You Don't Want to Catch This: Difference between revisions

 

Compare [[Playing Sick]], [[Hypochondria]].

 

* ''[[Tintin]]'' has claimed that Snowy had rabies in order to scare people away.

** A rare villain example was featured in ''Prisoners of the Sun'' where the crew of the ship where Calculus is being held put up a quarantine flag and have a crooked doctor declare the ship out of bounds. However, Tintin isn't fooled.

* ''[[Batman]] #163'' has Robin fake smallpox to scare some Mooks away and escape.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In ''[[Schindler's List]]'' one of the characters faked lice to keep the guards at a distance.

* "[[Star Trek|Dammit, man, this woman has an immediate case of post-prandial, upper-abdominal distention!]]" In a two-for-one, this is also an [[Expospeak Gag]].

'''Bones:''' Cramps. }}

* In Sondheim's ''[[A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum]]'', this device is used twice; once to get the female love interest away from her owner by claiming that she has a terrible, deadly disease to which the protagonist, fortunately enough, just happens to be immune, and once when said owner, trying to avoid the irascible customer who has paid in advance for the girl, pretends to be a leper to keep everyone away. Sight gags involving fake limbs being thrown at people abound.

* In ''[[Tommy Boy]]'', the main characters escape ticketing and/or arrest by a similar ploy (claiming they are being swarmed by bees).

* ''[[Swiss Family Robinson]]'': while salvaging the shipwreck, the father chases off attacking pirates with a quarantine flag, explaining to his sons the flag means Black Death is aboard.

* In one of the ''[[The Thin Man (film)|The Thin Man]]'' movies, Nora is surrounded by admirers and Nick wants to have a word in private with her.

Everyone around them makes excuses and leaves. }}

 

* In Patrick O'Brian's book ''[[Aubrey-Maturin|Master and Commander]]'', Dr. Maturin stops the Spanish from boarding them by expressing relief that they've shown up, now do they have a doctor aboard who understands the plague...?

* In Emmuska Orczy's ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel (novel)|The Scarlet Pimpernel]]'', the title character claims "her" grandson has smallpox to keep the Revolutionaries at a distance.

* In the third ''[[Slayers]]'' novel, Lina and Gourry are captured by bounty hunters. When the guards start getting lecherous, Gourry very sternly warns them not to lay a finger on Lina, or ''they'll catch what she's got''. The guards immediately back off, but Lina is ''not'' happy.

* Played with in ''[[X Wing Series|Wraith Squadron.]]'' Our heroes are undercover in an enemy ship, having taken it over. They are scheduled to get a face-to-face meeting with some of the enemy. The disease ploy comes up, but it'll look suspicious. They decide to turn the trick on its ear, and so they manage to get at one of the enemy's shuttles and release some [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bunkurd_Sewer_Disorder Bunkurd Sewer Disorder] into it, so that when the shuttle returns and docks with the ship, everyone will catch it. It's not lethal, but it ''is'' highly unpleasant. This works - the Wraiths are good at [[Crazy Awesome]].

** {{spoiler|Also pulled in the first book, with a "plague ship" full of pirates/thieves/soldiers.}}

* [[Dave Barry]] suggested faking a contagious and lethal illness as a way to deter insurance salesmen.

* In [[Frederick Forsyth]]'s ''The Fist Of God'', a British soldier is undercover as a Kuwaiti hospital employee in downtown Kuwait during its occupation by Iraq in the Gulf War. He is stopped at a checkpoint, and gets away by whining that all of the samples in his trunk will escape into the air. He states that the samples are of cholera and smallpox.

* The protagonists of ''[[Bridge of Birds]]'' use the "Plague of the Ten Thousand Pestilential Putrescences" to break out of jail.

* Taken a step further in ''[[Farscape]]''. The team needed a base they'd infiltrated quarantined. So Rygel pretended to have "Hynerian dermaphollica". But to really sell it, of course, ''they actually infected him''.

** Technically they just reawakened the disease, as it was already in his system from a previous infection. And it wasn't part of the original plan. The resident [[Mad Scientist]] decided upon it for the added realism. The rest of the crew was understandably freaked out, since the Dermaphollica was lethal to all, but one of them.

* In ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', Allan a'Dale pretended to have "Turk flu" to scare off mine guards.

* ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''. In "Judgement" Dr Phlox is able to get some private conversation time with Captain Archer by telling his Klingon guard that Archer has got a contagious disease. As dying from disease would be spectacularly dishonourable, the guard quickly makes himself scarce.

 

== Other ==

 

== [[Real Life]] ==