Psychotic Love Triangle

Personally, I'd prefer the high-carbon steel to the stainless, plus heft and grip make a big difference...oh, wait, this is about the girls?

A Love Triangle where at least two of the members are mutually crazy in love with the hypotenuse. Leads to a massive amount of drama and generally lots of violence and attempts to Murder the Hypotenuse, only now it's working both ways, and if the third member of the trio is not mentally unstable and violent, expect them to suffer quite a bit. Sometimes though, the third member of the trio can be as crazy, if not more so, than the aforementioned crazies. And if they aren't, they may be soon enough thanks to the other two. It may overlap with Bisexual Love Triangle if there is a Depraved Homosexual or Psycho Lesbian character.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Adekan: Anri flip-flops between Yandere and Cute and Psycho for his brother Shiro and Kojiro both of whom have Ho Yay with each other. Sakura is one to his "big brother" Shinohome who also becomes more obsessed with Shiro after he manages to cut his hair to escape from him when he made him his Sex Slave with him doing morally objectionable things when trying to get him back.
• Black Butler features Grell who has an attraction towards numerous characters, especially Sebastian, and especially if they are strong. Unfortunately for Grell, Sebastian is too focused on and devoted to eating the soul of Ciel and is implied to have yandere tendencies towards him. Madame Red had a thing for her sister's lover and went crazy because she was refused and had an accident which made it so she couldn't have a baby. She also flirts with Sebastian and has Grell in love with her and later killing her. Season two has Sebastian acting especially possessive towards Ciel, Claude fighting with Sebastian for Ciel's soul, and Alois is yandere for Claude who also ends up killing him and is jealous of Ciel as a result. Baron Kelvin also was yandere for Ciel as well as Undertaker to a more ambiguous extent. When Baron Kelvin first met a 7-year-old Ciel at a party held by Vincent Phantomhive, he immediately fell in love with him and came to worship him, viewing him as special and beautiful. However, he decided that only special people can touch other special people, and decided to undergo numerous plastic surgeries on his face with parts taken from actual children in order to become more beautiful to suit Ciel.
• Bleach: Loly and Menolly both think they have a love rival in Orihime because they believe Aizen has an interest in her. So they beat her up and attempt to kill her. However, Aizen has no interest in any of them. Loly also seemed to have quite a bit of Foe Romance Subtext towards Orihime.
• Death Note: Kiyomi Takada and Misa Amane vie for the affections of Light Yagami, who is not in love with anyone. Both women qualify as complete yanderes, but Light is just as crazy, if not more so, than either of them. Misa also seeks the psychopathic Light's affections and instead finds herself the object of L's attraction - that is, when he's not torturing her for information (or perhaps especially then?). Then there's the pounds of Foe Romance Subtext hints that Light may have a thing for L, which may or may not be reciprocated, despite the fact that L knows he's a Serial Killer and Light later kills him.
• In the manga Desire Climax both Hina and Shoei demonstrate some Yandere tendencies towards Mio.
• El Cazador de la Bruja: Rosenberg and L.A. are yandere for Ellis who has something for Nadie.
• In Ergo Proxy both Daedalus and Iggy are yandere for Re-I.
• The Flowers of Evil: Eventually gets to this point with Saeki and Nakamura being the yanderes for Kasuga.
• The Yuno-Yukiteru-Akise triangle from Future Diary, with Yukiteru being stuck between the uber-Yandere Yuno and the more subtle, but still violently obsessive Akise.
• Girls Bravo has two Yandere love triangles in the anime. Namely, Lisa and Yukina are both Yandere for Yukinari and Kosame, and Hijiri are both Yandere for Kirie. Played for laughs.
• Gravitation: Both Shuichi and Tohma are yandere for Yuki who is in a relationship with Shuichi who is the object of a crush from Ryuichi who is the object of a yandere crush from Tatsuma who also molests Shuichi as he resembles Ryuichi.
• Happy Sugar Life: Satou and Mitsuboshi are both completely obsessed with Shio. Satou kidnapped Shio and confined her to her apartment, which causes Shio’s brother Asahi to put up missing posters. When Mitsuboshi sees one of these posters shortly after being kidnapped and raped by his boss, he becomes convinced Shio is the one who will “cleanse” him, and takes a bunch of the posters to hang up in his room and carrying around one that he frequently sniffs. Unlike most examples of this trope, Satou is more than willing to use Mitsuboshi’s feelings for Shio to manipulate him into helping her get rid of Asahi. Oh yeah, and Satou and Mitsuboshi are both teenagers while Shio is eight years old.
• In Haru To Natsu, Makoto finds himself stuck between the two twins Haruna and Natsumi who viciously fight over who will win him, to the point of tying him up, threatening him with a knife, and attempting to rape him.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers has the Belarus/Russia/Lithuania love triangle. Belarus likes Russia, Russia likes Lithuania, Lithuania likes Belarus, and it goes downhill from there.
• Hot Gimmick has the Azusa, Ryoki, and Hatsumi love triangle. Between Ryoki and Azusa, poor Hatsumi is like some kind of Yandere-magnet.
• Played with in some Mayu Shinjo mangas. At first the male love interest will be a Yandere and Fetishized Abuser while his Girl Next Door girlfriend will be more or less normal. Then, the girl who will appear to challenge said Girl Next Door will turn out to be a Yandere Clingy Jealous Girl... meaning that the two yanderes do not compete for someone else, but the crazy dude is the target of both a crazy girl and a non-crazy one.
  • Sensual Phrase: Sakuya (Fetishized Abuser), Aine (Normal Girl), Ayako (Yandere girl)
    • And played straighter with Sakuya (Fetishized Abuser), Aine (Normal Girl), and Tomoyuki (siscon love rival)
  • Haou Airen: Hakuron (Fetishized Abuser), Kurumi (Normal Girl), Reilan (Yandere girl)
  • Akuma na Eros: Satan (Fetishized Abuser - and yes, it's THAT Satan), Miu (Normal Girl), Sara (Yandere girl)
• Okane ga Nai has both Tokigawa and Kanou acting like yandere to Ayase.
• The 90s Sailor Moon anime has Prince Diamond acting like a Yandere towards her when she's already in love with Mamoru/Darien and Emerald acting like a Yandere towards Prince Diamond. Another yandere love triangle consists of Ali having a crush on Usagi and Ann having a crush on Mamoru when Usagi loves Mamoru and Mamoru doesn't even remember Usagi, thanks to amnesia. There's also Queen Beryl, Dark Lady, Fish Eye (anime only), Fiore (movie), Nehelenia (anime only) all developing villainous crushes on Mamoru some to a yandere extent.
• Sakura Gari has two of them:
  • There is initially a love triangle between Souma, Masataka, and Sakurako. With Souma rather obsessively pining (to a Yandere-like degree) after Masataka, who has a huge crush on Sakurako, who is a Yandere for her brother Souma.
  • When Souma mellows out and stops being Yandere, Depraved Bisexual Dr. Katsuragi comes into view, making both him and Sakurako Yandere for Souma. Katsuragi loved Souma since they were children, and is upset that Souma loves Masataka so he rapes and tortures Masataka with the intent to drive him away from Souma. Masataka escapes but is left scarred and traumatised. Souma finds out, confronts Katsuragi on his bullshit, and deals him a brutal Humiliation Conga... that Katsuragi's wife transforms into Karmic Death. As for Sakurako, she eventually snaps so badly that she tries to kill Souma and Masataka, then is Driven to Suicide.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, although replace drama with comedy. Though, here, it's more like a Yandere Love Dodecahedron. They tried to make it more like a "Love Sphere"...but you can guess what happened to most of the people.
• Seraph of the End:
  • Ferid acting as a Depraved Bisexual yandere towards numerous people like Krul especially, Mika, and Yuu. Mika and Yuu meanwhile are implied to have feelings for each other, but still do show fair signs of being hetero, which Ferid seems to like getting in the way of and Mika can be possessive over Yuu. Mika even cuts off Ferid's arm for trying to drink Yuu's blood and later loses it when Ferid actually does.
  • There's also Ferid/Mika/Krul. As noted above, Ferid stated he loves Krul, and one can guess he didn't take it well when Krul, um, KISSED MIKA ON THE LIPS. Yeah. This ends on a Tear Jerker in the Season 2 finale when he subdues Krul and forces her away from Mika, and pretty much everything that happens to Krul afterwards is pure Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel.
• Tokyo Ghoul initially has both Rize and Tsukiyama mixing murderous and amorous attentions to Kaneki. Tsukiyama retains his feelings for Kaneki into the sequel and it also features Kanae who is Yandere for Tsukiyama, Romo wanting to ruin Sasaki's life in order to get him to become the beautiful and tragic Kaneki she adores, and Eto varying between trying to kill Kaneki and declaring her love for him because of his violence towards her. Also there's a popular fan theory that Touka initially had yandere feelings for Kaneki as she brutally beat the crap out of him while verbally attacking him for leaving her and now in chapter 114 of re Mutsuki has joined the fray as he has a violent and romantic obsession with Sasaki/Kaneki. Matsuri is implied to be a yandere in regards to his feelings for Urie and Urie is violently protective with an implied crush for Mutsuki.
• In an Imagine Spot in the first episode of Tsugou no Yoi Sexfriend, the main character sees all five of his sexfriends as knife-wielding nutcases.
• The yaoi manga Under Grand Hotel has Swordfish being a Yandere for Sen who loves Swordfish back. There's also Norman who's in love with Swordfish but pretended to be in love with Sen so he could get closer to Swordfish. He tried to persuade Swordfish to kill Sen but that didn't work. So, on one occasion when there was a scuffle going on he tried to get Sen out of the way by stabbing him with a pencil but accidentally ends up stabbing his inmate Walter instead who was trying to protect Sen in the hope of getting protection from Swordfish. When he finds this out, Norman holds a knife to Walter's neck telling him, "If you don't want to die, don't butt in again Walter!" And in the first few scenes we see Lain Brody, he gives Sen a blowjob, strips him, drugs him, and outright molests him as he's drugged (including telling him "No way in hell am I letting Swordfish kill you. Because he doesn't love you. I'm the only one that can kill you."), rapes him with a mop handle, ties him up, and hides him in a dryer. And when Swordfish finds Sen he gives him CPR. Lain responds to this by stabbing Fish in the arm with a fork and tries to stab him again while screaming at him, "Get off of Sen! He belongs to me!" Immediately after that Lain is shot and killed by security guards.
• Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest has an interesting (and nightmarish) example in that both Ryuuko and Haguro are Yandere for Inugami's more violent side, and lust after him. They are also in a sexual relationship with each other and think about Inugami while having sex. When the two of them find out that Inugami, who wants nothing to do with either of them, has started developing feelings for his teacher Aoshika...it gets ugly. Very, VERY ugly.
• Wolf's Rain: Jagura, a Yandere, is in love with Darcia who's a Yandere for her twin sister.

Audio Plays

• Kankinkon's third generation is made of this. The heroine avoids becoming a yandere herself since her family curse (in which nearly all of the blood-related men become psychotically obsessed with the girls they're interested in) was lifted just before she was born; in exchange, all of her childhood friends from different families are the psychotic suitors.
• In Yandere Heaven the listener/heroine is trapped between two yandere males - the situation changes between each volume. The Yaoi Genre Spin-Off Yandere Heaven BLack has a male trapped between two Yandere men as well.
• Yandere no Onna no Ko is essentially the same as Yandere Heaven with the genders flipped.

Comic Books

• During Superman's Red and Blue period, the split Supermen had to contend with both Maxima and Obsession showing up at the Fortress of Solitude at the same time. While Maxima was horrified by Superman's situation, Obsession's reaction was that they now had one each.
• While "love" is quite a stretch, Spider-Man, Eddie Brock, and the Venom symbiote have one of these. The Venom symbiote is a Yandere for Peter that wants to kill Peter so no one can have him, Eddie is a Yandere for the Symbiote that wants to Murder the Hypotenuse, Peter.

Fan Works

• Expendable Assets: Izuku is pursued by two yanderes, Himiko Toga and Ochako Uraraka, and Mad Scientist Mei Hatsume. He picks Himiko, and the other two eventually get over it.
• Thousand Shinji: The three members of the triangle are psychopathic in this story due to their allegiance to the Chaos Gods. Asuka (a Hot-Blooded, berserker Tsundere) and Rei (a Creepy Child Yandere) love Shinji (a Manipulative Bastard and Jerkass). Shinji is in love with Asuka and regards Rei like a sister. Rei gets frustrated about it and often fantasizes about getting Asuka killed, but she dreads what Shinji would do to her in retaliation. At the same time, Asuka is very violently protective of Shinji and would slay with extreme prejudice whoever tried to take him away from her. A battle to the death, a murder attempt, and much drama and enmity later, the situation was peacefully settled when they agreed to have a three-ways relationship.
  Shinji: I can see where this is going. Fuck...caught in a love triangle between a Khornate berserker and my Nurgle sister.

Films — Live-Action

• Stoker has India/Charlie/Evelyn. Charlie's a murderer and has been since he was a child, not to mention infatuated with his own niece. India, the niece in question, seems sane enough at first, but she's a creepily emotionless Nightmare Fetishist as well as a murderer herself by the end. Evelyn is the "normal" one, but even she's rather unstable — she's just not violently unstable.

Literature

• Ai no Kusabi has Riki being in a Love Triangle with Iason and Guy, who are both dangerously obsessive of him. It went From Bad to Worse.
• In Bakemonogatari, Hitagi shows some Yandere tendencies towards boyfriend Koyomi at times. Suruga is Yandere for Hitagi and directs some lewd behavior towards Koyomi.
• The Ian McEwan story The Comfort of Strangers is about a couple who become obsessed with the protagonist's beautiful boyfriend, and ultimately murder him together.
• Dog & Scissors: Both Kirihime and Madoka have the hots for Kazuhito. Subverted, because Madoka calms down after Kirihime scolds and defeats her.
• Durarara!! has Namie and Mika towards Seiji. Though it's later subverted when it's revealed that Seiji is not only as crazy as them, he's also in love with Celty's head.
• In The Rising of the Shield Hero, Motoyasu's death resulted due to him not wanting to choose one of his two female friends over the other. Both girls responded by stabbing him to death while arguing over who would go to heaven with him.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, there's Lysa towards Petyr, and Petyr towards Lysa's older sister Cat. Lysa raped Petyr whilst he was drugged, delirious and insensible twice in the backstory, with him possibly believing she was her sister. Petyr, who Used to Be a Sweet Kid, was left unhinged and bitter after being rejected by Catelyn, so he decided to [deep breath] manipulate Lysa into killing her husband and accusing House Lannister of the murder, all in order to draw Catelyn's own husband, Ned, to the Decadent Court of Westeros, driving a wedge of tension between Houses Stark and Lannister. The end result: Ned was executed for treason, fanning the flames of aforementioned tension, which grew into a spectacularly bloody, continent-wide civil war, leaving thousands dead, the land ravaged and the economy hanging on by a thread just before the start of a winter that could last for generations! All of this, just because Petyr Did Not Get the Girl! The guy takes Yandere to a whole new level of insanity.
• Agatha Christie's short story "Triangle At Rhodes" features two couples: one consists of Valentine Chantry, who is on her fourth husband and seems to have no real regard for his feelings, and her very possessive, jealous husband, Tony. The other consists of Marjorie Gold, a very kind, plain woman who is desperately in love with her husband Douglas, who seems to be infatuated with Valentine (who is returning his feelings). When Valentine is murdered, it looks as though Douglas attempted to kill Tony so he and Valentine could get together, but actually got Valentine instead by pure accident. In reality, there were actually two love triangles: the fake one (Tony/Valentine/Douglas) and the real one (Marjorie/Tony/Douglas). Valentine and Douglas had no serious feelings for each other, but Marjorie made it look like they did- she wanted to start a relationship with Tony, and they felt that the best way to get rid of their partners would be to murder Valentine and pin it on Douglas, who would subsequently be hanged. Poirot sees through it instantly.

Live-Action TV

• In American Horror Story: Cult, Ally Mayfair-Richards is married to Ivy, who despite initially seeming to be a supportive wife is actually in on the titular Cult, and in fact actively hates Ally, having sent the Cult after her to drive her insane and get full custody of their son. Their babysitter, Winter, is Obviously Evil and is working for her brother's nefarious plans, and Winter ends up fingering Ally in her bathtub, with Ally dubiously at best consenting to this. Exaggerated after both the reveal that Ivy and Winter were actually having an affair, as well as Ally later murdering Ivy as well as framing Winter as The Mole and getting her killed by Kai.
• Bates Motel: Norma Bates, an emotionally scarred Broken Bird, sadly finds herself caught in the middle of choosing to be with the Only Sane Man Sheriff Romero or her own son Norman Bates. Norman is the dangerous one and views her relationship with Romero as a serious act of betrayal. Romero loves her but thinks Norman is dangerous and doesn't understand the incestuous codependency which has made them both this way. Thus Norma is torn between her feelings for Romero and her toxic relationship with Norman.
• In season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampiress Drusilla is caught between her longtime lover and caretaker Spike, and her freshly de-souled beloved "Daddy" Angelus. Considering they're all soulless vampires at the time, there's not a healthy dynamic in sight.
• In Cold Case episode "Love Conquers Al" a teenage truck runner girl has the misfortune of falling for a popular jock that already had a girlfriend. She has an affair with him. The jock comes clean with his girlfriend and she resolves that the best way to move on from his cheating is to ''murder'' the other girl. And he goes along with it. At the end of the episode they're lifer lovebirds.
• Magnificent Century with Mahidevran, Hürrem, and Süleyman.
• In the fifth season of The Walking Dead, a girl named Jesse Anderson is caught in the middle of a love triangle between her husband Pete Anderson and Rick Grimes. Since the zombie apocalypse brings out the best and the worst in both men it's very complicated for her to choose who she feels safer with. It ends with Rick coming out on top after he kills Pete in self-defense.
  • Season 7 gives us Negan, Dwight, and Sherry. Dwight and Sherry were married, but after their attempt to flee went wrong, Sherry agreed to become Negan's wife in order to save Dwight's life. Unfortunately, Negan is an Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild, Sherry is still in love with Dwight, and Dwight does whatever Negan tells him to.

Video Games

• Dante's Inferno: The innocent Devout-Christian Beatrice finds herself being fought over by her emotionally scarred, sinner husband Dante and the devil himself, who desires her as his queen in Hell.
• Irisu Syndrome!. Irisu likes Uuji. Ageha also likes Uuji, but she's not a yandere for him. No, the second yandere in this triangle is Uuji, who likes Irisu but has completely messed up ways of showing it.
• Mica: Apoptosis: Dynasty is in a Psychopathic Love Triangle with Mika and Tamora. Chances are, however, that he doesn't know the former is a Yandere, but he surely knows the latter is one. He was so terrified of Tamora that he fled his country to escape her, but not before she poisoned him. When he survived the poisoning thanks to Mika's healing, Tamora arrived looking for him. Mika managed to out-Yandere her by snapping her neck and ripping her into pieces using her psychokinesis.
• When Yanderes Cry gives poor Nishiki a Psychopathic Love Rectangle, which interferes when his relationship with his girlfriend.
• Happens in Yanderella with both true ends. Yatarou is friends with a Girly Girl and a Tsundere Tomboy, both of who are madly in love with him. Either way you choose, you'll make one angry and awaken the beast within her.

Visual Novels

• My Harem Heaven is Yandere Hell has a Psychopathic Love Rectangle with The Protagonist and his three Childhood Friends.
• School Days has Makoto in the middle of a Love Triangle with two Yanderes, Kotonoha and Sekai. The Anime/Manga/Visual Novel Trope Codifier. Note that despite the infamy the franchise has, in the original visual novel this is largely downplayed. Kotonoha and Sekai are both quite unstable, but most of the time it doesn't escalate into violence.
• Starstruck Love gives you the option of pursuing two of these. The only way to escape the psychopathic part is to accept one of the four guys for who he is... If you don't, someone (including you) may be killed.
• Yandere I Love You So I Want To Kill You has a love rectangle like the one mentioned above, only it involves one childhood friend, a teacher, and an underclassman. Oh, and there's a lot of sex involved.

Web Videos

• Channel Awesome had a triangle of rejection between The Nostalgia Chick, Todd in the Shadows and Obscurus Lupa. The last one didn't do anything, but Todd bordered Stalker with a Crush towards her — and did weird stuff trying to woo her — and the Chick in turn went as far as kidnap Todd to get his attention. (Todd and the Chick were dating at the time in real life, and this triangle was abandoned after both To Boldly Flee solved it in-universe and Lupa being Mis-blamed on the dismissal of another reviewer made Todd uncomfortable).

Western Animation

• On South Park, Satan is in a relationship with nice-but-boring Chris when his ex-lover, Saddam Hussein, returns to Hell. Saddam kills Chris to get Satan back; since he's dead again, Chris just reappears in Hell the next day. Saddam refuses to make peace with Chris and kills him again, only for Chris to start fighting back, and the Love Triangle quickly descends into the two of them murdering each other each day as Satan equivocates about who he wants to be with.

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