Dr. Wilson: I though you had lunch with coma guy.
Dr. House: This is persistent vegetative state guy, much more interesting.
In
Real Life, having a friend or family member fall into a coma is a heart wrenching tragedy. On the one hand they are physically present and alive... but for all intents and purposes they are dead. Waiting for a family member to come out of a coma can be like a slow, painful torture that might never end.
Not so in fiction.
In
Medical Dramas and
Live Action TV series, coming out of a coma isn't a matter of if, but
when. More often than not it's an ideal way to have a character
Put On A Bus without
dropping a bridge on them (never
burn drop a bridge you may want the casting department to cross again, eh?). If a
Super Hero's
Secret Identity is exposed, a
Convenient Coma to the hapless discoverer solves those dangling plot threads without resorting to killing or changing the
status quo. Speaking of
killing, it's also a good way for moralistic heroes to do away with a bad guy without losing their no-killing reputation. Of course, the coma was
the villain's own fault.
A favorite for writers is that as soon as the hero
clears the table and is ready to settle down with his
first love, that plucky
Unlucky Childhood Friend turned
Human Popsicle will wake up and be a
Fish Out Of Water. Oblivious to all the extant romantic
Character Development, she reintroduces entire
layers of confusion, angst, guilt, and other soap opera staples to the once clean equation. The same is true for villains or people who found out the hero's secret ID.
If they're not long term, comas are usually treated as the step before
death for someone who's ill. Being told that the patient has "slipped into a coma" is generally a signal to the heroes to hurry up and find the cure. Staying beside and talking to the comatose person, often in shifts to allow each character in an ensemble to pour their hearts out, is usually a given. Expect a
Mistimed Revival to result just as they leave. If they don't make it in time, the comatose friend will
invariably wake up, say they heard everything, and deliver a heartwrenching
Final Speech before quietly slipping off.
Sometimes, interrogating a comatose person for info will start to wake him up, or at least spike his EKG or EEG. He is then a
Comatose Canary.
The comatose person may start waking up either with
the eyes or
the fingers.
Many a pregnant comatose mother will give birth while in a coma, at times resulting in spectacularly tragic
Death By Childbirth as the mother never sees the child.
Expect the comatose person to wake up with
selective memory problems. May overlap with
Angst Coma, in which the coma is either caused by the sufferer's personal problems, or cured by dealing with them, or both. Compare
Empty Shell.
Examples:
Comatose Childbirth
- Meg on Veronica Mars. Originally was supposed to have died in the season two bus crash/explosion, network meddling led to Meg surviving and for added trauma, pregnant with Veronica's old flame Duncan Kane's child. She ultimately woke up long enough to give birth and warn Duncan and Veronica to not let her family raise the child, before Rob Thomas could finally kill her off via her dropping dead from an sudden aneurysm.
- Another case of 'pregnant in a coma': the Bride from Kill Bill, who got a bullet in the head by Bill himself after taking a hell of a beating from her fellow Deadly Vipers while she was pregnant. It's a wonder the kid even made it to term, really.
- Not really, a woman's body is designed to hold on to the pregnancy as long as possible, even with physical trauma. Also, a when a pregnant woman dies, the baby lives until lack of oxygen kills them, so there is a small window of time where the kid can be cut out. Considering how far along the Bride was, a c-section wouldn't be that surprising. This is medical fact that can bring a revelation the above spoiler.
- In Wicked (the book version) Elphaba gives birth to Liir while in a fugue state
. Not quite a coma, but close enough.
- All My Children's Kendall was in a coma when she gave birth to Spike. This led to much argument over whether to deliver him early (risking his health) or wait until he was stronger (risking the mother's health.)
- As of this writing, she's in a coma again (not pregnant this time) to allow Alicia Minshew to go on her honeymoon.
- The Pedro Almodovar film Talk To Her is about two men who visit two comatose women at hospital. one of them impregnates the one he visits.
Happy Place Comas
- In the Superman story "For the Man Who Has Everything..." (by Alan Moore), Superman has an alien parasite attached to him which grants his fondest fantasy; a normal life on Krypton. He has to force himself to deny the fantasy to wake up and save his friends.
- In JLU's treatment of this story, Batman and Wonder Woman manage to help him, by disrupting its hold when trying to pull it off, allowing him to shake himself awake by realizing that Krypton's survival is false—only for the parasite to end up on Batman, who sees his father beating the living tar out of the mugger who killed Bruce's parents. He has to let his parents be murdered before his eyes before he can wake up. (Wonder Woman didn't get away unscathed, either: while this was going on, she had to fight Mongul, who had sent the thing to Clark in the first place.)
- Fei in Xenogears had an inner child personality that was functionally comatose and constantly reliving his happiest memories. Of course, Fei himself was in a coma as well for a while there.
- In an episode of Supernatural a Djinn did this to Dean.
- Earl and his fantasy of "The Hickey's" in My Name Is Earl.
Medical Drama Comas
- On Futurama, the only role Bender was suited for in All My Circuits was a comatose robot. On another episode, Leela goes into a coma after a space wasp sting, although the episode actually follows Leela as she dreams Fry died trying to save her from being stung. Her dream gradually keeps getting stranger, and it seems she's going insane from guilt over Fry's death. The audience isn't shown that Leela was comatose until right before she wakes up.
- House woke up a comatose guy just to ask him some questions.
- As the page quote can attest, House also tends to use the comatose patients' rooms as his personal cafeteria, since that way no one bothers him.
- Plus their rooms have cable.
- Also as the quote attests, House woke up "Vegetative State Guy" and the method he used would only work once due to the body gaining a resistance. "Coma Guy" is somebody else and he's still in a coma.
- Also, many episodes include the patient of the week slipping into a coma. This adds the urgency and time limit for House&company to find out what's wrong with them.
- Greys Anatomy does the exact same thing with "Really Old Guy", who's in a coma. I think a year after House did it. Lazy Grey's Anatomy.
- Talk To Her The entire premise of this film is basically: "Will the girls wake up?" Where, in real life, there is usually little question and the person simply stays that way until he or she dies. Subverted slightly in that one of them dies and one and one doesn't.
- Tuck in The Saga Of Tuck is in a short coma after a vicious criminal assault.
Put On A Bus Comas
- Justified in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Faith wakes up from her coma a year afterward, and she had the healing abilities of a slayer.
- Odd that she had no neurological symptoms, though. Even with special healing skills, she should at least have had serious brain damage for awhile after awakening. Indeed, someone in a coma doesn't just 'wake up', there are several intermediate stages (look up Glasgow coma scale).
- Similarly, Cordelia in Angel The Series, comatose for half a season before coming Back For The Dead. Sorta.
- Ultra Magnus in Transformers Animated, which neatly cleared the stage for Sentinel Prime to take over. The odd with this one is that he's still in it by the end of the series.
- Parioded in Friends when Joey's character on Days Of Our Lives fell down an open elevator shaft and was put in a coma. All this because he said he helped write the scripts in an interview.
- Jonathan Turner in Boy Meets World. (He never did come out of it).
- Michael Corinthos in General Hospital. Said bus went through a time warp and he woke up five years older...a year later.
Other
- The early'90s Canadian TV series The Odyssey had a comatose young teen undergoing a sort of internal hero's quest as the basis of the series.
- Good Bye Lenin used the coma of the lead's mom as a form of Time Travel from communist Germany to capitalist Germany.
- Kickin It Old School used a similar (but 20-year) Convenient Coma much less believably.
- Ayu in Kanon turns out to have been an astral projection; her real body's in a coma, and has been for the past seven years. Unlike Key's usual Downer Ending fare, she gets better.
- Fuuko in CLANNAD is a revisiting of the Ayu story, but with some changes. You find out about her condition right away instead of at the end of her arc, and though she's been in a coma for a much shorter time, the amnesia spell surrounding her is magnified by ten.
- Dread, the psychopath from Tad Williams' Otherland ends up in a coma where all his victims as hideous monsters forever chase him through an eternal Outback. Unusually vengeful end for a villain of this author but ah, so fitting.
- The basic plot premise for the novels is that the Grail Brotherhood and its massively complex computer network are implicated in the unexplained comas suffered by thousands of children around the world, including the protagonist's brother. The comas turn out to be caused by the Mind Control powers of the Other. True to the trope, the destruction of the Other releases the children, but the story is at least realistic in how it treats the physical effects of a months- or years-long coma.
- Hitomi from ICE winds up in a coma after an accident, which causes her mind to blend with that of a woman in the dystopian future.
- The Riddler was smashed in the noggin with a mace during Infinite Crisis, was in a coma for the "One Year Later" time skip, and woke up A) having forgot Batman's secret identity, and B) free of his compulsions for both riddling and crime. He's currently a successful private detective, so fair play Edward!
- "Special Officer" Matthew Bright falls into a coma and is visited every day by fellow superhero Jason Miller in Rising Stars. When Jason eventually dies defending his comatose friend, immediately Matthew wakes up, declares to have heard everything told to him during the years and sets off on a revenge trip.
- StrikerS Sound Stage X, set three years after the events of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, ends with Subaru learning that Ixpellia is only partially functioning and that she will soon slip into a coma that will last for maybe ten years... or a thousand. The two of them spend her last day being naturally awake together, until the latter falls asleep in Subaru's embrace.
- Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (aka Rumbling Hearts) visual novel and anime. Haruka is run over by a car and falls into coma right after the protagonist confesses to her, and when she wakes (after tree years!) he's dating with her best friend. Drama ensues.
- In the movie Just Like Heaven, Elizabeth had become comatose after being in a car crash. Her sister wanted to pull the Life Support after a while, but the Power of Love made her wake up at the last second. She can't remember the time she spent as a "ghost" when she was comatose until she touches David at the very end.
- Desperate Housewives had Susan's main love interest Mike put into a coma. Over six months later, she tentatively hooked up with a man she met at the hospital who's wife had been a coma for many years. Of course, the prominence of this trope has lead viewers to assume that all coma patients wake up eventually, and thus accuse them both of cheating on people who were going to wake up any second. (Although, this being TV and not real life, Mike actually did...)
- Previously, in the first season, Carlos's mother was run over by a car a few minutes after discovering Gabrielle's adultery. After several weeks spent in a coma, dreaming about the moment where she will wake up and tell her son; she suddenly awakes in the middle of the night when the nurse is taking a break; she jumps on her feet, slips, falls down the stairs and dies
- In the original GI Joe cartoon movie, Duke is grievously and bloodily wounded by Serpentor's snake staff near the beginning. He uses his last wheezing gasp to force out the words "Go... Joe..." before collapsing, at which point one of the bystanders hilariously exclaims "he's slipped into a coma!" He stays in it for the entirety of the movie and comes out at the end. The original plan had been to kill Duke off, but Transformers: The Movie came out a short time earlier and the writers hastily rewrote the scene to avoid seeming to copy Optimus Prime's death.
- Satoshi of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, at least in the anime, is in a coma for almost the entire series. It turns out that he developed the Hinamizawa Syndrome, escalated to Level Five, and needed to be sedated to avoid harming himself/others. And of course they didn't tell his little sister.
- In Once Upon A Forest Michelle's coma after inhaling toxic fumes serves as the main plot point, and her friends have to set out on a quest for the herbs that will revive her.
