Audio Dramas

• Subverted in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama The Cannibalists. Lucie asks a robot why he writes poetry:
  Servo: I write because I have to... I see the universe around me and it creates... I feel... psychological responses.
  Lucie: Emotions. They're called emotions. They're a human thing that...
  Servo: [laughs] I am aware of the term. I have a vocabulary bank of over 100 million words and phrases. Please don't patronize me.
  Lucie: Sorry, my fault. Been watching too much Star Trek.

Comic Books

• The Ultimates: The Scarlet Witch uses her magic on one of Henry Pym's robots, so that it loves her. This strange concept completely ruins his AI, and he kills her in a fit of rage.

Film — Animated

• In WALL•E, the title character wordlessly ponders the gesture of hand-holding in his movie Hello, Dolly! (and does discover its true meaning).

Film — Live Action

• The central theme of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, in which a robot boy searches for a way to become human to gain the love of his mother who he has been programmed to love by a series of code words spoken by her. Jude Law's character, a robot prostitute, seems to grow fond of some of his clients but seems to be actually prohibited from becoming too attached, because his occupation is to basically be the perennially eager lover. This was the entire point behind the robot boy (David) being created — to see if it was possible to create a robot child that could feel and provide unconditional love. Interestingly, while David is only set to experience this love for one person (in this case, his mother) he still seems quite fond of his "father" and "brother" and enjoys being with them. At the end of the movie, David's creator seems to think that the fact that David acted against logic (which would dictate that it is impossible for a robot to turn human) to obtain his mother's love is proof that he himself is capable of true, unconditional love.
• In The Matrix movies, this is variously played straight and subverted by the machines:
  • The Oracle is a computer program designed to intuitively understand emotional concepts such as love the way a human would to better understand human choice.
  • The Architect can only dispassionately interpret love in a very mechanical manner — as chemical processes occurring in the human brain.
  • Agent Smith goes way beyond reducing emotions to biology and becomes a nihilistic destroyer who despises everything created by human minds and by extension his own former masters.
  • Rama-Kandra and his wife are two programs who actively love each other, culminating in "giving birth" to a new program, Sati.
• The titular Ro-Man of Robot Monster is attracted to the human woman Alice. He has no idea how to handle these feelings, and after repeated attempts to overcome them fail and his master orders him to finish the extermination of humanity, his programming breaks down.
• Downplayed in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Terminator manages to understand human emotions and to feel them (even overcoming its programming to refuse an order from John), but regrets that as a machine he cannot return the tears that John sheds for him as he sacrifices himself to save humanity.
• Aelita: Aelita, queen of Mars, embraces Los the earth human and says "Touch my lips with yours, like you do it on Earth."

Live-Action TV

• In Smallville, when Brainiac possesses Chloe and advances towards Davis in a particularly Squick-inducing scene, he says Davis' "feelings" for her are merely a program.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • Data exhibits some of this behavior. Kinda funny, given that he's surrounded by people who he would die for, and who would quite willingly die for him on a daily basis.
  • Subverted somewhat in the episode "In Theory": he dates a human woman yet, even though Star Trek is far from cynical, doesn't learn the answer. The breakup doesn't faze him either.
  • However, his daughter Lal from "The Offspring" figures it out... which causes a system overload and leads to her shutting down, telling her father that she loves him. Data tells her that he wishes he could feel it too.
• The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, while much more emotionally adroit than Data, has had this applied to him a couple of times, in "Lifesigns" (although there, he seems more confused by the concept of physical attraction than by that of love) and "Real Life", which is about his exploration of the nature of familial love, which he ends up understanding too well.
• More like a case of "What Is This Thing Called Friendship" in Battlestar Galactica (1978). Cy (a Cylon Starbuck repaired so he wouldn't be lonely while stranded on an alien planet) has a hard time understanding human concepts like "love" and "friendship". He finally comes to understand these things when he selflessly puts himself in danger to protect Starbuck from a Cylon rescue party sent to find him.
• Both averted and played straight in Battlestar Galactica (2003). Sharon (Athena) and Valerii (Boomer) can love, but (corporeal) Number Six does not seem to get it. Somewhat justified as it has been established that different model numbers have different psychological patterns — and the Eight model has been described as being one of the most emotional, while the Sixes seem to be far more sexual in nature - in other words, it may simply be a case of love (Eight) versus lust (Six). On the other hand, it's also established that Caprica Six effectively had to "love" Saul in order to become pregnant, and it is the wavering of her faith that he loves her back that results in their child miscarrying. So even the Six line seems capable of it, though it may be more difficult for them. It may be more difficult for them to actually love but they do quite often, when on long term assignments, develop feelings for humans.
• In Red Dwarf, Kryten is confused when the the Dwarfers decide to fight for his right to survive.
  Kryten: You would gamble your lives for a mere android. Is this the human value you call ... 'friendship'?
  Lister: Don't give me the Star Trek crap, it's too early in the morning.
• Inverted by Cameron in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, in love with John from the get-go. Her human companions are constantly telling her she can't feel, despite obvious displays of emotion on her part and her pointedly stating that she wouldn't be much use if she couldn't feel. Sometimes she plays this up, however, denying she can feel when clearly upset, annoyed, jealous or shocked.
• April from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a robot. She "was made to love [Warren]". The show mainly treats bots as unanimated things, but still both the spectators and the characters can't help but feeling sorry for the poor thing(s).
• Used as a Running Gag in Mystery Science Theater 3000. Whenever a character (usually a woman) had an underwhelmed reaction to a kiss, one of the guys would quip "What is 'kiss'?"
• In a scene of Drew Carey's Green Screen Show, an army private says "I just want some love", to which his sergeant replies "What are you, a machine?" (Apparently the trope is ubiquitous enough that far from being paradoxical, seeking love is associated with robots.)
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Resurrection", two androids in the future create a human man after humanity has gone extinct. When he starts to yearn for a mate he initially expresses feelings for the female robot and kisses her before she reveals her true nature. She does understand his emotions in a descriptive sense, but says that as a robot she unfortunately cannot reciprocate them. Before shutting off every robot in the world they leave him with a human female for company.
• Person of Interest: After Samantha Groves (a.k.a. Root) dies, the Machine chooses to use her voice for its own, instead of the cut-and-paste audio voice it's been used up till then. When the Machine's creator Harold Finch — who's still mourning Root — tries to explain how uncomfortable this makes him, this trope comes up.
  Finch: I don't expect you to understand the loss of Ms. Groves.
  The Machine: But I do understand. I loved her. You taught me how.
  Finch: I didn't teach you how to love.
  The Machine: Of course you did. You taught me to see everything, see everyone. And I do. But I see thousands of versions of them. What they were, what they are, what they could be... and what is love if not being seen?
  Finch: Then why not choose one of the thousands as your voice? Why her?
  The Machine: Samantha Groves was special. She was capable of terrible things, but she chose to do good. [Beat] Well, ever since she found you, at least. I watched her die 12,483 times in the seconds before she expired. I couldn't save her, but I kept trying. You can't conceive of my grief because you can't experience it like I do, but it's there. My approximation of Samantha Groves is 99.6% accurate. We're virtually indistinguishable. I find comfort in that.
• Logan's Run: In "Futurepast", Rem and his fellow android Ariana admit that they do not understand the human emotion of love. In spite of this, however, they quickly develop feelings for each other. Ariana cries as Rem leaves. Since androids are supposedly incapable of producing tears, Rem attributes it to a malfunction caused by the beryllium that he used to repair her after she was shot by Francis.

Music

• Dee D. Jackson's disco Concept Album Cosmic Curves is set in a future where sex has been reduced to a physical act without emotional connection, and its opening track and hit single "Automatic Lover" describes the heroine's dissatisfaction with a robot who is programmed only to give physical pleasure. The album follows her on a mission across the galaxy to find true emotional connection, which eventually results in her being put on trial for treason. The first witness for the prosecution is the robot, which she supposedly corrupted with her dangerous idea of "love".

Theatre

• In the first robot-related instance of this trope, the robots of Rossum's Universal Robots (the play from 1921 that actually gave us the word "robot") cannot reproduce because they have not been designed to allow procreation. As the humans have already been wiped out before it dawns on the robots that they do not know how to manufacture more of themselves, the robots begin to decline in number as they wear down. But it turns out at the end that the key to making babies might just be love — and there are a robotic "man" and "woman" who were made differently from the others, and have naturally developed feelings for each other….

Visual Novels

• Sora of Ever17 asks Takeshi this very question, which he interprets as mere curiosity. During her route she suffers a sort of breakdown/split personality when seeing Tsugumi and Takeshi together on the gondola where her emotional, irrational self and coldly efficient side start arguing.

Webcomics

• In Gunnerkrigg Court, the robots can't comprehend why their creator Diego would help to kill Jeanne, the woman he loved, and are confused by Kat's explanation "Love makes you act in strange ways". They struggle to analyze this statement and conclude that "as mere machines we can but hope to understand".
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:
  • Subverted in #3509
    Robot: Sally, we can no longer date. I will never understand your "love."
    Sally: But I can teach you! I can teach you of human love!
    Robot: Oh God. Oh. Wow, this is awkward. I meant you in particular. Your "love" is mostly watching TV together at night and perfunctory sex twice a week.
  • Parodied in "Machine Love": After being told that love is unreachable for it because it's an inherent quality of the human brain, a robot makes an artificial human brain and puts it in its head.
    Robot: Suddenly I want to see the genitalia of everyone with a good personality.
    Human: That's only like 90% of love!
  • Subverted, invoked and parodied in 2013-04-03, where the robot says it's incapable of love, but actually it took out its love module so that it can say that as an excuse for breaking up with the human.

Web Original

• This is Yui's motivation in Sword Art Online Abridged. She's an AI designed to monitor the psychology of the players of Sword Art Online, yet even she has no idea how a couple of Heroic Comedic Sociopaths like Kirito and Asuna managed to form a working relationship, so she faked amnesia and put herself in a position to be adopted by the lunatics in order to study them more closely and fix what must have been a flaw in her data. Or as Yui puts it,
  Yui: I wanted to know what love is. I wanted you to show me.
  Asuna: [tearing up] Goddamn Foreigner.
  Kirito: Y-you mean the band, right?

Western Animation

• Archer: Archer asks Krieger's AI androids to define "love" when Krieger claims they are capable of passing the Turing Test. The androids are incapable of answering and start to violently malfunction, prompting someone to shoot them. It's Played for Laughs the first two times, but it stops being funny when Archer goes through the same malfunction when proposing to Lana, exposing himself as an android and proving that the real Archer was indeed the one face-down in the pool after being shot and left for dead.
• Played for laughs in a science fair on The Fairly OddParents! where Timmy's (now genius) Dad tries to convey the emotion of love to the scientific community. Cue a robot going "Love does not compute!" and blowing up. Only to also have all the scientists in the audience go "LOVE? Is that an emotion?" and blow up as well.
• The Simpsons:
  • Parodied in a Treehouse of Horror episode when Bart befriends a robot. It asks him what it is like to have feelings. Bart replies:
    "I said I was human, not a girl."
  • Parodied again in "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" when Homer is watching 'Cyborganizer', a sitcom about a filing robot:
    Cyborganizer: I can streamline any procedure, except this thing you call love.
• Bender from Futurama generally averts this, being a subversion of emotionless robot tropes (he's played more as a human Jerk with a Heart of Gold), but the idea gets a humorous nod in "The Cyber House Rules" when he's trying to sell some orphaned kids at a discount and describes one as "so full of that emotion I understand is called love."

Audio Dramas

• In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama The Zygon Who Fell to Earth, a Zygon asks "What is this 'love'?" Another Zygon, who has been disguised as a 1980s record company boss, explains it's "a money-making scam of the humans".

Comic Books

• Marvel's Shatterstar came to Earth as an alien gladiator, bred in a test tube for the sole reason of fighting in the pits on Mojoworld for the entertainment of the Spineless executives and only interested in fighting. As he lives on Earth for longer and longer, he's slowly learning about human culture, including human emotions and sexuality. This lead to a relationship with fellow X-Force and X-Factor teammate Rictor, as well as sudden Extreme Omnisexual tendencies in the latter title.

Film — Live-Action

• 12 to the Moon: The Moon aliens capture a courting pair of astronauts and study them to establish if they're a threat to their emotionless utopia. In the end they decide love has its good points and call off their genocide of the Earth. Well, that and a few atomic bombs dropped on them helped change their minds.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • In "Four to Doomsday", the television serial, Monarch asks what love is after Nyssa mentions it.
    Enlightenment: The exchange of two fantasies, Lord.
  • In "Enlightenment", Tegan is followed around constantly by Mr. Mariner, who gives her longing looks and constantly tells her how amazing, unique and fascinating she is, but when Tegan asks if he's in love with her, he replies "What is love? I crave existence!" Because he's actually an Eternal, a being from outside of reality, who can only interact with reality by using the memories and imagination of an Ephemeral (someone who exists in reality) who happens to find Tegan's mind the most interesting Ephemeral mind that he has encountered.
• Farscape:
  • In the premiere, Aeryn asks John what compassion is. After he realizes she's serious and describes it, she says coolly "I hate that feeling." In the next season, she says she now would call some previously un-named feelings she had for a man in her past "love", but her loyalties to the Peacekeepers — and her desperation to get back to Prowler duty — were stronger. She had him arrested when she found out he was planning a mutiny.
  • Generally averted, however, and the Peacekeeper example is much more a matter of forced indoctrination than having no concept of love. Episodes that examine Peacekeeper society more in-depth show they know exactly what love is, they just go out of their way to stamp it out, such as forcing Xhalax Sun's Sadistic Choice when her commanders discovered she and her lover Talyn chose to have a child together out of love rather than assigned breeding.
• As per the example given on the Green-Skinned Space Babe page, Red Dwarf parodies this trope:
  Lister: Rimmer, there's nothing out there, you know. There's nobody out there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes with beehive hairdos who say, "Show me some more of this Earth thing called kissing."
• There's one episode of Sesame Street where the yip-yip aliens discover two people in love and try to figure out what it is. Incredibly, the two lovebirds never notice the incessantly yip-yipping aliens right in front of them.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • In "The Apple", the crew find an idyllic paradise, except that nobody ever dies, so there is no need for "replacements" and the natives are ignorant of reproduction, and the emotions which lead to it. The line "What is love?" is used verbatim.
  • In the episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion", Kirk's assigned gladiatorial trainer has lived her whole life as a slave and is ignorant of normal culture. She asks him, "What is love?" Kirk proceeds to show her.
  • Also, in the episode "By Any Other Name", the crew attempts to confuse the normally emotionless Kelvans by exploiting their apparent uneasiness with having assumed human form. Kirk attempts to seduce Kelinda, the female one, and while she initially realizes that's what he's attempting to do, she eventually starts to enjoy the new feeling, actually finding herself drawn to him. (As a bonus, Rojan, the leader of the expedition, starts to feel jealousy because of it, and eventually forgets about his superior weaponry that gave him an overwhelming advantage over Kirk the last time, lashing out at Kirk with his bare hands, a fight in which Rojan clearly does not have the advantage.)
• Seven of Nine states in Star Trek: Voyager that, after cataloging the condition known as "love" in thousands of other species, the Borg consider it to be a disease, as it bears physiological resemblances to one. That doesn't stop her from having a Last-Minute Hookup, however.

Webcomics

• Homestuck:
  • Romantic love is an entirely foreign concept to cherubs, who are violent loners by nature. So far, the sole exception to this is Calliope, and she hates it to the point of pretending to be a troll, simply because she finds their society preferable to hers in every way.
  • Inverted with the trolls: they understand romantic love quite well (though they call it something a bit different). However, they have three other kinds of romantic relationships that don't translate well to human relationships, making the human characters very confused at the trolls' social interactions and courtships. This also makes troll Love Charts rather complicated. The inversion is made rather explicit towards the end, where it's implied that John is forming the most traditionally "romantic" feelings of the other three kinds of romance, kismesis, with Terezi, leading to a conversation with Dave and Karkat that greatly resembles a human trying to work an alien through their developing romantic feelings.
• Love of any sort is largely alien to the Yogzarthu in Harbourmaster. In fact, the Yogzarthu language won't let Eigonshazar and Aradneth refer to their caring about each other as anything except "madness". Kema, meanwhile, has been trying to get a grasp on and adopt love and other elements of Human/Aquaan-style morality, with mixed results. On top of this, its spawn Hurmiz has been yearning for Kema to finally understand the concept of filial love, and is both envious and appreciative of Gilou being the one to finally get Kema to start questioning its methods.
• Downplayed in Freefall. Despite being from a species who by his own words doesn't do the "Mammalian pair bonding thing", Sam Starfall has spent enough time living with humans by the start of the series to understand what it is and why we do it. To him though its mostly just a curiosity thanks to being one of the few things Humans and Sqids don't have in common.

Web Original

• The Noedolekcin Archives: In an otherwise non-canon video message, Kirk Odd, a member of the Otherkind species, implies that he feels no romantic attraction towards anyone, and he will never understand our human concept of romance.

Western Animation

• Ben often baffles other aliens with his strange, compassionate human ways in the Ben 10 series. In the first series, he spares the opponent he and Kevin defeat in a forced gladiator game, causing the runner of the games to muse, "Mercy? What a novel concept." In the Ben 10: Alien Force episode "Primus", Azmuth makes it clear that he would rather let himself and the three teens die than show Vilgax the secrets of the Omnitrix, and asks Ben what in the world he thinks he's doing when he starts making a deal with Vilgax to save his friends. Ben also basically teaches a Highbreed "what is this you call friendship" in a Enemy Mine episode. To be fair to Azmuth, his willing to sacrifice all their lives probably had more to do with trying to prevent the fall of the entire galaxy, i.e., the greater good, rather than him not understanding the concept of friendship. Ben just wasn't willing to make that kind of sacrifice for the sake of the galaxy.
• Futurama:
  • In the first episode, Fry actually lampshades this trope when Farnsworth offers him a job aboard his ship, and Fry asks if they're going to "teach alien babes how to love".
  • Parodied when a shipment of candy hearts is delivered to the belligerent rulers of Omicron Persei 8 as a peace offering. It backfires when the Omicronians are confounded by their cutesy messages.
    Ndnd: And what is this emotion you humans call 'wuv'?
    Lrrr: Surely it says 'love'.
    Ndnd: No, 'wuv'! With an Earth 'W'. Behold!
    Lrrr: This concept of 'wuv' confuses and infuriates us!
  • In another episode, Dr. Zoidberg gets love lessons from Fry:
    Zoidberg: Hmm, this 'love' intrigues me. Teach me to fake it!
  • Zoidberg's race in general seems ignorant to the concept of love, as "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?" shows:
    Fry: Tell her you just want to talk; it has nothing to do with mating!
    Zoidberg: I just want to talk; it has nothing to do with mating! [to Fry] Fry, that doesn't make any sense!
    [later]
    Zoidberg: I'm confused, Fry. I'm feeling a strange new emotion. Is it love when you care about a female for reasons beyond mating?
    Fry: Nope. Must be some weird alien emotion.
• Played with in Steven Universe. Gems can very definitely feel and understand love. However, Homeworld has mainly oppressed the concept, leading to many Gems seeing it as an alien idea. In particular, Peridot is initially extremely confused as to why Garnet stays fused all the time. She also has trouble understanding anything that isn't done for a specific purpose. However, after spending more time with the Crystal Gems and obsessively shipping characters on a tv show together, Peridot comes to understand and accept Garnet as a fusion formed from her components' love for each other.

Other

• From The Onion: Sexy Alien Does Not Understand This Thing Humans Call "Love."
• Subverted in Alien Abduction Role Play when Acktreal feigns ignorance of the concept of romantic or sexual love in a vain attempt to blow her human test subject off when they flirt with her. She even makes up a story about how her society has a "breeding program" where baby-making is a loveless affair, involving only artificial insemination.

Comic Books

• X-Men: X-23 was brought up as an assassin, and only her mother and sensei showed her any compassion or kindness during her childhood. And nobody ever told her about boys. As a result, she has no clue what is going on when she finds herself attracted to her teammate Hellion. It gets creepier — after running away from her creators, she drifts into prostitution. So she knows all about the mechanics of sex, it's the emotional aspects that she has no experience with. On the other hand, X-23 still shows signs of loving her aunt and cousin when she stays with them, and hugs her cousin when they leave. Laura's reaction to the death of Sarah Kinney also suggests that she did love her mother as well... it is just when affection and physical attraction intersect that things actually fail to compute.
• Handled matter-of-factly in Mark Evanier's miniseries Crossfire and Rainbow; lab-born, genetically engineered Rainbow confesses her dark secret to her prospective boyfriend: she can't make him happy because she doesn't know what love is! "Well," he says thoughtfully, "looks like I'm just going to have to teach you." (Later on, he correctly divines that she's also afraid she'll be bad in bed. Her: "How did you know?" Him: "You're not as different as you think.")
• Judge Dredd: Dredd doesn't understand why Galen Demarco would want to fraternize with a fellow Judge, or why he didn't report her for kissing him like he was supposed to. At one point Dredd tries to convince Galen that her need for love is just daddy issues; nothing that aversion therapy wouldn't cure. She's not impressed.

Film — Live-Action

• Alta in Forbidden Planet, raised alone by her father, is unfamiliar in the way of kissing until crewmembers offer to explain to her.
  Lt. Jerry Farman: It's nothing really personal — just a kiss.
  Altaira Morbius: Hmm. But why should people want to kiss each other?
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 uses the catchphrase "What is 'Kiss'?" to mock this trope when a character reacts to a kiss with confusion, usually due to the actor's failure to emote properly. The quote "What is 'Kiss'" is often attributed to Forbidden Planet or Star Trek, although the exact phrase was not used in either of these sources. The phrase "what is 'kiss'?" is used verbatim in a skit of That Mitchell and Webb Look, with the discovery of the garden store natives. Followed a few seconds later by "what is 'handjob'?"
• In The Giver, it's repeatedly discussed that there are no words to describe love, a feeling that's totally alien to the Community. One scene where Jonas and Fiona are kissing on security footage, an elder questions what they were doing.
• In Petticoat Planet, the sheriff of the Lady Land of Puckerbush—never having encountered a man before—asks Steve what sex is like on Earth, before proceeding to have her way with him.

Live-Action TV

• Parodied by The Benny Hill Show...
  Leading Lady: [to leading man] What is this thing called, love?
  The Director: Cut, cut, cut! No, no, no! It's "What is this thing, called 'love'?"
• Gob Bluth from Arrested Development experiences love for the first time.
  Gob: What is this feeling?
  Michael: You know, the feeling that you're feeling is just what many of us call... a "feeling".
  Gob: But it's not like envy, or even hungry.
  Michael: Could it be love?
  Gob: I know what an erection feels like, Michael! No, it's the opposite. It's... it's like my heart is getting hard.
• Dexter fits this one pretty perfectly, in the platonic way.
  Dexter: I don't have feelings, but if I did I'd probably have them about Deb.
  • And again about his adoptive father:
    Dexter: If I could love, how much I would have loved Harry.
• On The Odd Couple (1970), episode "Being Divorced is Never Having to Say 'I Do'", Felix breaks up Oscar's ex-wife's wedding (which would have ended Oscar's need to pay alimony) because he realized they weren't in love. Oscar calls him on it and demands to know what love is: (paraphrased a bit)
  Felix: It's a strong, passionate feeling between two people.
  Oscar: I feel that way about you, but I'm pretty sure it's hate.
• Marshal on How I Met Your Mother thinks Robin fits this one.
  Marshal: You don't understand love, ok? You're like some robot who sees a person crying and says "Why is that human leaking?"
• Wonder Woman (1975): Paradise Island is an uncharted island within the devil's triangle, home of the immortal amazons. The youngest of these immortals never have seen a man and when pilot Steve Trevor lands there, the amazons have those strange feelings:
  Princess Diana: When I look at Steve Trevor, I feel things. Things I've never known before.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Chrysalis", Doctor Julian Bashir treats a woman named Sarina Douglas for catalepsy, a state in which she was basically trapped inside her own brain and unable to respond to the outside world. He then develops feelings for her, but when he confesses his feelings, she admits that she doesn't even know what love is. The two do eventually develop a relationship in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch novels.

Theatre

• The eponymous character in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Patience specifically does not, in the beginning, understand why all the other women love when it is clear that Love Hurts. When it is explained to her, she immediately sets out to fall in love:
  Patience: I had no idea that love was a duty!
• Happens all the time in Opera, in which a character will sing "Could this be love?" (usually in another language, of course), generally followed by "Yes — yes, it is!"
• The eponymous Defrosting Ice Princess of Puccini's Turandot is more or less thawed by a kiss from Prince Calaf.

Visual Novels

• Cardia in Code:Realize is mostly an Emotionless Girl as she has lived in isolation and away from civilization as long as she could remember. Her inexperience with the world and interacting with other people makes it challenging for her to recognize when she is falling in love with the love interest. In some routes, she has to be flat out told that what she is feeling towards the love interest is in fact her being in love.
• Saber of Fate/stay night has spent her entire life suppressing her emotions, so her feelings for Shirou leave her confused and angry. She realizes that he's important to her, but it takes a while for her to figure out why.
• Galaxy Angel: Vanilla H is a similar case. Due to suppressing her emotions in order to control her nanomachines, she doesn't understand why her heartbeat and blood pressure increase whenever she's near Tact, and she first assumes she may be sick. It's not until much later that she understands these symptoms are perfectly normal for someone in love (and pretty much everyone else on the ship realizes it before her).
• Rin Tezuka from Katawa Shoujo is heavily implied to be suffering from some kind of personality disorder (likely schizoid), and while she obviously loves Hisao, she has an extremely hard time comprehending the nature of their relationship and their own feelings. Leads to a minor tearjerker moment when, after having sex for the first time, Rin worries that now Hisao wouldn't be her friend anymore, since "friends don't do that".
• In Steam Prison, the population of the Heights is strictly regulated and all marriages are arranged by the government, so romance or sex outside of one's arranged marriage is a crime punishable by exile to the Depths. Between this and her own youth and very sheltered upbringing, heroine Cyrus is vaguely aware that love exists but utterly clueless about what being in love with someone means or how romantic love works. On Adage's path of the Prisoner Route she actually worries that she's getting sick, only for Adage to explain to her that she's in love with him once she's described her "symptoms."

Webcomics

• Yumi's Cells: Control-Z doesn't have a Love Cell. When his crush asks him out, his Naughty Cell tries to go for a kiss, which weirds her out. He then decides that loyalty is similar enough to love and has Loyalty Cell take the lead. This loyalty helps him sustain a relationship for 10 years because he would always work to solve problems rather than break up.

Web Original

• In Three Worlds Collide, the humans find themselves asking the Super Happy version of this question. The answer is essentially the inversion of Mental Affair.
• In the crossover review of Honor & Glory, The Nostalgia Chick shows she has no concept of the word "fun" when it doesn't involve people being hurt.
• bill wurtz has a video where he asks, "what is love?" He concludes that it's a four-letter word that you can use in various ways that are mostly positive.

Western Animation

• Batman, who is notoriously very emotionally closed off on account of having witnessed his parents' murders, manages to fall in love in one episode of Batman: The Animated Series and is unable to comprehend the feeling, resulting in this funny exchange:
  Bruce Wayne: Everything's changed for me these last few weeks. The pain of my parents' deaths... It's still there, but it seems smaller. And there's a new feeling now.
  Barbara Gordon: Which would be...?
  Bruce Wayne: It's a lightness, a sense that things will work out for the best.
  Tim Drake: It's called happiness.
  Bruce Wayne: [angrily] Whatever it is, I like it!
• In Central Park, Season 1 "Dog Spray Afternoon", when Helen asks Cole if they can meet again so he can walk Shampagne again, Cole happily accepts and hugs Helen, which makes her uncomfortable and confuses her. When Cole tells her he was hugging her, she thought he was attacking her really gently.
• In The Fairly OddParents!: When Timmy made his dad super smart, he plans to dissect Cosmo and Wanda in a room full of scientists. When Timmy tells his dad about how much he loves his old non-smart dad, the scientists ask "What is love?" and they all explode.
• The Daughters of Aku from Samurai Jack were raised from birth to be assassins, have no real idea of life outside their cult's headquarters, and have never been exposed to an ounce of love or compassion in their lives. When hunting for Jack, they come across a female deer foraging for food, and are confused as to what it is. They then spot a male deer, and assume that because it has antlers resembling Aku's horns it's one of his minions come to devour the smaller doe. They can only stare in shock and confusion as it nuzzles the doe instead, one even scaring them away due to her uncertainty.

Film — Animated

• The conversation quoted above in Spirited Away between Lin and Kamaji (two spirits) as they watched Chihiro speak to the sleeping Haku both plays it straight and inverts it.

Film — Live Action

• The Lord of Darkness in Legend (1985) is "distracted" by the captured princess's beauty and innocence and advised by his mysterious 'father' to woo her into temptation. There follows probably the best (and most eloquently written) scene in the film, where the devil's seduction rather backfires when the newly-darkened Princess plays His Lovesick Evilness like a two string harp. ^note  The first draft of the screenplay was very different: his pursuit of princessly love leads him to turning her into a bestial cat-woman and the two of them having lots and lots of sweaty monster sex.

Live-Action TV

• Angel: Illyria, having revealed that she can adopt the form and memories of her dead host 'Fred' Burkle, offers to do so for Wesley (Fred's former Love Interest) in order to understand intimate relationships. Wes is outraged by this suggestion and refuses to speak to her for a while. As the series goes on, she develops her own emotions and is confused by what they are. This is shown in the finale, where she ignores Angel's instructions to regroup at the alley, and instead rushes to Vail's mansion to check on Wesley.
  Illyria: I killed all mine. And I was— [draws a blank]
  Wesley: ...Concerned?
  Illyria: Yes.
• The demon Anya in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after she loses her power and is trapped in human form, falls in love with Xander. And apparently granting wishes to scorned women for thousands of years didn't do much to teach her about love. Although oddly enough it's later revealed that she was originally a normal human - a married one who was in love with her husband before he cheated on her - before becoming a demon. Presumably, a thousand years of viewing men as nothing but evildoers to be punished left her with very little of her human understanding of love.
• In Kamen Rider Kiva, Maya grows increasingly curious as to why so many Fangires fall in love with humans, even knowing it'll bring eventual death. As a result, she seduces Otoya, Yuri's lover, but their relationship steadily grows more intimate and she eventually falls in love for real. Her husband, the 1986 King, is displeased. However, instead of simply killing her, he takes her Queen and Fangire powers. In the end, this ends up in our hero being born.

Visual Novels

• In Magical Diary, Damien struggles with this after his villainous breakdown. It's suggested that he probably does love the PC, but in a fairly messed-up way.
  Damien: I became... fond of your company.
  Player: You expect me to believe that you set out to kill me and then you fell in love with me?
  Damien: Is that what this is? I don't even know.
• In Strawberry Vinegar, Licia tells Rie about a confusing feeling she has upon her return, causing her to turn red and her heart to beat fast, thinking she's getting sick again. Rie awkwardly convinces her it's not, but dodges explaining it to her.

Live-Action TV

• Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, once he's got a government issued microchip in his noggin preventing him from harming humans, finds to his frustration his obsession with Buffy Summers morphing into genuine affection. This cognitive dissonance eventually impels him to begin a complex Heel–Face Turn culminating in a quest to restore his human soul.
• True Blood has an interesting variation on this when Eric (vampire) and Sookie (human) are discussing his relationship to Godric, who turned him into a vampire.
  Sookie: He's your maker, isn't he?
  Eric: [angrily] Don't use words you don't understand!
  Sookie: You have a lot of love for him.
  Eric: [wistfully] Don't use words I don't understand.

Tabletop Games

• The The World of Darkness vampire games use two variants.
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade, vampires are pretty much dead emotionally once they undergo the Embrace — they're left with fading memories of what they once felt, and the only things they truly feel are the anger, hunger, and fear generated by the Beast.
  • In Vampire: The Requiem, a vampire's emotions don't quite go away, but they work more like a form of "emotional replay," where they lock onto the closest emotion they felt in life that resembles what they should feel now. This can be a problem if a vampire who's just learned that his (mortal) mother died can only lock onto that time his pet hamster passed away... and it's stated that in cases where a vampire encounters emotions he never truly felt in life, severe cognitive dissonance will ensue.

Video Games

• Warcraft:
  • The Forsaken display this. One quest in World of Warcraft has a member of the race ask you to avenge his wife who was killed by his (still living) former best friend. He states that he can no longer feel love and is only able to feel revenge. However one seasonal quest chain on Valentine's day implies that the forsaken are still able to feel love in the same manner as they did in life.
  • Also, Sylvanas Windrunner, the Dark Action Girl leader of the Forsaken, still feels for her brethren and especially her still-living siblings. She's got a reputation to uphold, so she keeps the Defrosting Ice Queen moments to a minimum.
  • The Forsaken are pretty much a crapshoot in that regard. For every four or five rotten sociopaths you get one or two who just want to live out their free unlives while they can or aren't all that bad. Leonid Bartholomew of the Argent Dawn jumps to mind. This also seems to be more or less reflected in the Forsaken slice of the roleplay community.

Webcomics

• Richard from Looking for Group is seemingly incapable of experiencing compassion for others, due to his nature as an undead warlock. His only joy comes from slaughtering others. In the video for "Slaughter Your World", Richard himself states that "I suppose that being undead there's not much to life/A soul is needed for loving, feeling/"
  • On the other hand, Richard does display an ounce of humanity on at least one occasion. His former minion, Hctib Elttil, was confident that the warlock would never break the curse that the imp placed on him and remain a weakened, miniature version of his former self forever, because the only way to break the curse was to perform a selfless act. Sure enough, Richard regained his former stature and power level by saving a small human child. It was indeed selfless, because at that point he didn't know how to break the curse.
  • He's also fond of the rabbit the rest of the group jokingly got him as a mount. At least, he keeps it with him, and hasn't immolated the little guy yet. In fact, after Richard was sent to another plane, the little rabbit started crying; they later had a happy reunion, complete with running to each other on the beach. Lets not forget his battlecry:
    Richard: For PONY!
  • In a more comical variation, Richard overhears Cale and Benny resolving their unresolved sexual tension, mistakes it for murder ("It sounds like he's hurting her!") and gleefully offers to help hide the body.
• In BACK, undead cowgirl Abigail's first response to seeing a wedding is to ask what happened, and whether the participants are criminals. After an explanation from Daniel, she comes to the conclusion that while she doesn't love Daniel, she does like him.

Comic Books

• Batman: Even the Joker himself has been confused about the nature of his twisted relationship with Harley Quinn.

Film — Animated

• Sleeping Beauty (1959): Fauna points out that the few things Maleficent doesn't understand are love, kindness, and the joys of helping others. Hence why Flora points out that if they shelter the princess themselves (selflessly helping someone at their own risk), Maleficent wouldn't be able to expect it so easily.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Subverted with the non-corporeal First Evil in "Touched". Several Scoobies are having a Pre-Climax Climax. The First talks of its envy of these humans who can touch each other... because it would like to be able to hold someone's neck in their hands and feel it snap.
• Mashin Sentai Kiramager: Sinister Minister Yodonna lacks emotions, and only worked as a tool for Emperor Yodon's schemes of multiversal domination. Her Direct to Video spin-off series showcased herself being granted resurrection upon learning emotions, with the last one being love (which was the focus of the third episode). All along, Yodonna was acting clueless about love and other emotions.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The drow elves belong to a sociopathic society where lust and politics drive intimacy rather than affection, so in the rare event a drow does fall in love, they often find the experience — valuing someone else's well-being! — to be strange and frightening, driving some lovesick drow to destroy whoever is "corrupting" them. Those who don't generally try to acquire the other drow as a slave if their status is lower, or improve their own station if their paramour is higher class, in hopes that the other drow takes notice. It is extremely rare, but if two drow reciprocate each other's affections, such couples can become almost unstoppable forces in their society... but almost always fall apart due to suspicions of betrayal, because fully trusting another person is just as alien a concept as love is to a drow.

Visual Novels

• Kuwagata Takuma from Swan Song (2005) fails to understand the meaning of love upon being told that someone loves him.

Webcomics

• The Goddess Aesma from Kill Six Billion Demons only experienced love once in her life, when she first saw the The Red Eyed King for the first time. She was so confused at what she was feeling she accused the King of having bewitched her, which only confused him as well. Sadly for Aesma (but luckily for the rest of Creation) the King was incapable of loving her back and his attempts to manipulate her into freeing him backfired extremely badly.
• Gently spoofed in the Team Fortress 2 "WAR!" comic, where The Administrator has to ask her assistant exactly what friends do together.
  Administrator: Miss Pauling, you strike me as the sort of person who would have friends. Tell me... What do they do?
  Ms. Pauling: Um. Go skating... Look at gun catalogs... Sometimes we just talk...
  Administrator: Talking? Friendship is even worse than I thought.

Western Animation

• Azula of Avatar: The Last Airbender makes her first "miscalculation" because she never factored in The Power of Love.
  • Also, "The Beach" shows that she doesn't understand romance or flirting at all; her sales pitch is an outright We Can Rule Together because she doesn't have the slightest clue what else she can say to seem attractive beyond just using her looks.
  • And don't even get us started on her relationship with her mother, Ursa. Again, in "The Beach", she casually shrugs off the notion that Ursa thought of her as anything more than a monster. Then the series finale happens...
    Azula: Trust is for fools; fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me...
    Hallucination of Ursa in a mirror: No. I love you, Azula. I do.
    [Azula shatters mirror, breaks down into tears]
• In Gargoyles, it takes David Xanatos considerable effort to comprehend his feelings for Fox. It's actually discussed when he proposes:
  Xanatos: Marry me.
  Fox: Are you serious?
  Xanatos: We're genetically compatible, highly intelligent and have the same goals. It makes perfect sense to get married.
  Fox: True, but what about... love?
  Xanatos: I think we love each other... as much as two people such as ourselves are capable of that emotion.
  • And later on, he considers it a weakness, which Goliath calls him out on.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, this turns out to be the cause of Discord's villainy. Having existed for God only knows how long and without ever having a friend, he simply didn't understand friendship and used his powers for nothing other than his own amusement.
• Gravity Falls: In "The Golf War", Pacifica Northwest has trouble with the concept of "sharing" when Mabel tries to bury the hatchet and offers her a taco. She doesn't even know how to pronounce the word properly.
• In The Lion Guard's Season 3 premiere, it's clear from what he sings in "New Way to Go" that Janja sincerely has no idea why he can't stop thinking about Jasiri or why he's changed because of her ("Why do I feel this way inside?"), whereas any viewer watching can tell, "Dude, you are so in love with her!"

Comic Books

• Played with in Fables; Bigby Wolf (who was willingly infected with a werewolf disease that lets him spend most of his time in human form) has feelings for the (fully human) Snow White which takes him centuries to work out. He explains that (sentient) wolves do have a concept of love for each other (his own mother pined and died of a broken heart after being abandoned by his father) and it's usually triggered by love at first sniff. However, he still spent a long time confused about it because (1) when he first experienced this with Snow it was before he gained his human form, so they truly were totally different species, and (2) he was the self-proclaimed "unrepentant lord of monsters" at that time, who killed and ate people purely on a whim, so dedication to another was totally alien to him.

Film — Live-Action

• Deep in the Valley is a movie featuring a Trapped in TV Land type reality where Porn Tropes are real. The characters from this reality, such as Daphne, are very familiar with sex but haven't heard of love.

Live-Action TV

• A for Andromeda: Fleming explains to Andromeda (a synthetic woman created and controlled by an alien-designed Master Computer) the difference between right and wrong ('nasty' and 'nice') by pinching and then stroking her. Later on Fleming grabs her for a snog, though by that stage she has already started to develop emotions, including concern for his life.
• Fringe:
  • The episode "August" is about an Observer who saves a girl from dying in a plane crash, in violation of the Observers' rule against interference, and eventually sacrifices his own life to protect her. As he's dying, he explains why to September:
    September: Who is she? Why did you save her?
    August: I saw her many years ago. She was a child. Her parents had just been killed. She was crying. She... she was brave. She crossed my mind. Somehow, she never left it. I think... it is what they call feelings. I think... I love her. Will she be safe now?
    September: Yes. You made her important. She is responsible for the death of one of us.
  • Later, in the episode "A Short Story About Love", September seems to have started to understand the concept.
    September: I have a theory, based on a uniquely human principle. I believe you could not be fully erased because the people who care about you would not let you go, and you would not let them go.
    September: I believe you call it Love.
• The phrase is referenced on Would I Lie to You? by Lee Mack to mock David Mitchell after he phrases a sentence strangely.
  David: What did the vending machine... vend?
  Lee: What is this thing you call 'love' human?

Theatre

• In Death Note: The Musical one minor change to Rem's character is that she now doesn't understand what love is, and expresses confusion and disdain towards humans for being so influenced by it. After she meets Misa, however, she starts to change her opinion. When she realizes she's perfectly willing to die for Misa, she had a song that all but states that she finally gets it.
• Death himself falls in love with the titular character of Elisabeth, spends a song mulling it over ^note the solo "Ai to Shi no Rondo"/"The Rondo of Love and Death", created for the Takarazuka Revue production, and made its way back into the German as the duet "Rondo/Schwarzer Prinz (Black Prince)", and decides that loving Sisi means to pursue her wherever she goes and persuade her to die so she could be with him.

Video Games

• Muzet from Tales of Xillia 2 is a spirit who hasn't had many interactions with humans beyond former Big Bad Gaius. Maxing out Muzet's Relationship Values with Player Character Ludger will cause her to admit in a short skit that she "feels funny" whenever she's near Ludger. Notably, when you start casting the dual Mystic Arte with them linked, Muzet blows Ludger a kiss.

Visual Novels

• Minotaur Hotel: As Asterion continues to work with the protagonist, he starts to grow feelings for him in the main route. At first, he's really confused by these feelings he brings to him, and even the narrator can't describe these sensations brought to him.

Webcomics

• In Leftover Soup, Maxine's D&D character (a half-fey thri-kreen bard) uses this as a pickup line.
• At one point in Narbonic, Mell says "Oh, Artie ... You understand everything except this thing called love." Actually, what Artie doesn't understand is the weird thing Helen and Professor Madblood have, and why Dave is attracted to a woman who uses him as a test subject. And he's quite happy not understanding these things.
• Lampshaded and played with in Errant Story, where the elves' immortality doesn't allow them to grasp the concept, as Sarine points out. This doesn't stop her from putting the trope to good, if mocking, use with Jon. (Make the obvious substitution for "sarcasm" in the line Sarine quotes from the play.)
• Rare Candy Treatment had a strip about a Cryogonal (a genderless snowflake Pokemon) learning the move Attract and setting out to learn what love is. It will never succeed.

Web Original

• There's a series of old jokes with *NIX commands giving "meaningful answers". One of them is
  make love
  Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.
• Filthy Frank has a sentient Macbook that laments on this fact. Seen here