Faint In Shock / Live-Action TV

• In The Addams Family, normal people have a habit of passing out in surprise when exposed to the family's antics.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: Watson faints when Holmes reveals himself alive and well.
• The Adventures of Superman:
  • Lois faints the second time the titular wolf shows up in "Ghost Wolf", and doesn't come around until the guys come on the scene.
  • The Monster of the Week Swami's female assistant Lura passes out when Superman barges in on the villains at the end of "The Man Who Could Read Minds". Hey, it means Superman gets to avoid punching a woman.
  • in the Episode "The Golden Vulture", McBain keels over when his sword bends against Superman's chest.
• All My Children's Maria Santos faints in elated shock when her presumed-dead husband Edmund walks into his own funeral.
• 'Allo 'Allo!: Lieutenant Gruber faints after seeing what he thinks is the ghost of the "first" René.
• Alma Gêmea:
  • A pregnant Dalila faints when she hears that Raul kissed Kátia in public.
  • Olívia faints when she discovers that Raul sold her house, and again when she finds out that he's the true father of Dalila's baby.
  • After constantly trying to avoid him, Generosa faints when Romeu finally finds her.
  • Crispim faints after seeing Kátia naked.
• And Then There Were None has Ethel Rogers wail and faint right after hearing herself accused of a murder she'd hoped to hide. Later on, Vera Claythorne faints from the increasing stress and terror of the situation she finds herself in. Finally, after shooting Philip Lombard (whom she presumed was the murderous mastermind of the story) dead and finding herself the apparent sole survivor, the intensity of her emotions and relief cause Vera to faint once again. The show uses Vera's two faints as narrative framing devices, showing the viewers flashbacks to her past (that reveal progressively more details about her backstory) while she's out cold.
• Any Day Now: Mrs. O'Brien faints upon being told that Johnny was killed in action in Vietnam.
• Done on multiple occasions by Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served?, typically as a silent collapse into the arms of his coworkers.
• Arrow: Though he claims it's due to a fever, it's pretty obvious that Curtis passes out because he's having a Fangirl moment over his favorite masked vigilantes in "Beacon of Hope".
• In the 1993 TV remake of the 1958 Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Harry attempts to cause his wife Nancy to suffer a heart attack and die by deliberately insulting and angering her. Nancy only faints instead, but Harry believes himself to have succeeded in killing her and drives away from the scene. Nancy later comes back for revenge, but only after spending most of the night lying sprawled on top of the house she collapsed onto, completely passed out.
• On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon tends to faint when he's over-stimulated.
  • Sheldon faints due to his fear of heights while rock climbing with Kripke in "The Friendship Algorithm". He's left hanging unconscious on the harness.
  • Sheldon faints in "The Good Guy Fluctuation" when he's scared by Leonard in a mask. The guys apparently were making bets on whether he would.
    Howard: Who had money on faints?
    Raj: I had peed his pants.
    Leonard: Hang on. Looks like everyone's a winner!
  • In "The Hawking Excitation", Sheldon faints when he realizes the paper he gave Hawking had a mistake. Judging from Hawking's reaction, this happens quite often.
    Stephen Hawking: Great. Another fainter.
• Birds of a Feather: Dorien expects Mrs. McCarthy to cut off her fingers in "Falling in Love Again", but then she sees she ruined her nails, which makes her faint.
• The Borgias: Lucrezia faints during a confrontation in season three where she discovers that all her plotting resulted in the crowning of a king who did not have her or her family's best interests at heart.
• The Brittas Empire:
  • Carole passes out in "Back from the Dead" when she realizes that Brittas has apparently come back from the dead.
  • In "The Stuff of Dreams" Colin can't comprehend the fact that Brittas was Mr. Didcot the whole time and faints because of it.
  • In "Back with a Bang", Brittas falls unconscious after learning of his death in the previous episode, "The Last Day".
• ''Brooklyn Nine-Nine"; Charles is so overcome with joy on learning about Jake and Amy getting engaged that he swoons in "Brooklyn Nine Nine S 5 E 04 Hallo Veen".
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Episode "Beauty and the Beasts" When her werewolf boyfriend Oz is suspected of having killed someone, Willow goes to the mortuary at night to get samples from the victim. As Xander and Cordelia retch and express their disgust at what's been done to the body, Willow is completely focused on the task, but on finishing, faints in their arms.
  • Willow proclaims that they need to find — a gown-wearing Buffy appears in the frame behind Xander — "Buffy!" in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer S2E6 "Halloween"". A couple more demon-kids move to surround them. Xander says they have a situation, and Willow asks Buffy what they should do. Buffy faints dead away.
• Bunk'd: In "Zuri Had A Little Lamb", Emma first faints when Lou's sheep is in labor. She wakes up right after the lamb is born, but faints again at the sight of the afterbirth.
• Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum: Gato Pintado faints when he sees three Pedros pass by the library in episode 8.
• El Chavo del ocho:
  • An episode centers around Patty giving kisses to Quico and El Chavo and causing them to faint, and whenever it happens, they're "revived" with buckets of water. At the end of the episode, Don Ramón ends up getting one from Patty's aunt Gloria and faints too. Chavo then calls dibs on him, but instead of a bucket of water, he grabs one full of bricks...
  • In one episode, Quico is playing dead by acting like he was run over by a vehicle, and ketchup is splashed in several parts of his body to simulate blood. When Doña Florinda sees him, she thinks he genuinely fell victim of a car accident and faints.
• Chuck: When Casey shoots Bryce for breaking into in his house, Non-Action Guy Chuck faints at the same time that Bryce goes down.
• Columbo: Phyllis, prone to hysterics, tends to faint often in "Old Fashioned Murder". Ruth sarcastically predicts Phyllis will faint when she hears Columbo say the word "homicide", and sure enough she does.
• Community: In "For a Few Paintballs More", the Dean has spent the entire episode trying to ensure that he won't have to pay out the paintball prize. He faints when Pierce announces that the award money should go to Greendale.
• Doctor Who:
  • Adelaide faints when Leela announces that the Rutan is inside the lighthouse in "Doctor Who S15 E1 "Horror of Fang Rock"".
  • In "Doctor Who S27 E9 "The Empty Child"," Rose collapses in relief into Jack's arms after her rescue from the balloon.
  • Alice, the maid, sees all the ruckus going on with lizard women, snowmen and the potato guy in "Doctor Who 2012 CS "The Snowmen"". She screams and faints.
  • "The Crimson Horror" has a Running Gag involving minor character Mr. Thursday coming face-to-face with things like Madame Vastra or Strax for the first time and immediately, noiselessly fainting. And he does it a third time when he sees the TARDIS dematerializing.
  • Bill passes out after the monster's attack leaves black slime on her neck in "Doctor Who S36 E10 "The Eaters of Light"".
• In the Enemy at the Door episode "The Polish Affaire", Lady Diana Prideux faints dead away on finding an escaped prisoner hiding in her garden shed. When she recovers, it turns out that he's not just any escaped prisoner, but a man she loved and lost before the war.
• Father Ted, in the episode "Entertaining Father Stone":
  • Dougal drops to the floor like a puppet that's had its strings cut when Ted reveals - after a long, drawn-out preparation - that the guest in the next room is the excruciatingly dull Father Stone. He does get up immediately on command.
  • Dougal faints a second time when Father Stone indicates that he intends to stay a while:
    Father Stone: Oh, I don't know. A few weeks, maybe.
    [Dougal hits the floor]
• Fawlty Towers.
  • In "Communication Problems", Basil is robbed of his gambling winnings by Mrs Richards, then she's complaining it was "ten pounds short". When a man enters the hotel carrying a vase she bought the previous day and asks Basil if he knows her. He is so immensely frustrated that even the mention of her name makes him faint. (He does get straight back up though).
  • At the end of "Basil the Rat", he also faints from the pressure.
• Flander's Company:
  • Hippolyte is overwhelmed by all the differences and faints in the alternate universe.
  • Kevin faints at the sight of Gladys' severed arm.
• Friends: Throughout the episode "The One with Rachel's Other Sister", Monica is very nervous that the good china might get damaged. When Rachel and Amy break a plate in their fight, Monica collapses into Ross' arms.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Sansa Stark faints on seeing her father decapitated in "Fire and Blood".
  • Jon Snow, (born of a noble family) tries to explain the concept of swooning to his wildling girlfriend Ygritte. She mocks the idea mercilessly, having come from a society where people have to be tough to survive.
• Gilligan's Island:
  • In the episode "Ghost a Go-Go", Gilligan faints when he pulls up the window blind and sees the ghost outside the hut. The Skipper faints when he looks out the hut door and sees the ghost walking through the trees.
  • In the episode "The Hunter", Gilligan passes out from fear (and quite possibly exhaustion) after the Skipper tells him how narrowly he escaped being killed. He and his tree disguise fall on the Skipper's foot.
  • In "Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow," Ginger and Mary Ann both faint when they see Gilligan with white hair, then again when he becomes bald.
• The Greatest American Hero: Pam faints when Ralph demonstrates the power of the alien-bestowed super-suit by casually picking up the front end of her car.
• I Dream of Jeannie:
  • Roger in "The Richest Astronaut in the Whole Wide World", upon seeing Jeannie emerge from her bottle for the first time. He then faints again after being revived by Jeannie.
  • Tony in "My Wild-Eyed Master", upon being granted X-Ray Vision and seeing Jeannie and Roger as skeletons. Like Roger in "The Richest Astronaut in the World", he also faints a second time upon being revived.
• I Hear Your Voice:
  • Hye Sung faints upon hearing of her mother's death.
  • Hye Sung also faints upon witnessing Soo Ha fall off a rooftop.
• Inside George Webley: A horror film George and Rosemary watch in "The Light Is Dark Enough" is scary enough to make George faint in the first ten minutes.
• Janda Kembang: Salmah faints in Malik's arms when the odong-odong driver reveals that the kid who fell of his odong-odong (which she assumes to be her missing daughter Laila) was brought to a hospital.
• Kaamelott tends to play this for laughs, mostly with the male characters.
  • Bohort is afraid of every animal as scary as rabbits and pheasants or worse. After Arthur spends half an hour trying to convince him there are no wild animals in or around the camp, Léodagan shows up saying he was just taking a leak and a bear came out of the bushes. Well...
  • Perceval once faints when Arthur, having guilt-tripped himself over his abusive treatment, gives him a compliment. Arthur has to bring him back by repeatedly slapping him while yelling "Wake up! You are a disgrace!"
  • Arthur once faints when Perceval claims he has successfully carried out a mission. This is the case, although he forgot what the medallion he'd recovered actually did. When kept in a locked room overnight, it turns everything else in the room into gas. Locked rooms like Kaamelott's treasury...
  • Father Blaise faints on hearing the tritone (diabolus in musica) in person.
• Legends of Tomorrow: Mick Rory drops like a sack of potatoes in "Mr Parker's Cul-De-Sac" when he finds out that he has a teenage daughter.
• The Legend of Xiao Chuo: Yan Yan faints when she hears about her father's death.
• Legion: In "Chapter 22", Gabrielle Xavier is so terrified by a "phantom" that abruptly materializes next to her son's crib that she faints.
• Life of Riley: Anthony is prone to fainting, usually as a result of Maddy unintentionally scaring him.
• Llan-ar-goll-en:
  • Tara does this in "Dirgelwch y Llythyr Coll" when it's revealed that Ceri stole her own letter.
  • Prys does this when he actually sees the real Siôn Corn for the first time. When he gets up, he thinks he was hallucinating; he wasn't, and he faints again.
  • In "O Na, Mrs Tomos!", Tara and Mia both faint once they smell Prys' smelly tuna egg sandwich, and it happens at the end of the episode when Prys himself sniffs the tuna that Sugar Lump ate.
• The Magicians: In "Oops!... I Did It Again", Alice passes out when Penny tries to travel to the moon and ends up TeleFraging himself.
• Magnificent Century: After learning that she can marry the man she loves, Hatice passes out.
• Played for laughs several times on Married... with Children. Al Bundy will occasionally faint dead away when his wife Peggy does something particularly ridiculous, like spending $2,000 on an interior decorating course, redecorating his personal bathroom into a pink feminine nightmare, commissioning a $2,500 painting of herself.
• M*A*S*H
  • "The Army-Navy Game": Frank Burns faints when he draws the short straw to go check out the bomb.
  • "Love and Marriage": On a bus, when a wounded Mrs. Kwang goes into labor, Radar practically has a Heroic BSoD.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
  • Kimberly faints when she first sees who the White Ranger is in "White Light, Part 2". She manageds to stay fainted until he helps her sit up.
  • In "Foul Play in the Sky", Bulk and Skull faint when they see that their pilot, Steve, has fallen asleep in the cockpit. They faint again when they come to and realize that Kimberly is flying the plane! It takes smelling salts to wake them up at the end of the episode.
• Mimpi Metropolitan:
  • While Alan and Prima just cringe when they see a goat being slaughtered in episode 3, Bambang outright faints.
  • In the ending of episode 26, Mami Bibir faints after finding out that not only Rio and Adul had left the dorm without telling her, but they had stolen many furnitures from the dorm.
• Similar to The Addams Family, every characters of The Munsters have habits of passing out or Freak Out when they meet the Munsters. Herman and his wife Lily sometimes fainting.
• My Roommate is a Gumiho: After seeing Woo-yeo transform into his full gumiho form, Dam screams for a few seconds and then collapses.
• My Three Sons: Miss Pitts faints when she sees what appears to be Chip beating his grandfather's dead body. (It Makes Sense in Context.)
• NCIS: In the episode Something Blue, Timothy McGee finds out from a doctor that his wife Delilah is pregnant — something she apparently wasn't aware of, either. His body freezes up, his eye twitches, and he faints flat on his back. Far from being surprised at his reaction, however, Delilah dryly comments:
  Delilah: That's exactly how I imagined it.
• In one episode of Night Court Dan keels over in relief after learning that he's just been the victim of Mac's elaborate prank, and hasn't literally sold his soul to the devil.
• Northern Rescue: Taylor blacks out from the pressure while competing in a spelling bee. A little while later, a competitor spots a video of it online.
• Odd Squad:
  • In the episode "6:00 to 6:05", Octavia faints when she realizes that she forgot to feed the dinosaurs... four-and-a-half hours too late. Luckily, Otto manages to catch her before she can get a concussion as well from hitting the hard floor.
  • Implied in "Olympia's Day" when Olympia has a Freak Out. She wakes up in Dr. O's office in confusion, asking what happened.
• On One Tree Hill when Lucas angrily confronts Dan about his role in Keith's death, Karen, who is heavily pregnant with Keith's baby, is overwhelmed at the news and faints. In spite of going into shock and momentarily being reunited with Keith in Heaven, she and their little girl, Lily, survive.
• Only Fools and Horses: In "Time On Our Hands", an antiques expert finds a pocket watch in the Trotter brothers' garage which was made by a legendary watchmaker and he estimates it's worth around £40,000. At auction the opening bid is £150,000 which causes Del Boy to faint in surprise. Rodney drags him outside to recover, and when they return to the auction they learn the bidding has reached £3.5 million. Cue Rodney fainting.
• The Outer Limits (1963): In "Keeper of the Purple Twilight", Janet faints when Ikar shows her his true alien form.
• The Outpost: After discovering Wren is pregnant and that he's going to be a father, the first thing he does is faint. Presumably out of shock.
• Parks and Recreation: In "Two Funerals", Ron passes out when he finds out his personal barber died. Apparently, the man had been the one constant left in his life.
• Two occurrences happen on Passions:
  • Ivy faints when it's revealed that Sam is Ethan's father and not Julian: An angry Julian demands she awake.
  • A newly pregnant Grace faints and falls down a flight of stairs. Though she ultimately survives the ordeal, her and Sam's unborn son, who was to be named Jack, does not.
• In The Phantom of the Opera Mini Series, Christine faints at the sight of Erik's unmasked face, much to his devastation (she'd promised to love him enough to overlook what he looked like, but to no avail).
• Poirot: In The Murder on the Links, when Eloise Renauld sees her husband's body in the morgue, she gives off loud "No"s before fainting.
• Olive faints in the Pushing Daisies episode Girth when she believes that a dead horse jockey's ghost is out to kill all the other jockeys from that race, which would include her. Later the "dead" jockey shows up, and he's really tall; because he was paralyzed the doctors cut off his dead horse's legs and put them on him.
• The Forensic Drama Quincy, M.E. has an opening montage which includes Quincy conducting an autopsy while six police academy recruits observe. Three recruits whoop their cookies while the other three faint and collapse onto the floor. Quincy takes a moment to peer beyond the corpse to assess his "audience."
• A recurring gag on Raising Hope as much of the show's comedy is based on secret revelations. In particular Jimmy faints several times in the 2-part season 2 finale upon hearing ludicrously illogical news about his baby's mother.
• Red Dwarf:
  • Rimmer faints while watching an Apocalyptic Log found aboard a derelict ship in "Psirens". The comes when a crewman backs off-screen away from a hideous alien... and then red stuff spurts across the screen.
  • In "Epideme", the Cat reacts to Kochanski cutting off her own arm by fainting. He points incredulously then keels over, and is left lying on the floor still frozen in that position.
• Santa Clarita Diet:
  • Joel and Abby faint when they see Sheila's "blood", which has turned thick and almost black from decomposition.
  • Eric passes out when Sheila intentionally (and casually) breaks her own thumbs to escape a pair of handcuffs.
• Stargate Atlantis:
  • In an early episode, Rodney learns that the city is in danger and responds by promptly keeling over. After a brief moment of panic, his teammates are only too happy to inform him that he pulled one of these.
  • In "Critical Mass", Kavanaugh faints at the prospect of his impending torture.
• Stargate Universe: The episode "Awakening" has an amusing reversal of the classic 1950s cinema "Monster Faint". When one of the aliens runs into a human, it's the alien that faints. To make it even funnier, the alien faints in front of Volker, probably the least combative character on the show.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Neutral Zone", Claire passes out when she sees Worf, because he's an alien and she's never seen one of his species before. Justified, since she's recently been in cryogenic stasis, which has made her a bit weak.
• Supernatural:
  • In "Nightshifter", Sheri faints when Sam and Dean confront her with what appears to be her own corpse.
  • Sam faints after he sees the "angel" in "Houses of the Holy".
• Tarzán (1991) has Jane fainting in Tarzan's arms from the relief of being saved from certain death after falling out of a tree.
• Temps de chien: While helping Antoine heal a cow, Kim ends up fainting when he's using a sewing needle on the animal. By doing so, she lands her head on a big cowpat.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby", when Frisby punches one of the aliens in the face, the alien's human head is revealed to be a mask covering his true alien head. When he sees this, Frisby collapses. He wakes up five minutes before the aliens are scheduled to leave.
• Wednesday: In "Woe What a Night", Enid isn't comfortable at all with Wednesday describing the murders and the various missing body parts. After getting handled a few pictures taken straight from the autopsies, Enid swoons and faints. Wednesday then implies this isn't the first time.
  Wednesday: [to Thing] Fetch the smelling salts. Again.
• The X-Files:
  • Although Agent Scully is hardly the frail heroine, even she keels over when a ghost removes his hat to reveal a large shotgun hole through his head.
  • Played for laughs in 1947 Roswell in "The Unnatural" when Dales, the cop protagonist, sees Exley's true alien form for the first time. The alien keeps trying to wake him up to explain things, but as soon as the cop does so he passes out again. And again. And again.

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