and impact rather than the lovers themselves.

Compare Sex in a Shared Room, Emasculated Cuckold, Alone Among the Couples, Third Wheel, Netorare, Unbalanced By Rival's Kid, and Moment Killer.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Full Moon, poor Meroko gets this with multiple love interests. As a human, one of the events that drove her to suicide was seeing her best friend kissing the boy she loved. She also overhears Takuto's Anguished Declaration of Love to Mitsuki about halfway through the plot.
• Maki from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War deals with this on a near daily basis due to her best friend Kashiwagi dating her crush Tsubasa (a fact that both are unaware of). She has an uncanny ability to always be present when the two are having an intimate moment, and understandably spends most of her screen time miserable.
• Oshi no Ko: Kana is in love with Aqua, but he's currently dating her rival Akane. Even though Aqua is only dating Akane for pragmatic reasons, it still hurts her when she sees Aqua and Akane do couple stuff. It gets even worse when Ruby, Aqua's sister, meets Akane and immediately calls her "big sister" because she's already convinced that Akane is going to marry her brother. Ruby squeeing over Aqua and Akane's relationship serves as a series of Harsh Word Impact blows on Kana.
• Played for Laughs in Romantic Killer. Junta, who has had a crush on Anzu since they were kids, regularly finds himself stumbling into her having romantic situations with some of the other guys in her life. Said situations usually end with him tearfully running away while Anzu, happy for the interruption, gives chase while trying to explain that it is Not What It Looks Like.
• Sailor Moon: In one of the manga's Flashbacks to the time of the Moon Kingdom, Beryl is shown spying on one of Princess Serenity's secret meetings with Prince Endymion.

Comic Books

• The Eagles of Rome: To break off the burgeoning (and politically-inconvenient) relationship between Marcus and her daughter Priscilla, the High-Class Call Girl Morphea forces Priscilla to overhear her having sex with Marcus (having drugged and bound him beforehand), and hear Marcus say he loves Morphea. As soon as Priscilla's gone she has Marcus thrown out.
• The Punisher: One story has Jigsaw capture Frank and try to break him by projecting footage of Jigsaw having sex with Frank's resurrected wife (actually a hitwoman who underwent Magic Plastic Surgery to look like her) on a wall of Frank's cell with the sound set to maximum. It doesn't work.

Fan Works

• Cyborg Davis has a scene where it's revealed that Yami Ninji had secretly filmed Kari and T.K. having sex, so he could use the footage to physiologically break the ever jealous Davis.
• In From Smolensk to Santander, a Hussar Ballad fanfic, after Vincento realises he has fallen in love with Shura, it becomes a torment for him to watch the affection between her and her fiance, especially since neither of the couple has any idea about his feelings and both of them view him as a good friend.
• A Leaf of the Tree: Ino was a Hopeless Suitor towards Takeo, and bemoans having to watch Sakura succeed where she failed.
• Noelle and Rudy play Deltarune puts an unusual spin on this: while playing Deltarune, Noelle notices that the Susie in the game becomes nervous around Game!Ralsei after he reveals his true face, as well as his promise to make cake for her. She then panics upon realizing that Ralsei is real, believing that he just might be a romantic rival and that he's got a head start.
• In the second chapter of The Story of Apollo, Daphne and Luca: An Italian Tragedy, Vincenzo has one when he sees Luca (since, in later chapters, we find out that he has a crush on him) being happy with [[spoiler: Alberto.
• A Waterbending Quirk:
  • Tokoyami goes through this upon seeing how close Katara grows with Todoroki Shoto, having hidden his feelings for her out of the belief that she'd never see him the same way due to his avian appearance. Eventually, he rekindles his friendship with her, with Katara assuring him that they'll always be close and that he'll find somebody someday.
  • Uraraka also endures this. While she'd been hiding her feelings for a while, she grows competitive upon noticing that Momo and Izuku are growing closer together. Ultimately, she accepts it, even encouraging Momo to reveal her feelings to Izuku and helping them hook up.

Films— Animation

• In Aladdin, Aladdin has to watch Jasmine flirt with and ultimately kiss Jafar. He knows that she's only doing it to distract Jafar, so he won't notice Aladdin and Abu sneaking into the room to try to save her; nevertheless, his expression shows how clearly uncomfortable he is with what he's seeing.
• At the end of Foam Bath, a devastated Anna watches from afar as Zsolt walks off with his bride and Anna's friend Klára. She had just spent the entire afternoon trying to convince the cowardly Zsolt to marry Klára, inadvertently developing feelings for him, but they just couldn't burst their "bubbles", the social norms and personal issues separating the two of them. She's gotten over it in the Distant Finale.
• Megamind: Tighten observes Roxanne dating Bernard (actually a disguised Megamind) right off the heels of Roxanne telling Tighten they will never be together. This causes him to give up trying to be a hero, which he'd only done to try and impress Roxanne, and turn to villainy.

Films— Live-Action

• In the second Descendants, Mal and Ben are having some relationship trouble leading up to the school cotillion, but this is briefly halted when Ben is kidnapped by Uma and her pirate crew. After Mal and the others free him, they all prepare for the dance, though the relationship hasn't been mended. So, when Ben shows up with Uma, Mal is stunned and heartbroken, especially after he declares Uma to be "his true love". This moment ends when Jane unveils a stained glass window he had commissioned, featuring himself and Mal, which reveals to the crowd that Ben was being brainwashed.
• When Bianca sees her male friend and neighbor Wesley kiss the Alpha Bitch Madison in The Duff, she instantly becomes jealous and heartbroken, berating him for kissing her at their secret spot.
• Fall: When Becky watches a video taken during her wedding ceremony with Dan, she notices Hunter scowling at them in the background.
• In Gangs of New York, Henry sees Amsterdam make out with Jenny, a woman he was interested in but who turned him down earlier in the film. He outs his identity to Bill Cutting out of jealousy.
• Happens to two people in overlapping love triangles in Hussar Ballad when Lieutenant Rzhevsky has a huge crush on and persistently flirts with singer Louise Jermon.
  • Louise's Old Flame Pelymov has to watch it, though Rzhevsky is aware of their past relationship and asks him if he is okay with Rzhevsky hitting on her. Pelymov, determined to forget his love for Louise after their quarrel, assures him he isn't jealous in the slightest, but his expressions say otherwise.
  • It's much harder for Rzhevsky's fiancee Shura, since she is in a Sweet Polly Oliver disguise and Rzhevsky doesn't know it's her (theirs is an Arranged Marriage, and the one time he met her as a woman she trolled him by putting on lots of powder and acting overly girly). She also has to watch the flirting and can't contain her rage, drinking heavily and crying out that she hates actresses and women in general. Things get even more complicated when Louise admires the youthful and passionate "boy" and decides to tease both Rzhevsky and Pelymov by being affectionate towards "him".
• Mean Girls: Regina fawns over Aaron and can't keep her hands off him whenever Cady's around, because she knows Cady likes him and is jealous that they're dating (and in fact only got back with him in the first place to hurt her). Cady knows exactly what she's doing, but has to sit there and put up with it because of her role in Janis' Backstabbing the Alpha Bitch plan.
  Regina: [running her hands through Aaron's hair] Why do you wear your hair like that? You hair looks so sexy pushed back. Cady, will you please tell him his hair looks sexy pushed back?
  Cady: [narrating] Regina was dangling Aaron in front of me on purpose. I knew how this would be settled in the animal world.
  [Cue Imagine Spot of Cady tackling Regina and clawing at her face.]
  Cady: But this was Girl World. [out loud] ...Your hair looks sexy pushed back.
• Red, White & Royal Blue: Upon attending Alex's New Year’s Eve party, Henry is obviously jealous upon seeing Alex kissing random girls^note Nora in the book who throw themselves at the latter. Unable to deal with it, he immediately leaves, much to Alex's confusion.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Janet is an emotional wreck when she sees post-coitus footage of Brad and Frank, devastated that Brad would betray her like that. Brad is, in turn, horrified when he finds her naked with Rocky, and their relationship is implied to be unstable for the rest of the film. Brad's reaction is nothing compared to Frank's, though, who flies into a jealous rage when he realizes that Janet and Rocky are into each-other.
• In Sannikov Land, when Annuir confesses her love for Ilyin (his response is rather reserved as he has a fiancee at home), they are watched by Dukkar who has a Villainous Crush on Annuir and was rejected by her only minutes ago at the wife-choosing festival. This event cements Dukkar's hatred of Ilyin and the rest of the explorers, and he spends the rest of the film being The Dragon to the murderous, sadistic local shaman.
• In the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby watches, from a distance, the happy wedding of Marianne and Colonel Brandon. Willoughby does love Marianne, just not as much as he loves the money and carefree lifestyle provided by his Meal Ticket wife, and his expression shows that he has a moment of regret for what could've been, before silently turning and riding away.
• In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom watches as Dickie and Marge make love, seeming almost enraged at what he's seeing. Even creepier? It's impossible to tell which one of them he's jealous of.
• Titanic (1997): At the end of the movie, Rose is seen reunited with Jack aboard the Titanic and other passengers, all of which applaud them... all except Cal, who's looking distinctly unhappy.

Literature

• In All Dressed in White, Meghan has an extreme case of this. She was secretly in love with her college friend Jeff for years, but she had little choice but to watch him and her best friend Amanda fall in love. She even agreed to be Amanda's bridesmaid at the wedding, never telling her how she felt about Jeff. Laurie eventually finds candid photos from the wedding trip, which include snapshots of Meghan looking longingly at Jeff or glaring in the background while he and Amanda are being Sickeningly Sweethearts with each other.
• In A Detective Story by Kir Bulychev, Lera reminisces on how her admirer and eventual husband Oleg had to watch her affectionate relationship with her First Love Ivan, and imagines how strongly Oleg must have felt about it. So strongly, it turns out, that he decided on Relationship Sabotage and framed Ivan for cheating.
• The Dresden Files: Invoked as punishment by Mab, Queen of the Winter Fairy, at the end of Battle Ground. When she declares her intention to seal the alliance with the vampiric White Court via a dynastic marriage between her Knight (Harry Dresden) and the vampire queen Lara Raith, the Winter Lady Molly (who is also in love with Harry) interjects on his behalf, pointing out that he needs time to grieve after his latest loss. Mab agrees to postpone the wedding by a year, but in an act of spite, tasks Molly with personally publicizing Harry and Lara's relationship and upcoming wedding during said year.
• Earth's Children: When Ayla walks in on her mate Jondalar and Marona having sex in The Land of Painted Caves, she feels intense jealousy for one of the first times in her life, later admitting that she now finally fully understands Jondalar's reaction when she and Ranec were romantically involved in The Mammoth Hunters. Even though Jondalar immediately ends his affair with Marona and makes it clear he loves Ayla, she's deeply hurt and resentful (especially considering she’s already gone through a lot recently, including a harrowing religious test and a miscarriage, and she's well-aware Marona hates her), and it causes a rift in their marriage that isn't repaired until the end.
• In East, Rose watches her beloved happily courting the Troll Queen and muses that she is no better than said Queen if she wants to break up such a tender romance. Then, however, as she discovers just what atrocities are committed by the trolls, she realises the man must have been brainwashed to love someone who condones it (which is indeed the case).
• In the finale of Enoch Arden, Enoch Arden spies on his beloved wife Annie's domestic bliss with her second husband Philip (believing Enoch to be dead, she committed Accidental Adultery). He is crushed by the sight of it, especially by the fact Annie has already had Philip's baby, but he only does it to make sure she is happy and never reveal to anyone that he has been alive all along until he is really on his deathbed.
• In Eugene Onegin, Lensky's fiancee Olga cheerfully responds to Onegin's flirtations right in front of Lensky himself. It leads to Lensky challenging Onegin to a duel.
• Subverted in Faith Hope Love by Georgy Yudin. The main character watches what he thinks is his wife cavorting with another man. However, due to Impostor Forgot One Detail, he sees the woman has a six-fingered hand, while his wife doesn't, and realises he is being tricked.
• A major plot twist in The Hound of the Baskervilles is when Stapleton goes nuts on seeing Henry Baskerville hit on his sister. This is because she's actually his wife, and despite Sir Henry's infatuation serving his plans he's unable to control himself and very nearly blows his own cover in doing so.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, this trope is in play at the Yule Ball. Harry has to watch his crush Cho dance with Cedric and Ron has to watch his crush Hermione dance with Viktor.
  • In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry has a Green-Eyed Epiphany when he sees Ginny kissing Dean. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione's Belligerent Sexual Tension goes on as Ron starts dating the very openly affectionate Lavender Brown and Hermione has to watch it, while Hermione performs Operation: Jealousy and starts dating Cormac McLaggen so that Ron would see that.
• Gale suffers this in The Hunger Games, when he has to watch his best friend and crush Katniss, kiss Peeta — and eventually become engaged to him — on national television. She's only pretending as a strategy for the Games (and later to placate President Snow to keep her family safe), but that doesn't make it much easier on Gale. In the second book, Katniss takes a moment to try to step into his shoes and envision how she would feel if Gale had gone to the Games instead and ended up pretending to love some other girl. She's blown away by how jealous and angry she becomes just imagining it.
• Jane Austen:
  • In Emma, Jane and Frank are secretly engaged, and she has to watch him flirt with Emma (who is clueless about the truth). Finally she refuses to believe that flirting is just to keep the cover and wants to break the engagement. Meanwhile, Mr. Knightley decides to go away and stay with his brother for a while rather than continue to watch Emma, whom he has loved for several years, continue flirting with Frank Churchill. (When the truth about Frank's engagement to Jane Fairfax becomes known, he comes flying back to make sure she's all right.)
  • In Sense and Sensibility, Marianne's passionate courtship with Willoughby is in plain view of everyone around, including Colonel Brandon who silently pines for Marianne. However, she is completely unaware about the latter's feelings.
• After spending half of Moonlight Becomes You trying to get in contact with Maggie, Neil finally manages to track down her address in Newport and drives by...only to see her getting back from a date with Liam, much to his disappointment.
• In Only the Ring Finger Knows, Wataru watches Kazuki walk arm-in-arm his female cousin while she calls him her "favorite guy" and immediately decides that he's in love with Kazuki and also that he needs to give up on him. After finding out she's his cousin...he still thinks she's a more viable love interest than he is.
• Osamake has an interesting case where due to it being a Harem, any of Suehara's Love Interests seeing him "flirt" with another girl is enough to make them jealous, sad, or angry. However, it's more prominent with his childhood friend Kuroha, who dejectedly watches him make a fuss about Shirokusa's hurt foot all throughout episode 9, especially since Shiro is his First Love and her rival. Kuroha admits that seeing them together felt worse than when she rejected him.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: The main pairing of Oliver Horn and Nanao Hibiya attracts this from several characters.
  • Their friend Katie Aalto has a crush on Oliver and tends to get a little irritable when Nanao acts too clingy (despite their otherwise close friendship). It's nonetheless clear pretty early that she's firmly the Third Wheel, which becomes a significant source of angst as Oliver and Nanao's relationship gets more serious over the years. She's also a little jealous of Oliver's (affectionate but completely platonic) relationship with his cousin Shannon, getting worked up when Shannon greets him with a kiss on the cheek when they run into each other the day after the fight with the garuda.
  • In volume 9, Nanao gets jealous of Oliver's rapproachment with his Stock Shōnen Rival Richard Andrews, and physically attacks him with a Forceful Kiss. This in turn triggers an incident with Oliver's follower Teresa Carste, who crushes hard on him: in volume 10 she tries to get him to kiss her, then when he doesn't realize she wants it on the mouth, she loses her temper and goes out and attacks Nanao—and then has to run away with her tail between her legs because Nanao is so much stronger than she ever thought possible.
• A particularly weird example in Spectrum where Irina is split into seven copies of herself which are located on different planets and can sense each other's feelings (and get killed off one by one as nature struggles to bring order back). When Martin starts a romance with the fifth Irina, the two other remaining ones can't help but sense her feelings all the time, including when Martin sleeps with her, and go crazy with jealousy.
• A Puppy Love version in A Tragedy by Nadezhda Teffi. At a Christmas party, Kot'ka's longtime crush Tanya, right before Kot'ka's eyes, starts playing and dancing with an impressive-looking cadet (military school student) who is eight years old to Kot'ka's six and Tanya's seven. Tanya is a generally good-hearted but egocentric girl and genuinely doesn't realise why her actions hurt Kot'ka, while he is too proud to admit he is offended.
• The Twilight Saga series runs off of these moments between Bella, The Rival Jacob, and One True Love Edward, with the latter two baiting Bella into such moments by the third book in order to make their romantic claims on her that much more apparent to one another. This peaks in Eclipse when the three have to camp in the woods in the middle of winter and Bella begins to freeze. Edward cannot help since as a vampire, his skin is ice cold. Jacob however runs very warm due to his shapeshifter nature and thus Bella has to share his sleeping bag with him in order to keep warm. The entire chapter that follows is a conversation between Edward and Jacob discussing Jacob's smugness over the situation, their feelings for Bella, and her feelings towards both of them.
• In A Very Scary Story by Anatoly Aleksin, Gena, one of the school poets, writes love poetry. One of his pieces is about his Fate Worse than Death suffering at the sight of his crush flirting with an older boy. Later, he falls in love with another girl and writes a poem about his Fate Worse than Death suffering at the sight of another boy walking with her from the canteen. However, it is revealed both girls are entirely fictional.
• In the Warrior Cats book Sunset, not long after Squirrelflight turns down Ashfur in favor of Brambleclaw, there's a scene where Ashfur notices Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw walking together with their pelts touching, and Leafpool is shaken by the fury in Ashfur's eyes.

Live-Action TV

• Bridgerton:
  • In Season 1, Penelope Featherington often gets jealous whenever she sees Colin Bridgerton courting Marina Thompson. In the final episode of Season 2, she gets jealous again when seeing Colin dancing with Cressida Cowper.
  • In the ending of season 1 episode 3, Simon Basset couldn’t help but stares jealously upon watching Daphne Bridgerton meets and dances with Prince Friedrich, so much that he immediately leaves as he couldn’t take it.
  • In season 2 episode 5, while promenading and courting Edwina, Anthony Bridgerton glares jealously at Kate Sharma and her seemingly-suitor, Thomas Dorset, having fun on a boat. He eventually comes over trying to upstage Dorset in courting Kate. It doesn't end well.
• The Brokenwood Mysteries: A strange variation comes to light in a Feuding Families case after one family's daughter is murdered. Star-Crossed Lovers with the rival family's son, the couple were witnessed kissing when they thought no one could see them. They were spotted by the mother of the victim's best friend, who was obsessed with the idea of her daughter dating the man despite her daughter's repeated insistence on their being Just Friends. The mother was angered that the woman was Always Someone Better to her daughter, now including romancing the mother's dream son-in-law, and kills her accidentally during a confrontation about it.
• Cruel Summer: One of the bigger points of drama in the show came from a recently-rescued Kate seeing her boyfriend, Jamie, kissing Jeannette... who was the very same girl Kate accused of leaving her with her kidnapper, as well as his ex. Kate bottled this issue up for months, and when she finally confronted him about it, he used gaslighting tactics to dismiss the concerns. This whole ordeal only made her emotional issues worse.
• Doctor Who: In "Human Nature", Martha and the Doctor are living a life in 1913, where the Doctor has turned into a human professor named John Smith, and she's a racially-targeted servant girl at the school, who nonetheless retains her feelings for the Doctor. Unfortunately, John spends several scenes in this episode flirting with the nurse, Joan Redfern, and does it right in front of Martha, who he disregards as nothing more than an acquaintance at best.
• Samdong from Dream High has an emotional breakdown when he sees Jingook kiss Hyemi, his crush, on the Ferris wheel he brought her tickets for so they could ride together.
• One episode of The Drew Carey Show sees Drew and Lisa's relationship threatened by a new company policy forbidding relationships between managers and employees. In an effort to hide their relationship, Drew enlists his buddy Jay to pose as Lisa's boyfriend, which leads to him being forced to watch her kiss Jay, which pisses him off.
• In The Good Place, both Janet and Eleanor go through this:
  • Janet spent the latter half of Season 1 in a relationship with Jason, which ends when the neighborhood is rebooted in the Season 1 finale. In Season 2, it turns out that despite being rebooted 800 times, Janet still has residual feelings for him, and is secretly upset by him being in love with Tahani.
  • After spending the latter half of Season 3 trying to re-kindle her relationship with Chidi, the actions of Shawn in the last episode force him to undergo a memory wipe. In order to prevent one of Chidi's ex's from ruining the experiment, she is forced to set them up with each other. Chidi has no idea about his relationship with Eleanor, much to the latter's distress.
• House of Anubis: These moments are common in the series, though they're usually subtle moments of characters misinterpreting a platonic interaction. Some of the more standout examples, however, left the characters feeling hurt for several episodes:
  • The most notable moment in the Nina/Fabian/Joy Love Triangle is when Joy kissed Fabian while disguised as Nina, causing Nina to run off in tears while a confused and distressed Fabian had to run after her. Nina was bitter for several days.
  • As part of an Operation: Jealousy, Eddie spent a lot of time in season 2 flirting with Mara to make Patricia jealous. She usually got angry at these interactions, even halting a Sibuna meeting to shout at them from under the floor to "turn the lights on". Season 3 would then have him spending a lot of time with KT, which again made her jealous, though Character Development eventually made her attempt an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy moment- believing he really wanted to be with KT over her as a result of all these scenes. Eddie himself was on the receiving end of this when he had to watch his rival Ben flirting with her, such as being her partner in a blind trust-exercise. His jealousy made him and Alfie fail the exercise, and put strain on his relationship with Patricia from then on.
  • Mick is the victim of this twice. First, Amber wanted to make him jealous to win him back, so she gave Alfie an impromptu kiss during a line-reading of Romeo and Juliet. Mick nearly attacked Alfie over it, despite him only being the recipient of the kiss. Later on, when he came Back for the Finale of season 2 just to talk to his then-girlfriend Mara, he had his heart broken when she wound up kissing Jerome that same night. This was his last appearance in the show, as he was walked off-screen by a sympathetic Alfie.
  • A rather dark example comes at the end of season 3. Alfie, who was just turned into a sinner, dumped Willow in a cold-blooded Kick the Dog moment. As icing on the cake, he proceeded to flirt with Mara and Joy just seconds later, in front of a heartbroken and sobbing Willow. This moment devastated her for the rest of the season, and he, once turned back to normal, had to give her an apology gift before she even considered taking him back.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "Like Angels Put in Hell by God", Antoinette Brown is smoking a cigarette outside of her home, upset and quietly shedding tears while looking inside her bedroom window as her lover Lestat de Lioncourt and his boyfriend Louis de Pointe du Lac lose themselves in wild, spur-of-the-moment sex. Both men threw her out from her own house, so Lestat (who was in coitus with Antoinette before Louis broke down her door) is making it very clear to her that he loves Louis more than her.
• Victorious: In The Pilot, Jade walked in on awkward-newgirl Tori rubbing coffee off of her boyfriend Beck's shirt. Immediately, she took this as a threat and repeatedly bullied Tori for the rest of the class. Tori finally got her revenge by kissing Beck on stage... but this only made Jade angrier, leaving a grudge that would last for most of the show.

Music

• In the song "Silhouettes" by The Rays (later covered by Herman's Hermits), a man passing his girlfriend's house sees silhouettes on the window shade of his girlfriend and another man kissing. Overcome by jealousy he rings the house's doorbell only to discover that it was the wrong house and he had just interrupted two strangers.
• Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" is a textbook example.
  I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her.
  I'm right over here, why can't you see me?
  I'm giving it my all but I'm not the girl you're taking home.
  I keep dancing on my own.
• Taylor Swift:
  • The Bon Iver-Taylor Swift duet "Exile" is about a former couple who encounter each other shortly after their breakup. The man (Iver) sees the woman (Swift) flirting with her new boyfriend and is very upset.
  • The "teenage love triangle" plot of folklore (2020) is kicked off when James comes to a school dance and sees Betty dancing with a guy, gets jealous, and leaves, having a summer fling with August instead. It's unclear whether Betty and James were actually dating or not, but either way, James comes to regret it because of how much it hurt Betty.
• ''The Tremeloes "Here Comes My Baby": "Walking with a love with a love that's oh so fine, never to be mine"

Theatre

• In Attila, Foresto goes crazy with jealousy when has to watch his fiancee Odabella contentedly accepting Attila's attentions and later his offer of marriage. According to the libretto, Odabella is faking her affection for Attila to get an opportunity to kill him (and Foresto knows it), however, some productions play up the drama by showing Odabella Becoming the Mask.
• Black Comedy (1965): Carol Melkett and her father are frozen in incredulity and anger as Carol's ostensible fiancée Brindsley gets into an argument with Clea (his Old Flame who had just thoroughly torpedoed his engagement) which devolves into light-hearted teasing and the two seeming to get back together right in front of the livid onlookers.
• In Così Fan Tutte, Guglielmo and Ferrando decide to test their respective fiancees' fidelity and try to seduce them in disguise. As a result, each of the girls falls in love with the other one's fiance. At first Guglielmo's fiancee Fiordiligi is determined to stay faithful, but then Guglielmo is forced to watch her duet with Fernando when her resolve finally breaks, and he is absolutely heartbroken and nearly runs out to confront the couple at once (Don Alfonso, who instigated the whole thing, has to hold him back).
• In The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega, when Diana quietly watches her secretary Teodoro's romantic rendezvous with her maid Marcela, the Betty to Diana's Veronica, she has a Green-Eyed Epiphany (for the second time in the play) and realises she hasn't been able to let go of her own feelings for Teodoro as she had hoped she would.
• Molière's L Ecole Des Femmes has a scene where the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist Arnolphe (who keeps his naïve sixteen-year-old ward Agnes cooped up in his house and forbids her from talking to anyone outside to ensure her faithfulness) learns that Agnes has been seen talking to a man and demands that she explain herself. She starts giving a blow-by-blow account of how it happened (and because of her ditziness, doesn't understand why flirting might be considered bad), not once seeing how tortured by jealousy he is. Arnolphe learned of it in an earlier scene where he runs into Horace (a friend of his son Oronte, and the man Agnes spoke to), who starts going on and on about his love for Agnes, and his disdain for the ridiculous old fart keeping her locked up (Arnolphe recently tried to go by a more aristocratic-sounding name, so Horace doesn't know he's talking to that same old fart). Arnolphe has to grin and bear it until Horace leaves.
• In L Elisir D Amore, Adina flirts with Belcore in front of her longtime admirer Nemorino, who is so tormented by it he decides to snare Adina with the eponymous elixir.
• In some productions of Eugene Onegin, such as Willy Decker's staging at the Opera de Paris, Prince Gremin inadvertently witnesses the final duet, learning that his adored wife still loves her Old Flame Onegin and will only stay true to Gremin out of duty. His reaction varies from one production to another: since the libretto and the music have no mention of him in this scene, he is always silent, but his face can be sad, impassive or clearly contorted in Tranquil Fury. In Decker’s production, he appears closer to the end of the duet, when Tatiana already makes her decision clear, so he takes it reasonably well and consolingly hugs Tatiana after she bids her final farewell to Onegin.
• In The Golden Cockerel by Nickolay Rimsky-Korsakov, the Queen of Shemakha deliberately charms both Tsar Dodon and his general Polkan out of their wits, and Polkan has to watch her seduce Dodon. However, while usually she just ignores Polkan for the better part of the scene and he sulks somewhere in the background, the 2014 staging by Anna Matison gives the whole subplot a much more dramatic spin: the Queen is clearly attracted to Polkan as much as he is to her but has to seduce Dodon for nefarious political or magical goals (the staging is ambiguous about that). It leads to Polkan having bouts of violent jealousy when he drags the Queen to his side to demand explanations right when she is flirting with Dodon (the latter, being monumentally stupid and self-absorbed, notices nothing).
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame uses this trope heavily, as is to be expected of a musical where unrequited love and lust is a major theme (and arguably the central driving force of the plot.) In "Thai Mol Piyas," Frollo watches from the shadows as Esmeralda, the target of his obsession, kisses her Love Interest Phoebus. Later, Quasimodo, who has a much more benign crush on Esmeralda, stumbles across her and Phoebus singing a romantic duet together, causing him to become distraught.
• In Luisa Miller, Wurm watches Luisa, on whom he has a Villainous Crush, happily confess her love for Rodolfo and enjoy her birthday feast with him, and afterwards says how the fire of jealousy burned his soul. However, Wurm has an Entitled to Have You attitude towards Luisa and is baffled as to why her father refused to let him marry her unless she loved him back, so that scene is designed to show him as the creepy Stalker with a Crush he is rather than make him sympathetic.
• In his aria in The Marriage of Figaro, the Count laments how horrid it would be for him to constantly see Susanna, after whom he is lusting, being happy with Figaro.
• Les Misérables: Eponine brings Marius (whom she is in love with) for a clandestine meeting with his crush Cosette. Marius and Cosette fall in love right there and duet "A Heart Full Of Love"; Eponine's part in that song has her stand off to the side and mourn her love for Marius.
  Marius and Cosette: A heart full of love...
  Eponine: He was never mine to lose...
• Much Ado About Nothing: The evil Don John tricks Claudio into believing that he sees his fiancée Hero making love to another man the night before his wedding (it is actually Hero's maid Margaret dressed in her clothes). This enrages Claudio so much that he calls of the wedding from the altar the next day.
• In the Andrew Lloyd Webber adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom witnesses Christine and Raoul have a romantic duet at the end of the first act, which spurs him to declare revenge on both of them and leads to the famous chandelier drop.
• The Ring of the Nibelung:
  • In some stagings of Das Rheingold, such as the 2006 Copenhagen production, Wotan openly flirts with Erda and kisses her in front of his long-suffering wife Fricka. In the Copenhagen production, Fricka breaks down crying at the sight, and even the return of her sister from captivity (which was arranged thanks to Erda's prompting) can't console her at first.
  • In Twilight of the Gods, Brunnhilde is dumbfounded when she sees her adored husband Siegfried happily preparing to marry Gutrune. Siegfried has been brainwashed, but she doesn't know that at the moment.
• In Simon Boccanegra, as Paolo Albiani is dragged off to the gallows, he is also forced to hear the wedding celebration of Amelia Grimaldi (on whom he has a Villainous Crush) and Gabriele Adorno. He brokenly cries out "The horror! the horror!" when he hears it.
• In The Snow Maiden, the Snow Maiden has to watch her sweetheart Lel kiss Kupava in front of everyone, after the Tsar tells Lel to pick a girl to kiss in reward for his beautiful song. Later she secretly watches Lel and Kupava declare their love for each other, which leads her to realise she lacks something Kupava has (being a Tragic Ice Character, the Snow Maiden can feel platonic love but has zero concept of passion and sexual relations).
• In The Tsars Bride, Ivan Lykov, being a classic Tenor Boy, is unaware that his alleged friend and best man Gryaznoi is madly in love with his bride Marfa. Therefore, Lykov and Marfa happily celebrate their engagement right in front of him. Gryaznoi seems calm and happy for them, but that's because he is planning to slip a Love Potion into Marfa's goblet right during the engagement toast.

Video Games

• At the end of King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, Alexander interrupts the wedding of Abdul and Cassima to try and free his beloved Cassima from his evil clutches. When he gets there, though, Cassima not only insists she loves Adbul, but also coldly demands that Alexander get killed for his interruption. Of course, it's actually Adbul's genie in disguise as her, but Alexander is still shaken by it and sadly admits he might've been wrong the whole time.
• In Divinity: Original Sin II, if you have the Red Prince as a party member and allow him to enter Sadha's carriage with her, you can take a peek at the two having sex. Eventually, however, the Red Prince will discover and demand an explanation, where one of the options is this trope - saying you're jealous of Sadha.

Web Original

• In Brig Scarlet Flamingo, after Joseph has his Love at First Sight moment with Yvonne, he is forced to watch her talking tenderly and kissing with her fiance Jerome. Since he immediately realises she is rich and he at that point is a vagabond who thinks his Glory Days are gone, he doesn't harbour any resentment towards it and, in fact, the sight of the couple prompts him to return Yvonne's engagement ring which he had previously stolen from her in a crowd before actually seeing the girl face to face.

Web Video

• The Cry of Mann: Jouglat had a crush on Martinez since they met, but she doesn't return his feelings. She does, however, have a not-so-secret crush on his sister, Berry. When he catches them together, listening to one of Tank's tapes and having a private moment, he gets insanely jealous. It helps spur him further into his drinking and Sanity Slippage.
• Played for Laughs in Danny Gonzalez's "POV: I'm Your Vampire Dad" video. One skit involves a couple out at a dance when the protagonist's ex shows up. Afraid to see him, they try to leave, but their serial-killer boyfriend says he'll handle it. It seems like he's about to fight the ex away... but they start making out instead. The protagonist is horrified by this, and they both rudely demand they back off. As a result, they get attacked by their Vampire Dad.

Western Animation

• Iron Man: Armored Adventures: Tony and Pepper's slowburn is filled with these moments.
  • Pepper sees Tony's moments with Whitney while they are dating. When Tony thinks he is going to die on an Iron Man mission, he asks Pepper to say goodbye to Whitney for him. Ouch.
  • Tony sees Pepper with Gene and Happy. He gets jealous when Pepper walks Gene out and when Pepper asks out Happy in front of him (twice). He also gets jealous when Pepper mentions she has a date with Happy in another episode.
• The Legend of Korra: After a few episodes of Belligerent Sexual Tension, Korra finally makes a move and kisses Mako... right as poor Bolin shows up with a bouquet, intending to confess his feelings to her. Witnessing this spurs him to run away in tears; Mako goes after him, making the already awkward moment even worse.
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Anakin and Padme have to keep their marriage a secret. She is sent on several diplomatic missions that include an old flame of hers, Rush Clovis. Rush keeps trying to rekindle things between them, while she accepts his advances and responds in kind without actually getting involved with him again. Whenever Anakin is present, he can't keep himself from getting angry and jealous.

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