Incurable Cough of Death: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|'''Phoebe:''' Would you want to break a dying woman's heart? ''(fakes a cough)''

 

 

If you have a cough, you're going to be dead before the end of the show.

* Raquel Applegate of ''[[Wild ARMs 4]]'', {{spoiler|due to suffering from an unknown, incurable disease that's implied to be radiation poisoning}}. This doesn't stop her from being the most powerful character in the game, though it does explain why her HP and speed are so low. {{spoiler|She eventually dies in the [[Distant Finale]] epilogue, having never found a cure for her sickness.}}

** Subverted in ''[[Wild ARMs 5]]'', by the ''same character'', but in a [[The Cameo|cameo]] [[Continuity Nod|appearance]]. Although she still has the cough, the player can go on an obnoxiously long [[Irrelevant Sidequest]] to cure her and give her a happier ending. Ironically, the thing you use is the same cure-all that had no effect on her in ''[[Wild ARMs 4]]''.

* In the manga ''[[Emerging]]'', a heavy cough that sometimes [[Blood From the Mouth|produces blood]] is one of the first signs that a character may have contracted the extremely deadly [[The Plague|mystery illness]] that is spreading across Tokyo.

* Takiko from ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'' Genbu Kaiden continuously coughs during her journey. When she's back in the Real World, it's revealed that she {{spoiler|caught the consumption of her late mother}}. Then again, {{spoiler|it's already revealed by Miaka that she originally died at the hand of her father}}.

* Hatsune Otonashi in ''[[Angel Beats!]]'' suffers from this.

* Aslan Battour from ''[[Kaze to Ki no Uta]]'' suffers from tuberculosis in the backstory. {{spoiler|He's already dead in the main storyline.}}

 

== Comic Books ==

* In the ''[[Marvel 1602]]'' miniseries, Queen Elizabeth I is shown coughing blood into a handkerchief. To be fair, she WAS rather old, and history records that she died in 1603. {{spoiler|Count Otto von Doom's poison device renders the question moot, though.}}

* In ''[[Green Lantern]]'s Sinestro Corps War'', Guy Gardner coughs in mid-battle, indicating that he's infected by the sentient bio-virus Despotellis. He soldiers on and fights, until eventually collapsing, before the Corps medic injects him with Leezle Pon, a sentient smallpox virus... who's also a [[Green Lantern]]. Two viruses enter, one leaves victorious.

* In ''[[The Metabarons]],'' Othon von Salza takes terminal damage to his lungs when he destroys the Shabda-Oud cetacyborg. He coughs up blood for the rest of the issue until he dies.

 

* The main character in the ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' fanfic [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5932238/1/Pariah Pariah] suffers from this.

* Joey in the [[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series]] fanfic ''[[Decks Fall, Everyone Dies|Decks Fall]] [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6474469/1/Decks_Fall_Everyone_Dies Everyone Dies]'' has this.

* In the little known [http://forum.fanfiction.net/forum/WHOO_Kingdom_Hearts_RPG/80471/ WHOO!] ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' RPG! The character Reeves seems to have contracted one. Trolololo

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes]]: A Game of Shadows'', {{spoiler|Irene Adler}} is murdered with some kind of poison that causes this and [[Blood From the Mouth]] followed by death in minutes.

* The James Eckhart indie film ''To Be Friends'' has one scene like this on a beach to establish that the lead female character is terminally ill, explaining why she and her best friend are in the countryside so {{spoiler|she can commit suicide.}}

 

== Literature ==

* Played straight in [[Cormac McCarthy]]'s ''[[The Road]]''.

* ''[[The Stand]]''.

*** Ruby Gillis, Anne's childhood friend, does die of "galloping consumption" in the same novel, but there is no issue of this being hinted with a cough, as Anne does not learn of Ruby's illness until just before the latter's death.

* Averted and parodied in the Fourth Wall-abusing novel ''The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun'''. In one scene near the beginning Philip Roth—yes, that Philip Roth—coughs, and [[Lampshade Hanging|remarks]] that means he'll be dead by the end of the novel. The protagonist tells him that it's a parody and he shouldn't worry. {{spoiler|As you've probably guessed, it's played straight in the end. Roth knew he was dying all along, and furthermore, had killed Lilian Jackson Braun himself, out of a deep-seated hatred of her books}}.

* In ''[[The House of Night]]'' series, once a fledgling vampyre starts coughing, this means they are rejecting the change and will die. [[Blood From the Mouth]] often occurs as well.

* In ''A Dream of Red Mansions'', Lin Tai-yu has one from her introduction. It escalates considerably after she makes a certain discovery.

* In ''The Tartar Steppe'' by Dino Buzzati, in the first scene where Lieutenant Pietro Angustina appears, this is how readers are clued in that he's elegant, self-possessed, and ill: "Angustina had a slight fit of coughing. It seemed strange that a sound so disagreeable should proceed from such a refined young man. But he coughed with due restraint, lowering his head each time as if to indicate that he could not help it -- that it was really something he had nothing to do with but which he must endure. So he transformed the cough into a kind of willful habit for others to imitate." Seventy pages later, Angustina dies an elegant and self-possessed death.

 

* Episode "Awakened" of ''[[Charmed]]'' opens with Piper coughing up a storm and Phoebe trying to convince her to go home and rest. Piper insists she's fine. She collapses two minutes later. She's in a coma within a day.

* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' pretty much gives two giant middle fingers to this trope, because Dr. House's patients just about never die.

 

== Theater ==

* The "coughing tragic consumptive heroine" trope dates back to the 1852 novel and play ''La Dame aux Camélias'' by [[Alexandre Dumas]] ''fils'', as well as the opera ''La Traviata'' and Greta Garbo film ''Camille'' based on it, making this trope [[Older Than Radio]].

** Mimì from Puccini's ''[[La Boheme|La Bohème]]'' is another operatic character who coughs and faints her way to a tear-jerking death scene. Mimi from ''Rent'' fares much better.

 

== Video Games ==

* Solid Snake in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'' coughs horribly whenever he's out of his suit, even though the disease giving him trouble is [[Plot-Relevant Age-Up]].

** Though, considering the amount he smokes...and he's had his cigs from the first game, and possibly even through training...

* During the opening sequence of [[The 7th Guest]], we see a girl dying of a "mysterious virus" and hear her coughing rather persistently.

* In ''[[The Sims]] Livin' Large'', there's the so-called Guinea Pig Disease that your sim can catch if (s)he doesn't keep his/her guinea pig cage clean. Once the guinea pig has bitten the sim, (s)he will start coughing and sneezing and will most likely die in the next few days if (s)he's not treated. The "incurable" part of the trope is subverted, though, because it can be cured in two ways: either buy the Forgotten Guinea Pig painting and wait for several in-game hours or let one of your sims use the Concoction Station several times until (s)he gets a white potion, then let the ill sim drink it.

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Keychain of Creation]]'': {{spoiler|Secret, shortly pre-Abyssalization}} exhibited this in a flashback, complete with [[Blood From the Mouth|blood]], after catching a plague of some sort.

* [[Wooden Rose]] [http://www.woodenrosecomic.com/comic/chapter1/29.html The father]

* The False Guenevere's sickness in ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'' (punishment from God in the base arc, clone degradation in the space arc) manifests this way.

* [[Erstwhile]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130826193334/http://www.erstwhiletales.com/littleshroud-02/ features it in] "The Little Shroud"

 

== Web Original ==

* Elizabeth Avery's {{spoiler|cancer}} manifests itself this way in ''[[Lonelygirl15]]''.

* In ''[[Marble Hornets]]'', the more wrapped up in whatever happened to Alex Jay gets, the sicker he seems to grow. Entries set in the past show Tim having a similar coughing fit, {{spoiler|supporting the idea of him being Totheark / the Masked Man}}.

** The "[[Fan Nickname|Slendycough]]" idea got picked up by a few other stories in the [[Slender Man Mythos]], with one suggesting that it's due to {{spoiler|Slender Man dragging the victim back and forth through time, which the human body is not designed to handle}}.

*** [[One Hundred Yard Stare]]: Has the symptom appear in episode four.

 

== Western Animation ==

* This trope is spoofed in the ''[[Animaniacs]]'' movie ''[[Wakko's Wish|Wakkos Wish]]'', in which Dot constantly coughs and claims she "needs an operation" but never mentions quite what the problem is. At the end of the movie, she does a [[Disney Death]] that lasts for less than five minutes (Those acting lessons paid off!), and is later shown emerging from the operating room with a new beauty mark to make her "even cuter".

* Parodied in the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Kenny Dies". Kenny randomly starts coughing during one scene, and if you can't guess where it leads to, take another look at the episode title.

 

== Real Life ==

* Legendary gunfighter Doc Holliday eventually died of tuberculosis. It's said that knowing he was terminal was what made him such a [[Death Seeker]] in the first place. (Reportedly his last words were "This is funny.") Accounts of his Incurable Cough of Death can be found in the historically inaccurate (but still pretty cool) movie ''[[Tombstone]]'' or [http://www.badassoftheweek.com/doc.html here].

* Unfortunately played straight by [[Too Dumb to Live|a few too many TB patients who refuse to take a full course of any antibiotic]] and help in the development of the multi-drug-resistant strains, and anybody who catches those.