History Main / CatchYourDeathOfCold

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/PetesDragon1977'': After being tossed from a boat into the water by Elliot, mean hillbilly matriarch Lena Gogan comes down with "p'monia" (so she claims), although her only symptoms are sneezing and body aches and she recovers after just one scene.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/PetesDragon1997'': After being tossed from a boat into the water by Elliot, mean hillbilly matriarch Lena Gogan comes down with "p'monia" (so she claims), although her only symptoms are sneezing and body aches and she recovers after just one scene.

* In both the 1943 and 1970 versions of ''Film/JaneEyre'', [[spoiler: Helen Burns']] [[IncurableCoughOfDeath consumption]] takes its fatal turn for the worse after she's forced to spend hours outside in the rain as a punishment (alone in 1970, with Jane in 1943). This is a page-to-screen embellishment, as neither [[spoiler: Helen]] nor Jane is ever punished in that way in the book ([[BoardingSchoolOfHorrors although certainly in other ways]]) and [[spoiler: Helen's]] illness worsens on its own.

* In the first movie to ''Manga/CardcaptorSakura'', Sakura falls into a (shallow) well and gets completely soaked and then sneezes.

* In a book based off ''WesternAnimation/{{Ozwald}}'', Ozwald gets a cold from being caught in the rain.

** In "Ramona's World", Beezus is not allowed to go out because it's raining and she's just washed her hair, so her mom thinks she will get sick.

* A ''Series/HappyDays'' fan fiction called ''A Day in the Rain is Worth a Few In Bed'', [[{{Badbutt}} Fonzie]] gets a cold from kissing in the rain with his LoveInterest Meg, who's an AuthorAvatar.
* Another fanfic involving Meg, ''The Fonz Does Not Get Sick'', has Fonzie get a cold from swimming in winter.

* In ''[[http://knapp-street.org/Squeaky/KSM.html K-S-M: Kiss Me]]'', which is a fanfiction of ''Series/LaverneAndShirley'', this trope is zigzagged. Laverne has a cold (or possibly flu, nobody's sure) and Shirley thinks that she went into the cold after taking off her coat, but Laverne herself thinks it's a result of being drenched with water after a fight at a party. However, a whole lot of others also got drenched at the same party, including Lenny, who is seen perfectly healthy.

* In ''Film/{{Babe}}'', Babe catches a cold after running away from home on a rainy night. Though the cold itself concerns the vet less than the little pig's refusal to eat, which unbeknownst to the humans, is because of the reason why he ran away: he just learned that humans eat pigs. But after Farmer Hoggett comforts him with a song and dance, assuring him of his love, he eats again and quickly recovers.
* In ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife'', George lost the hearing in his left ear from a cold he caught as a result of saving his brother from falling in the ice. Zuzu catches a cold from walking home with her coat unbuttoned. George complains that they ought to all have pneumonia from how drafty their house is.
* In ''Film/AlexanderAndTheTerribleHorribleNoGoodVeryBadDay'', Alexander's sister Emily comes down with a cold on the day of her school play, and blames it on having been out in the "cold van" all evening rehearsing.

* Evoked in Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland, after swimming in the Pool of Tears she cried when she was [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever a giant]], Alice worries that she’ll catch a bad cold if she doesn’t get dry quickly, although she doesn’t.

* Invoked in ''{{Series/Highlander}}''...Anne tells Duncan he'll get a cold from sitting out in the cold air. (And she was a doctor. Eesh. as for whether immortals get sick, we never find out for sure.)

* ''Series/WorzelGummidge'': In "Muvvers' Day", Worzel falls into a pond and Sue says, "He'll probably get pneumonia!". Not only can pneumonia not be caught from falling into a pond, but Worzel is a scarecrow, and as John says, "Scarecrows can't get pneumonia!"
* In an episode of ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', Sheldon wants to get out of going to a birthday party for Amy's aunt and announces that he'll "run around outside with a wet head and try to catch a cold."

* Subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode "Arthur's Almost Boring Day", in which Mr. and Mrs. Reed make Arthur and D.W. walk to Grandma Thora's house in a rainstorm. D.W. moans "We'll die out here!" but as it turns out, neither of them get sick.

* The [[AnIcePerson ice-powered villain]] Frozer from ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'' has a bright purple nose (he has blue skin, so a red nose would be purple for him) and sounds like he has a stuffy nose when he speaks. His civilian self didn't have a cold when he was akumatized nor does he normally sound stuffed up, so it seems this was done purely because of this trope.

* Zigzagged in ''Fanfic/NurseJet''. Sean was sniffling by the beginning of the story, but he wasn't fully sick until after leaving the window open overnight while it was raining.

* In ''WesternAnimation/AroundTheWorldWithWillyFog'', Tico falls ill as a result of being exposed to the cold when the travellers set out to cross the frozen Great Lakes in an ice boat after heavy snow prevents their train from leaving Chicago. However, none of the other members of the party get sick from the cold, implying that the reason it happens to Tico is because he's the smallest of the group and is therefore less able to endure the freezing weather.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSpectacularSpiderMan'': Peter goes around in un-insulated Spider-Man suit in the dead of snowy winter, and the next time we see Peter Parker, he's [[FreezeSneeze sneezing]], albeit not nescescarily with a cold.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/KikOriki'' titled "How to Catch a Cold", Fluff bathes in icy water and eats icicles in hopes of catching a cold to get attention. It doesn't work, though.

* Played with in the ''WesternAnimation/{{CatDog}} episode "All About Cat." When Cat sets out to make Dog sick so Cat can replace him in the starring role of the musical "Abe Lincoln, Superstar!", he opens the window to let in a cold breeze on Dog while he sleeps, and replaces his pillow with an ice block... but then he pours a vial of germs onto Dog too.

* In ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'', Jane ends up with a bad cold after riding her horse through the rain to see Mr Bingley.

* At the end of the B-plot of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' episode “Escaping Expulsion”, King is implied to have caught a cold after being trapped in a combo spell Eda cast GoneHorriblyRight. To wit, he’s sneezing, has a cup of hot cocoa, and is wrapped in a blanket.

* In the online game based on ''Franchise/{{Frozen}}'', called ''Elsa Frozen Flu Doctor'', Elsa catches the flu from spending weeks in the cold.
** A similar game entitled ''Rapunzel Flu Doctor'' has Rapunzel and Eugene from ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}'' on a date and then Rapunzel falls out of a boat into the lake and catches the flu.

* Seems to be a reoccurring mechanic in the stealth-based ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' series, where leaving the player character in a cold or rainy place or leaving him scantily clad for too long causes him to catch cold and start sneezing at random, making it harder to sneak around enemy soldiers.
** Snake gets a cold after being stripped of his suit in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'', although it only serves as something to attract guards.
*** In-game dialogue implies he actually caught it from the sick soldier guarding his cell. He can catch cold from spending too much time in the frozen outdoors at the beginning of the game, though.
** He gets a cold again in [[Videogame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty the sequel]], after sneaking around in the pouring rain.
*** Raiden can also get a cold, if you take too long finding his gear in the level where he's naked.
** In Videogame/MetalGear2SolidSnake leaving Solid Snake hanging around in the water of the underground drainage ditch for too long causes him to catch a cold, making him occasionally sneeze. The sound causes nearby guards to get suspicious.
** In Videogame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater Naked Snake can catch a cold if you make him run around in the "Naked Camo" or hang around in water or rain. In addition to his random sneezing alerting guards like in previous games, his stamina will drain more quickly, the camera will shake in first person view, and the controller will vibrate (explained in-game as Snake shivering) until you cure him.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'', the main character gets caught in the rain on the way back from school during the onset of a typhoon, and spends a few days in bed with a fever. The main character can also come down with a cold if fatigued by studying too late or spending too much time dungeon-crawling in Tartarus; because daytime is being spent in a crowded school and the fatigue weakens his immune system, this is in fact more realistic than catching cold due to the weather.

* While I was listening to a non-English scientific podcast about the [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19 pandemic]], a virologist specializing on coronaviruses mentioned that the 4 coronaviruses that cause the “common cold” were originally zoonotic diseases just like the ones causing SARS and COVID-19 and that the last of the 4 “harmless” coronaviruses jumped from cows to humans in the 19th century.[[note]] (This can be deduced from the number of mutations that this cold virus has today, compared to the similar one in cows, since the rate of mutation is fairly steady throughout time and can therefore be used as a a sort of clock, like radioactive decay in carbon dating.)[[/note]] He said there is a current theory that this now mostly harmless coronavirus caused a quite severe disease epidemic at first as well.[[note]] (Apparently there was an epidemic with fitting symptoms and no known cause around the right time, but of course diagnosing this sort of thing over a hundred years later is fraught with a lot of uncertainty.)[[/note]] The theory (and hope) is that either coronaviruses in general tend to mutate to become less lethal once they’ve entered the human species.[[note]] (This would make sense because it is evolutionarily advantageous for the virus not to kill its hosts or make them so ill they have to stay in bed and therefore can’t go around spreading the virus to many other people. It’s known that this is how this works for influenza viruses, for example. Though influenza viruses mutate quite frequently, while the COVID-19 virus seems to be much more stable, as far as scientists can tell after half a year of monitoring.) [[/note]] Or else that, once everybody got infected with a specific coronavirus, those that survive have lifelong immunity at least insofar as that they don’t get severely ill again because their immune system has learned to notice and fight the virus off.[[note]] (The main reason why the COVID-19 coronavirus is fatal in some cases is that it is so new to humanity that our immune system doesn’t even notice the infection for about a week. When the body finally does notice that something is wrong, the virus has already spread throughout the entire body and so the immune system pulls all the alarms and, in some people, completely overreacts, starting a so-called cytokine storm. This immune system overreaction and the accompanying massive, system-wide inflammation reaction is what actually kills people, not the virus itself destroying too many cells for the body to survive. This is why medication designed to suppress the body’s inflammation reaction, such as dexamethasone, can sometimes save the lives of hospitalized COVID-19 patients, even though it seems counter-intuitive to give someone who has an infectious disease medication that suppresses part of the natural immune system response. In contrast, the theory is that if somebody already had the disease before, even if they don’t become completely immune (as is generally the case with the coronaviruses that cause the common cold – immunity generally only lasts for a year or so), their now “trained” immune system should still notice a renewed infection with the same virus right at the start – when the viral infection is still limited to the tissue of the throat for example – and so the immune response would be more measured and less panicky and overreacting.)[[/note]] So, once a new coronavirus has infected more-or-less everybody a least once and is rotating through the population every year like the flu, totally new infections would only occur in children – and it seems like coronaviruses (even COVID-19) cause much less severe illness in children than in adults for some unknown reason. So at that point, everyone would get infected with the virus the first time as a child, when it can’t hurt you much, and then again and again as adults, but even then you won’t get severely ill anymore because your immune system was trained for this specific virus when you were a child. Perhaps that is how new coronaviruses go from “deadly pandemic” to “just another common cold” every time one of them jumps the species barrier, even without the virus mutating much. Conversely, if this theory holds true, it would suggest that the coronaviruses that (among other types of viruses) cause the “common cold” once really were serious and potentially fatal diseases, at least for one generation of humanity, each causing nasty local epidemics whenever it hit a new country/population, similar in severity to what was happening in winter/spring of 2020. (Travel was much slower and rarer in pre-modern times, so it could have taken decades for one specific virus to go around the entire planet.) Which might be part of how the myth of “catching your death of cold” may have originated.

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus'', when Arnold takes his helmet off on Pluto, his head freezes over. Back on Earth, he's just got a cold. Just so everyone's clear, the estimated warmest temperature on the surface of this little ball of ice is just about a skip above absolute zero. The post-episode Q&A segment acknowledges how this was not realistic in the slighest and that he should have "turned into an ice block, or worse".

Despite the fact that the actual cause of the cold has been fairly common knowledge for about a hundred years now, this fact has not seemed to permeate the public consciousness very far. (In English-speaking communities, this confusion may just be caused by its being called a 'cold'.) Mothers still caution their children to button up when going outside lest they catch cold, and any character in fiction, especially animation, will instantly begin to sneeze and cough after being chilled or, especially, [[InstantIceJustAddCold frozen]]. These symptoms may go away once they've been warmed up again, which is sometimes TruthInTelevision, as some people FreezeSneeze when it's cold, but often these symptoms are treated like a cold.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'': Exaggerated in one strip, where Linus claims to have caught a cold from having a chilling sensation listening to music.

* Seems to be a reoccurring mechanic in the stealth-based ''Series/MetalGear'' series, where leaving the player character in a cold or rainy place or leaving him scantily clad for too long causes him to catch cold and start sneezing at random, making it harder to sneak around enemy soldiers.
** Snake gets a cold after being stripped of his suit in VideoGame/MetalGearSolid, although it only serves as something to attract guards.

-->'''Rhino''': ''[scoldingly]'' Maybe next time you'll think twice about swimming in the neighbor's duck pond when it's 35 degrees out. It's like when people go outside with wet hair after they take a shower. Not smart.