Meet Cute

An elegant and finely crafted fictional depiction of how Phil Foglio met his wife and co-writer Kaja.

Ted: I just gotta bump into her somewhere. Now if only I knew her schedule, I could arrange a chance encounter.
Lily: That's great, Ted. You'll be the most casual stalker ever.

— How I Met Your Mother, "Purple Giraffe"

Meet Cute is a way to quickly introduce two characters and set up their burgeoning relationship. A meet-cute is almost always rife with awkwardness, embarrassment, and sometimes outright hostility. It's often used in films, particularly the Romantic Comedy, due to time constraints; while on television a relationship can develop more naturally over many episodes, a movie has to get their couple set up right away to fit within 2 hours.

This meeting can happen by way of any of an innumerable array of circumstances, so long as there's something cutesy about it. Possibly they have an instant dislike for one another. Maybe they crash into each other in a hallway and papers fly about. Maybe one of them has been shopping for ISO-Standard Urban Groceries and trips over the other walking down the street. Perhaps mistaken identity or other wacky misunderstanding is involved. Sometimes someone is naked or in an otherwise embarrassing situation.

This is a subtrope of Boy Meets Girl and sister trope to Chic and Awe. When one party has arranged the "chance" encounter for the purpose of romance is very common.

Not to be confused with The Cutie, even though either or both of them could very well be just that. Nor with the eponymous movie from 2022.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ai Yori Aoshi: Kaoru and Aoi meet cute at the start of the series. They bump into each other at the station, he fixes her shoe, walks her to her destination (taking a round trip on the train because he didn't want to wake her up) and then they discover they are childhood friends.
• Baccano!:
  • Ennis and Firo meet when they bump into each other, she loses a button on her suit, and he runs after her to return it. After decades of pining on Firo's part, they get married.
  • In a slightly less traditional example, Claire Stanfield/Vino meets Chane Laforet while he is on top of a train, soaked in the blood of his victims. She tries to kill him. He proposes. They end up Happily Married.
• In Basilisk, during their first meeting, a hiccup causes Oboro to stumble and spill a tray of tea she was serving all over Gennosuke.
• Bleach finally provided the long-anticipated story of the first meeting between Isshin and Masaki in the "Everything but the Rain" flashback mini-arc. The trope was both played straight and subverted: their Rescue Romance was indeed both badass and adorable... and it broke Ryuuken in the process.
• In Brave10, Saizo meets Isanami via collision and within a day they are already in bickering mode.
• In Code Geass, Euphemia and Suzaku Kururugi first meet with her jumping out of a window several stories above ground and landing in his arms.
• Daily Lives of High School Boys usually lampshades this trope as it appears, under the supertrope of Boy Meets Girl.
  • In general, this trope is invoked by the (Literature) girl, and recognized by this name by the boy (Hidenori).
  • In High School Boy and Drop-kicks, Emi wondered if the sudden closeness between Hidenori and Kiyohiko was "Boy Meets Boy".
• Darker than Black:
  • Subverted. Li ends up saving Chiaki several times just by being in the right place at the right time, including once with a Fake-Out Make-Out, and eventually promises to help her escape the country. However, "Li" is just the civilian alias of Hei, a.k.a. "The Black Reaper". He was stringing her along purposefully in order to learn what she knew. And on top of that, it wasn't even the real Chiaki- it was a Doll programmed with her personality as a decoy to draw him out.
  • Li and Misaki, on the other hand, mostly play this straight - their first proper meeting occurred while hiding in a bathroom stall from a yandere Mafia Princess at a party.
• Dear Brother: Nanako and Kaoru meet on the train ride on their first day of high school. The crowded train causes them to squeeze together. After Nanako has a hard time getting out of the train, Kaoru helps her out but that causes them to collide.
• Double Arts reveals in a side comic that Kiri's parents met this way. When a super-tall boy and a super-tiny girl trying to enroll in a seamstressing school misjudge the "normal" sizes of their trial garments...
• In Eden of the East, Akira Takizawa and Saki Morimi meet in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., with the former carrying a cell phone, a gun...and completely naked.
• Eureka Seven: The Official Couple meet when she crashes her Humongous Mecha into his house. She then ritualistically burns most of his remaining possessions.
• Fullmetal Alchemist; Izumi met her future husband Sig Curtis after she crashed into him while hurrying to start training with her alchemy teacher (she also happened to be carrying a bear carcass at the time. Sig returning it to her is what triggered their Love at First Sight moment).
• Ga-Rei: Kensuke Nimura meets Kagura Tsuchimiya when she crashed into him on her scooter, resulting in an Accidental Kiss.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: Makoto, after several failed matchmaking attempts, uses her time-leaping ability to forcibly arrange a meet-cute for Kousuke and Kaho by putting them in just the right positions for Kousuke to get involuntarily tackled into Kaho by another student. This ultimately leads to Kousuke and Kaho dying in a train accident, and Makoto later undoes her meddling in favor of a much simpler approach.
• Gravitation: Shuichi and Yuki meet cute twice: the first time, Shuichi's lyrics blow away in the park into the hands of Yuki who insults them, much to Shuichi's shock; the second happens a few days later when Shuichi jumps in front of Yuki's car in the rain and Yuki, after deprecating him again, drives him to his home to dry him off.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: Although it's not even hinted at in the main continuity, Kyon has two encounters that fit this bill with Nagato during the movie.
  • The first is when he helps her get a library card, told in flashback, since he doesn't remember the event. Nor did she find out his name.
  • The second is when he enters the former club room to find only Nagato sitting there and finally introducing himself to her.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, this is done twice: Maria meets Hayate by accidentally running him over with her bike while he was lying in the snow, then giving him her scarf since he was out in the snow without even a jacket. Hinagiku first meets Hayate while she is standing high up in a tree after going up to save a baby bird and then getting stuck due to her fear of heights; she then accidentally kicks off Hayate's face after jumping down since he wasn't ready to catch her.
  • Nagi kind of gets this due to the convoluted way that she meets Hayate with what she believes to be a surprise confession of love. In actuality Hayate is just the worst criminal ever and his statement of his intent to kidnap her (to pay off the massive debt forced on him) was incredibly vague.
• Hekikai no AiON:
  • Tatsuya first saw Seine after she steps on his money when a couple of bullies throw it to the ground.
  • Tatsuya's parents met when the father saw the mother hanging white radishes.
• Hellsing, of all things have two examples (both fit the Boy Meets Ghoul trope too). First one, manga only, when Alucard and Integra meet which includes an oddly endearing and awkward scene of Integra asking his permission to sit next to him (when he was a corpse) and curls beside him, wishing he were a Knight in Shining Armor that would save her. And, in both OVA and manga, how Pip Bernadotte and Seras Victoria meet, establishing a Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic since Pip's taunting and Seras' finger flicking him across the room.
• In His and Her Circumstances, Yukino's parents were childhood friends who bumped into each other on her mother's first day in middle school.
• Hunter × Hunter: Subverted and lampshaded during the Greed Island arc with "Love-Love, The City of Romance" which is "famous for its easy meetings": various Moe-looking characters crash into the main characters, lose their glasses, and generally need rescuing, but the main characters ignore them because they've got a mission to complete.
• In Josee, The Tiger, and The Fish, Josee and Tsuneo meets for the first time after Josee's wheelchair roll downhill as Tsuneo is walking home. Cue Tsuneo catching her and the comical accusation from Josee.
• Lady!!: Sort of. Lynn was searching for flowers and got lost, then she saw Edward fall off his horse and on a bush near her. With Arthur following soon after.
• Most of Love Hina is filled with this trope... Keitaro and Naru get it most often, particularly in the episode where they both decide, separately, that they need to go on vacation, bump into each other, both break their glasses, and have to spend the day together, doing romantic stuff, only to find out when they've regained their glasses who they are, and spend the rest of their trip escorting an anemic girl back to her home island (who would later turn out to be a Childhood Friend for both of them).
• Lampshaded in Lucky Star: two random characters of no importance whatsoever accidentally tangle their bag keychains, and Konata (witnessing this) notes that they are now on the way to being a couple, while Kagami snaps that real life does not work that way.
• Monster Musume: About half the girls are introduced this way. It's even invoked by Centorea, who believes it to be a Japanese ritual of finding your soulmate. Given that she's in a Harem Comedy, she's not wrong.
• My Hero Academia: Izuku Midoriya is going to the UA High to take the entry exam, and accidentally trips over his feet. Luckily for him, Ochaco Uraraka happens to be nearby and uses her Zero Gravity Quirk to stop him from falling flat on his face. She apologizes for using her Quirk without permission, and after giving some words of encouragement goes on her way. Izuku is excited over having talked to a girl, even though he didn't actually say anything.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji first meets Asuka on the deck of a battleship after she arrives with Evangelion Unit-02. A gust of wind causes Shinji and his friends to catch a glimpse of Asuka's panties under her dress, resulting in him getting slapped and chewed out, thus kickstarting one of the most dysfunctional relationships in anime.
• Becomes a driving plot point in One Stormy Night, as a wolf and a goat meet in a pitch-black barn one night and become friends, each oblivious to the other's species. This is the setup for their forbidden friendship.
• Ouran High School Host Club has an interesting example. Haruhi stumbles into the Host Club while looking for a quiet place to study and is mistaken for a boy. When Tamaki finally finds out Haruhi is really a girl he's left speechless and blushing. We even get two different versions: the anime has Haruhi walking out in Ouran's female uniform and Tamaki finally realizes Haruhi's a girl; the manga has Tamaki pick up Haruhi's school ID, and from that learn she's a girl. While meet-cute tends to force a coupling, Haruhi's initially disinterested in all six boys in her Unwanted Reverse Harem and relationships in the manga seem develop pretty naturally.
• In the anime adaptation of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix and Maya cement their new partnership by bowing to each other — which turns into a cute yet comic pratfall since she's behind a glass wall at the time and they both bump their heads.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Misty debuts in the first episode, peacefully fishing when she hooks a big one, wrenching it free from the river only to find out she's fished out some kid... and then she notices his Pikachu. While she's cooing over it, Ash mistakenly thinks she's asking about his welfare, only for her to snap at him. When the flock of Spearow chasing Ash appears, Ash runs off — stealing Misty's bike. Eventually, Misty tracks him down, now-ruined bike in tow, and demands recompense. This sets the tone for their relationship for the rest of Pokémon: The Original Series.
  • A couple of years before Ash's journey began, he helped out a girl when she was lost in the forest and has injured her leg. Ash had forgotten the meeting, but the girl, Serena, did not, and Serena started her own journey to meet up with him again when he journeyed to the Kalos region, where she and her mother currently live.
  • In one Japanese Pokémon radio show, Musashi and Kojiro are playing two people (named "Jessie" and "James") who are slowly dying of lack of oxygen on a spaceship that has went off the rails. They mention having met several times before they became friends. They first met when they were trying to save a kid from falling and they hit their heads together. Jessie and James later met again at a store when they noticed they were reading the exact same book. They then kept on meeting again and again.
• Used within the first 5 pages of Rosario + Vampire. Moka crashes into Tsukune with a bicycle, and the fun begins.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Usagi and Mamoru meet when she accidentally hits him with a failing test she'd tossed over her shoulder. This repeated several times in the first anime with her hitting him in the head with flung shoes, maintaining the Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic they had for much of the first series. They even met again at the finale of the first series, after everyone has lost their memories, and yet she meets him again as the same stock footage of the test paper incident plays from the first episode — making this a reMeet Cute.
  • In the first anime Rei tries to invoke this trope when she develops a crush on Mamoru, by attempting to run into his arms and blush accordingly. It totally doesn't work — he steps on her when she falls. Rei, ever the trooper, goes with it anyway.
  • ChibiUsa finds a little boy's keychain when he drops it. Cue bishie sparkle when she sees him and he seems wonderful... until he starts doing a lewd routine from Shin-chan, which his keychain depicts. ChibiUsa is not amused.
• Sk8 the Infinity: Langa meets Reki when the latter's skateboard comes rolling down toward him. Somehow, Reki seems to convince Langa to try skating with a bright smile. Langa utterly fails, tripping flat right onto the street, and after Reki bursts out laughing, he's left protesting. Reki then skates, and as Langa, still lying flat on the street, panics over the idea of him crashing right into his face, Reki suddenly ollies right over his face and body as Langa's left watching wondrously When Reki turns to show off, Langa's sitting up, blushing with a starstruck look. Then Reki is the one who starts to blush as he asks whether he'd like help picking out a skateboard at his job - before Langa acts as his own Moment Killer, leaping up to ask whether his job has openings. By the end of the series, Langa expresses that Reki is his Implied Love Interest several times, and through the animation, it's highly implied that Reki sees him as the same.
• In The Story of Saiunkoku, Shuurei and Ryuuki meet when she tries to get some cherry blossom petals to float in her tea, but can't reach any. Ryuuki stops to help her out, but a strong wind make him accidentally break the whole branch off. They end up having tea and Shuurei's home made sweet bean buns together. Of course, Shuurei was in the garden in the first place specifically to meet Ryuuki, making the encounter semi-planned, but the "cute" of the meet-cute happened purely by accident.
• Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Hikaru's first response to Misa is to call her an "old lady", however by the end of the series they've proposed. Millia wants to kill Max pretty much right off the bat for being a better pilot than her, and they later get married as well.
• Played with in Tenchi Muyo!: Under the misguided impression that Shōjo manga are actually a realistic guide to teenage relationships on Earth (an impression fostered by a mischievous Sasami), both Ayeka and Ryoko engineer classic Crash-Into Hello meetings with Tenchi — months after they first met him.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: After Kamina's death, Simon becomes full of self-loathing, angry and blame for it. After a battle that results in Lagann not working because of his issues, he ends up in a canyon where a Gunmen throws a container away. Opening it, he meets Nia. Because Nia is pretty, nice to him, and seems to have no understanding on what a human is, all of that angst is forgotten and he goes right back to being a dork when the two get to know each other.
• In X/1999, Yuzuriha meets Kusanagi when he kneels down to pet her spirit dog Inuki, posing himself as the first person, other than her, able to see and touch Inuki. She almost immediately falls into him, in slow motion, and embraces him, Tears of Joy in her eyes, both of them surrounded by hovering white feathers. After excusing herself, she runs away to meet with her comrades, leaving an utterly confused Kusanagi behind her. What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?

Comic Books

• Karolina Dean and Julie Power first met when Julie was part of a group hired to shut the Runaways down. And then they really hit it off several years later when the Runaways tried to sneak into Avengers Academy.
• Years after their breakup in the previous universe, the closing pages of Batman Eternal see Stephanie Brown walk in on a conversation between Red Robin (Tim Drake) and her new roommate Harper. The two share a silent panel adorably smiling at one another.
• In Diabolik the titular protagonist and his beloved Eva Kant first met when she caught him trying to steal the Pink Diamond from her, and he threatened her with a knife. As she was captured by his eyes and had to admire his ability to arrive there undetected and he was caught by surprise by her not fearing him in the slightest, they fell in love.
• Empowered met her boyfriend Thugboy when she was a captured superheroine and he was the minion tying her up. Sparks flew. They don't like to talk about how they met.
• In Marvel's Eternals, Khoryphos is unexpectedly teleported to Lemuria, arriving in the Deviant artist Yrdisis’s house. She’s initially scared because of the bad blood between their races, then embarrassed because he loves and understands her art and they clearly have a lot in common. But he’s the enemy, so she flees the house. They work it out, eventually, and are now a happy couple.
• Henchgirl: Multiple instances between Mary and Fred in the first two issues. Fred (as Mannequin) carries Mary home after finding her passed out in trash bags in an alley after Mr. Great Guy foiled the Butterfly Gang's bank heist at the beginning of Issue 1.
  • They meet again the next day—Fred is a teller at the bank Mary's gang hit the night before, and Mary was depositing the money she stole back into the bank! Fred is not pleased. They meet again when Fred is working catering at Greg Gaines' ball in Issue 2—Mary sneaks in the side entrance after being turned away at the door (and insulted by Coco). Mary joins the catering staff to get an in—and Fred interrupts Mary's stealing some jewels. He doesn't turn the charming young thief in then.....
• The House of Mystery story "Romantic Comedy (With Corpses)": Girl meets boy, boy asks girl out, boy turns out to be a vampire wanting to feed, girl turns out to be another vampire who was actually looking for a date, they decide to go on one after all. The girl vampire, who is firmly convinced she's in a romantic comedy, even calls it a meet-cute.
• Towards the end of Alan Moore's "The Reversible Man", the backwards-in-time protagonist walks into a train station with his ex-wife and they spread newspapers on the floor. He realises she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, and the papers collect into their hands as he loses eye contact with her. They never see each other again.
• Saga features a flashback to how Alana and Marko met, which their child describes as "what they call the 'Meet Cute.'" However, this was when Marko was a prisoner under Alana's care, and she says this just as Alana lays some police brutality on Marko.
• Spider-Man: Boy's aunt tries to set him up on a Blind Date. Boy is convinced girl is awful because his aunt likes her. Boy spends months trying to evade meeting this girl. Boy finally gets tricked into seeing girl. Boy opens door and to his surprise realizes the girl is stunningly beautiful. He stumbles with um...uh..."That's Mary Jane?" Girl confidently declares "Face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot!" And thus the award for most memorable/cutesy meeting of a couple in the Marvel Universe goes to...

Comic Strips

• Mandrake the Magician: Mandrake meets his love interest and eventual wife, Princess Narda, after two of her servants attempt to mug him.

Fan Works

• In Always You: Strange and Abby meet when bumping into each-other at Tim Horton's.
• As Fate Would Have It has Nate first come across Yancy by finding her lost Xtransceiver not long after his childhood friend Rosa rejects him. They begin talking to one another through said device, and eventually meet one another in Nimbasa City's amusement park, enjoying the Ferris Wheel view and having dinner together. They later become a couple around 5 chapters in.
• The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Paris Trip," Berlioz helps the hopelessly lost Mittens find Sainte-Chapelle after they engage in flirting banter. Afterwards, Berlioz becomes Mittens's tour guide and then her vacation-fling lover.
• Sally Sparrow meets Dr. Watson this way in Children of Time: Watson bumps into her on the sidewalk and spills her textbooks. Being the Victorian gentleman that he is, he helps her pick them back up and offers her coffee in apology. The two of them chitchat over their coffee... and at the end of the next episode, they get together. Their relationship forms the story arc that finishes with the season finale.
• In the Fruitful series by SailorChibi, people have the first words their soulmate will tell them on their chests. Marinette's are It’s okay, passionfruit is my favorite. Adrien's are Oh my god I’m so sorry I ruined your tie. You can probably guess how the meeting goes.
• In Junior Officers, Kitsune and Akio met in college when Akio spilled his papers on the ground and Kitsune helped him pick them up.
• Supergirl (2015) fanfic my youth is yours: Kara and Lena met in college when Lena ran into what she thought was a wall.
• No Charm Equal: As a Cupid, Harry is able to arrange first meetings for potential matches for his charge. He is able to arrange it so that Amelia and Roxy meet when he spills a cup of coffee on one, and the other offers to lend some clean clothes.
• In On a Cross and Arrow, this is what happens when Fluttershy and her male alternate-universe counterpart Butterscotch accidentally run into each other. They hit it off quite well after getting over their initial shyness.
• Agents Stephanie Podd and Cupid Carmine in the Protectors of the Plot Continuum mission "In Other News, Water is Wet". Word of God has confirmed that this wasn't intentional on the part of Cupid's creator, so this sorta counts as a Meet Cute for their authors as well.
• Rise of the Galeforces: Not exactly a direct meeting, but the first meeting of Adam Squall and Violet Parr turns out to be fairly awkward, especially because Adam had just turned back into a human. They become an Official Couple by the end of the fourth act.
• In the Hunger Games fanfiction Some Semblance of Meaning, Vale Whitaker references this trope by name when she is trying to convince "the pragmatic voice" that Obsidian is not in love with her, listing their lack of this as one of her reasons.
• Elsa and Anna in Teach Me first meet in a lesbian bar where they hook up in a one-night stand. The next day, Elsa had to leave before Anna wakes up, only for her to realize that she was going to be her son's teacher. Awkward.

Films — Animation

• In Disney's animated 101 Dalmatians, Pongo (the male Dalmatian) intentionally arranges one for Roger and Perdita's owner Anita by tangling his leash in their owners' legs and pulling them into a pond.
• Anna and Hans meet cute in Frozen, when he nearly knocks her into the water with his horse. Hans turns out to have exploited this trope as a way to get close to Anna and take advantage of her naivete. Turns out that he's just heartlessly using her to get to the throne of Arendelle, and couldn't give two craps about her.
• Inside Out: At the end of the movie, Riley bumps into a boy on her way into the hockey rink. The boy is unable to speak, and his emotions are in a blind panic (Fear is actually in the fetal position, crying), while an alarm blares "Girl! Girl!" inside his head.
• Migration: At the beginning of the film, when the Mallards are introduced to a new family of ducks, Dax meets a female duck named Kim, and they hit it off, although Gwen embarrasses Dax by loudly broadcasting that Dax likes Kim. At the end of the movie, after the Mallards have reached Jamaica, Dax finally gets to dance together with Kim.
• In Tangled, Rapunzel knocks Flynn out with a frying pan when he intrudes into her tower. In Tangled: The Series, he even mentions that he fell in love with her after she first hit him with it.
• WALL•E:
  • Wall-E is watching Eve flying from afar, but he makes a noise and she immediately blasts at him with her plasma cannon. This happens several more times before she recognizes that he's not a threat.
  • As they watch Wall-E and Eve flying in space, John and Mary accidentally hold hands, which is also the first time either of them has touched another human being. They introduce themselves and seem to hit it off.

Films — Live-Action

• Lampshaded in 22 Jump Street, Jenko drops his Q-tip into Zook's meat sandwich. The resultant product is called a "meat Q-tip" sandwich, shortened to meet-cute.
• Played with in 50 First Dates, where a woman and a guy meet in standard fashion, in a bar. Except she got a brain injury that kept her from converting her daily short-term memory to long term. The rest of the movie is him making her fall in love with him. Every. Single. Day. They even marry and have kids.
• The events of The Adjustment Bureau are kicked off with a meet cute, when David Harris is in the men's room nervously preparing his "defeat speech" after losing the senate vote - and dancer Elise pops out of a stall, having hidden there to avoid security. This meeting was pre-approved by the eponymous bureau. Their next meeting, however, was not.
• American Honey: Star first makes eye contact with Jake when he passes her by in a van with his crew. She follows him inside a K-mart where they flirt and make eyes each other. They get to talking when she retrieves his phone, which slipped out of his pocket while dancing on top of the cashier’s counter.
• In April Showers, April and Sean first meet during the theater group's initiation ceremony.
• In Ariel (1988), Taisto meets Irmeli when she gives him a parking ticket.
• The trope's prevalence in Old Hollywood made it a requirement for inclusion in The Artist. Peppy drops her autograph book, ducks under a cop's arm to retrieve it and stumbles right into George, touching off both their relationship and her career at the same time.
• Attachment: Leah meets Maja when the latter bumps into her while they're in a bookstore.
• Played with in Back to the Future. In the beginning, Lorraine reveals that she met George this way and they don't have a particularly good marriage. When Marty goes back in time, he meets her the same way and she falls for him instead. So basically Lorraine would have fallen for whoever her dad's car hit that day. Doc Brown explains this onscreen with the same implications. Ew. Of course, once Marty gets involved, he turns it from meet-cute into a Rescue Romance and things turn out to go surprisingly well from then on.
• Bit: Laurel runs into Izzy at a party, with their attraction being obvious with Laurel's awkward and nervous behavior with her. Izzy eases past her defenses and they get involved.
• Bluebeards Eighth Wife - Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert meet at the men's pajamas counter of a department store. Colbert likes to sleep in a man's pajama top but doesn't wear the bottoms, so she wants to buy only a top. Cooper sleeps in pajama bottoms and doesn't want to buy a top. Since the store sells pajamas only as top and bottom sets, it's inevitable that she and he will choose a pair they both like. This movie was directed by European-born Hollywood director Ernst Lubitsch, who inadvertently invented the term "meet cute" because he had difficulty speaking English.
• Bringing Up Baby - Cary Grant's dorky paleontologist runs into Katharine Hepburn's madcap heiress on the golf course; she mistakes his ball for her own, and he follows her around trying to convince her that it's his ball, not hers. She then drives off in his car, with him teetering on the running board.
• Rakesh and Vimmi in Bunty aur Babli meet in a train station after they both fail to get the jobs they really wanted. Vimmi lies to Rakesh, saying she's going to be a model. Rakesh congratulates her and then she starts bawling (in a really loud and annoying way.) they then decide to become thieves and along the way fall in love.
• In Can't Hardly Wait, the main character finds all the signs of his one true love in his freshman year, up to eating the same flavor of Pop Tart... only to get interrupted by the jock, so they never actually meet. Of course they get together at the end of the movie, though.
• Cassanova Was A Woman: Cassanova runs into Lola after accidentally falling into a clothing rack while in the theatre both women work at.
• In Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, Hibiscus and Chen meet when a Suggestive Collision during the fight on the plane leaves them entangled in each others arms and almost results in an Accidental Kiss. Chen's next scene has him telling his friends about this cute girl he met on the flight.
• In Closer one of the couples (if you can call them that) meets when Larry chats to Dan in an online sex chat room. Dan is pretending to be Anna, and sends Larry to where she's likely to be. He meets her there, and despite some initial confusion she very quickly figures out that Dan must have been pretending to be her. She and Larry then hit it off really well.
• In Desert Heat, Rhonda and Eddie meet in a diner, complete with name mix-ups and being unable to take their eyes off each other.
• Lampshaded (and subverted, given what follows) in Disney's Enchanted after Giselle falls into her Prince's arms.
  "And in years to come we'll reminisce / How we came to love..."
• Flower (2017): Invoked by Erica, who stages a cutesy bump-in 'first meeting' at the grocery store in order to charm Will.
• In the film Get Smart, Max and Agent 99 first meet when she plows into him while jogging.
• Played with in Godzilla (2014) to make a Kaiju version. He-MUTO and She-MUTO meet up in San Francisco for the first time, and the male presents the female with a nuclear warhead as a courtship present. They trade it from mouth to mouth like a kiss before the female takes it to feather the nest.
• Deconstructed and Subverted in Gone with the Wind. Scarlett and Rhett have a horrible marriage, because people whose only contact is bumping into each other during a war probably don't have much in common.
• In Good Bye, Lenin!, Alex meets Lara when she saves him from choking at a press freedom rally.
• Hands Across the Table - Coming out of Allen’s apartment, Carole Lombard bumps into Fred MacMurray while he's playing hopscotch on the checkered floor. She’s not impressed.
• Hardball had Keanu Reeves' character Conor meet his eventual love interest after she unintentionally smacked him with a door.
• In Henry's Crime, Henry and Julie meet when Julie runs him down with her car while he is scoping out the bank.
• High Plains Drifter: Town prostitute Callie Travers tries to engineer this by 'accidentally' bumping into the Stranger and starting an argument with him. The Stranger is not amused, dragging her into a nearby barn and raping her.
• Will Smith's character in Hitch has made a career out of helping his clients get the attention and affections of the women of their dreams. This is one of the techniques he uses.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) Trillian and Arthur meet at a costume party where Arthur is dressed as Livingstone and Trillian as Darwin. Amusingly in the commentary Bill Nighy tries to reference this trope but calls it a 'sweet meet'. He is promptly mocked.
• The Holiday explicitly spells this out via an elderly screenwriter who's probably been in Hollywood long enough to name most of the tropes found in the film. One of the female leads has a meet cute with him that leads only to friendship, but she has another with Jack Black that leads to romance. It's surprisingly effective.
• I'm Thinking of Ending Things: Ambiguous Situation version. When begged by Jake's mother for a cute meeting story, the young woman describes meeting Jake at trivia night at a bar; they had been attracted to each other but Jake had initially been too shy to ask for her number before finally doing so. But later, when talking to the janitor, the woman seems to spiral and admit that they had barely interacted at the bar, implying that she is an idealized fantasy of what might have been.
• Judy Garland and Van Johnson in In the Good Old Summertime. They bump into each other when Van is on his way to work and Judy is on her way to look for a job. He knocks her hat off, accidentally puts a bird on her head, and then her skirt gets caught in his bike wheel as he drives off leaving her in her bloomies. Judy then gets a job at the same store as Van. You've Got Mail does Meet Cute as well, just updates it to 1998.
• In Irreconcilable Differences, Albert meets Lucy while he's hitchhiking across the country. She drives through a puddle and splatters him with mud.
• It Happened One Night - Clark Gable, playing a penniless, cynical reporter, and Claudette Colbert, playing a spoiled runaway heiress, meet on a bus. They argue over who should get the last seat, and Claudette Colbert ends up falling asleep on his shoulder overnight.
• Jack & Diane: Diane bumps into Jack while trying to awkwardly borrow a cell phone, and then her nose starts bleeding. Jack is smitten at once.
• Kal Ho Naa Ho must take this to the extreme. Aman yells at the Kapoors for their awful singing, and their arguing gets Naina's attention. When he sees her, he begins singing (beautifully) what develops into a Bollywood/Hip-hop/Gospel remix of Pretty Woman, in front of a giant American flag, with the entire street playing background music and joining in the dance. Of course, he doesn't get her.
• The Lady Eve - Barbara Stanwyck plays a femme fatale out to snag rich men so she and her father can cheat them at cards; Henry Fonda plays a naive but wealthy heir to a brewery. Wanting to make lots of money off him, she deliberately sticks out her foot and trips him, then berates him for breaking the heel off her shoe. He accompanies her to her cabin, where he puts a new pair of shoes on her feet himself as she aggressively flirts with him.
• Similarly with David Spade and Sophie Marceau in Lost & Found.
  Roger Ebert: Dylan and Lila have a Meet Cute. She runs into him and knocks him flat, with her landing on top, which is about the cheapest Meet Cute you can buy at the Movie Cliche Store.
• Played with in the movie Made in Heaven (1987): The couple meets, falls in love and gets married in Heaven. However, Annie is sent down to Earth. Mike goes down to find her, and must meet her again by the time he is 30.
• In Margarita with a Straw, Laila first meets Khanum after pulling her to safety when a protest turns violent and Khanum is left disoriented from tear gas.
• Midnight - Claudette Colbert's character is looking for a cab driver that's willing to take her to find a job. She finds Don Ameche, and bluntly tells him her plan: she doesn't have money now, but will double what the meter says and give him a tip if he just gives her a free ride. He agrees, opens the car door, and then hostilely says a big fat no. She then buys a newspaper for cover from the rain, and Ameche's character, out of guilt, gives her a free ride.
• In Mississippi Masala, Demetrius and Mina first meet when she accidentally hits him with her car.
• Mr. Deeds Goes to Town - Gary Cooper plays a naive country boy who suddenly becomes a millionaire. Once he moves to the big city, the cynical reporter played by Jean Arthur wants to meet him so she can do a big story on him — so she pretends to faint outside his mansion, and he gallantly comes to her aid.
• In a scene from My Best Friend's Girl, Dane Cook's character actually talks about this trope and calls it meet-cute, saying it's common in Rom Coms because all girls want that funny, witty guy, charming, dorky guy. He then goes on to invoke this trope by running with her on the track and falling over her then being struck by her beauty when she tries to help him up.
• In My Demon Lover, Denny and Kaz meet outside a health food cafe where Kaz tries Denny's Disgusting Vegetarian Food and then spits it onto her dress.
• In Napoléon (1927), the title character and Joséphine de Beauharnais first run into each other when she's on the way to the famous Fortune Teller Mlle. Lenormant and he's trying to fix his cardboard boots after they got wet.
• By the end of Night of the Comet the whole world is dead except for the protagonists: teenage girls Sam and Reggie; Hector, the hunky stranger Reggie has hooked up with; and the two little kids they have taken under their wing. Sam is upset because her older sister has once again stolen the guy she had her eye on, in this case the last man in the world, and she thinks it's ridiculous when Reggie tells the kids to wait for the light to change before crossing the deserted street. So Sam crosses against the light - and is almost run over by a cute boy who appears from out of nowhere. He asks her if she wants to go for a ride, and they drive off.
• No Hard Feelings: Invoked. Maddie and Percy's parents deliberately stage one when they ask her to visit Percy at the animal shelter where he does some volunteer work so they can hit it off "naturally". Unfortunately, he either can't take a hint or is just so anxious that he clams up in her presence. He even mistakes Maddie for a serial killer and pepper sprays her.
• In Notting Hill, the characters played by Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts meet when he smacks into her as they both round a corner from opposite directions and he spills juice all over her blouse — setting up both the need for him to invite her to his house across the street to clean up and his charming clumsiness. The best part is that as we track them both heading for this collision, Hugh Grant's character seems to be avoiding looking straight ahead, for no particular reason.
• In The Number 23, the hero and his wife first meet when he bumps into her in the street and she drops her cake box.
• In On Chesil Beach, Edward receives news that he's earned a First Class Honours degree, but doesn't have anyone around to happily share the news with. He gets on a bike and goes to the Oxford campus, randomly walking into a meeting for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Florence is the first person he sees when he walks in, and as they meet each other's gaze, it's love at first sight.
• Plus One: Discussed when, at Jason and Sarah's wedding, Ben complains that he hasn't had a meet-cute. Alice's attempt at inducing one is "shoving him at a cute girl".
  Alice: What's a meet cute?
  Ben: It's when two people meet each other and instantly fall in love. Like you know, when you reach for the same cereal at the grocery store. It's adorable, and you're like "Oh my god, you like Lucky Charms too? That's amazing, I'm Ben by the way."
• Rags: After Trumpet runs over to Charlie and spills Kadee's compositions everywhere, Charlie goes to help her and the two of them end up bumping heads. This is their first interaction, and it ends pretty awkwardly, as Kadee gets upset at the fact that one of her sheets got waterlogged while Charlie is just nervous and starstruck.
• The Weaponized Meet Cute subversion appears in the movie Red Eye. Lisa meets this charming guy at the ticket counter, they have a drink and flirt at the airport bar, and end up sitting next to each other on the plane. Too bad he's a Psycho for Hire who may or may not be a Stalker with a Crush. She probably should have guessed as much when she found out his name was Jackson Rippner.
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights: While the Sheriff of Rottingham is demonstrating how a catapult works, the device accidentally launches him high into the air. Meanwhile, Latrine is in her bedroom praying for God to send her a man she can marry. Just then Rottingham crashes through the ceiling and lands on her bed, much to her delight.
• Played twice in different ways in Roxanne, the titular character meets Charlie when she's accidentally locked out of her house naked and has him help her. Later she and Chris lock eyes, only for him to run away and vomit out of nervousness.
• In Scrooged, Frank Cross meets the love of his life when she walks out of a store and whacks him "right between the eyes" with the door. She nicknames him "Lumpy" after the incident.
  Young Frank: Do you shop here often? Because if you do, I can walk on the other side of the street.
  Frank and The Ghost of Christmas Past: Badum bum bum
• In Serendipity, Jonathan Trager and Sara Thomas meet in Bloomingdale's after grabbing the same pair of gloves as a Christmas gift for their respective partners but end up falling for each other.
• Set It Up:
  • Harper and Charlie first meet when arguing over buying food from a delivery man. Rocky first meeting aside, they prove to get along well later on.
  • They later try to invoke this when trying to set up their bosses. They decide on locking them in an elevator.
    Harper: Every great romance begins with a meet cute!
• This trope was already old and dusty when it was used in Singin' in the Rain. Early in the film, Gene Kelly's character is running from a crowd of fans. He's jumping from the roofs of cars, taxis, trolleys, etc. until he goes flying and lands in the seat of a roofless car. The driver, played by Debbie Reynolds, accuses Kelly's character of being a no-talent hack, and they yell at each other before he leaves. Needless to say, they end up romantically involved.
• Non-romantic example in Star Trek (2009). Kirk and Spock's first meeting involves Spock getting Kirk court-martialed for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test. The writers have actually stated that the heart of the film is them falling in love with each other - but in a platonic sense.
  • Kirk and Uhura meet cute in the bar, then reacquaint cute in her room later. For that matter, Kirk and Pike also meet cute in the bar. And then Kirk and McCoy more or less meet cute on the shuttle.
• Super Mario Bros. (1993) has Luigi and Daisy meet by chance when Daisy needs the phone Luigi is currently using. An earlier version of the script had a more traditional Meet Cute where Luigi helped Daisy after she slipped on some water coming out of the Riverfront Cafe.
• In Test Pilot, Ann lives on a farm in Kansas. Jim the test pilot crashes his plane on her farm. Pretty impressive, as far as meet cutes go.
• A Double Subversion occurs in True Romance. Clarence and Alabama meet cute in classic style, complete with spilled popcorn, bonding over Sonny Chiba movies, and romance in a comic-book store. Then it turns out that she's a call girl who was hired specifically to meet cute with him. However, they do eventually fall in love with each other for real.
• The The Truman Show, being a TV show in which the main character was unaware of his reality, played with numerous tropes like this. Truman's hand-picked cheerleader love interest in his high school years, the woman who eventually would be his wife, was set up to meet him in an artificial meet-cute; she tripped and fell right in front of him. It didn't work, and an incidental background extra who happened to be nearby at the time was the one he truly fell in love with, and after she was forcibly removed from his made-up world, he nursed a secret, almost obsessive love for her for his whole life.
• William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, the Baz Luhrmann version of the famous tragedy, has the Star-Crossed Lovers first spying each other on opposite sides of an aquarium. And it's adorable.
• Zabriskie Point features an elaborate and jokey version where the boy is an outlaw flying an aeroplane on the lam across the LA desert and the girl is driving a car cross-country on an empty road below. The boy catches the girl's attention by flying really low in a series of stunt flights to get a closer look.

Literature

• In Amelia Peabody's The Crocodile on the Sandbank, Amelia Peabody and Emerson first meet in a museum, where they promptly have a blazing row over antiquities. By the end of the book they're happily married and expecting their first child.
• Subverted in American Gods. Mister Town meets Laura by the side of the road and offers her a lift. Within the span of less than an hour, they make playful banter and run through the rain with newspapers held over their heads, laughing. The character is convinced that he's found true love for the first time in his life. Then Laura kills him just like she killed his friends. Of course, if you've read the novel faithfully up to that point, you already know that Laura is Shadow's undead wife who's willing to murder others to help him, so you know from the start that it isn't going to end well for the hapless guy.
• Annie on My Mind has a very peaceful meeting... but the two girls meet when one of them is singing folk songs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Medieval Wing, as I recall). They then proceed to act out swordfighting in the Arms and Armor hall. It's a Meet (Very) Cute.
• Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane in Death and Diplomacy. She's on an multispecies alien planet which she knows has no contact with Earth, trying to communicate with a shifty humanoid alien in pidgin (the Doctor has disappeared and taken his Translator Microbes with him). He's an Alien Abductee, who is partly fascinated by the first fellow human he's seen in years, but is mostly amusing himself playing along with what he considers her patronising attitude to the natives. She is not happy when she figures it out. Belligerent Sexual Tension ensues, and at the end of the book they decide to get married.
• In A Brother's Price, Jerin meets Ren when he sneaks to the kitchen to get something to eat (he hasn't eaten all day because he didn't want to show his face with so many strange women in the house), Ren startles him, and he nearly falls into the fireplace, so she has to catch him.
• Discworld:
  • Verence and Magrat's first meeting in Wyrd Sisters probably counts, at least on the embarrassment front; she's soaking wet after spending the morning gathering herbs and he's, well, the Court Jester in full uniform, which is embarrassing enough for anyone. And when he realises he's disturbed a witch, he runs away.
  • When Ginger and Victor meet in Moving Pictures, she's dressed as Shirley Temple. She then starts criticising the co-star she hasn't met yet, which is him. Possibly Holy Wood magic insisted on the movie trope.
• In Rebecca Lickiss's Eccentric Circles, Africa, Piper's blue-eyed blond cousin, and Sherlock, her black husband. He invoked Commonality Connection on their anti-Meaningful Names, explaining that "Sherlock" means "the blond one."
• In the Newberry Award-winning children's book Ginger Pye, the children's father (Mr. Pye) met their mother (the soon-to-be Mrs. Pye) when, for kicks and giggles, he decided to run "up" the "down" escalator in what he thought was an abandoned subway station. Naturally, he ended up running down their mother-to-be, who was riding "down" it. Romance ensued.
• Lampshaded and referenced in Gravity's Rainbow:
  It was what Hollywood likes to call a "cute meet," out in the neat 18th-century heart of downtown Tunbridge Wells, Roger motoring in the vintage Jaguar up to London, Jessica at the roadside struggling prettily with a busted bicycle, murky wool ATS skirt hiked up on a handle bar...
• Jack and Ellen's first meeting in The Heir Chronicles' The Warrior Heir is relatively normal, but their introduction to the other's secret identities comes when they are thrown into a ring and forced into a duel to the death to determine which of the two wizard houses would gain supremacy for the next few decades. Ellen ends up saving his life in the duel instead of killing him, due to developing a crush on him during their normal time together. Seph and Madison in the next book meet when Seph tries to use magic to get information out of Madison and she drains his energy through the spell.
• Hive Mind (2016): Amber's maternal grandparents met when they both reached for the same chocolate crunch cake. She bumped him out of the way, he slipped on some fruit, and she ended up taking him to the medical unit.
• Lampshaded in Identical Twins Aren't the Same in Bed (and other observations): A Novel where the narrator meets friend he ends up falling for when she persistently IMs him out of the blue with different screen names. He's never met her, except possibly in passing, and he has no idea who the names belong to. Justified in that the author met a female friend (albeit, one he never dated) that way, and the book is assembled from fictionalized versions of real events. Subverted in that he met her that way years before the events of the novel, they never got together in that time (in fact, he was sort-of seeing someone for part of it) and the plot of the book is partially about him trying to tell her his feelings and that the book ends intentionally ambiguously with regards to whether they ever get together.
• John Putnam Thatcher: In Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round, DOJ investigator F.X. Riley runs into Susan Price, the secretary of a man he arrested, at a dry cleaner. She accidentally overshoots her basket and dumps her laundry on his head. He hands her some lingerie that she dropped, and that she's embarrassed by due to it being slightly slinky. She points out to him that he forgot to take his clothing out of the machine due to being distracted by her and that his folding methods leave too many wrinkles. The chemistry is really sealed when she asks his full name and he reluctantly complies, with the two going on dates the next several nights.
  Riley (stiffly) It is Fabian Xerxes. Father was a socialist.
  Susan: (giggling) I think it's a respectable name ... My name is Susan B. Anthony Price. Mother was a feminist.
• In The Law and the Lady, Valeria met her future husband by tripping and falling into the trout stream where he was fishing.
• In Masks of Aygrima: Mara meets her Love Interest Keltan when she's sneaking around Tamita at night and hides in the coal cellar he was hiding in, forcing him to threaten her with a knife in order to stay hidden. When they meet later, they quickly become friends due to the previous incident being Nothing Personal.
• In The Millennium Trilogy, Lizbeth Salander first becomes aware of Mikael Blomkvist's existence when she's hired to do a background on him, which she completes by hacking his computer to find out if he has any secrets. When Blomkvist becomes aware of her actions, he decides to retaliate by barging in on her apartment unexpected (for added awkwardness, in the movie, he manages to catch Salander in bed with a girlfriend.) Surprisingly, this does not stop them from developing a rapport, which leads to him enlisting her aid in finding out what happened to Harriet Vanger. Later, she decides to make their relationship sexual.
  • The sequel relates that she first met her on-again-off-again girlfriend Mimmy after getting so drunk at a gay pride parade that she felt an irresistible urge to embrace the cute talking lemon in her vicinity. Said lemon was actually Mimmy in a costume.
• Older Than Television: In The Phantom of the Opera (1909) Christine and Raoul meet as children when he rushes into the sea to save her scarf.
• Prep has an unconventional one: Lee first properly interacts with her crush, Cross Sugarman, when she goes to the nearby mall to get her ears pierced and ends up passing out, waking up to Cross asking if she's okay.
• Raptor Red has a series of these with a male raptor, where a series of unusual circumstances prevent him from carrying out the normal courtship ritual. When they first meet, for example, they happen to be hunting the same dinosaur. Awkward!
• In Relativity, when Greg meets Sara he knows he's going to fall in love with her, partially because when he dropped a bunch of empty take-out trays on a busy street, she was the only person to stop and help him gather them up.
• At the beginning of Rosaleen among the Artists, Rosaleen and Nick meet on a bus after she accidentally drops her fare out the window and he offers to pay it for her.
• Shards of Honor: Cordelia Naismith is the commander of a Betan scientific survey group and Aral Vorkosigan is the commander of the Barrayaran taskforce that just attacked her base, killing one of her men and landing another with serious brain damage. It's Love at First Sight, at least on Aral's side, and he proposes marriage about three days later.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: A dwarf boy and his athletic older brother run into a girl pursued by bandits. The older brother fights off the thugs and the younger brother comforts the girl. Boy and girl like each other and get married. This is how Tysha and Tyrion Lannister (with the brother being Jaime) meet... And then it doesn't go well. Averted later on when it was revealed by Jamie that it in fact wasn't a date prank, and that Tysha in fact did love Tyrion
• The Syrena Legacy: Emma and Galen meet when she trips on her flip-flops and faceplants into his chest.
• A platonic version occurs in Tales of the City, where future best friends Michael and Mary Ann first meet when Michael's then-boyfriend Robert asks for advice on making hollandaise sauce, and she thinks he's hitting on her. Later, after she moves into Mrs. Madrigal's building, she discovers that Michael is her neighbor.
• Twelve Days: Olympia and Terry first met last year at a barbecue when Olympia's son Hannibal ran ahead of her at a barbecue, bumped into Terry, and almost bounced off him into an empty swimming pool before Terry caught him.
• In the novel Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson, the protagonist refers to this trope by name when describing his initial encounters with various women.
• The Wheel of Time has several. Rand meets Elayne after climbing the wall of her palace garden to use as a vantage point and falling down the wrong side of it, Mat meets Tuon (properly) when he encounters her while trying to escape a city occupied by her troops, Bayle Domon meets Egeanin when she boarded his ship to inspect his cargo, etc.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow. Roy Harper meets Thea Queen when he snatches her purse, causing her to track him down so she can get it back. He's well aware of the irony of meeting his future Love Interest this way and it gets mentioned several times, including the final episode when Thea accepts Roy's proposal of marriage.
• Avocado Toast: Molly first met her girlfriend while dropping a book and nearly running into her.
• Ben on Baby Daddy after having three chance encounters with a beautiful woman named Elle on Emma's birthday forms an infatuation with her. Cue the final season's major plot thread as both Ben and Elle continue to search for each other, having constant near misses, only for the two to finally meet in the series finale when Elle is revealed to be the medical intern that delivers Riley and Danny's baby.
• A rather interesting variation (less "Meet Cute" than "Meet Morbidly Fascinated") happens in Babylon Berlin, where Gereon Rath - a police inspector working in the vice squad - and Charlotte Ritter - a secretary working for homicide - collide after getting out of the paternoster (an old-timey lift), and spill their respective departments' evidence photos all over the floor. As they try and figure out which of the scattered pictures feature grisly murders and which depict perverted sex crimes, they use the chance to make introductions. They get their Big Damn Kiss over two seasons and a lot of drama later.
• Samantha and Darrin got together on Bewitched after bumping into each other everywhere.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Buffy and Angel didn't hit it off at first. Though there was hitting involved.
  • Riley and Buffy's first meeting in "The Freshman", where Buffy accidentally dumps a pile of textbooks over Riley's head. This has most of the elements, including the fact that Riley was brought in especially as a love interest for Buffy and that most fans didn't care for him. They actually get to meet cute again (when they discover each other's secret identities) in Hush.
    Riley: So, in all the concussion, I didn't get a chance to introduce myself...
  • Season Two has a running gag of Oz admiring Willow from afar, but the pair keep missing each other. They finally meet at the school's career fair, after their genius IQs land them in a VIP room with waiters and classical music.
    Oz: "Canapé?"
  • Willow being shushed by her Wicca group for perpetuating "stereotypes". A shy girl in the back raises her hand to support Willow's opinion. Oh hi, Tara.
• Used by name in an early episode of Californication, when Hank's daughter is explaining how he and his ex (the girl's mother) met.
• In a Clip Show episode of Charmed, Coop describes Phoebe and Cole's meeting as this. It consisted of Phoebe nearly roundhouse kicking Cole, who catches her leg.
• In the series premiere of Cheers, Diane meets Sam for the first time—and it's through her covering for him when a jilted former lover of his calls the bar. Especially cute is that he's implied to be rinsing his mouth—and therefore can't talk at the moment, and can only "mime" instructions on what to say, which leads to an exasperated Diane finally saying to the phone, "He had to go to mime class!"
• Cobra Kai: In "The Good, The Bad, and the Badass", Miguel Diaz bumps into Samantha LaRusso at school during a passing period. Sam is happy to see him back on his feet, and happier to find he's disassociated from his old friends at Cobra Kai, leaving her open to a second chance at being friends again. It only takes less than a few days for them to go from establishing themselves as friends again to being in a romantic relationship, and a very intimate and comfortable one too.
• Named in Cougar Town when Jules laments the fact that she and Grayson don't have a meet cute like other couples that they know. It transpires that, in a case of Forgotten First Meeting (which remains forgotten by the end of the episode), that they did actually have a meet cute when Jules was new to town and they met outside a store and Grayson introduced her to red wine.
• Coupling: Steve meets Susan in a ladies bathroom, in the middle of having sex with his ex.
• Invoked in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. When Greg returns to town he and Rebecca decide to forget their past and start over as if they are just meeting. The song "Hello, Nice To Meet You" has them introducing themselves in various situations (a train, a bar and a dentist's office). The song actually name-checks the trope.
  It's nice to meet you.
  In various meet cutes.
• On the The Crown, Prince Charles has his first meeting with a young Diana Spencer, after she "accidentally" runs into him during his visit with her sister Lady Sarah Spencer. Needless to say he is instantly charmed by her, just as the rest of the world would be eventually.
• Lampshaded in The Dead Zone when Johnny meets Natalie after she spills a drink on him. On hearing the story, Dana replies "Oh, a cute meet. I thought the internet had pretty much done away with those."
• Degrassi: The Next Generation:
  • Clare and Eli first meet when Clare's glasses get run over by Eli's hearse.
  • Zig and Maya meet on their first day of high school when Zig convinces Maya to pretend to be his girlfriend to chase away a different girl.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Terror of the Autons", the Doctor produces copious amounts of smoke from his lab experiment, then shouts at the pretty ditz who sprays it with a fire extinguisher because she's ruined months of work. Doctor, meet your next companion, Jo Grant.
  • "Rose" gives us a rather more action-packed example than usual when The Doctor saves the titular Rose from Autons, whilst Rose thinks the whole thing is some kind of prank by a student flash mob. She's clearly fascinated by this weird stranger from the get go.
    The Doctor: I'm The Doctor, by the way. What's your name?
    Rose Tyler: Rose
    The Doctor: Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!
  • "Human Nature": Although they've already met, the first time John Smith interacts with Joan Redfern on-screen is when they run into each other while he's carrying a large stack of books, and drops one, leading her to offer to help carry them.
  • In "Blink", Sally Sparrow drops in on her friend Kathy Nightingale in the middle of the night and runs into her brother Larry. Who is naked.
  • Taken to extremes in Clara's story arc. It is revealed that Clara's parents met when a large leaf blew into the face of Clara's father, momentarily obscuring his vision and causing him to not notice a car coming for him, which would have hit him had Clara's mother not intervened. The leaf becomes "the most important leaf in human history" because of its involvement in getting Clara to be born, and due to this it is used by Clara to kill a story-eating god and help pull herself out of the Doctor's timestream.
• The Eternal Love: Xiao Tan and Lian Cheng's first meeting is a subversion. She's stuck on top of a wall after an ill-advised escape attempt, doesn't know he's the man she's expected to marry, and asks him to help her down. It looks like it's going to be a meet-cute... but Lian Cheng is uninterested in the whole situation, refuses to help, and doesn't lift a finger when she falls.
  • The Eternal Love 2 invokes this trope when Xiao Tan has amnesia and Lian Cheng deliberately recreates the first time he met her — though this time he catches her instead of letting her fall.
• Farscape was somehow able to pull it off perfectly via Love at First Punch (Pentak Jab?)—right at the start. John Crichton, meet your dream girl. She's not happy to see you.
  Aeryn Sun: Name your rank and regiment!
• First Kill: Juliette first meets Cal (who she finds attractive but is too shy to initially approach) through bumping into her accidentally, causing Cal to spill her drink all over herself. Cal brushes off this and it leads to them being at a party later where they kiss.
• Eun Chan and Han Kyul first meet in The First Shop of Coffee Prince when she delivers food to his apartment, just as he gets out of the shower. He assumes she's a boy, so he doesn't bother covering up. She spends quite a bit of time gawking as he sits down and dries his feet, until he notices her gawking. She's so flustered she runs out without getting payment for the food.
• Though technically they already knew each other, Ross and Rachel met cute in the first episode of Friends. Later in the series, Phoebe and Mike met cute.
• Subverted on Gilmore Girls when Rory meets Marty, naked in her hallway. He falls for her but she chooses Logan
  • When buying coffee from the cart at school Rory turns around and drops her change all over the ground. She crouches down. Logan stops to help her pick up the coins and he greets her with, "This would definitely qualify as a cute meet if we hadn't already met."
• In Girl Meets World, Riley meets Lucas by falling into his arms after tripping/being pushed in a subway car.
• Good Omens (2019): Demon Crowley and angel Aziraphale first met at the Garden of Eden. When it started raining, Aziraphale sheltered Crowley under his wing.
  • In series 2 we learn that it wasn't in fact their first meeting. The had met before, when angel Crowley was making stars and galaxies. And when the stars started falling it was Crowley who sheltered Aziraphale under his wing. It hardly gets cuter that this!
  • Also, Crowley vividly remembers their meet-cute at the Garden of Eden, because in season 2 he speaks from his own experience when he suggests the "perfect" way to make two people fall in love with each other - put them under rain and then under a shelter, staring into each others' eyes and - Va-voom! - sorted.
• Subverted on Gossip Girl, where Dan meets cute a girl early in the second season, by bumping into her, books falling, and you know the drill. So definitely a love interest, except that by the end of the episode they show you that the girl was hired by Chuck and he pretty much orchestrated everything from the get-go.
• Guardian: The Lonely and Great God: Amusingly subverted. Shin, in his capacity as a guardian, arranges a meet-cute between two people in a coffee shop. When it turns out they're both already in relationships and also pretty horrible people in general, Eun-tak asks why he bothers to play Guardian Angel for them. Turns out that he doesn't; he's the guardian of the two people they are about to dump to be with each other, thus saving them from their lousy partners.
• Done in Hannah Montana where, during a time-travel/All Just a Dream episode, Miley and Jackson try to intentionally recreate the meet cute of their parents to make sure they're actually born.
• Audrey Parker on Haven actually has two meet cutes-Nathan saves her when her car is about to fall over a cliff and later Duke rescues her from drowning after being knocked into the water after being hit by lightning, then washes her clothes and makes her coffee.
• On Home and Away, Matt and Evelyn had a meet cute when he bumps into her in the Summer Bay high school hallway.
• Horatio Hornblower: Lieutenant Hornblower and Lieutenant Bush have a Meet Cute introduction in "Mutiny" (Series Two) which foreshadows their Heterosexual Life-Partners status for Series Three. When Mr Bush comes aboard the Renown, he's nearly hit by a pulley block and Horatio knocks him down just in time.
  Mr Bush: Interesting welcoming ceremony, Mr Hornblower.
• The entire run of How I Met Your Mother turned out to be a setup for a huge meet-cute between Ted and "The Mother", Tracy.
• Jane the Virgin: Jane met Michael the night of her 21st birthday. He arrived at her door after her neighbors called in a noise complaint. Considering that the moment she saw such a handsome man in a patrol uniform arrive at her doorstep, again on her 21st birthday, she and her friends mistook him for a stripper, until his very real gun went off by accident. However by the end of the night the two were watching Telenovelas together and shared their first kiss.
• Leverage:
  • An amusing variation occurs on the first episode, during Sophie's flashback. This moment ends with her and Nate shooting each other.
  • In the episode "The Lonely Hearts Job", Nate calls his strategy a "Meet Cute", as he and Sophie have to pretend to bump into each other and become interested in each other in less than 24 hours.
• The cold open for the episode "Blinded" of Lie to Me hits quite a few hallmarks of a meet-cute: girl and guy accidentally bump into each other, books in her hands drop, awkward conversation, glowing filter on top, blissful background music. Turns out the guy is a creep, this is no chance encounter, he has planned to lure her into a trap, then rapes and blinds her.
• Even during the aftermath of a deadly plane crash, Jack and Kate on Lost managed to meet cute; she sewed up his stitches while they bantered about drapes and spinal surgery.
  • Jack met his wife, Sarah, when he operated on her following a near-fatal car accident. He promised her that she would be able to dance at her wedding, despite the prospect of paralysis; when her fiancé left her and she miraculously recovered, Jack married her. However, his devotion to his work ended up destroying their marriage.
• In 1966 Sitcom Love on a Rooftop Dave meets his wife-to-be Julie when his sandwich falls into her bag while he's working. When he finally tracks her down, he becomes more interested in Julie than in his lunch.
• In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk makes a friend", Monk meets the friend by bumping into him in front of a supermarket. Their groceries fall down and get mixed up. Then they go on to have a relationship that's oddly similar to a romance.
• Invoked by name by Kelly in the season 7 episode of the US version of The Office, "Training Day", when she sets up meeting Michael's replacement, played by Will Ferrell, by bumping into him and dropping papers, complete with Meganekko glasses.
• Once Upon a Time
  • Snow White and Prince Charming meet when she robs him, he chases her and knocks her off a horse. Right when he realizes that the thief is a woman, she hits him in the head with a rock. This is usually left out of the storybooks.
  • Emma and Neal meet when Emma steals a car, not realizing that Neal is sleeping in the back seat. Ironically, Neal had stolen the car himself.
• Ordinary Joe: In the pilot, Joe and Amy literally bump into each other at college graduation and strike up a conversation while trying to sort through their belongings. In the musician timeline, this blossoms into romance and marriage. In the cop timeline, they meet again ten years later and decide to revisit the feelings they brushed aside when they first met. In the nurse timeline, however, where Joe marries his on/off girlfriend Jenny, Amy ends up marrying his friend Eric.
• The Rise of Phoenixes: Ning Yi and Zhi Wei first meet in Zhu Yin's room. Ning Yi hides behind a screen when Zhi Wei walks in, then accidentally knocks it over and freaks Zhi Wei out. She sees him holding a pair of scissors and immediately assumes he's dangerous. Much awkwardness ensues, to Zhu Yin's amusement.
• Schitt's Creek:
  • Alexis forces Mutt into a kiss selfie the moment they meet.
  • David babbles nonsense about his business plan to an amused Patrick.
  • Hotel blogger Emir and Stevie engage in flirty banter as she pretends to be a guest so she can talk up the motel. When Emir asks her to lunch, she confesses the truth before their drinks arrive.
• Schmigadoon!: The very first scenes depict Josh and Melissa's first meeting. Melissa's chocolate bar got stuck in the hospital vending machine and Josh instructed her to kick it. When she does so, snacks come pouring out of the machine. Sparks fly between them and they proceed to date for many years.
• In Seinfeld, Jerry and George met in gym class when Jerry was spotting George on the ropes and George slipped and fell on Jerry's head. George unwittingly recounts this to a reporter who thinks they're a couple, to which her expression clearly indicates that this is the weirdest example she's ever heard.
• In Shameless (US), Fiona meets Jimmy/Steve at a club when a man she was dancing with steals her purse; he swoops in to try to and stop him, but ends up crashing into a waitress and having a bunch of drinks fall on top of him. The thief gets away, but Fiona thanks him for trying to save it and the two hit it off from there.
  • Frank fakes this with his long lost daughter Sammi in Season 4; he bribes some kids to get into a fight with Sammi's son Chuckie, then swoops in and pretends to save Chuckie when this catches Sammi's attention. He doesn't do it because he's romantically interested in her (he's aware that she's his daughter, but she isn't, and being the Manipulative Bastard that he is, Frank is only reaching out to her after years of not being in her life to get a new liver because his is failing after decades of hard drinking) but she is, and thinks he is too when she asks him out on a date.
• Lois and Clark on Smallville. He's amnesiac and naked in a field. She even teases him about it later.
  • In the commentary for the pilot episode, the producers compare Clark and Lex's first meeting to this. Lex loses control of his car, hitting Clark and plummeting off a bridge into a river. Clark dives in and saves him by ripping the car's roof open. The producers refer to it as a "meet violent".
• Although there were no plans for the two to get together at the time, Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran had an interesting first meeting in Stargate SG-1. In an attempt to hijack the Prometheus, Vala disguises herself as a Kull Warrior, which are normally disgusting artificially grown humans encased in armour. After tying Daniel up to a chair, he asks why she chose him, and she tells him that she finds him very attractive. Keep in mind at this point, she is still disguised and her voice has been digitally altered to sound deep and masculine.
  You're not really my type... And I'm more than a little disturbed to think I might be yours.
• Supernatural: The show tried this a number of times, but given the show's fans having a *ahem* complicated relationship with potential love interests, it didn't always work the way the writers wanted.
  • Dean and Jo: they first met when she was holding a gun on him and after he disarmed her she punched him in the nose. In the minority as after the creators realized that the new character didn't work as intended (coming off more Annoying Younger Sibling than potential love interest) and that roughly 98% of the fans hated the pairing with a passion, the whole idea was called off and never progressed past her having a slight crush. The casting sides for Jo actually included the words "sparks are flying" in the notes though. Yikes.
  • Dean and Anna Milton: He's chasing her down, knowing she knows about the apocalypse and that demons are on her trail. He and Sam find her hiding in her father's church, and she emerges when she realizes that he's the Dean Winchester that the angels have been talking about and says they think he can stop the apocalypse. Meanwhile, he's charmed that she can tune into angel radio. She was supposed to be Dean's endgame, angelic love interest but fans far preferred Dean's friendship with Castiel and so he was given most of her story.
  • Castiel and Meg: She traps the angel in a circle of holy oil and taunts him. He escapes by moving very close to the demon, as if he might kiss her, but instead uses her body to bridge the fire and escapes. A number of fans actually liked this one, and Castiel/Meg was one of the show's more successful ships, and it only ended because Meg's actress left the show for health reasons.
  • Sam and Amelia: Arguably a worse failure at this than Dean and Jo (see above), after Sam hits a dog with his car, Amelia the veterinarian pressures him into adopting the dog. It's supposed to be romantic, but fans did not like the fact that Sam had abandoned hunting and failed to search for his missing brother and really didn't like a veterinarian pressuring a penniless drifter into adopting a dog he had no visible means of caring for.
  • Sam and Eileen: They are both hunters chasing down a banshee, with her being deaf because of a banshee attack that killed her parents when she was an infant. Sam attempts some sign language, which he's bad at but she appreciates the effort. They eventually bond over losing parents to supernatural attacks as infants and being called to the hunting life. This one was also somewhat successful, with many fans choosing to believe Eileen is Sam's unseen wife from the series finale.
• In the Torchwood episode "Fragments", we learn that Jack and Ianto met when Jack was overpowered by a Weevil and Ianto stepped in to help. Then again with their capture of a pterodactyl, which is a glorious scene rife with UST.
• Kate and Peter on Trophy Wife meet this way. In that while she was drunkenly singing and dancing at a karaoke bar, she fell off a ledge and right into his lap. Then she dislocates his nose with the microphone. He asks her out on a date after she takes him to the hospital.
• In True Blood, it turns out Pam and Eric met this way, although in a rather dark version of the usual meet cute. Eric swooped in to save Pam of a rapist/murderer by slitting the guys' throat and licking his blood of his fingers right in front of her. Her reaction was to calmly state she had been around dead bodies before. Interestingly, they did not start a Rescue Romance, rather a friendly acquaintance based on mutual respect, which turned into an eternal bond when Pam (in desperation) slit her wrists and forced Eric to either turn her into a vampire or let her die.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Long Morrow", Commander Douglas Stansfield and Sandra Horn meet when she drops her papers and he helps her to pick them up.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Ye Gods", Todd Ettinger and the woman with whom Cupid makes him fall in love first meet when they bump into each other at the reception of an outdoor café. At the end of the episode, they meet again when the woman crashes her car into Todd's. Having realized that they are meant to be together, they kiss in the middle of the street.
• Two and a Half Men:
  • Named by Charlie when he flirts with a nurse who is prepping him for a vasectomy.
  • And a second time when he is flirting with a doctor checking out his back pain. He tells her not to ruin the 'meet cute thing' they've got going on.
  • Alan names this trope in an episode when describing the ideal date to his Kavorka Man brother Charlie, describing the exact plot of a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy, right down to the Third-Act Misunderstanding.
• What I Like About You: Holly met her First Love, Henry, when she and her sister walked into the men's room.
• Done on Wizards of Waverly Place the movie (noticing a Disney theme here?) after Alex's wish rewrites reality so that their parents don't meet Max spends much of the movie trying to engineer a meet cute. He fails rather miserably.
• A very strange example in Workaholics, Adam meets a homeless woman after buying beer at a convenience store. She tries to steal the beer, he tackles her, and they scream in each other's faces. Only to quickly pause, give each other cute, awkward 'hi's, and for Adam to then ask her if she's a size four. He then takes her to Karl's wedding as his date.
• In Zoey 101, Chase and Zoey meet when Chase crashes his bike into the school's flagpole.

Music

• Tommy Shane Steiner and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras's "What We're Gonna Do About It" has a man and woman meeting in a Starbucks, and the male is offering such awkwardly cute lines as "Well, your shirt is yellow, my shirt is blue, my favorite color's green / Pretty amazing if you know what I mean". The song has Wilson-Sampras' character recounting the story over the phone to a friend, with her speaking while Steiner sings the male's lines. If not for the singing, it could easily be a scene from a Romantic Comedy.
• From "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" by Cake:
  I want a girl with a smooth liquidation
  I want a girl with good dividends
  At City Bank we will meet accidentally
  We'll start to talk when she borrows my pen

Radio

• Painfully deconstructed in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio "Urgent Calls", where the Doctor meets a lady called Lauren when she dials a wrong number and calls a telephone box he was walking past - and he gives her some medical advice that saves her life. Repeatedly, they end up contacting each other when dialing wrong numbers - the Doctor even refuses to take down her number at one point because he knows he'll contact her again later. This all turns out to be a coincidence virus that somehow broke out and which the Doctor is trying to stop, and the final scene is Lauren writing a letter to him in which she admits that it would be terrible if everything happened built on luck, even though she's only addressed the letter to "The Doctor" in the hope that it would find him.

Theatre

• In Cactus Flower, Igor Sullivan meets Toni by breaking into her apartment to foil her suicide attempt and give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She's already in a relationship with Julian, but he's a married man (or so he's led her to believe) and Igor conveniently has a neighboring apartment.
• Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto — Cesare and Angelo meet when Cesare saves Angelo after the latter loses control of his horse. Angelo thanks Cesare for saving his life, but Cesare says he doesn't care about Angelo's life, he was trying to save the horse. He thought Angelo was a horse thief, until Angelo explains.
• Hadestown: Orpheus is so blown away by Eurydice from the moment he sees her, he asks her to marry him before even introducing himself, then blows her away in return by singing for her with his literal divine voice.
• Puccini's opera La Bohème: Mimi comes to Rudolfo's bachelor pad for matches. She drops her key. The wind blows out their candles. The two grope for the key in the dark. Rodolfo finds the key, hides it, and continues "searching" as an excuse to hold Mimi's hand — "Your little hand is frozen! Let me warm it in my own."
• In the musical of Les Misérables, Marius and Cosette play this perfectly straight, randomly running into each other in the street. He apologizes and stoops to help her up, and then they make eye contact. Emphasis added because the musical score emphasizes that precise moment with a sting.
• The Light in the Piazza: Fabrizio catches Clara's hat when it is carried away by a gust of wind.
• The Mrs. Hawking play series: In part II: Vivat Regina, Mary and Arthur meet when, while Mary is on a stakeout for a case, she comes across him needing a spot of help subduing a ruffian. She brains the ruffian with her poker, and the two have a conversation that, while nothing overtly romantic happens in that play, definitely hints at a possible affection developing.
  • Subverted in part IV: Gilded Cages. The first time Reginald and Victoria meet, he attempts to save her from what he perceives to be her falling off a roof, but she's so startled by his unnecessary intervention she ends up punching him in the eye. Their marriage ends up an unmitigated disaster.
• In The Odd Couple, Oscar meets the Pigeon sisters he arranges his and Felix's double date with by getting stuck in the elevator with them. At least partially averted in the female version, though, because though Olive (female Oscar) gets asked on a date by the Costazuela brothers when she's stuck in the elevator with them, we know she's at least heard of them or seen them around the building before because she mentions them much earlier in the play.
• Being a modernized version of La Boheme, RENT does a similar thing between Roger and Mimi in the song "Light My Candle". Only it's played with a bit as they'd clearly seen each other around before, don't get involved until later in the movie version, and it's implied that Mimi orchestrated it to try to invoke the trope with Roger.
• In Sweet Charity, Charity and Oscar meet by getting trapped in an elevator together.
• The play Thoroughly Modern Millie begins with the titular Millie quite literally running into Jimmy, her love interest and also very, very rich.
• In Wicked, Fiyero nearly runs Elphaba over in his carriage-cart-thing. She is so mad about it, she precedes to hit Fiyero on the head with a book then fall in love with him.

Video Games

• BioWare seems to like this trope.
  • Neverwinter Nights: When you first meet Aribeth, you are almost immediately attacked by mysterious assassins.
  • Hordes of the Underdark: You first meet Nathyrra when she is trying to get you not to kill her for being a drow so she can give you important information to help you defeat the evil drow faction. And when your new character meets Aribeth, you just literally defrosted her and she immediately attacks you, following which you either have to convince her that Tyr hasn't abandoned her or that it doesn't matter.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: You meet Bastila when she is in a cage wearing only undergarments being offered as the first-place prize for a victor in a swoop race. However, if you play the main character as female, this trope is averted. You meet Carth when the two of you grab an escape pod as the Endar Spire explodes—not particularly cute.
  • Jade Empire: Silk Fox is trying to kill you because she mistook you for a minion of the minions of the minion of the evil rival of the Big Bad. The only female Love Interest in a Bioware game who you meet ordinarily is Dawn Star, who you grew up with.
  • Mass Effect 2: Master thief Kasumi met her now-deceased boyfriend while they were both trying to steal the same painting. They ended up keeping it as a memento. Most of Shepard's romantic interests, however, are met when you either talk to them while pursuing a specific goal - Garrus, Jacob, Traynor, Cortez - or when one of you helps out the other in a bad situation - Tali, Liara, Ashley, Jack, Miranda, Thane if you count serving as a distraction - and neither option really qualifies as particularly "cute", especially given the typical bodycount of the latter.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, you meet Visas when she is sent to assassinate you and the Handmaiden when she stows away aboard your ship on the orders of Atris. Also, one of the best examples of this trope is the half-naked Exile walking into Atton's cell.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, you rescue Neeshka from a band of thugs, Elanee hops in to rescue you from a bladeling and a band of Duregar, and Safiya bandages your potentially fatal chest wound and drags you out of an ancient cavern system in Mask of the Betrayer. A female player meeting the male love interests might also qualify, with Casavir showing up to attack a bunch of orcs about to attack you, and in Mask of the Betrayer you coming into Gann's cell with an offer of freedom in exchange for military service.
• Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer: A potential conversation with Reese reveals that she met her husband Cyrus when she saw him go by on a motorcycle... and crash into an ice-cream truck because he was distracted by her. The two wound up hooking up after she took him to the hospital.
• Chrono Trigger features one of these as the main character runs into (or gets run into by) Marle, and causes her to lose her pendant, which Crono then helps return. Shortly afterwards, Crono goes after Marle when she gets sent into the past.
• Parodied in Crush Crush. You meet the first girl, Cassie, with a textbook Crash-Into Hello... that injures her so badly that her next appearance is in a full-body cast. Quite understandably, she's majorly pissed off at you for a while. Many of the game's girls are met in similarly Meet Ugly encounters that leave them mad at or upset with you until you apologize to them enough times.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII had Aerith meet Cloud when he fell through the ceiling of her church into a flowerbed - from a terminal height, mind you. Also, Crisis Core reveals she met previous love interest Zack in the exact same way. Ironically, Aerith and Cloud's real first meeting was a subversion of the Crash-Into Hello where she was knocked over - by a random NPC - before calmly asking Cloud if he wanted to buy a flower as he wandered past.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall first meets Rinoa at the SeeD ceremony. He looks up at a shooting star and looks where it came from, and his eyes lay on Rinoa, who seeks the same shooting star and looks where it's headed to, and her eyes meet Squall's. Rinoa goes over to him and gets a rather reluctant Squall to dance with her. She leaves him open-ended at the end of the dance when she sees someone she knows, leaving a slightly disappointed Squall.
• Occurs in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones between two minor playable characters, the cavalier Franz and the recruit Amelia. The two meet as enemies on the battlefield, but when the latter tries to attack the former, she trips over her own lance. Franz then helps her up, and noticing that she doesn't actually want to fight, he convinces her to lay down and join his side instead.
• A flashback in Katamari Damacy's We Love Katamari reveals that The Prince's parents - The King of All Cosmos and his wife - met cute to a ridiculous degree, in a Crash-Into Hello involving a cut-off Pompadour and a half-eaten bread accidentally forming a heart shape. The result: love at first sight.
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Being the first game in the series to really lean into the whole Implied Love Interest angle, Link and Zelda first meet during the ceremony for him becoming a royal engineer, with him gasping upoin laying eyes upon her and her returning his look with a smile. This is in sharp contrast to most of their other incarnations, who tend to either already be acquainted with one another at the start of the game or meet under less than ideal circumstances.
• Metal Gear:
  • Deconstructed in (surprise, surprise) Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. We learn that Raiden and Rose met over a pedantic argument over which building King Kong was climbing in the movie. It later turns out to have been all a big set-up to ensure Raiden would fall for her, allowing her to spy on him as part of the set-up for an Evil Plan.
  • When Snake first meets Otacon in Metal Gear Solid, Otacon wets his pants. Snake teases him about it in Sons of Liberty (in a flirtatious, 'I remember the day when we first met' kind of way), Otacon jokes about it in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and in Metal Gear Mobile it's actually a plot element when Snake asks Otacon what happened when they first met in a Spot the Impostor situation.
• The interactive romance novel Moonrise has the opposite of this trope. The player has a meet ugly with Alice. When they first meet, Alice violently infects the player lycanthropy.
• Parodied in Namco High, with Davesprite suggesting that his entire courtship with Cousin should consist of them both falling into water fountains at every opportunity. Averted in the actual story, however, with Cousin meeting each potential partner by being in detention at the same time.
• In Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, it was obvious the first time they communicated via Clank that Ratchet and Rivet were intrigued at there being another Lombax out there. When they finally meet at Zurkie's, both are tongue-tied a bit when they see each other. Although not much is explored about possible feelings between them, what with the dimensions crumbling all around them, it's clear there's something there.
  Ratchet: What's— (sees Rivet) Uhh... uhh, hey.
  Rivet: Hey! Yes, um... hi. Umm... I have Clank. (pulls Clank around off her back, and he waves happily at Ratchet)
• In Sentimental Graffiti, each of the girls is introduced to the player in this manner.
• Venba: Venba and Paavalan met like this, as she tells Kavin in Chapter 3. Venba was part of a group of teachers and students who had organized a protest at the private school where they were teaching, and Paavalan was an Intrepid Reporter covering the protests who interviewed her, among other protestors. He then published a poem (specifically, a venba) about the protests and about her, causing the protests to gather public support, the school to ultimately concede, and her to fall in love.

Visual Novels

• Lampshaded in Katawa Shoujo. One version of the scene in which Emi slams into the protagonist Hisao is actually titled "Meet Cute."
• Possible in Melody when the the protagonist gives the title character her first lesson. The protagonist can make lame compliments about Melody’s name, offer her his half-eaten fast food leftovers as a mid-lesson snack, or both.
• The protagonist of Serendipity Next Door meets two of her prospective love interests this way: she accidentally plows into Masaomi in her rush to get to work, and then meets Izumi later the same day when her bicycle tire goes flat in the middle of a downpour, prompting him to offer her an umbrella and let her leave the bike overnight at the pet store where he works rather than have to wrestle it home in the rain. Subsequently, she discovers that both men live in her apartment building - Masaomi next door, Izumi right across the hall.

Webcomics

• In Agents of the Realm, Jordan and Kendall bump into each other, starting their friendship. Engineered by Kendall, who needs to find out why Jordan works with Ruby.
• In the space arc of Arthur, King of Time and Space, Guenevere first meets Arthur and Lancelot at the same time, and mistakes Lancelot for the king, something he finds embarrassing, but she and Arthur find funny. It's a meet cute between her and both of them.
• In The Dreamer, although Alexander and Beatrice technically already knew each other, they still met cute in issue nine. Granted, they aren't in a relationship yet, it's still worth noting.
• The stalker version is used in Elsanna – Bram Stoker's Dracula, as Elsa stalks Anna before revealing herself.
• Shroomy from Electric Wonderland tried to invoke this in a Valentine's Day-themed comic.
• In Freefall, Florence arrives at Winston's home in the middle of a hurricane while he is watching a werewolf movie. He hears knocking, opens the door, sees Florence, and bolts in terror. Florence puts it down to showing too many teeth when trying to smile.
• F'ga in Ghastly's Ghastly Comic likes to tell people he and his boyfriend Bobby met through a glory hole. Bobby insists that it wasn't what it sounds like; "F'ga was just reaching through to borrow some toilet paper because his stall was empty and that weird guy with the Chick Tracts wasn't in the bathroom that day."
• The Foglio's Girl Genius avatars (the storyteller and the biographer) are shown meeting in a piece of extra art where she's holding a book titled FATE and has accidentally dropped another book on his head.
• Last Res0rt pulls a meet-cute almost right out of the gate with Slick pulling a Crash-Into Hello onto Jigsaw as he's trying to evade his guards. Granted, Slick and Jigsaw aren't a couple yet, but being the only other of her species on board so far leaves little to the imagination.
• Leif & Thorn: The title characters meet when Leif is pruning a tree, and a branch knocks Thorn in the head.
• The anime-inspired MegaTokyo naturally has this happen several times. Of particular note is the main couple, Piro and Kimiko, who've managed to meet cute 'bout 3 times so far... Largo and Erika probably also qualify, albeit only twice.
  • Yuki and Kobayashi's Meet Cute is almost a parody; their first interaction within the strip involving her falling on him from a great height (immediately after he unintentionally distracted her) and giving him three broken ribs, a concussion, and a broken arm.
  • Don't forget the exact details of Largo's first meeting with Erika. His near-fatal error of thinking her breasts weren't real and that she padded her Kasumi outfit was followed by his being asked in Japanese "Want me to break your other arm so you have a matched set?" most definitely didn't point at 'cute', rather 'keep your distance, you perv.'
• Questionable Content: Amir and Natasha first met in a mosh pit, when she kicked out one of his teeth. She saved the tooth, happened to bump into him a few days later and offered to return it kicking off their romance. If you're a metalhead you'll go "Nawww!" and if you're something else you'll go "WTF!!".
  • Also played with here with Steve and Cosette, though technically she already had his number.
  • Name dropped by Martin in Issue 3209 after Claire attempted (and failed) to invoke it to secure a second date with Emily for her brother, Clinton. (This is despite Jeph Jacques claiming to despise TV Tropes).
  • Name dropped again when Emily mistakes horror for romantic comedy. (it's what she thought the first two grisly murders were!)
• How Shine and Gumiya first met in NEXT!!! Sound of the Future. Gumiya was alone outside while it was pouring down rain, then Shine approached him to offer him her umbrella. Initially, Gumiya thought she was nice enough to give up her umbrella for a stranger, until she pulled out another umbrella from her coat and told him she always carries at least four umbrellas on her all the time in case of rain. The sheer ridiculousness of her actions cheered him up, and he treasured the memory of that day ever since, even though Shine finds it deeply embarrassing.
• Robber x Lover: The two main characters meet when one tries to return the other's things and is mistaken for a robber.

Web Videos

• Kontrola: Natalia met Majka in the past while the latter was a store clerk. The two had clear attraction to each other from the start, with awkward banter before Natalia left Majka her number.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang met Katara after running away from home, getting caught in a massive storm, and ending up frozen in an iceberg for a century. Her face is the first thing he sees when he wakes up. The result: Love at First Sight. He immediately asks her to go penguin sledding with him, and she confusedly accepts.
  • The Legend of Korra: Mako and Asami Sato meet when he runs into the street to catch the bus, stepping out from behind a parked car. On her moped, Asami doesn't see him until it's too late, and barely manages to slow down and bump him over. Mako is pissed but changes his tune when she removes her helmet. She invites him to dinner to apologize, which he gladly accepts.
• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Good Times, Bat Times", Dale and Foxglove meet for the first time when Dale, previously suspended on a string of chewing gum, plummets into the deep, and she saves him. To make it even cuter, Dale wonders how a little bat like Foxy can carry something as heavy as him, upon which she realizes that she can't. They hold on to each other in sheer terror while hovering for a second or so before falling into a dumpster together. Then again, Foxy had had a crush on Dale even before they met for the first time which heavily implies that she has been at least watching the Rangers since their arrival at the drive in, if not outright secretly stalked them since even earlier. Their first meeting is cute nonetheless.
• In the Gravity Falls episode "Soos and the Real Girl" Soos meets a girl named Melody when she sees him riding a kiddie ride and finds it cute. Melody is a mall employee who actually works at a place called Meat Cute.
• The short cartoon Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou is about a boy with incredibly bad luck meeting a girl with incredibly good luck. Hilarity Ensues, involving an out-of-control ice-cream cart and falling pianos.
• Although the romance angle is limited to subtext, in the Legion of Super Heroes (2006) episode "Legacy" Superman hits it off with Alexis, richest girl in the galaxy, when he saves her out-of-control mecha-suit from plummeting out of the sky.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Mommy Fearest" has Professor Utonium falling in love at first sight to a new woman in the neighborhood who baked him a cake. In the episode "Meet the Beat-Alls," Mojo Jojo comes across an eccentric female chimpanzee (an expy of Yoko Ono in behavior). In both cases, the romance was simply a means to an end, with the man being a pawn in the woman's schemes, and the love is over within 7 minutes of episode time.
  Mojo Jojo: You took my love away.
  Blossom: Well, you know, in the end, the love you take is equal to... to... Oh, who cares, it's just some dumb old song.
• My Adventures with Superman: In episode "Adventures of a Normal Man", Clark and Lois’ first interaction at the bodega is an adorably awkward interaction at the door, followed by an even more awkward interaction with the shopkeeper involving a bib.
• The Raccoons: In "The Sky's The Limit!", Ralph mentions that he met Melissa when he accidentally spilled coffee on her.
• Reboot's AndrAIa and Enzo. She's trying to kill him in a game. He thinks she's just another sprite and that her abilities are really cool. They end up working together to beat the game and forever afterword.
• In "Lisa's Wedding" of The Simpsons, Lisa has her future told by a fortune-teller. College-aged Lisa meets Hugh at university. First they bump their heads together at a drinking fountain, he then grabs the last soy pop at the vending machine which Lisa also craved, he steals her an elevator and doesn't share it with her so she has to climb the stairs, and then even snatches the last copy of a book Lisa needs to read. Last part includes them reading the book together with a sort of reading race. Then Hugh is impressed and turned on by Lisa's knowing the definition of "stochastic", and they start making out in the library.
  Female Librarian: First, they hate each other. All of a sudden, they love each other. Oh, it doesn't make any sense to me.
  Male Librarian: Of course not. You're a robot.
  [Female librarian robot sheds a single tear, then shorts out, and her head melts.]
• In the "Bubble Buddies" episode of Steven Universe, Steven starts out to return a glowing bracelet to Connie, when his magic bubble shield forms around the two of them when a piece of the cliff crumbles off. After Sadie tries to break the bubble with a hammer and a chair, Steven and Connie try to burst the bubble with a harpoon and a roller coaster. Just when Connie is about to lose hope, Steven offers to be her friend; after making it back to shore, Steven borrows Connie's glow bracelet to lure the gem worm, which is crushed under the pier, and Steven's and Connie's relationship begins.
• In the Wander over Yonder episode "The Battle Royale", Wander discovers Lord Dominator is a lady and tries to organise a meet cute between her and Hater involving a candy pop ring, hoping they will fall in love, get married and abandon their evil ways. However, every villain in the galaxy hears that the ring is a powerful artifact of invincibility and attempts to claim it for themselves, resulting in all-out war. When Hater and Dominator finally meet up, they try to blast each other to oblivion (at least until Hater knocks Dominator's helmet off).
  Wander: This is less of a meet cute and more of a meet RRAAGH I'm going to destroy you!

Real Life

• Martial artist Wong Fei-hung met his fourth wife, Mok Kwai-lan, when his shoe flew off during a martial arts demonstration and hit Mok Kwai-lan in the head. She then leapt up on the stage and berated him. Impressed by her spirit, he asked her parents for her hand in marriage, and they accepted.
• Mel Brooks met Anne Bancroft on the set of a talk show. Afterwards, Brooks bribed a woman to find out where Anne planned on eating dinner that night so he could "accidentally" bump into her again. This resulted in marriage and the creator of The Zombie Survival Guide.
• This gay couple in Washington, who got married after repeated meet-cute events. They met normally at a bar the first time, then proceeded to re-meet cute twice at three year intervals until they finally got around to staying together. It looks like fate really, seriously wanted this one to happen.
• Subverted in Dan Savage's series "How Sleaze Is Lived in America" which featured letters from readers who had developed relationships out of drunken hookups, met their partners at orgies, etc. This was in response to Ann Landers, above.
• Fittingly, sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer met her husband when they were waiting for a ski lift, and her very tall future husband decided to ride with the very short Ruth... even though he already had a girlfriend.
• This tumblr post tells the story of how the OP's grandparents met — when the grandmother was running away from the police, jumped onto the back of the grandfather's motorcycle, and yelled at him to drive.
• Alan Alda first met his wife Arlene when they were at a dinner party and a cake fell to the floor. The two of them were the only guests still willing to eat the cake.

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