Created By: Unicorndance on November 27, 2017
Last Edited By: Unicorndance on April 19, 2018
Filthy Rich: "So, Granny was never sick?"
Granny Smith: "And there ain't no apple-blighted ponies?"
Big Mac: "Nope."
Applejack: "Those were all lies."
Although there may be some exceptions, it generally isn't a good idea to lie. It is usually an especially bad idea to lie about someone else's health, because you're bringing another person into the equation. That doesn't stop some characters, though, and this is what this trope's about.
Maybe the liar is trying to avoid going somewhere or doing something by claiming that someone else is sick and that person needs their attention. Maybe, the liar is trying to prevent the ones being lied to from visiting the allegedly sick character and finding out a secret. Maybe the allegedly sick character is playing along and they're either helping this person pretend to be contagious or trying to gain important access to places or items that they claim will "cure" the allegedly sick one.
Sometimes, the character who's apparently sick can be not present or even completely made-up and the liar can just leave without any intention of visiting them, but if they're made up and expected to be present, expect the character who invented them to use their imaginary illness to justify why they cannot let anyone see them.
If it's a real person and they're not playing along, expect the liar to hastily try and hide the allegedly sick person or make them look sick, sometimes shh'ing them or putting a hand over their mouth when they try to say, "I'm fine". Sometimes it's an animal or a baby and they can't talk, but they still look healthy, so expect the lying character to try and hide that.
Compare Playing Sick and its subtrope You Don't Want to Catch This for pretending that you are sick, and Induced Hypochondria for lying to someone that they are sick. Invented Invalid is a subtrope (for when the person is definitely made up and the lie involves a visit.)
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "Where the Apple Lies".
Examples:
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Films
- Star Wars: A New Hope has C3PO tell a "Someone Else Is Broken" Lie by pretending another droid, R2D2, has short-circuited and they have to go to maintenance.
- Thor: Ragnarok: Thor and Loki perform a routine to get past the guards that involves Thor carrying Loki, who's limp, and shouting "Get help!".
Literature
- In Be Careful What You Wish For, Ruth lies to her parents to avoid going out by saying that she is going to visit her friend Lou's "sick" grandfather.
- In one of the Just books, Andy tries to get out of doing something by pretending his imaginary friend, a polite boy named Fred, is sick. His mother pretends Fred is real.
- In The Midnight Gang, the main character Tom has to get sleeping serum to get the evil matron to fall asleep. He pretends that he's a doctor and the fired porter is his patient. What the porter allegedly has is undefined, but it renders him immobile, is a literal pain in the butt, and drives him insane into thinking he's a doctor.
Live-Action TV
- The Addams Family: Happens in "Cat Addams", when the Addamses think their pet lion is sick and try and make the vet brave enough to treat him, they falsely claim that Cleopatra (the plant), Thing (the hand in a box), Cousin Itt and Uncle Fester (the humans) are sick, have them play along, and have them pretend the vet cured them.
- Animorphs: In Marco is incompletely demorphed from Osprey and people want to know what's wrong with him (being mostly covered with a sweater). Jake pretends he is his deformed brother Tommy and Marco pretends he has a disease called "beakonoma" which causes you to grow a beak and only affects the "smart and handsome". Jake transmits most of it to the crowd and they leave, shuddering as Marco finishes demorphing.
- In episode "San Junipero" of Black Mirror, Kelly tries to lose Wes, who is stalking her, by telling him that her friend Yorkie (sitting next to her) is terminally ill. Later, it turns out that it's in virtual reality and Yorkie is in fact the avatar for an comatose old lady.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: In the episode "Eyes on the Prize", Will tries to convince his friends Ty and Jazz that Carlton is ill, but when asked for the name of the illness, he can only come up with the unconvincing "Bette Davis Eyes".
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- In "By Any Other Name", Spock uses his Vulcan abilities to pretend to be unconscious to help the protagonists escape from the Kelvans. Both Kirk and Dr. McCoy tell the Kelvan guard that Spock is sick and needs to be taken to the Enterprise for treatment.
- In "I, Mudd", as part of a fake escape attempt, Dr. McCoy injects Harry Mudd with a drug that causes him to fall asleep. He then (along with Captain Kirk) tells the android guards that Mudd is sick and needs to be taken to the Enterprise sickbay.
Theatre
- In Matilda, the girls pretend Nigel is narcoleptic to get him out of trouble.
Western Animation
- Arthur: In "D.W.'s Imaginary Friend", Arthur wants to go to the fair and his sister D.W. wants to come and bring her Imaginary Friend Nadine. Arthur doesn't want D.W. to bring Nadine out of fear they'll think he's babyish, so he tells her that he thinks Nadine has chicken pox and must stay behind. However, he admits to having lied when D.W. realises the Fridge Logic that if he can't see Nadine, how's he to know she's sick?
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: In the episode "Bus the Two of Us", Bloo takes the Fosters' bus on a joyride without Frankie knowing. When Will finds out about it from Mac, he, who usually doesn't like lying, lies to Frankie that Coco is sick and that she has to stay to take care of her.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "Sweet and Elite", Rarity lies that Opalescence is sick to justify her staying in Manehattan instead of returning (really it was to go to a party). When her friends arrive to bring their initial party to Rarity, she drenches Opalescence in water to make her look sick.
- In "Where the Apple Lies", it's revealed that the reason why Applejack Will Not Tell a Lie is because she lied in her adolescence that Granny Smith was sick to avoid Filthy Rich and Spoiled Milk from finding out that she didn't really make a deal with Granny and also falsely told Granny that the apple blight was starting to infect ponies.
- Rugrats: In "All's Well That Pretends Well", Angelica lies to the adults that the babies are sick and tries to make them look sick by making them shiver with ice cream, painting spots on Phil and Lil to make it look like they have the chicken pox, and trying unsuccessfully to make them sneeze.
- Thomas the Tank Engine has Gordon lie to Thomas that James is sick as part of a plan convincing James to play sick.
Indexes:
Hello, Unknown Troper. You'll need to get known to lend a hand here.
- For Fake Illness Cover Story, Someone Else Is Sick Lie seems grammatically incorrect and is difficult to understand ("what is 'Sick Lie'", I asked myself).
The folderization also makes this seem like it has more examples than it actually does.