Perverted Sniffing

"I was just imagining a rope around that beautiful neck."

Kirito: Look, I don't know how much you paid the old man, but I hope you kept a receipt. Funny enough, Asuna's already married — to me! I-I mean, it was in a video game, so I don't know how legally binding it is, but still, it's the principle of — oh, God, what are you doing?
Sugou: [sinister chuckle] She smells like innocence...!

— Sword Art Online Abridged Episode 12

When a character audibly sniffs another character or something that would carry their scent, indicating they have an unhealthy and often very creepy attraction to them. Usually smelling hair or discarded articles of clothing.

See also Smells Sexy, Perverted Drooling, and Lecherous Licking.

Please use editorial caution with Real Life examples and limit them to cases widely reported in the news by reliable sources. Extra caution is warranted due to the Sex Tropes rule to not give Real Life examples for sexual issues.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Played for Laughs in Asteroid in Love. Moe Suzuya seems to have a thing for this for the other girls she likes. For example, she states an advantage of Ao moving into Misa's room is that she can get both their scents often.
• Black Butler II: In the first episode Alois basically flirts with Sebastian via leaning into him and smelling him, pronouncing that he "smells good".
• Kosukegawa sniffs Motoko's bra (which snapped due to the Breast Expansion that occurred when Motoko's buxom Split Personality Mikiri took over her body) in Change 123.
• The Dangers in My Heart: Yamada was subtly implied to have been getting a whiff of Ichikawa's jersey, after they get both of theirs mixed up after gym class in chapter 33. Given the motion of her holding it as if to pull it from her face, Ichikawa finding rice on the collar (Rice that was on Yamada's face after a bowlful from lunch) and Yamada's blushing red face when he points it out. The anime drops all the subtlety and just shows her going at it.
  • She later tries squeezing out some of the men's wash while taking a bath at Ichikawa's house. Only to retreat into the water when Ichikawa comes in with his sister's clothes.
• Dragon Ball: Krillin sniffs a Dragon ball that had been hidden in Bulma's panties. It's arguable whether this was out of perversion or to confirm his baffled suspicion about where exactly Bulma was hiding it.
• The Flowers of Evil: Kickstarts the plot. Nakamura catches Kasuga sniffing his crush Saeki's clothes, and proceeds to blackmail him.
• Fruits Basket: In episode 5 there's a rather funny scene where Shigure sniffs a strawberry-decorated towel that Tohru left behind. Yuki and Kyou beat him up upon seeing this.
• In Hekikai No Aion, Sheila smells Tatsuya's necktie when she's all alone in the infirmary. Hilarity Ensues when Tatsuya enters.
• Imaizumin-chi wa Douyara Gal no Tamariba ni Natteru Rashii: ~DEEP~: During the hot day, Reina, Yukina and Keita decide to check each other's sweat smell. Ruri comes home, finds them, and shoots them with a water rifle.
• In Koharu no Hibi Koharu does this in regards to Akira who she's Yandere for and doesn't want to forget his smell.
• Tohru does this with one of Kobayashi's shirts in chapter 3 of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Of course, she was sniffing a shirt that she had just finished washing, so there wasn't any scent left.
• In Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Beltorchika does this to the famous Amuro Ray shortly after she meets him, with the excuse that he uses her favorite soap.
• In the No. 6 manga, a top official sniffs Dogkeeper's neck (instead of resorting to Lecherous Licking like in the anime) because he thinks they're a prostitute, much to their disgust.
• When Outlaw Star: Gene first fights Suzuka, he makes her stumble by grabbing her sash. It comes off and he proceeds to unabashedly sniff it, much to Suzuka's embarrassment.
• Persona 4: The Animation has one of Shadow Kanji's beefcake compatriots taking a deep whiff of Chie. This understandably creeps her out.
• Played With by Cloudcuckoolander Mari in Rebuild of Evangelion, who has a habit of sniffing Shinji because she's a Blood Knight who likes the smell of LCL from piloting EVAs, despite how flustered it leaves him. She continues this habit after the two end up together, having grown to enjoy his scent in particular.
• In Sarazanmai, a flashback shows Enta covertly sniffing Kazuki's gym clothes, revealing that he's attracted to him.
• In the Street Fighter manga, E.Honda takes advantage of having Chun-Li locked in a grab to sniff her. She is not pleased.
• In Sukisho episode 2 Yoru smells the perfume that Ran applied (he was forced to dress up as a princess).
• Tsukiyama Shuu from Tokyo Ghoul does this to Kaneki on multiple occasions. While there is some justification in that Ghouls have keener senses than humans and others had commented on Kaneki's unusual scent, Tsukiyama takes it to entirely different levels and beyond. After getting some of Kaneki's blood on a handkerchief, he keeps it in a plastic bag for months and periodically takes it out and huffs it like a junkie.
• Sword Art Online: Kirito and the audience first discover Sugou Nobuyuki's true colors when, after Asuna's father leaves her hospital room, he sniffs the comatose Asuna's hair. Then we discover he went so far as to recreate Asuna's real-life scent in ALO.
  Sugou: And don't even get me started on how... hard it was to get an analyzer into your hospital room undetected.
• Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches: Yamada does this to his own body when he has swapped bodies with Shiraishi, and she shines up his body with some beauty products. Also does it to Odagiri when she hugs him.

Comic Books

• Preacher: As part of his Sub-Par Supremacist schtick, the leader of the Klansmen is mentioned to have almost been prosecuted for an incident involving sniffing seats, though he bought off the lawmen.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Spoiler Character MaNi/Elder Brother does this quite a bit to Monster X, using his tongue to smell.
• Advice and Trust: Prior to the two of them hooking up, Asuka had stolen one of Shinji's sleep-shirts for this purpose. She later ended up using it as a security blanket of sorts after a particularly bad nightmare (Misato was forcing the two of them to sleep in separate beds at the time, so she couldn't hug Shinji for comfort).
  His scent... she couldn't have him next to her right now, but she could still fall asleep with his smell there. Maybe that would extend a little of its protective power.
• In the WD Zorro fanfic The Eagle's Gaze, the antagonist does this to Esperanza twice.
• In the Cardcaptor Sakura fic Shadow of the Dragon, Syaoran succumbs to temptation while waiting for Sakura to finish getting ready for a shopping trip and sniffs the panties she had worn to bed. Unfortunately, Sakura reenters the room and catches him in the act.
• Sword Art Online Abridged plays Sugou's sniffing fetish dead seriously, like in the source anime. Kirito, on the other hand, openly calls him on it... among other things.
• The Ultimate Evil: Shendu does this a few times to Valerie, the target of his Villainous Crush. At one point he's enjoying the remains of her scent on the book she had hidden in her trousers.

Films — Animated

• Frollo sniffs Esmeralda's hair in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (pictured above).
  Esmeralda: What are you doing?
  Frollo: I was just imagining a rope around that beautiful neck.
  Esmeralda: (breaks his grip) I know what you were imagining!
  Frollo: Such a clever witch. So typical of your kind to twist the truth. To cloud the mind with unholy thoughts.
• Don Juan from The Legend of the Titanic continually sniffs Elizabeth's glove.

Films — Live-Action

• Blade Runner: While Priss is in J.F. Sebastian's apartment, she sniffs him while he's sleeping. She had acted (and would later act) in a seductive way toward him.
• Paul Gallier does this to his estranged sister Irena in the 1982 remake of Cat People. However, they are, of course werecats and it's a part of their animalistic bonding ritual. Paul wants Irena to be his mate.
• During a party scene in The Dark Knight, the Joker circles around Rachel and appears to sniff her.
• Debbie in Devil in the Flesh, a dangerous Stalker with a Crush for her teacher, sneaks around his house at one point and sniffs his shirts in his closet.
• James Bond himself sniffs Miss Taro's towel in Dr. No after he surprises her by making it to her apartment alive and she goes to pick up the telephone.
• Ever After: Monsieur le Peu sniffs Danielle's hair after he buys her.
• The elevator scene in Final Destination 2.
• The Funhouse Massacre: When Jeffrey Rameses is patting down a park goer for anything that's not allowed in the park, he then takes the time to sniff her hair afterwards.
• Alec Trevalyen does this to Natalya in GoldenEye.
• Harry Potter: Scabior, the head Snatcher in Deathly Hallows to Hermione. After he captures Hermione, he calls her "My lovely" and sniffs her hair.
• Alvin Marsh in It (2017) does this... to his own daughter, Beverly. The next scene shows her hacking off her long, beautiful hair in disgust.
• In The Locals, Nev sniffs Kelly's hair while he is holding her arms pinned and says that "She smells nice!"
• The Lover. When her elder brother confronts The Girl about the illicit affair she's having with a wealthy Chinese playboy, she denies it, so he searches her suitcase and sniffs her underwear, telling her accusingly, "It smells of Chinese." Given that The Girl has an Incest Subtext with both her brothers, this trope is implied.
• In The Mask, Charlie does this to Tina's coat that she gave him.
• The Mountie: While searching Amethyst's tent, Damoslav sniffs her underwear.
• In A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) remake, Freddy sniffs Nancy during a nightmare she's having.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: When the tramp steamer captain is trying to bluff the Nazis into thinking he killed Indiana Jones in order to get Marion, he takes a lock of her hair and sniffs it.
• Serenity: It's more a case of Cloud Cuckoo Lander than attraction, but in the background of the video Kaylee shoots of Inara leaving her shuttle, River can be seen quite deliberately sniffing Inara's bed.
• Occurs with Clu to Quorra in TRON: Legacy.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: In this commercial, Quicksilver smells the hair of a female student at Xavier's school that he's infatuated with.
• Zack Snyder's Justice League: When Aquaman leaves the remote Icelandic village he's been helping, several Nordic beauties sing an Icelandic lament. While the lyrics aren't translated, the romantic subtext is made obvious when one of the women picks up the coat Aquaman left on the shoreline and smells it.

Literature

• Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Tisala sniffs Ward's clothes. It comes across as rather romantic, as she is in love with him, and he with her, and not very perverted, as he has, always the gentleman, invited her to use his bedroom, including the bed, as it is one of the few actual rooms in his place. So she's not invading his personal space, he has invited her in.
• Lolita: After Dolores is packed off to summer camp, a depressed Humbert throws himself into a pile of her clothes in her bedroom, quickly disentangling himself when the maid comes upstairs with a message. This scene is shown in the 1997 film adaptation (the 1962 Stanley Kubrick film has Humbert sniffing her pillow instead).

Live-Action TV

• Batwoman (2019): A tearjerker version occurs when Sophie Moore sniffs her ex-lover Kate Kane's jumper while searching her apartment after she's apparently killed in a plane crash.
• Boardwalk Empire: Agent Van Alden is so obsessed with Margaret Schroeder that he once stole and sniffed her hair ribbon.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • In "Shadow", Spike enters Buffy's room while she's not home and sniffs one of her sweaters; when confronted, he claims it's a "predator thing."
    • In "The Pack", Xander is possessed by the spirit of a hyena and starts sniffing Buffy's hair, a prelude to his Attempted Rape later on.
    • And the situation is reversed in "Beer Bad" when Buffy becomes a Nubile Savage and starts sniffing Xander. Made even more triangular when, at the end of the episode, Willow is seated on a park bench with Buffy crouched next to her and Buffy sniffs her hair as well.
  • A sign of Angel's breakdown in "Dear Boy" when Darla has been giving him Erotic Dreams — at one stage he's standing behind Cordelia and starts sniffing her hair, causing her to run off. "Personal space bubble!"
• CSI had an episode called 'The Panty Sniffer'. Someone decided to make money selling panties for this kind of thing.
• Doctor Who: In "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", a heroic case occurs with Queen Nefertiti doing this while flirting with the Doctor.
• Niles in Frasier likes to sniff Daphne's hair (when he's not going with the Longing Look), though of the non-perverted variety.
• Game of Thrones: The Titan's Bastard has a good sniff at Missandei's groin as she pours him wine, making her very uncomfortable.
• Hannibal: The title character does this to Will Graham multiple times. Of course, he has Super-Senses and is a cannibal, but he's a lot subtler about it with other people.
  • Lampshaded in the promotional material. "Did you just smell me?"
• Heroes: Sylar does this to Claire once he manages to get her separated from Nathan and Peter. Claire is very much not amused.
  Sylar: [after sniffing her hair] God, this is so much fun.
• Alexander the Great sniffs his general's (presumably Hephaistion, Alexander's historical lover) hair in Horrible Histories's "Alexandria" sketch as a Throw It In! by the actor. Note that Horrible Histories is a family show.
• On iCarly, when meeting Carly for the first time, Nevel sniffs her hair in order to smell the shampoo she uses. Needless to say, Carly's a little creeped out by this.
  • Freddie smells Shelby Marx's hair when she hugs him.
• Papa Lazarou in The League of Gentlemen once sniffed a lady's hair.
• Lucifer. In "Candy Morningstar", Maze sniffs an erotic dancer that Lucifer has hooked up with, after blatantly checking out her ass.
• Mad TV: In the first "Can I Have Your Number" sketch, Darrel at one point sniffs the girl he's hitting on.
• My Dead Ex: After she sticks him in her closet to hide, Ben instantly sniffs Charley's clothing in there. She's disgusted by this (mildly).
• In Orange Is the New Black a criminal sniffs Piper's underwear that she gives him in return for the favor of passing a note to her girlfriend Alex. Piper later uses that as incentive to sell used panties to perverted guys to make a profit.
• Oz: Keller once smells his boyfriend Beecher in "A Cock and Balls Story" and says that he "Smells Sexy". (The smell being Beecher's father's aftershave.)
• Invoked in Red Dwarf with a Noodle Incident that inspired Space Corp Directive 196156:
  "Any officer caught sniffing the saddle of the exercise bicycle in the women's gym will be discharged without trial."
• In the Smallville episode "Visage", Tina Greer sniffs Lana's underwear at one point.
• In the third season episode of The Sopranos entitled "Second Opinion", newly "made" man Christopher Moltisanti receives a surprise, late night visit at his apartment from his immediate superior in the crime family Paulie Walnuts and Patsy Parisi. The two gangsters comb through Chris and his girlfriend Adriana's belongings to cherry-pick Christopher's stolen swag. Chris catches Paulie taking a mighty sniff of a pair of panties from Adriana's lingerie drawer.
• Star Trek: Picard: Because of the Incest Subtext between Narissa and her brother Narek, when she sniffs his neck to determine if he had sex with Soji (a Romulan's olfactory sense is superior to a human's), it's a little creepy.
• Two and a Half Men: Charlie did this in the beginning of "No Sniffing, No Wowing" to one of the paralegals.
• A character on Victorious has done this to Tori, Jade, and the principal of their school.

Music

• One of the many, many skeevy things mentioned by the Stalker with a Crush in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Do I Creep You Out"?
  ''Somethin' I should ask about
  Can I sniff the pit-stains on your blouse?
  And do I creep you, do I creep you out?"

Video Games

• In the "A New Life" mission of Hitman: Blood Money, one of your options for taking out the bodyguards is pouring a bottle of ether on Vinnie's daughter's underwear, since one of the agents guarding Vinnie is a pervert who likes to sniff them.

Visual Novels

• In the eroge Snow Sakura, the protagonist Yuuiji comes across his cousin's panties, and may sniff them depend on your decision.

Web Animation

• In Bravest Warriors, Danny sniffs the pillow that Plum was sitting on.

Web Comics

• Big Break (2019): In a two-part comic, Stalker with a Crush Dara pretends to be a laundress and asks her neighbor Kris to give her all the laundry in her apartment. The reason why is because she wants to sniff and masturbate to Troy's clothes because of his musk. She ends up learning to her horror that the clothes actually belonged to Kris, not the object of her obsession.
• Homestuck has Terezi, a blind troll who uses her advanced smelling and licking abilities to see and whop massive amounts of ass with her cane.
• Super Effective: Blue/Douche takes his catchphrase "smell ya later" too literally.
• In Unsounded, resident Jerkass Starfish molests and nearly kidnaps a tied up and helpless Sette before being driven off by another character, but tears free a chunk of her hair in the process and creepily sniffs it as he retreats, remarking to himself that he knew that the victim would 'fancy' him. (She doesn't.)

Web Original

• This◊ popular image macro depicts Judas apparently sniffing Jesus and Jesus objecting that it's gay. The text◊ has◊ appeared◊ on◊ other◊ images.◊
• In the Random Encounters video "Senpai Notice Me" Yandere-chan sings about how she loves to smell her Senpai's clothes. For some context: she hid herself in some towels to grab his jacket after he stripped naked for a shower.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Fan", one shot of Sarah's video has her in Gumball's room, wearing his daytime clothes, putting the shirt he sleeps in over her face, and inhaling. It's accompanied by the line "I dressed in your clothes and breathed in your air."
• Family Guy:
  • Quagmire sniffs a lady's shoe.
  • Herbert tells God all he wants is one sniff of Chris' cap. Along comes a gust of wind, and Herbert's wish is fulfilled... except now he wants more.
  • Brian performs the normal "dog sniffing another dog's rear" greeting, but being "more person than dog", everyone looks at him like he's a perv.
• In Gravity Falls, Gideon does this, sort of subtly (but not subtly enough) while hugging Mabel in "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel".
  Mabel: Are you sniffing my hair?
• In Hey Arnold!, Curly spends one episode trying to do this to Rhonda.
  • In the movie, Helga talks about how much she loves doing this to Arnold, and later on in the movie, actually does it.
• Downplayed, but the entire plot of the Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Scent of a Hoodie" revolves around Star obsessing over the smell of an unwashed hoodie that her best friend and crush Marco accidentally left when he was last in her dimension. The episode ends with the article of clothing cleaned and returned to Marco, as which point he starts sniffing it because it now smells like Star.
• Total Drama:
  • Cody hits his low when it comes to hitting on Gwen in "Not Quite Famous". He tries to make smalltalk while she's trying to write in her diary, tries to read what she pens down, and when she keeps giving him the cold shoulder, he sniffs her hair. Gwen is disturbed and while Cody isn't done being a creep, he does realize this was not an action to ever repeat.
  • Sierra goes through Cody's backpack in "Super Crazy Happy Fun Time in Japan" and is thrilled to find her crush's shoe. She inhales deeply from it, sucking in one shoelace end that goes down her throat to emerge from her mouth.
  • Anne Maria's first impression of Ezekiel in "A Mine Is a Terrible Thing to Waste" is formed when he abducts her. Her second impression is formed when she sees his shadowy form on his throne as king of the giant mutant gophers. Her third impression is formed when he introduces his self by taking a long sniff up her body and waggles his eyebrows at her. Her response is a short but sure "Eww!"

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