Celebrate Best Friends Day with Famous BFFS in Pop Culture!

Ah, friends. How many of us have them?

Whodini, the great hip hop sages of decades past, tells us that we tend not to use the word “friend” the right way, despite how easily we throw it around. Best friends are a little bit different though. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly changes a friendship into a bestieship; the switch doesn’t happen easily or frequently. But when it does, it’s magical.

There’ve been no shortage of iconic fictional besties over the years. From Fred and Barney to Thelma and Louise, dynamic duos have captured our hearts (or, in the case of the pairs on this list, broken them) for as long as we’ve been telling stories. In celebration of National Best Friends Day, here are some best friends whose relationships are guaranteed to tug on your heartstrings before shredding them altogether.

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Frodo and Sam

The Lord of the Rings

It’s nearly impossible to get through Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy without crying, but some of the series’ most sob-inducing moments happen thanks to Samwise Gamgee and his unflaggable devotion to his best friend Frodo Baggins. Despite his initial fear about leaving the safety and familiarity of home, Sam vows to stay by Frodo’s side for every moment of their adventure.

Even when Frodo tries to leave the Fellowship, knowing that the journey he’s embarking on is dangerous and not wanting to endanger any of his friends, new or old, Sam refuses to let him go alone. “Of course you are,” he agrees when Frodo tells him he’s going to Mordor alone. “And I’m going with you.” It’s just a fact for Sam; where Frodo goes, he will follow. It’s that undying loyalty that carries Frodo, at times quite literally, and gives Tolkien’s epic tale its heart.

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Ellie and Riley

The Last of Us

We don’t spend much time with Riley, but she’s one of the most important characters in Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic, zombie-ish saga. She and Ellie’s doomed friendship-turned-blossoming romance is the catalyst for the primary plot of The Last of Us. After all, it’s only when Riley and Ellie are bitten on an ill-fated adventure to an abandoned mall that Ellie discovers she is immune. And it is Riley and the memory of her death, the desire for it to mean something, that pushes Ellie towards the Fireflies and makes her determined to help them cure the cordyceps infection that has ended the modern world.

These two girls lived in a harsh reality. By the time of the events of the Left Behind DLC take place, things were only going to get worse. Riley chose to become a Firefly, which would’ve separated her from Ellie and made maintaining their friendship that much harder. Plus, it’s even more heartbreaking that they’d taken such a small but important step towards a more romantic relationship before tragedy befell them. But Ellie chooses to honor Riley by going with Joel to the Fireflies. Their friendship is a necessary part of the story and one of the most important relationships in the series.

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Riku and Sora

Kingdom Hearts

Yes, every Kingdom Hearts game in existence with Sora as its protagonist seems to be about the sweet sunshine boy trying his hardest to get back to Kairi. However, it’s Sora’s relationship with Riku that anchors and shapes the series as a whole. The Destiny Islands fall to darkness thanks to Riku, whose insecurity over his relationship with Sora allowed darkness to take over his heart. That’s the event that kicks off Sora’s grand adventure, and throughout every stage, Sora’s constantly looking for Riku.

At the end of the first game, Sora opts not to return home with Kairi, despite their reunion being his goal through the whole game. Instead, he needs to find and rescue Riku. When the two finally meet up again in Kingdom Hearts 2, Sora is so happy to see his best friend that he falls to his knees, overcome with tears. And when Riku is too ashamed of his past behavior to look at Sora or even return home with him, Sora emphatically reminds him that he will always be Riku’s friend, no matter what. At the end of the game when the two boys sit on the beach in the Dark Realm, Sora doesn’t try to find a way back to Destiny Islands and, consequently, Kairi. He is content to stay trapped in the darkness because Riku is with him.

Riku Guards Sora No Matter What

The love and loyalty isn’t one-sided though. While Riku spends much of the early series coming to terms with his own darkness, he also spends it looking after Sora. When Organization XIII uses Naminé to tamper with Sora’s memories, Sora must be put to sleep for her to chain them back together and restore his mind. This takes a whole year, and Riku spends every bit of it watching over Sora. He even lets the darkness in his heart take over to gain an edge over Roxas, a Nobody whose existence threatens Sora’s reawakening.

Later, when Organization XIII hijacks Riku and Sora’s Mark of Mastery exam, Riku subconsciously skips the test to become a Dream Eater and protect Sora’s heart from the Organization’s Nightmares. And he doesn’t even realize he’s done it! Now, with Sora missing after the events of Kingdom Hearts 3, Riku will go anywhere and do anything to rescue his best friend. Their relationship is so sweet and unconditional, and if you didn’t cry when Riku told Sora that the only thing Sora should be jealous of is the fact that he has Sora as a friend … then that’s okay because that just means you cried all the tears your body could produce a couple hours earlier when Sora tearfully proclaimed “It’s Riku! Riku’s here!” while clutching Riku’s hand. Completely understandable.

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Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio

Final Fantasy XV

Oh, boy. This one’s a doozy.

This isn’t a pair but a whole quartet of best bros, and their relationship is the beating heart of Final Fantasy XV. What starts out as a simple roadtrip to get Crown Prince Noctis to Altissia in time for his wedding turns into a quest to get now-fugitive King Noctis the divine and ancestral power he needs to defeat an immortal evil and save the world from perpetual darkness. Simple, right?

None of them comes out of the war unscathed. In fact, not all of them come out of it at all. But what keeps them going despite seemingly insurmountable odds, debilitating injury, kidnapping, and 10 years of rampaging daemons with no sunlight to deter them, is their love for each other and their loyalty to Noctis. Ignis and Gladio have been tied to Noctis for most of their lives as his advisor and Shield respectively, and their devotion to him as their liege is only surpassed by their love for him as a best friend. And though Prompto came along later in life, he also trained to join the Crownsguard so he could spend more time with Noctis and protect him like Ignis and Gladio do.

By the end of the game, the four of them walk headfirst into certain death with no hesitation and no doubts because they’re all together. It’s one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking endings to a story that I’ve ever witnessed in any medium, and it doesn’t work without the deep bond that ties the four men together.

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Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes

MCU Infinity Saga

Now we hop back into the world of movies — comic book movies, more specifically, to keep the nerd cred up — for yet another bittersweet bestie duo. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes have a friendship that spans nearly 100 years, and most of those years see them separated and suffering. HYDRA captures Bucky’s unit during WWII and experiments on him, so Steve defies orders and logic to cross enemy lines (completely alone, mind) to rescue him. They’re finally reunited, Steve newly Capified and Bucky more than a little confused, only for Bucky to fall off a train hurtling high in the Austrian Alps to his supposed death a short time later. Steve isn’t the same afterwards, though he doesn’t have long to mourn. Yet.

On his “final” mission, Captain America crashes his plane into the ocean to keep the bombs on board from detonating over the United States’ Eastern Seaboard. Thanks to the experimentation done on both of them, though only Cap’s was voluntary, both men survive their crashes. Steve spends the next 70 years frozen solid in a block of ice until SHIELD finds him while HYDRA recovers Bucky’s body before he dies. Both of them wake up in the 21st century, but even that miracle isn’t worth much.

A New Age of Heroes and Friendship

HYDRA turns Bucky into the Winter Soldier, their perfect assassin. He has no memory, no sense of identity, and when he’s not on a mission, they freeze him. When he finally escapes them though, he’s still not free. He lives his life on the run from both Steve and HYDRA until he’s framed for the assassination of the king of Wakanda. Suddenly, he becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to turn the Avengers against each other.

Every time it seems like the two of them may finally get some time to just be friends again, something happens (usually to poor Bucky) that separates them. When they finally win all the battles and beat all the bad guys, when they finally have the time to maybe make up for the near century they both lost, Steve leaves. He goes back in time to spend his life with Peggy Carter, willingly going somewhere Bucky can’t follow him. This decision left many fans seething after leaving theaters in 2019. And that’s ultimately what makes Steve and Bucky’s relationship so damn bittersweet. There’s so little time for them to relish in it. I guess that’s what fan fiction is for, right?

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On this National Best Friends Day, my hope is twofold: that you enjoy this tiny sampling of some of nerddom’s most iconic best friendships and that your own relationship with your bestie is much sweeter and less bitter than any of the ones mentioned here.

Do you have a favorite friendship that’s not on this list? Gon and Killua, maybe? Goku and Vegeta (they’re totally besties, it counts)? Buffy and Willow? Let us know over at Sideshow Social Network or at side.show/geekgroup, and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!