Yoko Oh No

"Guys always blame the girl when they can't keep their little band together."
—Agent 355, Y the Last Man

Basically Die for Our Ship, but aimed at a Real Life love interest of a celebrity or other public figure. She (and it almost always will be a woman) is hated by most of the fan base for "stealing him away from them", despite the painfully large probability that the fans have no hope of ever hooking up with him. The hate only intensifies if she happens to outlive him.

Seems to be most prevalent with musicians, but also happens with actors' and athletes' love interests. Whether or not they deserve the hate is another matter entirely. Here there be Fan Dumb, for you can rest assured that it will never, ever occur to any of the people who buy into this trope that the lives and relationships of celebrities are simply none of their business.

Characters like this pop up in fiction, of course, and not just with musicians - any group of friends is liable to complain that the hero's new girlfriend is trying to "break up the Five-Man Band". If she's a Temporary Love Interest introduced solely to use this plot, the girl in question may even be a direct parody of Yoko Ono herself. Whether this character is treated with cynicism, sympathy or indifference varies from show to show.

Related to Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend, if the love interest and the rest of the band don't see eye-to-eye. Sister Trope to Apple of Discord, Parent with New Paramour, and Friend Versus Lover. For the exact opposite, see Creator Couple and Contractual Purity. If you were thinking of another Yoko, see Last Kiss.

Examples of Yoko Oh No include:

Real Life examples

The Trope Namer

  • Yoko Ono, the Trope Namer and widow of Beatle John Lennon. She's frequently blamed for breaking up the Beatles, as per John's preference that she be by his side at all times. Some claim Yoko upset the group dynamic by suggesting changes to the music or influencing John's opinions. While John certainly was devoted to her, arguably at the expense of his friendship with the others, it's worth noting that the other Beatles themselves have acknowledged that the break-up was caused less by any scheming or maliciousness on the part of Yoko (although they do nevertheless insist that she wasn't exactly the easiest person to get along with and apparently didn't bother to make much effort to make things any more comfortable) and more by the fact that they'd simply been drifting apart musically and personality-wise for some time, and that Yoko just happened to be there when it all imploded. Of course, a Japanese conceptual artist at least partially involved in the break-up of a marriage wasn't likely to be the most popular figure in 1960s British society for a number of reasons anyway, and this hasn't stopped Yoko from being popular fodder for Black Comedy about how she was somehow unscathed when John Lennon got shot.
    • During the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, the caption "SORRY GIRLS, HE'S MARRIED" was superimposed over John. This referred to John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia. He actually married her in 1962, just as the Beatles were taking off in Britain, but was convinced to keep his marriage secret by Brian Epstein precisely because Epstein was worried about the effect a married Beatle would have on the fans. In other words, this trope was kicking in for John Lennon before he'd even heard of Yoko Ono.
    • Arguably, Ono is a decent artist, but there's a far darker motive in play if you look into her story: Prior to John Lennon, Ono, while a significant figure in the art world, was more known as being the stereotypical rich girl who likes to dabble in art than her controversial artwork made her out to be. She was heavily supported by her family, and when that wasn't there, there was always some sugar daddy. By marrying Lennon, she not only secured her reputation and legacy, but also her lifestyle.
      • John Lennon was born to a well-off family as well, and regularly pointed out the irony behind songs such as "Working Class Hero" and his attempts to pass off as a "Teddy Boy".
    • It's worth noting that George Harrison exonerated Yoko of breaking up the band as early as 1971 during a televised interview with Dick Cavett, instead pointing out that the Beatles basically broke themselves up. Although reportedly, this was around the same time that he specifically didn't want Yoko at the Concert for Bangladesh, so...
      • On that note, George's first wife Pattie Boyd was physically attacked by crazed fangirls after they got married. His second wife Olivia, however, averts this trope completely: she's almost universally beloved by fans, particularly after her Crowning Moment of Awesome when she beat down an intruder who was attempting to murder George.
    • Just because Ono wasn't the sole factor in breaking up the band doesn't mean she wasn't a factor. John Lennon to David Sheff in 1980: "When I met Yoko is when you meet your first woman and you leave the guys at the bar... The old gang of mine was over the moment I met her... but it so happened that the boys were well known and weren't just the local boys at the bar."


Musicians' Love Interests

  • Alicia Keys has been getting some of this-to be fair, she did have an affair with Swizz Beats while he was married to Mashonda (though they were separated at the time).
  • Courtney Love, widow of Nirvana lead Kurt Cobain. Frequently accused by conspiracy theorists of having Kurt Cobain killed. The fact that she referred to Cobain as an "asshole" shortly after his death didn't help (although she called him an asshole for killing himself, and anger is a natural stage of grief.).
    • The more rational Cobain fans/Love haters will sometimes suggest that Love indirectly killed Cobain by introducing him to the infamous bad habits that did take his life. Even when Cobain was already on the road to addiction way before he met her.
    • The timing of Cobain's death right before the release of Hole's Live Through This makes one wonder. There's also the matter than Eldon Hoke, aka El Duce of the Mentors, claims Love once offered to pay him a large sum of money to off Cobain (though the fact that Hoke was a deranged sex offender who later ended up being killed by a train while drunk doesn't make him the most credible source in the world). Also, Cobain's suicide note didn't actually mention suicide; it read more like a rationalization for Cobain's merely wanting to quit the band.
      • The sheer logistics of somebody having somehow killed Cobain are absurd. But don't tell that to the Fandom. They'll go apeshit if you even DARE suggest Courtney Love isn't a horrible human being.
      • The first paragraph of Kurt's suicide note refers to "this note". I think that makes it clear that it's a suicide note. When else do we refer to a long letter as a "note"? The conspiracy theorists never seem to notice, though.
    • Some Nirvana fans claim that Kurt Cobain wrote Live Through This. Everyone involved in making the record had said that it was Hole's work (although Kurt Cobain did sing backup on two songs, and you have to actually listen carefully to hear him).
    • Primus and Tom Waits have their take on it too. Maybe.
  • Heather Mills, ex-wife of Beatle Paul McCartney. Their very public breakup made matters worse, and Mills certainly didn't endear herself to the public after the divorce. The extremist and confrontational approach Mills took to animal rights, in contrast to Linda's and Paul's more moderate stance, didn't help matters. It got to the point where some commenters claimed she had beaten out Yoko as most hated Beatles love interest.
    • Before Heather Mills, there was Linda Eastman. She got far less hate, however (indeed, approximately half the shit that Mills received was based on the fact that Paul met and married her not very long after Linda died). Linda did get flack for not being ladylike and upper class like Paul's first girlfriend Jane Asher, but most of it was during the period she and Paul performed, with other musicians, as Wings. Her perceived lack of musical talent led to such cruel jokes as "What do you call a cow with wings?" This ended after Paul returned permanently to his solo career, and the fact that she was struggling with cancer made the public averse to heckling her.
      • There's an in-concert recording in circulation, the authenticity of which was never denied by the McCartneys, of Linda's singing isolated off the mixing board. Apparently, her microphone was always turned off, and she was just allowed to think that she was up there singing. Being a bad singer doesn't mean she was a horrible bitch like her haters used to say, though.
      • To be fair, Linda never claimed to be a professional musician; Paul pushed her into being in his band.
  • Nancy Spungen was often considered the "Yoko Ono" of seminal British punk band The Sex Pistols and has been the subject of considerable controversy. A troubled and possibly mentally ill teenage groupie who got involved with troubled Sex Pistols "bassist" Sid Vicious, Nancy has been blamed for Sid's heroin addiction and degeneration. She was hated by other Pistols members (being an American didn't help) and ridiculed by the press. While most agree that she did introduce Sid to heroin, he was well-known to have already been regularly abusing a number of other drugs (mostly speed) and her influence on his already dramatically self-destructive behaviour is very likely exaggerated. She was murdered shortly after the Sex Pistols broke up. Although Sid was arrested for the murder, many believe that her murder was committed by a drug dealer in a deal gone bad.
  • When she was dating Ritchie Neville from the Boy Band Five, Billie Piper was subject to this. These days, Billie Piper is a household name and well-accepted actress in Britain and no one cares about Five any more.
  • Another Japanese victim: Ami Onuki from Puffy AmiYumi, the wife of Teruhiko "Teru" Kobashi from GLAY. Western fangirls keep insisting they're "just about to get divorced", no matter what Ami does and says about that (like, you know, using both her engagement and wedding rings in almost any Puffy picture she's featured in).
  • The other half of Puffy, Yumi Yoshimura, was subject to a lot of fangirl ire when she married very popular singer Takanori Nishikawa, better known as T.M.Revolution. When Nishikawa divorced her four years later after evidence she had cheated on him surfaced, the hatred intensified, but was surely accompanied by plenty of schadenfreudic glee.
  • Megumi Oishi, media talent wife of the J-Rock star Hyde. For his part, Hyde never made a secret of his longtime crush on her, which dates to from before he even met her in person; consequently, there are just as many fans that were very happy at the news of their engagement and marriage.
  • Miyavi (first from Due Le Quartz, now in S.K.I.N) marries Idol Singer Miyuki "Melody" Ishikawa. Fangirl wankery ensues.
  • Rare male example: some fans of the Spice Girls went up in arms for this reason when David and Victoria Beckham first got engaged. These days feelings seem to be reversed, with Victoria getting flack from David Beckham fans, and even worse if said fangirls are into slashing Beckham with Michael Owen.
  • Iman, wife of David Bowie, gets some of this. (If you believe the Areaologists, it's because she's officially ended the age of Free ShArea.)
    • Not as much as Angie, despite the fact that she didn't really have to Die for Our Ship.
  • Tiffany Darwich was a popular Idol Singer during the mid and late 1980s. When she had the New Kids on the Block as back-up artists during her tour, their fame sky-rocketed and soon they were more famous than she was. When Tiffany briefly dated one of the New Kids, Jonathan "Jon" Knight... well, Hell broke loose, and Tiffany was hotly bashed by the same teenage girls who used to love her.
    • Made Hilarious in Hindsight by the fact that Jonathan later revealed he was Invisible to Gaydar, and that he and Tiffany actually were more like Platonic Life Partners: Tiffany was among the first ones who said so, which later Jon himself confirmed. She was rather worried because she was the one who (accidentally) outed Jon to the public, but he told her not to worry about it; he had came out to friends and family years before, and although he never made any real public announcement, it was never really a secret.
  • Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance and Lyn-Z from Mindless Self Indulgence. Somewhat unusual in that the bitching comes from both bands' fanbases.
    • Two words: Eliza Cuts. His marriage to the lovely and talented Lyn-Z is considered by some to be an upgrade by several miles, especially since reading the "I am not just Mrs. Gerard Way" article.
  • Many fans of the progressive metal band Queensrÿche feel that ever since lead singer Geoff Tate's wife, Susan, took over the band's management, things have gone downhill. This discussion elaborates further on the point. [dead link]
  • Marcello Cabuli. The husband of Tarja Turunen from Nightwish, who's earned a lot of the flak for Tarja's problems with the band, ending in a rather nasty Take That firing.
    • Also, you wouldn't even believe how crazy some of Tuomas Holopainen's fangirls can get if they even vaguely suspect someone is his girlfriend. Death threats have been involved.
  • Inversion: pretty much nobody doubts that Ozzy Osbourne's success and wealth since The Eighties (not to mention his not having died yet from his drug and alcohol abuse) is almost entirely due to his wife and manager Sharon.
  • Some * NSYNC fans still blame their demise on Cameron Diaz, who Justin Timberlake began dating around the same time he started to seriously work on his solo career.
  • Some of Trent Reznor's fangirls predictably started whining after his engagement about how his relationship distracts him from music (they're just jealous it's not them, clearly). What's weird is seeing a 46-year old fanboy whining about it. The guy who got sent his thoughts on Trent to assumed he was a disgruntled groupie at first (being named Irit doesn't help, though).
  • David Gilmour's then-girlfriend/now-wife, Polly Samson, wrote the lyrics for Pink Floyd's 1994 album, The Division Bell. Gilmour said this was because he's never felt like he was particularly good at writing lyrics (with the lone exception of "Sorrow") - Syd Barrett and Roger Waters always took care of that, and once he buggered off Gilmour had to pick up the slack.
  • A notable aversion is Rasa Davies, first wife of The Kinks' Ray Davies. She contributed some well-regarded backing vocals to several of the band's greatest songs (e.g. "Sunny Afternoon", "Waterloo Sunset", "Autumn Almanac") and acted as a peacemaker between Davies and the rest of the group. After she divorced him, the group recorded some of their worst albums.
  • Nick Jonas dated Miley Cyrus. Both of which received a lot of hate for doing that.
    • Cyrus' current boyfriend, actor Liam Hemsworth, who she met on the set of The Last Song, tends to get backlash from "Niley" supporters. It probably didn't help that Miley's move to a more mature image occurred around the same time as her romance with Liam.
    • And now, Nick and Delta Goodrem are both getting this since they got together in June 2011.
      • News that, ironically enough, Goodrem was/is a rabid Miley fangirl made some waves online.
      • Nick Jonas is almost due for a bunch of flack from Delta fans (And former Delta fans) for "Distracting her from her music". She's been following him from place to place forever. He's been working, but Delta, really, hasn't, HERRR fans want stuff from her, actual material, an album maybe two years overdue, art work, a music video, a sample..anything!!!
    • Selena Gomez also got hate while dating Nick. Pretty much any girl dating a Jonas Brother has to go through this, even Kevin's wife has this problem sometimes.
  • Gorillaz's ex-guitarist Paula Cracker is not popular among the fans, even though she left before the band ever recorded an album and was replaced by Noodle. Admittedly they have some reason; she was 2D's girlfriend and cheated on him with Murdoc... but HE isn't blamed by the fangirls.
  • Adrienne Armstrong. Green Day has some pretty crazy fangirls who start online petitions calling for Billie Joe to divorce Adie (with a select few expressing desires to kill her). Creepy thing is, most of these girls are between the ages of 13 and 16.
  • Caron Bernstein, the now ex-wife of Rammstein guitarist Richard Z. Kruspe, got a lot of this treatment during their marriage. The significant others of the other band members have had this treatment, too, but not nearly to the same extent that Caron had.
  • Dorothea Hurley, the wife of Jon Bon Jovi, got fangirl hatred in spades in The Nineties for being Jon's Victorious Childhood Friend. Since they're Happily Married even now, it looks like things have worn off. Hopefully.
    • One of those fangirls was, of all people, P!nk. She once went on record as saying that as a young girl, she burst out crying and ripped up all her Bon Jovi posters when she heard Jon was getting married...and in a Crowning Moment of Awesome, upon hearing about the interview, Jon actually sent her a pair of his pants, with a note that said "Now you can finally get in my pants!"
  • Arguably, could be applied to Chantal Kreviazuk, pop singer and wife to Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida. Then again, the Clumsy Congress was too busy fighting with itself to notice her influence.
  • Averted with The Fall. The band's numerous line-ups have often featured Mark E. Smith's current girlfriend or wife, who generally provides a stabilising influence. The years with then-wives Brix Smith (in the 1980s and early 1990) and Elena Poulou (in the 2000s) coincided with some of the band's most successful and critically acclaimed albums.
  • Heavily averted with Tom Waits. His wife Kathleen Brennan is often referred to as "his muse" by both himself and by the media, and is responsible for introducing him to the music of Captain Beefheart, heavily influencing his musical direction and leading to his most critically-acclaimed albums.
  • A truly creepy amount of hatred, including death threats, is being aimed at Selena Gomez. Her crime? Being seen snuggling with Justin Bieber. Here's a report on that. Now that they're confirmed to be dating, she has recieved even more constant bashing on the internet.
    • There are also Demi/Selena shippers who despise Justin
    • She's barely the first one: Kim Kardashian got similar threats too.
  • Selena Gomez also got hate when she briefly dated Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame.
    • She also has issues because even when the fans aren't bashing her, she'll have more people show up at the backstage door to mob Justin leaving than came to her concerts.
  • A really creepy example for Journey: in the mid-90s, there was a Yahoo group called "Steve Perry's Photo Palace" (now defunct). Said group had huge amounts of defaced pictures of Steve's former girlfriend, Sherrie, along with hateful, derogatory, and violent comments directed towards the poor woman. The horrible thing? At that point, Perry had been broken up with her for well over 10 years. Yeah. That.
  • Usher didn't have many problems while dating Rozanda Thomas/Chilli from TLC, as his fans loved to see them together. Hell broke loose when he dated and then married his stylist, a single mother named Tameka Foster. Fandom and Usher's own family saw Tameka as a Gold Digger and gave her the cold shoulder, even more after she and Usher got married (which Usher's dear mom refused to attend, and it'd take 'em a while to rekindle their bond). His first album after his marriage completely tanked, and everyone blamed Tameka for that, to the point that Usher had to defend his married life on live TV. Even after the birth of their second kid, the pressure on them didn't disminish, and soon they got divorced.
  • Ashlee Simpson, when she started dating and later married Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, got this a lot from the Fall Out Boy fanbase.
  • When Rihanna and Chris Brown were dating, this reaction wasn't any worse than usual. Then he got arrested for domestic abuse. Many fans proceeded to say some of the most nasty things they could, saying it was her fault because she gave him herpes/cheated on him/etc.
  • Taylor Swift got this when she was dating Joe Jonas. Then Joe infamously dumped her via a phone call and the fans took her side. The fact Joe started dating Camilla Belle so soon after did not help matters. (And that Joe and Camilla look creepily alike also didn't help).
  • Kylie Minogue got some of this from INXS fans when the late Michael Hutchence dated her. The flipside also happened - some people gave this treatment to Hutchence, as they felt he was "corrupting" Minogue.
  • Noting on how many boybands are produced in Korea nowadays, some Fangirls can create a huge Internet Backdraft when their bias is getting hitched on a girl.
  • Sarah Orzechowski and Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie. There was a "joke" about them being engaged, which actually was real. Needless to say, fangirls began to freak out and get jealous (even using some of Panic's lyrics to basically call Sarah a whore).
  • According to the other members of Motley Crue, Pamela Anderson became this when she married drummer Tommy Lee. According to Nikki Sixx, Pamela Anderson convinced Tommy that he was the most talented and important member of the band and that he deserved to be in the spotlight more. This apparantly caused tension between Tommy and the rest of his band when he began to demand more creative control on the albums. Sixx also blames Anderson for Tommy's eventual departure from the band.
  • Dave Lombardo of Slayer once quit the band because the other members would not allow him to bring his wife on tour with them.
  • When 32-year-old Xtra Factor Co-host, Caroline Flack started dating One Direction's youngest member, 17-year-old (at the time) Harry Styles, there were the to-be-expected cradle robbing jokes... and then there were the death threats. Some fans hated her because she "stole" Harry away from them, some because she got in the way of Larry Stylinson, and some because... well, they just didn't like her.
    • The other boy's girlfriends have all seen varying degrees of hate as well, with the exception being Louis' girlfriend from before he auditioned for X Factor, Hannah, who was friends with the other boys and seemed to be universally adored. Fans were crushed when they broke up, but chalked it up to Executive Meddling. That is until he started dating a model a few months later. Needless to say, the model was not popular with the fans initially. She has developed a bit of a fan-base herself since then because she is really pretty and apparently quite nice to fans she meets, (which is also what caused fans to eventually accept Liam's older girlfriend, Danielle, who was a background dancer on their series of X Factor.)
      • Whilst on tour in Australia, a secretary for a radio station struck up a rapport with Zayn Malik, who asked her out for drinks. It wasn't long before the fanbase caught wind of it, and they immediately flooded her Facebook with abusive messages and rang up the radio station to declare their outrage. The poor woman was so overwhelmed that she cancelled the date.


Athletes' Love Interests

  • The biggest sports equivalent of John and Yoko may be Wayne Gretzky and wife Janet. Many Edmonton Oilers fans still believe Janet's acting career was one of the main reasons Gretzky OK'd the 1988 trade to Los Angeles, beginning the breakup of an Oilers team that won the Stanley Cup five times in seven years.
  • Jessica Simpson caught a rather ridiculous amount of flak for dating Dallas Cowboys' QB Tony Romo. In this case, it was from other men because Romo had a few high-profile bad games shortly afterwards.
    • And as befits the trope, some of Simpson's detractors nicknamed her "Yoko Romo."
    • Obviously a parody, but Artie Lange referred to her as "the cunt who broke up 98°".
    • The Jessica Simpson example is probably the purest version of this trope due to some sports fans, particularly US football fans, being rather superstitious. If his game goes downhill around the same time that he starts dating or marries someone, that someone is to blame for upsetting the apple cart. If it wasn't her, it would have been something else that was going on at that time.
  • Romo and Jessica was preceded by Jason Sehorn and Angie Harmon. The fact that Sehorn played for the New York Giants while Harmon was a Cowboys fan didn't help.
  • Supermodel Gisele Bundchen, the wife of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, is likely to become this when, following the Patriots' loss in Super Bowl XLVI, she was caught on camera criticizing the Patriots' receivers. To be fair to her, she endured being taunted and heckled by rowdy Giants fans.

You've got to catch the ball when you're supposed to catch the ball. My husband cannot fucking throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can't believe [the Patriots' receivers] dropped the ball so many times. -- Gisele Bundchen

    • For the record, Brady is currently[when?] 0-2 in Super Bowls, both of them to the Giants, since he, in late 2006, dated and, in 2009, married Gisele.
  • When Formula One champion Ayrton Senna was killed, his girlfriend Adriane Galisteu managed to get media prominence, in a Paris Hilton kind of way. F1 fans regard her as a self-serving vulture.
    • Some people compared her disfavorably to Senna's former girlfriend, ex-porn actress turned children show's host Maria Gracia Meneghel aka Xuxa. Really not helped by Senna saying in two interviews that, after his first wife, Xuxa was the only woman he ever wanted to marry.
      • Even his family hated Adriane: they gave Xuxa the 'widow's' seat.
    • Going to present day F1, Nicole Scherzinger, one of the Pussycat Dolls and Lewis Hamilton's girlfriend, gets a lot of ire from fangirls, mainly for drawing attention to herself and showboating when the camera's on her. She's been blamed for the splitting of Lewis and his manager and father Anthony, nevermind that Anthony apparently was a Stage Dad. Yes, some number of people that hate her want to ship Hamilton with Adrian Sutil, but let's note that as of this edit, she's the only present day F1 WAG to get this much ire.
  • While supporters of the Spanish football team didn't have anything against Sara Carbonero, the Hot Scoop girlfriend of goalkeeper Casillas (except maybe some jealous female fans), after Spain lost to Switzerland in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, some put the blame on Sara, accusing her of distracting Casillas (the foreign press in particular...). All was forgiven and forgotten after Spain won the tournament (specially after this).
  • R&B singer Toni Braxton is particularly despised by Dallas Mavericks fans: During the early 1990's, she allegedly was dating team stars Jason Kidd and Jim Jackson at the same time, sparking a rift between the two and eventually leading to the break up of a potentially powerful Mavericks team. Both Kidd and Jackson have denied ever dating Braxton. Braxton never confirmed or denied it, further stoking fan hate.
  • Actress Noureen Dewulf got this treatment from fans of the Buffalo Sabres. Having married the Vezina Trophy winning goaltender Ryan Miller not long before the start of the 2011-2012 NHL season, she was targeted by Sabres fans and the local media not long after Miller struggled during the first half of the season. The rumors of Miller requesting a trade to the Anaheim Ducks so he could be closer to his wife only made it worse.

Other Famous People's Love Interests

  • Orlando Bloom's old girlfriend Kate Bosworth was despised by a large number of fans, and his current wife (and as of January 2011, the mother of his child) Miranda Kerr isn't doing so well either. An example is here. It's apparently okay to yell "A dingo ate my baby" to Miranda because she's Australian, Unfortunate Implications (misogyny and xenophobia) be damned.
  • Male example: Some Katie Holmes fans bash her husband Tom Cruise, accusing him of casting a corrupting influence on her personal life (her conversion to Scientology, her not appearing in The Dark Knight, etc). Katie recently denied such speculation, claiming she's "no wallflower." It doesn't help that many dislike Cruise for other reasons, including being the celebrity most involved with Scientology.
  • Ted Hughes endured a negative reputation among Sylvia Plath fans due to his infidelity and divorcing an emotionally fragile wife such as Sylvia Plath, driving her to suicide. Editing her poems and shuffling the sequence of her poetry collections did not help matters at all. The fact that his second wife Assia Wevill (the woman for whom he left Plath) killed herself and their daughter in the same way Sylvia did doesn't help...
    • Ted had been more successful than Sylvia before her death, making her widely resented. Her poorly treated mental problems and equally Mad Artist temperament made it relatively easy for Ted to find a Freudian Excuse to cheat on her. It Got Worse, too.
  • Spice Girl Mel B was rather despised due to her dating and breaking up with Eddie Murphy, and being the mother of his baby. Eddie also got a lot of hate for this, mainly because they broke up after she became pregnant and then went on to claim that he wasn't the father (which, as it turned out, he was).
  • Two words: Jade Olivia. She gets a lot of hate from fans for dating Tom Felton. To add to this jealousy, she also is criticized for---in their words---looking too thin, having a fake tan and makeup, looking cheap, looking like a smoker, the list goes on. Ironically, Tom is a smoker; or so I've heard.
  • Sophia Myles, former girlfriend of Doctor Who star David Tennant. Some outraged fans insisted that Myles had only appeared on the show because Tennant demanded she be given a part, despite reports that they actually met on the set while she was filming her role.
  • After the release of the Lord of the Rings movies, a fanbase sprang up believing that Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan were a couple in real life. There was a great deal of Slash Fic and one of the first known examples of "wingfic". This led to quite a bit of vitriol being directed at both actors' respective girlfriends, but it seems to have died down now.
  • There was once a hatelisting for actress Téa Leoni. For her acting, her roles, or something else? No. Because she married David Duchovny and took him away from his "Twu Wuv", Gillian Anderson. The owner of the site went as far as swearing that Téa and David's kids were not his and Téa tricked him into marrying him, while on the other hand, she also swore Gillian's child was David's and that made them soulmates. One like-minded person even went so far as to claim that Duchovny and Leoni's oldest child was really Gillian's daughter. There was also once a website dedicated to supposedly proving that Leoni has had massive amounts of plastic surgery and was therefore evil.
    • These folks are still around, albeit not as prominent as they used to be. They call themselves Snoggers and still pop up from time to time in the few remaining X-Files message boards.
    • That said, Duchovny's relationship with Leoni supposedly did have a tangible effect on The X-Files: Duchovny, wanting to be near his wife and encourage her movie career, managed to get the shooting location of the show shifted to Los Angeles from Vancouver. That's why there were fewer episodes set in the woods, and more in the desert, in later seasons. Still no excuse for the bashing, though.
    • Leoni, however, was more than good-natured about all of it -- she was practically shipping her husband with Anderson herself! It was supposedly Leoni's idea that Scully be naked when Mulder carries her out of the spacecraft in the first movie. She then claimed that when she watched the movie and got to the near-kiss scene, she was saying, "Do it! Do it!"
  • Poor, poor Mamoru Miyano. This famous Seiyuu hid the fact that he was getting married and his wife was pregnant (a big deal for him, due to some health issues that almost rendered Miyano infertile) . When he announced his marriage in an interview and a video was uploaded to Nico Nico Douga (the Japanese equivalent of Youtube), Miyano's most rabid Japanese fans started writing very nasty insults at him and his wife in the comments, even wishing for his career to go down or for the lady to miscarry. Info here.
  • A mix of this and The Other Darrin happened to another voice Talent, Yukana Nogami. Once she got to replace Saeko Shimazu as Four Murasame in the Zeta Gundam movies, it was rumored that she had slept with the cast director to get the role (they were, apparently, involved in the past, and it wasn't pretty for his marriage). Said rumors never were confirmed, but Japanese fans immediately accused her of being a homewrecker (the guy was divorced again and they blamed Yukana for it) and keep trolling her blog, calling her "slut", "whore" and "bitch"; it got so bad that Yukana had to close her blog temporarily to not get more online slutshaming. However, this didn't stop her popularity from regrowing immensely when she played C.C..
  • Supposedly, the reason Jackie Chan doesn't discuss his personal life in interviews anymore is that a Japanese Fan Girl jumped in front of a moving subway and killed herself after learning Chan had a girlfriend. Jackie relates that story in his autobiography, as well as an incident where a girl went into the lobby of his production studio's office and drank poison when news of his marriage came out.
  • Supernatural fandom has become very notorious for this, much to the ire of those fans who'd rather not get lumped in with the crazies. Up to Eleven now that Jared Padalecki announced his wife's pregnancy.
  • Deborra-Lee Furness, wife of heartthrob Hugh Jackman, seems to get a lot of this, intensified by the fact that she's a good ten years his senior. Never mind that they're actually happy together. Then there are those who insist he's gay and she's a beard, because in some minds, the only possible explanation for such an attractive man to be with an older, slightly plump woman is subterfuge.
  • Japanese voice talent Megumi Ogata gets married. To a man 13 years her junior. Watch the fangirls flip out because they want her to be a lesbian.
  • Some Harry Potter fans would like to see Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, who play Harry and Hermione respectively in the film adaptations, become a couple offscreen. (This is partly connected to the Ship-to-Ship Combat over Harry/Hermione vs. Ron/Hermione.) Thus a small contingent of fans go up in arms whenever either actor is romantically linked in the press to someone else, although this has died down somewhat since the release of the last book (in which Ron gets the girl).
  • Some Farscape fans are desperate for Ben Browder and Claudia Black, who play John Crichton and Aeryn Sun respectively, to become a real-life couple. (Admittedly, they have astonishing on-screen chemistry, but Ben was married ten years before the show started; Claudia, meanwhile, postponed her honeymoon to shoot the Peacekeeper Wars miniseries.) As a result, some despise Ben Browder's wife, Francesca Buller (who has appeared in the show playing four different characters) for "getting in the way of Ben and Claudia". Not only that, but some fans have accused her of being a "bad actress", of only getting to be on the show in the first place because she's Ben's wife, and apparently, at a convention, someone even told her to her face that they hated her. Possibly as a result of this, Claudia's husband Jamie has kept a much lower public profile (though as he apparently isn't in show business, this is probably easier)--his last name isn't even known to fans.
  • Tetsuya Kakihara provoked many fans, especially of the yuri type, when he posted pics of him dating Mamiko Noto; voice talent romances are very fickle things, but when you date one of Hitomi Nabatame's "secret wives", it takes a lot of balls to admit that you are in love with her. Nabatame may be a good sport about her wives, but the fans are not.
    • Just for the benefit of the doubt, apparently Japanese otakus have no qualms with same-sex romances (especially the Les Yay type), but woe be on to you if you are romantically involved with the opposite sex, especially a voice talent. Since Shizuka Ito and Hitomi Nabatame are lesbians and in a relationship...
  • Pick any interview with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on YouTube and there will be some comment on how they should ditch their current love interests for each other. After all, they had such great chemistry in Titanic! Who cares if Sam Mendes and Bar Rafaeli get upset? At least Kate and Leo will be together forever.
  • Male example: Some of Dita Von Teese's male fans aimed a lot of hate towards Marilyn Manson when he got together with her. For that matter, fans of both sexes aimed a lot of hate towards Von Teese for marrying Manson. Many female fans complained about her "stealing" him, while male & female fans both complained about her "tying him down" or "distracting him from his art".
    • It Got Worse. When the fans began to accept the marriage, Manson dumped Dita Von Teese and began to date Evan Rachel Wood, but now as of 2010, he and Evan broke up.
      • Actually, it was Von Teese who initiated the break-up. She was the one to file for divorce. According to her, she didn't support his partying or his relationship with another girl. As much as she loved him, she decided that she did not want be part of that. Von Teese also stated that she gave Manson an ultimatum, but says, "It didn't work. Instead, it made me the enemy." Von Teese has shown to not be seeking spousal support and seems to be completely indifferent to his assets. Not that a lot of Manson fanboys and fangirls will still stop acting like she was a opportunist or other similar accusations. Rose McGowan also broke up with Manson due to disagreements of his lifestyle but of course she's still looked down on as someone trashy or too below Manson's standards. When you think about it, if the genders were reversed, it would be Marilyn Manson who would be looked down on, much like Courtney Love unfortunately, with the male Von Teese and/or McGowan as the martyrs or woobies to fandom...yay, double standards.
        • Dita's latest relationship, with Louis-Marie de Castelbajac, is something of a subversion of this trope. Her fanbase is virtually unanimous in approving of this romance (which may have something to do with the fact that he's tall, gorgeously handsome, possessed of an elegant sartorial sense, a French aristocrat, and the son of a well-known couturier); in fact, the trope is occasionally inverted in that some people think he's too good for her.
  • It's common for fans of film director Fritz Lang to blame his wife, screenwriter Thea von Harbou for anything undesirable in one of his early films, in spite of the fact that they often co-wrote the screenplays together. (In the second half of his career the blame is placed on Executive Meddling.) It certainly doesn't help matters that von Harbou joined the Nazi party and wrote propaganda films during the war, while Lang fled to Hollywood and basically had to start his career over.
  • Several people think that marrying Madonna was bad for Guy Ritchie's career - his most critically panned and at the same time least successful movies, Swept Away (which was a vehicle for her) and Revolver, were made during their marriage. After they divorced, Ritchie made Sherlock Holmes, which was by far his most commercially successful movie.
  • Go to YouTube. Type "Ryan Higa and Tarynn Nago" into the search engine. Click on any video about them dating. Chances are, there WILL be comments from jealous girls saying things like "Ryan's mine!" and insulting Tarynn. Although Ryan and Tarynn aren't dating anymore, any girlfriend Ryan gets better watch out.
  • A politics example, more from a PR perspective than actually changing policy: former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's wife, Margaret, could count as a combination of this and The Load. In the leadup to his first election victory in 1968, Trudeau was embraced as a breath of fresh air in the eyes of Liberal Party supporters and Canadians in general: he was young, charismatic, attractive, bilingual and incredibly outspoken. Traditionally, unlike America's First Lady, Prime Ministers' wives don't play much of a role outside of moral support for their husbands, but Margaret Trudeau grabbed headlines for her wild lifestyle and a supposed affair with Mick Jagger. Most notoriously, when her husband lost the May 22, 1979 election to Joe Clark's Conservative Party, she was off partying with the Rolling Stones in New York. Margaret fits this role because of the impact her actions had on Trudeau's image; his critics almost always brought up Margaret's lifestyle whenever they wanted to criticize the Prime Minister.
    • Of course, Margaret was 29 years Trudeau's junior; they married when he was 51 and she 22 (having been dating on and off for four years). In the end, she divorced him in 1984, just as his second stint as PM (Joe Clark lasted all of ten months) was ending.
  • Two words: Angelina Jolie. She still gets flack for getting together with Brad Pitt right after his divorce from Jennifer Aniston. The couple insist that they fell in love on set of the movie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith), but got together after his divorce, and EVEN Jennifer Aniston agreed with that, but jealous Angelina-haters will never let her off.
    • What's worse is that many of the haters seem to write for the tabloids, given the countless cover headlines claiming that Brangelina are about to break up (the couple were able to sue The News of the World for libel after such a story was published), that Brad hates every relationship Jennifer gets in, that Angelina has threatened Brad and their children with physical abuse, that Angelina is out to ruin Jennifer's life, that Brad has openly insulted Jennifer via dismissing their married years, that Brad and Jennifer are secretly sleeping with each other behind Angelina's back, that both Brad and Angelina are bad parents... (et cetera, et cetera...) It's as close to real-life Die for Our Ship as you can get.
  • Russell Crowe's wife Danielle Spencer gets quite the hate from her husband's rabid fangirls. I.e, this one refers to Danielle as "The Wife and Womb Unit" for commiting the horrendous sin of being married to him.
  • Even if their relationship is denied by those involved, the Nonsten fans have started to talk about the nasty things they will do to Kristen Stewart if she is indeed romantically involved with Edward...I mean Rob Pattinson from the Twilight movies. To be fair most fans want Robsten to be true and root for the couple to make it.
    • And some Robsten fans really don't like Nikki Reed, the actress playing Rosalie Hale. In their words:

"She (Kristen) and Rob started to get really close again, taking it slow, then MA visited. This was during the Juno weekend. Rob was really upset to say the least. He felt Kristen might be stringing him along or that MA's presence there would change her mind. Nikki apparently tried to comfort him that night by the way....offering Rob her support if he needed her. Fucking bitch."

  • Director Mitsuo Fukuda has his wife Chiaki Morosawa serve as the story writer for many of his series. Fans tend to blame Morosawa for the dip in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny's plot quality... While it is true that Morosawa was often late with the series's scripts, rumors about her deliberately derailing Princess Cagalli's personality out of personal hatred towards her voice actress are simply ridiculous... but the Fan Dumb love to believe them and eat them like candy, even when there's no proof about it.
    • And it sure didn't help matters that Morosawa was developing cancer during Destiny's production, which is the reason why she was late with the scripts of the series. When fandom learnt it, more than one idiot said "How the bitch dies, she ruined my series!"
  • In Japan, female entertainment stars have a much less likely rate to get married than men. Get caught dating one person and you could be deemed a "slut" by some Otakus or fans. A few idols gotten caught in scandals that damaged their careers. However, as said earlier, being a lesbian on TV or drama CDs is perfectly acceptable since it is "pure".
    • Example: Rabid fans plan the death of Aya Hirano because she has an older boyfriend. Hirano was also found to have consensual sex with several male coworkers, the imminent revelation which was part of the reason she left her previous studio, Lantis. (The other reasons were that they were treating her like dirt—3 other voice actresses have followed her lead and left in the past month alone.)
    • A stalker followed Aki Toyosaki to her home, which was so far away from the train station that she has to take a taxi just to get to it. He discovered she is living with her boyfriend. The fan response was hundreds of posts on 2ch showing destroyed merchandise, including several that had threatening imagery—weapons pointing at pictures of her and the like.
    • Similarly, a stalker followed Ayana Taketatsu to a shopping center, where they stole photographs she was taking in a photo booth with her boyfriend. Same reaction as the above—destroyed merch, threatening imagery, and a demand that she be fired for not remaining single and virginal.
    • The above 3 incidents have lead to what may possibly be the biggest Fan Dumb moment in Japanese history—Japanese Voice Actress stalkers are now demanding a national law be passed requiring female voice actresses to remain single, virginal, and prohibit them from any contact from men until they retire from the voice acting industry. Not making this up (although the link is to Sankaku Complex and thus NSFW).
    • While they don't have it as hard, male entertainers face similar difficulties. When the singer Ayaka and the actor Hiro Mizushima got married in secret and the news leaked, both of them had to leave their management agency; also, actor Yusuke Yamamoto got in problem when he was caught going into his apartment with his girlfriend. And then there's Mamoru Miyano and Tetsuya Kakihara...
    • The damage is minimized when their significant other works in the same industry as them. However, most didn't last. Yuu Asakawa and Showtaro Morikubo, Naomi Nagasawa and Ryotaro Okiayu were married (and with children) and divorced later on...ouch.
    • There however is an exception to the rule. Being the fact that Show Hayami and Rei Igarashi themselves are married and still are in Real Life. Their known roles? Sosuke Aizen and Precia Testarossa.
    • Divorce rates are pretty high so its most likely have little to do with the fact that both parties are seiyuu. Also, Fans know a lot of seiyuu couples who have been married for a long time.
    • Also other famous exceptions include Megumi Hayashibara and Kikuko Inoue, as they have been mothers thus far. (Hayashibara was at least Genre Savvy enough to not release the name of her husband to the public for a long while). Also, when Sayaka Ohara announced that she's going to be married, no flaks arrive for her, thank goodness. And of course, thankfully the recent marriage between Kenichi Suzumura and Maaya Sakamoto was rained with congratulations and blessings. Only time will tell if their marriage won't share the same fate as Morikubo-Asakawa and Okiayu-Nagasawa as above.
    • Mainly due to their age, since they should having kids sooner or later, younger seiyuus (20's) don't have the luxury of finding love without flak from fans.
    • Not really too surprising, there are plenty of nutjobs out there and then there's the people who do it just because they know it'll cause drama. The majority of their fans are most likely happy for them. Truth is, it probably only takes single crazy fan wank post on the internet for people to fuss over it and blow things out of proportion.
  • Roger Federer's wife Mirka is a somewhat complicated case. His most dedicated and knowledgeable fans tend to think highly of her, knowing how much she's contributed to her husband's career. But her looks has been the target of very nasty comments from both fans and media, especially after they had started out with her being the prettier of the pair, he turned out to be Beautiful All Along and she lost her athletic build after her own tennis career ended and got fat (This lessened when she gave birth to their children and became a Hot Mom, though.) Meanwhile, the media has occasionally gone after her, particularly at the end of 2003/beginning of 2004, when she was blamed for his parting with his then-coach (shortly after that she stopped giving interviews). The yellower Swiss press has especially told stories about her dating an older member of the United Arab Emirates royal family before she got involved with Roger, and tried to portray her as controlling.
  • Professional Wrestling example: Even though Jeff Hardy and his girlfriend Beth have been together over a decade now (and in fact refer to each other as husband and wife and not boyfriend and girlfriend) and live together, and that Beth has stayed with Jeff through plenty of insane personal turmoil, plenty of the nuttier fangirls are positive Beth is some money-grubbing come-lately bitch. Though in this case, most girls don't have another ship they want her to die for, they seem to think (however wrongly) that they themselves are Jeff's unrealized dream girl. Beth's Twitter account has plenty of examples she's listed of girls threatening or name-calling her over it.
    • Much worse in the case of the late Owen Hart and his widow Martha. To wrestling fans, Owen Hart was a talented, remarkable guy who spent thirteen years entertaining the fans and his peers and whose work should be shown to future generations. Martha Hart? The money-grubbing bitch that sues the WWE every couple of years to erase her husband's place from wrestling history to the point that the relationship between her and her extended family is mutual hate. Every time Martha's name comes up in the headlines, death threats are guaranteed.
  • When she first started on Wizards of Waverly Place, everybody loved Selena Gomez (she was seen as a better alternative to Miley Cyrus, who was at the peak of Hannah Montana overexposure.) However, she made the fatal mistake of dating-and "taking away"-Taylor Lautner from Twilight crazies, and she's now referred to as "Slutena Homez."
    • And It Got Worse. Now she (apparently) gets a little too close to Justin Bieber and, ooooh boy...his more rabid fans were up in arms and send her death threats on her Twitter.
      • Anybody who gets close to Justin Bieber is going to fall victim to this. Same thing happened to Kim Kardashian after they did a photo shoot together.
  • While averted by the shipping community, the wives and girlfriends of the crew of That Guy With The Glasses get a scary amount of hate. Iron Liz is the butt of many "lol, she's really a man" jokes and people are unhappy with the amount of times she's appeared in Linkara's reviews, Scarlett was called a "ginger fat pig" by trolls and she gets rage from people she's banned on Spoony's forum, while Doug's fiancee only has one picture floating around the internet and people go crazy over the fact that he could be attracted to a large woman. The only one who doesn't seem to get any hate is Brad Jones's wife Jillian.
    • Even The Nostalgia Critic and The Nostalgia Chick get this from the other's fanbase when there's any sign of Ship Tease between the two. Her fanboys said they were going to kill him in his sleep for their fail date, and his fangirls like to talk about how they'd like to beat on her while at the same time squeeing over how "adorable" he is. It makes the people who fancy enjoy them both slightly confused. Of course, now the crazy fans have at least some cause to celebrate, as Spoony and Scarlett split up in early 2011.
    • And now Linkara and Iron Liz have broken up, how this will affect Atop the Fourth Wall remains to be seen.
    • Averted when two TGWTG reviewers hook up (Case One, Case Two, and Case Three)
  • Yana Rudovskaya, the second wife of Russian skater Evgeni Plushenko, is apparently "too old and wringly and ugly" AND "too opinionated and bitchy" for him.
    • That person was in the minority. Most of the Plushenko fans adore her, especially since she had a hand into him coming out of retirement. Everyone agrees that his first wife (and mother of his child) Maria Ermak was a bitch, though. (Not so surprisingly, she's been blamed for his retirement.)
    • The real people who have gone after Rudovskaya are those who objected to Plushenko's less than gracious behavior when he lost the gold in Vancouver, especially those that liked him in general; it was easier for them to believe she spurred him to it, rather than fully blame him alone.
  • SHINee has Jonghyun, which was pretty known for having a very Ho Yay relationship with fellow member Key (which the fans adored). Right after revealing that he is in a (real) relationship with actress Shin Se Kyung, fans started going wild, but later accepted this since it made SHINee's fanbase grow. Then again, several fans have made a theory that this was just a cover story for the Jong-Key (Jonghyun and Key) relationship.
  • Although Andre Agassi's marriage to Brooke Shields didn't seem to attract much criticism, it didn't escape notice that it was only after the divorce that he began to be seen as something more than unfulfilled promise.
  • Supermodel Gisele Bundchen has become subject to the ire of many of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady's fans for supposed negative influence on his postseason performances. Since the two began dating in 2007, Brady has failed to lead his team to a championship despite winning two MVP awards and twice taking them to the best regular season record in the league (including an undefeated 16-0 in 2007, which ended in one of the biggest upsets in sports history when the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants). Couple this with Bundchen's occasionally controversial public statements and it's easy to see why football fans would be wary of her.
  • Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, Oscar Wilde's boyfriend gets this a lot. Wilde's previous partner, Robbie Ross, is usually looked on much more favourably. The main reasoning of this is that Douglas' behaviour (e.g. hiring male prostitutes) was the main reason Wilde's homosexuality was discovered, ruining Wilde's career, getting him arrested and put in labour jail for two years (ruining what was left of Wilde's health), forcing his family to move to Europe under false names (to escape the shame that homosexuality carried at the time) and ruined (and YMMV killed) altogether one of the greatest writers that ever lived.
  • When Law & Order: SVU actress Stephanie March got together with chef Bobby Flay, the fan reaction was overwhelmingly negative. Particularly among fans who shipped March's character Alex Cabot with Olivia Benson, and blamed Flay for March's departure from the show. (The fact that Flay was, at the time, widely known as Iron Chef Morimoto's Eagle Land Type 2 American rival didn't help.) Mariska Hargitay's real-life husband Peter Hermann wasn't too popular with fans either, but seemed to attract less outright vitriol than Flay.
  • In the Doctor Who fandom, many people bash Matt Smith (The 11th Doctor)'s girlfriend, Daisy Lowe, in favor of him hooking up with his on-screen former "love interest" Karen Gillan (Amy Pond). Or they want him for themselves.
  • Aaron Johnson's fiancee Sam Taylor Wood gets this for being 23 years older than him. She's often subject to vicious comments about how she is supposedly too old and ugly for him, and he is sure to dump her for a younger woman.
  • In the wake of Princess Diana's death, Prince Charles went back to former girlfriend Camilla Parker-Bowles for love and support. Bad move: the sort of exciteable people who went batshit over the death of a modern saint who very quickly ascended to the position of National Martyr (Diana Spencer) vilified the poor woman and subjected her to a barrage of hate, as often as not blaming her for St Diana's untimely death, despite the fact she did not properly re-enter Charles' life until well after his divorce from Diana. Cammila is still popularly loathed, and Charles has been informally advised not to give her the courtesy title of Queen when/if he ascends to the throne. It is feared that a Queen Camilla may tip the British people into republican sympathy, such is the degree of loathing for her. This is predicated on no better reason than She Is Not Diana. Add this all to the many reasons so many would rather see the crown directly passed on to William instead.
    • Most of this is, if not actually justified, at least made understandable by it being widely believed that Charles was having an affair with Camilla and that this is what led to the divorce.
  • Tom Hiddleston aka Loki from Thor is seen with a (rather pretty) lady who seems to be either his girlfriend or his wife. Cue the screaming fangirl meltdown.
  • Rumour has it that Viggo Mortensen is dating Ariadna Gil, his co-star from Alatriste. Fangirls everywhere pretty much broke down when that rumour started circulating around the 'net. To add to the fire, Ariadna is already married with two children, and would be cheating on her husband if the rumours are true.
  • Of course, on iCarly, you have your Seddie and Creddie fans, and fans who ship the actors who play those characters in real life (Jathan and Niranda, respectively). But when Nathan Kress's relationship with Madisen Hill got out in the open, things heated up on Twitter when incensed Jathan fans started sending hate tweets to Madisen for "getting in the way" of their ship, forcing Nathan to block many of them and thus sparking a heated controversy on whether or not he had done the right thing or had gone too far in blocking even those who hadn't directly bashed his girlfriend. To be fair, though, Madisen apparently also attacked the Jathan fans back, so neither side is completely innocent.
  • Many fans were actually happy that Zooey Deschanel got divorced because it meant that she would be 'free' to be with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Cue his fans getting angry over their insensetivity.
  • Groucho Marx, in the last years of his life, had a caretaker/girlfriend named Erin Fleming. While she isn't blamed for breaking up the Marx Brothers (that happened a decade earlier with Chico's death), most Marx fans hold her in ire for the way she used Groucho. During the 1970s, as Groucho got increasingly ill and senile, Fleming was constantly shoving him in front of the camera and the public eye, all in the name of jumpstarting her own stillborn acting career. When Groucho died in 1977, the unspoken fan reaction was generally "Thank God he's finally free of her."
  • When actor Bradley James from Merlin began dating actress Georgia King (who guest-starred on the show) many who shipped Bradley with his co-star Colin Morgan (under the portmanteau "Brolin") responded by throwing a fandom-wide hissy fit. This included leaving nasty messages on Georgia's Twitter, carefully scrutinizing the body lanuage of the couple in an attempt to scientifically disprove their attraction to each other, complaining that all their Brolin fan-fiction was now ruined, or simply refusing to believe it was true. It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
  • In Turkey and other neighboring countries, when a rumor said that local Memetic Sex God Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ was getting married, many girls were so crushed that they were Driven to Suicide or at least attempted it.
  • Nathan Kress's girlfriend Madisen Hill gets an incredible amount of flak because he's dating her and not Jennette McCurdy. Despite the repeated insistence of Jennette and Nathan that they are Like Brother and Sister. It got to the point where they eventually went public with their views on the situation, and started blocking some of the worst offenders, who are mostly people from Sam/Freddie (the characters that Nathan and Jennette play on iCarly) fandom.
  • South Korean actress Ha Ji-won was Unpersoned by the "Eight Goddesses" that secretly controlled the South Korean government because she played a character with a romantic relationship with an actor one of the "goddesses" liked.

Fictional Examples

Anime

  • A lot of Shoujo and Josei series involve the new girl catching the eye of the resident hottie, causing all the other girls to get enraged and gang up on her. Jesus, and you wonder why the resident hottie opted to stay single. Who'd want to go out with any of those crazy bitches?
    • In Sensual Phrase, Aucifer songwriter and lead singer Sakuya's girlfriend Aine has to deal with overzealous, whiny and sometimes downright violent fangirls more than once. Once she befriended a girl named Sakura, only to be dumped by her new "friend" once she learnt that she was dating Sakuya. Sakura later gets to briefly date Sakuya... but then we learn it's a Batman Gambit from him, since he wants to "punish" Sakura for taking Aine's friendship and position for granted.
    • Miyako Sakuragawa from Private Prince got to meet up with Prince Wilfred in a high-class party that her friend Chiri smuggled her in. The next day, a bunch of bitchy girls were already on her case, and Wilfred's valet Robert had to bail her out.
    • In Peach Girl, Momo got attacked (and her locket with a picture of her crush smashed) by a bunch of Kairi fangirls. She had just had a very short, and antagonistic, conversation with the guy and they are warning her to "stay away from our man". So, if the fangirls had paid attention to what was said in that convo or actually looked at the locket before breaking it, they'd have realized Momo was not interested in Kairi at that point.
    • In Lovely Complex, Risa Koizumi is attacked by a girl named Mimi due to her closeness to the basketball captain Ootani, whom Mimi has her heart set on. Mimi goes as far as almost stabing Risa in the hand with a pen out of jealousy. Fortunately, she later gives up on it.
  • Haunted Junction has a case like this in the beginning. A female ghost attempts repeatedly to possess Kazumi to spend a whole night with her boyfriend... Turns out that said boyfriend was a rising rock singer and, the night she died, the poor girl was running away from three rabid fangirls who had been bullying her for dating him, getting accidentally hit by a drunk driver in the middle of her escape. They get their asses literally kicked by the Ghost Giant (who punishes meddlers like that among Saitou High students), and the girl is reunited with the BF without needing to possess Kazumi.
  • In the anime Love Love, Naoko got seduced by Natsumi due to the fact he was a scriptwriter, when it was time that she realized she actually loved him. Both got in trouble after they attempted to have sex at a love hotel
  • In The Legend of Black Heaven, Oji's wife Yoshiko (or "Yokko"), a groupie of the metal band Oji fronted in his glory days, is broadly hinted to have caused the breakup of the band by conceiving Oji's son Gen. Yoshiko is largely hostile and unsupportive when Oji takes up the guitar again to the point of moving out of their house and filing for divorce when Oji won't quit the band.
  • In Durarara!!!!, Izaya's younger sister Mairu has a brief Heroic BSOD when she reads in a tabloid that her favorite actor (Shizuo's brother Kasuka) might have a relationship with Idol Singer Ruri Hijiribe.
  • Basically the plot of Nana; Nana O is perceived as this due to her relationship with Ren, with far-reaching effects on her life and career.
  • In Mawaru Penguindrum, three girls who were dumped by resident hottie Kanba Takakura (Asami, Yui and Chizuru) form a club named "Heart-Broken Victims of Takakura Kanba Assocation". As such, Yui and Chizuru corner Kanba at some point, asking him if he has a new girlfriend or a girl has taken their places in his heart. Then, Action Girl Masako then shows up and wipes their memories away... just like she did to an hospitalized Asami right beforehand.
    • Averted in the case of the in-story famous Takarazuka actress Yuri Tokikago, who is dating Kanba and Shoma's teacher Keiju Tabuki and hasn't had problems coming from fans as far as the story shows. This doesn't change when they get engaged, Yuri retires from acting and Tabuki moves into her Big Fancy House. The only one really objecting is Ringo... and well, this is Ringo we're talking about. And she later stops objecting anyway.
  • In The World Only God Knows, when popular idol Kanon publicly confesses to Keima, several of her fanboys are not pleased.
  • Zetsuai 1989: Koji's announcement that he's in love with Izumi doesn't go over very well with his fans. Especially the already unstable Eri.
  • In Bakuman｡, when it comes out that Azuki, now a very popular voice actress, is dating the main character, Mashiro, there is a massive amount of fan rage and Internet Backdraft.


Comic Books

  • An early issue of Grim Jack had him trying to protect a No Celebrities Were Harmed Expy of John Lennon. In the end, he finds out too late that the stalker's target was the wife, not the musician as everybody had assumed. The killer had blamed her for 'ruining' her husband... but her death resulted in him quiting singing and music all together.


Fan Works

  • The Moaning Myrtles, a Wizard Rock[1] band, plays Myrtle's crush on Harry for laughs and wrote a song about Cho called "Choko Ono"


Film

  • David St. Hubbins' girlfriend from This Is Spinal Tap, Jeanine Pettibone. She's intended as a parody of Yoko Ono, naturally.
  • Emily Wang in Clean gets blamed for the fall into obscurity and drug-related death of her boyfriend, a former rock star.
  • A smaller-scale example; in the British romantic comedy Confetti, one of the main characters is in a low-level rock band. He's getting married, and his best friend / bandmate has taken to writing songs which are thinly veiled rants about how much of a bitch he thinks the main character's fiancee is and how she's breaking up the band and splitting them apart. She is, however, a perfectly lovely and sweet woman, but is savvy enough to get the references to her in his music and does not appreciate them.
  • America's Sweethearts is one huge parody of this trope. John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones play a real-life Hollywood couple that have made several romantic comedies together. But when they break up prior to the release of their latest movie, interest in the film plummets, so the studio's promotion team tries to make it look like they're getting back together so the fans and press will care again.


Literature

  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book Legends of the Ferengi, one of the stories recounts how the popular Ferengi music group "Success" broke up after Grymi Success skipped the Isle of Grubs music festival to spend the evening in a tube grub sack with his wife, a Bolian performance artist named Pino.
  • In the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series, Georgia considers this trope the reason why Robbie's bandmates dislike her.


Live Action TV

  • A late fourth-season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is called "The Yoko Factor". The Yoko in this case is an actively malicious one—Spike, who can see a conflict brewing among the Scoobies, and pushes just the right buttons to set it off. Notably, Spike himself notes to Adam during the episode that Yoko, for all she got blamed, didn't break up the Beatles; it was internal strife, much as he wasn't so much the cause of the Scoobies' breakup, just the catalyst that (deliberately) brought their grievances into plain view. This example, however, is a subversion—while the Scoobies do have a vicious argument and falling out thanks largely to Spike's prodding, when tempers have cooled a bit they're savvy enough to realise that Spike's been manipulating them, approach either other more calmly about their recent tensions, and mend bridges.
    • In that same arc, Riley's friend Forrest views Buffy as the Yoko (with the Beatles represened by the Initiative).
      • Spike in turn, along with Riley Finn, served as Yoko Oh No to Angel/Buffy shippers who were furious that the relationship between the two characters was effectively ended due to Angel being spun off into his own series. Spike in particular gets blamed a lot, as the writers fleshed out Spike's character and made him more sympathetic to the audience. Some fans preferred the older characterization.
  • Shawn Ryan created his own personal Yoko Oh No plot device on The Shield in the form of Mara, Shane Vendrell's girlfriend and ultimately wife. Introduced at the start of the third season without bothering to show how she and Shane hooked up, Mara instantly shattered the loyalty of the members of the Strike Team with her existence, ultimately causing the group to break apart and to put Shane and Vic Mackey at bitter odds with each other. On the other hand, Mara is routinely written as being the only character who knows full well the true dark nature of the Strike Team and their crimes, and as such, reacts to their insane illegal/morally unethical schemes in a sensible fashion. Unfortunately, this in turn led to Shane Vendrell murdering his best friend, Detective Curtis "Lem" Lemanski, due to Mara lecturing Shane earlier in the season that he needed to put his family ahead of protecting Lem and his friends in the Strike Team, much to the horror of fans of the Lem/Shane slash pairings. Ultimately, Shane kills Mara and their child, starting the chain of events that brings the Downer Ending on..
  • Coco from Flight of the Conchords is a parody/lampshade of the Yoko effect. She's perfectly nice, but Jemaine insists that she'll break up the band.
  • Alluded to in That '70s Show. When Eric and Donna find out that Hyde and Jackie are dating behind Kelso's back (to be fair, Kelso did run out on her for a while), Eric freaks out over the effect of the deal in their common friendship and tells Jackie "You'll be breaking up the band, Yoko!"
    • Earlier, in the episode "The Third Wheel", he also calls Hyde's Girl of the Week Yoko ("What? We're kind of the Beatles.")
  • John's Yoko is the Trope Namer, but the exact words "Yoko Oh No" were spoken in the All That sketch "C.J. and the Cloudy Knights", where one of the Cloudy Knights has a girlfriend named Yoko who threatens to leave him if he doesn't become the lead singer.
    • This exact phrase was uttered by Bubble in "Absolutely Fabulous"
    • As well as Robert Wuhl in an HBO stand-up comedy routine.
    • It was also the title of a California Dreams episode.
  • Nina from Just Shoot Me forced her boyfriend of the week (Huey Lewis) to quit his air band (he came back). She also broke up The Jackson Six. Yes, there were six.
  • On Thirty Rock, Jack almost married a manipulative, vampy Gold Digger. She defended her actions thus:

Phoebe: You know how John Lennon was better than the rest of the Beatles but he didn't realize it until he met Yoko Ono? Well, I'm Jack's Yoko.
Liz: You want to be Yoko?

  • Israeli sitcom The Foxes, revolving around a group of friends making a poor quality horror series on YouTube, made an ersatz Yoko girlfriend for the group writer and director Schmuckler. Her skin had a rather dark complexion and her eyes were always covered by sunglasses (to let the audience believe she was Asian). She frequently meddled with the production, whispering ‘suggestions’ to Schmuckler (who took the habit of wearing round sunglasses) and never uttering a word besides that. The rest of the group hated her guts, but let her stay because Schmuckler was a virgin and they wanted to give him an opportunity to finally get lucky. This got so bad she made them break up (and smiling in Schadenfreude as Schmuckler announced the break up), but was soon allowed to be in the group’s new short instead. The actor playing the murderer in the scene was extra-cruel to her, leading to her leaving the group for an acting gig (apparently, no-one could play a dead body as well as her), and it turned out Schmuckler never got to do anything with her.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: In Gamera vs. Guiron, they reference Yoko Ono. During a closeup on young Tomoko, one of the SOL crew quips, "I'll show you! I'll grow up to break up the Beatles!"
  • In the episode of The Big Bang Theory "The Cooper-Nowitzki Theorum", Sheldon's graduate student Ramona Nowitzki seeks to isolate him from the group and curtail his leisure activities in a effort to improve his scientific work. The soundtrack lampshades this by covering a Montage of this activity with "Be My Yoko Ono". Sheldon eventually cuts ties with Ramona in order to avoid sharing credit with a lowly graduate student.


Music


Radio

  • Inverted in Old Harry's Game, one of the characters violently hate celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh because he fancies Titchmarsh's wife


Video Games

  • In The Prince of Tennis Dating Sim Gakuensai no Oujisama, if you place the main girl (default name: Shizuka Hirose) in Hyoutei Gakuen and she becomes close to Atobe, she will be threatened and physically attacked by his rabid fangirls. When Atobe finds out, he will lecture Shizuka harshly for not telling him about the incidents; later he'll protect her from his fans and, if the main girl manages to successfully woo him, in the end he announces that she will be his girlfriend in front of the whole school, much to the dismay of the attackers.
  • Parodied in the one of the loading screen messages for Guitar Hero: "When in doubt, blame the singer's girlfriend".


Web Original

Fan 3: So they say he saved her life.
Fan 2: They say she works with the homeless and doesn't eat meat.
All The Fans: We have a problem with her!
Fan 1: This is his hair.


Western Animation

  • Barney's girlfriend from The Simpsons episode featuring the B Sharps; another Yoko parody.

Moe: What'll it be?
Barney: Gimme a beer
Barney's Japanese Girlfriend: I'll have a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat

    • In another episode, when someone mentions Yoko Ono, Homer says, in all sincerity "Ew, she totally ruined the Plastic Ono Band!"
  • Metalocalypse references this one, in the episode "Girlfriendklok". Nathan Explosion's woman in that episode is, to say the least, a nuisance.
    • Not to mention there were mass suicides when news of him having a girlfriend broke out. (And open warfare between fangirls once they broke up.)
  • Moko Jono, Mojo Jojo's girlfriend in The Powerpuff Girls' Beatles spoof "Meet the Beat-Alls". She helps the girls split up the band. Here, she's a good gal who is sent in as a Reverse Mole of sorts. She was a nonsentient female ape of the same species, "cross"-dressed as a sentient being, brought in by the PPG to break up the four supervillains whose powers combined could beat all three of the girls.
  • A Pinky and The Brain episode featured The Brain introducing a "singer" named Yoyo Nono (who can't sing at all) to the popular 60's band The Feebles. The result?

George Harrison Lookalike: She's awful.
Paul McCartney Lookalike: She's terrible!
Ringo Starr Lookalike: She can't sing.
John Lennon Lookalike: I love her!

    • Then the band breaks up so "John Lemon" can pursue a relationship with Nono, and The Feebles's fanbase immediately run Pinky and the Brain out of India for introducing them.
      • An out of universe example; many fans see Elmyra as a unanimous example of this for the entire series.
  • On Family Guy, Stewie threatens Brian with doing the same thing to him he did to John Lennon. The Manatee Gag shows Stewie making the introductions.
  1. ↑ band that writes music about Harry Potter
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