History Main / TyphoidMary

Not to be confused with the ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'' villain of the same name. For the metaphorical case of a character who unintentionally brings death and disaster to everyone they come into contact with, see DoomMagnet.

* The {{Trope Namer|s}}: Mary Mallon was a woman who worked as a chef in New York in the early 20[[superscript:th]] century. Everywhere she worked, her employers and the other household staff would all fall ill with typhoid fever, after which she would leave and find new employment. She was ultimately caught in 1907 and forcibly quarantined, given the nickname "Typhoid Mary" by the ''Journal of the American Medical Association'', and revealed that she did not wash her hands before cooking. She was given the option to have her gallbladder removed, or she would have to agree to never become a cook again. She was released 3 years later and forbidden from cooking. She changed her name and went right back at it, leaving a swath of typhoid fever infections in her wake. She was arrested again in 1915 and remained in quarantine until she died 23 years later in 1938. Autopsies showed her gallbladder was full of live typhoid bacteria. Her treatment in quarantine was unusual in that other repeat offenders, including other food handlers and people who had more outbreaks to their name than her, got off with nary a reprimand and a promise not to do it again; the government threw the book at her because she explicitly ''refused to stop working as a cook'', backing them into a corner. However, as [[PoorCommunicationKills it was never properly explained to Mary what was going on]], it's a perhaps understandable reaction: She didn't show symptoms, so she didn't believe she was a carrier.

* {{Subverted|Trope}} in an issue of ''ComicBook/TheNewTeenTitans''; a young Russian woman is sent to run errands in New York City, while unknowingly infected by her boss to spread disease in America. Unfortunately, she gets progressively sicker as she goes along, and once the Titans catch up to her, she is the only one who ''can't'' be cured.

* ''Webcomic/StandStillStaySilent'': The Rash works like this while it's incubating, according to [[http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=437 this]] in-universe document. This is the reason for which some areas require a two-week quarantine for all non-immunes who wish to enter. While it's technically a ZombieApocalypse example as well, the overlap with ZombieInfectee is averted due to only a minority of patients actually transforming, and the rest simply dying.

* The {{Trope Namer|s}}: Mary Mallon was a woman who worked as a chef in New York in the early 20[[superscript:th]] century. Everywhere she worked, her employers and the other household staff would all fall ill with typhoid fever, after which she would leave and find new employment. She was ultimately caught in 1907 and forcibly quarantined, given the nickname "Typhoid Mary" by the ''Journal of the American Medical Association'', and revealed that she did not wash her hands before cooking. She was given the option to have her gallbladder removed, or she would have to agree to never become a cook again. She was released 3 years later and forbidden from cooking. She changed her name and went right back at it, leaving a swath of typhoid fever infections in her wake. She was arrested again in 1915 and remained in quarantine until she died 23 years later in 1938. Autopsies showed her gallbladder was full of live typhoid bacteria. Her treatment in quarantine was unusual in that other repeat offenders, including other food handlers and people who had more outbreaks to their name than her, got off with nary a reprimand and a promise not to do it again; the government threw the book at her because she explicitly ''refused to stop working as a cook'', backing them into a corner.

Unlike the {{Plaguemaster}} and PoisonousPerson, the Typhoid Mary isn't a villain. She doesn't intentionally ''try'' to spread her infection, and is often unaware that she is infected at all, especially when she is an asymptomatic carrier like the original Typhoid Mary. She is at worst ObliviouslyEvil, stubbornly refusing to believe she is a carrier, let alone cooperate with public health authorities.

However, villains may try to use the Typhoid Mary as a weapon, deliberately infecting an unsuspecting person with a contagious disease so she can unknowingly spread it to others. If she was in fact the first person who was infected she may be the PatientZero and possibly be the key to curing it. Thus she can be the target of an all-out manhunt to contain her before everyone around her is infected.

The TropeNamer is the RealLife example of Mary Mallon, the original "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary Typhoid Mary]]" who spread typhoid fever to at least 53 other people while refusing to believe she carried the disease at all because she [[TheImmune never became sick from it herself]]. In biology/epidemiology, this is known as an "asymptomatic carrier" (i.e. carries the disease but shows no symptoms of it).

* During the Ryugu Shelter arc of ''Manga/SevenSeeds'', it is said that the hidden carrier of [[spoiler: the Arcia X parasitoids]] is likely asymptomatic and doesn't even know that they have them and are spreading them around. Turns out the carrier is [[spoiler: Maria]].

* Italian comic book ''ComicBook/DylanDog'' had a short story about a girl born into a werewolf family. While not a werewolf herself, she was a carrier of lycanthropy -- anyone who came into contact with her internal fluids (including through sex) would be infected.
* Averted in an issue of ''ComicBook/TheNewTeenTitans''; a young Russian woman is sent to run errands in New York City, while unknowingly infected by her boss to spread disease in America. Unfortunately, she gets progressively sicker as she goes along, and once the Titans catch up to her, she is the only one who ''can't'' be cured.
* In one BadFuture of ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'', Damian Wayne faces his greatest challenge as Batman when a Joker virus drives the people of Gotham insane. [[HopeSpot All except for one baby boy.]] Barbara Gordon tests the baby and can't find any symptoms of Joker virus at all. Damian visits Gorilla Grodd and demands that he help synthesize a cure for the Joker virus using the baby. Grodd reveals that the baby is actually a carrier of the Joker virus. [[BolivianArmyEnding Cue Joker Barbara killing the baby and opening the doors for the mob of lunatics.]]

* Jack from ''Film/Transporter2'' is turned into one by the villains as part of an assassination plot.
* LoveInterest Nyah from ''Film/MissionImpossibleII'' was going to be used as one by the villains. She knew it, however, and was ready to kill herself rather than spread the disease. Luckily, Ethan got her the cure in time.

* This was the central plot driver in ''Film/{{REC}}'', where no one knew that the little girl didn't actually have tonsilitis, but something far far worse.
* In ''Film/{{Kids}}'', one of the characters is a sexually promiscuous teenage boy who doesn't know he's HIV-positive.
* The lab tech in ''Film/{{Outbreak}}'' unwittingly infects dozens of people in a cinema after an accident in the lab in which he catches the virus. He's exposed to a blood sample from a dead man, who caught the virus from a smuggled monkey.
* Anthony Wong's VillainProtagonist character from Hong Kong exploitation movie ''The Ebola Syndrome'' contracts the eponymous sickness, but turns out to be a one-in-a-million case whose immune system fights it off while remaining contagious, and unknowingly spreads it around in South Africa and Hong Kong. Towards the ending, he becomes aware of his condition and starts to spread it willingly, but by then he's been long confirmed to be pure evil.
* In ''Film/RiseOfThePlanetOfTheApes'', Hunsiker displays exactly ''one'' symptom of what will eventually be known as Simian Flu: a nosebleed (which frankly, could be anything). He brushes it off and boards a plane, starting Simian Flu on the global pandemic that [[spoiler: kills 90% of humanity]].
* In ''Film/CabinFever Patient Zero'', Porter is an asymptomatic carrier of an otherwise highly infectious strain of a flesh-eating disease. An amoral scientist uses him as a lab rat to help find a cure so he (the scientist) can get rich.

* Lenie Clark of Peter Watts' ''Literature/RiftersTrilogy'' series carries βehemoth back to the surface world. However, she isn't a proper example since she spreads it deliberately.
* The protagonist of ''Literature/{{Peeps}}'' carries a parasite that transforms anyone he gets too intimate with into a vampire. Now that he knows, he's careful not to spread it, but he had already infected a number of people before he found out he had it.
* Geoffrey Allen from ''Literature/TheChangelingPlague''. He gets a retrovirus engineered to cure his cystic fibrosis. Since it was specifically designed for his DNA, it has only positive effects on him. But unbeknownst to him, he's also spreading to other people...
* The novel ''Literature/CodeOrange'' revolves around a teen who fears he may be a carrier of smallpox.
* ''Literature/WildCards'': In ''Literature/DownAndDirty'', [[spoiler: Croyd 'The Sleeper']] wakes up with the ability to spread a new strain of the Wild Card virus; one where people who have already been transformed with Wild Card can be re-infected and changed all over again. [[spoiler: Croyd]] keeps moving and spreading the virus because he has entered the paranoid stages of his meth addiction, and can't trust anyone.
* Stephen King's ''Literature/TheStand'' has several unwitting Typhoid Marys but "Joe Bob" Brentwood is the most important as he unintentionally spreads the superflu beyond any chance of containment.
* The rabies-spreading Rant Casey, of, well... Literature/{{Rant}}. In fact, the book compares him to Typhoid Mary several times. However, he seems to actually want to spread the disease... unless he doesn't... it's a little complex when you don't know [[spoiler: there's technically [[strike: two]] THREE of him.]]
* In the ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'' series, the British government exploits this by infecting a French dragon with a highly contagious plague and sending it back to its home base to spread the disease.
* [[spoiler:Miss Sneezy]]'s story in ''Literature/Haunted2005'' is about an island facility where examples of this trope from all over the country live in [[BubbleBoy sterile, high-security isolation]]. [[spoiler:And yes, she is one of them.]]
* In ''Wyvern'' by A.A. Attanasio, one character finds that every village he stays at is struck by fever, although he never gets sick himself. He is finally taken in by a Buddhist monastery, and although the monks get sick, they teach him how to treat the illness. Finally, he administers the cure to himself, and from then on nobody else gets sick by having contact with him.
* The zombie plague in ''Literature/WorldWarZ'' does not have any asymptomatic carriers, but some infected people were killed and had their organs harvested and sold on the black market. This spread the infection across the world, well past any precautions set up to stop mobile zombies. There are rumors that this was deliberate, as China -- the source of the outbreak -- wanted to make sure [[TakingYouWithMe that no other country would survive unscathed while they struggled]].
* Thura in the ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' book ''Salamandastron''; probably his partner-in-crime Dingeye as well, but he never got the chance to show symptoms.
* In the ''Literature/ParadoxTrilogy'', Devi becomes one after being infected with the Stoneclaw virus. The virus works by corrupting plasmex; Devi has so little plasmex herself that it will take months to kill her, but she can still spread it to others, who die almost immediately.
* In ''Literature/TheInitiateBrother'', a plague is spread to the ranks of a barbarian army by Shimeko, a former Botahist Sister who is having something of a CrisisOfFaith. It's debated by other characters whether or not she filled this role knowingly or not, though the fact that she was a healer suggests she'd have to have realised it.
* In the ''Literature/JacobsLadderTrilogy'', Perceval is unknowingly infected with a deadly strain of influenza and then set up to be taken prisoner by the enemy kingdom of Rule so she'll spread it to her captors. Perceval is horrified when she later learns that she was used as an unwitting biological weapon.
* In Creator/CliveBarker's short story "The Life of Death," an English woman ventures into a crypt that was sealed after the Black Death, and becomes a carrier of the disease. She spreads it to a number of coworkers and friends, who die, and to countless others as well. [[spoiler:She is then murdered and raped by an acquaintance who turns out to be a SerialKiller, and he becomes a carrier in her stead.]]

* ''Flight from Tomorrow'', by Creator/HBeamPiper. A future dictator escapes a revolution with a time machine to the twentieth century where he plans to be a ConquerorFromTheFuture. However, he turns out to be a WalkingWasteland because future mankind has become acclimatized to high levels of radiation after a series of atomic wars. The military track him and carpetbomb the valley he's in, then fill it with concrete from one mountainside to the next.
* ''Naples '44'', by Norman Lewis, details a plan by the Allies to send prostitutes behind German lines who were infected with severe cases of syphilis. Venereal disease had infected the Allied armies in Italy but not the German military, who ran their own brothels. Unfortunately, the mission was cancelled and the women were released so they could continue to infect Allied soldiers.
* ''Literature/CiaphasCain'': The novella "Old Soldiers Never Die" has an entire regiment of Typhoid Marys. A Tallarn regiment goes from a planet experiencing an outbreak of a Chaos-tainted plague straight to Lentonia, and brings the plague virus with them. But the Tallarns being TheFundamentalist even by [=40K=] standards, there's enough off-page praying and devotionals going on to block the Chaos element of the plague, so they don't get sick themselves. Unfortunately said off-page praying and devotionals don't ''eliminate'' the Chaos element, and once the Tallarns start spreading the virus among the other military units assigned to the Lentonia uprising the full plague starts up.

*** The episode "The Way to Eden" featured Dr. Sevrin, carrier of the Synthecoccus Novae virus who was more crazy in the coconut than malicious. While the episode didn't have any reported infections, this was because Federation citizens were immunized against the disease. The problem was that Sevrin wanted to go live on a primitive planet whose inhabitants were susceptible to the disease and did not have any immunities. Kirk orders him to be arrested and isolated which causes Severin's followers to get very angry.
--->'''[=McCoy=]''': All the others are clear. He doesn't have it. He's a carrier. Remember your ancient history? Typhoid Mary? He's immune, as she was, but he carries the disease and spreads it to others.
*** Spock in the episode "Miri", although he never actually spreads the disease he passively carries, simply because everyone else around him is infected too.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "I Borg", Geordi proposes using the captured Borg drone Hugh as a carrier for a computer virus meant to destroy the Borg Collective. Picard eventually decides against it on moral grounds--he had come to see Hugh as a person rather than a nameless Borg drone--for which he is [[WhatTheHellHero roundly chewed out]] by Admiral Nechayev in "Descent". However, the sense of individuality that Hugh gained from his exposure to the ''Enterprise'' crew ''did'' infect his cube, which resulted in the Collective severing its connection (in much the same way a computer security guy would unplug a computer actively being hacked).
** In the backstory to the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Child's Play" the Brunali genetically engineered a child, Icheb, to carry a pathogen fatal to the Borg in the hopes of eliminating the Collective. It ''did'' succeed in killing the Borg aboard the cube that assimilated him, but wasn't transmitted beyond it.
* An episode of ''Series/{{House}}'' had an old lady volunteer at the hospital handing out teddy bears and unwittingly spreading echovirus. She barely had any symptoms, and healthy adults were unaffected, but it was lethal to newborns.
* In ''Series/DarkAngel'', Original Cindy's girlfriend was turned into one and eventually died from it.

** Given an ImAHumanitarian twist in episode "Our Town", a town of cannibals catches Cruetzfeld-Jakob disease by serving up an infectee at a ritual banquet.
** The episode "Jump The Shark" is about a biological terrorism plot based on sending out two Typhoid Maries. (Unusually for the trope, they are both fully aware and willing participants).
** Played straight in "El Mundo Gira", when an undocumented laborer mutates to secrete an enzyme that causes anyone who touches him to be overwhelmed by lethal fungal infections within minutes.
* In ''Series/StargateSG1'', before the Ori gain the ability to attack Earth directly, they try infecting an SG team member with a virus. He then spreads it to the rest of his team, and once they return to Earth they bring the disease back with them. The man who was originally infected turns out to be immune to the disease, ensuring he doesn't die before he spreads it to as many people as possible.
* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'':
** An incompetent intern spends the whole week nearly killing patients until JD has a heart-to-heart with him and tells him that medicine isn't for him. But on his way out, the intern absent-mindedly picks up and bins a dropped medical tissue, then shakes hands with a recently-cured (and very beloved) patient, which gives her the infection that [[spoiler:ultimately kills her]].
** In another episode, three people die after organ transplants because the donor unknowingly had rabies.
* The organ donor variant has also been used on ''Series/LawAndOrder'' and ''Series/{{NCIS}}'', usually with black market human tissues and cancer.
* In an episode of ''Series/{{ER}}'', a staph infection spreads throughout the department, and Jeannie teams up with one of the doctors from the infectious disease department to figure out who's doing it. They both immediately know that it's from someone not washing their hands adequately after going to the bathroom, but are initially flummoxed by realizing none of the infected patients have the same doctor or nurse in common. Shortly afterward, the doctor notices all the charts have the same handwriting on the top page, letting Jeannie figure out the person doing the infecting is Jerry, the desk clerk.
* The TropeNamer appears in ''Series/OneThousandWaysToDie''. Because of her unsanitary cooking practices, she ends up infecting and killing a rich couple she was hired to cook for.
* Natalie Luca in ''Series/TheBlacklist''.
* One season one episode of ''Series/MissionImpossible'' had a village full of people who were being trained by an East Bloc government to perfectly blend in with western society. The people all believed that they were being trained as deep-cover spies. In truth, their handlers planned to infect them all with the plague before shipping them out to their assignments. [[spoiler:Rollin gets infected while disposing of the plague samples, and then comes into unprotected contact with the plot's leaders after getting captured. After Dan succeeds in extracting the team, they leave to find a hospital to get Rollin treated and the rest of their number tested, leaving the villains unaware that they might have caught the plague from Rollin.]]
* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'': In "The Pluto File", Robert Reed's [[CodeName The Falcon]] is an unknowing carrier of bubonic plague.
* Mike Barnes from the ''Series/MidnightCaller'' episode "After It Happened" is HIV-positive, but he continues to have promiscuous, unprotected sex, thinking that if he doesn't acknowledge his disease, he won't die from it.
* Invoked in one episode of ''Series/MurderSheWrote'', in which a character named Ellen wryly refers to herself as "the Typhoid Mary of murder" -- she herself is not murdered, but people around her are, and Ellen has a tendency to be accused of involvement even though she's completely innocent. Jessica, amused, tells Ellen that she can't be "the Typhoid Mary of murder" because that's Jessica's title.
* ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'':
** In "Carrier", Jean [=DeLynn=] Baker, an unbalanced woman who disappeared in 1999, grows spores on her hands over night. These spores release a toxin that kills everyone else in her hometown of Granite Pass, UsefulNotes/{{Oregon}}, including her parents. Jean can't control her ability, which thereafter manifests whenever she becomes angry or upset. She eventually comes to believe that she is on a MissionFromGod to purify humanity.
** In "Tiny Machines", Danny takes a promicin shot and soon develops the ability to spread promicin like a plague. He himself is immune to its effects. In the following episode (and SeriesFinale) "The Great Leap Forward", his mother Susan is the first person to die but far from the last. When he brings her to St. Ambrose Hospital, Danny's presence causes half of the people there to die from promicin exposure while the other half survive and go on to develop abilities. NTAC and the government initially believe that the outbreak is confined to the hospital but it becomes readily apparent that it is spreading throughout UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} like a contagion. It even reaches the NTAC building itself. Hundreds of people die within hours. By the time that the outbreak is contained eight days later, the confirmed death toll stands at 9,000.
* Invoked, but subverted by Hawkeye in ''Series/{{Mash}}'' when he steals a jeep to go see Trapper off at the airport. He gets stopped by the MP's and lies that Radar has some kind of highly contagious disease (in reality, Neurapraxia is caused by physical blows causing nerve damage) and that Hawkeye is himself an asymptomatic carrier.

* In ''TabletopGame/RedMarkets'' "Latents" carry the Blight that turns people into [[NotUsingTheZWord Casualties]], if not careful they can spread it to others and fatal injuries will cause them to immediately become a [[TechnicallyLivingZombie Vector]]. They can result from a freak accident (a crit fail on infection rolls) or taking a drug made from the bone marrow of TheImmune right after getting bitten.

* In the play ''Damaged Goods'' by Eugene Brieux, a man diagnosed with syphilis ignores his doctor's warnings to put off his announced marriage for a few years, and is able to keep his disease a secret until his child is diagnosed with it.

* ''Franchise/MetalGear'':
** In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'', [[spoiler: Solid Snake is unknowingly infected with FOXDIE to kill the members of FOXHOUND and the [=ArmsTech=] President Kenneth Baker.]]
** This becomes a plot point in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots'' when [[spoiler:Snake's accelerated aging and the age of the virus itself causes it to mutate; given a few more months, FOXDIE will stop caring whether its targets matches its targeting parameters, and Snake will become a one-man plague. He is then infected with a second strain of the FOXDIE virus which helps cancel out the old virus and will not have enough time in Snake's body to mutate itself, as Snake is estimated to have one year left at most.]]
* On a wall in ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'', some wall graffiti purports that some people are carriers of the zombie infection. It's loosely implied that the survivors might be carriers, not [[TheImmune immune]], as they had assumed. This is confirmed in the comics for "The Sacrifice": the original ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' survivors learn that they've been spreading the infection across the country and may have inadvertently doomed everyone who helped them in the previous campaigns. They then decide the only responsible way to save themselves is [[TheAloner reach an isolated island and live off the land]].
* The above may have inspired both the character of [[spoiler: Yerema]] in ''VideoGame/DeadIsland'' and TheReveal that [[spoiler: the player characters]] are also uninfected-looking carriers in ''VideoGame/DeadIslandRiptide''.

* During the Mogloween 2011 event in ''VideoGame/{{DragonFable}}'', TheHero meets a little boy named Andy. Poor Andy is the only person who managed to escape from a Zardbie outbreak, but not unscathed. For some reason, the bite he suffered hasn't mutated him into a Zardbie, but anyone who kisses him (happens twice because girls find him too adorable) or anyone he bites (such as a Gorillaphant) becomes a Zardbie. [[spoiler:A bad situation becomes worse when one of the people Andy unwittingly mutates is needed to make the Zardbie cure...]]

* In ''VideoGame/TraumaTeam'' [[spoiler:Rosalia is one of these to a degree. Even after she was killed, her blood had seeped into the ground, into the flowers, and then made the monarch butterflies become carriers of her Rosalia Virus disease. Those butterflies then spread the disease through their shed scales.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'''s resident PlagueMaster Yamame Kurodani is actually a friendly youkai who doesn't use her powers without reason, but her PowerIncontinence causes her to spread disease anyway. As a result, she overlaps with this trope.
* The [[VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening Awakening]] expansion to VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins brings [[TokenHeroicOrc the Messenger]], an intelligent darkspawn who seems to be the only one of the bunch not obsessed with slaughter, rape, or [[PlayingWithSyringes experiments of uncertain morality]]. If he survives the events of the game, he disguises himself and wanders the land [[MysteriousProtector helping travelers in need]]; unfortunately, he's still a darkspawn, so those he helps sometimes become infected with [[TheCorruption the taint]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}'', Beatrix's PatientZero ability turns a targeted ally for a short time into a contagion carrier that enfeebles enemies they come in contact with but doesn't suffer any ill effects themselves. They instead have their speed buffed. When an ally isn't targeted, she uses the ability to turn herself into such a carrier instead. While it's normally a choice between making an ally or Beatrix herself into a contagion carrier, the Self Medicated augment though allows it so that both a targeted ally and herself become carriers.
* This is invoked by the player in ''VideoGame/{{Pandemic}}'' and ''VideoGame/PlagueInc''. Early on, you want people to ''spread'' your disease, but not ''get sick'' from it. Not that it [[MemeticMutation prevents Madagascar from shutting down everything]].

** The "Bad Boys Love" storyline elaborates this as the backstory for [[spoiler: Fujishiro Nageki the mourning dove, who unwittingly carried a virus harmless to birds but fast-acting and lethal to humans. Upon learning of this, Dr. Shuu experimented with turning him into a bio-weapon against humanity, which [[DrivenToSuicide drove Nageki to suicide]].]]
** In the same route, we also learn that [[spoiler: Ryouta, who already had a slightly weak immune system and weak stomach, got unknowingly experimented on by Shuu, to make him a good carrier for the virus. He eventually implanted Nageki's liver into Ryouta, having him turn into his next Typhoid Mary]].

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] in ''Webcomic/TheZombieHunters''. [[ZombieInfectee The Infected]] contract TheVirus through exposure to ''any'' [[TheUndead zombie]] bodily fluids through an orifice or wound, but only being bitten or [[PoisonIsCorrosive vomited on]] causes [[ViralTransformation imminent zombification]]. Otherwise Infected can live full, asymptomatic lives, as the virus will remain dormant. However, they can infect others through their own bodily fluids, and will inevitably [[CameBackWrong reanimate]] after death. On the [[IslandBase Island]] [[PoliceState Military Base]] [[EndangeredSpecies humanity's remnants]] inhabit, Infected are both [[FantasticGhetto segregated]] from and forbidden from [[NoSexAllowed romancing]] the uninfected. Infected are also [[DystopianEdict required]] to wear [[FantasticRacism identifying armbands]] and ID tags, [[BigBrotherIsWatching pass through checkpoints]], and [[FascistsBedtime obey curfews]] while among uninfected, and the unskilled are [[FantasticCasteSystem exploited]] as [[WeHaveReserves highly-expendable]] DisasterScavengers (the eponymous [[SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom Zombie Hunters]]). All residents are tested regularly, and anyone who goes off-island has to pass through quarantine and [[DecontaminationChamber decontamination]].
* ''Webcomic/{{Endtown}}'': Topsiders refer to unmutated humans as "Typhoid Marys", blaming them for spreading the plague that turned the rest of the population into monsters or {{Funny Animal}}s. [[spoiler: Except there is no virus, and the Topsider leadership know it.]]
* BioAugmentation is common in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'', but several characters realize only too late that this process can be tampered with to [[BodyHorror turn them into]] unwitting bio-weapons.
* ''Webcomic/HarkAVagrant'' has a strip parodying the TropeNamer. In this case, she didn't return to cooking after being made aware she was a carrier... far worse.
---> Lick your face clean, 5p

* ''Webcomic/AwfulHospital'': [[spoiler:[[TheProtagonist Fern]] herself might be a carrier of [[OmnicientCouncilOfVagueness The Parliament of the Old Flesh's]] SyntheticPlague.]]
* ''Webcomic/WildeLife'': [[spoiler:This is why [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent animal people]] aren't supposed to eat humans--normal people can be carriers for "the Madness," a supernatural ailment that drives animal people insane and then [[WasOnceAMan turns them into monsters]]]].
* ''WebComic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': While in the desert, Mr. Scruffy contracted the deadly [[FictionalDisability Sphinx Pox]], and he spread it to the rest of the Order. Unfortunately for [[spoiler:Hel]], the incubation time is [[ComicBookTime five weeks.]] [[spoiler:And anyway, Durkon manages to cure everyone who contracted it from Mr. Scruffy, so it ended up being not that big of a deal.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/RocketPower'': Sam is one in the episode "Typhoid Sam". He gets sick, but after throwing up, he almost instantly recovers as he built up an immunity to it. He ends up getting everyone else sick however, and right before the playoffs.
-->'''Otto''': Wait a sec... Sam's not sick cause he's always sick, and we're sick cause we're never sick? That's sick!
* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Pink Eye," where Kenny's case of being a zombie was misdiagnosed as conjunctivitis. He goes through the episode without anyone (except Chef, eventually) noticing that he's causing the "pink eye" epidemic. It was Halloween, so they thought he was just dressed as [[strike:a zombie]] [[RuleOfFunny Edward James Olmos]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'', the Amoeba Boys catch a cold and accidentally cause a city-wide epidemic when the virus mutates within their bodies. Although they are villains ([[PokeThePoodle or at least try to be]]), they did not spread the cold on purpose, and so are this instead of {{plague master}}s.
* According to ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', Quagmire has just about every STD known to man but he doesn't show any symptoms, yet spreads them, seemingly left and right.
-->'''Quagmire''': "I give gonorrhea, I don't ''GET'' gonorrhea, okay?"

* The TropeNamer: Mary Mallon was a woman who worked as a chef in New York in the early 20[[superscript:th]] century. Everywhere she worked, her employers and the other household staff would all fall ill with typhoid fever, after which she would leave and find new employment. She was ultimately caught in 1907 and forcibly quarantined, given the nickname "Typhoid Mary" by the ''Journal of the American Medical Association'', and revealed that she did not wash her hands before cooking. She was given the option to have her gallbladder removed, or she would have to agree to never become a cook again. She was released 3 years later and forbidden from cooking. She changed her name and went right back at it, leaving a swath of typhoid fever infections in her wake. She was arrested again in 1915 and remained in quarantine until she died 23 years later in 1938. Autopsies showed her gallbladder was full of live typhoid bacteria. Her treatment in quarantine was unusual in that other repeat offenders, including other food handlers and people who had more outbreaks to their name than her, got off with nary a reprimand and a promise not to do it again; the government threw the book at her because she explicitly ''refused to stop working as a cook'', backing them into a corner.

* [[spoiler: Miss Sneezy's]] story in ''Literature/{{Haunted 2005}}'' is about an island facility where examples of this trope from all over the country live in sterile, high-security isolation. [[spoiler: And yes, she is one of them.]]

* In [[Creator/CliveBarker Clive Barker's]] short story "The Life of Death," an English woman ventures into a crypt that was sealed after the Black Death, and becomes a carrier of the disease. She spreads it to a number of coworkers and friends, who die, and to countless others as well. [[spoiler:She is then murdered and raped by an acquaintance who turns out to be a SerialKiller, and he becomes a carrier in her stead.]]

* ''Series/WonderWoman'': In "The Pluto File", Robert Reed's [[CodeName The Falcon]] is an unknowing carrier of bubonic plague.

* In the second episode of ''Anime/{{Memories}}'', a man takes an experimental drug that causes anyone near him to die instantly. He never realizes he's dangerous (and doesn't realize that people are dying instead of just randomly going unconscious) and seems quite upset that everybody's trying to kill him.

* In "The Moral Virologist" by Creator/GregEgan, a MadScientist designs a deadly disease that only kills people who have multiple sexual partners, but is as contagious as the common cold or the flu. Since he has never had sex himself, being both a fundamentalist Christian and unmarried, he spreads it through the population by infecting himself and engaging in some PlatonicProstitution.

* ''Sneezing Blood'' and the sequels have a weirdly inverted case, as the subject is symptomatic, she's just ''not'' contagious, that is, until her medicines stop working.

* ''Naples '44'', by Norman Lewis, details a plan by the Allies to send prostitutes behind German lines who were infected with severe cases of syphilis. Venereal disease had infected the Allied armies in Italy but not the German military, who ran their own brothels. Unfortunately, the mission was cancelled and the women were released [[WhatAnIdiot so they could continue to infect Allied soldiers]].

* In ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'', [[http://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-05-04 Squigley is accused of being this for swine flu, as he's a pig.]]

* Most people who carry the Epstein-Barr virus (Mononucleosis) can actually be just this - to the point where almost everybody over the age of 35 has antibodies that can target the Epstein-Barr virus. This is evidently true with a lot of herpes-family viruses as well.

* The TropeNamer appears in ''Series/OneThousandWaysToDie''.

The TropeNamer is the RealLife example of Mary Mallon, the original "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary Typhoid Mary]]" who spread typhoid fever to at least 53 other people while refusing to believe she carried the disease at all because she never became sick from it herself. In biology/epidemiology, this is known as an "asymptomatic carrier" (i.e. carries the disease but shows no symptoms of it).

* A significant percentage of people who who catch [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19]] show few or even no symptoms. Even those who do eventually show severe symptoms will have had a lengthy period of asymptomatic contagion before then. All this leads to a disease that is spread mostly by people who, much like the TropeNamer, feel completely healthy and have no idea they've even been infected -- thus the importance of ''universal'' use of precautions such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccinations simply because ''[[ParanoiaFuel no one can be certain they aren't infectious]]''[[labelnote:*]]'''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou That includes you]]'''[[/labelnote]].

* A significant percentage of people who who catch [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19]] show few or even no symptoms. Even those who do eventually show severe symptoms will have had a lengthy period of asymptomatic contagion before then. All this leads to a disease that is spread mostly by people who, much like the TropeNamer, feel completely healthy and have no idea they've even been infected -- thus the importance of ''universal'' use of precautions such as mask-wearing and social distancing simply because ''[[ParanoiaFuel no one can be certain they aren't infectious]]''[[labelnote:*]]'''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou That includes you]]'''[[/labelnote]].

* A significant percentage of people who who catch [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19]] show few or even no symptoms. Even those who do eventually show severe symptoms will have had a lengthy period of asymptomatic contagion before then. All this leads to a disease that is spread mostly by people who, much like the TropeNamer, feel completely healthy and have no idea they've even been infected -- thus the importance of ''universal'' use of precautions such as mask-wearing and social distancing simply because ''[[ParanoiaFuel no one can be certain they aren't infectious]]''.