Perhaps you have a male character who is visibly touch-feely towards another male character, while being similarly open in rejecting the advances of any female characters who come his way. Or when the other male characters ogle the resident Ms. Fanservice, this character hardly bats an eye, but he seems quite interested in what the Walking Shirtless Scene is doing. Other characters in the work may even question exactly which way this character swings, but never get an answer. The character's sexuality is simply never made clear within the work.
Yes, this character is Ambiguously Gay—they display much onscreen evidence of exclusive same-gender attraction, but nothing is ever explicitly confirmed one way or another. The ambiguity can range all the way from from blink-and-you'll-miss-it implications to all-but-confirmed.
This trope has taken slightly different forms throughout the past due to differences in censorship and what was permissible in the media. In many old films, characters were often given descriptions that may be perceived as code words for "gay". Such words may include "eccentric", "queer", "confirmed/lifelong bachelor" or other words that can just as easily mean their conventional definitions without subtext, hence why it's ambiguous.
In other cases where the censors may not have permitted any overt implications of homosexual attraction, creators would sometimes deliberately utilize stereotypical traits as a way of Getting Crap Past the Radar and implying a character's homosexuality. For example a male character might lisp, show and have an interest in fashion and musicals, have no apparent interest in the opposite sex, and live in a single-bedroom apartment with one of their "roommates". In modern sociological theory, these characters are described as being "queer-coded".
This particular permutation of Ambiguously Gay has largely become a Broken Trope in domestic media due to contemporary media being more open to depiction of explicitly gay characters, many of whom don't necessarily conform to stereotypes. However, it still lives on in some kinds of media aimed at international audiences, due to certain countries having more stringent anti-LGBT censorship than others.
As a result, modern instances of the trope are less likely to rely on stereotypes or code; common reasons for characters in newer works being considered Ambiguously Gay include a lack of interest in heterosexual relationships, overtly implied romantic or sexual interest in a character of the same gender, and In-Universe rumors about the character's sexuality.
Compare Hide Your Lesbians, wherein the relationship between two characters is ambiguously gay. It's frequently combined with Word of Gay, for cases when the character's homosexuality remains deliberately ambiguous within the work itself but is declared elsewhere by a creator. If the hints are overt enough, it can overlap with Transparent Closet, and some types of Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, in which the character's dubious sexuality is much more openly questioned. A similar trope is Have You Tried Not Being a Monster? for when the gay innuendo is used to define something supernatural, such as vampires or mutants.
A closely related trope is Ambiguously Bi, which is similar to this trope but with bisexuality as opposed to homosexuality, and often involves a character who often shows explicit attraction towards at least one gender in canon. Compare and contrast with Homoerotic Subtext, which is about same-gender characters who may or may not be attracted to each other, but nevertheless have gay moments which are often lampshaded by the work itself. See also Pseudo-Romantic Friendship. Also compare and contrast Queer Establishing Moment, for when an Ambiguously Gay character graduates out of the "Ambiguously" part.
Not to be confused with Ho Yay, which is an Audience Reaction for fans interpreting any interactions between two characters of the same gender as homoerotic, whether or not it's deliberately implied within the text and regardless of what sexual orientation the characters may have in canon.
A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples for episodic works shouldn't be added until end of season for the season introducing the ambiguity (or after 3 months, for episodic works without seasons). This is to allow time for the story to develop the character and resolve ambiguity. There is no waiting time for non-episodic works.
Examples:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films - Animation
- Films - Live Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Western Animation
Other Examples:
- Budweiser ran one of their happy, feel-good ads where the first person that a male soldier calls to tell he's coming home is another guy who he also embraces first at his coming home party, even before his own parents.
- On a similar note, a 1989 commercial
for Hamm's beer features their iconic bear mascot acting pretty flirty with two men who enter a bar together, even gazingly longingly at them as the scene wraps. The ad was briefly rediscovered and became Popular with Furries in the 2010s.
- The Happy Chop could count, if it qualifies as ambiguous: "if you like small fruit... or even a big one!" and "can I say hard cheese on television?"
- Happy Heroes: Teacher Know-It-All blushes at the sight of Professor Limen's muscular body in Season 5 episode 45, but is not confirmed to have a crush on him.
- Infinity Nado: Pandora despite his appearance and name is actually a boy who never really shows any interest in female characters in the series and is super close with the main character Jin.
- Gil Thorp: Lini Verde, a flashy-dressing Glee fan who's also a clinch player for the basketball team. His sexual orientation hasn't been stated. The storyline involves a website that calls him unpleasant names, but the exact nature of those names is unrevealed (probably a good idea for all sorts of reasons). When one character suggests wearing pink to support him, she gets the response "This is about bullying, not ... pinkness!"
- It's Grim Up North London: Jez and Quin in the Private Eye comic strip. Maybe they're a stereotyped gay couple; maybe they're an equally stereotyped pair of upper-middle-class artistic types, who happen to share a flat.
- Lucy and Sophie Say Goodbye is a 1900s comic about two women who take a long time to part ways. Almost every strip has them kissing goodbye. Due to Values Dissonance it's unclear if this was intended to be Platonic Kissing or Queer People Are Funny.
- Terry and the Pirates: Creepy Crossdresser Sanjak dresses like a man and wears a monocle that she uses to hypnotise people; most notably Terry's girlfriend April. Her use of a monocle carries some interesting connotations, as in the early 20th century, a woman wearing a monocle would most likely be assumed to be a lesbian.
- "The Grave Mound" is a lesser-known story from The Brothers Grimm in which two men outsmart the Devil and move in together to live happily ever after "as long as God is pleased to permit". One of the story's few adaptations (the final chapter of Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms) makes them explicitly a co-habitating queer couple.
- "The Wood Maiden" reads like a tragic lesbian love story to modern readers. Betushka goes into the forest where she meets a mysterious and beautiful wood maiden, and together, the two women dance the days away, until Betushka makes an Orpheus-style mistake that separates them forever.
- The WWE tag team Billy & Chuck were ambiguously Manly Gay, from being spotted backstage oiling each other up and doing bizarre stretches, to their shiny red trunks and matching personalized headbands, to their boy-band entrance theme. This became less ambiguous when they planned a gay wedding, on television — and then became outright subverted when they stopped said gay wedding to declare that the whole thing was a publicity stunt, and they weren't really gay, just Heterosexual Life-Partners.
- Their manager Rico, who took their gimmick AND their theme song to whole new levels. The You Look So Good To Me theme has been used time and again in the WWE to mark a character as non-heteronormative. See Marella, Santino.
- While The Brooklyn Brawler's onscreen persona has always been a tough guy, an Urban Legend amongst longtime wrestling fans is that Steve Lombardi is gay, rumored to be in a relationship with Pat Patterson.
- Long before Billy & Chuck, WCW had Lenny and Lodi, who were very ambiguous about their "very close relationship" - until Executive Meddling from AOL Time Warner killed the angle, ending it with the revelation that they were brothers.
- During a D-Generation X run, Triple H and Shawn Michaels seemed to pass off as convincing Heterosexual Life-Partners at the very least. They only even somewhat pass because most viewers don't remember the original DX, where there was very little heterosexuality to be had, between Shawn kissing Hunter on national television numerous times and Hunter's infamous "bi" quote:
Triple H: I'm "bi" a lot of things. Lingual ain't one of them.
- The Fabulous Ones. They were a Mr. Fanservice team marketed to adult women as Playgirl-style sex symbols (as opposed to The Rock 'n' Roll Express, who were a Tiger Beat team aimed toward teen girls), but some of their posed photos do seem to have a bit of Ho Yay in them.
- Goldust from the WWE, even though his gay overtones are primarily mind games he plays with his opponents. One notable example is his feud with Razor Ramon, where in one match he rubbed Ramon's chest and freaked him out.
- The New Generation.
- Layla El and Michelle are very close, and it was Layla who suggested they go to couple's therapy. And then there's Layla's blatant dry humping Kelly Kelly and Natalya on TV.
- Too Much had "Too Sexy" Brian Christopher and Scott "Too Hot" Taylor as tag team partners who were very concerned about each other's safety. Billy & Chuck's "wedding" angle was originally planned for Too Much, but was vetoed by Jerry Lawler (Brian Christopher's father) who was afraid his son's career would never recover. However, they found more success when the then-WWF repackaged them as the Pretty Fly for a White Guy team Too Cool, Grandmaster Sexay and Scotty 2 Hotty and put them with Rikishi, and it got over much more than Too Much had.
- Sasha Banks and Bayley sure are close, with Banks even telling Bayley "I love you, I always have, and I always will." They hug a lot.
- Round the Horne has the very fey Julian and Sandy: a couple of out-of-work actors, though they could turn their hand to anything. In one episode they were lawyers, leading to the glorious line "We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time." (At the time, homosexuality was still technically illegal in the UK.)
- The stage version of An American in Paris has stylish song-and-dance man Henri Baurel, whose sexuality is questioned but never resolved in the text.
- Poddi in Ávaxtakarfan. He and his sister Palla are best friends and do everything together, and they both stare at Immi with admiration during the "Immi Best" musical number. He is also the only character whose gender is the opposite of the grammatical gender of the word for his species.note
- Guffi Banana loves talking about Immi Pineapple, looking at Immi, and seems incredibly enthusiastic about Immi’s coronation, leading some fans to theorise that he may have a crush on Immi. It’s worth noting that Guffi is the last character to turn against Immi, remaining loyal longer than Immi’s implied love interest Eva Orange
- In Bandstand, Jimmy ignores the female ensemble while his band mates ogle the women in New York, has a considerable wardrobe of plaid pants, and has some delicate flair in his mannerisms. The casting call and a cut scene reveal he is unambiguously gay, starts out with a slight crush on Donny, and his boyfriend was a fellow Navy man who died when their ship blew up.
- Be More Chill: Michael's relationship with Jeremy can be seen as this. They obviously care a lot for each other, are each other's only friends before the events of the musical, and Michael's song after Jeremy abandons him shows how dependent he is on him. And let's not forget how Jeremy called Michael his favorite person.
- Legally Blonde: The stage version has a scene where the cast tries to figure out whether such a character is actually gay... or just European. Turns out he's gay AND European!
- The Mousetrap has two cases (from a cast of eight). Miss Casewell is abrasive, masculine and at one point is caught writing a letter to "dearest Jessie", which she's somewhat cagey about. Mr. Wren is very camp and loves to cook, and repeatedly brings up how attractive he finds the investigating Sergeant Trotter.
- The Nerd: The script indicates that Axel is to be played very effete, and the ending suggests that he's trying to get everyone else out of the house so that he can share it with fellow theater devotee Kemp.
- The Play That Goes Wrong: Max really, really doesn't want to kiss Sandra. When Trevor ends up having to read Florence's lines, though, he's much more enthusiastic.
- Pokémon Live! turns the normally Camp Straight James more clearly into this. He's still as flamboyant as ever and jokes about "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (an old military regulation that banned openly LGBT people from service for years).
- Shrek: The Musical is full of this trope, from the sassy Donkey, to the prissy Farquaad, to the entire pride-anthem vibe of "Freak Flag".
Pinocchio: I'm wood. I'm good. Get used to it!
- The protagonist of Ken Laszlo's Italo Disco song "Hey Hey Guy". All we know is the guy on the other end of the phone is a man... and so might be the narrator of this male-sung song.
- Grimlock from The Transformers is likely this — owing to having confusing feelings when kissed by Re-Cycle in The Transformers: The Movie.
- Coach Z of Homestar Runner was shown married to Bubs and has worn a skirt and hair curlers in two different toons. The only reason why he is ambiguous is that his sexuality is never mentioned. He's likely Ambiguously Bi due to his obsessive attraction to Marzipan.
- I Am Octavia is about how Octavia is on the brink of breaking her friendship with Vinyl Scratch because Vinyl is always too busy for her. Their relationship is only referred to as a friendship, but there's a lot of deliberate subtexts. It doesn't help that the song it's parodying is often interpreted as a romantic song.
- Meta Runner: Belle racked up a fair number of this just ten episodes in. A number of her interactions with Tari include leaning in nice and close while calling her names like "honey" and "babe". Her reaction to what happened to her former gaming partner Lucina and how they interacted beforehand also heavily implies they may have been more than friends. The "ambiguous" part was dropped in the series finale when it was confirmed that she and Lucina were in a romantic relationship that they gleefully resume when the latter is brought back.
- Minecraft: The N00b Adventures has Gaylord_Steambath, who, on an interesting off note, is also The Sociopathic and, uh, well, kind of eccentric antagonist of the series.
- The Most Popular Girls in School: There's been a ton of examples among the unconfirmed characters, but one that comes to mind is the fact that Rachel brought Judith to prom. And Judith was wearing a tuxedo. Woof.
- Nomad of Nowhere features Skout and Toth. Skout is very eager to please Toth while Toth, a generally hard-headed bounty hunter type, is uncharacteristically kind to (and protective of) Skout.
- Red vs. Blue:
- Donut. In Season 1, he had been given pink armor ("It's not pink, it's lightish red!") and was your typical new recruit. In Season 2 (where this trope comes into play) he started using lotions, talking about his feelings, screaming like a woman, analysing dreams, and generally being as effeminate as possible while retaining some air of heterosexuality. The song "Donut: The Musical" from the Season 9 soundtrack is full of double-entendres and similar sounding words (that the other Red members keep asking to repeat).
Tucker: I don't think Santa's outfit is a biker's costume and a codpiece, Donut.
Donut: It was the best Christmas ever! - He remained high camp but still just ambiguous enough as time went on, though jokes about his sexuality decreased as LGBTQ acceptance became more and more of a hotbed issue, emphasizing his ditziness instead. Even the double-entendres were ultimately revealed to be just him trying to be funny, but it just led everyone to dismiss him and generally not take him seriously. Eventually Season 17 saw him undergo major character development, forming deep friendships with already-deep characters like Wash or Carolina, when before, they all had just seen him as a nuisance.
- Donut. In Season 1, he had been given pink armor ("It's not pink, it's lightish red!") and was your typical new recruit. In Season 2 (where this trope comes into play) he started using lotions, talking about his feelings, screaming like a woman, analysing dreams, and generally being as effeminate as possible while retaining some air of heterosexuality. The song "Donut: The Musical" from the Season 9 soundtrack is full of double-entendres and similar sounding words (that the other Red members keep asking to repeat).
- The hosts of Spill, in their review of Beautiful Creatures, claim that upper-class, "posh" Southern accents come off as sounding like this.
- Critical Role has Caduceus Clay. He's made several comments on the attractiveness of male NPC's and seems rather uncomfortable when Nott tries to get him to compliment the bright queen. Word of God says he's an aromantic asexual.
- The titular character of Daisy Brown. In "Another cooking video!", the hidden messages in the closed captioning appear to be of a conversation Daisy is having with her father, in which she asks if she's able to marry another girl. In "Artistic video", she tells Alan a bedtime story she made up, wherein the queen of the moon falls in love with the queen of the stars.
- The Fantastic Favio Bros: Tony often acts as the foil to Favio. As such, while Favio is a Chivalrous Pervert, Tony is ambiguously gay. His Evil Twin, LeTony, also has traces of ambiguous sexuality.
- Jreg: In Centricide, Anarcho-Primitivist's interaction with Homonationalist shows him being offended that the latter does not find him attractive. Whether this indicates an attraction to other men or is just a matter of pride is a matter of debate.
- The Nostalgia Critic's review of Batman & Robin uses the jingle from The Ambiguously Gay Duo to lampshade this trope.
- Nick and Beck of Theatre of Life fame. They do it on purpose.
