Romance and love can outrank magic, technology, or even a Physical God, in influence on the progression of a story. But how it influences the story is a crapshoot.
The Good: Love acts as a Fixer Sue or Deus ex Machina, overcoming all.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Being in love instills a desire to protect.
- Love at First Sight: Instantly loving a person.
- Love Redeems: Love makes a character do a Heel–Face Turn.
- The Power of Friendship: Love for your friends empowers.
- The Power of Love: Feelings of love empowers.
- True Love's Kiss: Romantic kiss that cures ills.
The Bad: Love is an Artifact of Doom, corrupting even unambiguously good people who lack the willpower to sacrifice their relationships for their morals into a Face–Heel Turn. Murder mystery series seem to love this one.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Her love causes her to have unreasonable jealousy towards other girls who go near her guy.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: His love causes him to go psycho whenever his girl is around other guys.
- If I Can't Have You…: Unrequited love ignites violence against the one who refuses them.
- Love Makes You Evil: Being in love causes the character to throw away their morals.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Killing off someone who stands in the way of your love.
- Woman Scorned: Being dumped or rejected by her love causes her to snap and possibly kill.
- Yandere: Love causes a character to become insanely jealous and murderous towards those who seek to take their love away from them.
The Ugly: Love is an Artifact of Death, bringing doom and pain to all who encounter it.
- Cartwright Curse: Everyone The Hero loves is always fated to die.
- Destructive Romance: Love relationship that causes one or both parties nothing but heartache and possibly even death.
- Fatal Attractor: Repeatedly falling in love with immoral or mentally unwell people.
- Literal Maneater: She eats you alive.
- Love Hurts: Falling in love will get your heart broken.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Falling in love costs you your sanity.
- Love Martyr: Putting up with horrendous abuse for the sake of being with the one you love.
- Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Lovers have to deal with so much crap.
- Out with a Bang: One or both of the lovers are killed during the act.
- Roaring Rampage of Romance: Perceived threats to one's relationship trigger violent overprotectiveness.
- Sex Signals Death: Making love gets one or both of the lovers killed later on.
- Spurned into Suicide: Not getting love returned leads to taking your own life.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Lovers cannot be together and this causes them heartbreak.
The Complicated: Love is an embodiment of the Rule of Drama, making life unnecessarily complicated.
- Adrenaline Makeover: High action and tension makes a plain character into a Love Interest.
- Cock Fight: Men fight each other for a woman's affections.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Falling in love causes stupidity.
- Love Triangle: Two people love the same person, leading to drama.
- Love Dodecahedron: More than two people are caught in romantic drama.
- Strangled by the Red String: Characters fall in love but have no reason to.
- Unrequited Tragic Maiden: A woman loves a man that she just cannot seem to win, and gets a piteous fate for it.
- Will They or Won't They?: Who knows if these two will ever couple up.
