History Main / IncurableCoughOfDeath

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* {{Subverted}} in ''WesternAnimation/{{Balto}}''. The entire point of the story is that the titular dog-wolf hybrid had to help a dogsled team get medicine so that the diphtheria epidemic didn't kill most of the town's children. They are shown occasionally, growing weaker and often coughing weakly [[ShownTheirWork per the disease's actual symptoms]], but Balto and the team make it in time to save them.
* {{Averted}} in ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNIMH''. Timmy is bedridden and coughing because he has pneumonia, but we're led to believe by the end of the movie that he's getting better thanks to the medicine his mother gave him.
* ''WesternAnimation/CorpseBride'': The Van Dorts' servant, Mayhew, has a nasty cough at the beginning of the film that Nell Van Dort frequently complains about. He later succumbs to whatever was causing it[[note]]probably lung disease brought about by his incessant smoking[[/note]] and keels over while driving them home. The Van Dorts don't even notice aside from the sudden lurching of the carriage. He then shows up in the Land of the Dead as a "new arrival".
* This trope is spoofed in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'' movie ''WesternAnimation/WakkosWish'', in which Dot constantly coughs and claims she "needs an operation" but never mentions quite what the problem is. At the end of the movie, she does a DisneyDeath that lasts for less than five minutes (Those acting lessons paid off!), and is later shown emerging from the operating room with a new beauty mark to make her "even cuter".
* Clara in ''[[WesternAnimation/DavidCopperfield1993 David Copperfield (1993)]]''.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ScroogeAChristmasCarol'', Tiny Tim has a bad cough, as did Scrooge's little sister Jen in the past. The "death" part of the trope is semi-{{averted}} in Jen's case, though – she recovered from her illness, but was permanently weakened by it, leading to her DeathByChildbirth as a young woman – and completely {{averted}} in Tim's case, as Scrooge's HeelFaceTurn brings him the medical care he needs.

** {{Averted}} in ''Anime/MyNeighborTotoro''. It's never outright stated, but Yasuko Kusakabe clearly ''is'' in a clinic for tuberculosis. [[spoiler:Fortunately, she recovers and comes home (after a few scares) in the end. It’s based on his own childhood, after all]].
** Played straight in ''Anime/TheWindRises''. Jiro’s [[spoiler:wife, Naoko,]] is already in advanced stages of the disease when they meet again as adults. He [[spoiler:marries her]] despite knowing how sick she is and she dies from it at the end.

* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Kenny Dies". Kenny randomly starts coughing during one scene, and if you can't guess where it leads to, take another look at the episode title. (Probably Muscular Dystrophy, judging from the vague descriptions we get.)
** Played straight in the ''South [=ParQ=] Vaccination Special'', though: Ms. Nelson starts coughing with no build-up just as the boys bring the vaccines against COVID-19 at the school and the scene suddenly cuts to her funeral. However, it's heavily implied that Mr. Garrison made a [[DealWithTheDevil pact with "The Elite"]] to get rid of Ms. Nelson and regain his place as teacher at South Park Elementary.
* Also spoofed in ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' "Tears of a Clooney". Hayley randomly coughs during one scene, which sure enough leads to her developing cancer (though she ultimately does not die.)
* In an animated short called ''WesternAnimation/TheKinematograph''. It's a truly heartbreaking story about a man attempting to create moving pictures (aka movies) in color. His wife is the one who tells him her theory on how to make color film, which ends up working. However, as soon as he leaves the room, she starts coughing. When he finally makes it work, he asks her to sit down in front of the camera and talk so he can film her. After he's developed the film and is excited to show her, he finds her collapsed on the floor near a bloody handkerchief. [[spoiler:She dies, and all the man is left with is the film of her he was so eager to make]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Superjail}}'' - [[TearJerker poor little "Sanser]]"...
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Poor Violet is one half of a pair of orphans who always show up in Springfield whenever a heartstring needs tugging. She suffers from this. Most likely due to living in an orphanage that can't afford the proper number of walls.
-->'''Poor Violet''': Three is not enough ... (COUGH HACK COUGH)
** In the episode "And Maggie Makes Three", Homer bids goodbye to Little Joey, [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext a Depression-era shoeshine boy that works at the bowling alley with him]], saying that they'll "get to California some day". Joey, wistfully, humors him, then begins coughing into his rag.
* Lampshaded in ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse'' with the first Peter Parker. He is severely injured and buried under a pile of rubble. Despite first insisting that he's fine, he coughs, indicating to the viewer that he will probably not be getting up from this. Also somewhat subverted because rather than dying of his injuries, he is killed by Kingpin.
-->'''Peter Parker''': The coughing's probably not a good sign.

** In early serial [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E7TheSensorites "The Sensorites"]], Ian develops a case of this. He goes from coughing to unconcious and dying in about two minutes. Fortunately, he has a natural immunity — he's a program regular. (That didn't stop some viewers from mistaking William Russell's acting-cough for an on-camera bout of real real-life choking — a different kind of ICOD.)
** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E9TheEmptyChild "The Empty Child"]]: The elderly Dr. Constantine is seen coughing.

* Averted, Post-nasal drip can cause continuous coughing but by itself wouldn't likely cause death. Have fun scaring people though.

* Pertussis aka Whooping Cough. It's usually only fatal to infants (which just makes it worse), but even in older kids it can cause fainting, hernias, and rib fracture. It's also very unpleasant to endure, being that the endless deep coughs can make a person ''feel'' like they're dying, even in mild to moderate cases.

* Website/TheOtherWiki says the following about the voice actor [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Varney Jim Varney]]: During the filming of ''Treehouse Hostage'' in August 1998, Varney started developing a bad cough. As the cough became worse, Varney began noticing blood on his handkerchief and, after filming was complete, he went to the doctor. A chain smoker, Varney had developed lung cancer.
* Creator/HenrikWergeland famously died from two-sided pneunomia that chained him to bed for 14 months. It began with a day in April 1844 when he decided to take his jacket off because the weather was bright, but his office accordingly cold (located in the old castle in Oslo). He had a fit of pneunomia, but after two weeks, he decided he was well enough to celebrate the National holiday of May 17, but his sister noticed he was "pale as death" when she saw him strolling downhill to town. After that, the illness returned, and this time, no power in the world could save him. His lungs deteriorated to a point where he passed out and died the following summer. Of course there was a lot of coughing and blood involved. Also possibly lung cancer, not very well known at the time.
* Norwegian painter Nicolai Astrup died of a similar illness in the autumn of 1928, having caught pneunomia after - believe it or not - taking off his jacket in April that year (April in Norway ''can'' be treacherous). Astrup got his because of a car ride, combining hot sunshine with cold airs.

* ''Manga/XxxHolic'' main character Watanuki -- who is also the ButtMonkey / TheWoobie of the show -- suffers from the dreaded blood-coughing after [[spoiler: befriending a lonely ghost whose presence sadly sucks out his life energy even if she doesn't want him harm]] in a episode arc. He does survive because another character [[spoiler:kills the ghost with a spiritual arrow in order to save him]], but it is made clear that it would have killed him if the situation would have continued any longer.

* In ''Anime/BtX'', Hokuto suffers from radiation poisoning, and is stated to have few months of life left [[spoiler: He isn't planning to last that long.]]

* In the ''Manga/BlackButler'' manga during the {{circus|OfFear}} arc Ciel is dragged off to the makeshift outdoor baths by his roommate. During this time it's winter and the water the circus performers are washing up with isn't heated (it's VictorianLondon, after all). After being soaked with the freezing water we later see Ciel coughing, eventually falling into an aggressive coughing fit that causes him to vomit. We find out that he [[spoiler: suffers from asthma, a disease he inherited from his mother. The cold had aggravated it.]] He gets better, though.

* In ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'', Joshua Christopher suffers from this trope, until [[spoiler: he accepts Chrono's horn from Aion and becomes part of the antagonist organization, the Sinners.]].
* In ''VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'', Nagisa has an evidently non-lethal version of this. [[spoiler: Until she gives birth, which complicates things a bit.]]
** In ''After Story'', [[spoiler: One of the first signs that her and Tomoya's daughter Ushio inherited the already [[DeathByChildbirth deceased Nagisa]]'s illness is that she beings coughing profusely. It gets nastier for both father and daughter. [[{{Retcon}} And then better.]]]]

* Takiko Ohkuda from ''Manga/FushigiYuugiGenbuKaiden'' continuously coughs during her journey. When she's back in the Real World, it's revealed that she [[spoiler: caught the consumption of her late mother, Yoshie]]. Then again, [[spoiler: it's already revealed by Miaka that she originally was {{mercy kill}}ed at the hands [[OffingTheOffspring of her father]].]]

* Somewhat subverted in ''Manga/GlassMask'', since Maya's mother, Haru ''does'' suffer from tuberculosis, but [[spoiler: actually dies after being hit by a car]].

* In ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'', WordOfGod says that a pre-teen Holy Roman Empire suffered from this and BloodFromTheMouth. TeamMom Hungary is seen picking him up and carrying him around [[BridalCarry in her arms]] at least once. [[spoiler: He died later, but is strongly implied to have sort-of being brought BackFromTheDead... as Germany.]]

** In ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'', the Incurable Cough Of Death is simply one of the V-Type Infection's syndromes (among dizzy spells, fever, keeling over at the drop of a hat...) that [[spoiler: Sheryl Nome]] has to endure, even though [[spoiler:Grace]] has claimed the V-Infection to be incurable and fatal. [[spoiler: Her]] struggling to overcome these in order to reassert [[spoiler:herself and her ideals]] seems to be one of the major plot arcs as the series nears its end.
*** [[spoiler: However, Sheryl doesn't die, but is saved when Ranka uses her own Vajra skills to move the virus from her brain to her stomach region, turning it into more of a benign symbiosis than infection.]]

* Zest of ''Anime/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaStrikers'' has this, due to being one of [[MadScientist Jail's]] botched attempts at an [[SuperSoldier Artificial Mage]]. [[spoiler: While [[HugeGuyTinyGirl Agito]] hates her for doing it, she thanks Signum for [[SuicideByCop killing Zest in battle]], letting him die as a knight instead of a sick man.]]

* Justified in ''Manga/NabariNoOu'', as Yoite's ''entire body'' is failing as a result of his use of the forbidden Kira technique. [[spoiler: It's explicitly mentioned later on that he won't survive the month.]]

** Itachi Uchiha dies from one of these. Apparently, he had been keeping himself alive with all sorts of medicine so he could [[spoiler: be killed by Sasuke]]. Then we find out ''why''.

** Hinata Hyuga nearly avoids this. She acquires exponential damage to her body's chakra system and heart from facing her cousin, Neji Hyuga, in the preliminaries. She is still feeling the affects of such a strain on her body that she breaks out in a violent coughing fit during the fight between Neji and Naruto a month later and subsequently passes out. Kiba Inuzuka finds an ANBU overlooking the final Chunin matches [[spoiler: It's really [[TheMole Kabuto]] [[DeadlyDoctor Yakushi]] in disguise]] and has him heal her with his medical ninjutsu.
** Sai's "older brother" Shin also died from one of these [[spoiler: before Danzo could force them to fight to the death]].

** [[spoiler: Whitebeard had it, too. Considering [[RasputinianDeath everything else he went through]], though, it's easy to forget. Though it's indicated that if not weakened by disease, all the punishment he took in his final battle ''still'' [[MadeOfIron wouldn't have been enough to kill him]].]]

* Sayo Muto aka Magdaria from ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'''s filler arcs is dying of tuberculosis. Specifically, she got it from her mother when she was a little girl, and her older brother Shougo tried to search for a cure to no avail. [[spoiler: Neither mother nor daughter die of illness; both of them were shot to death, with several years of difference.]]
** One could argue that it's played straight, [[spoiler: in that the cough signals the audience that the character is doomed. Of course, the way the writers were practically splashing "Wouldn't it be so tragic if this character died?" all over the screen every time poor Magdaria appeared, most of us [[ForegoneConclusion already knew that]].]]

** [[spoiler: Kenshin, and then Kaoru]] contract some kind of unspecified disease in the [[NonSerialMovie Seisouhen OVA]] whose symptoms include this.
* In the "Dream" arc of the ''Manga/SailorMoon'' manga, Mamoru hides his Incurable Cough Of Death from Usagi at first, but he is soon discovered. He also coughs up some [[BloodFromTheMouth black blood]] and, more significantly, has a black rose in his lungs showing this to be some sort of magic disease (apparently without followup testing for known diseases that can produce anomalous chest x-rays). It turns out [[spoiler: it is a result of his kingdom, Elysion/The Golden Kingdom, that he ruled being attacked which affects him physically... once the enemy is defeated he is cured]].

** Raquel Applegate of ''VideoGame/WildArms4'', [[spoiler: due to suffering from an unknown, incurable disease that's implied to be radiation poisoning]]. This doesn't stop her from being the most powerful character in the game, though it does explain why her HP and speed are so low. [[spoiler: She eventually dies in the DistantFinale epilogue, having never found a cure for her sickness.]]

* Fluttershy in ''[[https://www.fimfiction.net/story/546/the-cough The Cough]]'' admits to a cough, which is the only warning sign of a dangerous and notably incurable but also unnamed contagion, and is murdered [quite brutally] to protect the remaining refugees. A literary interpretation of The Incurable Cough of Death. [[spoiler: It is implied that Rainbow Dash was actually the one who coughed and that they killed the wrong pony.]]
* Meadowgrass from the tenth chapter of ''Fanfic/TheMareWhoOnceLivedOnTheMoon'' has one of these due to pneumonia in a {{Steampunk}} setting. [[spoiler: she doesn't make it to the end of the chapter]], and the whole experience ends up affecting Twilight a lot.

** Played straight in ''Anime/TheWindRises''. Jiro’s [[spoiler: wife, Naoko,]] is already in advanced stages of the disease when they meet again as adults. He [[spoiler: marries her]] despite knowing how sick she is and she dies from it at the end.

--->'''Cersei''': Lord Gyles has had that cough for ''years'', and it never killed him before. He coughed through half of Robert's reign and all of Joffrey's. ... You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die.

--->She sighed a great deal, she used to sink down on to the divans, and sometimes even faint. She would interrupt her wearisome embroidery, raising her eyes to the heavens (she was subject to strange mystical states), or let the heavy anglo-saxon novels, which she never finished, drop on to her knees. She often held a delicate batiste handkerchief to her lips, and coughed faintly. In those moments she paraded an ostentatious discretion, and a truly unbearable resignation. I kept a pitiless watch on her, and I can positively state that she never coughed the slightest drop of blood. But she had cultivated the art of languishing gracefully, and no doubt her head had been turned by romantic examples of phthisis, of homecomings from balls where you catch cold in the snow.

* In the story ''Laura and the Silver Wolf'', the heroine [[spoiler: who has leukemia]] begins to cough... and from then on, she wakes up exactly once and then [[spoiler: dies. But if we believe her, then she is forever in the Ice-Land and [[DiedHappilyEverAfter quite happy there]]]].

* In the ''Hetty Feather'' trilogy by Creator/JacquelineWilson, Ida Battersea starts to suffer from this in the second book. [[spoiler: She [[TearJerker doesn't make it.]] ]]

** This was also used with Londo as {{Foreshadowing}}. Londo, being a Centauri, has seen a vision of his own eventual death, but no context for the scene (seeing their own deaths in a vision is one of several [[PlanetOfHats hats]] the Centauri wear). One of the details of the scene is him having a sickly cough (though he knows from the beginning it's unrelated to his actual cause of death: [[spoiler: being strangled to death by G'Kar]]). Starting from late in the second season, we see Londo cough occasionally, WordOfGod being that it is foreshadowing his eventual fate.

* Subverted in ''Series/CriminalMinds'' episode "North Mammon". Three teenaged girls were kidnapped by a man and held in a cold, damp cellar. Just before this happened, one of the girls had coughed, indicating that she was getting a cold. [[spoiler: That same girl grew worse and worse in health due to her surroundings as she and her friends were locked up. In order to be let go, the kidnapper made the friends choose among themselves which one of them would die in order for the other two to be let go. One of the healthier girls made up her mind to kill the sick girl and was trying to convince the other healthier girl to help, but in the end the sick girl bashed the former's head in with a hammer in order to survive. She and her remaining friend made it out of the cellar alive, but horribly shaken up from the experience.]]

* In ''{{Series/Deadwood}}'', Doc Cochrane begins hacking up blood in the third season, and Silas and others describe him as "a lunger", implied to be tuberculosis. Cochrane starts getting depressed, but Swearengen gives him a tough-love pep-talk, telling him that he isn't dead yet and to get back to work. Of course, the fact that Cochrane is the only doctor in town means Swearengen and the rest of the town residents rely on him. [[spoiler: Subverted, since the Doc lives to the end of the series.]]

* While not Chris' counterpart, the series from which Dragon Knight adopted its footage, ''Series/KamenRiderRyuki'' also contains one such character in Shuichi Kitaokao/Kamen Rider Zolda. In fact, its more or the less the main reason why he becomes involved in the Rider War as he wants to use the promised wish to grant himself immortality, thereby curing himself. By the end of the series, Shuichi decides to quit the Rider War deciding to enjoy what little time he has left. However, [[spoiler: he also begins to feel the need to take some personal responsibility over his role in allowing his ArchEnemy to become a Rider, and decides to fight him one last time. Before he gets the chance, however, he succumbs to his illness and dies. Even taking the ResetButton ending into account, there's no indication that things will turn out any better for Kitaoka, and worse, he'll probably never go through the CharacterDevelopment he did in the series and grow out of his {{Jerkass}} tendencies.]]

* In one ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' episode, they end up in a world where a disease ("The Q") is spreading throughout the world, and wiping out humanity [[spoiler: because, as a paranoidly clean society, they never discovered penicillin]]. Anyone who coughs has the disease (and often try to cover it up).

* Edwin Stanton struggled with asthma for most of his life, and coughs constantly throughout ''Podcast/EighteenSixtyFive''. [[spoiler: His asthma ultimately claims his life by 1868]].

* Double Subversion in Creator/MartinMcDonagh's play ''The Cripple of Inishmaan'': Cripple Billy, having a pronounced cough from the start of the play, produces a doctor's letter diagnosing him with TB, and is seen to die of it in a Hollywood motel room. [[spoiler: It turns out that he forged the letter so that Babbybobby, the boatman whose wife died of TB, would take him to Inishmore so that he could be in the film ''Man of Aran''. His "death scene" is actually him rehearsing his lines in his motel room.]] And then [[spoiler: after Billy returns to Inishmaan when, irony of ironies, it turns out that he ''has'' contracted TB after all, complete with BloodFromTheMouth]]. On a related note, the play is also a {{Deconstruction}} of BuryYourDisabled.

** He doesn't really cough until [[spoiler: he's horribly burned in a fire at the end of Act 3]]. Prior to that, he's actually mostly okay. Likely he inhaled the superheated air and burned his throat.

* ''VideoGame/MinecraftStoryMode'': [[spoiler: Inflicted upon whoever Jesse saved from the Wither Storm when they rejoin the group.]]

** Thomas Downes, the person who intervenes in the fight between Arthur and Valentine's local brute Tommy, has a pretty nasty cough when you meet him for the first time, and dies of it about 1/3 of the way into the game.[[spoiler: But not before infecting Arthur with his [=TB=] while Arthur tries to collect a debt from him, resulting in Arthur's death by the end of the story.]]

* ''Webcomic/KeychainOfCreation'': [[spoiler: Secret, shortly pre-Abyssalization]] exhibited this in a flashback, complete with [[BloodFromTheMouth blood]], after catching a plague of some sort.

** The more wrapped up in whatever happened to Alex Jay gets, the sicker he seems to grow. Entries set in the past show Tim having a similar coughing fit. The following seasons show this is the least of his health problems - without meds, [[spoiler: he turns back into the Masked Man, which involves something approaching a seizure.]]
** The idea got picked up by a few other stories in Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos, with one suggesting that it's due to [[spoiler: Slender Man dragging the victim back and forth through time, which the human body is not designed to handle]].

* In an animated short called ''WesternAnimation/TheKinematograph''. It's a truly heartbreaking story about a man attempting to create moving pictures (aka movies) in color. His wife is the one who tells him her theory on how to make color film, which ends up working. However, as soon as he leaves the room, she starts coughing. When he finally makes it work, he asks her to sit down in front of the camera and talk so he can film her. After he's developed the film and is excited to show her, he finds her collapsed on the floor near a bloody handkerchief. [[spoiler: She dies, and all the man is left with is the film of her he was so eager to make]].

* ''WesternAnimation/OverTheGardenWall'' features Lorna, who spends the majority of her appearance coughing due to a "mysterious illness" [[spoiler: (actually an evil spirit that has possessed her)]].

* In ''Film/Maleficent2014'', the dying King Henry has a terrible cough as a result of the mortal wound Maleficent gave him.

* George "The Gipper" Gipp in ''Film/KnuteRockneAllAmerican'' dies this way after his freshman season playing for Notre Dame ([[OneSceneWonder which was covered in about ten minutes in the film]]).

%%* Tiny Tim (Robin the Frog) in ''Film/TheMuppetChristmasCarol''.%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample

* ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter2'': Lian Xing's main symptom after being infected with TheVirus.

* In ''VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS2}}'': The hero's buddy, Zeke develops a cough soon after the plague becomes a part of the plot.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'': [[spoiler:Cave Johnson acquires]] a fatal illness [[spoiler:from handling moon rocks, and his intercom]] messages are frequently interrupted by violent coughing fits. Somewhat justified since it's speculated that [[spoiler:lunar dust]] could cause respiratory disease.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea 3|AbsenceOfJustice}}'', Almaz starts getting sick when he's pricked by a needle thus suffering from an incurable curse. He insists that he's fine throughout the majority of chapter 6 and 7 until he finally drops dead due to progressively getting weaker. Only in the bad ending does he stay dead. Other than that, he'll get better.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Azur Lane}}'' upon finishing construction of Battlecruiser Amagi, she would cough during her introduction. [[spoiler:The reason would be revealed during the final stage of the ''Crimson Echoes'' event, where she reveals that due to being born 'weak' and having a defective core that she was not long for the world.]]

* In ''Film/FindingNeverland'', Sylvia Llewelyn Davies is a widow with five young sons, so you think she'd want to look after her health for their sakes. There were consumption treatments and sanitariums (though no cure, some people DID recover) in Edwardian England, especially for a woman with money. Instead, she says "I need to go on pretending... until the end...". That's about as useful as "think happy thoughts and you can FLY!"

* In ''Podcast/Wolf359'', Eiffel develops a cough at the start of season 2, which gets progressively worse over time. At the end of ''"Lame-O Superhero Origin Story"'', he's audibly out of breath even though he hasn't done any physical labour. He then starts coughing and gagging, [[BloodFromTheMouth hacks up blood]] and collapses. The next episode starts off with him suffering severe breathing problems, running a high fever and going into shock. [[spoiler: During the episode, his lung collapses and he suffers severe internal bleeding. While he ''does'' survive, it's only barely.]]

* ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'':
** In Trials And Tribulations, [[spoiler:Terry Fawles]] falls victim to this in case 4 from ingesting poison.
** Subverted in Spirit Of Justice, as it is suggested that [[spoiler:Dhurke Sahdmadhi]] died this way, but it is actually found out that [[spoiler:it was blood from gunshot wounds.]] This reveal, however, helps dissipate most of (if not all) the suspicion surrounding that case's defendant.

-->-- [[http://www.avforums.com/threads/the-hollywood-rule-book.32262 "Hollywood Rule Book,"]] Vanity Fair

* In ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'', at the end of the Maria ending, [[spoiler:Maria coughs, and it is implied that what happened with Mary will happen again with Maria]].

* Practically invoked and inverted in ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' episode "My Lucky Night". Dr. Cox's son Jack develops a cough, which turns out to merely be the sniffles, but that doesn't prevent his dad from charging down the hospital hall like a mad bull, violently shoving over other doctors and patients. Dr. Norris, Jack's pediatrician, explains to Cox that as a doctor, he has to deal with the burden of knowledge, knowing what can really go wrong, and that he has to take control of it or it will ruin him. In the episode's closing scene, Cox is lying in bed, panicking about Jack's coughing.

--> "It starts out as a cough, then you start coughing blood. And then... well. Then I shoot you."

* ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'': Agent Peggy Carter starts coughing during her discussion with Steve in hospital. This is heavily implied to be related to her illness, except that further context indicates her illness is Alzheimer's disease - not exactly a respiratory ailment.

* Creator/NicoleKidman's character Satine in ''Film/MoulinRouge'' is also dying from tuberculosis. In a slight subversion, she doesn't know she's dying (even though it should be pretty frickin' obvious), because Harold (her boss and father figure) tells the doctor not to tell her so she can continue to perform. Even though someone in the late stages of tuberculosis would not have been able to hit the notes she was singing, or sing at all for that matter.

* Subverted in ''Film/EscapeFromLA'': Up until the end of the film, everyone was convinced that Snake's cough was due to him being infected with a deadly toxin. Then, it was revealed that [[spoiler: he and the audience had been duped;]] the "Plutoxin 7" virus he was given [[spoiler: was actually a common influenza virus]].
* In ''Film/TheHost2006'', coming into contact with the tadpole monster reportedly infects the touched with a lethal virus. When main character Gang-Du is infected, the media makes a big case about how he is exhibiting "cold-like symptoms", including coughing (which leads to some mild hysteria on the streets of Seoul when a man coughs in a crowd while the media piece is playing). Subverted in that [[spoiler:the virus ''doesn't actually exist'' (the US Army stuck with the story because it was too late to say they were wrong), and Gang-Du probably just has a cold]].
* The mysterious virus in ''Film/RightAtYourDoor'' seems to give people coughs and prompt tearful evaluations of life and the government.
* At about the halfway point of the Creator/AndyKaufman BioPic ''Film/ManOnTheMoon'', Andy coughs while explaining his latest stunt to his agent; later, during a comedy club appearance where he invites audience members to touch a cyst on his neck, he has a brief fit of coughing. These are both given no heed and the latter could be seen as AllPartOfTheShow...but in the next scene Andy breaks the news to his confidantes that he has a rare form of lung cancer, which he eventually dies from. Notable because this is actually TruthInTelevision: Andy developed a cough in the mid-1970s, and he sometimes can be seen coughing in interviews. In 1983, when it became too frequent and pronounced to ignore, he took his loved ones' advice, went to a doctor, and learned that he was dying; the cough was a side effect of his illness.

* Invoked in ''Film/Parasite2019''. The Kim family spends most of the first act scheming their way into getting jobs for the rich Park family. Along the way they have to get rid of the rest of the household staff. By the end of the first act, the only one who’s left standing is the housekeeper. Mr. Kim tells Mrs. Park that he ran into her when he went to get his annual check-up and she was telling someone on the phone that she had active TB. Mrs. Park says she didn’t know people still got that in rich countries like UsefulNotes/SouthKorea but he retorts that Korea is the OECD country with the highest infection rate. He also says that he personally wouldn’t want someone with such a horrible, contagious disease around his own kids. When they get home, he has his daughter float some peach fuzz in the air as the housekeeper is deathly allergic. He then follows behind her coughing fit and squirts hot sauce onto the tissue to make it look like she’d coughed up blood and it gets her fired.
* Creator/JulianneMoore's character in ''[[Film/TheEndOfTheAffair1999 The End of the Affair]]'' coughs lightly in a restaurant and Creator/RalphFiennes' character asks if she's alright. Needless to say, she's on her death bed within 20 minutes of screen time. In an essay about seeing this movie with his boyfriend, David Sedaris pokes fun at how this trope was used; "It might have been different had Julianne Moore suddenly started bleeding from the eyes, but coughing, in and of itself, is fairly pedestrian".
* In ''Film/BriansSong'', the first big sign that something more than a little weight loss is happening is Brian Piccolo hacking and wheezing on the sidline complaining of hay fever and allergies. A fairly realistic example of this trope since he's actually got a tumor in his lung.
* Justified in ''Film/BrassedOff''. Coal lung (caused by inhaling small particles of coal dust, which proceed to abrade membranes in the lungs) has all the symptoms, and is incurable and invariably fatal. Danny is a retired miner who has probably worked for over thirty years, most of that before protective gear.

* Longshanks, in ''Film/{{Braveheart}}''. Introduced subtly as a very mild sneeze; by the end he's dead from consumption. Given his age and the time period, however, he was going to go pretty soon anyway.
* ''Film/FindingNeverland'', Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Creator/KateWinslet) is a widow with five young sons, so you think she'd want to look after her health for their sakes. There were consumption treatments and sanitariums (though no cure, some people DID recover) in Edwardian England, especially for a woman with money. But instead she says "I need to go on pretending...until the end...". That's about as useful as "think happy thoughts and you can FLY!"
* Subverted by another real-life character played by Creator/KateWinslet, Juliet Hulme, in ''Film/HeavenlyCreatures''. Juliet suffered from TB as a child, and her relapse as a teenager is signaled by one scene of her in school coughing slightly and then spurting a tasteful amount of blood on her text book. She spends months in hospital, [[spoiler: and helps her best friend Pauline murder Pauline's mother, after Juliet recovers]].
* ''Film/MissPotter'': Ewan [=McGregor=]'s character, Norman Warne. Mr. Warne's sister has to tell his fiancee Beatrix that Norman died suddenly, possibly caused by getting rained on at the train station to say goodbye to Beatrix. "It was just a cough!", Millie Warne says. Actually Norman Warne died of Leukemia, which apparently doesn't cause coughing, but maybe that's not nearly as "romantic"?
* In ''Film/{{Constantine}}'', the eponymous AntiHero is dying of lung cancer, complete with bloody cough, and he knows it. In the end, of course, [[spoiler:the Devil cures him so he won't go to Heaven]].
* ''Film/GranTorino'' - Creator/ClintEastwood's character exhibits the cough complete with bright red blood and the coughing fits being violently enough to bring him to his knees. He passes it off as nothing, but a later scene with the doctor implies that it's a great deal more serious. He doesn't die of it, [[spoiler:instead dying in a hail of bullets to make sure a violent street gang stays put away]]. Given the frequent smoking in the film and his advanced age, it's probably lung cancer.
* ''Film/RepoTheGeneticOpera'' has Rotti Largo, whose very first scene has him being brought the news that he's dying, and has very little time left. His only symptom is a rather bad cough, and [[spoiler:of course, he's dead by the movie's end.]]
** In fairness, they do hint that it's some kind of cancer--he's bald and has lesions on his face, which can both be caused by chemotherapy and similar treatments. [[spoiler:It's the stress of the Genetic Opera that kills him by the end.]]
* Used in ''Film/{{Shadrach}}'' where Paul's mother has a persistent cough, probably from tuberculosis, and dies a few years after the events in the movie.
* In ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', Yoda's imminent death is heralded by his rather nasty cough in his last scene while alive, although he apparently dies of simple old age - perhaps his weakened immune system couldn't stand the swampy air of Dagobah?
* In the Creator/ErrolFlynn swashbuckler ''Film/CaptainBlood'', HangingJudge [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Lord Jeffreys]] coughs into a cambric handkerchief and is diagnosed by the eponymous hero as dying from "a bleeding death in the lungs." (In the novel and in RealLife, Jeffreys' fatal illness was actually kidney disease. (Admittedly, kidney disease is rather more of a challenge to show tastefully on screen...)
* In ''Film/MildredPierce'' the younger daughter gets the fatal cough after the first 15 minutes.
* The movie Film/BrightStar has John Keats succumb to an Incurable Cough Of Death, which is a TruthInTelevision because the actual John Keats died of TB.
* ''Film/TheRoad'' has the father coughing through most of the movie. His sickness is never identified, but he does die from it.
* In ''Film/Gremlins2TheNewBatch'', Mr. Wing is coughing from his lifetime of smoking. When he refuses to sell his shop to corporate minion Forster, the latter notices how much he's coughing and correctly decides all he has to do is wait him out.
* In Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheStand'', coughing=having Captain Trips (the "superflu" which all but wipes out humanity)
* This is the first sign of infection in the Zombie flick ''[[Film/DeadAir2009 Dead Air]]''.
* Averted in the film adaptation of ''Film/WhosAfraidOfVirginiaWoolf''. Characters frequently cough, but it doesn't portend anything.
* Strangely enough, [[spoiler: Ram]] in ''Film/{{Tron}}'' starts coughing after being mortally wounded.
* In ''Film/IronJawedAngels'', Inez starts with a cough...then coughs blood...then dies. Same as her real life counterpart, she has pernicious anemia.
* In the [[FilmOfTheBook film adaptation]] of ''Film/TheLastSong'', the main character's father has an ominous coughing fit shortly before his daughter(and the audience) find out he has terminal cancer.
* In ''Film/{{Inception}}'', Saito (who had been shot in the chest in the first dream level) appears to be fine... until he starts coughing. By the time they've finished the third dream level, he's died and gotten stuck in limbo.
* Tiny Tim (Robin the Frog) in ''Film/TheMuppetChristmasCarol''.
* Whistler in ''Film/{{Blade}}''.
* Johnny Blaze's Dad in the ''Film/GhostRider'' film gets the Cough of Death, as a symptom of his blatant lung cancer from smoking too many cigarettes.
* Robert Franklin and [[spoiler:Hunsiker]] in ''Film/RiseOfThePlanetOfTheApes''.
* The disease in ''Film/Contagion2011'' takes this form, killing you mere days after you start coughing. [[spoiler:Subverted on the "incurable" part, though, as a vaccine ends up being created at the end of the film]].
* In ''Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows'', [[spoiler:Irene Adler]] is murdered with some kind of poison that causes this and BloodFromTheMouth followed by death in minutes.
* The James Eckhart indie film ''To Be Friends'' has one scene like this on a beach to establish that the lead female character is terminally ill, explaining why she and her best friend are in the countryside so [[spoiler:she can commit suicide.]]
* George "The Gipper" Gipp (UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan) in ''Film/KnuteRockneAllAmerican'', dies this way after his freshman season playing for Notre Dame ([[OneSceneWonder which was covered in about ten minutes in the film]]).
* In ''Thérèse'', Thérèse (soon to be St. Thérèse of Lisieux) develops a violent cough, complete with BloodFromTheMouth, which proves to be tuberculosis.
** TruthInTelevision. In fact, Thérèse was ''overjoyed'' when she found blood in her handkerchief. She'd spit something into her handkerchief the night before but had to wait till morning to make sure. She writes about it like a five-year-old on Christmas.
* ''Film/{{Byzantium}}'': Clara gains this in her adult life before she turned vampire. She's also shown coughing up blood.
* Ray in ''Film/OffTheBlack'' suffers from multiple coughing fits. It's implied that he's living on borrowed time, likely due to his job dropping Agent Orange during Vietnam.
* In ''Film/PansLabyrinth'' Ofelia's mother is very ill, this is apparent because she has both a cough and a handkerchief. She's also pregnant, so you just know how [[DeathByChildbirth this is going to end]].

* Edith in ''Film/CrimsonPeak'' picks up a bloody cough a few nights after arriving at the titular household. With her mother dying of disease during her childhood and then ''haunting'' her, you'd expect Edith to be concerned, but she seemingly forgets about it. [[spoiler: Probably best she didn't bring it up, since Lucille is poisoning her tea. Subverted in that Edith survives the film, although her recovery is an open question.]]
* Eazy-E in ''Film/StraightOuttaCompton'' begins coughing when he [[spoiler:fires Jerry Heller for embezzling money from his group]]. It turns out his coughing is {{foreshadowing}} his HIV/AIDS diagnosis.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BoyAndTheWorld'', a harvester has a terrible cough. [[spoiler:It's implied that his cough isn't what kills him, it's the government that doesn't find him useful anymore.]]
* In Film/{{Tombstone}}, [[spoiler:Doc Holliday's cough marks his eventual death by tuberculosis, much like the real Doc Holliday.]]
* In ''Film/SavingMrBanks'', Travers is frequently shown coughing blood into a white hankerchief.
* Tom from ''Film/HowItEnds'' starts coughing at frequent intervals, eventually culminating in coughing up blood over the passenger-side window of his car, sometime after taking a hit to the chest during a scuffle with a convict pretending to be a police officer. A justified example, as it turned out that hit fractured several ribs, one of which punctured his lung; it ends up collapsing less than ten minutes after the actual bloody-cough and Will is forced to perform an impromptu thoracostomy to re-inflate it. It's also not the ''only'' sign of the injury either, since at one point Tom tries to draw his gun on another set of bad guys, but collapses in pain before he can get it out of the holster.
* Early in ''Film/ShortcutToHappiness'', Mike tends to cough every time he lights up a cigarette. This leads to a RunningGag between him and Stone, as every time he does this Stone sarcastically tells him to "have another cigarette". Eventually, after a particular bad coughing fit, Stone takes the cigarette out of his mouth and throws it away. The viewer later learns that this was the moment when Mike quit. However, the coughing is an early symptom of the lung cancer that eventually kills him.
* ''Film/DarkWaters:'' Tennant, once ‘’he’’ gets cancer from the water.
* ''Film/BohemianRhapsody'': Freddie Mercury develops a cough as a result of his AIDS and at one point coughs up blood during a recording session. TruthInTelevision, as the AIDS complication that killed him was bronchial pneumonia.
* ''Film/TheHungerGames'': It is implied that President Snow suffers from some kind of terminal illness. He coughs up blood in ''[[Film/TheHungerGamesCatchingFire Catching Fire]]'', and is visibly sick in both ''[[Film/TheHungerGamesMockingjay Mockingjay]]'' films. Finnick's speech in ''Mockingjay: Part 1'' reveals that Snow used poison to eliminate rivals during his rise to power. In order to prevent suspicion, he drank the poison himself, but quickly used antidote before he succumbed. Poison is still poison, though, and the antidote didn't fully cure Snow, so he is likely living on borrowed time.

%%* ''Literature/TheStand''.

** If he survived VideoGame/MassEffect2, Thane Krios is coughing when met in VideoGame/MassEffect3. In this case, it's justified as his illness is stated to be Kepral's Syndrome, a drell-specific condition where their lungs slowly fill with fluid. By the time of ''3'', he says he was given 3 months to live... 9 months ago. [[spoiler:He'll later be seriously wounded and die due to complications resulting from his illness, keeping with the trope]].
** Eve is a female krogan shaman who became immune to the [[SterilityPlague genophage]] inflicted upon her species after some well-intentioned but barbaric experimentation. She coughs during conversations with the player if they previously chose to destroy said experimentation data in VideoGame/MassEffect2, and sure enough dies later on if this is the case.

** If he survived VideoGame/MassEffect2, Thane Krios is coughing when met in VideoGame/MassEffect3. In this case his terminal illness was already known. [[spoiler:He'll later be seriously wounded and die due to complications resulting from his illness, keeping with the trope]].

* A semi-common trope in fanfiction in general is 'HanahakiDisease', which has at its focus people coughing up flower petals as a result of unrequited love. Eventually the petals will fill the victim's lungs or throat so much they choke to death. The only cure is for the love to be reciprocated or surgery to remove the flowers, but that also removes the love the victim has for their love interest (and in some cases the ability to love altogether). Notably, most victims refuse the surgery, preferring to die rather than lose their feelings (and in many cases are rewarded with reciprocation).
** There are some variations where the love doesn’t need to be requited, only revealed, to avoid any UnfortunateImplications.

* ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'':
** Thomas Downes, the person who intervenes in the fight between Arthur and Valentine's local brute Tommy, has a pretty nasty cough when you meet him for the first time. [[spoiler:He later on coughs at Arthur when the latter tries to collect the debt from him, and accidentally ends up [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom passing his tuberculosis to Arthur]]. Thomas himself passed away shortly afterward, either because of his disease or because of the vicious beating he received from Arthur.]]
** Towards the end of the story, [[spoiler:Arthur is diagnosed with tuberculosis, and his coughing gets progressively worse. Unlike many video game examples of this trope, Arthur starts taking stat penalites as his condition worsens. By the end, he ultimately [[TheHeroDies succumbs to it]].]]

* In the very first scene of ''Series/TheCrown2016'', [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseofWindsor King George VI]] violently coughs up blood into the toilet, before assuming a StiffUpperLip and going into preside over Prince Philip's investiture ceremony. Given that the focus of the series is about George's daughter [[UsefulNotes/HMTheQueen Elizabeth II]]'s early years on the throne, it's not hard to guess what's coming.

* Meadowgrass from the tenth chapter of ''Fanfic/TheMareWhoOnceLivedOnTheMoon'' has one of these due to pneumonia in a [[Steampunk Steampunk setting]]. [[spoiler: she doesn't make it to the end of the chapter]], and the whole experience ends up affecting Twilight a lot.