Basic Trope: Illness strikes as the plot demands.
- Straight: The Bob-onic plague infects Alice right before a critical moment.
- Exaggerated: Alice’s entire town is sickened with the Bob-onic plague when someone asks Alice to get a cat out of a tree.
- Downplayed: Alice contracts the Bob-onic plague right before a quest but only develops symptoms a few days later.
- Justified: The Bob-onic plague is a magical and/or technological disease that Bob can control.
- Inverted:
- The author getting sick causes them to change the plot.
- People recover from the Bob-onic plague (but don’t contract it) as the plot demands.
- Subverted:
- Alice thinks she’s getting sick right as she has something important to do but it’s just allergies.
- Alice appears to be getting sick but it’s just vaccine side effects.
- Double Subverted:
- It really is allergies, caused by a protein in the virus that is also found in peanuts, which she is allergic to.
- The reason Alice has allergies in the first place is because of the plague.
- The vaccine was contaminated with the real disease.
- Parodied: The second someone arrives with a quest, Alice becomes violently ill and as soon as they start to leave, she recovers. When they turn around and see Alice is feeling better and offer the quest again, Alice immediately resumes throwing up.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Some characters get sick based on the plot but not others.
- Everyone gets sick as the plot demands but not always.
- Averted:
- The author rolls dice to determine when characters will get sick.
- Nobody gets sick in this story.
- The author reserves illness for the characters’ downtime.
- People get sick realistically.
- Enforced: The author is commissioned by the WHO to make a story about getting sick at the most inconvenient times to get kids to wash their hands.
- Lampshaded: “Why do we only get sick at the worst times?”
- Invoked:
- Bob sneezes on Alice because he wants her to be too sick to stop him.
- Charlie eats raw meat so they won’t have to take a test at school tomorrow.
- Exploited: Characters contracting the Bob-onic plague are used to detect important elements of the plot.
- Defied: Alice gets vaccinated against the Bob-onic plague so she won’t contact it later.
- Discussed: “Charlie’s sick but nothing is happening.” “We aren’t in a book silly”
- Conversed: “Wow in Tropeingdom nobody gets sick unless it’s really important.”
- Implied:
- “So since Bob is defeated, will Alice finally get better?”
- We see a pile of dirty tissues on Alice’s bed when someone mentions that Alice couldn’t help with the quest.
- Deconstructed:
- The Bob-onic plague has already spread while it was still incubating inside of Alice, before causing symptoms at the start of an important mission.
- Charlie’s parents assume that they are just lying to avoid a test that day.
- Reconstructed:
- The Bob-onic plague can only be spread after you have developed symptoms.
- Charlie displays symptoms that are way too obvious to be faked.
- Played for Laughs: “Can you get my cat out of the tree?” “Yes” as Alice walks out of the door she starts sneezing violently and scares the cat out of the tree.
- Played for Drama: People refuse to help others because they will get sick if they try.
- Played for Horror: Upon accepting a quest Alice becomes a zombie, leading to a zombie apocalypse.
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