Malingering Romance Ploy

When she finds out he's lying he's going to need those bandages for real.

"I wouldn't mind breakin' me own head if I had a nurse like Gadget waitin' on me."

— Monterey Jack, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers

Malingering is feigning or exaggerating an injury or illness. Typically, it's to get out of duty. However, it has other uses, as well.

When a character suffers a minor injury or illness, and suddenly their Love Interest, whom they've been crushing on the whole series, is paying them extra attention to take care of them. What's the logical outcome? Well, in the realm of fiction, it's to exploit it, playing up the illness or injury for all its worth while delighting in the lavish attention they're now receiving. Sometimes, the character may try to keep up the ruse by either getting themselves injured or Getting Sick Deliberately.

A sub-trope to Playing Sick, this version is explicitly about garnering a love interest's attention and possible affections, as opposed to the "I Have A Headache" response.

This will almost always backfire, as when the Love Interest learns that they were being toyed with, they will invariably respond with disappointment at the very least and outright outrage at the worst. In some cases, it can even go so far as to cause Ship Sinking, permanently putting a wedge between the character and their love interest.

In a few cases, both the feigner and the love interest know perfectly well what's going on and they play along with each other as a form of flirting, particularly if the love interest is a doctor or other health professional.

Compare Florence Nightingale Effect, where a caretaker begins to fall in love with their patient. Also compare Münchausen Syndrome. Compare After Action Patch Up.

Contrast You Don't Want to Catch This, which is when someone plays sick to get people to stay away from them.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Long Long Man: After she's seemingly caught in an affair with Long Long Man, Chi-chan reveals to Tooru that she's Secretly Dying, and that she has an affinity for long things because it makes her think that her lifespan might be longer. However, it's implied that she faked her illness in order to get Tooru to propose to her.

Anime & Manga

• In one of the earliest episodes of City Hunter, Ryo passes himself as a patient of the hospital where works the pretty nurse he's tasked to protect. Later, he's wounded for real.
• Nurse Ikoli of the Nautilus in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is so pretty she has even a fan club. Of course, Sanson managed to voluntarily wound himself to see her more often.
• The plot of an Ouran High School Host Club episode features a variation where someone fakes sick for someone else's romance attempt. It starts off with Kaoru pretending to be sick so that he could set Hikaru up with Haruhi on a date. Hilarity Ensues with Tamaki getting jealous and the rest of the club trying to help the date go well.
• School Rumble: When Nurse Anegasaki starts at the school, the perverts of Class 2-C get themselves banged up in order to be near her. They're very put out to find Harima already there and in Anegasaki's enthusiastic embrace, though to be fair, Harima hadn't known Anegasaki was there, and she and Harima had a bit of a history.
• Urusei Yatsura: When the students at Tomobiki High learn there's a new school nurse, every male student fakes ill to get in to see her. It turns out to be Sakura, who is less than amused.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In the story “The Ways of Women”, from Archie, Issue 175, Archie successfully pulls this with Veronica. A jealous Reggie deliberately injures himself, and plays it up, thinking that he’s gotten Veronica’s attention, only for her to go right back to focusing on Archie.

Fan Works

• Downplayed in Confrontation (ack1308); Sophia genuinely did hurt her ankle when she crashed into Brian while rollerblading, but Taylor is fairly sure that she's milking it to flirt. Brian doesn't seem to mind, though.
  "Well, it doesn't look damaged, and there's no swelling that I can detect," Brian decided, although Taylor noticed that he didn't take his hands off of Sophia's ankle. "But you might want to take the weight off of it for a while."
  "Help me to a bench?" asked Sophia, giving him the puppy-dog eyes treatment.
• Making a Moment is about Dipper trying to get together with his love interest without having to put himself out there and actually tell her how he feels. His plan is to "make a moment" — that is to say, invoke rom-com tropes — and somehow create a moment where the music swells and they spontaneously kiss, thus getting together without either party really having to put themselves on the line. This plan doesn't go so well. In the later half of the fic, after other tropes fall flat, Dipper tries to invoke this one by eating raw shrimp to intentionally make himself sick. He ends up deconstructing the trope instead. Taking care of someone when they're sick is tremendously loving, but not very sexy.
  Yeah, no. He had no idea why he thought being sick would put him on the fast track to romance-ville. It was nice that Mabel was taking care of him but the interaction was pretty one-sided, and even if it wasn't he felt more disgusting than alluring. Even if he could open his eyes to stare longingly into hers, he doubted the crust in the corners of them, the sweat on his face, or the vomit on his breath really got her engines going.

Film — Live-Action

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:
  • Draco is genuinely injured by Buckbeak the hippogriff but plays up the severity of the injury because Pansy Parkinson is fawning over him.
  • Much later, when Ron is injured by the Whomping Willow and enjoying Hermione's concern, he does something very similar, remarking that the leg might need to be amputated. (Needless to say, it does not.)
• Hatari!: When Pockets falls from a fence, Brandy rushes to him and calls him "baby" in concern. He pretends he's passed out, then "wakes up" and pretends he's in pain, so she'll keep fussing over him. Later, when Kurt and Chips — who really were injured earlier that day, when their car went over — come looking for some ice, they learn that there's not any left, because Brandy took it all to use it in ice bags and drinks for Pockets.
  Chips: He fell off a fence.
  Kurt: You nearly took a leg off, I got a dislocated shoulder...
  Chips: And he gets the ice.
• In A Kid in King Arthur's Court, Calvin is knocked from his horse during jousting training. He pretends to be more injured than he is so Princess Katie will fawn over him, and even manages to sneak in a kiss.
• Michael 'Squints' Palledorous, one of the kids of The Sandlot (the one with the glasses), has it bad for Wendy Peffercorn, the lifeguard of the town's major swimming pool and one of the most beautiful girls of the town. So during the scene where the Sandlot kids are at the swimming pool, Squints fakes a drowning so that Wendy will rescue him and give him mouth-to-mouth, just before he puts his arm around her and kisses her long and good. Wendy is pissed ("You little pervert!"), and this little stunt gets the kids banned from the pool for life, but it's made clear at the end of the scene that this is what ends up starting their eventual romance when Squints gets older.
• The plot of Sweet Lies (Lost and Found) kicks off when miserably single Ji-ho is hit by a car, and realizes the driver is her old school crush Min-woo. She pretends to have amnesia so that he doesn't know where to take her, and thus has to care for her in his own house.

Literature

• Books of Samuel: Amnon, one of King David's sons, falls desperately in lust with a young woman named Tamar. His friend Jonadab advises him to use this trope to gain her affection. The fact that she's Amnon's half-sister doesn't even slow him down, and things go From Bad to Worse. Much, much worse.

Live-Action TV

• The Big Bang Theory: Amy starts out with a genuine cold but pretends to be sick even after she's gotten well because Sheldon has been taking care of her, and she's been enjoying it. When Sheldon learns, he understands her desire to be around him longer but feels the deception warrants a form of punishment. Amy quickly suggests a spanking.
• Doctor Who: In the episode 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', a murder suspect admits that he has been faking his inability to walk so his wife will remain by his side and not be tempted to cheat.
• Glee: Played With. Wheelchair-bound Artie and stutterer Tina bond over their disabilities, but shortly after they start dating, Tina confesses that she began faking her stutter to make people leave her alone; now that she belongs to a group like Glee Club, she feels she doesn't need to. Artie, who can't just shake off his disability, feels betrayed, but eventually forgives her.
• House of Anubis:
  • When Amber is temporarily cursed with blindness, Alfie frantically tries to help her by carrying things for her and the like. She exploits this by continuing to fake blindness even after she recovers, and when he catches her reading a magazine, she spins it as him just being so good at helping her.
  • In the first season, while visiting a hospital-stricken Alfie, Jerome grew attracted to his hot young nurse and started pretending to have a fever to get her attention. She claimed that he had a horrible illness that required being given an injection with a Giant Medical Syringe, forcing him to admit he wasn't sick... and leading her to admit she was just messing with him because she knew what he was attempting.
• M*A*S*H: Downplayed example in the episode "Out of Sight, Out of Mind". After Hawkeye spends much of the episode flash-blinded from fixing a stove in the nurses' tent, he fakes a relapse to worm his way back into said tent (hoping for a chance to see the nurses undressing). However, the nurses are wise to his ploy and toss him out.
• In the first season of Parks and Recreation, Andy suffered broken legs falling into the "the pit" outside of his girlfriend Ann's home. However, he refuses the have the casts taken off when it is time, unknown to Ann so that she'll keep being The Caretaker him. She finds out two weeks later and breaks up with him.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Explorers", Leeta flirts with Dr. Bashir by extremely obviously feigning a little cough. Bashir plays right along.
• Terry and June: In "Thanks For The Memory", Terry loses his memory, which causes his wife June to fuss over him. Although his memory eventually comes back, Terry continues the ruse to continue this fuss being made over him. Unfortunately for him, June overhears him revealing this and figures it out.
• To the Manor Born: After Audrey injures her back, she prolongs her "suffering" to keep Richard visiting and bringing her flowers and chocolates. When he invites her on a skiing holiday in Switzerland, she has to accelerate her perceived recovery to not miss out.
• Why Women Kill: Beth lies to her husband Rob that she has cancer after finding out that his mistress April is pregnant, as she knows he'll never leave her while she's sick.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks: In "Pensacola Popovers", Walter Denton mentioned he enjoyed being sick so his girlfriend Harriet Conklin could fuss over him.

Western Animation

• Animal Crackers: In one episode, Lyle gets bitten by a snake. Neither he nor Dodo are sure if the snake is poisonous, so Lyle is convinced he's doomed. However, he soon realizes that Lana might take care of him if she finds this out, and tells her after saving her from being trampled by Gnu's herd. She proceeds to take him home and wait on him hand and paw. Later, the snake gets washed and Dodo discovers she isn't poisonous. Lana gets angry at Lyle for his ignorance and storms out.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: Dale hurts his foot kicking the Ranger Plane, and spends the rest of the episode playing it up because Gadget is doting on him. Monterrey notes that a pretty face could drive a person to do strange things. When Chip proves to Gadget that Dale is faking, she is absolutely livid (which, if other examples of her getting mad are any indication, would not have ended well for Dale, had the Rangers not been captured by the Kiwis). After he legitimately breaks his foot kicking a crocodile, Gadget tells him that it's no fun being truly injured.
• Garfield and Friends: Zig-zagged. Jon will use any slight sign of illness in Garfield as a pretense to take the eponymous cat to the vet, Liz, to hit on her and ask her out, playing on her sympathies for his ill cat.
• In the Hey Arnold! episode "Beaned", Arnold accidentally hits Helga on the head, giving her Easy Amnesia. Feeling guilty, Arnold takes care of Helga. After she recovers, Helga acts like she's still amnesic so Arnold can continue doting on her.
• The Penguins of Madagascar: In "Love Hurts", Private gets injured and falls in love with the zoo nurse. He then starts purposely getting injured so he can keep seeing her.
• Popeye:
  • In the short "Hospitaliky", Popeye and Bluto combine this with Deliberate Injury Gambit to get the attention of nurse Olive Oyl. After multiple failed attempts at getting hurt bad, they finally get into a fight that climaxes in Popeye force-feeding Bluto his spinach to get him strong enough to beat him to a pulp.
    Popeye: I yam the sickest, 'cause I was the quickest, I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!
  • The same short got remade in color as "For Better or Nurse", with a twist ending: Olive throws Popeye out because she works at a cat and dog hospital, and when he and Bluto pretend to be cats and dogs they get dragged off to an insane asylum.

Real Life

• In his autobiography, Jackie Chan discusses meeting Bruce Lee, and how during one take while filming Enter the Dragon Lee accidentally hit Chan in the head. Jackie wasn't seriously hurt, but he pretended to be more injured than he actually was so that he could hang out with Bruce, the star apologizing to him all throughout the day.

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