Orbital Kiss

An Orbital Kiss is a phenomenon in Film, Western Animation, Live-Action TV and visual media, where two characters kiss, and the camera rotates a full 360 degrees around them as this happens. This may or may not be accompanied by Slow Motion. Look for one of the two to lift a foot.

Subtrope of Orbital Shot. Not to be confused by a kiss on the orbitals. Or in near Earth space. A symptom of the Big Damn Kiss.

Examples of Orbital Kiss include:

Anime

• At the end of Slayers Next, not only does the camera spin when Lina and Gourry kiss, but they spin too. In mid air.
• FLCL parodied this in the first episode, with the characters wondering how they can hold their breath while the camera pans around.
  • And again in a later episode, Naota is sent flying toward the class rep- who has a massive crush on him- and, for several seconds, time slows down, the Bishie Sparkle comes in and it seems like they're going to have the most painful, glorious, awesome kiss in all history. Their foreheads collide and he goes tumbling down a nearby staircase, simultaneously infecting her with the latest forehead-burst monster.
• This happens once in Fushigi Yuugi, when Miaka resolves to stay in the book world with Tamahome. However, they don't kiss, they just embrace.

Film

• The Thomas Crown Affair
• Vertigo has one between Scottie and a made-up Judy. The lips of the two kissers are obscured by scenery during the rotation at regular intervals, due to rules at the time that forbade showing a kiss for more than a few seconds.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has this happen at Will and Elizabeth's wedding.In the midst of a battle, no less.
• A particularly disturbing one takes place in Outbreak. Jimbo and Cindy have one, but Jimbo's got Motaba virus and passes out in Cindy's arms when the orbit comes full circle.
• Larry the Cable Guy in Witless Protection before fading to black.
• Greg Pilkington and Graham in Priest, complete with sweeping orchestral music on the beach.
• In Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet, our eponymous star-struck lovers share a kiss in an elevator - which was actually too small to fit cast and crew inside. There were a lot of breathless grips running around the outside of the tiny lift set, removing and replacing panels to allow the steadicam to move freely around the couple.
  • Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge also features the equivalent, at the end of the Elephant Love Medley. I sense a pattern.
• Every Bollywood film ever. Except the characters in question don't even kiss, they just hug very dramatically.
  • They definitely kiss at the end of Three Idiots, and it's definitely an Orbital Kiss
• Lampshaded in the Princess Diaries.
• Such a kiss, set to This Year's Love by David Grey, takes place in The Girl Next Door as the party drunkenly spins around the kissers.
• The finale of Serendipity.
• The second version of Kotaro Terauchi's Boys Love ends with the former teacher and student kissing while the camera spins around them.
• Played straight at the end of Airplane!—until the end, when the romantic background chorus sings so high they injure their voices.

Live Action TV

• One features at the end of the Supernatural episode "Monster Movie" fits beautifully as the entire episode is shot in the style of old black-and-white monster movies.
• Ned and Moze in the Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide series finale.
• Sydney and Vaughn's kiss at the end of the Alias episode "Phase One" was the culmination of almost two solid seasons of UST.
• Doogie and Michele in an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D.
• Kirk and Uhura's famous "first interracial kiss" in a 1968 episode of Star Trek was, as a result of cultural taboos, hidden by an Orbital Kiss that just didn't make it all the way around.
• Josh and Donna in The West Wing.
• Shawn and Juliet in Psych. Their second after their first is a "Shut Up" Kiss.
• Mary and Matthew in Downton Abbey.
• Rachel and Finn in the Glee episode 'Michael'. It starts off as a hug then turns into a kiss.

Video Games

• The "first kiss" cutscene of The Sims 2 does this.
• In Mass Effect 2, this happens in Thane's romance scene. (Well, the camera rotates by 180 degrees, but it's close enough.)
• There is a mod that adds this to the pre-Final Battle dialogue with your love interest in Dragon Age Origins.

Western Animation

• The kiss in the series finale of Danny Phantom: "Wow. Remind me to save the world more often."
• Bob and Dot's kiss in a ReBoot season finale.
• Happens in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo with Robin and Starfire.
• Recess plays this one for all it's worth, complete with the playground scenery suddenly transforming into a fairy-tale land and back again, in the episode where TJ and Spinelli have their Test Kiss.
• Aladdin and Jasmine spin around on the magic carpet as they kiss at the end of the movie.