Pinky Swear

Now we know they mean business.

"Earth, Water, Sea, Air! I declare a pinky-swear!"

— Master Roshi, Dragon Ball

Pinky swears are used as a way to form a pact or as a declaration of friendship between children. While the practice is considered cutesy and juvenile to older persons, children often take this kind of gesture seriously, as if their very lives, or worse, friendships, hang in the balance of words spoken over interlocked fingers.

Usually this gesture is accompanied by a rhyme or "oath" spoken in unison by the pinky swearers. This can vary by region.

While North American children tend to use the chant "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye," Japanese schoolchildren use the following "oath":

Yubikiri genman, uso tsuitara hari senbon nomasu, yubi kitta which colloquially means: "Pinky promise pledge: If you're lying, I'll make you drink a thousand needles. Pinky promised!"

"Yubikiri" means literally "finger cut", likely because of the timeless punishment of cutting off a finger if you fail or break a promise or contract (still practiced today amongst some yakuza and other gangsters), so the last bit of the promise is literally "our fingers have been cut!" to seal the deal. Also, the term hari senbon, while meaning literally "1,000 needles", is also a regional slang term for a pufferfish, which is covered with 'needles' when inflated. So, they could also be promising to make you drink a puffer fish, which obviously would be painful, followed by a rather nasty death by neurotoxin.

Russian children, too, use a similar pinky finger gesture when promising to be friends and no longer fight. The chant for this occasion can be roughly translated to English as the following: "Make peace, make peace, make peace, and don't fight anymore, and if you fight, I'll bite, and biting is not enough, I'll beat you with a brick... we cannot beat with a brick, we are friends now!"

In Australia (and perhaps elsewhere) there is an understanding that if the pinky swear is broken, the one who broke it has their pinky finger broken in turn.

A common variation is for an adult to make a "pinky promise" to a child as reassurance. Either at the child's request or to show that the adult understands how children feel. May end up as a Heroic Vow. Commonly subverted into a Kick the Dog moment by having the villain use a child's trust in the pinky promise to trick them. Especially cruel villains may even mock the child for their gullibility after revealing their true motives. Unless the power of the pinky promise makes him do a Heel–Face Turn.

A cousin to this trope is the Red String of Fate; which is connected by pinky fingers.

See Yubitsume for when a character goes through with it and cuts off their finger.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• The PSA Pinky Pledge features two girls making a pinky swear to stay safe online.

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You:
  • Rentarou uses this in Chapter 2 as a "failsafe" to ensure that nobody cheats during the blind kissing game.
  • Chiyo and Naddy use this in Chapter 71 as a promise not to tell Rentarou or the other girls about what they talked about at McDonald's.
• Hatoko and Misaki in Angelic Layer make such a promise, cementing each other as The Only One Allowed to Defeat You. When Sai defeats Hatoko later on, they make another promise, that Misaki will beat Sai.
• In Bakuman。, Kazuya Hiramaru makes one with Yuriko "Ko Aoki" Aoki that he will get serialized at the next meeting. Takuro Nakai sees this and is quite horrified.
• Betrayal Knows My Name: Tsukumo and Toko do this in episode 10.
• Bleach anime episode 247. While Captain Ukitake is trying to recapture his zanpakuto's spirit Sogyo no Kotowari, he promises them that if they give him their weapons he'll play with them as long as they like. They ask him to pinky swear on his promise and he agrees.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • Also used in the last episode of Cardcaptor Sakura, when Sakura and Shaoran vow to keep in touch.
  • That's not the only time... It's used in both the anime and the manga multiple times.
• The trailer for the 21th Case Closed movie has a flashback where a young Heiji makes one with a just as young Momiji.
• Lelouch makes a promise to Nunnally in Code Geass that he will make a better world for her and never lie to her. Tian Zi and Li Xing-ke may have the most epic pinky swear in all of anime, in which Xing-ke promises to use his life, which she saved, for the good of her country that results in Wedding Smashers, a coup d'etat and some Gambit Pile Up.
• Danganronpa: The Animation: Makoto and Kyoko link pinkies before she heads off into danger. He's making her promise to come back safely.
• Hijiri and Kazusa do this in Descendants of Darkness.
• Dragon Ball:
  Master Roshi: Earth, Water, Sea, Air; I declare a pinky swear!
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • Kyon did this with the adult Mikuru in Haruhi Suzumiya, when Kyon and the young Mikuru traveled 3 years back in time.
  • One of Ryoko Asakura's image songs is about pinkie promises.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, Germany and Italy's Pact of Steel is forged with a pinky swear. Slightly subverted by the fact that both of them are grown men... Although Italy is a bit immature. It was Germany's idea, though; it's stated that he got the idea from Japan.
• His and Her Circumstances, including in the opening song
  • Not only that, the opening song is called "Tenshi no Yubikiri", meaning, "An Angel's Pinky-Promise".
• Hunter × Hunter: Gon makes a pinky swear to his mother figure Mito to come back to her safely after he becomes a hunter. He also makes a pinky swear to Palm that he will take her to NGL after defeating Knuckle and Shoot, though Palm takes this as something else.
• THE iDOLM@STER - The Producer to Yukiho (ep 3) and Miki (ep 12).
• Kanon; Yuuichi and Ayu's relationship is marked by several of these.
• In K-On! a flashback told by Ritsu shows her and Mio doing this when they decided that they would one day form a band. Followed by Mio pointing out that it didn't happen quite like that.
• Love Hina, Mutsumi and Naru pinky swear in volume seven.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, before she leaves for a one-day conference, Nanoha performs one of these with her adopted daughter, Vivio, saying that she will give her some caramel milk if she promises to wait for her return like a good girl. Unfortunately, Jail attacks their base on that night and takes away Vivio.
  • The two of them makes another pinky swear in ViVid, where Nanoha makes Vivio promise not to use her Adult Mode for mischief.
  • At the end of A's, when Hayate goes out for a Christmas party, her doctor makes her promise to come back that day after having spent Christmas Eve out of the hospital for the final battle of the season (although her being teleported out wasn't her fault), and they seal it with a pinky swear.
• Happened in Monster Rancher.
• This is done twice between San and Saturn in My Bride is a Mermaid (once as kids and once in the present).
• In a fairly lighthearted example, One Piece has the Strawhats doing this with Shirahoshi at the end of the Fish-Man Island Arc, promising to visit her again if she promises to mature. Since Shirahoshi's pinky is bigger than most of the Straw Hats' entire bodies, most of them just touch theirs to hers; Luffy, on the other hand, stretches and wraps his around the entire length.
• Takaaki and Miyako from Powerpuff Girls Z did a pinky swear when they're little so that they will meet again some other time.
• In an episode of Sailor Moon, two aspiring animators, Hiromi and Kazuko (renamed Lori and Cassie in the first English dub), bought boxes of expensive pencils used by professional animators, and pinky-swore they'd only use them in emergency circumstances. They both end up breaking the promise when they're assigned to work on the Sailor V anime since they were both insecure about their talents, but forgive each other in the end.
• Shows up near the end of Magical Project S.
• In There, Beyond the Beyond, Futaba attempts this, but Cloud Cuckoolander Kiara sucks on his pinky, instead.
• In Saki this is done between Nodoka and Saki to underline Saki's promise that she won't hold back at playing mahjong anymore.
• Used straight several times, and later somewhat subverted in School Days; especially when the promise is actually about something very important. Of course, part Makoto being Makoto and part everyone being idiots, he ended up breaking every single one of them.
• The teenage girls on the crew in Super Dimension Century Orguss, who are from a parallel universe race with two tentacles in their hair, do this with the tentacles in the first episode, weirding out Kei.
• Manatsu practically forces Ichika into one of these near the end of the first episode of Uta∽Kata. It also features prominently in the Ending Theme.
• ×××HOLiC:
  • Anime only: one of Yuuko's customers lands herself into hot water by making promises she can't keep.
  • There's also the Pinky Swear between Watanuki and Himawari.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! (young Jonouchi and Shizuka).

Comic Books

• Deadpool short story "The Pinky Swear". Being Deadpool, he takes it very seriously.
• The playground vow in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) is a particularly silly oath:
  Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake
  Clap your hooves and bake a cake
  If I do lie and spill the beans
  You can make me eat sardines.

Fan Works

• Beyond Tomorrow: Kikyo does one with Hanyuu to reassure her that she is not prejudiced against half-demons and won't hurt her, even chanting the Japanese pinky rhyme for good measure.
• In a The Big Bang Theory short by A.A. Pessimal, Amy and Bernadette realise they've made a bad situation a lot worse. ^note it involves lab monkeys provided by Amy which have been infected with something nasty in Bernadette's lab - then re-exported to Africa. A pinky-swear sorts out this little concern.
• In Fairy Dance Of Death, Asuna uses this to bond with a traumatized pre-teen girl.
  She leaned a little closer, and stage-whispered unnecessarily. "Can you keep a secret? A really big secret?"
  "Sure."
  "Yubikiri?" Asuna smiled as she held up her pinky finger. Yuuki smiled too—the first time she'd done so—and pinky-swore.
• At one point in the infamous Harry Potter fanfic Becoming Female, Dolores Umbridge takes over Hogwarts again and hires a couple Death Eaters as teachers. She assures the student body that Lucius Malfoy did a pinky swear with her to not bring in any more Death Eaters. When he inevitably breaks his promise:
  "How COULD you!" Umbridge shrieked. "I thought we had a deal! We did a pinky swear, remember?"
  "I had my fingers crossed behind my back," said Lucius smugly.
  "Damn the loopholes!" yelled Umbridge.
• In Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail, Parker did one with his sister Chloe to promise her that he wouldn't reveal to their parents about her entering a horror writing competition. Unfortunately, he had already done so at the time under the belief this would help find a clue to her whereabouts.
• In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Kyon's sister promises her brother not to tell Haruhi Tsuruya kissed Kyon. While Kyon's sister didn't tell Haruhi, she acknowledged it's her fault Haruhi learned that because she slipped when talking with a cousin.
• In Mortal Man, Patrick tries to make one with Spongebob. He changes it to a "stumpy promise" when Spongebob reminds him that he doesn't have pinkies.
• The pro wrestling story, One More Time has Molly Holly instigating one with Eddie Guerrero, that he will let the WWE doctors look him over, and she will have another match someday. As the story is a Foregone Conclusion it takes place the night before Eddie's death, it makes for a Downer Ending.
• Past Sins: Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Promises", complete with an odd ritual: "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.", which appear in Chapter 2.
• The Rainbow Connection: It's shown in a flashback that Rainbow Brite and Stormy pinky swore to be friends forever. It was made even more serious by the fact they used their birth names (especially since Stormy hates her original name).
• Support starts with the newly graduated Raven and Chelsea pinky promising to support one another even into adulthood. Eight years later, a homeless Chelsea arrives at Raven's job wondering if her friend remembered the promise, which she did.

Films — Animation

• Koda from Brother Bear insists that Kenai do this so he could take him to the Salmon Run. In the sequel, this became a regular for them whenever they make a promise.
• Despicable Me: At the end of the film, Gru makes one of these to Agnes, promising to come to the girls' ballet recital.
• Trolls World Tour: A pinky promise between Pop Trolls has such power that it generates a Planar Shockwave when the pinkies connect, as seen with Poppy and Biggie.

Films — Live-Action

• Used in the live-action Casper movie between a father and daughter (it even becomes a Chekhov's Gun: when the former dies, his ghost only remembers the daughter after she hooks her pinky with his).
• As with the comic book entry above, used in the Deadpool movie between him and Vanessa. Not explicitly called out, but they are seen linking pinkies.
• Apparently defied in Looney Tunes: Back in Action; when Mother hears DJ knows about the Blue Monkey from his father, she grouses, "What is the point of making them pinky swear?"
• In Radio Flyer, the seriousness of promises in a childhood view is underlined with the final pinky promise between adult Mike and his son.
• A pinky-swear was the only thing that could show the strength of Chris' vow that he didn't know that a gun he gave Gordy to play with in Stand by Me was loaded in the first place.
• In a deleted flashback scene from What's Your Number? one was made between a teenage Ally and Jake promising that they'll lose their virginities to one another when they are older.

Literature

• In Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic:
  • Phoenica insists on making one with the Spelling Bee, making the latter promise to not change up the rules of the Hexicon game again. Since the Spelling Bee is a magical construct made by Lorelai, it also binds her by proxy. What's more, because they are in one of Lorelai's magically-constructed worlds at the time, the promise becomes genuinely magically compelling and unbreakable.
  • After mainly finding him unsettling for most of the novel, Molly extends one to Rick after the latter reveals his past as a gladiator and they bond over a shared tendency towards self-sacrifice. During this conversation he lets slip that "Rick Shades" is just a persona he constructed because facing his friends in battle as himself felt wrong. When Molly asks what his real name is, he is at first hesitant to tell her, since if they have to fight some day, he wouldn't want the real him to fight her, resulting in this:
  “We won’t fight.” [Molly] held out a pinky. “Promise.”
  “Hm?”
  “It’s a pinky promise. Once you shake it, you can never break it.” [Rick] stared at her outstretched hand, uncertain, tables turned.
  “Is it magic?” he asked.
  “Yeah. Kinda.”

Live-Action TV

• Arrowverse
  • Arrow
    • In "The Candidate", Anarky taunts a Damsel in Distress by making her pinky swear that she won't reveal who kidnapped her if he lets her go. Then he breaks her finger and declares he will torture her instead.
    • Although Thea is estranged from Malcolm Merlyn, they do this trope in "Dark Waters" when Thea promises her supervillain father that she will be careful.
  • Legends of Tomorrow. In "Wet Hot American Bummer", Sara Lance coaxes Ava Sharpe into doing this before they go to a summer camp to catch the Monster of the Week. They do it again when they have to take a potion to turn themselves into children for plot-related reasons. And in later episodes as a sign of mutual affection.
• Community: When Star-Burns is to testify in a case of a mishap in the biology lab that he was witness to, he makes Troy and Abed pinky-swear not to reveal what he was doing there.
• On an episode of Full House, a pinky swear was made between D.J. and Stephanie as a way of making D.J. promise to eat when it was revealed that D.J. has spent three days crash-dieting.
• In the first episode of The Handmaid's Tale, Moira and June pinky-swear that they'll escape and save June's daughter. June throws it in Moira's face when she encounters a defeated Moira at Jezebel's.
• In the Korean drama Mawang, a particular pinky-swear becomes a rather sinister plot twist.
• Young Antonio's promise to young Jayden in Power Rangers Samurai to train and fight at his side when the Nighloks returned was sealed with one.

Music

• MARETU's Vocaloid original "Mind Brand" has "yubikiri genman" in the lyrics. The context suggests the pinky promise is made by a guy to a young girl, whom he has sex with and leaves when she's of no use to him anymore.
• In the music video "Goodbye Earl" by The Dixie Chicks, Wanda and Mary Anne pinky swear to help each other kill the abusive Earl and hide the body together.

Theater

• In Ang Huling El Bimbo, Emman makes a pinky promise with Joy, promising to never abandon her, no matter what. He breaks this promise. This causes him to breakdown when she dies and her daughter Ligaya offers one to him.

Video Games

• A major motif between Jin and Tsubaki from BlazBlue, to the point that their "love theme", so to say, is called "pinky promise".
• One piece of promotional art in Ever17 depicts two of the characters, Coco and Sara, floating in the sea with pinkies clasped. Interesting in that the two of them apparently never interact or even meet in-story until the very end, but have a mysterious connection nonetheless.
• Fallout 2 has a variation on the whole pinky-swearing idea. After being asked for help, the PC can ask a minor NPC to cut off his right pinky in order to "seal the deal," presumably to test if he is serious about his promise or not. The NPC may or may not agree to do it. If he does, a good player can stop him before he actually does so, but an evil PC... can then tell him to fry it up and eat it. At that point, the NPC will try to kill you.
• Granblue Fantasy: In her SR version's Fate Episodes, Andira initiates this with the protagonist after taking a bath at a hot springs resort. Such a promise simply has her requesting that they should not forget this calm and memorable moment.
• A song featured in the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series is called Pinky Swear (Yubikiri), about a girl who cuts her pinky off as a promise that her love is real and won't change.
• Sonic does this with Shahra in Sonic and the Secret Rings as he promises that he'll have her smiling by the end of their adventure.
• Crops up in Tales of the Abyss with Luke a few times. Demonstrates his child-like understanding of the world, even when he is insisting that he hates them. Though some of the pinky swears from the past were between Asch and Natalia.
• In The Walkingdead Sara asks Clementine to make a one when they first meet which you can decline or accept.
• Alluded to in Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 3, when the Commander is trying to talk a Shining Blade agent into helping them. Said agent is reluctant due to the oath of secrecy she's under.
  The oath we take is far more intense and binding—not something you seal with a pinky swear.

Web Comics

• In Li'l Mell, Mell makes the time-traveling older Sergio pinky swear that they'll be best friends forever, and she seems to expect the younger version to abide by it.
• Mew and Donut do a pinky swear in Lily Love when Donut helps Mew sneak a hamster into their dorm.

Western Animation

• In the American Dad! episode "Tearjerker", Stan makes a pinky promise with Johnny Depp that the latter would tell the former if he became a robot.
• Archer: When Malory can't find her infant grandaughter her first thought is that Cheryl took her. Pam gets Cheryl to confirm she didn't take baby A.J. by holding up her pinky and asking "swearsy realsies?" with Cheryl repeating the gesture and phrase. Pam insists that this means she really didn't take the baby as swearsy-realsies is "pretty sacred to us".
• One episode of Arthur had a bunch of the main characters doing this.
• In Drawn Together, Princess Clara swears two other characters to secrecy with a pinky swear. However, Toot breaks her silence almost instantly (as in, without even leaving the room).
• In Fish Hooks, in the Halloween special, Oscar would only save Jocktopuss' life if he promises to never steal candy again... but a normal promise wasn't enough.
  Jocktopuss: Ugh, Jocktopuss hates you.
• Molly of Denali: In "Trini's Super Coop," Daniel promises to help Trini winterize the chicken coop by linking pinkies with her.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Pinkie Pie will swear her friends to a "Pinkie Promise", complete with an odd ritual: "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."
  • Later on lampshaded by Twilight as a pretty odd way of swearing:
    Fluttershy: You must swear that you don't tell Rarity!
    Twilight Sparkle: I promise.
    Fluttershy: Pinkie Pie Swear!
    Twilight Sparkle: Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my AAAAAH!
  • And you do not want to break a Pinkie Promise. 'Cause if you do, Pinkie Pie will HIJACK you for sure. This was lampshaded in the episode "The Last Roundup".
• The Collector from The Owl House makes these rather often, overlapping with Deal with the Devil, although it primarily highlights their Goo-Goo-Godlike behavior, and they very deeply believe that pinky swears are the most definite of promises. They throw an angry tantrum when Belos intentionally fails to meet his end of their deal, angrily calling him a "Liar, liar, pants on fire" as he severs communication with them. And once he is freed, they proceed to turn Belos into mush with a Finger Poke of Doom. On the other hand, if he makes a pinky promise, you can be sure he will fulfill his end of the bargain.
• In The Venture Brothers, when Dr. Girlfriend demands that the Monarch stop being Rusty's nemesis if he wants to marry her, the Monarch pinky-swears on it. When that promise is violated by his henchmen he yells "I made a pinky swear! A SACRED pinky swear!!"
• In W.I.T.C.H., near the end of the season 1 episode "The Mudslugs", Cornelia and Will reconsile their friendship with a pinky swear.

---