Fainting: Difference between revisions

== [[Film]] ==

* ''[[Sleepy Hollow]]'': In [[The Movie]], the 'cowardly' Ichabod Crane is the hero and can't very well show true cowardice, so he tends to stick out any dangerous situation and then pass out once it's over.

* Stirling from the Kit Kittredge movie does this twice after discovering hobos.

* Captain Spaulding does this in ''[[Marx Brothers|Animal Crackers]]'' as Mrs. Rittenhouse is hailing him for fearlessly journeying through [[Darkest Africa]].

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Frank from ''[[MASH|M* A* S* H]]'' had been known to do this.

* In the ''[[X Files]]'' episode "The Unnatural", Dales faints away upon seeing Exley's true alien form, and then faints again (and again, and again) when the alien revives him.

* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Sokka faints (without screaming) upon seeing the pregnant woman give birth en route to Ba Sing Se.

* Timmy's dad does this regularly on ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]''.

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Miki seems to suffer from this quite a bit in ''[[Marmalade Boy]]'', giving ''two'' of her potential love interests a chance to get closer to her.

* [[Gender Bender|Female Ranma]], in the Picolet Chardin saga of ''[[Ranma One Half|Ranma 1/2]]''. Since [[Battle Butler|Madame Saint-Paul]] does not allow her to eat at all unless she does it "properly," she loses weight at distressingly high rate. Coupled with intense speed and dexterity training, the stress this causes on her body culminates with her fainting from starvation, just as she has finally mastered the Gourmet De Fois Gras technique. The dramatic effect is ruined when, before hitting the floor, her head smacks into a watermelon, cracking it open (the watermelon, not her head.)

* Sailor Jupiter from ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' gives blood up for her injured friend earlier in the episode, and then faints while fighting. She fights through the pain to rescue Sailor Moon and defeat the youma alone.

* Kimberly of ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'' has done this a time or two.

* Scully in [[The X-Files]] episode "Redux" faints in a meeting with Skinner and other FBI higher-ups after her cancer progresses to a dangerous point. She was about to tell the board who the mole was working in the FBI, and as Skinner catches her before she hits the floor, she whispers "You", implying that she believes he is the mole.

* In ''[[Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger]]'', Jasmine's briefly fainting and being caught by Umeko (not a love interest... [[Ho Yay|theoretically]]) replaces the usual [[Psychic Nosebleed]].

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

{{quote| "Hope that hurt."<br />

"Totally worth it!" }}

* In ''[[Frasier]]'', Niles pretends to faint into a man's arms in the last of a long string of attempts to stop said man from throwing Frasier out of a party before he can seal an important deal vital to Niles and Frasier's latest [[Fawlty Towers Plot]].

* In the ''[[Fawlty Towers]]'' episode "Gourmet Night", Basil is forced to introduce a man named "Twitchen" to another man who had a facial tic. He frantically tries to get out of it, and eventually pretends to faint for a moment.

* A Fake Faint also occurs in the [[Shakespeare]] play ''[[Macbeth]]'', pulled off by Lady Macbeth in an attempt to draw suspicion away from her murdering husband. Macbeth is being asked some ''very'' awkward questions about why he killed King Duncan's supposed killers (instead of keeping them alive so they can tell who put them up to it). Her fainting diverts the attention of the questioner, and by the time everything is sorted out the king's sons have fled and Macbeth can put the blame on them.

* A ploy frequently employed in opera:

** In Act II of Puccini's ''La Fanciulla del West'', the heroine throws a poker game by pretending to faint so she can retrieve a winning hand from [[Victoria's Secret Compartment|somewhere about her person]].

== [[Western Animation]] ==

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Sissi must be the [[Incredibly Lame Pun|mother]] of this trope

== [[Video Games]] ==

== [[Web Comics]] ==

== [[Literature]] ==

* Having the narrator faint was a standard way for Lovecraft to finish his stories since it saved him having to explain how his very non-[[Badass Normal|BadassNormals]] could live to tell the tale.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

{{quote| '''Crow:''' Apparently women are devoid of the "fight-or-flight" reflex.}}

== [[Video Games]] ==

== [[Western Animation]] ==

= Emotional Faint =

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Emma of ''[[Victorian Romance Emma]]'' faints at a ball, partly due to the fact that her corset is laced too tightly and from seeing William with Eleanor.

* Albert of ''[[Gankutsuou]]'' faints from when he accidentally drank water that was laced with poison.

* Hinata of ''[[Naruto]]'' faints almost any time Naruto (her [[Love Interest]]) gets too close. [[Character Exaggeration]].

== [[Fan Fiction]] ==

* In ''[[Jumanji]]'', Sarah faints when she realizes Alan is standing on her doorstep. (And like the Sherlock example above, it's because she had thought he was gone forever)

* ''[[The Incredible Mr. Limpet]]''. When George Stickel hears the supposedly drowned Henry Limpet's voice coming from the sea, he faints dead away - probably because he thinks he's hearing Henry's ghost.

* Doc Brown faints at the end of ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'' after Marty (whom he had just sent away in the time machine) reappears behind him --

{{quote| '''Doc:''' (practically shrieking) But I just sent you back to the future!!!<br />

* In ''[[The Quiller Memorandum]]'', Quiller is faced with torture. He attempts to delay it by putting himself into syncope, through breathing heavily then holding his breath to drop his blood pressure. It's an Emotional Faint because he is under massive stress and he uses that to make his enemies believe he is weak.

* In ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi|The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', during the island getaway episode, the shy time-travelling Mikuru faints promptly upon seeing the stabbed body of the mansion owner, and stays out of the action for a while under Yuki's supervision, providing Haruhi and Kyon an excuse to go exploring alone together.

* In ''[[The Inheritance Trilogy]]'', Eragon faints when his mentor, Brom, is fatally stabbed. But then, he faints at the end of almost every chapter, as well.

* Dante does this in ''[[Divine Comedy|Inferno]]'' to the point where many modern readers think of it as Girly Man Fainting. His spells are usually a symptom of extreme empathy with someone he meets in Hell, as in, "Oh my God, I identify with your suffering so much I just can't stand it. * thud* "

** Actually he only fainted twice in the Inferno. Once when he first enters Hell, due to a sensory overload, and another time in the circle of Lust, where he meets a couple that is basically the Romeo and Juliet of his time. That one was from empathy, due to his being in love with a woman from afar his whole life. (And a possible fangirl episode... they were pretty famous)

* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s short ''--[[And He Built a Crooked House]]'', Mrs. Bailey repeatedly faints throughout the adventure in the tesseract house.

** In the book 'Double Star' the heroine faints quietly and without fuss after an intense scene which probably means the ruin of all they've been working for. Later another character reveals precautions have been taken and they're safe - whereupon she faints ''again''. Still, given what's at stake and the extended strain she's been under it's hard to blame her.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Olive does this in the fifth episode of ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' when it seems a dead horse jockey's ghost is out to kill all the other jockey's from that race, which includes her. Justified-ish in that Pushing Daisies never pretended to be realistic medically or otherwise - {{spoiler|later the "dead," jockey shows up really tall, because he was paralyzed so the doctors cut off his dead horse's legs and put them on him.}}

* ''[[Fawlty Towers]]''.

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Happens quite frequently in [[MenageA3|Ménage à 3]] - characters often faint due to sheer embarrassment, sheer pleasure, or for other reasons.

== [[Web Original]] ==

== [[Western Animation]] ==

{{reflist}}