Imaginary Love Triangles in Anime and Manga.
- Ayakashi Triangle:
- There is a sort of love triangle between Suzu, Matsuri, and Soga, but various events makes Suzu very mistaken as to what kind. She knows she loves Matsuri, believes Soga is openly a romantic rival over him, and worries Matsuri may already be falling in love or fooling around with him. In reality, Matsuri returns her feelings but won't admit it, Soga knowingly loves her but only told Matsuri, and his attraction to Matsuri is an Inconvenient Attraction that Matsuri doesn't notice, much less reciprocate.
- Similarly, Lu and Yayo (who only know Matsuri as a girl) think Soga and Matsuri form a different love triangle where Reo also love Soga. The reality is that Soga and Reo are mutually disinterested, and Reo also loves Matsuri.
- Matsuri comes to fear Garaku as a romantic rival for Suzu's affection because Garaku knew Suzu's past life, even though there's no signs of attraction between them (not to a mention a huge age difference).
- Bleach: Early into the Arracar Arc, Orihime becomes depressed because she mistakenly assumes that Ichigo — who she has feelings for — is in love with Rukia. Rangiku Matsumoto comforts Orihime by assuring her that she is just as important to Ichigo as Rukia is, and not to give up on her feelings for him. This pays off, as while Ichigo and Rukia really are Just Friends, he and Orihime end up an Official Couple.
- Danganronpa 3: During an episode of Side:Despair, It seems that there is one, with Chisa thinking that she is competing with Juzo Sakakura for the heart of their mutual friend Munakata, but Juzo states that it's an idiotic idea. Then it turns out that this is subverted, and she was Right for the Wrong Reasons, Juzo is indeed in love with Munakata, but afraid of his reaction and seeing as Munakata is in love with Chisa, he decides to back down, so he was never competing in the first place.
- Fairy Tail has a love triangle existing only in the mind of Juvia, who misinterprets something Gray says to think he loves Lucy, and thus believes her to be a rival in love. Ironically, Gray and Lucy are just friends and Gray doesn't seem to have an interest in love, let alone notice Juvia's affections for him. The imaginary rivalry settles down after a while, but that doesn't stop Juvia from sometimes flaunting her "progress with Gray-sama" in front of Lucy. Later she believes that she's in a Love Dodecahedron in which most of the female characters who know Gray are in love with Gray.note After Lyon falls in love with Juvia, Juvia also imagines that Gray is in love with Lyon.
- Gamers! (2015) has a setup where all the characters involved think they're in a Love Dodecahedron, but it's really just a love triangle with an Official Couple on the side. Aguri loves Tasuku who loves her back. Karen loves Keita who reciprocates. Chiaki and Keita are made for each other but their relationship is a little complicated. This is muddied however with people's perceptions. Keita and Aguri think that Tasuku is two-timing Aguri with Chiaki and/or Karen. Karen at points thinks that Keita is in love with Chiaki. Chiaki initially thinks Keita is being led on by Aguri until he asks Karen out and thus "escapes" her. And Tasuku is deliberately setting up Keita's love triangle, at least in part because he thinks that Aguri's two-timing him. The imaginary triangles and dodecahedrons are complicated from the start, and the constant misunderstandings mean it just goes downhill from there.
- The Geek Ex-Hitman: Viviana is opposed to yakuza underboss Mei's one-sided Best Her to Bed Her-style pursuit of Marco, because she's a Yaoi Fangirl who ships him with the third member of their doujinshi circle, Andre.
- Horimiya: Chapter 86 has an imaginary harem forming around Sakura in the eyes of two background characters. Said "harem" includes Hori.
- Matsuri from I Belong to the Baddest Girl at School is convinced that her childhood friend Yutaka and New Transfer Student Youdou are both competing for the affections of Unoki, who himself may or may not have a one-sided crush on infamous delinquent Toramaru. She's wrong on pretty much every count; Yutaka has feelings for her that she wrongly assumed were directed at Unoki, Youdou openly admits she's in love with him but has chosen not to pursue a relationship out of fear that she'd end up abusing him, and while Unoki does have a crush on Toramaru, he only thinks it's one-sided; Toramaru is smitten with him to the point that she believes they're already a couple.
- Ichaicha Suru to Okane ga Waichau Futari no Hanashi: Hanasaki is planning to give Aki a Love Confession, but he has his friend Touma over that day. Due to his referring to his friend in gender-neutral terms, and Hanasaki seeing a helmet with flower patterns, the androgynous Touma, and lingerie and handcuffs that Touma had bought for his own girlfriend, she assumes Touma is Aki's girlfriend and runs off.
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
- Kaguya sometimes thinks that there is one going on between her, Shirogane and Fujiwara. However, this is all just on Kaguya's bad habit to resent Fujiwara for her qualities. Shirogane only has eyes for Kaguya. She, in general, doesn't look too favorable on Shirogane making female friends.
- Chapter 74, due to the three of them having binged too much shojo manga, shows Kaguya in an imagined love triangle, where Shirogane and Ishigami try to court Kaguya.
- In Chapter 182 and 187, Hayasaka's and Shirogane's friends assume there is a love triangle going on between Kaguya, Shirogane and Hayasaka.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016), Shad sees Link's arrival as the beginning of a Love Triangle for Ilia's affections, not quite realizing Link took Shad to be Ilia's Second Love, backed off entirely, and is now moving on to his own Second Love, Midna.
- In Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, as she began to develop feelings for Solomon, Sheba became jealous of Solomon's close friend Arba, seeing her as the ultimate rival. But in reality, the relationship between Solomon and Arba were only familial and once Arba realized Sheba would be a good match for Solomon, she approached Sheba and gave her the blessing to be Solomon's wife.
- Mint na Bokura has Chris, who falls for Noel and goes to great lengths in order to steal "her" away from her "boyfriend" (who in reality is the Secret-Keeper for Noel's true gender).
- In Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, Ryousuke thinks that his crush Miyako is dating Nozaki and that he has to win her over. In truth, Miyako and Nozaki are just fellow manga authors (a profession that Miyako hides) who happen to be neighbors, his reputation being just a misunderstanding of their discussions over manga plots.
- Takeo from My Love Story!! initially believes his crush Yamato likes his Bishōnen best friend Suna, since girls usually flock around Suna while Takeo is ignored due to being a bit of a Gonk. Takeo is very wrong - Yamato only has eyes for him. Suna is the one who arranges to clear up the misunderstanding and get them together.
- Naruto Gaiden has a variation on this as the one believing the love triangle is the child of two of the members involved. Sarada is Sasuke's and Sakura's daughter. Her father has been gone her entire life and she knows little of him. One day she spots a picture of Sasuke and Karin, which causes her to start doubting her parentage. She finds more evidence of Karin being her mother as time goes on. It turns out she is Sakura's biological daughter. Karin gave up on Sasuke years ago. Karin and Sakura are even actually friendly as adults.
- Episode 5 of Persona 4: The Animation centers around on of these, though parts of it are real. Ai Ebihara likes Kou, who likes Chie. The imaginary dodecahedron is created when Ai gets Yu Narukami to pretend to be her boyfriend, and then everyone starts thinking Chie likes Yu...
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Several one-off characters who develop crushes on Ash aren't happy to see Misty, May, or Dawn travelling with him.
- Miette invokes this, pretending to have a romantic interest in Ash, all just to see Serena get jealous. Serena doesn't buy it, for the most part.
- Samurai Flamenco has a very odd inversion where the hypotenuse themself is imaginary, but everyone involved treats her as real. Goto is "dating" a girl through texts. He spurns Mari's advances because of her. The girlfriend is jealous of Masayoshi at one point, implying that Goto has feelings for him, but feels guilty about straying from his girlfriend. But she isn't actually an obstacle to either of these relationships, because 1.) she mysteriously disappeared years ago, and 2.) by that point Goto's texts from her were really a coping mechanism he used to keep sane, up to and including imagining how she'd react to any of these developments. It's that kind of a show.
- In Spy X Family Yor, who's very insecure about her abilities as a wife and mother, worries that she can't live up to the memory of her husband Loid's late first wife, or that she can't compare to Loid's beautiful and talented coworker Fiona. Unbenownst to her, her husband is actually the super-spy known as Twilight, meaning that his "first wife" only ever existed as part of the fictional backstory of his current persona (and that her stepdaughter Anya was actually adopted from an orphanage), and that Fiona is actually Twilight's spy colleague Nightfall. While Nightfall is manically in love with Twilight and would like nothing more than to replace Yor as his wife with the intention of winning his affections for real, Twilight has no romantic feelings for her whatsoever and knows she'd make a terrible mother for Anya so he's perfectly happy with Yor in the role of his wife. Furthermore, despite all the women Loid has used and discarded in the past in order to carry out his missions, Yor is the only woman he's ever had real feelings for, even if he himself doesn't realise it yet.
- Zigzagged in Urusei Yatsura with the Lum/Rei/Ran Love Triangle; Ran is desperately in love with Rei and terrified of the idea that Lum will steal him away, as the two were engaged at some point prior to the series. Much of her hostility towards Lum is born of this phobia, the other half being grudges over the constant trouble Lum got her into as kids. However, Lum hates Rei, broke off the engagement to him, regards it with deep regret, wants nothing to do with Rei, and would be happy for Rei and Ran to hook up (even if she doesn't understand why Ran would want him). Complicating things is that Rei is still in love with Lum and wants to win her back, whilst being largely oblivious to Ran's existence outside of her constantly feeding him.
- In ...Virgin Love, Chiharu's knowledge of Kaoru's sex life starts to make Daigo think there might have been something between them and Chiharu decides to fan the flames. Kaoru later reveals to Daigo that Chiharu is his cousin and he's just being had.
- In the elementary chapters of Wandering Son, Saori develops a crush on Nitori but becomes very jealous of Nitori's friendship with Takatsuki. The two are frequently Mistaken for Romance and are very close. This causes a drift in Saori's and Takatsuki's friendship. None of this is helped by the fact Nitori is confused about whether she likes Takatsuki platonically or romantically. She confesses to Takatsuki but is turned down, only for later that day for Saori to confess to her. When Nitori declines Saori's affections and mentions that she confessed to Takatsuki, this causes Saori to fall into a depression and her friendship with both to be ruined for several years. By high school the drama had died down, with all three being friends (especially Takatsuki and Chiba). It helps that Saori and Nitori both have a boyfriend and a girlfriend respectively.
- Yona of the Dawn had a Love Triangle played completely straight in its beginning chapters, but it slowly morphed into this as the series went on. When they were growing up together, Yona had always loved Su-Won, while Hak had always loved Yona. After Su-Won murdered Yona's father and usurped her throne while she escaped with Hak, Yona naturally fell out of love with him. Much later, she's fallen for Hak, but he believes her still keeping the hairpin Su-Won had given her means that she still loves him.
