Line #5 Film/Outbreak


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/outbreak_poster.jpg]]
2
3	->''Try to remain calm.''
4
5	Imagine you are hunting a killer. The perpetrator is insidious, invisible, and deadly. It is reactive and fast. Its victims suffer and die in horrifying pain. There is no reasoning with it, no bargaining with it, and no way to stop it. The military wants to avoid a panic. The media questions the methods being used to stop it. [[TheVirus It is a billionth your size.]]
6
7	''Outbreak'' is a 1995 suspense film directed by Creator/WolfgangPetersen and starring Creator/DustinHoffman, Creator/ReneRusso, and Creator/MorganFreeman (among many others: Creator/DonaldSutherland, Creator/KevinSpacey, Creator/CubaGoodingJr, Creator/PatrickDempsey, etc.), depicting a what-if scenario surrounding a deadly fictional African virus called Motaba, inspired by real-life Ebola outbreaks, and speculating on the measures taken by the military and the Center for Disease Control if such an outbreak occurred in the United States.
8
9	In 1967, a deadly virus, Motaba, ravages a war-torn African village. The U.S. Army sends in colonels Donnie [=McClintock=] (Sutherland) and Billy Ford (Freeman) to appraise the situation, and they promise to send for help. But what's really sent is a fuel-air-bomb which vaporizes the village and everyone in it.
10
11	Flash-forward thirty years, when an infected monkey from this very area has been captured and smuggled to the United States, and into the hands of Jimbo (Dempsey), a young man who plans to sell it for the pet trade.
12
13	The smuggled monkey spits in Jimbo's face, on his way to sell it. When it turns out unsuitable (after having scratched the pet shop owner and having lost her banana to another monkey in the shop), Jimbo sets it free in California and hops a flight home to Boston -- during which he falls seriously ill. He greets his girlfriend with as passionate a kiss as he can muster, then passes out.
14
15	In Boston, Dr. Robby Keough (Russo) takes care of the victims of the infection, and that's that. But the cat is out of the bag. Cedar Creek, California becomes infected with a mutated and airborne strain of the virus.
16
17	Following his instincts, Sam Daniels (Hoffman) disobeys orders and goes to Cedar Creek. His crew is dispatched and Daniels is allowed to work despite having disobeyed. With Robby's help, they race against time to find a way to cure the deadly virus.
18
19	Meanwhile, the Army, seeing projections of the virus' progress across the North American continent, advises the President to take drastic measures... without sharing with him the information that they have a cure for the African strain and want to be able to use it as a biological weapon. [=McClintock=] concocts a plan to firebomb Cedar Creek.
20
21	Can Daniels find a way to cure the new Motaba strain and get it back to Cedar Creek before the Army wipes it out to save the country and keep their weapon?
22
23	The film was nominated for various awards but failed to garner any major award nominations. Notable in that it was set-up as a [[DuelingWorks counter-production]] to a film adaptation of the novel ''The Hot Zone'' that never materialized.
24	----
25	!!''Outbreak'' contains examples of:
26	* AcePilot: Salt proves to be an excellent one, which doubles as a ChekhovsSkill when escaping from [=McClintock=].
27	* AmicableExes: Downplayed with Daniels and Keough. They have a lot of unresolved tension and issues and aren't over each other, but when push comes to shove they're able to work together without issues to deal with Motaba. [[spoiler:They end up reconciling by the finale of the movie.]]
28	* AnyoneCanDie: [[spoiler:Casey Schuler]] succumbs to the virus after being infected when his suit tears.
29	* ApocalypticGagOrder: Colonels [=McClintock=] and Ford, despite knowing how deadly the Motaba virus is, play clueless so that they can use the version they have a cure for as a germ warfare weapon. There's even a scene in TheWarRoom where they watch a projection of Motaba's contagion spread and death toll, indicating the president is on board. There are repeated examples of the government telling people who are sick that they'll be just fine -- right before [[KillItWithFire dropping a Fuel Air Bomb]] on the infection.
30	* ArmiesAreEvil: Variation. The entire U.S. Army is not evil; the film takes great pains to show that individual soldiers obey orders even when they visibly have concerns and questions, but InsaneAdmiral [=McClintock=] ''definitely'' is.
31	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Motaba has more in common with the Andromeda Strain than Ebola. Most notable examples:
32	** There is serious debate as to whether or not it is even ''possible'' for a virus that is not airborne to evolve that rapidly.
33	** At one point, a character working in BSL-4, Casey, is infected within seconds after his suit rips. This is why pressurized suits are used in the first place; Motaba would need powered flight to get to him.
34	** Ebola is murder on primates, making a monkey reservoir species unlikely to say the least.
35	** [[spoiler:The cure is isolated and synthesized in large quantities within hours. It gives Hollywood effectiveness for how rapid and complete recovery is from a virus that has been described as liquefying the internal organs of its victims.]]
36	* AssholeVictim: Rudy Alvarez spends his screentime being an abrasive asshole with a HairTriggerTemper, and he winds up one of the first to die of Motaba.
37	* BavarianFireDrill: Daniels uses this to get his plane redirected to Cedar Creek. He intimidates a poor airman who is in charge of getting the plane ready that he didn't had orders to go to New Mexico, he had orders to go to Cedar Creek, and call General Ford to confirm it if he's unsure, then tell the airman that it's too damn late in the night and to ''not'' call Ford and wake him up, just get the damn plane ready to go.
38	* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Both Casey (played by Creator/KevinSpacey) and Robby (Rene Russo) are infected at different times with Cedar Creek Motaba, for which there is no cure so far.
39	** Casey's symptoms are portrayed with horrifying detail: blood streaming from his eyes, nose and mouth, skin destroyed.
40	** Robby looks a little bit feverish, her eyes are a little fever-bright, and her hair is slightly disheveled. It's been a matter of hours, at most a day between Casey becoming infected and Robby becoming infected. Even once she has entered the later stages, her makeup has been made to make her look pale and dried out, but she's not bleeding from her face like Casey was at the same stage.
41	* BeleagueredAssistant: Being a colonel, Briggs hardly fits the traditional archetype of an assistant but he acts as one to [=McClintock=], mostly getting getting treated like crap and criticized no matter what he does. Briggs is only too happy to put [=McClintock=] [[TheDogBitesBack under arrest]] at the end of the film.
42	* BellyScrapingFlight: [=McClintock=]'s helicopter trails its skids through the water when it passes under the bridge during the helicopter chase along the river.
43	* BiologicalWeaponsSolveEverything: General [=McClintock=] believes that weaponized Motaba will solve enough problems in wartime to merit killing off an entire American town and keeping it a secret.
44	* BlatantLies:
45	** When Daniels asks Ford what E-1101 is (the serum for the original strain of Motaba) Ford calls it an experimental antiserum from Yale virology. Daniels doesn't buy it for a second.
46	** When Daniels and Salt manage to successfully divert the bombing run, causing the pilots to drop their cargo harmlessly on the water, the pilots blame the miss on "wind shear".
47	* BloodFromEveryOrifice: One of the more horrific effects of the virus.
48	* ChekhovsGun: Subverted. The soldiers begin rounding up infectees in the quarantined small town, and we get to see only one woman say a tearful goodbye to her family. We follow her for a few minutes while they take a blood sample during her initial medical exam. There is even a close up of the phial, labeled "Sample 612". In a later scene, we see a scientist examining blood slides:
49	--> '''Scientist''': "Sample 607: Infected. 608: Infected. 609: Infected. * Frustrated sigh* They can't ''all'' be infected. 610... Infected. 611...''Infected''. 612... Damn! Still infected!"
50	* ChekhovsGunman: The sailor aboard the Tae Kuk. At the beginning, he is seen playing with the monkey. But when Daniels and Salt visit the ship, they are immediately taken to the freezer, where his dead body is seen.
51	* ChekhovsSkill: While going over Major Salt's personnel file, it's mentioned he's a trained helicopter pilot.
52	* ContaminationSituation: Robby Keough and Casey Schuler both contract the deadly Motaba virus. Robby lives long enough to get the cure. Unfortunately, Casey does not.
53	* CouldSayItBut: General Ford tells Daniels and Salt exactly how to stop the bombing run at the end of the movie, under the guise of warning them of the dire consequences of doing so. [=McClintock=] immediately starts berating him for "slipping up" like that, then has a bit of a subdued OhCrap reaction when he realizes what he's up to.
54	* CrisisPointHospital: This is the inevitable condition of any hospital in an area hit by the Motaba virus, as no less than three examples in the film aptly demonstrate.
55	** The first is a field hospital in Zaire, 1967; overrun with cases of the virus, forty-eight people have already died in the last two days, and conditions are dire even without the place being in the middle of a war zone. With no morgue or graveyard available, bodies are dumped outside under a tarpaulin. General [=McClintock=] has the place bombed to prevent the disease from spreading. [[spoiler:And to hide the existence of the virus so he could acquire it as a biological weapon.]]
56	** The second is another field hospital in modern Zaire, this time built around a peacetime village. By the time the USAMRIID team get there to investigate, the virus has killed just about everyone in the building and left them as breeding grounds for the flies - a sight that prompts Major Salt to vomit in his hazmat suit.
57	** The worst is the local hospital at Cedar Creek, California: Here, the virus mutates into an airborne form, so it spreads quickly through the ventilation ducts and into wards for uninfected patients. By the end, the hospital has gotten so crowded the military have been forced to expand testing and treatment outdoors into a field hospital, and the mortality rate is so vicious that the bodies eventually have to be burned immediately to save space. [[spoiler:[=McClintock=] plans to have the town bombed as well, both to prevent it from breaking quarantine and to preserve Motaba as a bioweapon.]]
58	* CryingWolf: Daniels is treated as doing this; it's just that he tends to go on alert much faster, and take infection risk much more seriously than his superiors would prefer.
59	* DeadpanSnarker: Casey. No surprise there considering [[Creator/KevinSpacey who plays him]].
60	* TheDeadHaveNames: {{Invoked\|Trope}} by the White House Chief of Staff, dropping a stack of photos onto a conference room table:
61	-->"[[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Those are the citizens of Cedar Creek, go ahead take a look at them]] - these are [[AMillionIsAStatistic not statistics]] ladies and gentlemen - they're flesh and blood! I want you to burn those images into your memories, [[WhatTheHellHero because they should haunt you until the day you die]]!"
62	* DivorceIsTemporary: As the movie opens, Robby used to be part of Daniels' crew he takes to all outbreak sites, but when their marriage ended, she got another job. They fight until they're forced to work together, but it's obvious they still love each other despite their differences. By the end of the film, it's obvious that they're going to give it another shot.
63	* TheDogBitesBack: From the moment General [=McClintock=] arrives in Cedar Creek, he treats Lt. Colonel Briggs like total crap. Just look at the [[http://www.imfdb.org/images/7/70/Out19112.jpg grin on Briggs' face]] when [[spoiler:he gets to put [=McClintock=] under arrest at the end.]] The General {{lampshade}}s how pleased the Colonel must feel about this.
64	* DramaticDrop: The mom to the little girl who has befriended a monkey she's named "Betsy" drops a plate of apple slices (complete with dramatic shattering of dishware) when she sees the announcement that the monkey is a carrier for the deadly Motaba virus.
65	* EnsignNewbie: Major Salt fits this pretty well. He is a young Army doctor who, when first introduced, has never been in the field before. In Zaire, when he witnesses the true horrors of a "hot zone" for the first time and realizes that reading about horrible diseases in a book is ''a lot different'' than seeing it in person (something his older, more seasoned colleagues warned him about), he loses his cool, and starts vomiting and freaking out. And when working with a dangerous virus like Motaba, this can create more dangers for everyone. However, he gets himself together and toughens up, and really proves himself in the final parts of the movie. In fact, he qualifies as MajorlyAwesome by the end of the movie.
66	* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
67	** The first time we lay eyes on Dr. Sam Daniels, he's in the middle of giving his two giant St. Bernard dogs a bath. He takes the call from Ford, then scolds the dogs for getting out of the tub while he was on the phone. He immediately relents when the dogs retaliate with PuppyDogEyes.
68	** The first time we see Casey, he makes jokes at Sam's expense, then at Salt's.
69	** The first time we see Salt, we see him as a gung ho guy whose empathy is revealed the first time he sees suffering in the field.
70	** [=McClintock's=] is him visiting an infected camp to personally see how lethal Motaba is, getting some samples, lying to a terminally-ill patient for FalseReassurance, and then calling an airstrike to [[KillItWithFire kill everybody in it, infected or not]].
71	* EvilIsNotAToy: [=McClintock's=] and Ford's efforts to use Motaba as a biological weapon spiral out of control. After they decline to reveal that they have the serum for the original strain, this allows someone to be infected with the airborne strain, who promptly spreads it to an entire movie theater full of people, and the rest is history.
72	* ExaggeratedTrope: Motaba is a perfect example of a fictional disease that goes over the top for the sake of RuleOfDrama; known hemorrhagic fever viruses like Ebola have an incubation period of seven to twenty-one days, with a fatality rate of 30-90% depending on the strain. Motaba patients have symptoms within hours with a fatality rate of 100%. [[OutsideContextProblem Even the scientists are shocked at how fast and deadly Motaba is]].
73	* FaceDeathWithDignity:
74	** In the prologue, the Congo camp doctor [[OhCrap figures out]] that the "care package" being airdropped is [[QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice a daisy cutter]] a few seconds before the sick soldiers do, and he remains stone-faced while the soldiers [[FaceDeathWithDespair have varying degrees of shock on their faces]].
75	** Casey tries, but in his last moments he is too feverish to carry a conversation.
76	* FailsafeFailure:
77	** A lab technician is infected with ThePlague when he carelessly opens and reaches into a centrifuge while it's still spinning, breaking a vial of infected blood and cutting his hand. In RealLife, lids on centrifuges lock until the spinning has completely stopped; it's ''impossible'' to open one while it's still in motion, therefore, in order to open that, the lock would have had to have been broken.
78	** Later, Casey gets infected when the oxygen line on his isolation suit gets stretched too far, causing the suit to rip open like it's made of tissue paper.
79	** In the novelization, Casey gets infected when his oxygen line gets disconnected from his suit. These kinds of valves are designed to seal if there is not a plug installed -- air compressors use the same technology -- so the only way this could happen is if the oxygen hose itself were separated from the plug attaching it to the suit, which itself would be a pretty inexcusable failure to check their gear before use.
80	* FalseReassurance: In the opening, [=McClintock=] tells the Congolese doctor that he'll arrange an airdrop of medical supplies for the mercenary camp. He also tells one of the mercenaries - a fellow American - that he'll be brought home and will see his girl again. A few hours later, a plane does come by and drop a large container... it's just said container is actually a fuel-air bomb which then vaporizes the camp.
81	* FakingTheDead: Daniels orders Salt to fire a couple of missiles into the forest below them so it looks like their Loach has crashed. This fools the pursuing Hueys long enough as they check for wreckage that they're able to get away.
82	* FieryCoverUp: The military threatens to bomb the town in order to contain the virus.
83	* FlatWhat: Billy Ford's reaction when told by Daniels that there are ''two'' strains of Motaba, and the new one, despite what they were told about the prior strain, is ''airborne'' and highly infectious.
84	* {{Foreshadowing}}: As Casey and Sam are about to enter the secure environment, Casey catches a tear in Sam's suit and chides him playfully for being preoccupied over his divorce from Robby than with proper procedure. Later, Casey has worked himself so hard he begins to fall asleep at his post. Forgetting his oxygen line he walks away without unhooking it and tears his suit.
85	* GameOfChicken: Twice:
86	** Salt does this with one of the helicopters chasing him and Daniels, to buy some time for them to get back to Cedar Creek.
87	** Ford roundabout suggests it to Daniels and Salt so they can try to prevent Sandman from dropping its bomb.
88	* GoryDiscretionShot: Played with. There are a few shots of bloody, lesion-covered Motaba victims reflected in the hazmat suit masks. The shot either tightens in on the eyes of the person in the mask so you can see their horror, or cuts away.
89	* GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) plays a fairly large role and so does USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases).
90	* HateSink: [=McClintock=], full stop. The audience can hate a disease, but it's just a disease that does what it does, so the filmmakers compensate by making him as unsympathetic as they can -- a sociopathic SmugSnake WarHawk that has about the same problem with killing thousands of people (be it by bio-weapon or gigantic fireball) as he has wiping dog crap from the bottom of his shoe.
91	* HazmatSuit: Worn by the security guards. Because if they didn't, they'd all discover a lot about the disease a little ''too'' personally.
92	* HeroicSacrifice: Played with. Daniels pulls off his hazmat helmet in Robby's hospital room, knowing full well the virus is airborne, to give Robby the will to fight until the antiviral serum is completed. It's more of a calculated risk, since Sam knows that Salt is already producing the antivirus for the airborne strain as fast as he can.
93	* HopeSpot: The "experimental antiviral serum" works on original Motaba, but not the new strain. Then Casey and Robby each become infected. And Daniels realizes [[spoiler:the Army knew about the first strain of Motaba and the antiviral was produced en masse already for the troops so they could use Motaba as a bioweapon.]]
94	* HyperCompetentSidekick: Salt is this to Daniels, as an AcePilot and marksman and a doctor who is capable of making an antivirus within a few minutes.
95	* IdiotBall:
96	** The young boy who goes up to an obviously sick Jimbo and asks if he can have his half-eaten cookie. He's a kid, but ''c'mon''. Luckily his mom is smarter and stops him before he can touch it.
97	** Jimbo's girlfriend, who kisses him even after noticing that he looks sick.
98	** At the Cedar Creek lab, the technician working with the blood sample from the pet store owner becomes infected himself when he reaches into an active centrifuge, breaks the sample container, and splatters himself with the blood. The reason? He was distracted by a sports broadcast, and not even a televised one. He was ''staring at the radio''.
99	* IfIDoNotReturn: There's a sick soldier in Africa who is pathetically grateful to see the Americans even if they're in faceless hazmat suits. But he's realistic, and asks them to tell his girl he loves her. The FalseReassurance mentioned above includes, "I'm not gonna tell her. You tell her yourself."
100	* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Played with.
101	** The thing that sets Salt's panic reaction off is seeing a toddler-age child, clearly infected, crying in bed with his parents who are obviously already dead.
102	** When Jimbo is on his flight home, already sick with Motaba (which by now the audience knows is seriously deadly), a little boy in a cowboy outfit asks for his cookie. Jimbo, despite being quite ill, playfully tells him he can have it. But his mother stops him before he can touch the infected cookie.
103	** Completely inverted later in the movie, when it is mentioned [[DeathOfAChild two children died]] from the new strain of Motaba.
104	* InfectionScene: There are numerous instances of viral infection. First, when a courier takes the [[PlagueMaster Motaba Virus infected]] [[MisplacedWildlife African Monkey]] to release it into the Northern California redwood forest, he gets scratched (which the camera focuses on), and boards a plane where his girlfriend meets him at the airport and make out, infecting her; the camera does a spin effect before showing the courier collapsing from illness. At the pet store where the courier tried to sell the monkey, a half eaten banana is taken by another monkey infecting it, and it infects the shop owner, who later dies in the hospital. Later, a careless lab technician gets the shop owner's contaminated blood on him. Up to this point, Motaba Virus could only be spread through physical contact, however it mutates inside the lab assistant to be spread via the air, and when he has a coughing fit he infects dozens of movie theater goers, with a lot of focus on his flushed face and the mucus droplets in the air. Robby and Casey, two virologists, work non-stop for days, and the fatigue makes them careless in the lab. The camera focuses on a tear in Robby's hazmat suit that allows the virus to enter, and a needle prick on Casey's hand that she tries to disinfect.
105	* InsaneAdmiral: [=McClintock=], whose go-to option for disease control can be summed up as "KillItWithFire". [[spoiler:This is because he wants Motaba as a biological weapon, which won't work if it can be cured by anyone else. It says a lot that he's the ''only'' man in the film that sees the horrors Motaba can do and ''doesn't'' look disturbed (he doesn't even try).]]
106	* InsistentTerminology: A downplayed case. Despite multiple people reminding him that he and Robby are officially divorced, paperwork and all, Sam Daniels continues to refer to her as "my wife". This is used against him by Ford, cited as his tendency to distort facts.
107	* InstantIllness: The Motaba Virus almost immediately enters the infectious phase right after initial infection (At first it was through physical touch, though once the virus mutates it can spread through the air), with symptoms appearing after about four hours which includes [[SicknessEqualsRedness a flush looking face]], [[IncurableCoughOfDeath severe cough]], and high fever. A few hours later, the victim will be too weak to move, have difficulty breathing, and [[BloodFromEveryOrifice experience extreme hemorrhaging]], eventually suffering seizures, organ failure, and, about twenty-four hours after infection, death.
108	* {{Irony}}: Sam and Casey get into an argument because Sam is being his usual obstinate self and insisting they've overlooked something. Casey tells Sam he should get some sleep, which only makes Sam angrier. Sam snaps that Casey should get some sleep. Casey as is his wont, jokes about having slept in July. The next shot is Sam having given in to sleep, and Casey still working, until he starts to fall asleep on his feet -- which is why he walks away without unhooking and tears his suit. If he'd listened to his own advice...
109	* ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure: A fuel-air bomb is used to sterilize an infected camp in Africa, and another is nearly used to sterilize an American town. [[spoiler:They do in fact have the cure for the original Motaba strain, but jump to sterilization because it would make a very effective biological weapon.]]
110	* IWasNeverHere: Played with. Lt. Daniels has, against orders, gone to the site of an [[TitleDrop outbreak]] of a deadly virus. His superior, General Ford, discovers this and also discovers that the situation is much worse than anticipated. Ford needs Daniels on the ground to battle the disease and doesn't want to waste time disciplining him, while Daniels is angry at how long it's taken for the military to respond to the situation. So:
111	-->'''Ford:''' You were never here.\
112	'''Daniels:''' No, I was here. I've been here from the beginning. I followed the bug here.
113	* {{Jerkass}}: General [=McClintock=] is a sociopathic InsaneAdmiral with a LackOfEmpathy who is perfectly happy to kill hundreds of innocent people as long as it gets him what he wants.
114	* JustFollowingOrders: Daniels tears this excuse apart as he's trying to stop the town from being bombed.
115	-->"If you think I'm lying, drop the bomb. If you think I'm crazy, drop the bomb, but don't drop the bomb because you're following orders!"
116	* KillItWithFire: The government's response to a deadly viral outbreak.
117	* KindheartedSimpleton: Jimbo isn't particularly smart and starts the whole crisis by stealing the monkey, but he is by no means a bad person and whenever given the opportunity he makes sure to PetTheDog.
118	* LackOfEmpathy: [=McClintock=]'s big defining personality trait. He berates everybody for sentiment and calls it silly. He has a clue about empathy though, because he makes precision strikes against others in ways that will hurt them emotionally.
119	* MagicalAntibiotics: Antiviral rather than antibiotic, but Robbie contracts the Motaba virus and is on the brink of death before they administer the virus' antiserum. She is almost completely recovered after only a day. In reality, this is far too soon to recover from a hemorrhagic fever, which causes massive internal bleeding and organ failure.
120	* MagicAntidote: One of the CDC doctors contracts the disease (a hemorrhagic fever with a near-100% fatality rate), and is hanging on by a thread when she's given the antiserum. Barely a day later, the splotches on her skin have disappeared, and she's looking tired but otherwise perfectly fine. FYI, hemorrhagic fever causes massive internal bleeding and organ damage. Much of this damage should be permanent even if the disease was arrested, and certainly would not be healed in a single day.
121	* AMillionIsAStatistic:
122	** Wisely navigated when demonstrating the impact on the town's populace. The soldiers begin rounding up infectees in the quarantined small town, and we get to see one woman say a tearful goodbye to her family. We follow her for a few minutes while they take a blood sample during her initial medical exam. There is even a close up of the phial, labeled "Sample 612". In a later scene, we see Casey examining blood slides and becoming increasingly frustrated as he pronounces each one as being infected, including hers. We're later treated to a shot of her in a body bag.
123	** [[DefiedTrope Defying this trope]] is the crux of the speech given by the White House Chief Of Staff, who asks everybody in the room to make ''damn sure'' that it is necessary to wipe out Cedar Creek, ''damn sure'' that the American people understand there was no other choice, and '''damn sure''' that nobody gets the funny idea of going to the press and lying about which decision they took after the fact.
124	* MisplacedWildlife: A capuchin monkey is a ''New'' World Monkey, not native to Africa where Jimbo gets it from.
125	* MoodMotif:
126	** There's a brilliant motif, full of hopefulness and wonder as Jimbo sets the host monkey free in the thick, lush California forest, underscored with a significant tension of strings and low notes because the monkey ''is'' the host and Jimbo is already starting to become symptomatic.
127	** There's an uplifting and hopeful tinkly tune when Daniels looks up to see the test monkey with African Motaba shows that the serum given Daniels by Ford works effectively as a cure.
128	** There's a ScareChord when Casey's suit rips.
129	** The Strings of Suspense play during Sam Daniels's impassioned plea to the pilots of Sandman not to drop the Fuel Air Bomb.
130	** There's a musical lilt that goes soft and gentle after Sandman releases its bomb over the water, indicating that Daniels' plea was successful and the pilots chose not to bomb the town despite orders.
131	* NoFEMAResponse: The town is quarantined, and then the plan is to Fuel Air Bomb it to stop the infection from spreading.
132	* NoOntologicalInertia: Once the protagonist has found and isolated the antibody from the monkey's blood serum, by the next scene there's enough antiserum for all those infected through Hollywood production speed. Once injected into the dying people, it nigh-instantly cures them and everything is soon on the road to normal, with no lasting ill effects.
133	* NoOSHACompliance: We get a shot that shows the disease is airborne as it must have traveled from the isolation ward to the room of another patient who's had no contact. But a hospital would have heavy and redundant filtration for just that reason even if they were told the virus isn't airborne.
134	* ObstructiveBureaucrat:
135	** Daniels encounters one of these, but convinces him to cut the crap by informing him that he has come all the way from the disease-infected city, clutching the man's hands very earnestly, and offering to cough on him if he doesn't believe him. This causes him to call his much more helpful boss, who gladly goes above and beyond to help Daniels.
136	** Ford ''behaves'' as one but only because he's trying to participate in the coverup of Motaba so it can be used as a superweapon. By the end of the movie he's had enough of [=McClintock's=] crap and turns on him.
137	* ObviouslyEvil: General [=McClintock=], with his permanent smug scowl.
138	* OhCrap:
139	** Daniels notices that people are getting sick with Motaba even though they should be isolated from the infectees.
140	--->'''Col. Daniels:''' It's airborne!
141	** Moments after Daniels gets one, Ford gets one himself after being informed that Motaba is now airborne.
142	** When Sandman's pilot and co-pilot see the Loach hovering in their path to Cedar Creek.
143	* OneDoseFitsAll: The film shows everyone getting the cure to Motaba in IV bags. The specification Sam gives Robby is that every patient is getting 200 ml. This would probably need to vary by age and size of patient, and whether they could be brought back from the later stages of the virus.
144	* TheOner: The credits sequence, which has a camera going through the Army biological hazards lab, with helpful subtitles showing which specific Biosafety level people work on.
145	* OperationBlank: [=McClintock=]'s plan for bombing Cedar Creek is code-named "Operation Clean Sweep".
146	* OrbitalKiss: A particularly disturbing one takes place in a scene. Jimbo and Cindy have one, but Jimbo's got Motaba virus and passes out in Cindy's arms when the orbit comes full circle.
147	* OrbitalShot: The camera spins dizzyingly around Jimbo and his fiancee before he collapses.
148	* OutsideContextProblem: ''Nobody'' saw a hyper-lethal virus like Motaba coming. The hospital in an urban center like Boston had no idea what to make of it so one could hardly blame the small hospital in a tiny town like Cedar Creek for being overwhelmed in a matter of minutes, especially since they were dealing with far more patients.
149	* PatientZero: A wild monkey carries the Motaba virus; the first ''human'' infectees are Jimbo Scott and the pet store owner he was trying to sell said monkey too -- the latter of whom got scratched while handling the animal, the former of whom got spat on by the monkey while releasing it into the wild. Though Jimbo only ends up spreading the virus to his girlfriend before snuffing it, the pet store owner ends up infected with an airborne strain of Motaba... and ends up spreading it to everyone in his town.
150	* ThePlague: Motaba.
151	* PleaseDontLeaveMe:
152	** Imploringly spoken by Sam Daniels as Robby looks like she might succumb to her Motaba infection. Followed by his calculated risk.
153	** Also stated by the dying American soldier in the 1967 prologue when he realizes that the hazmat-clad newcomers are also Americans.
154	* PrecisionFStrike: Done twice:
155	** Daniels gets to the point where has had ''enough'' of [=McClintock=] and his warmongering obstructionism when the former threatens to shoot down the latter after being told he has the way to cure the remaining early-stage Cedar Creek patients.
156	--->'''[=McClintock=]:''' With all due respect, Colonel Daniels, if you do not follow us to Travis Air Force Base, I will blow you out of the sky.
157	--->'''Daniels:''' General, with all due respect, ''fuck you''. Sir.
158	** Daniels to Ford, before Sandman is close enough to drop the bomb:
159	--->'''Daniels:''' This is ''murder'', Billy, any way you fucking slice it.
160	* QuarantineWithExtremePrejudice:
161	** Applied to Cedar Creek by the U.S. military, and the typical application of ArmiesAreEvil of this trope is (thankfully) averted: while Motaba ''is'' so lethal that it's justified, the only reason why the military escalates to try to nuke the city off the map is [[spoiler:because [=McClintock=] lied to the President and the Joint Chiefs about Daniels's chances of finding a cure, so he could maintain the existence of his personal project to use Motaba as a weapon in secret.]]
162	** The military itself doesn't act in any particularly evil way during the quarantine. They get a little justifiably physical with rioting townspeople who won't obey the stay-at-home command, and the only fatal incident occurs when someone about to break quarantine tries [[TooDumbToLive firing a rifle at a military helicopter ordering them to stop their car.]]
163	* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: The U.S. Chief of Staff certainly behaves as one during his one scene. When confronted by the reality of the dangers of Motaba he makes sure that it's ''absolutely necessary'' to wipe out Cedar Creek to contain the virus and that there was no other choice. The only reason he agrees to it in the first place is being lied to by [=McClintock=].
164	* ReassignedToAntarctica: [=McClintock=] attempts this by sending Daniels to New Mexico. Daniels has other ideas.
165	* RefugeInAudacity: Daniels' favorite trick.
166	** How Daniels gets onto the military flight to Cedar Creek.
167	** He does the same thing again to steal a helicopter so he and Salt can try to find the host.
168	* ReminderOfDuty: Several times:
169	** Ford reminds Daniels of the fact that he, himself, is part of the Army that developed the disease, in an effort to keep him quiet about the weapons project. This is about duty to the group.
170	** [=McClintock=] tells Ford that if he goes down, Ford will have just as much to answer for. Eventually, this no longer matters to Ford. This is about his own desires, though posed as duty to the group.
171	** The White House Chief of Staff tells the people preparing to authorize the bomb strike to wipe out the infected city that if there are any voices of the objection, they belong in the room, then and there, not someone running to the press later and claiming disingenuously that they were the "sole voice of opposition" in the room. This is about duty to higher ideals.
172	---> '''Chief of Staff:'''"Those are the citizens of Cedar Creek, go ahead take a look at them - these are not statistics ladies and gentlemen - they're flesh and blood! I want you to burn those images into your memories, because they should haunt you until the day you die!"
173	** Daniels appeals to the pilots who have been assigned with the duty of delivering the bomb that will wipe out the town on the basis of duty to ideals first:
174	---> '''Daniels:''' "If you think I'm lying, drop the bomb. If you think I'm crazy, drop the bomb, but don't drop the bomb because you're following orders!"
175	* RevealingCoverup: Ford provides the team with a serum [[spoiler:derived from the Motaba samples taken back in the Sixties]], which they find out works just fine against the first, un-mutated strain. Daniels' insistence in finding out where it came from puts Ford in a rut of increasingly ImplausibleDeniability.
176	* RuleOfDrama: There are several instances in the film that are done specifically to ramp up the tension and suspense for the audience, nevermind whether it's realistic:
177	** How fast Motaba mutates.
178	** Infection of airborne Cedar Creek Motaba is practically instantaneous. Casey is infected within seconds of his suit ripping despite a rigorous decontamination regime.
179	* RuleOfEmpathy: Who the viewer is supposed to empathize with goes up and down.
180	** Jimbo was engaged in illegal activity. Unsympathetic. But he is kind to children. Sympathetic.
181	** Jimbo's fiancee Alice comments that Jimbo looks terrible when he gets off the plane. Sympathetic. But despite seeing her fiance looks ill, she deep kisses him. Stupidity warranting reduced sympathy.
182	** The Centrifuge operator is not a sympathetic character because he wasn't paying full attention when he stuck his hand in a still-moving centrifuge full of blood. And the thing that distracted him? A sports broadcast on a radio. He was ''staring at a radio'' when he reached into the active centrifuge. Worse still, he goes to the movies not feeling well, and ''doesn't cover his mouth when he coughs'', exposing his girlfriend and the entire movie theater.
183	** The doctors don't want to touch Jimbo and Alice to autopsy them. Unsympathetic but understandable. One doctor agrees to but he's so terrified that his hands shake too much to hold the scalpel. Sympathetic.
184	** Donald [=McClintock=]'s EstablishingCharacterMoment is his appearance in Africa in a faceless, black mask Hazmat suit, wherein he lies to a dying soldier before ordering the bombing of the village. Everything we see about him going forward tells the audience he is not a sympathetic character.
185	** Billy Ford is a man who has a long career in the Army and went along with his superiors, but finds himself conflicted when the outbreak puts him between doing what's right and following orders.
186	** Sam Daniels is good hearted through and through. To a fault.
187	** There's a young mother in Cedar Creek who has come down sick and is obviously terrified. She bids goodbye to her children, who she can't even touch because she's contagious. She tries to speak reassuring words to her family that she visibly doesn't feel. She's sympathetic until the moment [[spoiler:we see her zipped into a body bag and carried off to be burned.]]
188	* SadClown: Casey. He's Daniels' best friend and covers up his emotions with jokes.
189	** When his suit tears and he fears he has been infected, he tells Robbie. "Just a sudden case of the Willies. I hate those Willies. Don't you think they should call it the Sams (referring to Sam Daniels, Robby's ex-husband)?"
190	** When he is in the early stages of the illness, and Daniels forces him awake, he says, "[[Film/TheWizardOfOz I had a wonderful dream, Auntie Em. You were there, and you were there...]]"
191	** When he's in the final stages, he weakly manages to joke to Robby that she should give Sam Daniels a chance because he has a huge crush on her.
192	* ScareChord: Used somewhat effectively when [[spoiler:Casey collapses as a result of the infection]].
193	* ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Daniels does this so much that his superiors just barely tolerate him. If he weren't [[BunnyEarsLawyer as good as he is]], he'd probably be reassigned or discharged.
194	* SecondLawOfMetafictionalThermodynamics: Subverted. The viewers were given plenty of information about the residents of the town about to be bombed. So naturally the day is saved.
195	* SillySimian: The movie unashamedly features a cute little monkey who is the plague bringer of doom (albeit unintentionally).
196	* SociopathicSoldier: [=McClintock=] is a good example of one that made it all the way to GeneralRipper: [[SmugSnake smug]], [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], imperious, ''completely'' [[LackOfEmpathy lacking in empathy]], and willing to kill thousands of people without hesitation for the sake of keeping the Motaba virus (which can easily kill ''millions'' if properly used) as a viable option for bio-warfare (and has no problem saying that it's all for the good of America).
197	* SophisticatedAsHell: Daniels's response to being ordered not to interfere with the bombing of a small town:
198	-->"General [=McClintock=], {{with all due respect}}, fuck you. Sir."
199	* SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic: [=McClintock=] shows off a projection of Motaba's spread over 48 hours, which consumes the entire country. In this case, it's probably a nonsense scare scenario (which sharp viewers might note is plotted from several cities that are not infected) designed to sell the committee on bombing the town.
200	* {{Sting}}: These are used practically all the time. And we do mean all the time.
201	* StunnedSilence: Daniels cannot speak for several seconds when he realizes he was about to go into a level 5 hot zone lab with a tear in his suit, if Casey hadn't spotted it.
202	* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: General Ford has a change of heart about the imminent incineration of an infected town. He gets on the horn to the chopper carrying Colonel Sam Daniels -- who has been unable to convince the army to call off the bombing -- to deliver the following warning:
203	-->'''Ford:''' This is General Ford. I remind you that you are interfering with presidential authority. Sandman has a specific line to the target. If you are in his way, he cannot complete his bombing run and there will be hell to pay. Do you understand?
204	* TakingYouWithMe: [=McClintock=] threatens to sink Ford's career alongside his if he's arrested at the end. Ford, by that point in time, is beyond caring and orders the General's arrest.
205	* TemptingFate: Daniels interrupts General Ford's party to say he needs to put out an alert for Motaba. Ford, however, brushes him off, noting [[CryingWolf other times]] when Daniels expected a major outbreak, but it didn't happen. In addition, Motaba kills so fast, it's hard for it to get very far. Afterwards, they agree that the odds of Motaba coming to America are about a million to one. Cue one Motaba-infected monkey arriving in America...
206	* TooDumbToLive:
207	** The guy who thought firing on a ''military attack chopper'', '''which had already fired warning shots at his truck''', was a good idea. Suffice it to say he did not live long after that.
208	** Jimbo's girlfriend also counts. She sees her boyfriend clearly showing symptoms of a serious disease, and she STILL kisses him on the mouth.
209	** The Centrifuge operator, who splatters himself with Rudy Alvarez's infected blood because he wasn't paying attention and infects even more people when he goes out to a crowded movie theater while knowing full well he's very sick and doesn't even cover his mouth when he coughs.
210	* TyphoidMary: The lab tech 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.
211	* WellTrainedButInexperienced: Major Salt is the NewMeat of the USAMRIID team and though he's trained well enough to detail the symptoms of Ebola from memory, he has absolutely zero field experience. Sure enough, while deployed to a CrisisPointHospital hit by the Motaba virus, Salt pukes inside his hazmat suit and tears the helmet off in a blind panic - an act that could have been fatal if the strain of the virus had been airborne. Though badly shaken, he recovers and begins working hard to make up for his earlier cockiness, soon adjusting to the pressure of working in the field - to the point that he even manages to commandeer a helicopter and help Daniels save the day.
212	* WithDueRespect:
213	** Colonel Daniels has this exchange with General [=McClintock=] while in a helicopter blocking a bomber from nuking a small town:
214	--->'''General [=McClintock=]:''' With all due respect, Colonel Daniels, if you do not follow us to Travis Air Force Base, I will blow you out of the sky. \
215	'''Daniels:''' General, with all due respect, '''fuck you''', sir.
216	** When Daniels and Salt are discussing how to intercept the Tae Kuk, Salt says, "You want me to fly you out to sea, drop you onto a freighter? Sir, with all due respect, that is idiotic."
217	* WorkingWithTheEx: Daniels works with his ex-wife Robby. [[spoiler:Naturally, they get back together at the end of the movie.]]
218	* WronskiFeint: After finding the host animal, Daniels and Salt are intercepted in their Loach by a pair of Hueys commanded by General [=McClintock=]. After an aerial chase, Salt manages to trick the two Hueys into nearly colliding. While they both survive, it distracts them long enough for Daniels to fire some missiles into the forest, keeping the Hueys even further distracted while they make it back to Cedar Creek.
219	* YouShallNotPass: In the climax, Daniels and Salt fly their helicopter right into the path of Sandman to prevent the bombing of Cedar Creek.

Context Film / Outbreak