History Main / SoapOperaDisease

* In Webcomic/KillLaKillAU, while they are not terminal, although severe, some of the illnesses Ryuuko suffers from are not named and neither are her symptoms described, however, she does tend to get put on life support (she is shown with breathing tubes in her nose and hooked up to an active heart monitor) and is often attached to machines and intravenous drips.

* ''Literature/InfernalDevices'': [[spoiler: Jem's. It was caused by a demon drug that was used to torture him and his parents when he was younger. There is no known cure for it, and he has to keep taking a specific drug to keep on fighting - as Brother Enoch says, taking the drug means a slow death, but keeping him off the drug would mean a quick one.]]

* Any KeyVisualArts game will have at least one IllGirl that suffers from this, with the exception of ''VisualNovel/{{Planetarian}}'' where the disease is [[spoiler:low battery power with no way to recharge]].

* This is essentially the fate of [[spoiler: The Mother]] in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother]]. The disease is fatal, and that's pretty much all we know about it.

* ''Franchise/KagerouProject'': Haruka Kokonose ([[spoiler:Konoha's former self]]) has a rather ambiguous illness, which periodically lands him in hospital for weeks on end due to "attacks", and prevents him from participating in physical activities, implying it's some sort of heart condition. [[spoiler:He dies at 17, after a year-long {{Timeskip}} following his introduction, but his final attack is implied to have been brought on by [=SnakePossessed=]!Kenjirou, so we'll never know how long he would have actually survived on his own]].

* Trisha from ''FullmetalAlchemist'' died of such a disease. It's never stated what it was but fans consider it either stress-related or cancer.

[[quoteright:270:[[{{Webcomic/Homestuck}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mituna_fanart_9364.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:270:And that's not even [[ApologizesALot the]] [[AmbiguousDisorder worst]] [[HatesBeingTouched of]] [[MoodSwinger it...]]]]

[[caption-width-right:270:And that's not even [[ApologizesALot the]] [[AmbiguousDisorder worst]] [[HatesBeingTouched of]] [[MoodSwinger it...]]

Creator/JMichaelStraczynski has mentioned one riff on this, in which a soap opera writer supposedly put a character into a coma with very specific and carefully-researched symptoms, for a plot that was only supposed to last a couple of episodes... and then realized that if the character's recovery was delayed, he could continue to crank out script after script without ever needing to worry about a pink slip, since nobody else on the writing team knew enough about the disease to write the character's recovery. The actress didn't mind either, since she got a paycheck day after day for a few minutes' laying absolutely still in bed. The producers were somewhat less than pleased at this.[[note]]Rumor has it that a couple of years later, the same writer called the producers asking if they needed his services again; he was told that the producers were still in a coma.[[/note]]

The anime trope of the IllGirl suffers from the same plague of vague. See its page for the full story but the gist of it is the same; some kind of fraility to gain sympathy.

** Although Alzheimers' Disease, which normally takes years and years to build up, slew Mike Baldwin in a matter of mere ''months'' in ''CoronationStreet''

** Although alzheimers' Disease, which normally takes years and years to build up, slew Mike Baldwin in a matter of mere ''months'' in ''CoroinationStreet''

* Any KeyVisualArts game will have at least one IllGirl that suffers from this, with the exception of ''VisualNovel/{{Planetarian}}'' where the disease is [[spoiler:Reverie/Yumemi suffers from low battery power with no way to recharge]].

* Any KeyVisualArts game will have at least one IllGirl that suffers from this.

--> Her condition was a case of ''terminal moe'', a dangerous illness which crops up in anime whenever they want to make a character more sympathetic through illness but don't want to actually attribute a real illness to them.

--> Her condition was a case of ''terminal moe'', a dangerous illness which crops up in anime whenever they want to make a character more sympathetic through illness but don't want to actually attribute a real illness to them\\
--''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1263379/gabriel_blessing Gabriel Blessing]] comment on the real illness behind [[{{Sekirei}} Chiho]]'s condition''