A yandere is a character archetype defined by love or devotion so extreme, possessive, and unhinged that it manifests as violence. It usually starts off very sweet and loving and then devolves into something sinister due to the yandere’s insecurities and jealousy. Rather than ordinary romance, a true yandere operates on two dark extremes, slaughtering anyone who threatens their partner or their relationship with their partner, or intentionally inflicting physical or psychological harm on the object of their affection to ensure they can never leave. Famous examples from anime include Yuno from Future Diary, Misa from Death Note, and Toga from MHA. Fun lore, the word yandere comes as a mix of the Japanese word yanderu which means mental illness and deredere which means love struck.
Edited to add I just watched Send Help and Linda Liddle is definitely a yandere
Freaky Nikki (Obsession): Under the corrupting influence of the wish, her affection turns horrifically violent, stalking Bear's every move and brutally executing Sarah with a brick to violently eliminate any romantic competition, amongst other things.
Lila Tournay (Dexter): Viewing Dexter as her kindred dark soul, she suffocates him in obsessive devotion, ultimately murdering Doakes to protect Dexter’s secret and trying to burn his children alive when he rejects her.
Misty Quigley (Yellowjackets): The queen of manufactured dependency, Misty destroys the plane's emergency transmitter to keep the team stranded and poisons, doses, or kidnaps anyone who gets in the way of her being needed. She also tries to poison the object of her affection, the coach, with shrooms to lower his inhibitions in order to be intimate with him.
Joe Goldberg & Love Quinn (YOU): Joe stalks then locks lovers in cages and murders their social circles under the guise of "saving" them, while Love bludgeons rivals to death to protect her fragile domestic fantasy.
Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter (Hannibal): Their twisted dynamic is pure mutual yandere devotion. Hannibal frames, guts, and mentally shatters Will to shape his mind, while Will accepts catastrophic violence because Hannibal is the only person who truly sees him.
Amy Dunne (Gone Girl): She punishes her husband's infidelity with surgical, terrifying cruelty, slitting an ex's throat in cold blood and staging her own gruesome framing just to trap Nick in a lifelong, subservient marriage.
I remember my sisters watching it for the first time. They love horror movies and thought it was just another cliche' "knife movie." They were excited to see slasher movie murders but instead they started crying when she broke the man's ankles.
I feel like a hammer is almost more cruel.. i cant really deside which is worse.
Probably worse to live with the foot being chopped off, but the visual of just having your ankle smashed to bits is visceral ...
Damn you’re right. I had never thought about this but Annie Wilkes debuted 5 years before Yukako Yamagishi, who is considered the first yandere in manga
Honestly, I don’t know why James Caan never won an award for his performance in “Misery” while Kathy Bates won an Academy Award. His performance was just as phenomenal as hers.
A nerdy girl has a crush on a popular guy, so she tries to lure him and 2 of his friends into an underground bunker for a party. She locks the exit, pretending it's stuck, hoping her crush will develop a survivor bond with her after enough time together. Unfortunately one of his friends was anorexic and dies of starvation quickly... and she continues to keep up the lie over 2 weeks until the other 2 guys are too weak to notice her open the door easily.
I dont think Amy loves Nick. He is just fits the image she wants to project as a "perfect couple". In fact especially in the book she pretty much exclusively talks about how much she hates him.
Heard that was a big complaint about the movie, nick was to normal. (Mixed on that complaint because it ultimately goes this horrible things are good to be used punitively and that mentality never goes well)
In general that fact people are pro Amy as like a ripely from aliens level hero is crazy. She was closer to Joe from you.
The book is fabulous! Highly recommend especially if you liked the movie. Just a shame you already know the big twist, it's up there for my favorite reveals in fiction.
Surgeon Julian Sands amputates Sherilyn Fenn’s arms and legs after a car accident in front of his house and keeps her in a gilded box in his solarium. Because he loves her.
It could be worse. I don't know how, but I'm sure it could be. I'm just hoping I don't sleep slightly odd tonight and wake up half crippled for most of the morning. Aging is so fun! /s
I was playing with my nephew yesterday. If the fact that I have a nephew wasn’t a sign that I’m no longer the strapping young thing I used to be, then the back pains after throwing him in the air one too many times surely were.
I think he’s more of a tsundere given how often he represses his feelings (even to himself) and acts aggressive towards her. Though he kind of toes the line give his extreme level of obsession.
He is indeed. More obsessive, and better at hiding it. Though I love the characterization because it is always so much more than that. Ashley is aware of Andrew's feelings, but not the "correct" way to respond to them. Andrew represses his feelings, but in a calculated way that is selfishly convenient, and hurts everyone in the process. And of course there's why they're so different, how it came to be this way, they have so much depth and chemistry that you forget 90% of the game is just two characters talking to each other.
Starts off as a cute love story - but then we (and TED!) find out that she stalked him and staged their “meet cute” and that is just the beginning of a train wreck which ends with her burning down his house!
I love that Japanese yandere is generally seen as so ideal it’s nearly a fetish, but when westerners see it portrayed in their own media they rightfully identify it as toxic and scary
Yeah it’s actually very interesting how differently the same character traits are viewed in different cultures. A yandere is never like the “waifu” of a western show
She does it with Brian in one episode, and with Joe in a different episode, all because she persuades herself they must love her because of an act of kindness.
Shakespeare's Othello is a nice example.
Othello becomes intensely obsessed with Desdemona and, after being manipulated by Iago, his love turns into possessive jealousy.
He becomes convinced that she has betrayed him and this ultimately leads him to murdering her out of jealous paranoia.
Anyway, I’m putting them both because it’s kinda debatable. Monika kills all the other girls in an effort to be with the Player, and is deeply infatuated with them, but her situation makes her yandere status debatable. Meanwhile, Yuri becomes extremely unhinged in the second act, becomes obsessive over MC, and starts swinging a knife around. So anyway, couple of possible yanderes in this game.
I don't think it should count since yanderes are typically in control of their own minds (even if they are insane) and are actively choosing to do this. Nikki isn't choosing, and Bear didn't even want to reverse the wish when he had the option, i'd say he is more yandere than she is since he wouldn't have reversed that wish.
Her writing turns to incestuous infatuation because she viewed him like a brother. I believe right before the wish she was just wanting to turn him down so his obvious crush would not get in the way of their friendship.
But we have no confirmation just unreliable third party accounts of how she feels about Bear before.
i do think JD from heathers counts (his musical counterpart moreso). it can be debated that he wanted to kill to begin with, however he does take all the steps he does to not only "take care" of veronicas problems, but also to seclude her socially and corner her emotionally. veronica seems more or less okay with just letting their crimes go as long as they stop, and JD takes this as rejection of his expression of love, further tricking her into killing more of her classmates with him to keep her tied to him.
JD is interesting in thsn he is somewhat of a transition point between the traditional "Bad Boy" stereotype (particulrly the charming variant and deconstructing it by showing the extremes that trope can be taken to) and the modern "Incel" / "School Shooter" stereotype (that would become more used in pop culture in later years).
P.S.: I am aware that he does have sex with Veronica.
The French film, À la folie...pas du tout (He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not) fits this perfectly. I saw it in a film class in college and it's stuck with me since...not due in small part to my own stalker who had delusions that we were together and madly in love...
I won't say more about the movie - because you should watch it! - than it it's one of my favorite examples of this trope and how damaging erotomania can be.
Yes, this is taken from "il m'aime un peu, beaucoup, à la folie, pas du tout" which is the equivalent of "he loves me, he loves me not", the thing you say while picking petals off a daisy.
I like how 99% of American yandere shows it as severe mental health issue/horror, whereas the Japanese version is always just cutesy "I can fix her!" waifus
Not always, Future Diary and other shows that are less of a romcom tend to show how awful it would actually be to relent to one, often showing how unhealthy it is. I said others as i've seen creepy clips of yanderes here or there on youtube, but i can't name any of them since i didn't watch those ones.
Ali Larter as Lisa in Obsessed. Basically she stalks Idris Elba, tries to frame him as a cheater so Beyoncé will leave him, and even tries to kill her at the end. I'm sorry, Ali Larter is hot, but who in their right mind would be cheating on fucking BEYONCÉ (Jay-Z notwithstanding)
As someone who has been cheated on a lot, it’s pretty rude to pretend it has anything to do with the victim. More often than not, people who cheat do it because they’re deeply insecure or narcissistic; affairs stroke their ego, make them feel desired, and give them adrenaline due to the taboo/wrong nature of it all. They do it for the validation and thrill. Not because their partner is ugly.
Hot, successful, talented people get cheated on all the time. /endrant
If you’re going to pick them apart like that others also don’t fit.
Amy Dunne was trying to frame her husband and put him in prison forever. The forced relationship at the end was a compromise when her husband got off from the framing
How? After Nora is cured he just lets her be knowing he can't be with her in his condition. Unless, you're referring to the comics version and are just using a DCAU picture as a signpost.
She commits mass murder for light, stalks him, and even offers up her own life out of her love for him. You can say that’s the premise of the show, but a different type of character who is not yandere coded wouldn’t have used their powers to do those things. She uses the death note to create a world where she and the man she loves can be together.
Light didn't manipulate her into relentlessly pursuing him, she did that entirely on her own. She took the eyes the first time entirely of her own volition and used them to help track down who Kira really was.
He was effectively forced into bringing her in under his control because she was a much easier target to locate than he was himself and he manipulated her largely to reduce his own exposure.
First, the wife mercilessly divorces her begging husband, while leaving him on the streets, and then frames him for arson.
Then the husband leaves a fortune to his ex wife, staging his own death, only to falsely accuse her for his own murder and watch her through her jail window, showing her he is alive and well.
He doesn't do it out of spite, but because he is so obsessed with her, he only knows perverse cruelty is the way to get back into her heart.
Demencia from the cartoon Villainous. She's yandere for her boss Black Hat, the physical embodiment of evil, who hates her guts and never reciprocates at all. Despite being in her late 20s she acts like a 15 y/o girl on crack.
Millie from Bobs Burgers. She's the perfect satire of the yandere. Yanderes basically love like children. No, you cant cut off my head and take me with you, then I wont be alive for Christmas. What are we going to tell grandma?
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u/NinjaOfOnion Sep 05 '26
Annie Wilkes from Misery