Temporary Love Interest

In an arc-less show, one in which each episode stands alone, the hero cannot be allowed to have long-running relationships. A girlfriend/boyfriend would interfere with opportunities to insert romantic tension.

Thus, the Temporary Love Interest who shows up has a brief, idyllic relationship with the hero, then dies tragically, is left behind or is otherwise written out. After that, she's usually never mentioned again. If she's put out of the picture without dying, she's a Girl of the Week. If a character has loads and loads of Temporary Love Interests, they may have a Cartwright Curse.

Stories involving Drifters or Knight Errants tend to involve this, if only because the lone wandering hero archetype tends to require that friends and love interests encountered during an adventure be left behind at adventure's end.

Related to Romantic False Lead, except that that relationship must die for the Official Couple to be able to get together. Contrast Disposable Love Interest, who is a kind of Satellite Character only there for a Token Romance and tends not to even get the dignity of being killed off. See also The Plot Reaper, a similar mechanism for killing off characters who'd ruin the status quo if they lived.

Examples

Anime and Manga

• Kirby: Right Back at Ya!: Whispy, of all people, who is a talking tree, gets his temporary love interest in the form of a flower. Dedede has her transformed into a monster, and Kirby has to kill her. To make things even more bizarre, when Whispy fell for her, she wasn't even sentient. She didn't come to life until after the transformation started.
• Four Murasame from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
  • Stella Loussier from Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny.
• D.Gray-Man: Anita was this to General Cross. Cross is a Chivalrous Pervert. Word of God says he likes good women. He is also stated to have many lovers, but Anita was the only one we met. Anita mentions that her mother was a lover of Cross, and supported the Black Order for him before she was killed by an Akuma. After meeting the Exorcist team that's searching for Cross, she offers them a ship and goes with them on the journey to find him. Sadly in a fierce attack on the ship, she and most of her crew are killed. Shortly before she dies, she thinks about Cross and wonders silently if she had become a good woman that would honor her mother. Lenalee is the one who lets Cross know of Anita's fate later. He is very somber and comments to Lenalee that he'd told Anita not to follow him, no matter what happened -stating that good women tend to be too simple-minded. Cross carries around the corpse of a deceased woman with parasitic innocence, named Maria. We haven't learned the origin of Maria yet. But if she was a lover of Cross, then he may lean toward being a victim of Cartwright Curse -because that would be three lovers we know of that are deceased.

Comic Books

• When the kids from Runaways went back in time to 1907, Victor found himself falling in love with a girl named Lillie. Their relationship followed this trope to the letter, except that she didn't die; she just decided at the last minute that she couldn't go with him back to the present.
• Supergirl:
  • In Supergirl Vol 1, Linda Danvers has several love interests. All of them are completely forgotten after one or two issues and are never seen again.
  • In Supergirl Vol 2, Linda dated a musician named Philip Decker for a while. They argued, she told him to not speak her until he was ready to be sincere... and they never talked again. Philip was never seen again after the final issue. Writer Diane Schutz wrote him out completely when she firmly established that Dick Malverne was Pre-Crisis Supergirl's main Love Interest in Young Love.
• Sabretooth has had four love interests in total, with two being this, Bonnie Hale & Holly Bright. Both introduced in a mini-series -Mary Shelley Overdrive & First X-Men respectively. Bonnie & Creed wanted to go away together. Holly, he had plans to marry & settle down with. Both were killed by Creed. He fatally wounds Holly when his body was controlled by the enemy. Bonnie was infected by a plague that would go viral if she wasn't killed & Creed tries to get the cure only for it be destroyed in an explosion. With no hope, Creed has to kill her.

Comic Strips

• Parodied in a Dilbert strip where the title character comments it's strange he has a girlfriend, and that it reminds him of Star Trek episodes where Kirk falls in love and you know she'll end up dying horribly — meanwhile, a flaming meteorite hits the ground just behind them and the girlfriend looks freaked out. Ironically, she goes on to dump him because he isn't as fun to be around anymore. Maybe she only loved him for the meteors?

Film — Live-Action

• Austin Powers (all of them), which in itself parodies the same concept from James Bond.
• Author! Author! (1982): Alice is set up to be Ivan's love interest after his wife Gloria dumps him, but they only date briefly before realizing that a long-term relationship won't work between them and have an amicable breakup.
• Even when James Bond has a love interest that actually manages to survive the entire movie, she's almost invariably completely forgotten in the next movie.
• Much like James Bond, the '90s Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman films are meant to retain (loose) continuity with one another, but each film contains a Love Interest who shows up, becomes deeply involved in Bruce / Batman's life, learns his Secret Identity, and then disappears in the next film with no explanation. They are:
  • Batman (1989): Vicki Vale
  • Batman Returns: Selena Kyle / Catwoman
  • Batman Forever: Dr. Chase Meridian

Literature

• In the Edie Spence series, Edie hooks up with some men over the course of the series, but as most men she meets are supernatural, strange things happen. Her zombie boyfriend, for example, leaves her because he thinks it's better for her. (As he has to eat human flesh on a regular basis, that's somewhat justified) A werewolf turns out to be willing to kill a child, which rather cools down her romantic feelings towards him, and then there is the weird thing where her new, seemingly human love interest turns out to be her old shapeshifter lover in disguise.
• In Star Wars Legends, Luke Skywalker went through girlfriends like most people go through socks. It was so sad. Fortunately, the suffering ended was substantially delayed when he married Mara Jade.
• The Mortal Engines quartet has two of these: Kate Valentine; in an interesting variation, as Kate also has a Temporary Love Interest, Bevis Pod.
• In the Horatio Hornblower book Flying Colours, Hornblower has an affair with a French widow named Marie, the daughter-in-law of the Comte de Gracay, while the Comte shelters Hornblower, Bush, and Brown after they escaped French captivity. While she survives the novel's events, she is killed near the end of the next book she appears in, Lord Hornblower.
• About a year after Beatrice's death in the La Vita Nuova, Dante begins to write a sonnet about another beautiful woman, only to have a vision of Beatrice that makes him realize his attraction to the new woman was a vain and shallow imitation of Love.
• Myth-O-Mania invokes this trope almost every time Cupid fires an arrow with either an orange or a yellow tip; while red-tipped arrows make people permanently fall in love, orange tips' effects wear off after three days, and love induced with a yellow tip only lasts an hour.^note Cupid hooks up Hades and Persephone by shooting the former with an orange-tipped arrow, but the couple forms a love genuine enough to last beyond the third day.

Live-Action TV

• On Arrow, Oliver was dating and sleeping with Star City Police Detective Mckenna Hall, but when Olicity began to gain traction as the fandom favorite OTP, Mckenna was injured in the line of duty and headed out of town for physiotherapy, never to return.
• In the original Charlie's Angels, any man an Angel shows interest in usually turns out to be the villain and is then never mentioned again, which makes the Hand Wave explanation of Sabrina leaving the team to get married rather inexplicable.
  • In one episode, Kelly is shown to be in a loving relationship with an obviously nice, decent man, but she has to end it because she has to go and work undercover. He doesn't know what she does for a living so she ends it by hinting that she no longer cares for him. However, it's clear her heart is breaking as she says it.
• Cobra Kai: Following their breakup at the end of season 1, Samantha LaRusso and Miguel Diaz spend season 2 in relationships with classmates from their respective dojos. Sam briefly dates Robby Keene, her dad's first student in Miyagi-Do and Johnny Lawrence's son. Meanwhile, Miguel dates new Cobra Kai student Tory Nichols. However, the relationships fall apart after Miguel cheats on Tory with Sam at a party right before school resumes. Tory, who has been harboring a grudge with Sam all summer, decides to attack her at school over it, kicking off a brawl that ends in Sam being injured and traumatized, while Miguel is crippled after Robby accidentally kicks him over a railing in a blind rage. After Miguel recovers from his injuries, he and Sam get back together late in season 3 after he bumps into her at school. Meanwhile, Robby is furious when he finds that Sam has dumped him for Miguel, and thus decides to join Cobra Kai to spite his dad and Daniel, where he eventually begins a relationship with Tory.
• Daredevil:
  • Claire Temple enters into a very short-lived relationship with Matt during the first season, but they mutually break up in the 11th episode. This is done for the status quo, as Matt's canon love interest in the show is Karen Page. Meanwhile, Claire goes over to Luke Cage and hooks up with Luke, her canon love interest in the comics.
  • Elektra Natchios is introduced a third of the way through season 2 and spends nine episodes working with Matt to take down the Hand before she's killed off by Nobu. But she's then revived in The Defenders, and is last seen with Matt below a collapsing Midland Circle and her survival is ambiguous.
• Desperate Housewives:
  • Susan Mayer gets two temporary love interests during the show's run, as temporary respites from her main relationship with Mike Delfino.
    • On the night that Mike plans to propose to Susan at the end of season 2, he's run over by Orson Hodge and ends up in a coma for six months. During this time, Susan enters a relationship with Ian Hainsworth, an Englishman whose wife is in a coma at the same hospital. She decides to commit to the relationship with Ian after Mike wakes up thanks to Edie Britt having managed to worm her way into Mike's heart. However, when Edie breaks up with Mike after he's arrested on suspicion of murder (and later exonerated), Susan gradually finds herself gravitating back towards him, and eventually Ian leaves her when he realizes this. At the end of season 3, Susan and Mike finally marry for the first time.
    • During the five year time skip between seasons 4 and 5, Susan and Mike divorce as a result of conflict over a vehicular collision they got into that claimed the lives of Paige and Lila Dash. Come season 5, Susan is in a Friends with Benefits relationship with a painter named Jackson Braddock. They nearly marry, but it's mostly because Jackson is Canadian and in the US on an expired visa, and needs a wife so he can avoid being deported. Unfortunately, this never comes to be, because Lila Dash's widowed husband Dave Williams, who has been seeking revenge for his family's deaths, reports Jackson to ICE. He then tries to kill Susan and MJ (her and Mike's son), but Mike rescues them. Afterwards, they share a passionate kiss, and ultimately remarry at the start of season 6.
  • Edie Britt manages to be one of these for two of the husbands on Wisteria Lane during season 3.
    • During the first few seasons, she's been competing with Susan for Mike's affections. When Mike wakes up from his coma at the start of season 3, Susan is out of town on a getaway with Ian, so Edie takes this opportunity to move in on Mike. Edie and Mike's relationship is short-lived, and ends when she breaks up with him after he's arrested for murder.
    • After breaking up with Mike, Edie pursues a relationship with Carlos Solis, who has recently divorced from Gaby. However, Edie has strong suspicions that Carlos still holds a torch for Gaby. Sure enough, Carlos begins cheating on Edie with Gaby after she finds out that her new husband only married her for political gain. He eventually breaks up with Edie, and after Victor dies, he remarries Gaby.
  • Victor Lang is a politician that Gaby meets late in season 3 while she's divorced from Carlos. While they hit it off rather quickly, the relationship turns south when he begins neglecting her for his political career, and she also learns (on their wedding day, no less) that he only married her for political gain, prompting her to begin cheating on him with Carlos. When Victor finds out about the affair from Edie, he tries to kill Carlos during a tornado, only to be killed when he's impaled from behind by a fencepost. Gaby quickly remarries Carlos shortly thereafter.
  • Katherine Mayfair is Mike's love interest during season 5 while he's divorced from Susan. They almost elope to Las Vegas too, until Mike bails on her at the airport in order to rescue Susan and MJ from Dave. Afterwards, he decides to break up with Katherine and remarry Susan. Katherine doesn't take it all that well, and spends the first half of season 6 harassing Susan and Mike up until she has a nervous breakdown and has to be committed.
• Doctor Who:
  • While the Doctor was mostly immune in the original series with a couple of exceptions, this happened to an awful lot of companions.
    • Barbara has a fling with Blond-Haired Space Boy Alydon in "The Daleks" but leaves him, as well as several more. Lampshaded in the Eleventh Doctor comic "Hunters of the Burning Stone" where the Doctor, upon hearing Barbara was going to marry Ian, reels off a long list of "broken hearts" she was going to leave.
    • Steven has a brief, tragic fling with Anne Chaplet, a girl he meets in 17th-century France. It's brief and tragic in part because he knows her for a couple of days leading up to a genocide against everyone belonging to her religion.
    • Jamie gets a love interest, Samantha, in "The Faceless Ones", but says goodbye to her at the end of the episode. This was not actually the original intention — the producer had offered the actress playing the part the opportunity to stay on as a companion, but the actress declined. Attentive viewers may notice that Samantha spends an unusually long time establishing her backstory and personality quirks for a Doctor Who side character for this reason.
    • Jo Grant seemed to leave a string of broken hearts in her wake, from Peladonian kings to Thal spacemen.
    • Ace has a full-on Cartwright Curse, with anyone she so much as smiles at dying in the last episode (even a female cheetah isn't immune). The New Adventures ran with this a lot.
  • In "The Aztecs", the First Doctor has a fling with, and gets an Accidental Engagement to, an Aztec healer named Cameca. They are seen through much of the serial cuddling or holding hands and both Ian and Barbara tease him affectionately about his fiancée ("you old rogue!"). The Doctor is clearly conflicted about whether he needs to move on immediately at all until Barbara's meddling puts them all in danger. Cameca admits she knew that the invention he was working on (the wheel) would take her from him, and she gives him a ring as a gift, which he attempts to discard but can't bring himself to.
    • Fridge logic suggests that the Doctor felt so badly about this that it took him nine regenerations to be willing to flirt again — much less go any further.
  • Any girl who asks the Doctor if she can travel with him but who would obviously not make a good companion for one reason or another in the Christopher Eccleston/David Tennant era:
    • Jabe from "The End of the World". She and the Ninth Doctor flirt outrageously, Rose tells them to "go off and pollinate" and a line in the Twelfth Doctor story "Deep Breath" states that they did have a physical fling. She dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to save everyone else on the space station.
    • Madame de Pompadour, who is dead at the end of "The Girl in the Fireplace" after the Doctor comes back for her too late.
    • In "Voyage of the Damned", this is done particularly badly — she practically commits suicide through stupidity (see, after you use the forklift to push the bad guy off the edge, you could at least try to jump out...). He then tries to save her through a mild Deus ex Machina, but it was broken in the wreck and she turns into a glowy remnant of herself that goes off into space and gets to see the Universe like she wanted.
    • Rose Tyler. In "Journey's End", she chooses to remain in Pete's World with the Doctor's half-human clone, aka "Handy", after Handy whispers in Rose's ear what the Doctor would not — presumed by many fans to be "I love you". Handy also offers to spend his one human life with Rose, saying that he will age and die as she does ("I could spend it with you, if you'd like"). The Doctor and Rose then part ways, presumably forever.
    • Done for legitimate characterization by River Song. In "Forest of the Dead", she sacrifices herself to prevent the deaths of thousands of other people and stabilize the Library's mainframe computer. Despite this, we see her past self go on many adventures with the Doctor, his companions, and eventually marry the (Eleventh) Doctor. Much later, a "data ghost" of her from after her death gets to say goodbye to him properly. She still dies to preserve the status quo but, thanks to the Mayfly–December Romance factor (despite her being part Time Lord, she gave up her ability to regenerate), that was fairly inevitable and their relationship is meaningful to both characters nevertheless.
    • Christina de Souza in "Planet of the Dead", a Classy Cat-Burglar who (as both she and the Doctor constantly announce to the audience) would be a perfect partner for Ten. Notable in that she doesn't actually die — they part amicably and she gets a flying London bus out of the deal.
  • In "Death in Heaven", the Twelfth Doctor is impressed by his fangirl Osgood and tells her that she should put "all of time and space" on her bucket list, while she Squees about it. The Master kills her in the very next scene.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures gives us Peter Dalton.
  • Occasionally happens to temporary companions in Expanded Universe stories. This especially happens in stories set during periods of solo travel, when a meaningful and quick connection is required without upsetting television canon:
    • Miss Lamb in Ghost Ship, who has a ton of UST with the Fourth Doctor (between "The Deadly Assassin" when he's just left Sarah and "The Face of Evil" when he picks up Leela) and dies.
    • Ali in The Beast of Babylon, who expresses a desire to travel with the Ninth Doctor and flirts with him about what kind of girls he likes (directly before the Doctor reappears in front of Rose at the end of "Rose"), but gracefully suggests that Rose would be a better partner for him before the Doctor has her Put on a Bus.
    • The Eighth Doctor short story "The Queen of Eros", where he gets all but married to a tyrannical alien queen, but eventually negotiates his freedom after transforming her into a better person.
    • The novelisation of "Shada" has Skagra's Sapient Ship Promoted to Love Interest for the Fourth Doctor. They have a bit of awkward, semi-accidental G-Rated Sex in which he talks her through achieving time travel which she massively enjoys and she falls in love with him soon after, but as she is an enormous invisible spaceship she is obviously unworkable as a companion, so she and the Doctor respectfully part so she can achieve independence (and punish Skagra).
• Gilina Renaez (The PK Tech Girl) in Farscape's first season. In fairness, she had more than one appearance. It's just that in the second, she found out that the true love she was risking her life for had the hots for someone else. Then she died tragically.
• Haven: Nathan's brief season one love interest, Jess, arrives and leaves over the course of three episodes. The episode where she decides Love Cannot Overcome Nathan's involvement with the Troubles is used to kick off Audrey and Nathan's Unresolved Sexual Tension, so it was clear that she was both never meant to be a serious contender and that she wouldn't be returning. Chris Brody in season two as Audrey's Third-Option Love Interest in the Nathan/Audrey/Duke Love Triangle straddles the line between this and Romantic False Lead, as he lasts longer and is more fully developed before being Put on a Bus.
• Horatio Hornblower: In the fourth episode "The Frogs and the Lobsters", during the mission in Mouzillac in France as supporters of the French Royalists, Horatio has an innocent brief romance with a local peasant girl turned into a teacher. Horatio persuades her to run away with him, though it's not clear what he wants to do with her once they get aboard his ship or to England. When they reach the bridge which the Navy is supposed to blow up, she's shot by French republican soldiers and dies instantly. Horatio cries Big "NO!" and is shattered for the rest of the episode, but that's the last time we ever heard of Mariette. Note that this isn't too different from the fate of Marie, Hornblower's French mistress in the original books, but that woman had more personality.
• JAG: Harm and Mac had through the years various love interests, none of them lasted more than a season. Also Admiral Chegwidden had several short-lived love interests. Averted with Bud and Harriet, who remain married from season 3 to the end of the series.
• Happens in an episode of Knight Rider, when Michael Knight's bride is killed before the wedding ceremony ends.
• Although not nearly as prevalent as in Michael Landon's earlier series Bonanza, there were scattered episodes of Little House on the Prairie featuring tragic heroines coming into contact with a male teen-aged character.
  • The best example is Sylvia, Albert's girlfriend in the two-parter named for her that aired in early 1981. Sylvia lives in a horrifying, cold world — she is teased mercilessly at school because of her early puberty, she is stalked by and impregnated by a rapist, her father calls her a whore, and Mrs. Olesen spreads malicious gossip suggesting that Albert had gotten her pregnant — and Albert her only hope of happiness. Alas, even this is taken away from her when the rapist finds her hiding in a barn (Albert unknowingly reveals her whereabouts) and returns to rape her a second time; She tries to flee by running up a rickety ladder, but a rotted step breaks under Sylvia's weight and she falls to her death; however, death does not come about until after she is brought home, and she and Albert are allowed to share tender words.
• The titular character from Merlin had Freya, a Mysterious Waif who is introduced and dies in the same episode - though she pops back occasionally as the Lady of the Lake.
• The vast revolving cast of the main characters' love interests in Seinfeld. Often Lampshaded as examples of how dysfunctional the core cast are.
  • The only subversions would be Susan (for George) and Puddy (for Elaine). Then again, Susan dies and Puddy tells Elaine he will not wait for her in the finale. Even Jerry's fiancée only lasts one episode (appearing briefly in a flashback sequence in the next one to explain that they mutually dumped each other).
• Smallville had two for Clark. The first one died, and the second one was put in prison. However, Shipping was so great they decided to bring her back for two episodes and kill her to stop it. The latest season introduced a third who also died in her second appearance. Of course we know who he'll end up with, which makes temps a requirement until the show ends. Lex has also had several and married a few of them.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1: Samantha Carter is a total black widow, and Daniel Jackson hasn't done too well either; nearing the end of the series, Samantha just got a seemingly-long-term boyfriend who still had an extended stay in the hospital during his introductory episode, and the height of Daniel Jackson's success is a love interest that merely spent a couple of seasons possessed (and effectively dead). The SG-1 team, like so many other heroes, may be effectively bulletproof, but its best not to get involved with them: it does not rub off. Dr Jackson eventually averted this by hooking up with a fellow member of SG-1 in the finale...only to have the relationship fall victim to a (literal) Reset Button.
• These happen in Stargate Atlantis too: Sheppard and very rarely McKay are on the receiving end. While, to some people, Sheppard had tons of UST going on with Weir, her disappearance mid-series left him without a single potential relationship that would last beyond a single episode. McKay on the other hand took his time and ended up with Keller in the final season.

  • Surprisingly averted with Teyla and Kanaan. Kanaan was kidnapped by Michael and clearly considered disposable by him. However, Kanaan survives to raise his child with Teyla.

• Averted on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine by Benjamin Sisko's long-term girlfriend Kassidy Yates (although she did get Put on a Bus at one point, by the end of the series she was a fixture in Sisko's life).
  • Kira's love interest Bareil dies eventually but doesn't really fit the trope. He was around for over a full season (even making a few appearances before he and Kira got together) and Kira spends quite a while mourning after he dies. Both of her next two love interests (or three if one counts Dukat's one-sided flirtations) talk about how important Bareil was to Kira and the impact of his death on her. Odo even sends her away while on his deathbed because he doesn't want her haunted by witnessing it the way she did when Bareil died.
    • His Mirror Universe counterpart is a better example. He popped up for one episode only, they quickly found themselves in an intense romance, and then he disappeared with Kira's counter-part (who casually mentions she later killed him when she next appears)
  • Odo had one in "A Simple Investigation", she doesn't end up dead exactly but he never sees her again and she's never brought up thereafter.
• Star Trek: The Original Series has what might quite possibly be the Trope Codifier: Edith Keeler of the truly exceptional episode "The City on the Edge of Forever".
• Supernatural: Any girl with Sam or Dean, especially Sam, who is known for his Cartwright Curse. In general, most women in the series either get killed off or don't show up again after being introduced.
  • Jessica, Sam's college girlfriend in the pilot, burns on the ceiling at the end of the episode. Interestingly, it's clear that Sam takes a long time to get over her death, still missing her at least five years after she dies.
  • Madison, the first girl Sam sleeps with after Jessica's death, turns out to be the Monster of the Week and Sam has to kill her to stop more people from dying.
  • Ruby gets Sam hooked on demon blood and manipulates him into releasing Lucifer. Dean kills her with her own knife. She did last two whole seasons, though.
  • Subverted with Cara, the doctor Sam sleeps with in "Sex and Violence". Dean, based on Sam's history, thinks she's the monster and they'll have to kill her. Turns out, it wasn't her.
  • Dean has Castiel wipe Lisa's memories after she nearly dies.
  • Then there's Amelia in season 8, whom Sam ultimately just leaves to go back to hunting and is never really mentioned again.
  • Eileen for Sam in later seasons, who first seems like a Girl of the Week, then comes Back for the Dead, then Back from the Dead and then it seems like they are really getting along until she disappears. Word of God is that she could be Sam's unseen wife from the finale episode but isn't necessarily. It's almost like the writers were had some issues with making a love interest stick, even one that was relatively well-liked and provided a great bit of disability representation since she was played by a deaf actress.
  • Castiel had two temporary love interests. First, it was Meg 2.0, who is killed off in Season 8. Then, it's Hannah, an angel who has an obvious crush on him but eventually returns to Heaven.
• Super Sentai is more fond of Girl of the Week, but uses this trope occasionally. Examples include Mahou Sentai Magiranger, where Tsubasa falls for a beautiful Idol Singer who turns out to be Dead All Along; and Gosei Sentai Dairanger, where a villain is introduced to fall in love with Rin and then gets killed by Gara in the same episode.
• Wizards of Waverly Place thrives on this. Although some love interests last a couple episodes or so, there are still a few who only manage to last one.
• Early seasons of The X-Files did this with Scully dating random dudes for an episode, Mulder had porn.
• The early first season episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess were notorious for providing both Xena and Gabrielle with a doomed Temporary Love Interest, including what is perhaps the most extreme example of the form as a whole, Marcus: he actually died twice. No wonder they quickly shifted to Ho Yay.
  • Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was just as bad at introducing them. Even though Iolaus had more romantic interests, there was no shortage of girls that would flirt and throw themselves at Hercules.
    • Most notorious is Serena, played by Kevin Sorbo's real-life wife, who Hercules marries at the end of her second appearance (only having known her a few days). She is killed off in the very next episode.

Video Game

• Kaoru Sayama in Yakuza 2 becomes Kiryu's love interest by the end of the game (they even share a Big Damn Kiss near the end), but right in the beginning of Yakuza 3, they split up via a flashback, where she decides leaves for America to expand her career, and even other people mention how they just weren't meant to be together. From then on she is pretty much never heard from again in the series. She finally returns in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where it's revealed that despite being Married to the Job, she's still very much in love with Kiryu and even though she believes him to be dead, a part of her is still waiting for him.

Western Animation

• In the final few episodes of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sokka had a romance with the princess of the Northern Water Tribe, Yue. In the season finale, Yue sacrifices herself to save the life of the moon spirit and restore the balance of the moon and ocean, resulting in in her Ascending To A Higher Plane Of Existence. Losing her has a lasting impact on Sokka, and he brings her up several times throughout the rest of the series.
• Lorna to Wirt in Over the Garden Wall. Although their brief relationship merits a gorgeous duet between their voice actors, and the two even plan to run away together, the romance ends with the episode, Wirt retains his crush on Sara without any conflict.
• Any episode of Totally Spies! where the subplot focuses on the love lives of any of the girls (or all three), Clover has a new boyfriend almost every time — Blaine's the only love interest of hers to last more than one episode in a relationship with Clover.
• Parodied in a Robot Chicken sketch which shows that James Bond turns into a clingy wimp (and a selfish lover) whenever he actually gets the girl. The reason he's always single again for the next film is that each of the girls dumps his ass when they realize how lame he is.
• A Season 9 episode of The Fairly OddParents! had Timmy trying to impress a girl named Missy, by wishing to be a jock, a sensitive guy, and an emo kid, respectively. This was Missy's only appearance in the show, while Tootie and Trixie, the two love interests he had in the earlier seasons, have been completely forgotten about at this point.
• The second episode of The Owl House has Nevareth, who strikes up a brief romance with Luz as part of the episode's parody of typical Summon Everyman Hero stories until it turns out that he and everyone else Luz met on her quest were illusions created by one of Eda's business rivals.

---