One Empathic Weapon, coming up!
"Love is a very powerful force. Even more so when it's focused into a coherent beam of destruction."
— Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater
(For an even better effect, listen to this
while reading the page.)
while reading the page.)
The Power of Love is a curious thing. It makes one man weep, and another man sing. It can change a hawk to a little white dove. Bring inanimate objects to life. It might just save your life. It makes people want to give up personal freedom to belong to each other. Don't you dare mock it, it's more than a feeling, that's the Power of Love.
Serves as the base of The Power of Friendship and The Power of Family, the Power of Love can be applied in dire situations to make things better. In fact, in many Disney movies it's the solution to everything. It's also an occasionally useful Deus ex Machina.
Common applications of the Power of Love include activating an Empathic Weapon, freeing a loved one from mind control, strengthening a loved one, and converting a Real Death into a Disney Death. Even when the power of love is not literally and directly responsible, the scene is often set such that the audience is left with the impression that it was "really responsible". Although, Love is more powerful than magic as it usually helps break spells.
Don't You Dare Pity Me! can sometimes be overcome by the Power Of Love; however, it may take time, and the love itself must be purified of any pity it does contain.
The Green-Eyed Monster may come into play. In more idealistic shows, it is a sign of an immature love, where trust and faith is insufficient. However, more cynical shows may treat it as normal, and even let it overcome Cannot Spit It Out.
In cynical times, this can feel like a rip-off. It depends on where you, and the scene in question, fall on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
Love Redeems evil but it can also turn you evil. Combining the two, it can support said baddies.
Sometimes, love for someone who's threatened can give someone a Heroic Second Wind, especially a Mama Bear/Papa Wolf.
A more passive but no less impressive display of the Power of Love is its ability to use the Red String of Fate to reunite the reincarnated lovers.
A Super-Trope to Heart Beat-Down, True Love's Kiss, and Sexually Transmitted Superpowers. A Sister Trope to Light 'em Up (light based powers) and Holy Hand Grenade (holy powers) which are generally good. Compare Care-Bear Stare which includes all positive feelings (happiness, peace, love etc).
Compare and contrast with The Power of Lust. Contrast with The Power of Apathy and The Power of Hate. Occasionally classified as one of the Elemental Powers. The Power of Love may be colored red.
As seen with The Four Loves, the word "love" can be used in several different ways, including for family, for friendship, or simply unconditional self-sacrifice just to do the right thing. However, this trope primarily refers to romantic love (Eros in Greek), partly because the English word "love" is taken to mean romantic in non-familial contexts.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Fan Works
- Films — Animation
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Comic Books
- Aquaman: In Aquaman (1986), Arthur realizing that despite everything he does love his brother is what stops Orm's powers, as the crystals have no aggression to feed on.
- The Authority: The finale of Abnett & Lanning's run depends on this. To go with the Class 2 Apocalypse, there's a horrific and intelligent virus floating around that ends up infecting Apollo, prompting Midnighter to look desperately for a cure. He's called north, eventually finding an island, which turns out to be a giant, Swamp Thing-like Century Baby named Gaia. In return for his help, she gives him an apple, and tells him to remember Avalon, the isle of apples: "The fruit of immortality... of love..." Two pages later, Apollo's fine.
- The Avengers: In the OGN Avengers: Rage of Ultron Starfox uses his psionic ability to make people experience love to defeat Ultron (who had been merged with his creator Hank Pym), resulting in Ultron realizing what he had become and fleeing.
Starfox: There is a solution. It's so simple. Love yourself.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In one comic, a spell that keeps Buffy asleep can only be broken by the kiss of someone who is in love with her. One of her Slayers, Satsu, does it.
- Dark Avengers: it's heavily implied that The Power Of Love is all that's keeping The Sentry from unleashing the Void and raining Biblical plagues down on humanity. Unfortunately his wife, Lindy, is terrified of him, and when she tries to kill him in the hope of preventing a mad rampage, that's exactly what she gets. Norman Osborn recognizes that Lindy could set the Sentry off again at any time; unfortunately his solution is to kill her and make it look like a suicide. Initially that seems to work, but the next time we see the Sentry he ramps up to a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum very quickly and eventually provokes Thor into killing him. The last we see of the Sentry and Lindy is two empty graves, side by side...
- DC Pride 2022: The twisted doppelgangers are destroyed by Harley and Ivy expounding on their love for each other.
- ElfQuest: The comic has this as a recurring theme. It shows itself through all dealings with Big Bad Winnowill, who tries to avoid this at all costs, and stated almost verbatim by all-loving High One Timmain, who almost states that this central trope keeps the Palace in balance. In a Rogue's Curse story arc, Winnowill can't even enter a shard of the Palace -her hate and the love of the spirits within keep her out.
- Fantastic Four: Referenced in a classic Stan Lee / Jack Kirby Fantastic Four (1961) story line, when Reed Richards, alerted by the Watcher, takes on the Silver Surfer. When Sue Richards asks the Watcher how Reed can take on the "all-powerful Silver Surfer", the Watcher answers, "All-powerful? There is only one who deserves that name. And his only weapon — is love!"
- The Flash:
- The Power Of Love allows the Flash to come back from an other-dimensional speedster heaven that no one had ever returned from. Several times.
- It lets Barry Allen break the Anti-Life Equation's hold over Iris Allen in Final Crisis.
- Flash-type speedsters rely on this trope to keep them from being absorbed by the Speed Force (the aforementioned speedster heaven). It doesn't necessarily need to be romantic — the paternal bond between Max Mercury and Bart Allen is a beautiful example of such — but yes, the three main Flashes rely on their wives for it. Another case of paternal bond getting used is in DC Rebirth. Wally thought he is permanently trapped in the Speed Force when his "lightning rod", Linda Park, doesn't even remember him; it was Barry Allen, Wally's father figure/mentor, that allowed him to escape.
- Giraffes on Horseback Salad: When the Woman Surreal begins falling in love with Jimmy, her Reality Warper powers are quickly amplified to the point where she begins altering the entire world into a surrealistic fantasyland.
- Green Lantern: Star Sapphire and the Star Sapphire Corps that succeed her are fueled by love. If uncontrolled (as can happen when all the power is consolidated into a single person), it is of the insane, possessive, destructive sort, which is why the entity that provides their power is called The Predator, but they run on all kinds of love (be it between a man and woman or a mother and her child or so on and so forth) and the Predator is actually the one that is corrupted by its hosts, not the other way around.
- One Star Sapphire uses Soranik Natu's love for Kyle Rayner and channeled it to bring him back to life.
- The Star Sapphire's Badass Creed:
For hearts long lost and full of fright,
For those alone in Blackest NightAccept our ring and join our fight.Love conquers all-with violet light. - Harbinger: Subverted. After Torque develops feelings for Faith he becomes weaker because his power comes from his own insecurity.
- Justice Society of America: For a split second, it looks as if this trope is going to be averted in the story arc "Princes of Darkness" — Jade's the Power of Love speech to Obsidian fails to halt his evil rampage — but it's really only a set up for their father, the Golden Age Green Lantern, to come in and deliver it successfully.
- Legion of Super-Heroes: Ultra Boy is saved from The Blight by The Power Of Love in the issues right before Legion Lost.
- Ninja High School: Jeremy uses this to bring back his friend, Cute Witch turned dark, Mimi. (The story's also a bit of a homage to Dark Phoenix so take that as you will).
- Providence: Dr. Alvarez, of all people, cites Love as the force that defines life.
Dr. Alvarez: Love is the only substantial thing. It is noble in its noises and odours, I think. From where I look at this, to not love is to waste the existence. Even life is a small matter beside it. You see, it is not interrupted by death. Without it, this world cannot be endured.
- Scott Pilgrim:
- In Volume 4, the "Power of Love" manifests in the form of a flaming sword Scott earns upon confessing his love to Ramona... but the trope is eventually Subverted because loving Ramona isn't enough for Scott to surmount the last Evil Ex. That requires the far more important Power of Understanding, which Scott gets from seeing how similar he is to Gideon, and how that is a very bad thing.
- In Volume 1, this protects Wallace, Jimmy, and those in the immediate vicinity from the effects of "Last Song Kills Audience", although they weren't in as much danger as the name implies.
- Spider-Man: The Power Of Love (for his son Harry) once turned Norman Osborn sane after he relapsed as the Green Goblin. Both the sanity and the love failed to stick.
- Superman: In Superman Reborn Lois and Clark's love (for the partner and for their son Jon) is so strong that it has repaired what was broken. More specifically, the pre-Flashpoint and New-52 versions of Clark and Lois are merged back together.
- Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The power of love allows Steve Trevor to cheat death, three times. At least one of those times he was aided by Aphrodite herself.
- X-23: Despite everything the Facility did to break her and forge her into an emotionless killing machine, it was Sarah Kinney's love for her as a daughter, defying orders to not treat her as a child whenever she could by reading to her and offering an emotional connection that saved her humanity and helped her break free of the Facility's control.
- X-Men: Defied in X Campus. Magnus claims he will show them the greatest power of the world. "Love?" asks Storm. "Magnetism".
- Young Avengers: Played absolutely straight when Billy is unable to fully access his Demiurge powers. His fiancé, Teddy, who had previously left to try to figure out whether he actually loves Billy after Loki insinuated that Teddy may have been accidentally wished into existence in the first place by Billy's powers, returns and decides that it doesn't matter to him whether or not he's alive because Billy subconsciously wanted someone like him to be. After True Love's Kiss, Billy immediately and effortlessly becomes the Demiurge and nonchalantly rearranges the universe the same way most people organize things in the fridge. It's lampshaded in-story.
Loki: Oh, ugh. Is love really going to save us all?
America: Of course it is. Anyone who thinks otherwise gets stomped into paste. - Zombies Christmas Carol: Fan and Fred both embody this, and Scrooge's love following his reformation is so strong he heals all of the zombies.
Comic Strips
- The New Zealand comic Footrot Flats features a scene where the main character, the Dog, finds himself able to walk on water due to his love for Jess, the neighbour's dog note . After this initial success, he demonstrates that there is no such thing as The Power Of Lust, by sinking as soon as he moves from "Love can work miracles!" to "I'm coming baby!"
Music
- Huey Lewis and the News on the Back to the Future 1 soundtrack had a song called "The Power of Love."
- The band I Fight Dragons did a cover of this song. They even paid homage to the original theme song of Back to the Future 1 in the cover's intro.
- The band I Fight Dragons did a cover
- Country singer Charley Pride had one of his last major hits with 1984's "The Power of Love," a No. 9 hit late that summer.
- Alive with the Glory of Love, by Say Anything. About the singer's grandparents surviving the Holocaust to be together again.
- Played straight in Nightwish's Ghost Love Score, essentially a ballad about two lovers who separate and reunite, but amped-up to insanely epic power metal proportions. Epic Love Maneuver!
- JAM Project's GONG. I GET THE POWER OF LOVE!
- Rozalla's "Faith". 'Cause you've gotta have faith ♪ In the power of love ♪ You've gotta have faith ♪ In the power of love ♪
- Much of what Céline Dion has sung, including one song with the Trope Name. A running theme is that love grants the (figurative) power of flight. "Because You Loved Me" has "you gave me wings and made me fly / you touched my hand, I could touch the sky". The French track "En Amour" is all about love and flight. "Where Does My Heart Beat Now" has the line "Two hearts that need one another / Give me wings to fly." Other examples include the obscure "Love Lights the World", and "The Power of Love" with its bridge "The sound of your heart beating made it clear suddenly / The feeling that I can't go on is light years away."
- Frankie Goes To Hollywood and their video celebration of the Nativity.
- ''Unstoppable'', by Rascal Flatts.
- The parson from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds has something to say referring to this trope:
"What kind of weapon is love when it comes to the fight?And what use are good and mercy, against all Satan's might?"
- Through the Barricades by Spandau Ballet suggests this trope as a means of overcoming divisions caused by The Troubles.
- Amy Grant -- "That's What Love Is For." Round off the edges, talk us down from the ledges...
- Harry and the Potters' third album is titled "Harry and the Potters and the Power of Love" which is entirely based upon Half-Blood Prince.
- In the Ayreon album "The Human Equation", one of the main 'characters' is the human emotion of love (It Makes Sense in Context). There is a Track called "Day 11: Love." and Love is one of the major themes of the album.
"You'll find me here, when ever they oppose you, I am the strongest of them all."
- Hayden Panettiere sings about it in the song "I Still Believe" from Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. In the music video, Hayden's love for her boyfriend adds color to a black and white world like Pleasantville. The bridges note this
Love can make miracles, change everything
Lift you from the darkness and make your heart sing
Love is forever, when you fall
It's the greatest power of all - Aaron Lines' "Love Changes Everything" is a series of vignettes in how the power of love changes people who are feeling down.
- Carrie Underwood, "So Small": "And when you figure out love is all that matters after all / It sure makes everything else seem so small".
- "If You've Got Love" by John Michael Montgomery:
If you've got love, you can move a mountain
A little further down the line
You can move it all at once or one rock at a time
You can turn an ordinary picture into a priceless work of art
That's what you can do if you've got love in your heart - One of Blue Öyster Cult's most well-known songs, Don't Fear the Reaper, is about how true love can transcend even death.
- This shows up in the song "Ten Pound Hammer", written by Dennis Linde and recorded by both Aaron Tippin and Barbara Mandrell:
If somebody would've told me
One woman could hold me
And leave me weak as a baby
I'd have told 'em they were crazy
You see, love hit me like a ten pound hammer
A ten pound hammer with a five foot swing... - Also from the pen of Dennis Linde is Don Williams' "Then It's Love":
Well, if it knocks you off your feet, then it's love, then it's love
If it makes your life complete, then it's love, then it's love
If it turns you upside down, then it's love, then it's love
If it makes your world go 'round, then it's love - "Immortal" by Marina Diamandis says that love is the only thing that transcends death and the end of the world.
- "From the Ground Up" by Dan + Shay is about a relationship that the narrator hopes will still be around 65 years from the present.
- "Levitate" by Imelda May is another song that uses metaphors of physical power to describe the intensity of romantic love. "I levitate towards you/And the way that you move..."
- Tears for Fears: The message of "Sowing the Seeds of Love" is that love can solve the world's problems.
Sowing the seeds of love
Seeds of love
Sowing the seeds
High time we made a stand
And shook up the views of the common man
And the lovetrain rides from coast to coast
Every minute of every hour
I love a sunflower
And I believe in love power
Love power
An end to need
And the politics of greed
With love - a-ha's music video duology "Take On Me" and "The Sun Always Shines On T.V." shows the protagonist turning comicbook Morten Harket into a real person withher love — and turning him back into a comicbook character when her love for him cools.
Myths & Religion
- The Bible:
- In Epistles of John, John stated that God is love, and whoever does not love does not know God.
- In Book of Corinthians, Paul writes how talks about the divine love, or Agape that is God's love towards His children, and the love of His children between each other. You'll probably recognize it; the verse is now a stock reading at weddings.
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
- The Hone-onna or Bone-Woman of Japan are ghosts driven by love to remain in the world of the living, rather than hate and revenge like other onryo ("vengeful ghosts"). The problem is that while their spirit remains so does the disgusting, rotting corpse they once had. The create a sort of Glamour to the object of her love and drains him of his life so they can be together in death. The disguise doesn't work if she's not after you, so it can be disconcerting at the least to see one's master flirting with a walking corpse. Her problem is her love comes off as a selfish sort of love; when she is found out she becomes desperate and the more desperate she becomes the more her "lover" drains away until he dies or is nearly-dead.
- In the Brazilian folk tale "The Story of the Yara", Alonzo (a young man on the brink of marrying his love) hears the Yara's song while bathing in the forest's pools. His bride, Julia, begs him not to go back until they're married, for fear of the Yara killing him. He manages to resist the urge to go to the pools for three days because he can't stand to see Julia's tears and anxiety about him. In the end, he survives his encounter with the Yara only because of his love for Julia and the shell full of her singing that she begged him to carry.
- According the Theogony, one of the oldest accounts of Greek mythology ever written, Eros, Love, was one of the primordial deities that first came into existence, well before the titans, and long before the Olympians, making Love not just powerful, but as fundamental to reality as the earth, abyss, and concept of existence, and outright predating the sky and sea. This was before Eros got retconned into just being Aphrodite's son.
Podcasts
- Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe?: When someone is resurrected by Caroline Frankenstein's methods, they return without a soul and are instead animated by a spark of love or a spark of hate. Most often, it's the latter that brings them back and they require outside interference to regain their soul. When Cassie and her resurrected sister Elsa are forced to confront each other, Elsa lets out all her rage at Cassie abandoning her and turning her back on the Falks, telling her she's spent the past several years being repeatedly tortured, killed, and resurrected by vampires. Cassie admits that she's hated her just as much, but the seeming deaths of her and her family didn't solve any of her problems. So even if they can never be family, she tries forgiving her. The power of the possibility of their connection is enough to bring Elsa's soul back.
- The Adventure Zone: Balance: Taako lampshades this by asking up front if the seventh Grand Relic was love the whole time. As it turns out, the power of strong emotions (including love) does exist. Certain inexplicable magical phenomena that the party has witnessed like Hurley healing Sloane of an incurable poison are because strong emotion is an energy unto itself like light, heat, and magic that can affect the physical and arcane worlds. The lich elves that run Wonderland are using this to sustain themselves and keep from descending into insanity by siphoning off the misery and suffering of those around them. Barry and Lup's love for each other and the rest of the IPRE sustains their lich forms. And the Starblaster's bond engine allows Tres Horny Boys to summon loved ones to help defeat The Final John in their final battle against the Hunger.
Pro Wrestling
- Brother Love: Parodied, inverted, subverted and averted with Bruce Pritchard's gimmick of a smarmy, rosy-cheeked faux preacher. Many times, he claimed to preach "The Book of Love," but it was more a "love" of the WWF's top villains of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Ted DiBiase and André the Giant, and showing the "power of love" by setting up good guys such as Hulk Hogan for beatings by the heels.
Tabletop Games
- Ars Magica: True Love gives a bonus to stay strong in difficult situations and to any action that protects the beloved. It's such an integral part of the character that it can't be affected by magic — though the same goes for other passions that run just as deep. It's also not exclusive to romantic love, so it can be adapted to similarly profound attachments.
- The ANIMa from Bliss Stage create a Humongous Mecha and its weapons entirely out of, as Word of God has it, "weaponized love." Most stats revolve around relationships with the other PCs.
- In the Classic and New World of Darkness:
- Fetches in Changeling: The Lost are Artificial Humans created by The Fair Folk out of trash and shadow-stuff to replace the humans they kidnap. Consequently they are almost always sterile and their offspring tend to be soulless monsters; the only exception is when a fetch who believes itself to be human has a child with someone they sincerely love.
- Most Classic World of Darkness systems have a merit called True Love for strong romantic, familial or platonic ties. Its effect usually translates to some more Heroic Willpower when fighting for said love. True Loves in Wraith: The Oblivion can serve as a fetter for the Wraith to enter the physical world, provide emotional sustenance, and inspire Heroic Willpower for possibly the most powerful asset the Wraith has.
- Vampire: The Requiem suggests that regular contact with a mortal who sincerely loves the vampire should stabilize the vampire emotionally, helping them resist the Sanity Slippage and Frenzy to which the undead are vulnerable.
- Princess: The Hopeful: The Court Of Swords is all about this trope. Princesses of Swords can use their magic more cheaply when either blessing or defending those they love, several of their Charms create flames whose heat is proportionate to the love they feel, and other Sword Charms can detect, renew, or even create True Love. It doesn't have to be romantic love, any of The Four Loves will work.
- In Dungeons & Dragons:
- 4th-Edition deities associated with love can grant this power, which focuses on protecting and healing allies.
- The infamous third-party 3.5 sourcebook The Book of Erotic Fantasy has a more easily-accessible version of the Resurrection spell. The somatic component is kissing the recently deceased, and it only works on someone who you love.
- The Virtue of Compassion in Exalted.
- Subverted, however, with Black Claw Style, which is based around the premise that love is a lie. The capstone Charm allows you to rip people's hearts out, and becomes much more powerful if your target happens to be in love with you.
- Also subverted with Sidereal Charm Shun the Smiling Lady, a charm whose sole utility is to make the target unlovable and make anyone who once loved them fall out of it. This is an entry level power, so many Sidereals just pick it up as a prerequisite to other charms. Then it's just sitting in your panoply, ready to be used at any time...
- One of the most powerful examples: if an Abyssal Exalted finds and truly cares for their Lunar Mate, almost all of the drawbacks of their state are blown away.
- Magic: The Gathering
- The game compares The Power Of Love to the power of rhinos.
Love is like a rhino, short-sighted and hasty; if it cannot find a way, it will make a way.
- While Red is the color of all manner of passions and feelings, for practical reasons, the main ones displayed on cards are variants on Unstoppable Rage and The Power of Hate. So it was considered a wonderful step forward in increasing the depth of the color when a card was successfully made about undoing a painful knot of sorrow and pain with rekindled familial love.
- The game compares The Power Of Love to the power of rhinos
- Warhammer 40,000 has the Imperium of Man, the biggest faction in the crapsack universe, and it runs on the Power of Love for the God-Emperor of All Mankind, who never wanted to be a god in the first place, but in his own words "wanted the best for his people". It's also his massive willpower born from love for Mankind that has allowed him to keep the Chaos rift at Terra closed and the Astronomican galactic beacon lit despite getting reduced to an undying corpse. That, and the sacrifice of a thousand souls every day so he can endure such a hellish state.
- You can see how much he actually cared about Mankind as a whole on the quote attributed to him on the creation of the Grey Knights, his ultimate weapon against the forces of Chaos:
The Emperor: One unbreakable shield against the coming darkness, One last blade forged in defiance of fate, Let them be my legacy to the galaxy I conquered, And my final gift to the species I failed.
- Imperial Saints' dedication to the Emperor and acts of Faith in his name actually have managed to save the day for the Imperium on more than a few occasions when all seemed lost. This is actually a game mechanic for some factions, which allow the player to pull the imperial equivalent to some warp powers.
- Disturbingly, Nurgle the Chaos god of disease runs on a different kind of love: stuff like a mother desperate to save her child from sickness and Friend to All Living Things (someone has to be a friend to plague rats, bacteria and the like) powers him. He's the nicest of Chaos gods, often referred to without irony as Grandfather Nurgle, and is always happy to shower his children with gifts of pestilence and decay.
- You can see how much he actually cared about Mankind as a whole on the quote attributed to him on the creation of the Grey Knights, his ultimate weapon against the forces of Chaos:
Theatre
- In Brigadoon, Tommy asks if "a stranger like... well... me" could choose to stay in Brigadoon. Mr. Lundie replies: "A stranger can stay if he loves someone here — not jus' Brigadoon, mind ye — but someone in Brigadoon enough to want to give up everythin' an' stay with that person. Which is how it should be. 'Cause after all, lad, if ye love someone deeply, anythin' is possible." Fiona comments, "I think I like that part best," clearly anticipating the show's happy ending.
- Richard Wagner's version of the Flying Dutchman trope allows the character — traditionally cursed to sail forever, to be saved by the power of love.
- According to The Other Wiki, most of of his subsequent operas use this trope too.
- Inverted in Der Ring des Nibelungen, only the one who renounces love will be able to forge the ring that will let him rule the world.
- According to The Other Wiki, most of of his subsequent operas
- In Damn Yankees, Joe manages to thwart the devil partly because of his unswerving fidelity to his wife. He spends the final scene cuddling up to her while she sings to him and ignoring Applegate's increasingly desperate pleas for him to renew their deal.
- Fangirls:
- "Set You Free" focuses on Edna's determination to help and "set free" Harry through her love and support.
- "Brave Thing" emphasizes the strength and depth of the bond between Caroline and Edna.
- One way of looking at the end of Hamlet is that Gertrude has cottoned on to Claudius's plan and drinks the poison to reveal his plan and save Hamlet. If so, this is the only time in the play she puts her son before anyone, including Claudius.
- Possibly the grandest and most edifying theme of Les Misérables is that this trope is indeed the answer to the evils and suffering of the world. Fantine and Éponine's final words as they escort Valjean to the afterlife:
"Take my hand, I'll lead you to salvation.
Take my love, for love is everlasting.
And remember the truth that once was spoken:
To love another person is to see the face of God." - Surprising, given the style of the play, but in the final scene of RENT, death is converted to Disney Death by a love song.
- In Swan Lake, this invariably comes into play in the ending. In the Bittersweet Ending, the power of Odette and Siegfried's love vanquishes Rothbart despite their deaths; in the Happily Ever After ending, Siegfried's love for Odette enables him to destroy Rothbart and save her.
- In Jasper in Deadland, half-lives are so filled with the love of others that being in the Underworld gives them the power to grant their own wishes.
- In L'Orfeo, Orpheus's song of love moves Persephone to tears and she begs Hades to let Eurydice go. Hades, while wary of what fate has in store, agrees due to his love for his wife.
- In Orfeo ed Euridice, as a reward for Orpheus and Eurydice's undying love, Cupid brings Eurydice back to life even after Orpheus fails and the couple departs happily.
- Disney's Believe states that love is what makes a garden grow, and nurturing the love between parent and child helps Dr. Greenaway's relationship with Sophia grow.
Visual Novels
- The titular heroine of Magical Warrior Diamond Heart embodies the power of love and hope. Ironically, she's Oblivious to Love when it pertains to one of her Childhood Friends who's been in love with her since childhood. Being in a frelationship with any one of her fellow teammates (extending to including Amber as a platonic variant) allows whitchever pair to access additional transformations and abilities.
- In the DLC case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Phoenix argues that a witness was able to arrive at the scene of the crime far sooner than should be possible due to the power of love. Specifically, he saw his bride being attacked by the case's victim and hurried to the crime scene. The normal route would take too long so he took a much shorter and much more dangerous route in spite of a serious injury. All in spite of his suffering from anterograde amnesia. Edgeworth mocks the idea, but is shut down by the (happily married) judge, and when the victim's true killer confirms that this actually happened, he's more than a little bewildered.
Web Animation
- This is, ultimately, what the web animated series Broken Saints is all about, and what drives its Earn Your Happy Ending.
Mama Tui: All things must die, Shandala. We cannot change this. But you can bring the heavens to your heart in life. Give yourself to those that need. If you do this, then the world is truly blessed... for it has known your love.
- In Draw with Me, this is what compels the boy to break through the glass, and later the girl to cut off her hand.
Webcomics
- Hilariously mentioned and subverted in And Shine Heaven Now after Marian, a Parody Sue, attacks the I-Jin of Jeeves and musses up his hair, which he points out is unlikely:
Marian: It's not unlikely at all. You're an enemy of Integra. So there's no way you can beat me. Because I have the most powerful thing in the universe on my side — the power of true love!
iJeeves: Indeed. slices Marian in to pieces As a tactic, it leaves something to be desired. - In this Beaver and Steve story arc, love comes from another dimension populated with evil hearts that want to take over the earth.
- According to Buttersafe, "love is the source of energy that fuels eye lasers."
- Used in this Captain SNES strip. The power of love and friendship helps win a fight.
- Cucumber Quest: Love plays an important role in the climax of Chapter 3. Sir Carrot starts seeing himself as The Load for being a total coward, thinking that he's useless to his friends and Princess Parfait. But when he finally reads the Love Letter that he lost to the Guardener, he learns that he's the reason why Parfait continues to endure her captivity, which causes him to gain his courage and level up. Parfait powering Carrot with her love and faith through their lockets takes it further and transforms Carrot's hodgepodge knight uniform into a shiny suit of heart-themed armor that grants him the ability to use magic weapons. All this is what allowed him to stand a chance against a Hocus Crocus-powered Rosemaster.
- Used and nicely summed up in the final part of Demonology 101, when Isaac Jenner and Madeline get married. Two Witnesses attend the wedding, and one comments on the Power of Love.
Aaron: What do you think it means?
Banai: It probably means the same thing it meant when you married Lily. That love is one of those annoying things that somehow manages to transcend destiny, Nature, and whether or not you were born with horns on your head. - Chloe in Eerie Cuties, being a succubus and all that can enjoy it... very much... to Glowing Eyes and Dramatic Wind.
- 8-Bit Theater: Subverted in this strip, where Black Mage explains that his Hadoken spell isn't so much powered by love as with love, in that it siphons some love out of the universe every time it is cast. Black Mage himself isn't sure how much, but he's given to understand the divorce rate ticks upwards with each blast. Also, he got the spell by sacrificing nine orphans to a god of evil.
- Ennui GO!: As Darcy lies bleeding out after getting harpooned in the gut, she flashes back to the time she met Izzy in college. She then sees how their relationship grew, fell apart, then meeting again and begrudgingly working together and meeting Tanya before stopping to the time their polyamorous relationship began. Soon enough, upon looking back, Darcy manages to rise up and goes to fight Captain Orca again, driven by the love she has for her girlfriends.
- Girl Genius: Apparently it's enough to make Agatha wrest control of her body away from the soul of her evil and (literally) possessive mother. Well, that's what it looks like anyway.
- Girly has loads of this throughout the series, but especially in the final arc, where all the artificial sidekicks explode when exposed to love (except for the sidekick cops, who are armored against love). Half the enemies are taken out by a sex god and his ex-wife, while the other half (including the sidekick cops) are dealt with by a pair of real cops through a combination of Clothing Damage and dirty dancing. The protagonists defeat the Final Boss by having hot, steamy lesbian sex next to her.
- The Gunnerkrigg Court interlude comic City Face is described by its author as "a story of how love can save the world." It turns out pigeon love and the resulting pigeon babies prevent humanity from bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
- In Homestuck, Noble Wolf Bec's love for Jade is so strong that when he sacrifices his body to save her and inadvertently imbues the Big Bad with his own strength and form, said Big Bad is tormented by the feelings of loyalty that were transferred, and can not bring himself to kill Jade when he finds her. As of the End of Act 5 flash, he killed the Courtyard Droll in an act of vengeance, and then laid Jade on her Quest Bed after CD managed to kill her in an explosion.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, love defuses the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Galatea, here and here.
- Lore Olympus: Played with. Near the end of Season 3, Persephone stabs Apollo with one of Eros's arrows of true love. He ends up terrified, because his newfound empathy for her forces him to realize just how much she must hate him, and how much he deserves to be hated. It pretty much borders on Mind Rape.
- MegaTokyo:
- As with many things, the exact nature and significance of love in the comic is ambiguous, but magical girls appear to draw their power from it, and it's widely known to be a force to be reckoned with:
Largo: Dude, I'm battlin' zombies and all I got is luv pow3r from a n3wb magical grrl. Help me out here.
Clerk: All ya got? That's enough, mate. - The power of obsessive adoration, meanwhile, is a separate matter altogether, albeit possibly connected.
- As with many things, the exact nature and significance of love in the comic is ambiguous, but magical girls appear to draw their power from it, and it's widely known to be a force to be reckoned with:
- Nixvir: The Power of Love, of course, is an important theme in Nixvir. It allows Oriel to bring Erik back to life after he was turned to stone by the Chief Weasel, and it also proves useful in helping them resist the Chief Weasel's own magic. It also helps Oriel to kill Naldor Salta, which helps Zaniel, her officious superior, to realise that she's fallen in love with Erik.
- The Order of the Stick:
- Haley becomes able to pick a lock when Elan encourages her.
Vaarsuvius: Love makes the world go round. And has been known to provide a +2 circumstance bonus to certain skill checks.
- The time when Haley had started speaking gibberish and breaks out of it when she tells Elan she loves him. She had been honestly trying to tell the truth and overcome her mental problem for some time, but finally managed it when her cynicism told her that Elan was going to leave her "just like everyone else" if she didn't recover right now.
- Haley becomes able to pick a lock when Elan encourages her
- Unsounded: Acts of kind love repel smoke eels, such as Elka running to console Toma after Pantofell is killed or Sette laughingly giving her hand a kiss and tapping it against her friend Jivi. This does not work as well when the eels are fully entrenched and backed by First Silver.
- In YU+ME: dream , Fiona's decision to attempt to go back into the Dream World to find Lia, especially considering Sadako had banned Fiona from the Dream Land, as well as the possibility that Fiona may never return to the real world if she finds Lia.
- In Yumi's Cells, the Love Cell has a special pink costume and is the most powerful of all Yumi's brain cells. Unfortunately, it was De Powered and put into a coma after a break-up a few years before the story begins. It starts recovering as Yumi finds (potential) new romance.
Web Original
- JLA Watchtower/DC Nation — the Titans, led by Arsenal and Nightwing, challenge Hades, God of Death, to retrieve Omen and Troia. Hades plays dirty including killing off both Dick and Roy, and finishes it off by sending out a zombie horde against the heroes. Clan Arrow's response was to grab Eros's love arrows and start shooting. When things really started to go badly, out comes an army of the heroes' fallen friends, relatives, and loved ones — including the fallen Nightwing and Arsenal — to start kicking undead butt.
- In the Colour My Series, it's implied that the protagonist's coloring powers are based off of love. Or, rather, the two go hand in hand.
- In Critical Role, apparently even the Random Number God bends to the power of love.
- In this universe, by the Dungeon Master's homebrew rules, the resurrection of dead characters can fail based on dice rolls, and anyone attempting a resurrection ritual can make up to three offerings (with associated skill checks) to increase the chance of success. When Percy is killed, Vex admits she's in love with him and kisses him. She rolls a Natural 20 on her skill check, and the ritual ultimately succeeds.
- Something even more incredible happens at the end of Campaign 2, after the resurrection ritual for Mollymauk fails. As the Mighty Nein begin to grieve, Caduceus sneaks off to a quiet corner to try Divine Intervention, a notoriously unrealiable ability as it requires a player to roll under their Cleric level (15, in Caduceus's case) on a d100, and is essentially the same as praying for a miracle. Caduceus makes a quiet plea to the Wildmother to give his friends Molly back, as they have definitely earned it... and proceeds to roll a 2 on his d100. Matt, unwilling to give him a True Ressurection for free, re-rolls the resurrection die and rolls a 12, high enough for the ritual to succeed.
- In Mall Fight, Eric brings Connor back to life with this trope.
- Pirates SMP: In the finale, it's revealed that the Corruption is made from and feeds on pure negativity and can be countered by positive energy like the petrification, i.e. Human Sacrifice via being Taken for Granite, which was then regarded to be the "only" way to stop the spread of the Corruption. However, the pirates' recurring friendship and kindness towards Cruppy, Ivy's familiar, in the series manages to give Ivy, the host of the Corruption, enough hope for the goodness of humanity that she is petrified and the Corruption is defeated without the use of Iris' corrupted witchcraft, thus freeing the Faction Isles from the Corruption as well as Iris' machinations to stay in power. It also helps that their concern for Cruppy and their deceased friends who were victims of being Taken for Granite were what drove the pirates to turn against Iris and fight for Ivy in the first place; in other words, The Power of Love has driven the victories against both major antagonists of the series.
- Frank and Sadie Doyle of The Thrilling Adventure Hour have conquered a fair share of supernatural baddies through the power of their love. A Valentine's Day special dedicated to them featured the Doyles blowing up a succubus after it tried to devour their love, attracting the attention of Freya and Bacchus because an oracle declared their love the strongest of all, and thwarting a Will o' the Wisp from stealing their souls before it even started by the simple fact that their souls belong to each other.
- In one of the possible endings of Today I Die, love gives the protagonist strength to survive.
- Supervillainess Sahar, in the Whateley Universe. She has a psychic ability to — once she's seduced a Psi — get so close that she can learn to copy that Psi's best 'knacks'. This makes her a ruthless femme fatale, until she falls in love with a mark, Zenith. She doesn't know how to handle that. So it takes a different kind of love — friendship — to get her to finish her Heel–Face Turn. And she gets Zenith back.
Real Life
- The Sacred Band of Thebes.
- Mary Ann Patten the wife of the Captain of the Clipper Neptune's Car, got the ship around the Horn propelled by this.
- An underweight failing newborn was saved by a hug from her tiny twin sister in this unspeakably adorable story from 1995.
- Similar to the above, there's the concept of "Kangaroo Care", where a baby is held closely to the mother's chest. Babies born prematurely or with low birth weight that are given this treatment tend to become healthy faster than those kept in incubators.
- The Castle of the Faithful Wives, thought this one crosses strongly with Guile Hero. To sum it up: A group of women are allowed safe passage during a war out of enemy territory with whatever they could carry, they chose to leave with their families doing a piggie ride.
- Love, romantic or otherwise, is often considered one of the most powerful motivational forces in the human psyche. There are even claims that it can cause the brain to release chemicals that allows a person to accomplish things that he/she could not or would not have been able to normally do. These factors are the basis for the "Power of Love" in fiction.
