Freeze Sneeze

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Don't you just hate it when your boogers freeze?"

A character sneezes from being cold. Maybe he's outside in a blizzard or in an arctic setting, or maybe has been trapped in a freezer. Maybe the character has been walking in the rain. He might also have been pushed into a fountain, pool, etc. and his clothes are completely soaked and he's standing there shivering. This may or may not mean the character is getting sick; he might start sneezing in the cold environment but then be perfectly fine once he warms up.

Truth in Television: Some people really do sneeze from being cold.

Examples of Freeze Sneeze include:


Anime

  • Happens to Lucy in her Nyu form after being out in the rain in Elfen Lied and happens to Kohta later on as well.
  • Happens to Ash Ketchum after falling into a river in the movie Pokémon: Lucario and The Mystery of Mew.
    • In Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure Candice sneezes from the cold. Considering she lives in Snowpoint but wears a skirt and doesn't bother to put on her sweater, it seems pretty logical. In an omake she's shown having a cold.
  • Happens to Shu from Now and Then, Here and There.
  • Haruka sneezes after falling into a lake in RahXephon.
  • Also happens to Ran of Green Legend Ran
  • In Inuyasha, Kagome sneezes after being caught in the rain for a while. Used for an episode of filler as Kagome really does get sick, and Inuyasha goes to Kagome's time to take care of her.
  • Happens twice in the manga of The Cat Returns, first when Haru walks out into the street to meet the cats, then again when she wakes up the next morning, having fallen asleep uncovered. The latter one appears in the film, though the cause is changed in the English dub to be an allergy to the cat-tails planted in her garden.

Comic Books

  • In Tintin in Tibet, Captain Haddock sneezes with enough force to rip open the overcrowded tent.

Film

  • In the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly, when Jane is made by her mother to visit Mr. Bingley via horseback, in the rain, she sneezes as soon as the doors are opened for her. This leads to us learning that she became ill because of the journey.
  • At the end of Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs, Peaches sneezes from a snowflake that she catches in her trunk.

Video Games

  • In Zack And Wiki. Zack, who wears an open sleeveless coat with no shirt and shorts throughout the game, shivers, sneezes and huddles for warmth whenever he's not doing anything in the Ice World.
  • Also happens to Link in some of the later The Legend of Zelda games.
  • Happens to Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. When he's sneaking around inside the chilly portion of Arsenal Gear, he can contract a cold and start sneezing, alerting the guards to his presence. A medicine capsule he can find in the locker after getting out of his restraints can counteract this condition.
    • Also to Snake himself in the first Metal Gear Solid, if you stay too long out in the snowy parts. This might just be part of the Twin Snakes remake, though.
      • It's not, albeit it's done in a different way. In the original PS1 game, after you break out of the torture chamber, Ocelot's stripped you of all your gear, leaving you shirtless. If you waste too much time before recovering your equipment, Snake can catch a cold and start sneezing all over the place, which can get you caught easily. The medicine to counter this is in one of the cubicles in the big office before the room where you fight Psycho Mantis.
  • In Yume Nikki, when Madotsuki uses the Towel effect (which huddles her up in a towel in a manner similar to a cozy blanket) she sneezes.
  • In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, your partner sneezes from the cold on the way to Frosty Forest.
  • In Pokemon Platinum, you run into Maylene outside Snowpoint City, which she has apparently walked to from Veilstone, in bare feet and in her usual outfit. Unsurprisingly, she sneezes, although she tries to brush it off, claiming she isn't cold at all. She's later seen shivering in the Pokemon Center.
    • Cubchoo has a large teardrop-shaped frozen snot drip from its nose. After it evolves into Beartic, it forms a beard of ice.
  • Lynne from Ghost Trick does this in the rain, and it's adorable.
    • She gets another one during the submarine chapter if the water starts to catch up with them.

Western Animation

  • Chilly Willy is MADE of this trope.
  • In an old Merrie Melodies cartoon starring a dog and a skunk, both characters catch a cold from being in freezing cold water. The cartoon ends when both characters share the same bed because they're both so stuffed up (and sneezing) that the dog can't smell the Skunk's stench.
  • Happens to Karen on the Rankin-Bass Frosty the Snowman Christmas Special.
  • In the Evil Con Carne episode Bring Me the Face of Hector Con Carne; when the main characters go to Antarctica to find Con Carne's missing face (it makes sense in context), General Skarr curses the cold weather and then sneezes from it. The weather is cold enough to freeze the resulting spray in midair.
  • On an episode of The Simpsons, Lisa is pushed into a freezer to get a carton of ice cream that Homer can't reach; she sneezes and then gets sick.
  • It also happens to Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races, near the end of "The Ski Resort Road Race".