History Main / HidingTheHandicap

* Flejj Hillmover in ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' came from a clan of dwarves who practised eugenics and would kill or exile any disabled members. Flejj himself was deaf but was able to hide his secret for years by being a very good lip-reader.

* Kagura, in ''Literature/GirlsKingdom'' always hides her left eye with her hair, because when she was younger a golf ball hit it at high speed, wrecking her vision in said eye and probably making it look rather ugly, meaning she presumably hides it to avoid detracting from her otherwise ethereal beauty.

* In ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist2003'', two orphaned Ishvalan brothers thought their mother had [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned them]] when she ran away during a bombing. In reality, she was going blind and didn't tell her kids. She had gone inside the house looking for them when she died in the bomb.

* [[spoiler:Itachi]] from ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' hid the fact he was going blind and was SecretlyDying until his death.
* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', All Might hides his true form from the public after All For One severely injures him so they won’t lose hope in him. No one besides Deku and a few colleagues at [=UA=] knows until his battle with All For One that he’s actually a skeletal, emaciated wreck with several missing organs who constantly coughs up blood.

*** Richard Wellington from "The Lost Turnabout" neglects to mention that he is nearsighted until an error in his testimony prompts Phoenix to confront him about it.

* ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo'': Not everyone at the school talks openly about their disabilities. Hisao, who has an invisible disability related to his heart, avoids talking to his friends about it.

* On ''Series/{{House}}'', a patient who was in training to become an astronaut pleaded with the doctors to conceal her diagnosis so her health history wouldn't get her disqualified for space flight.

* When UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi meets the infamous MasterSwordsman[=/=]BloodKnight Ito Ittosai in ''Manga/{{Vagabond}}'', he notices that Ittosai seems to always be concealing one of his arms. As Ittosai begins goading Musashi towards a fight, Musashi undergoes an entire process of guessing about whether Ittosai is hiding an injury (such as if that hand was cut off) or only pretending to do so in order to catch an opponent by surprise. [[spoiler:It turns out to be a bit of both; Musashi's arch-rival UsefulNotes/SasakiKojiro had in fact cut off around half of Ittosai's hand in a bout between the two, but Ittosai, no longer able to hold a sword with that hand, has turned to using it for barehanded surprise attacks, as he does to Musashi.]]

* In the first two books of the ''Literature/CodexAlera'' series, Tavi is generally open about his handicap of having no furies, because he's grown up with everyone knowing about it. This changes when he goes undercover as a legionnaire and has to hide his identity from a noble class who have all heard about the First Lord's "pet freak". His methods of hiding it ranges from cleverly making fire with magnification to breaking his own leg so others won't notice he can't march at a magically-enhanced pace.

* In the Season 6 of ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', Diggle gets nerve damage in his right hand and is no longer able to shoot straight. He keeps it hidden from everyone, although Dinah figures it out. He resorts to buying what he assumes is a steroid that hasn't been approved by the FDA from a street dealer, although it turns out to be a designer drug. The drug helps the tremors at first but later turns out to have done permanent nerve damage, leaving him worse off. Eventually, he's forced to admit the problem to everyone. Eventually, Felicity and Curtis come up with a subcutaneous chip that gives him full use of the hand.

* Mel from ''Series/GrowingUpFisher'' spent decades not letting anyone outside his immediate family and friends knowing that he's blind, doing things such as memorizing the layout and contents of an art gallery beforehand so well that his date was fooled. It's not until he divorces his wife and starts living alone that he has to acknowledge his limitations and begins using a guide dog.

* In ''Theatre/AngelsInAmerica'' anti-communist and anti-homosexual lawyer Roy Cohn insists that he's got cancer rather than admitting he's dying of AIDS.
* A variation in ''Theatre/{{Iolanta}}'': Iolanta is genuinely unaware she is blind since birth, and Vaudemont doesn't realize anything until he asks her for a red rose and she wants to know what "red" means. That's because Iolanta's father has ordered the servants to keep the girl from finding out anything eyesight-related: it's uncertain whether she can be cured, so he thinks it would be better for her not to know about her disability as he is afraid she would sink into depression otherwise.

*** "Farewell, My Turnabout" features a witness whose icy demeanor and fiercly independent nature hides the fact that she has dependent personality disorder.

* In the fourth season of ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'', a character named Mike is introduced. He has Multiple Personality Disorder, but, out of fear of being ridiculed, chooses not to tell anyone about it. His personalities still come out, but he lies and says he's just an overly-dedicated method actor. [[spoiler:His disorder becomes harder to manage, but he eventually confesses it to his crush Zoey, who accepts him.]]

* Similarly, UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy was much sicker than he ever let on publicly and was also borderline physically disabled due to a back injury that he first got in college and then exacerbated during the war. He’d been sickly as a child and was eventually diagnosed with a hormonal disorder called Addison’s that left him beset with constant stomach problems. His bad back was common knowledge (although it was much worse than anyone knew) but the Addison’s was a secret. During the presidential primary in 1960, his then rival and future Vice President UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson’s team found out about it during their opposition research but Kennedy’s doctors put out a [[ExactWords very carefully worded statement]] that said he didn’t have Addison’s that resulted from having tuberculosis as it wasn’t widely known back then that it only accounted for about a quarter of cases. That was enough to publicly quash the health rumors for good, especially because he was only 43.
* It is not unknown for highly motivated men doing advanced military training to conceal injuries that would otherwise have them washed out of the course, or worse still, back-squadded after medical intervention to do the whole gruelling thing again from scratch. There is a recorded case of a Royal Marines recruit who slogged his way to the end of basic training and passed out with the green beret, only to discover the leg injury he'd been covering up for wasn't just a sprain, it was, in fact, a broken bone. The Parachute Regiment and the SAS can boast similar stories. Tragically, men undergoing selection and training for elite Army/Marine units have died rather than confess to "weakness" and seek medical attention. For obvious reasons, the British Army now discourages heroic doggedness of this sort and is more proactive about checking for injury or potentially life-threatening medical complaints.

* Ditto Anthony Head, who has shortened fingers on one hand. Usually, he's either holding something or hiding it in a pocket on TV and publicity shots.

* [[UsefulNotes/AttentionDeficitHyperactivityDisorder ADD/ADHD]] individuals often do this, only telling about it to those who absolutely need to know about it. This is because it has been overdiagnosed in the past, it's relative lack of visible symptoms (especially in adulthood) means some non-ADHD people don't believe in it[[note]]Common claims include: "Watch less TV/Play less video games", "It's not a real disease and just an excuse for laziness/a conspiracy made by doctors to make money" You can't have it, you don't [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny chase squirrels]]" and ''dozens'' of other arguments[[/note]] and the fact that some, even non-ADHD people, abuse the stimulant medication leading some to believe it's addictive[[note]]Studies say that when taken properly, the medication is not addictive; in fact, it's been noted that medication reduces the chances of addiction, as the person is less likely to drink or use illegal drugs for self-treatment[[/note]]. As a result, there's a social stigma against the disorder, and many prefer to keep it hidden to avoid problems with their family/friends/workplace in case someone they know doesn't believe in it. While it's been getting better in recent years, most people still, unfortunately, know only of the stereotype of a 9-year old boy running around 24/7, causing underdiagnosis in girls and adults of both genders.
* Related to the above, many UsefulNotes/{{autis|m}}tic people hide their diagnosis if they can; this is again often down to other people not believing that the autistic person can really be autistic[[note]]The logic is usually because the person in question is fairly high-functioning and can do things such as hold a conversation (or even speak), have a job, understand sarcasm, have friends, and so on. Additionally, people who have autistic relatives and/or friends may think that, since the autistic person person in question doesn’t act like their relative/friend with autism, said autistic person can’t ''actually'' be autistic.[[/note]], and the fact that stereotypes regarding autistic people can definitely change how an autistic person is treated by others. Like with the ADD/ADHD example above, this also leads to there being a social stigma against autistic people (something that organisations seeking a "cure" capitalise on) and again has led to a stereotype that prevents AFAB individuals and people of color from getting diagnosed. This trope definitely acts as a double-edged sword, however; the ability to hide autistic symptoms, or allow the more obvious once to be viewed as [[DitzyGenius eccentricity]] or [[ShrinkingViolet shyness]], can often mean that it's more difficult for a person to actually access resources or help [[MortonsFork because it's assumed that they're "high functioning" enough to not need any help anyway.]] Like with ADHD, things have been getting better in recent years, but not enough to prevent this from being a DeadHorseTrope yet.