Friendly Tickle Torture

Sarah: So relinquish control of the remote into our baby sister's hands for tonight or else you will feel the wrath of my great and terrible punishment!
Erika: Great and terrible --
Sarah: TOO LATE! It's time for my super-ultra-mega... TICKLE ATTACK!
Erika: (Begins laughing uncontrollably) STOP! STOP! I GIVE!
Sarah: I dunno. I seem to have you in my grasp. You cannot free yourself from my power, can you?
Erika: (Still laughing) N-NO!
Sarah: Because you are helpless, yes? You are as helpless as the worm that fights the eagle?

Erika: (Still laughing) YES! I'LL DO...

—Erikas New Perfume

Tickle Torture, minus the malicious intent. Somewhat rare in fiction.

It should go without saying that Tickle Torture in real life is almost always of the Friendly variety. Of course, what the tickler considers friendly, the ticklee may not.

Sometimes tickling becomes Fetish Fuel.

Compare Romanticized Abuse or Casual Kink for the non-PG version.

Examples of Friendly Tickle Torture include:

Anime and Manga

• In Ichigo Mashimaro, Nobue and Miu are pretending that Miu's dead. One of Nobue's "proofs" is that Miu, despite "having been" very ticklish, doesn't react to the most severe tickling. Except that she does, of course.
• Ryo-ohki unintentionally does this to Sasami after being scared into hiding by Mirei in Tenchi Universe.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure, Tai gets tickled by his teacher after remarking that he could be an evil digimon
  • In Digimon Tamers, Growlmon gets tickled while being painted in an attempt to hide him.
  • In Digimon Frontier, Kouji is briefly tickled by Takuya and JP.
• Pico ends up on the receiving end of this in the second and third episodes of the Boku no Pico series.
• In Fairy Tail, Natsu does this to Erza after rescuing her from Jellal the first time.
• During the season finale of season 2 of Sonic X, after Rouge and Knuckles get into a fight, upon seeing Sonic has returned Knuckles cracks a joke on Rouge's ruffled appearance, leading Rouge to do you know what... offscreen
• In one of the earlier episodes of Fresh Pretty Cure, the heroines get tickled by magical erasers thanks to a playful trick by Chiffon.
• In Mahou Sensei Negima, Negi gets an accidental tickling when Ayaka asks him to lotion her back. when Negi panics and forgets, Ayaka demonstrates on Negi himself by lotioning his back, leading to you-know-where. Asuna however does NOT like this...

Comic Books

• In the X-Men comics, Nightcrawler has done this to, on various occasions, Rogue, Phoenix (Rachel), and Meggan (of Excalibur). Between his teleporting ability and his prehenisile tail, he's apparently quite good at it.
  • Hell, he's done it so much the Fandom has decided he has a tickle fetish.
    • The fact that he's done it to who he's done it to and suffered little punishment probably means something, too.

Film

• In the middle of Disney's The Sword in the Stone, When Merlin and Arthur/Wart transform into Squirrels as part of a lesson, they are encountered by two squirrels who instantly fall in love with them. The one that flirts with Merlin playfully tickles him.
• Near the beginning of Disney's The Rescuers Down Under, After Cody frees Majestic Eagle Marahute from a trap set by Mcleach, The eagle flies him around for a ride across the sky. During the event, Marahute catches Cody in her tallons and tickles his tummy while in her grasp

Music

• "Tickle Time", a song on the Sandra Boynton album "Rhinoceros Tap", is basically a song about this.

If you're feeling blue, and you don't know what to do
There is nothing like a Tickle Time to make you feel like new.
Oh there's nothing like a Tickle time to make you feel like new
So let's all get together, and we'll goochie-goochie-goo.

Literature

• Mr. Men: Doing this to people is the whole of Mr. Tickle's character.
• Happens repeatedly in the CHERUB Series to various characters, by various characters. James and Kerry seem to particularly enjoy it.
• Happens in most of Jacqueline Wilson's novels.

Live Action TV

• This is how the Ruth Buzzi episode of The Muppet Show ends, with a few of the Muppets tickling her.
• One song on Lamb Chop's Play Along is about how, while you can't tickle yourself (which is true), it is very possible for others to tickle you, as is demonstrated.
• Quite a bit in Zoboomafoo, particularly used on Zoboo himself
• In one episode of Road to Avonlea, Felicity makes a scathing remark about Sara's father to her face, instigating a fight between them. The boys tickle them to break it up.
• In an episode of Spin City, James is trying to demonstrate (to a bullied Paul) a fighting move called The Crane, in which he raises his arms above his head. James confidently states there is no defensive move against The Crane. Janelle simply walks up to him and tickles him under his arms. James collapses.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In "Gone" Buffy is turned invisible and uses it as an excuse to engage in irresponsible behaviour. This includes tickling Spike and gnawing on his earlobe while he's talking to Xander who has turned up looking for Buffy. As Xander has already walked in on Spike doing 'naked pushups' in bed, this odd behaviour as Spike twitches and giggles for no apparent reason convinces him that Spike needs to get a girlfriend pronto.
• This happens between Merton and Tommy in an episode of Big Wolf on Campus.

Newspaper Comics

• An October 2010 episode of 9 Chickweed Lane has Seth doing friendly tickle torture on Edda.
• In one comic of Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin's mom tickles Calvin in hopes of tiring him out into falling asleep, the plan backfires and only hypes him up while she falls asleep.
  • When Calvin is stuck hanging from a tree, Hobbes removes his shoe and tickles his foot. Unfortunately for Hobbes, this ends up making Calvin fall on him.

Video Games

• Psychonauts allows you to tickle just about any NPC in the game via the Crow Feather. Unlike most of the items and powers, which tend to elicit annoyed or even angry reactions, most of them only get slightly bugged by the tickling (and a few even sort of like it).
• Subverted in Mortal Kombat: Deception, if you punch one particular girl in the Chaosrealm during Konquest Mode.
• All My Sims characters seem to enjoy this; it's an action that may be performed if you click "Be Nice", and as such, NPC Sims will only do it to each other if they consider each other friends.
  • Additionally, in My Sims Kingdom, it's a possible option in some Socialization attempts. It seems to help get things back on track sometimes if you take the wrong path along the Socialization tree.
• This can be done in various other sims games too, including The Sims and The Sims 2. For some reason, though, it was left out of The Sims 3.
  • That's probably because it was "too sexual".
• At one point in Final Fantasy VIII, Laguna Loire threatens his True Companions Kiros and Ward with "the Cuchi-Cuchi treatment" (for seeming prepared to give up when the three of them are left lost and severely injured on a mission gone wrong). The threat reappears as an alternate line during Laguna's EX Burst attack in Dissidia Final Fantasy 012 duodecim.

Web Comics

• The Ticklebug between Sarah and Rachael in Las Lindas.
• Used in this Lolcats page.

Web Original

• The above quote from Erikas New Perfume has the eponymous character receiving this from her now older sister, Sarah. Sarah has quite a touch when it comes to tickling and has been known to cause those she tickled to wet themselves, but since Erika was already incontinent there was no worry about that (And she did need a diaper change after all that.)
• Pretty common in Internet "baby videos." Since these are all about the cuteness of the babies, it is very likely that when you are watching, you'll see the hand of the camera(wo)man giving this to the baby (or babies) onscreen in order to elicit laughter from the little tyke(s).
• On That Guy With The Glasses, Film Brain is subject to this by Jesuotaku and Nella in one of the scenes in the video Rejected "Spooning With Spoony" Ideas.
  • Another TGWTG example: In Paw's Music Movie review of Fantasia 2000, he and Elise are transported to Nella and Jew Wario's hotel room. Jew Wario latches onto them in a hug, and Nella tickles him to make him let go.

Western Animation

• An episode of Arthur focused on Sue Ellen and her feeling lonely at being an only child, she meets up with the Frensky sisters, practicing cheering. Catherine gets her to put her arms higher over her head, and then...
• One Garfield and Friends Quickie (and therefore probably a U.S. Acres/Orson's Farm strip) has Orson and Bo trying to tickle Roy and Lanolin in an attempt to cheer them up. No reaction, aside from deadpan snarking when they leave.
• The cartoon Maisy has a mini-episode titled Feather, at the end of which Maisy and her friends take turns getting tickled with said feather.
• Is invoked with startling frequency between the various characters on Little Bear, with the titular character almost always involved as either the tickler or ticklee. All the characters shown in the opening end up getting tickled at least once.
• Baby Looney Tunes has a quick tickle between Lola and Bugs.
• The episode "Butter's First Check-Up" of PB and J Otter has various characters getting tickled throughout as part of a game.
• The end of the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "A Bird in the Hoof" has Rainbow Dash convince Philomena to tickle the guard-pegasus' noses to get them to laugh.
  • Spike tries to tickle Twilight Sparkle while she's trying not to move; she resists for a while, then sends him flying. This results in her looking a bit more like her future self...
• 1 of every family members of the main cast in Family Guy has been tickled at least once:
  • Lois does this to Stewie in two episodes, once after Stewie escapes from Peter after shrinking down and entering him while Peter and Lois have sex.
    • Lois does this to Stewie later in the series during a cutaway for nearly one minute straight... then throws up on him.
  • In a different episode, Peter tickles Lois and she retaliates by hitting him in the face with a frying pan and breaking his nose.
  • Peter get tickled by the wife of a family that's moved into his house when it's threatened to be taken away by the back. She gets him again at the episode's ending as well.
  • Chris get tickled by Herbert during the first Star Wars Special.
  • In an episode where Meg and Quagmire are dating, Quagmire gets Meg by surprise while they're watching TV. Then she farts.
  • Subverted for Brian during a deleted scene. Peter tries to cheer him up, but Brian only sarcastically remarks that it's sexual harrassment.
• One episode of The Simpsons has Homer do this to Bart in order to get him to dance at a stadium event and cause him to pee himself.
• In an episode of Teen Titans, Shortly after Starfire reunites with Galfore, Her adopted father, they exchange rather menacing greetings in their native tongue. Then he decides to give her a more friendly greeting by tickling her. Starfire enjoys this.

Real Life

• Most people have either done this to someone else, had it done to them, or seen it done to someone else.