"Now get out there and make someone smile."
—The Boss, Smiling Friends
Bob notices that Alice is in a bit of a dour mood. Maybe she got turned down for a promotion, or her boyfriend just broke up with her, or her favorite potato chip brand just got discontinued.
Whatever the case is, Bob cares about her too much to let her wallow in her own misery. So he takes a seat right next to her and declares that he refuses to leave until he can get a smile out of her, one way or another.
This is usually used to heartwarming effect, demonstrating the platonic or romantic bond shared between the two characters.
See also Cheer Them Up with Laughter, which is one method that the character may use to achieve their goal; Finger-Forced Smile, which is another such method; and When She Smiles when they succeed. Compare Cheer Up Episode (when the efforts span an entire episode, rather than just one scene) and Must Make Her Laugh (when it's a long-term effort over the course of the series). Contrast Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul, when someone gets compelled/enchanted/etc. to smile against their will. May overlap with How About a Smile?. May result in The Un-Smile.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Zigzagged in Chapter 30; half of the girls try to get Perpetual Smiler Mei to open her eyes by doing things to make her stop smiling, such as scaring her or hurting her, while the other half tries to do so by making her extra happy. Rentarou succeeds by tricking her into laughing at one of Hahari’s mishaps.
- Ace Attorney (2016): The A-plot of "Sound the Turnabout Melody", a Whole Episode Flashback, is kicked off when Franziska von Karma notices that Miles Edgeworth never smiles, so she asks her father to take them to a mall and eat pancakes to cheer Miles up.
- Case Closed: In a flashback depicting Sera Masumi's first meeting with her Aloof Older Brother, Shuichi Akai, she decides to try and make him smile by making funny faces to him—none of which worked. When she sees him laugh over a young Shinichi's detective antics, she decides to become a detective herself.
- There's a Doraemon short, "Make That Girl Laugh!" where Nobita and gang try getting Musuko, a Perpetual Frowner from their class, to turn her frown upside-down for once to no avail until Doraemon procures a gadget-of-the-week called "The Expression Controller" to literally force Musuko into cracking a smile. Even that doesn't work (initially) until Nobita overcranks the gadget and eventually made Musuko smile... to the point of dislocating her cheek.
- The Jet Black Hedgehog: Shadow the Hedgehog: The start of the manga has Maria trying to cheer Shadow up and get him to smile, as she sees him with his constant dour expressions. Near the end of the manga, as Maria is about to return to her own timeline, she tells Shadow not to look grim and to send Maria off with a big smile. Sad, but shaky, Shadow gives her a crooked Tearful Smile, a Single Tear falling to the ground once she disappears. Shadow can only let out a wail of agony after letting her go.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:
- Fate Testarossa is physically abused by her mother Precia, and as a result is usually sad and distant. In episode 8, Fate's familiar Arf says that she feels emotional pain whenever Fate is crying or grieving and only wants to see Fate smile. As a result, she does everything she can to help Fate and make her happy.
- Precia Testarossa tells Fate that Fate is actually a clone and not her real daughter, sending Fate into a Heroic BSoD. When Fate comes out of it, she says that all she ever wanted was for Precia to smile at her. She had spent most of her life up to that point being a devoted daughter, doing everything she could to please Prescia, even submitting to vicious physical abuse at her hands.
- My Hero Academia:
- During the Culture Festival arc, Izuku Midoriya vows that he'll make the recently-rescued yet severely-traumatized little girl Eri smile. She finally breaks into a huge grin while watching Class 1-A's performance.
- Ms. Joke, the smile hero who teaches at Ketsubutsu high school, is intent on getting a smile or laugh out of Aizawa every time the schools get together. During the Provisional License Exam, she tells him his fly is open and she asks him to marry her. Aizawa is more resistant than most to her humor and just seems annoyed.
- Princess Tutu: In the opening scene, a young duck watches a lonely prince dancing and wishes that he would smile, saying she would do anything to help him do that. Drosselmeyer overhears her wishes and gives her a Transformation Trinket that transforms her into a human girl and turns her into Princess Tutu, whose mission is to retrieve the missing shards of the prince's heart to restore his emotions, including his ability to smile.
Films — Live-Action
- In the short film, Validation, Hugh has a gift for boosting people's self-esteem and making them smile with sincere compliments—until he meets the perpetually frowning photographer Victoria at the DMV and falls in love at first sight. Making her smile becomes Hugh's primary obsession. He tries every compliment he can think of, follows her after work, but despite his best efforts, he can't get her to crack a smile, which shakes his confidence and leads him to abandon his complimentary ways entirely. He finally breaks through when he unknowingly validates Victoria's elderly mother, restoring her happiness and indirectly melting Victoria's emotional barriers, earning him the genuine smile he'd been seeking.
Literature
- Big Nate: A less selfless version in "In a Class by Himself". Nate wants to see if he can make Mr. Galvin smile because he has read a fortune cookie that said he will surpass all others, and he thinks it would be quite a feat to get a smile out of a Perpetual Frowner like him.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg's neighbors, the Snellas, have a habit of holding "half-birthday parties" for each of their kids when they turn six months old, with the highlight being that all the attendees line up and try to make the baby smile and laugh. Not only have none of the babies ever laughed, but it's also clear that Mr. and Mrs. Snella do it so they can send the footage in to America's Funniest Families and win the grand prize.
- In Magic Tree House book "Monday with a Mad Genius", Leonardo da Vinci has been trying to get Lisa to smile. She says that the reason she refuses to smile for him is that he will finish his painting of her and then forget all about her. He promises that he will keep the painting with him as a treasured possession for the rest of his life, and then she is finally willing to smile.
- A subplot in the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Debtors Planet is Riker, with the assistance of Geordi, trying to get Worf to laugh. After all their attempts fail, it's Data who manages it completely inadvertently.
Live-Action TV
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Amy is working on the Christmas card for the 99th precinct, only that she can't seem to find a single picture of Rosa smiling. So she tries to find a way to make her smile.
- iCarly: The B-plot of "iPie" is that Freddie is babysitting his second cousin’s baby, Stephanie, who laughs and giggles for everyone else, but becomes utterly emotionless when she sees him. He tries all sorts of things to make her giggle, and he eventually succeeds when he smashes a pie in his own face.
- In the Heat of the Night: In "Bubba's Baby" when Jamison goes to take the picture with the baby that had been left with Bubba, he tries to get Bubba to smile. Bubba only relents and smiles when Gillespie orders him to smile.
- On Scrubs, J.D. and Turk often like to use their stuffed dog Rowdy (as in taxidermically stuffed) to play pranks
. One episode shows that they also like to leave Rowdy in front of the door of other people in the apartment building and then crack those people up with jokes about the situation when they return the "lost dog". One guy, however, has refused to so much as smile at their jokes, even after "returning" Rowdy fourteen times, which naturally makes the guys even more determined to get him to laugh. Turk finally manages to get him to crack a smile on the fifteenth attempt.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series: Getting Spock to smile is difficult at best since he is an emotionless Vulcan.
- By the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Worf has a reputation among his shipmates as a "big guy who never smiles." So the times when he actually does smile are few and far between.
- Star Trek: Voyager: Self-appointed Morale Officer Neelix keeps trying to get Tuvok to smile. Unfortunately, Tuvok is a Vulcan, so this just annoys him more than anything. This is to the extent where Tuvok strangles a simulation of Neelix in the holodeck in exactly this scenario, as part of an attempt to manage his loss of emotional control after mind-melding with a murderer (in "Meld".)
Music
- From "Dear Prudence" by The Beatles:
Dear Prudence, let me see you smileDear Prudence, like a little childThe clouds will be a daisy chainSo let me see you smile againDear Prudence, won't you let me see you smile?
- Nat King Cole: In "Smile", note the singer tells the listener to smile even when things seem sad, because a smile would remind them the sadness won't last. The song has been covered by various performers over the years, including Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett, and Glee.
''Smile, though your heart is achingSmile, even though it’s breakingWhen there are clouds in the skyyou’ll get byIf you smile through your fear and sorrowSmile and maybe tomorrowYou’ll see the sun come shining throughfor you''
Theatre
- Bye Bye Birdie: In one scene, one of the Sweet Apple teenage girls gets depressed over the fact that she'll probably be too old for Conrad Birdie once he gets back from war. This leads to the song "Put on a Happy Face", in which Albert beckons her to cheer up.
Video Games
- BlazBlue: Chronophantasma: There are a few scenes where Bang is trying to get the serious mercenary Bullet to cheer up, up to hilariously ridiculous methods such as belly-dancing. In the end, she lets out a light laugh, not because of what Bang did but because she's amused by seeing him trying.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening: In Inigo's support conversations with Lucina, he says her Perpetual Frown is bringing down the morale of the rest of the army. He then tries to make her smile, first by forcefully pulling on her cheeks, then by tickling her. Though both attempts end up making Lucina's mood even worse, she comes to understand his point of view by their third conversation and gives him a genuine smile.
- Rhythm Thief & the Emperor's Treasure: After Marie is rejected by her mother, Raphael performs a dance number to cheer her up. The sequence is accompanied by the song "One More Time", whose lyrics are all about getting the listener to smile.
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby: In one of her random career events, Mihono Bourbon encounters a baby that starts crying every time it sees her. She enlists the help of her trainer, along with her roommate Nishino Flower, to figure out a way to get the baby to smile when it sees her instead, and eventually succeeds.
Webcomics
- Kat Vance of Sequential Art is a professional photographer, and often has to photograph small children in shopping malls and department stores, as in strip #84. This particular tot hasn't smiled for the camera in four hours at least, leaving Kat to go home and eviscerate That One Boss in frustration.
Western Animation
- Camp Lazlo: In "The Wig of Why", after finding a wig, Lazlo starts predicting the future, with every prediction being correct. He asks for a smile before his predictions, which the grouchy Edward refuses to do. When Lazlo writes something in the wig that he doesn't think will ever happen, Edward finally gives him a smile and looks inside the wig. What does it say? Edward will smile for Lazlo.
- In the Family Guy episode, "3 Acts of God", Peter and his friends find out that God is using His powers to make the New England Patriots lose. When they confront Him about it, He makes a deal with them, promising that He'll stop if they can get Patriots coach Bill Belichick to smile.
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "My Fair Mandy", when Mandy decides to compete in the Miss Scurvy Pageant and try to win to prove Mindy wrong, Crabina tells her the only way she can win is if she smiles. Billy and Grim spend the episode trying to get her to smile, only to realize too late that actually getting her to do this upsets the natural order of things so much that reality falls apart, and the show transforms into The Powerpuff Girls (1998).
- Little Einsteins: In "Music Monsters", the Little Red Monster sings a special "Smile Song" that causes whoever is in the same area at the time to smile and feel better.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Pinkie Pie's main mission in life is to make people smile and laugh. This is particularly pronounced in "A Friend in Deed" when she sings "The Smile Song" and encounters Cranky Doodle Donkey, who refuses to smile no matter what Pinkie does for him, in some ways making the problem worse by trying too hard. It takes Pinkie learning that Cranky has been searching for his long-lost special friend and recognizing some items from his scrapbook for her to reunite him with Matilda, whose kiss finally makes Cranky smile.
- Rankin/Bass Productions produced The Osmonds in 1972, an Animated Adaptation of the Osmond family musical group. One episode has The Osmonds touring Ireland. There, they encounter a town that's home to Smilin' Meg, a ginger girl once known for her cheery smile and bright disposition. That is, until she suffered a heartbreak which has left her listless and morose. One song from these cute boys, however, rectifies that.
- Smiling Friends: This is the purpose of the titular charity organization Smiling Friends, dedicated to making the world a happier place by making its clients smile. However, Smiling Friends is also a Deconstructive Parody of the trope. Many of the clients suffer from serious, real-life issues that its employees are utterly unequipped to deal with, such as a middle-aged man's suicidal depression, and while Pim and Charlie always manage to cheer them up every episode, it always comes down to dumb luck. Not helping matters is that clients tend to be their own worst enemy at best, or exploitative at worst; one client named Mr. Frog is an unrepentantly psychopathic White-Dwarf Starlet who undermines the main duo's efforts with his violent tendencies, and another named James feigns depression to take advantage of the company's services, forcing Charlie to be his personal servant.
- Wander Over Yonder: In "The Birthday Boy", Lord Hater is given a new Doom Arena for his birthday party and his unexpected guests are Wander and Sylvia, and Hater gets excited as he wants to see Wander grovel and cower up in real fear. But Wander, on the other hand, seems unaware of the Doom Arena's disasters and is only interested in seeing how miserable Hater is on his birthday, and he spends the entire episode doing everything he can to get Hater to smile.
Real Life
- At the 2013 Oscars, Seth MacFarlane opened the event with "The quest for Tommy Lee Jones' laugh begins now." This actually drew a chuckle from the famously stoic and Deadpan Snarker actor.
