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alt title(s): Chekhovs Cough
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That bloody handkerchief can't be a good sign.
Chandler: Yes, er... my fiancee is dying. (Phoebe fakes a cough) Chandler: ...From a cough, apparently.
Miniver coughed, and called it fate...
— "Miniver Cheevy", by E. A. Robinson
If you have a cough, you're going to be dead before the end of the show.
This is usually accompanied by nasty amounts of Blood From The Mouth which is always a bad sign, even when there's no plausible reason for it, and may also involve collapsing. The character will probably try to hide it and will usually succeed until they actually pass out, no matter how ridiculously obvious it is. For some reason the character rarely visits a doctor after fainting/coughing blood/generally feeling like shit, no matter when the story takes place, possibly because of the Rule Of Drama. A character that goes outside in the rain or snow will often die, because he/she didn't "get out of those wet clothes fast enough". This trope is almost always carried out by the Ill Girl or Littlest Cancer Patient.
In Western literature the trope was heavily influenced by the prevalence of tuberculosis, an infectious disease considered by many historians to be the greatest killer in human history - yes, even greater than malaria or plague. The symptoms of tuberculosis (also known as consumption, phthisis, TB, or the White Death) are identical to those of the Incurable Cough Of Death, but death would usually come far more slowly for the TB patient, at least in Real Life. It's hard to say whether pneumonia influenced the trope or not, since pneumonia wasn't always differentiated from tuberculosis in the old days: the rapidity of death sounds more like pneumonia than TB, but then again all lung diseases back then were considered a form of tuberculosis - yes, even lung cancer, which wasn't even recognized as a separate disease until the end of the 19th century.
In anime this is likely inspired by Okita Souji , the famed Shinsengumi captain, who reportedly started coughing up blood due to tuberculosis before passing out during the Ikeda-ya Incident; he was unaware he had the disease until that moment. It's often said that he died 11 days later, creating the tragic image of a young warrior who defeated all opponents, only to fall to illness at the moment of his greatest triumph. It seems that most people fail to notice that two similar dates are four years apart due to the Rule Of Drama.
Thematically, the unnamed disease tends to act like pneumonia or tuberculosis, even in futuristic settings where those real diseases might be cured. Other times it's a hyped up version of unfortunately very real symptoms of chronically overworked people. In general, wider knowledge of medical conditions doesn't let writers be specific without slipping up.
Of course, in real life, people cough all the time from non-life-threatening causes, but those generally don't make for interesting stories. Think of this trope as the medical variant of Chekhov's Gun: if someone coughs in the first act, they better be dead by the third.
Compare Soap Opera Disease and Victorian Novel Disease. If the character insists that it's nothing, then it's Definitely Just A Cold.
As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers follow, though, really, the entire point of the trope is that the death isn't a spoiler to the Genre Savvy viewer, so as far as spoiler by definition tropes go, this is one of the safer ones. In any case, you have been warned.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The above mentioned Okita also makes quite a few appearances in fiction, complete with his famous sickness. In Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto he is a frail looking spectre of a man, who sees a ghostly cat and wastes away while reminicencing with the hero and lamenting his sad fate. Then he dies.
- Gintama has few of these too. Most of them happen during serious fights(and usually only bad guy dies afterwards), but there's actual example too. Since Okita Sougo's (character loosely based on Okita Souji) death would've completely messed up the comedic nature of the series, mangaka twisted things a bit- instead of him having tuberculosis, it was his sister who suffered from illness. She lasts for about two episodes. Among fans the arc is considered to be a big Tearjerker.
- In Clannad, Nagisa has an evidently non-lethal version of this. Until she gives birth, which complicates things a bit.
- In Berserk, one character seen during the "Conviction" arc is a prostitute who appears to be dying of a severe venereal disease. She claims the inside of her mouth is swelling up and her legs are covered in sores. Berserk being Berserk, we see plenty of her body, and none of the symptoms she describes are visible. The only symptom we do see? A nasty cough.
- Well, we do see her suffering from severe vaginal bleeding as well, so it isn't just a cough.
- In Bleach one of the Captains, Juushirou Ukitake, has a particularly terrible, bloody cough from tuberculosis, though he also isn't the usual type; he has already died and this is in the afterlife. He's been sick for many years and is often incapacitated by this cough, but he's not yet dead... Err, again. Or whatever happens to shinigami when they do their equivalent of dying.
- This is actually used as a spam-breaker feature in the video game adaptations. If you try to use Ukitake's special moves too often in sequence, he breaks into a coughing fit that paralyzes him and leaves him open to attack. There's a Spirit Card, "Ukitake's Medicine", that briefly turns this off, making him a good deal more dangerous.
- They are reborn on Earth. There was supposed to be a balance between the number of souls on Earth and those in the afterlife, but the writer seems to have forgotten about this (he does this a lot).
- It's strange, really, as the Soul Society's strange levels of technology seems incapable of developing antibiotics but has computers. Does the Soul Society not have mold?
- This sort of illness is apparently what killed Hisana Kuchiki.
- Papillion from Busou Renkin has such a cough, and escapes his inevitable death by becoming a homunculus. However, his transformation was incomplete, so though he has an immortal, super-human body, his illness wasn't cured like it should have been and his cough carried over.
- In B't X, Hokuto suffers from radiation poisoning, and has stated to have few months of life left he isn't planning to last that long.
- In Code Geass R2, Li Xingke has a chronic Incurable Cough Of Death that also causes Blood From The Mouth every so often when he pushes himself or his Knightmare Frame too far. Despite having the disease, he survives to see the end of the series. Then again, he isn't seen in the big wedding portrait in the end...
- He lives. Check the background during Ougi and Nunnally's handshake. That big ol' mech look familiar?
- In Chrono Crusade, Joshua Christopher suffers from this trope, until he accepts Chrono's horn from Aion and becomes part of the antagonist organization, the Sinners..
- Nemu in Da Capo coughs up Cherry Blossoms and quickly deteriorates in health. Subverted in that she survives.
- Hyatt in Excel Saga is constantly coughing up blood, collapsing, vomiting and dying (several times an episode).
- In the Fruits Basket manga, it is revealed that Tohru's father Kazuya died of a badly treated pneumonia.
- Izumi in Full Metal Alchemist does this, although she isn't the usual character type. And there's a darker reason for the cough than just illness. A failed attempt to transmute her stillborn infant son back to life caused the destruction of her internal reproductive organs. The hemorrhaging gets much worse during periods of extreme stress or guilt, causing her to cough up a truly frightening amount of blood. In spite of this, she still outlives nearly every major character while enduring heavy combat.
- Hohenheim later cures her Incurable Cough Of Death. Ironic, no?
- Alfons Heiderich in the movie also has a Cough of Death, and for a more traditional reason: fumes from the rocket fuels he was creating have destroyed his lungs. As it turns out, that isn't what eventually kills him. It's Rudolf Hess.
- Ed & Al's mom Trisha also succumbs to this, not to mention the deaths of homunculi, and whenever anyone sustains a serious torso wound? Aw heck, FMA is in love with this trope.
- Averted in Gravitation where Yuki not only collapses as he also coughs blood in the process but manages to survive. The illness is blamed on stress (it might be ulcers) and just as mysteriously as it appeared it disappears. Ironically or not Shuichi assumes that his lover is about to die.
- In G Gundam, the "elderly" (actually only 50) Master Asia is the greatest fighter in the world. His Kung Fu is stronger than everybody else's. He can effortlessly destroy Humongous Mecha using just his bare hands, or by swinging a piece of cloth at them. Basically the only one who's even worthy of thinking about fighting him is the main character... who happens to be his student. Yet when he turns against his boss, a weakling of a normal human, poor Master Asia is conveniently incapacitated by his Incurable Cough Of Death.
- Somewhat subverted in Glass Mask, since Maya's mother, Haru does suffer from tuberculosis, but actually dies after being hit by a car.
- Also, in the manga Gundam SEED Astray, a master swordsmith and swordsman named Un'no is also able to fight against Humongous Mecha on foot...though he uses a katana to do it, and "only" slices the barrels off their guns. His Incurable Cough Of Death actually is TB, which he dies from shortly after passing on his knowledge to Lowe Gear.
- Integra Hellsing's father dies of (as one review put it) "a terminal case of coughing up blood".
- Considering the amount everyone smokes in the series, this must be lung cancer.
- In Kare Kano's play "Steel Snow", the Inventor's Forrest-Gump-esque first love Rose reappears to give him a baby to take care of, coughs three times, and promptly dies.
- In Kodomo No Jikan, Rin Kokonoe's mother Aki coughs after being in perfect health for the rest of the manga. She's dead within a dozen pages. Fixed in the anime - she finds out she has lung cancer, but decides the money for expensive treatment to prolong her life for a short while would be better used to raise Rin. She hides it as long as possible. By the time it becomes inescapably noticeable, it's too far gone and she dies a relatively quick wasting death.
- In the Kuroshitsuji manga during the circus arc Ciel is dragged off to the makeshift outdoor baths by his roommate. During this time it's winter and the water the circus performers are washing up with isn't heated (it's Victorian London, after all). After being soaked with the freezing water we later see Ciel coughing, eventually falling into an aggressive coughing fit that causes him to vomit. We find out that he suffers from asthma, a disease he inherited from his mother. The cold had aggrevated it. He gets better, though.
- Yuna Miyama from Maburaho starts coughing, but this is later subverted when Kazuki Shikimori dies healing her.
- In Macross Frontier, the Incurable Cough Of Death is simply one of the V-Type Infection's syndromes (among dizzy spells, fever, keeling over at the drop of a hat...) that Sheryl Nome has to endure, even though Grace has claimed the V-Infection to be incurable and fatal. Her struggling to overcome these in order to reassert herself and her ideals seems to be one of the major plot arcs as the series nears its end.
- However, Sheryl doesn't die, but is saved when Ranka moves the virus from her brain to her stomach region, turning it into more of a symbiosis than infection.
- Zest of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has this, due to being one of Jail's botched attempts at an Artificial Mage. While Agito hates her for doing it, she thanks Signum for killing Zest in battle, letting him die as a knight instead of a sick man.
- Precia Testarossa as well. Why is she coughing up blood? Who knows! Probably stress and overworking herself, even though we never actually see her doing much apart from whipping Fate.
- In the anime Magic Knight Rayearth (second season), Anti Villain Eagle Vision is in an advanced stage of this. He forces his friend and minion Geo to not reveal it so he can die a "warrior's death".
- A character appearing on two episodes of the mecha anime Metal Armor Dragonar is shown to have this disease. However, he ends up surviving just long enough to see his two longtime compatriots killed, one by "friendly" fire, and then gets shot down himself after proving to be a significant enough opponent to elicit an upgrade of all three main Humongous Mecha.
- Averted in My Neighbor Totoro, where Satsuki and Mei's mother clearly is in a clinic for tuberculosis but gets cured and sent home (after a few scares) in the end.
- Justified in Nabari No Ou, as Yoite's entire body is failing as a result of his use of the forbidden Kira technique. It's explicitly mentioned later on that he won't survive the month.
- One of the drill instructors in Naruto, Hayate Gekko, has a constant cough. As expected, he dies — but in a sword fight, not of the disease.
- Hiruluk of One Piece has a disease similar to this, in which he periodically coughs up blood. But this isn't what kills him; even when fatally poisoned by Chopper's misguided attempt to cure him, and facing death at the hands of Wapol's firing squad, he drinks a potion and explodes.
- Doc Q and Stronger of the Blackbeard Pirates are also frequently shown coughing up blood; they have yet to die.
- Sayo Muto aka Magdaria from Rurouni Kenshin's filler arcs is dying of tuberculosis. Specifically, she got it from her mother when she was a little girl, and her older brother Shougo tried to search for a cure. Neither mother nor daughter die of illness; both of them were shot to death, with several years of difference.
- One could argue that it's played straight, in that the cough signals the audience that the character is doomed. Of course, the way the writers were practically splashing "Wouldn't it be so tragic if this character died?" all over the screen every time poor Magdaria appeared, most of us already knew that.
- Another one with that cough: Shinsaku Takasugi from the Tsukiokuhen OAV.
- Kenshin, and then Kaoru contract some kind of unspecified disease in the Seisouhen OVA whose symptoms include this. (The fans called it "Super Tuberculosis".)
- We know that since Rose of Versailles is a tragic shojo anime, that there's little chance that Lady Oscar will make it to the end of the series alive, but when she starts coughing up blood, that pretty much cinches it. Although, unusually, she doesn't actually die from the cough (though she is informed that it's terminal) but in a far more suitably dramatic manner while storming the Bastille.
- In one episode of Rune Soldier, Louie helps a little girl to find a rare flower for her grandmother, who has an unspecified sickness, that mostly consists of a bad cough.
- In the "Dream" arc of the Sailor Moon manga, Mamoru hides his Incurable Cough Of Death from Usagi at first, but he is soon discovered. He also coughs up some black blood and, more significantly, has a black rose in his lungs showing this to be some sort of magic disease (apparently without followup testing for known diseases that can produce anomalous chest x-rays). It turns out it is a result of his kingdom, Elysion/The Golden Kingdom, that he ruled being attacked which affects him physically... once the enemy is defeated he is cured.
- Uchuu Senkan Yamato had The Captain Juzo Okita (a nod to Okita of The Shinsengumi mentioned above; a.k.a. Captain Avatar for Star Blazers fans) suffering from a worsening case of radiation poisioning as the series progressed. The practical effect in the series was demoting him to The Mentor in favor of Hot Blooded Hero Susumu Kodai (Derek Wildstar), the "Acting Captain" to be.
- Raquel Applegate of Wild ARMs 4, due to suffering from an unknown, incurable disease that's implied to be radiation poisoning. This doesn't stop her from being the most powerful character in the game, though it does explain why her HP and speed are so low. She eventually dies in the Distant Finale epilogue, having never found a cure for her sickness.
- Subverted in Wild Arms 5, by the same character, but in a cameo appearance. Although she still has the cough, the player can go on an obnoxiously long Irrelevant Sidequest to cure her and give her a happier ending. Ironically, the thing you use is the same cure-all that had no effect on her in Wild Arms 4.
- xxxHoLic main character Watanuki- who is also the Butt Monkey / The Woobie of the show- suffers from the dreaded blood-coughing after befriending a lonely ghost whose presence sadly sucks out his life energy even if she doesn't want him harm in a episode arc. He does survive because another character kills the ghost with a spiritual arrow in order to save him, but it is made clear that it would have killed him if the situation would have continued any longer.
- In the manga Emerging, a heavy cough that sometimes produces blood is one of the first signs that a character may have contracted the extremely deadly mystery illness that is spreading across Tokyo.
- Takiko from Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden continuously coughs during her journey. When she's back in the Real World, it's revealed that she caught the consumption of her late mother. Then again, it's already revealed by Miaka that she originally died at the hand of her father.
Film
- In Clear and Present Danger, Admiral Greer?s mild coughing fit during a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting heralds a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and he?s dead two scenes later.
- This isn't as unrealistic as it sounds. Pancreatic cancer is like the ninja of cancers. By the time they find it you're pretty much screwed and you'll go pretty fast.
- Another Western movie example: In the spirit of all the "beautiful young woman dying from tuberculosis" operas mentioned below, Nicole Kidman's character Satine in Moulin Rouge! is also dying from tuberculosis. In a slight subversion, she doesn't know she's dying (even though it should be pretty frickin' obvious), because her pimp tells the doctor not to tell her so she can perform for his opening night.
- And because the doctor has told him there is nothing anyone can do, and Sabine's pimp cares about her and does not want her to learn such depressing news.
- Subverted in Escape From LA: Up until the end of the film, everyone was convinced that Snake's cough was due to him being infected with a deadly toxin. Then, it was revealed that he and the audience had been duped; the "Plutoxin 7" virus he was given was actually a common influenza virus.
- In The Host, coming into contact with the tadpole monster reportedly infects the touched with a lethal virus. When main character Gang-Du is infected, the media makes a big case about how he is exhibiting "cold-like symptoms", including coughing (which leads to some mild hysteria on the streets of Seoul when a man coughs in a crowd while the media piece is playing). Subverted in that the virus doesn't actually exist (the US Army stuck with the story because it was too late to say they were wrong), and Gang-Du probably just has a cold.
- The mysterious virus in the film Right At Your Door seems to give people coughs and prompt tearful evaluations of life and the government.
- At about the halfway point of the Andy Kaufman Bio Pic Man on the Moon, Andy coughs while explaining his latest stunt to his agent; later, during a comedy club appearance where he invites audience members to touch a cyst on his neck, he has a brief fit of coughing. These are both given no heed and the latter could be seen as All Part Of The Show...but in the next scene Andy breaks the news to his confidantes that he has a rare form of lung cancer, which he eventually dies from. Notable because this is actually Truth In Television: Andy developed a cough in the mid-1970s, and he sometimes can be seen coughing in interviews. In 1983, when it became too frequent and pronounced to ignore, he took his loved ones' advice, went to a doctor, and learned that he was dying; the cough was a side effect of his illness.
- Julianne Moore's character in The End of the Affair coughs lightly in a restaurant and Ralph Fiennes' character asks if she's alright. Needless to say, she's on her death bed within 20 minutes of screen time.
- In an essay about seeing this movie with his boyfriend, David Sedaris pokes fun at how this trope was used; "It might have been different had Julianne Moore suddenly started bleeding from the eyes, but coughing, in and of itself, is fairly pedestrian".
- Justified in Brassed Off. Danny is a retired miner who has worked for 40+ years with little or no protective gear, and has coal lung as a result. Subverted too since he gets hospitalised but doesn't actually die and comes back for a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- Sarcastically parodied (of course) in Superhero Movie. The soon-to-be-villain has a brief coughing fit; the handkerchief he uses comes away with a blood splotch on it. When the protagonist asks if he's okay, the villain replies, "Oh, yes, I'm fine. This is healthy cough blood."
- Longshanks, in Braveheart. Introduced subtly as a very mild sneeze; by the end he's dead from consumption.
- Although considering the movie takes place over a number of years, it's excusable.
- Finding Neverland, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) is a widow with five young sons, so you think she'd want to look after her health for their sakes. There were consumption treatments and sanitariums (though no cure, some people DID recover) in Edwardian England, especially for a woman with money. But instead she says "I need to go on pretending...until the end...". That's about as useful as "think happy thoughts and you can FLY!"
- The real-life Sylvia Llewelyn Davies had a better excuse for not seeking treatment: inoperable chest cancer. How that translates to a cough of doom is anyone's guess.
- Subverted in the more historically accurate 1978 miniseries The Lost Boys: J.M. Barrie himself, a chronic smoker, is highly prone to coughing fits from the beginning, but it never manifests itself as a disease of any import.
- Subverted by another real-life character played by Kate Winslet, Juliet Hulme, in Heavenly Creatures. Juliet suffered from TB as a child, and her relapse as a teenager is signaled by one scene of her in school coughing slightly and then spurting a tasteful amount of blood on her text book. She spends months in hospital, and helps her best friend Pauline murder Pauline's mother, after Juliet recovers.
- Miss Potter - Ewan McGregor's character, Norman Warne. Mr. Warne's sister has to tell his fiancee Beatrix that Norman died suddenly, possibly caused by getting rained on at the train station to say goodbye to Beatrix. "It was just a cough!", Millie Warne says. Actually Norman Warne died of Leukemia, which apparently doesn't cause coughing, but maybe that's not nearly as "romantic"?
- In Constantine, the titular Anti Hero is dying of lung cancer, complete with bloody cough, and he knows it. In the end, of course, he tricks the Devil into curing him so he won't go to Heaven.
- That wasn't a trick, that was the Devil being an asshole because he didn't want to lose; Constantine really shouldn't have given him the finger while going into the light...
- In the novelization, it wasn't Constantine's fault he flipped off the devil. God made him do it as He carried Constantine into the Light.
- Gran Torino - Clint Eastwood's character exhibits the cough complete with bright red blood and the coughing fits being violently enough to bring him to his knees. He passes it off as nothing, but a later scene with the doctor implies that it's a great deal more serious. He doesn't die of it, instead dying in a hail of bullets to make sure a violent street gang stays put away. Given the frequent smoking in the film and his advanced age, it's probably lung cancer.
- Repo! The Genetic Opera has Rotti Largo, whose very first scene has him being brought the news that he's dying, and has very little time left. His only symptom is a rather bad cough, and of course, he's dead by the movie's end.
- In fairness, they do hint that it's some kind of cancer—he's bald and has lesions on his face, which can both be caused by chemotherapy and similar treatments. It's the stress of the Genetic Opera that kills him by the end.
- Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (No Expanded Universe, although it went in more depth about it) Villainous General Grievous starts coughing as soon as he appears on-screen (Probably so that the audience notices he's not a robot although he looks like one). He'll die... shot.
- However, the cough had nothing to do with why he died. Obi-Wan shooting out his gutsack with a blaster took care of that.
- Used in Shadrach where Paul's mother has a persistent cough, probably form tuberculosis, and dies a few years after the events in the movie.
- In the Errol Flynn swashbuckler Captain Blood, Hanging Judge Lord Jeffreys coughs into a cambric handkerchief and is diagnosed by the eponymous hero as dying from "a bleeding death in the lungs." (In the novel and in Real Life, Jeffreys' fatal illness was actually kidney disease.
- the movie Bright Star has John Keats succumb to an Incurable Cough Of Death, which is a Truth In Television because the actual John Keats died of TB.
- The Road has the father coughing through most of the movie. His sickness is never identified, but he does die from it.
- In Gremlins 2, Mr. Wing is coughing from his smoking, and later dies.
- In Stephen King's The Stand, coughing=having Captain Tripps (the "superflu" which all but wipes out humanity)
- This is the first sign of infection in the Zombie flick Dead Air.
Literature
- Lord Gyles Rosby, a minor character from A Song Of Ice And Fire, was known for his constant coughing. Queen Cersei appointed him to her Council (because the alternative was Garth The Gross, a man troubled by constant flatulence) after which he promptly died.
Cersei: "Lord Gyles has had that cough for years, and it never killed him before. He coughed through half of Robert's reign and all of Joffrey's." ... "You will return to Lord Gyles and inform him that he does not have my leave to die."
- In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the minor character Helen Burns expires from consumption during a typhus epidemic.
- In "The Golden Road" by L. M. Montgomery, Cecily (after having always been more delicate than her friends, and spending a night with them in a bitter snowstorm) develops a persistent mild cough around the middle of the novel. She was otherwise perfectly happy and healthy for the rest of the novel, but after that point, the author begins to sprinkle in very subtle hints that she died soon after the book ended.
- Such as adults commenting that she looks like a relative who died young, and a character predicting the futures of all her other playmates but limiting Cecily to that she will always be loved.
- Averted and parodied in the Fourth Wall-abusing novel The Cat Who Killed Lilian Jackson Braun'. In one scene near the beginning Philip Roth—yes, that Philip Roth—coughs, and remarks that means he'll be dead by the end of the novel. The protagonist tells him that it's a parody and he shouldn't worry. As you've probably guessed, it's played straight in the end. Roth knew he was dying all along, and furthermore, had killed Lilian Jackson Braun himself, out of a deep-seated hatred of her books.
- Stephen Leacock names this as one of the ways out to end a detective novel without having to hang or imprison the culprit in ''The Great Detective'' , itself a collection of tropes for detective stories, making this Older Than Television.
- In The House Of Night series, once a fledgling vampyre starts coughing, this means they are rejecting the change and will die. Blood From The Mouth often occurs as well.
- In ''A Dream of Red Mansions", Lin Tai-yu has one from her introduction. It escalates considerably after she makes a certain discovery.
- Fantine in Les Miserables, of tuberculosis exacerbated by a snowball (Did Not Do The Research on the part of Hugo and 19th-century Western "medicine"). Apparently she coughs after every word - which doesn't stop her from delivering lengthy speeches on how happy she will be to see her daughter again. In the book, it both plays straight and inverts The Power Of Love - she might be cured if her daughter is brought to her, but she dies of shock when these hopes are dashed by Javert. (Also, see Theater.)
- Cryptonomicon has Lawrence's mom dying of what the book suggests was 1918's H1N1 flu. Incredibly justified - the 1918 flu was notorious for young, healthy people becoming sick one day and not waking up the next.
- In The Kite Runner, the first sign of the illness that will kill Amir's father is a cough. Doesn't quite fit this trope because the novel goes into a lot of detail about his diagnosis of lung cancer. But later Amir (and the reader) are alerted to Amir's old friend Rahim Khan's fatal illness by his coughing up blood.
- Invoked and Discussed Trope: in Henri Guigonnat's Daemon in Lithuania, here's Max-Ulrich describing his sister Kinga:
She sighed a great deal, she used to sink down on to the divans, and sometimes even faint. She would interrupt her wearisome embroidery, raising her eyes to the heavens (she was subject to strange mystical states), or let the heavy anglo-saxon novels, which she never finished, drop on to her knees. She often held a delicate batiste handkerchief to her lips, and coughed faintly. In those moments she paraded an ostentatious discretion, and a truly unbearable resignation. I kept a pitiless watch on her, and I can positively state that she never coughed the slightest drop of blood. But she had cultivated the art of languishing gracefully, and no doubt her head had been turned by romantic examples of phthisis, of homecomings from balls where you catch cold in the snow.
Live Action TV
Theater
- The "coughing tragic consumptive heroine" trope dates back to the 1852 novel and play La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, as well as the opera La Traviata based on it, making this trope Older Than Radio.
- Mimì from Puccini's La Bohème is another operatic character who coughs and faints her way to a tear-jerking death scene. Mimi from Rent fares much better.
- In Eugene O'Neill's play Long Day's Journey into Night, Edmund coughs frequently; he subsequently learns he has tuberculosis. He tries to hide the truth from Mary, his morphine-addicted mother, by passing it off as a "summer cold." In the heart-rending final scene, as the relapsing Mary thinks she's back in her adolescence, Edmund tries to break through to her by shouting, "Mother! It's not a summer cold! I've got consumption!", but she's too far gone for this to register.
- Subverted in Martin Mc Donagh's play The Cripple of Inishmaan: Cripple Billy, having a pronounced cough from the start of the play, produces a doctor's letter diagnosing him with TB, and is seen to die of it in a Hollywood motel room. It turns out that he forged the letter so that Babbybobby, the boatman whose wife died of TB, would take him to Inishmore so that he could be in the film Man of Aran. His "death scene" is actually him rehearsing his lines in his motel room. And then played straight after Billy returns to Inishmaan when, irony of ironies, it turns out that he has contracted TB after all, complete with Blood From The Mouth.
- Fantine in the musical Les Miserables, of tuberculosis. However, it's difficult to convincingly fake tuberculosis and sing heartbreaking arias at the same time, so it depends on the actress sneaking in a few coughs when she has the time. (The French concept album was more explicit, where Fantine actually sings, "Inspector, I'm sick, sometimes I cough up blood.")
Video Games
- Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4 coughs horribly whenever he's out of his suit, even though the disease giving him trouble is Plot Relevant Age Up.
- Though, considering the amount he smokes...and he's had his cigs from the first game, and possibly even through training...
- He doesn't really cough until he's horribly burned in a fire at the end of Act 3. Prior to that, he's actually mostly okay.
- At the beginning of Hector's path in Fire Emblem 7, Uther of Ostia coughs during a conversation with Oswin. This pretty much seals his fate.
- Ukyo from Samurai Shodown has long had such a cough, but is a subversion, as his popularity makes him essentially immune to the death he was set up for.
- At the end of the introduction of Dragon Quest V, the lead character's mother manifests one of these as an explanation of why she isn't present when the game proper kicks off. It's actually a trick, though — she's still alive, and gone for entirely different reasons.
- In Silent Hill 2, at the end of the Maria ending, Maria coughs, and it is implied that what happened with Mary will happen again with Maria.
- Star Ocean 3: Nothing about Ameena augers well for her life expectancy, but it's the cough that makes it possible.
- Subverted in Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time. In the first few cutscenes, the Vizier is shown coughing violently, getting blood in his handkerchief. Since he wasn't in a fight beforehand and this has nothing to do with his later death - either of them - it may actually fall under Vader Breath.
- The relevance is more character-driven than plot. The cough and blood show that the Vizier is dying of Tuberculosis. It is this impending mortality which drives him to seek the Sands of Time (and the immortality they can provide).
- Shinjiro in Persona 3 coughs on occasion, the only real sign the meds he takes to keep his Persona under control have wrecked his health. Interestingly, this is worked into gameplay: during combat, when someone misses with a melee attack, there's a chance they'll trip and be left prone for a round. Shinjiro doesn't trip - he bursts into such a severe fit of coughing that he drops to his knees.
- And then we have Akinari, the Sun Social Link, a frail, thin young man who has this nasty tendency to go into such fits of coughing that he ends up briefly unable to speak. The name the game gives his Social Link says it all: "Dying Young Man". Notable for actually giving an identity to his ailment (a terminal genetic disorder).
- Syphon Filter 2: Lian Xing's main symptom after being infected with The Virus.
- Mass Effect 2: The quarantine in Omega is in place because of a disease that starts off as a simple cough.
- In Unreal, you'll sometimes hear Nali cough for no plot-relevant reason.
- According to Doctor Who: The Adventure Games - City of the Daleks , getting caught in a paradox will not only cause you to fade into non-existance, Back To The Future style, but will also give you a really bad cough. Yeah.
Western Animation
- This trope is spoofed in the Animaniacs movie, in which Dot constantly coughs and claims she "needs an operation" but never mentions quite what the problem is. At the end of the movie, she does a Disney Death that lasts for less than five minutes (Those acting lessons paid off!), and is later shown emerging from the operating room with a new beauty mark to make her "even cuter".
- Parodied in the South Park episode "Kenny Dies". Kenny randomly starts coughing during one scene, and if you can't guess where it leads to, take another look at the episode title.
- Also spoofed in American Dad "Tears of a Clooney". Hayley randomly coughs during one scene, which sure enough leads to her developing cancer (though she ultimately does not die.)
- Averted in Balto. The entire point of the story is that the titular dog-wolf hybrid had to help a dogsled team get medicine so that the diphtheria epidemic didn't kill most of the town's children. They are shown occasionally, growing weaker and often coughing weakly to get the point across, but Balto and the team make it in time to save them.
- Averted in The Secret Of NIMH. Timmy is bedridden and coughing because he has pneumonia, but we're led to believe by the end of the movie that he's getting better thanks to the medicine his mother gave him.
- In an animated short called The Kinematograph. It's a truly heartbreaking story about a man attempting to create moving pictures (aka movies) in color. His wife is the one who tells him her theory on how to make color film, which ends up working. However, as soon as he leaves the room, she starts coughing. When he finally makes it work, he asks her to sit down in front of the camera and talk so he can film her. After he's developed the film and is excited to show her, he finds her collapsed on the floor near a bloody handkerchief. She dies, and all the man is left with is the film of her he was so eager to make.
- Superjail - poor little "Sanser"...
Web Comics
- Keychain Of Creation: Secret, shortly pre-Abyssalization exhibited this in a flashback, complete with blood, after catching a plague of some sort.
Web Original
- Elizabeth Avery's cancer manifests itself this way in lonelygirl15.
- The more wrapped up in whatever happened to Alex Jay gets, the sicker he seems to grow. Entries set in the past also show Tim having a similar coughing fit, adding more fuel to the theories that he's the mysterious masked man in the present.
Comic Books
- In the Marvel 1602 miniseries, Queen Elizabeth I is shown coughing blood into a handkerchief. To be fair, she WAS rather old, and history records that she died in 1603. Count Otto von Doom's poison device renders the question moot, though.
- In Green Lantern's Sinestro Corps War, Guy Gardner coughs in mid-battle, indicating that he's infected by the sentient bio-virus Despotellis. He soldiers on and fights, until eventually collapsing, before the Corps medic injects him with Leezle Pon, a sentient smallpox virus... who's also a Green Lantern. Two virii enter, one leaves victorious.
- In Marvel Zombies 4 all protagonist taked a experimental vaccine to be protected from zombie virus, with possibility it can turn them into zombie themselves. Later we see Jack Russel coughing, and next time when we see him, he's zombie.3
- Strangely averted in Fifty Two, when it is revealsed that Vic Sage knew he was dying in lung cancer since before the start of the series, but the only hint of that is him disaproving of his protegees smoking, and that is treated like a Running Gag more than anything. Of course, once the cat is out of the bag, his symtoms starts to show. Fast.
- In an issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, the turtles find themselves in the Caribbean in 1492 in time for Christopher Columbus' "discovery" (It Makes Sense In Context), and one of the natives develops a cough, foreshadowing the epidemic from diseases the Europeans brought over that they themselves had immunities against.
Real Life
- Legendary gunfighter Doc Holliday eventually died of tuberculosis. It's said that knowing he was terminal was what made him such a Death Seeker in the first place. (Reportedly his last words were "This is funny.") Accounts of his Incurable Cough Of Death can be found in the historically inaccurate (but still pretty cool) movie Tombstone or here.
- Truth In Television: Everyone who coughs will eventually die. This may even apply to those who don't cough.
- Unfortunately played straight by a few too many TB patients who refuse to take a full course of any antibiotic and help in the development of the multi-drug-resistant strains, and anybody who catches those.
- Also, cystic fibrosis. Although it's more like Incurable Respiratory-And-Digestive-System Failure of Death....
- Well, at one point it was the Incurable Cough Of Death. Today it's the Incurable But Treatable Sometimes-Cough Of Paying Very Close Attention To Your Health And Dying Before 40 *
But That Isn't As Catchy So People Refer To It Innacurately But Succinctly In Casual Conversation As An Incurable Cough Of Death .
- Very rare blood cancer that mostly affects females. Knew someone who had an unexplained mucous cough for 5-10 years with doctors saying they had no idea what it was...it killed her about 1-2 years after they finally figured it out.
- Please give the name of this cancer, if possible.
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