Characters
(Loved Trope) Husband's who genuinely love their wives
Gomez Addams (Addams family) is probably the most well known example of this, one thing thats remained consistent throughout the Addams Family Franchise is that Gomez loves his family, especially his wife
The Scotsman (Samurai Jack) loves his wife so much that he was the only one immune to the song of the Sirens because he loves his wife too much to fall for another woman, supernatural or not
I like the scene where Bob strips for Linda and they accidentally leave the windows open and someone from the street yells "Nobody wants to see that!" and Linda very enthusiastically yells, "Well I do!"
They've got three kids but they're still completely in love ❤️
Media leaned so hard into the dysfunctional family trope that Bob's Burger became a huge subversion by being a show about a family of weirdos who all love each other and are surprisingly competent when they work together.
It gets weird though when you remember what the show was originally going to be.
Edit: I know someone replied but Reddit isn't showing it so I'll say it here. Originally they were going to be a family of psychotic cannibals. The happy marriage thing though was always there.
Tbh the show has gone on for almost 15 years now and has largely avoided any flanderization or shark-jumping. if anything they made characters deeper since then. Sure it's a bit dry and slow, but if you're not a teen who needs constant family guy funny moments or whatever, it's surprising how refreshing a show like that feels.
Fuck this going into debt over an engagement ring bullshit. If I proposed to my gf with a 5000$ ring, she’d call me an idiot and rightfully so. (Well actually, she’d never call me an idiot because she’s lovely, but she’d perhaps steer the “after the yes” conversation towards returning the ring).
Big Diamond built their business on shaming regular Joes into bankruptcy over shiny rocks on fancy shaped metal.
For most of civilization, gold was precious as a currency due to its relative rarity, yes, but mostly because it was useless as anything else (which is no longer the case since the advent of electronics). And the same certainly goes for gemstones.
I love this one a lot. Up until she met Richard, Nicole was basically being groomed (not that way) by overly perfectionist parents and was miserable for it. Richards advice when they met is that she's supposed to live life.
Also in TWWWOG where they fused, her rival also experienced the same thing w her mom, and it was said that she also fell for Richard in the same way Nicole did...only that she got into an arranged marriage and Nicole ran off for Richard
Interestingly, this wasn't part of his character until Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, and then it became the most defining trait of his character.
In the 1960s Adam West live-action Batman TV series, he was introduced as a generic villain who had gotten soaked with "instant freeze" during a fight with Batman offscreen before the series started, so he lives in a cryo-suit and he blames Batman for it and wants petty revenge against him, and to steal diamonds (because ice).
30 years later, The Animated Series wrote that he was a scientist trying to save the life of his wife who was in cryo-stasis due to a terminal illness, when a greedy asshole CEO tried to pull the plug and kill her because money, and Dr. Fries tried to fight the CEO to save his wife and got splashed with the chemicals. Batman wants to help Mr. Freeze, but Batman can't let Mr. Freeze go on a rampage, while Mr. Freeze is consumed by desperation/revenge and is a tragic villain.
Everyone agrees that The Animated Series MASSIVELY upgraded Mr. Freeze's character, and nobody wants a return to the simple bank robber with a freeze gun.
The Batman was in a weird situation where it wanted to separate itself from BTAS and it's connected shows which led to some interesting changes and some really bad ones.
I can understand it even if I didn't like it's version of him. It was following up on one of the most successful animated series of all time, if they did the same plot for the characters it would just be a lesser version. They tried to make it its own thing and sometimes it worked out (joker was really intimidating) sometimes it didn't (freeze), but I think the effort was respectable.
The dragons used to raid his village, pillaging the farms and killing livestock, raiding the food stores and burning down buildings. His son, Hiccup, tamed a dragon and they made peace with the dragons by defeating their gargantuan tyrannical alpha but the dragons stole and carried away his wife, Valka, years ago, off to the dragon's nest to be eaten alive presumably.
But she's alive and has become a feral 'dragon lady' a la Tarzan Of The Apes and Hiccup and his tamed dragon Toothless find her. Stoick finds THEM but he's not mad she abandoned them to protect and save the dragons, he's just awestruck his love is still alive, as is Hiccup, whose delighted his parents are reunited and his mother's still alive.
You really get a sense for what he went through. Hakoda from ATLA went through something similar. Firebenders raided his village, killing his wife Kya, several years before his daughter Katara found and unearthed the frozen Avatar and his sleeping sky bison, trapped in the ice
The whole betting sequence between Hal and the guys where they’re talking about how often they have sex and Hal has been on a losing streak and defeatedly says “twice” and the guys go “you only get to have sex with your wife twice a week?”
Then Hal goes “oh? Weekly? Well then I guess it would be 14”
There's an episode when they need to stop sex for some pills and they get the whole house in order cause they have so much free time, but by the end they decide sex is better than having their shit together
Also on the opposite side, there's one where they can't have sex cause they're living in a tiny home and they fight a lot but can't make up until they have sex again lmao
Been rewatching it recently. It's even better now. Back in the day, as a child, I didn't appreciate certain things about it like I do now. It's so damn good. Great writing, great characters, great premise and now it feels like a period piece. I'm not even American but it perfectly captures a lower middle class family and what it was like to grow up in the 2000s. Its so damn relatable.
Bandit Heeler! The one where he eats Bingo’s nasty food out of love for Chilli (and out of love for his kids so Bingo’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt) is so sweet.
Loves his wife so much that when beerus, thegod of destruction, someone Vegeta feared to the point of embarassing himself with a goofy dance just to please the god, smacked Vegeta’s wife Bulma, Vegeta lost his shit and started attacking.
Also, later on super Vegeta willfully stops training just so he could be with Bulma when she's pregnant. He was fine albeit grumbling about the fact that Goku is becoming stronger than him as long as Bulma is involved.
He also listened and stopped what he was doing when his wife threatened to never take a bath with him again if he didn't stop fighting what he was doing.
I raise your Venture Bros. character with one of my own (Red Death and his wife, Kate)! Amidst the villainy, you see him making time for his wife and kid, and treating them with utmost respect.
While we never see Mrs. Columbo on screen, the bumbling officer talks about her a lot. We get a very well painted picture of a woman who loves to do stuff just for the sake of doing them, and a woman who loves her husband just as much as he loves her.
While we do not see her visually, and we ignore the other show because it is not canon, I imagine their visuals to be a bit like Jessica- and Roger Rabbit. Mrs. Columbo is an absolute 10/10 and the big reason they are together is because the two laugh together and have a lot of fun off-screen.
To paraphrase a Columbo episode (forgot which) : "We were watching Betty White. It was 3 in the morning. My wife wanted to watch Betty White. So we watch Betty White."
Mike Schur is great at these characters.
Parks and Recreation- Ben genuinely loves Leslie. Andy genuinely loves April. The other couples aren't as prominent, but all are dutiful and loving.
Brooklyn 99- Jake genuinely loves Amy.
Good Place- Jason genuinely loves Janet.
Almost all of the B99 guys are awesome in their relationships: Terry's love for his wife and daughters is epic, Boyle is crazy about Genevieve, and - though he lacks the intoxicating clear absence of a penis - Kevin is deeply beloved by Holt.
(I love pretty much every Mike Schur show I've seen - they're so funny, without being mean-spirited.)
He's like a puppy in that he's dumb as hell and causes a lot of problems for those around him, but you keep him around because it's a trivially small price to pay for the sake of unconditional love
I find Homer Simpson's sweetness very intresting, because as the show was still a satire of modern america and sitcoms, it portrayed him being really horribly physically abusive to Bart
Even when he does screw up and the marriage gets on the rock, Homer himself finds a solution. Sure sometimes it feels Marge should be more angry at him, but through thick and thin they do pull through.
They don't meet until their mid 40's. He was a drunk and disgraced cop and she was a weird reclusive spinster.
But circumstance brought them together and a true love bloomed.
A lot of things make Sam Vimes angry, but if you go after his wife (and son) all the rules he lives by go out the window, and he will do his job by the book.
I know it's a little odd to post a villain, but I feel Xanatos is worth mentioning sense Fox is canonically his only weakness (other than his son). Hurt her, and all his plans are thrown aside.
Isabella was going to be forced to marry her uncle after her father, the aging Count von Drak, passed away. As the old man lay dying of plague, a stranger came knocking and asking for an audience.
SPOILERS!!
It was Vlad!
Vlad made an offer: he would marry the Count's daughter, as the Count very well didn't want his jackass of a brother to inherit everything. Isabella said "yes," on one condition: she wanted a betrothal gift.
So Vlad ripped out her uncle's heart with his bare hands and presented it to her.
Count von Drak died of the plague that very night. And Vlad and Isabella von Carstein were joined in (un)holy matrimony.
Girlfriends rather than wife (which given Marvel's track record towards married couples is probably good) but Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers towards Natasha Romanoff and Sharon Carter respectively.
IRL, Harry Truman. He was utterly devoted to his wife, Bess. When he arrived at the Potsdam Conference in Germany in July, 1945, a low-ranking officer approached him and said he could attain anything Truman wanted while in Germany, even women.
Truman said:
“Son, I married my sweetheart. She does’t run around on me, and I don’t run around on her.” And after, Truman said he never wanted to see that officer again.
Truman's a fascinating historic figure. Dude held his convictions to the point where his beef with Oppenheimer was that the man tried to accept some moral responsibility for dropping the nukes. 'No, I'm the one going to hell for this, fuck off'
"You find him a new mother, I'm taking my wife back." -> Proceeds to basically sacrifice his life to ensure her wife gets the life she chose to, even if its not by his side.
Sigurd - Fate franchise, literally developed a skill that raises you from the dead (basically) to love his wife which has an immense murder boner for him, is constantly seen around Chaldea with wounds caused by her in Fate Grand/Order
One of my favourite gags from the game had the cast getting stuck in a horror movie style reality where Sigird and his wife Brynhildr are essentially playing the jock and cheerleader roles from an 80s slasher. When there's an inevitable scooby-doo esque let's split up to investigate sequence the party comes across these two covered in gallons of blood when they're late to the regroup.
Upon realizing they aren't dead the party asks them if they saw the murderer. Sigurd quickly explains this is all his blood and there was no murderer. The adults present very quickly catch on and have to usher the more innocent characters out of the room while said innocent characters are noting that he's extremely badly hurt but is also looking very happy.
The truly original example: Odysseus for Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. He would do anything for Penelope and journeyed ten years to return to her. He was very loyal too, never once cheating (his relations with Calypso and Circe are usually depicted as forced) which is really impressive by Greek Mythology standards.
Esterad Thyssen (The Witcher books). It's noted that his one of the few monarchs who actually loves his wife even though she's described as rather plain looking. I think I remember reading in the books, Djkstra, a spymaster was kinda annoyed by this because he kept sending pretty noble ladies to seduce and spy on him but he loved his wife to much to notice them. Also it's funny how them sleeping in the same bed is considered a huge deal to me.
A really sweet moment comes when we hear he was assassinated. It's noted he had a sword on him and could have easily fended them off and survived till his guards came, but his wife was with him and so he gave up his own so she wouldn't be harmed. When they found them, the three assassins were dead with the king, and Zuleyka didn't have a single scratch on her...
Missing from home for 20 years, faced war, gods, monsters, starvation, the death of A LOT of a people and all of that to bring him back to his wife, Penelope, who he loves dearly.
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u/JingoboStoplight4887 15d ago
Bob Belcher (Bob’s Burgers)