Computer Viruses Are Computer Illnesses

"Yes, I feel a tad warm. Perhaps I do have a virus."

— Robot Jones, Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?

Fictional malware can be difficult to write accurately to its real-life counterpart in a comedic cartoon setting while staying entertaining, but most of the time it's not accuracy these writers care about. Sometimes malware wipes out entire computer systems overnight, causes machines to malfunction comically or even fatally (neither of which are too far from reality), turns robots evil, and then sometimes makes robots sick, taking the "virus" in "computer virus" literally and being what this trope is about.

This (typically comedic) trope is far more prevalent in media aimed towards a younger audience, especially Western Animation. It started out as an overused Pun, but has somewhat managed to evolve into its own thing over time. Two examples are as a way to justify giving robots their own sick episodes or lightheartedly teaching children about malware.

Normally, Computer Viruses Are Computer Illnesses refers to when malware, as stated previously, causes an A.I. or other type of machine to show human-like symptoms of illness, but also refers to when personified computer viruses appear sickly and when computer viruses are fixed similarly to how a fictional human illness would be cured such as finding a cure and going inside the robot to eradicate the virus manually (especially if the virus has the physical appearance of Monstrous Germs) rather than just calling someone from I.T. to fix it.

A subtrope to Computer Virus. Not to be confused with Malfunction Malady. For A.I., cyborgs or other machines having software problems in general, see Glitch Episode. For when human-like traits are applied to a mechanical character without explanation, see Forgot He Was a Robot.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Futurama: Parodied in the strip "Night of the Automated Dead". Bender is tasked with sending a large order of "robot chicken soup" to Chapek 9, a robot populated planet, as it is experiencing a robo-cold pandemic. Bender then gets the idea to become infected (by getting the inhabitants to sneeze on him) in order to get sick days off work, but instead of making him sick, it mutates and causes the Robotic Undead after Scruffy unknowingly dumps Bender's contaminated oil into a robot graveyard.

Fan Works

• Many Detroit: Become Human fanfics feature an android (usually Connor) getting sick from a computer virus.

Films — Animation

• The Emoji Movie: The computer viruses from the piracy app have the physical appearance of real viruses and tend to sneeze frequently.

Films — Live Action

• Discussed in Flubber; Dr. Brainard asks his Robot Buddy Weebo why his wedding date disappeared from her calendar, causing him to risk missing it, then wonders if she's caught a virus. She admits she's been feeling a little feverish, and he feels her face and says, "You are a little hot." Actually, Weebo deleted the entry herself because she's in love with him and is trying to scuttle the wedding.

Literature

• Snow Crash plays with this; the titular virus is transmittable through The Metaverse, but seemingly only affects humans, causing people infected by it to speak in tongues. In the end, however, it is a computer virus, and when the Big Bad attempts to distribute it throughout the Metaverse, Hiro hijacks it with an advertisement for an antivirus program he invented to combat it.
• In the Pocket Books Star Trek novel Boogeymen, the Enterprise's computer gets infected with an aggressive computer virus, which is passed on to Data during a diagnostic. He promptly develops a feeling of weakness and fatigue, as well as experiencing pain for the first time, remarking that his head and limbs are "throbbing in a most unpleasant way." Dr. Crusher expressly compares his condition to the flu.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: Voyager has a non-virus example. The Doctor gets annoyed with the crew whining over minor illnesses, but Kes tells him he can't judge since he's incapable of getting sick. To teach the crew a lesson, he programs himself to experience flu-like symptoms to show how well he will be able to handle it. Kes secretly changes the program to keep him sick longer than he anticipated, which makes him panic, believing something is wrong with his program.

Music

• "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Virus Alert" spoofs this concept, with the 'stinky cheese' virus being capable of doing things like freezing your computer, stealing your identity or erasing data... but it's also capable of neutering your pets, making you attracted to sheep, changing your legal name, melting your face, or causing a rift in time and space that litters the area with Twinkie wrappers. The only way to deal with it, according to the song?
  Turn off your computer and make sure it powers down,
  Drop it in a forty-three-foot hole in the ground,
  Bury it completely rocks and boulders should be fine,
  Then burn all the clothes you may have worn any time you were online!

Video Games

• Empire Earth: Viruses can spread among robots, with the same mechanism as human plagues.
• The plot of Mega Man 10 revolves around finding a cure for a computer virus called Roboenza, which causes robots to have flu-like symptoms and eventually go rogue. Justified, as Dr. Wily programmed the virus to have this effect.

Web Animation

• Hector's World: The episode about pop-up ads says that clicking on pop-up ads could make your computer "sick" with viruses, and we see an image of a computer sneezing and with a fever.
• Reality Bytes: The first official episode titled "Virus Alert" features Petey, an anthropomorphic desktop computer, downloading a crappy game from a dubious website and getting a virus from it. He gets bags under his eyes and vomits binary code at one point. His friends later go inside of him to eradicate it.
• RWBY Chibi: In the season 2 bit "Computer Virus", Ozpin, Port, Oobleck, and Winter are confused as to what could've given their computer a virus, but then Penny walks by and sneezes, causing pop-ups to appear on the screen.
• The Trash Pack: In the episode "Snot My Problem", Scummy Screen, a living busted computer, ends up with a virus downloaded onto him, due to Trash-a-Pillar clicking a link that said to "download this virus to win a million dollars" (it seemed like a good deal at the time for the both of them). It leaves Scummy weak and sickly, with his complexion going pale and him sneezing out buckets of snot.

Webcomics

• The Petri Dish: One arc involves Thaddeus getting into legal trouble after he engineers a computer virus that makes computers throw up (he initially did it as revenge when another scientist deliberately made Bob malfunction).

Websites

• The SCP Foundation tale Excerpts from Training Seminars for Lesser-Known Foundation Careers plays with this in the 'Computational Epidemiologist' section, explaining that there are things called 'Organic Interface Viruses' which are capable of using humans as carriers between computers, including one described as giving your computer "the digital equivalent of herpes". The OIVs also sometimes mutate to infect their human carriers; the result of these infections is described as such:
  "...imagine the data structure of a computer trying to impose itself on a human brain. It's... not pretty. Imagine your brain, replaced with a can of Campbell's chunky soup. Now imagine that can being dumped into the Marianas Trench, and bursting under the pressure.
  It's not at all like that. It's worse because a soup can in your head will kill you. Most victims of mutated OIVs actually survive."

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Buddy", Anais and Jamie are tasked with finding out who gave all the library computers a virus. As seen in the above image, the computers have a green gradient, are wearing ice packs, sweating, and are surrounded by used tissues. However, Bobert, who is also infected, does not display these symptoms whatsoever.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Shaketopia", Frylock gives all the Glorfinoids within the virtual world gifts that have been implanted with a computer virus, causing them to develop an illness and Exhausted Eyebags before they explode and subsequently destroy the virtual reality.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: In the episode "Hard Drive Courage", Courage accidentally downloads a virus and when Muriel goes into the attic, she is sucked into the computer, forcing Courage to go after her, where it turns out the virus has a cold and intended to use Muriel as a new motherboard until he recovers. Courage then cures him by feeding him Muriel's vinegar gelatin.
• Futurama: In "Mars University", Bender says that he should take the members of Robot House, the robot fraternity, to Tijuana so that Fatbot can lose his virginity. In the epilogue, it's stated that Bender took the Robot House members to Tijuana, where Fatbot got infected by a computer virus and had to be rebooted.
• R.O.B. the Robot: In "Space Virus Blues", TK, Orbit, and Rob are infected with the blue space virus, which causes TK and Rob to sneeze and Orbit to jumble his words. It is implied to be a computer virus as it only affects robots and is cured using an antivirus program by the robot doctor.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Karen's Virus", Karen gets a virus from one of her computer friends, which causes her to sneeze, become delirious and later start to break down. When SpongeBob goes inside her to exterminate it, it is a real virus.
• Teen Titans (2003): The episode "Crash" focuses on Cyborg getting a computer virus after Beast Boy mistakenly inserts a disk containing a bootleg video game into his recharging station instead of his computer, causing him to hallucinate and become an Extreme Omnivore. The Titans are then forced to form an alliance with Gizmo of the Hive Five in order to go inside Cyborg and save him. The virus has the appearance of demonic bacteriophages.
• Transformers:
  • In the Beast Wars episode "The Low Road", Tarantulas infects Rhinox with an energon discharge virus, which causes him to literally sneeze himself to death. Inverted when Optimus Primal cures him using a counter-virus.
  • Played for Drama in the Transformers: Prime episode "Sick Mind"; Optimus Prime is infected with an engineered bioweapon called "cybonic plague", which he caught after entering an autobot plague ship. Bumblebee is then sent to obtain the cure from Megatron's mind. It isn't made abundantly clear whether this is a computer virus.
• Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?: In "Sickness", the Yogmans prank Robot Jones by inserting a virus-filled floppy disk into him while he's in sleep mode and he becomes very ill.

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