Misused: All Love Is Unrequited

Note: This thread was proposed by amathieu13.

All Love Is Unrequited is supposed to be a trope to cover stories in which the vast majority, if not all, of the characters who express romantic interest in another does not have those feelings reciprocated for one reason or another. In other words, it's a setting, plot, or worldbuilding trope, not a trope to describe a single character's feelings.

However, the wick check shows that mostly people are using it to just mean "character experiences unrequited love." Of the 60 wicks checked, only 28% were correct. 53% were just describing a single person having feelings for another character (and many didn't even describe how the other character felt about them, effectively turning these examples into "this character has a crush") and 18% were ZCE or unclear potholes.

On the one hand, the majority of wicks for this trope are on character pages when this isn't really a character trope, thus leading to the misuse. The wicks that were correct were exclusively those that weren't on character pages. This suggests that the trope itself might still be valid despite the misuse. However, even looking at the correct examples, the majority read no different from Love Dodecahedron and Love Triangle examples, to the point that I'm not so sure there is much of a difference. The 5 examples that maybe could stand on their own are those in which no one's love ever gets reciprocated. Once we start dealing with situations in which "most/the majority of characters feelings don't get reciprocated" however, you end up with examples that just outline the messy relationships characters' have, which is basically what Love Dodecahedron is.

Thoughts:

• Any version of this trope that is kept is probably going to need a rename to reinforce the idea that this is a setting trope, not a character trope, and not just Unrequited Love. Maybe something like No Reciprocated Love Scenario? Unrequited Love Scenario? World Of Unreciprocated Love? No Mutual Love For Anyone?
  • If we do keep it, to prevent redundancy between this, Love Dodecahedron, and Love Triangle, we might want to consider limiting it to situations in which no character's love gets reciprocated, ever.
• That said, I'm not so sure this is a trope that needs to be kept, given that most correct examples are virtually indistinguishable from Love Dodecahedron and Love Triangle.
• If we decide to not keep the trope at all, turning this name into a redirect to Unrequited Love Tropes would work. And if we keep the trope, but rename it, it still might also be worth it to turn the old name into a redirect to Unrequited Love Tropes.

• Cyrano de Bergerac: Cyrano, Christian and De Guiche love Roxane, but not one of them will get her. Roxane won’t get any guy too, because she's been Loving a Shadow. Even Ragueneau is abandoned by his wife, Lise. Nobody gets anyone.
• Sonic The Abridgehog: Calling it "love" is a bit generous. But Knuckles and Robotnik both want to get it on with Sera... who only has eyes for Sonic... who has absolutely no interest in dating a human.
• Hedda Gabler: Oh boy, where to start. Tesman loves Hedda who does not love him. Ejlert loves Hedda who does not love him. The Judge lusts after Hedda who denies feeling the same way. Can you see a pattern here?
• Angel Crush: A growing theme as the series progresses. Plenty of characters have crushes on other characters, but alas are either unnoticed, ignored, or rebuffed.
  • In Faye's case, it happens to her twice: when Rafa dumped her prior to the events of the story, and with how Daniel keeps changing the subject whenever things start getting interesting.
• Sleepaway Camp, Love Dodecahedron: Bordering on All Love Is Unrequited. Ricky and Judy dated the summer before, but Judy isn't interested in him anymore now that she's "more mature". Instead, she's interested in Paul, who's seems attracted but is more interested in Angela, who returns his feelings but freaks out anytime they get too close. By the end, Judy and Paul are dead, rendering the whole thing moot.

Love Dodecahedron / Love Triangle?

• Red and Green in Blue: Yukiko and Rise were in love with Yu, who rejected them and got together with another girl, while it's implied Chie has feelings for Yukiko.
• Beauty and the Beast (2017): Le Fou, who is interested romantically in Gaston, who attempts to win Belle's heart.
• Penguin Highway: Many of the romantic interests in the story are one-sided such as Suzuki's for Hamamato and Hamamato's for Aoyoma. Zig-zagged with Aoyoma and Onee-san's case; while she doesn't have the same romantic feelings for Aoyama that he has for her, she cares for him deeply.
• Left Behind: Floyd Charles desires Hattie Durham, who instead wants Rayford, who initially considers beginning an affair with her until the Rapture happens and he loses all desire for Hattie. Also Hannah Palemoon pines for David Hassid, who already has a girlfriend.
• Hetty Feather: Janet and Hetty, of which Jem has to choose as Archie. Hetty is technically the 'winner' of Jem's choice, but as she doesn't reciprocate his feelings, this ends up falling into All Love Is Unrequited territory.
• You Rang, M'Lord?: Henry loves Ivy, Ivy loves James, James loves Poppy. Madge loves Teddy, Teddy loves Ivy...
• Princess Silver: Rong Qi and Fu Chou are in love with Rong Le, who loves Wu You, while Hen Xiang and Ya Li are in love with Fu Chou.
• Get Ace: Ace has a hopeless crush on Tina, who rarely ever gives him the time of day. In turn, Ace himself is totally unaware and unreceptive of his geeky best friend Claudia's affection for him. Whenever Tina is seen interested in a boy, it's usually the goth kid Tyson, who despite being a total Chick Magnet, never seems interested in anyone. He usually acknowledges Tina's existence even less than she does Ace.
• Boy Meets Boy: At one point, a lot of love is unrequited. In one panel we learn that Harley used to like Skids, who still likes Harley, but Harley is already in a relationship with Mikhael, whose ex Tybalt is still not over him, in the mean time also throwing passes at Harley, who keeps rejecting him of course, all while Cy is secretly in love with Skids, who never finds out about this and at one point explicitly said Cy "wasn't his type". Cy eventually goes out with a girl named Ronnie, who Skids sorta kinda liked at the time.
• Fragile: At least in the Steph/Julian/Marian Love Triangle. Steph seems oblivious to Julian's feelings for her, and Julian in turn doesn't seem to be aware of Marian's feelings for him. Averted with Emily and Bruce, who both seem interested in each other.
• MySims Kingdom: Summer or Liberty, depending on who gets to be Travis's date to the prom. Linda also has feelings for Trevor and Buddy doesn't seem to like Lyndsay back. Sylvia likes Gonk but Gonk doesn't even know her name!
• Misao: Misao, Otome, and Yoshino are all in love with Tohma, who ultimately is too self-absorbed to really return any feelings. Ayaka has a massive crush on Mr. Sohta, and Kudou is revealed to have kept their feelings for Misao bottled up for too long. "Truth" also reveals that Sohta's childhood friend/crush Takano didn't feel the same way, which didn't end well.

• Extraordinary X-Men: Storm shows that she's a bit bitter about the fact that Jean managed to convince Logan to join while she herself couldn't. This is also in Old Man Logan, when she again reaches out to him only for him to turn away. In Old Man Logan's timeline (which branched off from the main one a bit after Civil War), he and Storm were never a couple and Logan was married.
• Savage Hearts: Graow falls head over heels for Bronwyn immediately upon seeing her. Too bad she finds him completely repulsive — at least at first.
• The Shape of Things to Come: Mari's true love is Nanami, though there are hints it might be requited in the future.
• Resurrected Memories: As shown from flashbacks, Ember McLain had a very difficult human life. Originally called Amberline McLain, she was an unpopular girl with big dreams of rock stardom who was frequently bullied and subjected to pranks from the popular kids, raised by Control Freak parents who didn't understand and neglected her, and suffered from an (All Love Is Unrequited) unrequited love towards David Parker, the most popular guy at her school. One day, David asked her out to the movies and she waited for him all night, thinking that he was just late. However, she eventually went home after realizing she was stood up and cried herself to sleep, unaware that her home had mysteriously caught on fire. She died in the flames and out of anger for her untimely death and horrible life, renamed herself Ember McLain and became the vengeful Evil Diva seen in canon. In fact the only good thing about Ember’s human life appears to have been her little sister.
• The Cyclops: Russ loves Susan, but knows that she won't return his affections because her heart still belongs to Bruce.
• Criminal Case: Grimsborough - Case 08: Beautiful No More: Alice killed Trixie because she rejected her love confession.
• Secrets Of Summer: Naty starts to fall in love with Luz, even though she likes Tony instead.
• Mayor Vine: Vine stalks Scoot (and is heavily implied to be in love with him) to no avail, while he himself believes Cherry (a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis of his) is stalking him.
• School Spirit: Casper has a little thing for Chastity (well, on and off when he remembers) but she and her friends wouldn't even know of the existence of an 'invisible nobody' like him.
• Mob Psycho 100 Seasoning City - Origo: He develops romantic feelings for Tome after their spiritual adventure. To his dismay, the girl is totally clueless and prefers the occult over ogling bros.
• Oh! My Emperor
  • Origo: He's in love with Fei Fei the moment he saw her in one of his predictions, but she doesn't love him and she only love Bei Tang Yi.
  • Xie Yu: She's in love with Moran when she was child, but he doesn't love her and he only love Fei Fei.
• Hustle Cat - Reese: Reese has a crush on Graves. While Graves may be aware of it^note on Graves' route, he tells Avery that Reese especially shouldn't know that he's slowly rusting, he shows no sign of reciprocating Reese's feelings.
• Vindictus - Ceara: She has feelings for Marrec, who in return is completely oblivious to this and respects her as a friend.
• Identity V Hunters - Joker: Had romantic feelings for a female acrobat/animal trainer by the name of Natalie (Margaretha Zelle) who appeared to be happily married to Sergi, the circus’ smiling clown, and who is said to have vanished from the circus one day, without a hint of a goodbye, much to Joker’s dismay.
  • However, the Weeping Clown's Background Story trailer seems to imply that Joker's feelings for her may not have been as unrequited as they initially seemed. This is assuming that Joker isn't an Unreliable Narrator.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Other Heroes - Life Lass: Gas Girl needles her about keeping her feelings for Duplicate Boy well into adulthood. Too bad he can't get over Shrinking Violet.
• The King of Fighters 2000 - Ramon:
  • Towards Vanessa, he tries to woo her, but Ramón doesn't seem to have any luck, along with the fact that she's married. Gets Lampshaded in XI, where he's a part of the Unrequited Love Edit Team along with Sie Kensou and Robert Garcia.
  • In XIV, without Vanessa in the base roster, he's far more focused on having a good time in the tournament. In XV however, his special intro with Vanessa almost immediately starts with him hitting on her when he realizes that she is his opponent, and trying to coax out a dinner date if he wins.
• Cyberpunk 2077: Allies - Kerry: It's shown that he had feelings for Johnny while in Samurai with him, with Johnny being fully aware of it but uninterested. It's implied he still holds a candle for Johnny in even in 2077. Subverted if he gets into a relationship with V.
• Arrowverse: Team Arrow:
  • Laurel: Reveals on her deathbed that she still considers Oliver the love of her life even though he's in love with Felicity at the time. However, later episodes, especially in season five, reveal that Oliver was, is, and will always love her.
  • Rene: It's fairly tame, but he has made advances on Thea several times only to get coldly rejected on every attempt.
• The Falling Kingdoms Series:
  • Nicolo: He's in love with Cleo, presumably since they were kids, but she only considers him a very dear friend.
  • Theon: There's a period of time where he fancies Cleo, but she never seems to consider him as anything more than a good friend. He eventually moves past it.
  • Brion: Unfortunately for him, his feelings for Lysandra are completely one-sided.
• Animal Crackers: Lyle has a huge crush on Lana, who wants nothing to do with him.
• Katawa Shoujo: Discussed in some of the neutral and bad endings... it's unclear in the neutral ending for Lilly whether she really does love him or whether she decided to simply play him and then leave. Similarly, Hanako and Misha have sex with Hisao not necessarily because they're attracted to him, but almost purely out of goodwill. Emi goes in the opposite direction, wondering whether Hisao would leave her if he found out about her emotional baggage.
• Mabinogi: G10 has a pair of RP quests based around this. Arenen likes Ilsa, who confessed her love to Voight, who didn't reciprocate. As a result, Arenen and Voight are no longer friends, and Arenen and Ilsa are both lonely.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Past examples included Boyle's unrequited crush on Rosa for the first half of season 1, Peralta's unrequited crush on Santiago, and then there's her crush on him after the Unrequited Love Switcheroo. However, the latter two have both been subverted by being an Official Couple. Charles eventually moved on from Rosa at the end of Season 1, and since then, all love has been requited.
• Kaeloo S 2 E 28 Lets Play Beach Volleyball: Meanwhile, Pretty tries to seduce Mr. Cat, (All Love Is Unrequited) but he's not interested.
• Criminal Case: Pacific Bay - Case 04: Dead Girl Rolling: Lenny Spitfire was in love with Susie, but he couldn't confess his feelings for her since she was already married
• Adventures with Anxiety: Al has a crush on the main human character, but cannot work up the courage to even hang out as friends, and her own stressed-out anxiety animal, Shire the cat refuses to behave anyway.
• Maleficent - Diaval: The novelization implies that he has feelings for Maleficent.
• Forum of Thrones - The Vale - Irving: Irving shows early signs of crushing hard on Maya, though a talk with Marak and Alan in the tavern of Raylansfair eventually reveals that he has genuine feelings for her.
• Sailor Moon Musical-Only Characters - Kaguya Shima: Loof develops a crush on Space Knight/King Endymion.
• Da Cor do Pecado - Pai: During the second phase of the novela, Helinho falls in love with a beautiful widow named Tancinha, who comes to him in order to make contact with her deceased husband.
• Vivo: Andrés purposely held back his feelings towards Marta after she learned that she could perform in America, in order to prevent causing her conflict between him and her dream. 60 years later, he decides to finally return his feelings by performing one last song with her on her final concert. He dies before he could do so, but after Marta is delivered his final song, she understands and accepts his feelings towards her posthumously.
• Mabinogi: If you pay attention to the backstories of some minor NPCs, there are a few one-way crushes. Malcolm likes Nora, Trefor likes Dilys, Ranald likes Endelyon, Aeira likes Stewart, Sion likes Ibbie, Galvin likes Del, Del likes Lucas, Del AND Delen like Aodhan, Elain likes Leslie (who's married)...

• School Rumble: To the nth power◊...
  • Exceptions in School Rumble Z: Tenma and the brain-damaged Karasuma, Karen and Imadori, Mikoto and Hanai, and maybe Harima and Eri. It wasn't very concise.
• Cyborg Kuro-chan: Nana for Kuro and Hirosue for Mi-kun.
• Bôa (UK): "Twilight" is about this.
• Prozzak: Poor Simon.
• Morrissey: "I Don't Mind If You Forget Me".
• Zedd: A possible interpretation of "Find You".
• Murder She Wrote S 7 E 2 Deadly: Jeff Ogden towards Melissa.
• Brütal Legend - Lita: Implied with Eddie.
• Ichi the Killer - Kakihara: Towards Ichi.
• BlazBlue - Ship-to-Ship Combat: Good holy lord, where do we even start? There's fans of (All Love Is Unrequited) Bang/Litchi who are very vocal and bash hammers on Arakune, and a minority of Litchi/Arakune fans who bash hammers on the other, then we have fans of Jin/Tsubaki who bash Jin/Noel fans. As of Continuum Shift, Jin/Makoto has been getting it's good share of popularity (though, it doesn't seem to cause much tension to the shipping community). And then we have Ragna/Jin, the most popular pairing in the series who will bash other Ragna and Jin pairings if need be... Hands down. Oh, and there's a portion of the community that believes Jin will eventually be a Celibate Hero / Chaste Hero, and therefore will have no official canon Love Interest. That's not even getting into all the popular Crossover Shipping Jin is involved with. The amount of Ship Tease between Ragna and Celica in Chronophantasma adds a torpedo to virtually all the Ragna ships beforehand and makes the Ragna/Jin, Ragna/Rachel and Ragna/Noel fans foam at the mouth.
• Five Nights at Freddy's High School: Or rather, no one realizes that their crush is also in love with them...