Romantic Hyperbole

"Of course I would, it would cement my love for you."

"I would walk across the desert with no shoes upon my feet,
To share with you the last bite of bread I had to eat."

— The Judds, "Love Can Build a Bridge"

Some lovers say that they'll care for you, work hard to support you, and be there for you when you need a shoulder to cry on. But why stop there? Why not fetch the stars from the sky for you, climb the highest mountain, walk a thousand miles on broken glass just for one touch of your hand! And yes, these things are completely impractical and nobody could actually do any of them without dying - but hey, sometimes the best way to express powerful feelings is through ridiculous exaggeration. Alternatively, you can interpret such impractical feats as metaphors for overcoming more mundane obstacles.

Other forms of hyperbole are also eligible, such as attributing supernatural properties or abilities to your lover that no person actually has, like shining/glowing, being the source of all beauty, or teaching the doves to sing.

If any "I would such and such" statements turn out to be Not Hyperbole, back away slowly because Love Makes You Crazy and/or evil.

Naturally a staple of Silly Love Songs.

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Examples

Film

• It's a Wonderful Life:
  George: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.
  Mary: I'll take it. Then what?
  George: Well, then you could swallow it, and it'd all dissolve, see? And the moonbeams'd shoot out of your fingers and your toes, and the ends of your hair... Am I talking too much?
• Subverted in Stardust when Tristan tells his girlfriend he'll bring back a star for her... and actually goes out and finds a star - fallen to earth in the shape of a woman - and tries to bring her back. Only along the way, he falls in love with the star and ends up with her instead.
• Shakespeare in Love subverts this trope by way of Sonnet 130 (see in Literature, below) when Shakespeare tells Thomas Kent (actually Shakespeare's love Viola in disguise) about how the woman he loves has eyes like the sun, lips red as coral, a voice like music, etc. "Thomas" responds that he'd hate to be Shakespeare's lady because no real woman could actually live up to that.
• Annihilation (2018). Kane won't tell his wife Lena where he's been deployed by the US military—only that he's in the same hemisphere. Lena laughs at him for thinking that she looks up at the skies while he's gone and wonders if he's doing the same. The fact that she'd mock him in this way is a sign that her affections have been straying.

Literature

• Shakespeare uses this trope a lot.
  • The most obvious example is probably Romeo and Juliet. Romeo says that Juliet: 1. Is the sun. 2. Teaches the torches to burn bright. 3. Is fairer than the moon. 4. Has cheeks brighter than the stars. 5. OK, you get the idea.
  • Another example is from Two Gentlemen of Verona. One of the male leads is in love with a woman named Silvia and he recites the following completely ridiculous speech which was also recited in Shakespeare in Love.
  What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
  What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
  Unless it be to think that she is by
  And feed upon the shadow of perfection
  Except I be by Silvia in the night,
  There is no music in the nightingale;
  Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
  There is no day for me to look upon...
  • Shakespeare also subverts this with Sonnet 130, more commonly known as "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun." He still loves her, though.
• Hell, Renaissance poetry was full of this stuff. Check out Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella sonnet cycle.

Live Action TV

• Playe with in a Flight of the Conchords episode, where Bret writes a song for his new girlfriend, chock-full of this kind of promise. Jermaine calls him on it.
  Jemaine: Would you actually climb the highest mountain?
  "Bret:" No, probably not. It's sort of a metaphor.
  Jemaine: For what?
  "Bret:" Well... that I'd do anything to be with her.
  Jemaine: Okay. So, would you climb the highest mountain?
  "Bret:" No. I wouldn't do a lot of this stuff, actually.
• Parodied by Mystery Science Theater 3000's Tom Servo in "Creepy Girl":
  All I know is that I love you! I want to shout it from the mountain tops! Uh, but, I'd have to get back down to Earth and actually CLIMB a mountain. Or they could just drop me off on a mountain. I don't care! That would be okay, because I just—need—YOU!
• Parodied in the MTV sketch comedy show The State while incorporating a Brick Joke. Earlier in the show, a teacher is telling students not to talk lightly about assassinating the president when a group of secret service agents rush in and carry her off. Later, when the cast is performing a Silly Love Song called "You Will Always Give Me A Boner", one singer sings "I would do anything for you! I'd even shoot the president!" Cue the secret service.
• Subverted in Babylon 5. Sheridan tells Delenn at one point, "I'll never leave you, Delenn, not if the whole universe stood between us." The universe does, and he doesn't.
• The Buffy/Angel romance is subject to a certain amount of In-Universe mocking regarding this trope.
  • From the BTVS episode "Helpless".
    Angel: I watched you, and I saw you called. It was a bright afternoon out in front of your school. You walked down the steps... and... and I loved you.
    Buffy: Why?
    Angel: 'Cause I could see your heart. You held it before you for everyone to see. And I worried that it would be bruised or torn. And more than anything in my life I wanted to keep it safe... to warm it with my own.
    Buffy: That's beautiful. [hugs Angel] Or taken literally, incredibly gross.
    Angel: [grimacing] I was just thinking that, too.
  • In the Angel episode "Fredless", Wesley and Cordelia summarize events for newcomer Fred's benefit.
    Cordelia: Let me break it down for you, Fred. [Chewing the Scenery] Oh, Angel! I know that I am a Slayer, and you are a vampire, and it would be impossible for us to be together, but—"
    Wesley: But! [The Glasses Come Off] My Gypsy Curse sometimes prevents me from seeing the truth. Oh, Buffy...
    Cordelia: Yes, Angel?
    Wesley: [Milking the Giant Cow] I love you so much I almost forgot to brood!
    Cordelia: And just because I sent you to hell that one time doesn't mean we can't just...be friends!
    Wesley: [Clint Squint] Or possibly more?
    Cordelia: Gasp!! No! We mustn't!
    Wesley: Kiss me!
    Cordelia: Bite me!
    Angel: [Walk-In Chime-In] How 'bout you both bite me?
• Referenced in, of course, Upstart Crow, particularly in the annoyed way that everyone reacts to Will Shakespeare's fondness for the trope.

Music

• The Judds - "Love Can Build a Bridge", as in the page quote. In this case the next line ("I would swim out to save you in your sea of broken dreams") makes it clear that it's metaphorical.
• The Proclaimers - "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)":
  But I would walk 500 miles
  And I would walk 500 more
  Just to be the man who walked 1000 miles
  To fall down at your door
• Similarly, Vanessa Carlton - "A Thousand Miles":
  You know I'd walk a thousand miles
  If I could just see you... tonight.
  • This one is particularly unrealistic: it would require over 13 continuous days to walk a thousand miles, so she obviously wouldn't make it "tonight."
    • She never says she'll walk them TO see her lover, just "if" she could. She could walk the thousand miles after.
• Foreigner - "Feels Like the First Time":
  I would climb any mountain
  Sail across a stormy sea
• Billy Ocean - "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going":
  Darlin', I'll climb any mountain
  Darlin', I'll do anything
• Céline Dion - "Pour Que Tu M'aimes Encore" ("For You to Love Me Again"): among other things, the narrator offers to make herself queen, cast magic spells of African priests, and turn herself into gold for her ex-lover to love her again.
• Evanescence - "Anything for You":
  I'll be anything for you
  I'll become your earth and sky
  Forever never die
  I'll be everything you need
• Coheed and Cambria - "Wake Up" (also overlaps with Lyrical Dissonance):
  I'll do anything for you
  Kill anyone for you
  Cause I'll do anything you ask me to...
  • Another Coheed example: he offers to "cut the throats of babies" just for you. Aww...
• Savage Garden - "Truly Madly Deeply":
  I wanna lay like this forever
  Until the sky falls down over me.
• blink-182 - "Until the Stars Fall from the Sky":
  I'll hold you all night honey
  To the sound of the waves
  Until the stars fall out of the sky
• Rick Astley - "Together Forever":
  And don't you know I would move heaven and earth
  To be together forever with you.
  • Also weirdly inverted in "Never Gonna Give You Up", where his promises boil down to "I will commit to you exclusively and not cheat on you," and he then states "you wouldn't get this from any other guy." Kind of a low bar, there, Rick....
• Jacques Brel's "Ne me quitte pas" (Don't leave me) has a number of line about what the singer would do to keep their lover. Unlike other songs where this is considered completely romantic, this one is more about how the despair associated with losing love would make you do really desperate things. One example among many:
  Moi je t'offrirai/ Des perles de pluies/ Venues de pays/ Ou il ne pleut pas
  I will bring you pearls of rain from countries where there is no rain.
• "Everything I Own" by Bread:
  I'll give up my life, my heart, my home
  I will give everything I own
  Just to have you back again
• "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg.
  Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
  Higher than any bird ever flew
  Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
  I've been in love with you.
  Stronger than any mountain cathedral
  Truer than any tree ever grew
  Deeper than any forest primeval
  I am in love with you.
• The premise of the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Good Enough For Now" is subverting this trope.
  You know I couldn't live a single day without you
  Actually, on second thought, well, I suppose I could
  (...)
  And I swear I'm never gonna leave you, darlin'
  At least 'till something better comes along
  • This trope is also parodied in "One More Minute," in which the singer makes hyperbolic and increasingly disturbing statements of what he would do to avoid the object of the song.
• Zig-Zagged in Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel:
  Cause baby there
  Ain't no mountain high enough
  Ain't no valley low enough
  Ain't no river wide enough
  To keep me from getting to you babe.

Straight example with the mountain, as there are certainly mountains high enough to be impassable. The valley gets a little weird, but if you expand your definition of "valley" to include gorges and canyons it still makes some kind of sense. But river? Really? Even the widest of rivers can be crossed by ferry.

• Subverted in Meat Loaf's song "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"
  I would do anything for love
  I'd run right into hell and back
  I would do anything for love
  I'd never lie to you and that's a fact
  And I would do anything for love
  But I won't do that.
  • Except the thing he won't do is fall out of love with said woman.
  • Although played straight big time in "I'd Lie For You (And That's The Truth)".
  Your every wish will be a wish that I will make come true
  And if you want the moon I swear I'll bring it down for you
• In Bruno Mars' brokenhearted "Grenade":
  I would catch a grenade for ya
  Throw my hand on a blade for ya
  I'd jump in front of a train for ya
• To Me You Are Everything by The Real Thing opens with:
  I would take the stars out of the sky for you
  Stop the rain from falling if you asked me to.
  I'd do anything for you
  Your wish is my command
• Sara Evans' "No Place that Far" IS this trope.
  If I had to run
  If I had to crawl
  If I had to swim a hundred rivers
  Just to climb a thousand walls
  Always know that I would find a way
  To get to where you are
  Baby, there's no place that far
• This trope's inversion is the premise of the old English folk song, Scarborough Fair. The song is about a man trying to exact impossible tasks out of a woman, telling her he'll love her if she can do these.
  Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
  Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
  Without a stitch or needlework
  And she shall be a true lover of mine.
• "I Will" by Jarah Gibson from the Soundtrack of The Room (2003).
  I will stand in the way of a bullet
  I will run through a forest of flames
  I will climb the highest of mountains
  Just to show you I love you, I will.
• There's the Eurovision Song Contest (2001) song "(I Would) Die For You" by Antique, Greece. Says itself, really.
• "10,000 Hours" by Dan + Shay featuring Justin Bieber:
  I'd spend ten thousand hours and ten thousand more
  Oh, if that's what it takes to learn that sweet heart of yours
  And I might never get there, but I'm gonna try
  If it's ten thousand hours or the rest of my life
• "Miracles" by Pet Shop Boys self-consciously employs this trope (in the "supernatural effect on nature" version) to convey the feeling of early infatuation:
  Thunder is silent before you, roses bloom more to adore you too
  Miracles happen when you're around
  The sunset is deeper and longer, the scent of the jasmine is stronger
  Stray dogs don't bite, birds start to sing
  Lightning daren't strike, you suddenly bring
  Bluer skies...
• Lampshaded during the verses, but ultimately played straight during the chorus of "Deeper Than The Holler" by Randy Travis, where the singer knows these songs are a dime a dozen, but wants to sing about what he knows.
  My love is deeper than the holler
  Stronger than the river
  Higher than the pine trees growin' tall upon the hill
  My love is purer than the snowflakes
  That fall in late December
  And honest as a robin on a springtime window sill
  And longer than the song of a whippoorwill

Theatre

• Mocked in "How Much I Love You" from One Touch of Venus (an alternate version of which was published as an Ogden Nash poem titled "To My Valentine"):
  More than a catbird hates a cat,
  Or a criminal hates a clue,
  Or the Axis hates the United States,
  That's how much I love you....
• In Of Thee I Sing, hyperbole naturally figures in Wintergreen's love-story campaign strategy:
  Fulton: There have been many great lovers in history. But Romeo never loved Juliet, Dante never loved Beatrice, Damon never loved Pythias, as John P. Wintergreen loved Mary Turner.
• In The Musical of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Johnny sings "I'll Buy You A Star," whose verse declares that even "buckets full of diamonds" aren't big enough to promise.

Webcomics

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  • A man claiming he'd do anything for the woman he loves, until she asks him: "Would you eat this brick?"
  • And again in this one, mocking the fickleness of young love.
  • Later subverted in this one, in which a man literally scales the highest mountain and swims the deepest ocean, and afterwards becomes a celebrity and loses interest in his original girlfriend.
  • Revisited yet again in this one, in which his lover claims that acts like "climbing a mountain" merely make him more socially desirable ("Clearly you're hedging your bets in case things don't work out here"). She instead asks him to do something socially deplorable to prove his love, like running naked through a kids' amusement park with a swastika on his forehead and a cape reading "FUCK SINGLE MOMS". Naturally, the votey shows a woman with large breasts asking if he's the swastika guy from youtube.
• A subversion similar to Shakespeare's "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun" is this xkcd, which starts, "You are not the light of my life."

Other

• Mocked in one of Steve Patterson's comedy routines, where he says love song writers should keep their promises realistic:
  I would step
  To the middle step
  On the stepladder
  If you really, really, REALLY needed that
  cup...
• Studies have shown that those who are more deeply in love will promise the one they love anything and everything they could possibly desire based solely on the depth of their love. However, their likelihood to actually fulfill that promise (even if it's a perfectly possible one, such as accompanying them to a boring social dinner) is governed by self-control and has absolutely nothing to do with their feelings for the person who they made the promise to. This has the unfortunate result that those who are the most deeply in love will often end up promising things that they simply don't have the discipline to make good on, resulting in them being more disappointing than a more rational person who loves them less and thus makes smaller promises that they are more likely to fulfill. Love really does make you crazy!

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