History Film / Outbreak

* AcePilot: Salt proves to be an excellent one, which doubles as a CheckovsSkill when escaping from [=McClintock=].

* AcePilot: Salt proves to be an excellent one, which doubles as a CheckoffsSkill when escaping from [=McClintock=].

* AmicableExes: Downplayed with Daniels and Keough. They have a lot of unresolved tension and issues but when push comes to shove they're able to work together without issues to deal with Motaba. [[spoiler:They end up reconciling by the finale of the movie.

* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice: Applied to Cedar Creek by the U.S. military, and the typical application of ArmiesAreEvil of this trope is (thankfully) averted: while Motaba ''is'' so lethal that it's justified, the only reason why the military escalates to try to nuke the city off the map is [[spoiler:because [=McClintock=] lied to the President and the Joint Chiefs about Daniels's chances of finding a cure, so he could maintain the existence of his personal project to use Motaba as a weapon in secret.]]

* BlatantLies: When Daniels and Salt manage to successfully divert the bombing run, causing the pilots to drop their cargo harmlessly on the water, the pilots blame the miss on "wind shear".

* BeleaguredAssistant: Being a colonel, Briggs hardly fits the traditional archetype of an assistant but he acts as one to [=McClintock=], mostly getting getting treated like crap and criticized no matter what he does. Briggs is only too happy to put [=McClintock=] [[TheDogBitesBack under arrest]] at the end of the film.

* UpToEleven: Known hemorrhagic fever viruses like Ebola have an incubation period of seven to twenty-one days, with a fatality rate of 30-90% depending on the strain. Motaba patients have symptoms within hours with a fatality rate of 100%. Even the scientists are shocked at how fast and deadly Motaba is.

* IdiotBall: The young boy who goes up to an obviously sick Jimbo and asks if he can have his cookie. He's a kid, but ''c'mon''. Luckily his mom is smarter and stops him before he can touch it.

Meanwhile, the Army, seeing projections of the virus's progress across the North American continent, advises the President to take drastic measures... without sharing with him the information that they have a cure for the African strain and want to be able to use it as a biological weapon. [=McClintock=] concocts a plan to firebomb Cedar Creek.

** Robby looks a little bit feverish, her eyes are a little fever-bright, and her hair is slightly disheveled. It's been a matter of hours, at most a day between Casey becoming infected and Robby becoming infected. Even once she has entered the later stages, her makeup has been made to make her look pale and dried out, but she is not bleeding from her face like Casey was at the same stage.

** The first time we lay eyes on Dr. Sam Daniels, he is in the middle of giving his two giant St. Bernard dogs a bath. He takes the call from Ford, then scolds the dogs for getting out of the tub while he was on the phone. He immediately relents when the dogs retaliate with PuppyDogEyes.
** The first time we see Casey, he makes jokes at Sam's expense, then at Salt's.

* IfIDoNotReturn: There's a sick soldier in Africa who is pathetically grateful to see the Americans even if they're in faceless hazmat suits. But he's realistic, and asks them to tell his girl he loves her. The FalseReassurance mentioned above includes "I'm not gonna tell her. You tell her yourself."

* RefugeInAudacity: Daniels's favorite trick.

* RevealingCoverup: Ford provides the team with a serum [[spoiler:derived from the Motaba samples taken back in the Sixties]], which they find out works just fine against the first, un-mutated strain. Daniels's insistence in finding out where it came from puts Ford in a rut of increasingly ImplausibleDeniability.

** The first is a field hospital in Zaire, 1967; overrun with cases of the virus, forty-eight people have already died in the last two days, and conditions are dire even without the place being in the middle of a war zone. With no morgue or graveyard available, bodies are dumped outside under a tarpaulin. General [=McClintock=] has the place bombed to prevent the disease from spreading. [[spoiler: And to hide the existence of the virus so he could acquire it as a biological weapon.]]

** The worst is the local hospital at Cedar Creek, California: here, the virus mutates into an airborne form, so it spreads quickly through the ventilation ducts and into wards for uninfected patients. By the end, the hospital has gotten so crowded the military have been forced to expand testing and treatment outdoors into a field hospital, and the mortality rate is so vicious that the bodies eventually have to be burned immediately to save space. [[spoiler: [=McClintock=] plans to have the town bombed as well, both to prevent it from breaking quarantine and to preserve Motaba as a bioweapon.]]

-->"[[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Those are the citizens of Cedar Creek, go ahead take a look at them]] - these are [[AMillionIsAStatistic not statistics]] ladies and gentlemen - they're flesh and blood! I want you to burn those images into your memories, [[WhatTheHellHero because they should haunt you until the day you die!]]"

* TheDogBitesBack: From the moment General [=McClintock=] arrives in Cedar Creek, he treats Lt. Colonel Briggs like total crap. Just look at the [[http://www.imfdb.org/images/7/70/Out19112.jpg grin on Briggs' face]] when [[spoiler:he gets to put [=McClintock=] under arrest at the end]]. The General {{lampshade}}s how pleased the Colonel must feel about this.

* FalseReassurance: In the opening, [=McClintock=] tells the African doctor that he'll arrange an airdrop of medical supplies for the mercenary camp. He also tells one of the mercenaries that he'll be brought home and will see his girl again. A few hours later, a plane does come by and drop a large container...it's just said container is actually a fuel-air bomb which then vaporizes the camp.

* HopeSpot: The "experimental antiviral serum" works on original Motaba, but not the new strain. Then Casey and Robby each become infected. And Daniels realizes [[spoiler:the Army knew about the first strain of Motaba and the antiviral was produced en masse already for the troops so they could use Motaba as a bioweapon]].
* IdiotBall: the young boy who goes up to an obviously sick Jimbo and asks if he can have his cookie. He's a kid, but ''c'mon''. Luckily his mom is smarter and stops him before he can touch it.
** Also Jimbo's girlfriend, who kisses him even after noticing that he looks sick

* KindheartedSimpleton: Jimbo isn’t particularly smart and starts the whole crisis by stealing the monkey, but he is by no means a bad person and whenever given the opportunity he makes sure to PetTheDog.

** There's a musical lilt that goes soft and gentle after Sandman releases its bomb over the water, indicating that Daniels's plea was successful and the pilots chose not to bomb the town despite orders.

* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice: Applied to Cedar Creek by the U.S. military, and the typical application of ArmiesAreEvil of this trope is (thankfully) averted: while Motaba ''is'' so lethal that it's justified, the only reason why the military escalates to try to nuke the city off the map is [[spoiler:because [=McClintock=] lied to the President and the Joint Chiefs about Daniels's chances of finding a cure, so he could maintain the existence of his personal project to use Motaba as a weapon in secret]].

** There's a young mother in Cedar Creek who has come down sick and is obviously terrified. She bids goodbye to her children, who she can't even touch because she's contagious. She tries to speak reassuring words to her family that she visibly doesn't feel. She's sympathetic until the moment [[spoiler:we see her zipped into a body bag and carried off to be burned]].
* SadClown: Casey. He is Daniels's best friend and covers up his emotions with jokes.

** When he is in the early stages of the illness, and Daniels forces him awake, he says, "[[Film/TheWizardOfOz I had a wonderful dream, Auntie Em. You were there, and you were there..."]]

** The Centrifuge operator, who splatters himself with Rudy Alvarez's infected blood because he wasn’t paying attention and infects even more people when he goes out to a crowded movie theater while knowing full well he is very sick and doesn't even cover his mouth when he coughs.

Imagine you are hunting a killer. The perpetrator is insidious, invisible, and deadly. It is reactive and fast. Its victims suffer and die in horrifying pain. There is no reasoning with it, no bargaining with it, and no way to stop it. The military wants to avoid a panic. The media questions the methods being used to stop it. [[TheVirus It is a billionth your size]].

!! ''Outbreak'' contains examples of:

* EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys: Inverted. A [[MisplacedWildlife capuchin monkey]] captured in Africa for the pet trade turns out to carry Motaba, infecting the first human victims and causing the outbreak. Also played straight, though, as on the other hand she is adopted by a little girl (whose mother thinks it's an ImaginaryFriend), and turns out to have the needed antibodies for the virus that the CDC need to make a cure.

* ChekhovsGunman: The sailor aboard the Tai Kook. At the beginning, he is seen playing with the monkey. But when Daniels and Salt visit the ship, they are immediately taken to the freezer, where his dead body is seen.

** The second is another field hospital in modern Zaire, this time built around a peacetime village. By the time the USAMRIID team get there to investigate, the virus has killed just about everyone in the building and left them as breeding grounds for the flies - a sight that prompts Major Salt to vomit in his hazmat suit. The only surviving inhabitant who isn't infected is the attending physician.

* EnsignNewbie: Major Salt fits this pretty well. He is a young Army doctor who when first introduced, has never been in the field before. In Zaire, when he witnesses the true horrors of a "hot zone" for the first time and realizes that reading about horrible diseases in a book is ''a lot different'' than seeing it in person (something his older, more seasoned colleagues warned him about) he loses his cool, and starts vomiting and freaking out. And when working with a dangerous virus like Motaba, this can create more dangers for everyone. However, he gets himself together and toughens up, and really proves himself in the final parts of the movie. In fact he qualifies as MajorlyAwesome by the end of the movie.

* {{Irony}}: Sam and Casey get into an argument because Sam is being his usual obstinate self and insisting they've overlooked something. Casey tells Sam he should get some sleep, which only makes Sam angrier. Sam snaps that Casey should get some sleep. Casey as is his wont, jokes about having slept in july. The next shot is Sam having given in to sleep, and Casey still working, until he starts to fall asleep on his feet -- which is why he walks away without unhooking an tears his suit. If he'd listened to his own advice.

** Wisely navigated when demonstrating the impact on the town's populace. The soldiers begin rounding up infectees in the quarantined small town, and we get to see only one woman say a tearful goodbye to her family. We follow her for a few minutes while they take a blood sample during her initial medical exam. There is even a close up of the phial, labeled "Sample 612". In a later scene, we see Casey examining blood slides and becoming increasingly frustrated as he pronounces each one as being infected, including hers. We're later treated to a shot of her in a body bag.
** [[DefiedTrope Defying this trope]] is the crux of the speech given by the White House Chief Of Staff, who asks everybody in the room to make ''damn sure'' that is necessary to wipe out Cedar Creek, ''damn sure'' that the American people understand there was no other choice, and '''damn sure''' that nobody gets the funny idea of going to the press and lying about which decision they took after the fact.

** The Strings of Suspense play during Sam Daniels' impassioned plea to the pilots of Sandman not to drop the Fuel Air Bomb.
** There's a musical lilt that goes soft and gentle after Sandman releases its bomb over the water, indicating that Daniels' plea was successful and the pilots chose not to bomb the town despite orders.

* TheOner: The credits sequence, which has a camera going through the Army biological hazards lab, with helpful subtitles showing which specific Biohazard level people work on.

** Daniels to Ford, before Sandman is close enough to drop the bomb.

* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice: Applied to Cedar Creek by the U.S. military, and the typical application of ArmiesAreEvil of this trope is (thankfully) averted: while Motaba ''is'' so lethal that it's justified, the only reason why the military escalates to try to nuke the city off the map is [[spoiler:because [=McClintock=] lied to the President and the Joint Chiefs about Daniels' chances of finding a cure, so he could maintain the existence of his personal project to use Motaba as a weapon in secret]].

* RefugeInAudacity: Daniels' favorite trick.

* RevealingCoverup: Ford provides the team with a serum [[spoiler:derived from the Motaba samples taken back in the Sixties]], which they find out works just fine against the first, un-mutated strain. Daniels' insistence in finding out where it came from puts Ford in a rut of increasingly ImplausibleDeniability.
* RuleOfDrama: There are several instances in the film that are done specifically to ramp up the tension and suspense for the audience, nevermind whether it's realistic.

** Billy Ford is a man who has a long career in the Army and went along with his superiors, but finds himself conflicted when the Outbreak puts him between doing what's right and following orders.

* SadClown: Casey. He is Daniels' best friend and covers up his emotions with jokes.

* SociopathicSoldier: [=McClintock=] is a good example of one that made it all the way to GeneralRipper: [[SmugSnake smug]], [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], imperious, ''completely'' [[LackOfEmpathy lacking in empathy]], and willing to kill thousands of people without hesitation for the sake of keeping the Motaba (which can easily kill ''millions'' if properly used) as a viable option for bio-warfare (and has no problem saying that it's all for the good of America).
* SophisticatedAsHell: Daniels' response to being ordered not to interfere with the bombing of a small town:

* TemptingFate: Daniels interrupts General Ford's party to say he needs to put out an alert for Motaba. Ford, however, brushes him off, noting [[CryingWolf other times]] when Daniels expected a major outbreak, but didn't happen. In addition, Motaba kills so fast, it's hard for it to get very far. Afterwards, they agree that the odds of Motaba coming to America are about a million to one. Cue one Motaba-infected monkey arriving in America...

** Jimbo's girlfriend also counts. She sees her boyfriend clearly showing symptoms of a serious disease, and she STILL kisses him in the mouth.

* UpToEleven: Known hemorrhagic fever viruses like ebola have an incubation period of seven to twenty-one days, with a fatality rate of 30-90% depending on the strain. Motaba patients have symptoms within hours with a fatality rate of 100%. Even the scientists are shocked at how fast and deadly Motaba is.

* HateSink: [=McClintock=], full stop. The audience can't exactly hate a disease, so the filmmakers compensate by making him as unsympathetic as they can -- a sociopathic SmugSnake WarHawk that has about the same problem with killing thousands of people (be it by bio-weapon or gigantic fireball) as he has wiping dog crap from the bottom of his shoe.

* InfantImmortality: Played with.

** Completely inverted later in the movie, when it is mentioned two children died from the new strain of Motaba.

** At the Boston hospital, the technician working with the blood sample from the pet store owner becomes infected himself when he reaches into an active centrifuge, breaks the sample container, and splatters himself with the blood. The reason? He was distracted by a sports broadcast, and not even a televised one. He was ''staring at the radio''.

* YourCheatingHeart: Actually works in Daniels' favor in trying to get the name of the boat Jimbo's monkey was brought in on:
--> '''Mrs. Pananides''': I have a friend in the Coast Guard I could call.\\
'''Daniels''': How close a friend?\\
'''Mrs. Pananides''': Closer than his wife would like...

Flash-forward thirty years, when an infected monkey from this very area has been captured and smuggled to the United States, and into the hands of Jimbo (Dempsey), a young man who plans to sell it for the pet trade. The smuggled monkey spits in Jimbo's face, on his way to sell it. When it turns out unsuitable (after having scratched the pet shop owner and having lost her banana to another monkey in the shop), Jimbo sets it free in California and hops a flight home to Boston -- during which he falls seriously ill. He greets his girlfriend with as passionate a kiss as he can muster, then passes out. In Boston, Dr. Robby Keough (Russo) takes care of the victims of the infection, and that's that. But the cat is out of the bag. Cedar Creek, California becomes infected with a mutated and airborne strain of the virus.


Following his instincts, Daniels disobeys orders and goes to Cedar Creek. His crew is dispatched and Daniels is allowed to work despite having disobeyed. With Robby's help, they race against time to find a way to cure the deadly virus.

[=McCormick=] and Ford, now generals, dispatch Robby's ex-husband and [=USAMRIID=] doctor Sam Daniels (Hoffman) to Cedar Creek along with Dr. Casey Schuler (Spacey) and Major Salt (Gooding). With Robby's help, they race against time to find a way to cure the deadly virus. Meanwhile, the Army, seeing projections of the virus's progress across the North American continent, advises the President to take drastic measures... without sharing with him the information that they have a cure for the African strain and want to be able to use it as a biological weapon. [=McClintock=] concocts a plan to firebomb Cedar Creek.

* IdiotBall:
** The young boy who goes up to an obviously sick Jimbo and asks if he can have his cookie. He's a kid, but ''c'mon''. Luckily his mom is smarter and stops him before he can touch it.
** Also Jimbo's girlfriend, who kisses him even after noticing that he looks sick.

* {{Irony}}: Sam and Casey get into an argument because Sam is being his usual obstinate self and insisting they've overlooked something. Casey tells Sam he should get some sleep, which only makes Sam angrier. Sam snaps that Casey should get some sleep. Casey, as is his wont, jokes about having slept in July. The next shot is Sam having given in to sleep, and Casey still working, until he starts to fall asleep on his feet -- which is why he walks away without unhooking and tears his suit. If he listened to his own advice...

** [[DefiedTrope Defying this trope]] is the crux of the speech given by the White House Chief Of Staff, who asks everybody in the room to make ''damn sure'' that it's necessary to wipe out Cedar Creek, ''damn sure'' that the American people understand there was no other choice, and '''damn sure''' that nobody gets the funny idea of going to the press and lying about which decision they took after the fact.

** There's a brilliant motif, full of hopefulness and wonder, as Jimbo sets the host monkey free in the thick, lush California forest, underscored with a significant tension of strings and low notes because the monkey ''is'' the host and Jimbo is already starting to become symptomatic.

** The Strings of Suspense play during Sam Daniels' impassioned plea to the pilots of Sandman not to drop the bomb.

* NoFEMAResponse: The town is quarantined, and then the plan is to fuel air bomb it to stop the infection from spreading.

* ThePlague: Motaba, a deadly virus based on the real Ebola.
* PleaseDontLeaveMe:
** Imploringly spoken by Sam Daniels as Robby looks like she might succumb to her Motaba infection. Followed by his calculated risk.

** Daniels gets to the point where he's had ''enough'' of [=McClintock=] and his warmongering obstructionism when the former threatens to shoot down the latter after being told he has the way to cure the remaining early-stage Cedar Creek patients.

** [[DefiedTrope Defying this trope]] is the crux of the speech given by the White House Chief Of Staff, who asks everybody in the room to make ''damn sure'' that is necessary to wipe out Cedar Creek, ''damn sure'' that the American people understand there was no other choice, and '''damn sure''' that nobody gets the funny idea of going to the press and lying about which decision they took after the fact.

** There's a brilliant motif, full of hopefulness and wonder as Jimbo sets the host monkey free in the thick, lush California forest, underscored with a significant tension of strings and low notes because the monkey ''is'' the host and Jimbo is already starting to become symptomatic.

** The Strings of Suspense play during Sam Daniels' impassioned plea to the pilots of Sandman not to drop the Fuel Air Bomb.

* NoFEMAResponse: The town is quarantined, and then the plan is to Fuel Air Bomb it to stop the infection from spreading.

* ThePlague: Motaba.
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Imploringly spoken by Sam Daniels as Robby looks like she might succumb to her Motaba infection. Followed by his calculated risk.

** Daniels gets to the point where has had ''enough'' of [=McClintock=] and his warmongering obstructionism when the former threatens to shoot down the latter after being told he has the way to cure the remaining early-stage Cedar Creek patients.

* {{Irony}}: Sam and Casey get into an argument because Sam is being his usual obstinate self and insisting they've overlooked something. Casey tells Sam he should get some sleep, which only makes Sam angrier. Sam snaps that Casey should get some sleep. Casey as is his wont, jokes about having slept in july. The next shot is Sam having given in to sleep, and Casey still working, until he starts to fall asleep on his feet -- which is why he walks away without unhooking an tears his suit. If he'd listened to his own advice.