Basic Trope Description: An epidemic or pandemic disease with death or at least some other very serious consequences for the infected.
- Straight: Troperitis is a very contagious and deadly viral disease with gruesome symptoms, like Incurable Cough of Death or Blood from Every Orifice. Ninety percent of the infected are dead after some days.
- Exaggerated: Troperitis is so contagious and deadly that it manages to kill everyone on the planet in a week. And has no symptoms besides sudden death.
- Downplayed: Troperitis looks gruesome and is very contagious, but only around five percent of the patients die as a result. Most patients recover.
- Justified:
- Synthetic Plague
- Troperitis spread from an animal to a human.
- Inverted: Beneficial Disease
- Subverted: Bob tells stories about how all his friends started coughing, had blood flowing out of every orifice and then died when he was in Tropestan. But he was there at war, and is describing war injuries.
- Double Subverted: After the war, a plague ravaged Tropestan, and Bob's friends fell victim to it.
- Enforced:
- The story needs a villain - and what would be a better villain than a being that is a billionth a human's size, and still outsmarts them in its villainy?
- Also Truth in Television.
- Averted: There are only mild diseases with barely any deaths occurring in the story.
- Zigzagged: Troperitis first starts in an Old Folks Home, where people drop like flies - but when in spreads outside, deaths are rare, since it just happened to hit a vulnerable group first. Then it mutates into something much more menacing, but scientists find a cure. But then it mutates again...
- Parodied: The disease causes the most random, ridiculous things to happen; Such as growing hats.
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz releases a Synthetic Plague on people.
- Exploited: Corrupt Corporate Executive Bob sells expensive fake cures to the desperate masses.
- Defied: The early outbreak is contained fast.
- Lampshaded: "Oh no, I had enough after Covid."
- Discussed: "The first symptom is coughing, then you get a fever, then you start bleeding out of mouth and nose and even later from every orifice while the fever is constantly rising until the very end. Most patients die after three days." "And what is the incubation period?" "Around one day."
- Conversed: "That reminds me of Covid."
- Deconstructed: Modern medicine has something against most diseases. Also, many countries have plans for an event like this.
- Reconstructed: But not every disease. And it can always happen that someone breaks their quarantine.
- Played for Laughs: Troperitis makes people act really wacky.
- Played for Drama: Nothing-expecting humans are confronted with something much smaller than themselves, that is eagerly killing and outsmarting them anyway.
- Played for Horror: The results of Troperitis on the human body are straight examples for Body Horror.
