Basic Trope: A sick character's hair is messy to signify their illness.
- Straight: Alice has a cold and her hair is tangled.
- Exaggerated: Alice only has some sniffles, but her hair is knotted so badly, she'd need to cut it off to fix it.
- Downplayed: Alice has a cold, and her hair is messy because she hasn't brushed out her bedhead yet.
- Justified: Alice's illness is very draining, so she doesn't have the energy to brush her hair.
- Inverted:
- Alice's hair is messy because she's healthy.
- Alice is sick, and her hair is perfectly done.
- Subverted: Alice is sick with messy hair, but Bob brushes it for her.
- Double Subverted: ...then it becomes messy again after Alice has a nap.
- Parodied: When Alice starts to get sick, her hair messes itself up.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice wakes up with messy hair, but she isn't sick, but then she falls sick, but then she brushes her hair.
- Averted:
- Alice does not get sick.
- Alice's hair remains the same while she is sick.
- Enforced: Alice is in an All-CGI Cartoon. The animators just got a budget boost which resulted in better hair physics, and by God, they are going to show those off!
- Lampshaded: "Alice must be catching something, she hasn't bothered to brush her hair this morning."
- Invoked: Alice becomes sick, and messes up her hair on purpose out of fear that Bob won't believe her.
- Exploited:
- Alice is Playing Sick, and messes up her hair to sell the act.
- Bob is Faking Another Person's Illness, and messes up Alice's hair to sell the act.
- Defied: Alice keeps a hairbrush nearby at all times so her hair won't get messy while she recovers.
- Discussed: "I can tell you're sick, your hair is a mess!"
- Conversed: "Hey, that character's got messy hair, he must be the sick one!"
- Implied: Bob is preparing a care package for Alice, and one of the items in it is a hair brush.
- Played for Laughs: Alice has Prehensile Hair that loses its mind when she is sick.
- Played for Drama: Alice is a struggling single mother, and a welfare visitor seeing her looking so disheveled sparks suspicions that she's a drug addict, jeopardizing her custody.
Back to Bedhead-itis.
