fan service

noun

1

: material included (as in a book, movie, game, or performance) specifically to please fans: such as

a

: entertainingly familiar elements (such as inside jokes or callbacks) aimed at fans of a series, franchise, etc.

… there are lots of Easter Eggs and … characters included purely as fan service for devotees to the original two movies …

—Aaron Potter

One way to look at this book is as several hundred pages of fan service. [Stephen] King offers a lot of callbacks to these earlier works that are undoubtedly a treat for his most loyal devotees.

—Kirkus Reviews

Some games will include a character, location or a reference from other games or forms of entertainment as fan service …

—US Official News

b

in anime and manga : sexually suggestive or explicit scenes (such as views of nude or scantily clad characters) that are included primarily to titillate the audience

An undeniable characteristic of both manga and anime is the concept of fan service—added material with the sole purpose of exciting the reader or viewer in a sexual way that does little to nothing to aid the plot.

—Grace Schutte

The anime industry's brand of fan service is much more R-rated. Some fans love it, others find it distasteful, and all agree that fan service is highly gratuitous, either for good or for ill.

—Louis Kemne

Given the mission of sending up anime cliches, one should not be surprised at the "fan service" panty flashes, breast gropes, gratuitous nudity, and gay-lesbian tropes trotted out.

—C. Cassady

2

: the act, practice, or approach of including fan service in something (such as a book, movie, game, or performance)

The entire third season of this … series felt like one long exercise in fan service …

—Brian Lowry

Metallica ripped through five tracks from their most recent album …, but outside of that, their setlist felt carefully constructed for fan service.

—Patrick Lyons

The most obvious rationale for bringing [William] Shatner back into the fold is plain old fan service. I know some of the Star Trek fanbase is really tired of seeing the new films … present updated riffs on classic Star Trek.

—Mike Bracken

Examples of fan service in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The storytelling is sturdy enough to prevent Skeleton Crew to ever fully descend into shameless fan service. —Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 2 Dec. 2024

There’s a difference between fan appreciation and fan service, and fan service doesn’t serve anybody. —Jen Chaney, Vulture, 25 Nov. 2024

Trump’s convention speech was 35 minutes of persuasion and 60 minutes of fan service. —Matthew Continetti, National Review, 2 Nov. 2024

There is a whiff of an unspoken playbook in 143’s mistakes, a struggle to square fan service to Perry’s third album, Teenage Dream, with current pop-star conventions. —Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 25 Sep. 2024

There was no concerted effort to adhere to the tone of more recent Venom comics, to push for an R-rating, or to make films in the effort of fan service and comic book accuracy. —Richard Newby, The Hollywood Reporter, 29 Oct. 2024

Bang has launched a new quest to dominate charts around the globe, but, as Alex Barasch reports in this week’s issue, the producer is using a formula that relies on a radical kind of fan service from his artists, and his enthusiasm seems increasingly disconnected from the sound. —Ian Crouch, The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1994, in the meaning defined at sense 2