History Main / YouDontWantToCatchThis

* In ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'', the monsters have gotten the idea that children are extremely hazardous, and panic ensues whenever an exposure is thought to have happened. Anything touched by a child is treated as a hazmat scene. This allows the government to easily intervene when a child is brought into the monster world.

* ''Neela: Victory Song'' (part of the Girls of Many Lands from the Literature/AmericanGirlsCollection): The train Neela, her father, and a resistance fighter friend of hers are riding comes to a stop because British law enforcement wants to search it. She remembers the makeup kit she was given earlier and uses it to cover her father's face and one of his hands with fake smallpox sores. The officers panic and dump all three of them in the middle of the countryside, allowing them to escape.

[[quoteright:230:[[ComicBook/{{Tintin}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/you_dont_want_to_catch_this.jpg]]]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Tintin}}'':
** In ''Recap/TintinCigarsOfThePharaoh'', Tintin routs a guard by pretending that Snowy is rabid. A dangerous gamble, as a braver guard could have shot Snowy before Tintin had a chance to reach him and wrest the rifle from him.
** In ''[[Recap/TintinTheCrabWithTheGoldenClaws Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws]]'', Tintin claims that Snowy had rabies in order to scare a man out of his taxi cab.
** A rare villain example was featured in ''Prisoners of the Sun'' where the crew of the ship where Calculus is being held put up a quarantine flag and have a crooked doctor declare the ship out of bounds. However, Tintin isn't fooled.
* ''Franchise/{{Batman}} #163'' has Robin fake smallpox to scare some Mooks away and escape.

* ''Neela: Victory Song'': The train Neela, her father, and a resistance fighter friend of hers are riding comes to a stop because British law enforcement wants to search it. She remembers the makeup kit she was given earlier and uses it to cover her father's face and one of his hands with fake smallpox sores. The officers panic and dump all three of them in the middle of the countryside, allowing them to escape.

----

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* In the third ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'' novel, Lina and Gourry are captured by bounty hunters. When the guards start getting lecherous, Gourry very sternly warns them not to lay a finger on Lina, or ''they'll catch what she's got''. The guards immediately back off, but Lina is ''not'' happy.

** Played with in ''Wraith Squadron''. Our heroes have taken over an enemy ship and have been posing as its crew, but they are scheduled to get a face-to-face meeting with another ship that would be able to identify the fraud. When thinking up ways to avoid the meeting the disease ploy comes up, but they think that it will look suspicious. So, they decide to turn the trick on its ear: They get the ''other'' ship to cancel the meeting due to illness, deliberately exposing them to [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bunkurd_Sewer_Disorder Bunkurd Sewer Disorder]]. ''This works''.
** In ''X-Wing: Iron Fist'', Face and Phanan are masquerading as guard stormtroopers on an infiltration mission. They are stopped by the next shift of guards and are queried for a password that they don't have. Face recalls his training, which says to "provide a reason and grab as much sympathy as you can". So he immediately starts coughing and hacking away, while remaining in respectful salute to the commanding officer. It works for a moment, but they still don't know the password.