Elan: Wow! Thanks, Captain Scoundrél! I guess since you have no children, you're passing [your rapier] on to me instead?
Julio: What, are you kidding? I have a son and/or daughter in every port on the continent, I'm just too lazy to figure out which one should get it.
Julio: What, are you kidding? I have a son and/or daughter in every port on the continent, I'm just too lazy to figure out which one should get it.
A story device wherein an adventuring character, usually constantly on the move exploring new places, outrunning authorities, or being deployed in far-off lands, carries out several romantic affairs in each of the various places they stop to visit. The character could be a Casanova, or simply trying and constantly failing to find a place to belong. Either way, every place on the map is marked with a romantic conquest, and the character is using the distance or vast separation between locations to give separate romantic attention to each lover, or to start a new life.
Often Played for Laughs where the character finds themself forced to return somewhere that one of their spurned or clingy lovers lives. Sometimes, they can't remember WHICH lover they had at this particular port, but go Oh, Crap! once they remember who it was.
Sub-Trope of Really Gets Around. Common in plots with Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow, Asian Baby Mama, The Chief's Daughter or a Farmer's Daughter.
Can overlap with Girl of the Week. Could be a form of Polyamory if the various loves are on board.
See also Living a Double Life and Secret Other Family. And see Harem Genre for when competing love interests live very close or under one roof.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- Le Male
: Implied in the ad for this fragrance by Jean Paul Gautier; a sailor is shown getting up from a woman’s bed, redressing, and leaving without a word, while she groggily sniffs his pillow to try and remember his scent.
Comic Books
- The Incredible Hercules: After Herc's "death" at the end of the eponymous comic, one of his lovers, Namora, and her friend, Venus, travel to various homes and businesses that Hercules owned. At each place, they found a woman living there who was one of Herc's many girlfriends that he would visit from time to time. All of them are utterly heartbroken when they learn that he's died.
- The Incredible Hulk: Hulk has had many different lovers and wives, and he's fathered children with some of them. The main reason why he's had so many is Bruce Banner's constant need to stay on the run and find a place where he and the Hulk won't cause trouble or hurt anyone, but he still cannot avoid falling in love with a local. Also, a lot of Hulk's separate personalities consider themselves entirely different people, often disagreeing on which woman they consider their One True Love (if any). Gray Hulk, for instance, moved to Las Vegas and worked as a pimp and a bouncer, acquiring a harem of women in the process. On another occasion, Savage Hulk entered the sub-atomic kingdom K'ai and, after magically having the Bruce Banner personality become dominant in Hulk's mind, fell in love with princess Jarella, The Green Scar was forced off-world by The Illuminati and found a happy life on the planet Sakaar, along with his new wife, Caiera. On yet another occasion, an otherworldly deity named Umar took an enraged Hulk back to her dimension to make him her consort. Feeling there was nothing left for him back on Earth, Hulk allowed her to, although his ex-wife, Betty Ross, resented it and eventually followed Hulk to that world.
- Jimmys Bastards: Exaggerated with Jimmy Regent, a James Bond parody who seems to have literally had a Girl of the Week, leading to his having hundreds of, well, bastard children (starting at 15), many of whom are out for revenge for his being a Disappeared Dad.
Fan Works
- The Bolt Chronicles: Blaze says he has sweethearts scattered throughout Los Angeles in “The Cameo.”
- Vow of Nudity: The Jackal (a tiefling sky pirate) mentions having multiple wives in different ports across the continent, and insists they’re all aware and consenting to the situation when Haara initially interprets this as her simply being a serial womanizer.
- The infamous pirate Revy Memito in We Are All Pokémon Trainers had numerous lovers in numerous ports throughout the world. Ever, PEFE!Every, All, Brie, Amanita, and Revy the Second are all descended from his paramours, Amanita in particular from a Spectran servant Revy met sometime during the Conquest Arc.
Films — Live-Action
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Captain Jack Sparrow goes for a more condensed version with lots of girls...in the same port. He returns to Tortuga only to immediately receive an Bitch Slap from one of his spurned exes (the reason is explained in Tales of the Code: Wedlocked). He begrudgingly admits, "I deserved that". A few are to follow.
- Pride of the Yankees: Ellie thinks Lou must have a girl in every town because he’s a traveling baseball player, but he quickly puts the idea to rest.
- Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt: Romasanta is a travelling vendor who has a lover in many of the towns along his route.
- Troy: Mentioned in context only. After learning that his brother Paris has smuggled Helen of Sparta onto their ship and hearing his claim that he loves her, Hector tears Paris a new one about the political consequences of his actions, and writes off his feelings as just the latest step in a cycle.
—Hector: “It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?! You roam from town to town, bedding merchant’s wives and temple mates, and you think you know something about love?!”
Literature
- Isaac Asimov's "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda": Max is telling a story about when he was in Marsport without his wife, but struggled with an urgent case preventing him from spending time with an old girlfriend.
- Ciaphas Cain mentions playing around a lot in his early career. He eventually stopped, however. Partly because it kept putting him in danger (e.g. by dating a girl who turned out to be chaos cultist, or a stroppy spoilt heiress) and partly because he met the love of his life, Amberly (and since she's an inquisitor, cheating would definitely put him in danger).
- Farewell, a famous poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, is about sailors that keep relationships like this, kissing girls and then leaving, and doing it again until their ships sunk and they die.
- The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Much of the stallion novel Proud Immortal Demon Way revolves around Luo Binghe seducing women wherever he goes, usually adding them to his harem afterwards.
Live Action TV
- Arrowverse.
- Oliver Queen used to be like this before he became the Arrow, and when he visits Gotham in Elseworlds (2018) he finds himself in the embarrassing position of contacting Vesper Fairchild for information when he can't remember if he had sex with her or not. Turns out she had, and hangs up on him.
- In Legends of Tomorrow. Sara Lance does this except with Time Travel, so she has a girl in every era of history. That's often literally, as she's bisexual.
- Yara Greyjoy from Game of Thrones has boys and girls in every port, apparently.
- Money Heist: Bogota shows Denver pictures of his many children. Each is from a different mother, and each lives in a different country.
Music
- The song "Area Codes" by Ludacris has the rapper bragging about this on a smaller scale. The chorus goes "I got hos/In different area codes", signifying that he's got a lot of girlfriends spread all across a city.
- In the song "I Got a Girl" by Lou Bega, the singer describes himself as an extremely promiscuous man who has a girlfriend wherever he travels around the world. Taken further with the following lines:
I gotta girl on the Moon, I gotta girl on Mars
I even gotta girl that likes to dance in the stars - "Travelin' Man", a hit for Ricky Nelson in 1961, is about this. He's left behind lovers in Mexico, Alaska, Germany, Hong Kong, and Hawaii, at least.
- Jairo's song La Balada de Corto Maltese states that the eponymous Anti-Hero is into this, and focuses on a Femme Fatale he meets in Argentina. They carry on a passionate affair, but Corto leaves her to pursue adventures in the rest of South America. Corto never learns that the woman is pregnant with his son, however, and at the end of the song their little son is said to go every day to the local harbour, hoping his father will show up.
- Referenced and inverted in the Sailor's Dream song "Twiddles":
"Oh you hear a lot of stories 'bout the sailors and their sport
About how every sailor has a girl in every port
But if you added two and two, you'd figure out right quick
It's just because the girls all have a lad on every ship!" - Dion and the Belmonts' "The Wanderer" is about a noncommittal man who roams around different towns and meets many women.
- The Leslie Fish / Vic Tyler [1] "Spaceman's Dilemma" is a humorous take on this — a spacer in a bar is drowning his sorrows over having to choose which of seven women (including a gypsy trader, a barbarian queen, and a priestess whose cult chose him as consort) to settle down with, and which ones to anger. Or maybe it's just boasting in a bar.
Video Games
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: One quest has Geralt running around Novigrad trying to find his friend Dandelion by talking to his various ladyfriends. The DLC "Blood and Wine" has him reunited with Duchess Anna Henrietta in the far-South country of Toussaint, who denies caring if Dandelion has spoken of her. The novels contain even more examples of Dandelion's sexual exploits, in each corner of the map.
- Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect 2: On Illium, Shepard can flirt with the asari Shiala and a male Shepard can get a kiss from Gianna Parasini, with both showing interest in pursuing it further someday. On the Normandy-2, he/she can romance one of several crewmates while cheating on any romantic partner chosen in the first game.
- Mass Effect: Andromeda: Ryder (both male and female) can engage in this trope by having a full romantic Love Interest on the Tempest, as well as at least two other regular lovers on a few hub worlds. If s/he does, the non-crew lover acknowledges that they are The Mistress in this relationship but don't mind, because they love even the little bit of attention Ryder gives them, and will offer him/her a home with them for as long as they want it.
- Lufia & The Fortress of Doom: The party can progressively talk to up to three women throughout the world with sailor boyfriends. Lufia gets vocally suspicious that it's the same sailor after the second one, and the third one is crying after finding out she's not the only one.
- Fable:
- In Fable, the Hero of Oakvale can have a wife or husband in each of Albion's five towns. An in-universe book describes a polygamist's wives discovering his charade and subjecting their husband to a visit from the Mythical Castrating Mountain Monkey, but the Hero is able to manage his separate households without such misfortune.
- This can occur in Fable II, if the player is a polygamist and marries more than one spouse, they'd better do it in a different town, or very separate parts in the same town. If either spouse discovers the other, they will be heartbroken and lead to a divorce.
- This is quite possible to do mechanically in Uncharted Waters: New Horizons: Any Player Character except Catalina (the only female captain among the six) can woo any of the waitresses he meets in major ports around the world with stories of his exploits, jewelry, or treasures until she falls in love with him, and there is no limit on how many girls can fall for him.
- In Sid Meier's Pirates!, every port city in the Caribbean has a Governor's daughter whom the player character can court. Although he can only marry one, he can romance any number of them simultaneously for their quest rewards, even as a married man.
- Grand Theft Auto: Some protagonists have the ability to acquire multiple girlfriends throughout that game's city or state, but in Grand Theft Auto IV, this was a real challenge, because each girl required separate attention to keep up their Relationship Values, which meant putting missions or other activities constantly on hold while Niko raced from girlfriend to girlfriend, trying to keep each one happy.
- Fallout 4: Possible to achieve, if the player romances all romanceable characters, then sends them back to their normal base of operations or permanently settles them at different towns across the Commonwealth.
- Inverted in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with Mirabelle Monet, the infamous proprietress of the Fo'c's'le Boarding House in Anvil, where the beds are reserved for seamen. Her NPC Scheduling generally has her sleep with at least two sailors every night.
- In seemingly every Huana village in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, there's someone (man or woman) who has slept with Tekēhu. He's even had a fling with a member of the violently isolationist Wahaki. Few are happy to see the irresponsible carouser again.
Web Comics
- In The Order of the Stick, the swashbuckling Cool Airship captain Julio Scoundrél has a long-running fan club of "Julioteers" and "a son and/or daughter in every port on the continent", so he settles for gifting prized possessions to his protégé Elan rather than sort out which one is entitled to them.
Western Animation
- Family Guy: In Peter’s Got Woods, Quagmire speculates that since he’s slept with women all over the world, he could have children who are in their 20’s (this is confirmed immediately by a cutaway to an adult son of his in Madrid).
- The Simpsons: In "New Kids on the Blecch", Bart is recruited - along with Milhouse, Nelson, and Ralph - to be part of a new boy band. Lisa discovers that the whole project is actually a covert operation to spread subliminal messages for Navy recruitment, as hinted in the opening lyric for one of the band’s songs.
—"I’ve had a girl in every port, from here to Barcelona."—"But now I’m back in Springfield, and girl, I’m gonna phone ya!"
