"All the guys keep bringing me ice cream, trying to win my heart. I'll tell you a secret. I'm actually lactose intolerant. I can't drink milk, and I'm a cow!"
— Henrietta, Epic Mickey
A trope that usually occurs when a character reveals they have an allergy that is ironic or contradicts their profession, personality, or biology. For example, an animal character that usually produces or loves eating dairy will have lactose intolerance or be allergic to something typically included in their respective Stock Animal Diet. Especially absurdist examples will have a character allergic to (part of) themselves, which often manifest as soon as mentioned.
See also Plot Allergy. Compare Ironic Fear, Abnormal Allergy, and Weaksauce Weakness.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In A Journey Through Fairy Land, Michael has a Green Thumb and loves taking care of plants and flowers, but is allergic to them. His sneezes due to working in the nearby greenhouse are one of the things that cause problems during his music classes.
- Rin Hoshizora from Love Live! is heavily associated with cats to the point that she frequently ends her sentences with "nya" (the Japanese sound effect for a cat's meowing), but supplementary materials reveal that she's actually allergic to them.
- Junpei from Nyan Koi! is deathly allergic to cats. After accidentally disturbing the shrine of a cat god, he is cursed to gradually transform into a cat and eventually die from his allergies. The only repentance is to listen to the problems of the cats in the city and help them solve their troubles.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side:
- In a strip with four ducks, one of them is horribly swollen and puffed up. His wife says "Oh, that's just Hank's little cross to bear... He's allergic to down and that's that."
- A strip titled "When careers and allergies collide" has a shepherd in a similar condition due to his allergy to sheep.
Comic Books
- In one comic, The Joker managed to kill an interviewer even from inside Arkham Asylum and not having any access to lethal weapons. The asylum let him bake some cookies, which they confirmed were completely non-toxic, but they didn't account for the ground peanuts in the flour, which killed the interviewer when he ate them. Joker did it entirely because he was amused that a man named George Carver
had a peanut allergy.
- For a long time, Superman's only weakness was to the radioactive remnants of his own home planet, Krypton, which cause him to lose access to his powers and become weak. While some writers have added a weakness to magic too, Kryptonite is still his most well-known weakness, becoming the Trope Namer for Kryptonite Factor.
Fan Works
- Winter Bells: As revealed in "Reconciliation", the Princess of Love, Cadence, is allergic to mistletoe.
Films — Animation
- The Boxtrolls: Mr. Snatcher, the Big Bad, is obsessed with climbing up the social ladder by any means necessary. He also has the belief that eating cheese is a sign of high social status, so he eats it constantly. He is allergic to the stuff, to the point that he spends the final act horribly swollen because the reaction is finally catching up with him and eventually even kills him.
- The young seahorse Sheldon from Finding Nemo claims to be "H2O intolerant" and sneezes.
Literature
- Tanith Lee's fantasy novel The Dragon Hoard contains a story-within-the-story featuring a dragon who cannot follow his natural inclination to hoard gold because he is allergic to it.
- In the kids' book Eppie the Elephant Who Was Allergic to Peanuts, Eppie is allergic to peanuts, even though they're the Stock Animal Diet for elephants.
- The wizard Ebenezum in The Exploits of Ebenezum is allergic to magic.
- In Two Percent Power, Patrick derives his powers from milk. He's also lactose intolerant.
Live-Action TV
- In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Hitchcock and Scully love to eat cheese, cheese pizzas, lasagna, and pretty much anything with cheese on it, despite being lactose intolerant. It has predictable effects, much to the dismay of everyone else in the precinct.
- In the Highlander franchise, whenever two immortals are close enough to each other, they get a kind of warning sensation (nicknamed "the Buzz") that another, potentially hostile, immortal is nearby. In one episode of the Highlander TV series, main character Duncan had a friend who would break out into sneezing fits whenever the Buzz was triggered for him. Being allergic to a danger warning is bad enough, but even worse was the fact that the Buzz was explicitly shown to vary in terms of how far apart two immortals would be when it would go off. Sometimes it might be triggered when the other immortal would still be a fair distance away, sometimes they'd be right around the corner. Being incapacitated by a sneezing fit due to your warning system while someone who truly believes There Can Be Only One is that close can be a very bad thing.
- Big Red from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series comes from a long line of pizza chefs, and is lactose intolerant - though whenever he's the one eating pizza he says it's made with soy cheese.
Video Games
- Henrietta the cow from Epic Mickey is lactose intolerant, even lampshading the irony of it. Despite this, in one mission, she asks you to bring her ice cream just as a reminder of the pirate Damien Salt who she fell in love with.
- In Happy Hospital, bees suffer from pollen allergies.
- In Kirby's Dream Land 2, the boss battle against Whispy Woods has him wearing glasses and a face mask in his first phase, indicating that he has a pollen allergy, even though he's a tree.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The Cucco Lady in Kakariko Village is allergic to cuccos and gets goosebumps when touching them. Averted with her specially bred Pocket Cuccos, saying she does not receive goosebumps from touching them.
- Katsuya Suou from Persona 2 is a Kindhearted Cat Lover and his Persona Helios takes the form of a humanoid cat; he's just severely allergic to them. It gets to the point that in some cutscenes he's allergic to a demon who's disguised as a cat. It's a wonder Helios doesn't cause a reaction. The form of his Persona - which is lampshaded, by the way - is a means to mock Katsuya for his inability to obtain anything he desires.
- One of the Temmies in Undertale is allergic to Temmies. When it mentions this, it promptly breaks out into "hOIVS!"
Web Animation
- Society of Virtue: The Aquaman parody, Juan Marine, is deathly allergic to shrimp.
Web Original
- Az from Gaijin Smash is allergic to fish, but lives in Japan.
Web Videos
- Rich Evans of RedLetterMedia has a cat allergy that causes his face to swell up. Therefore, whenever a video the group is watching deals with cats, they have Rich Evans be the one to talk about it, often accompanied by a picture of Rich's allergy acting up. Despite this, Rich has said that he does like cats, preferring them over dogs, and he would have one if he wasn't allergic.
- Sanders Sides: Patton (and presumably Thomas, since Patton represents his morality and emotions) is revealed to be allergic to cats in "Moving On Part 2", despite owning a cat onesie and otherwise being a Kindhearted Cat Lover. Discussed by him and Logan, after Logan gives him a cat hoodie:
Logan: It even has a front pouch to place an actual cat, if you so desire.Patton: Oh, I can't, I'm allergic.Logan: (angry pause) Then WHY the cat onesie?!Patton: (shrugs) I like cats!
- YouTube personality Tobuscus claims to be allergic to alliteration. His real name is Toby Turner.
Western Animation
- Baymax!: Mbita is a fish soup salesman. Unfortunately, he learns he's allergic to fish and panics he can't continue his family business because of it.
- Malloy from Brickleberry is a bear who's allergic to bees.
- Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Cheese is lactose-intolerant, but likes chocolate milk. Not to mention, he's named after a type of dairy.
- Earth Queen Hou-Ting from The Legend of Korra is allergic to most animals, so much so that she bans them from her presence. This is ironic for two reasons:
- Her father, featured in the prequel series, was best friends with his pet bear, Bosco.
- She and her court nonetheless feast on rare animals, verging into Cruella to Animals.note
- Played for Laughs in My Little Pony (G3). Zipzee the breezie loves flowers, despite her hay fever.
- Verminious Snaptrap from T.U.F.F. Puppy is a rat who has a severe cheese allergy which gives him massive swelling if he comes in contact with it. When lampshaded, he says he is well aware of the irony.
Real Life
- Clint Eastwood became famous as a leading man in Westerns and particularly iconic as "The Man with No Name" in the Dollars Trilogy. Despite being considered the quintessential film cowboy, Eastwood is actually allergic to horses and that allergy is the source of his famous Clint Squint.
- An echidna known as Matilda turned out to be allergic to ants... which happen to be the main thing echidnas eat. Folks at the Melbourne Veterinary Specialist Centre had to develop a vaccine to desensitize the poor echidna so that she could safely eat her natural diet.
- There is an Urban Legend that claims that Mel Blanc was allergic to the carrots he had to bite when voicing Bugs Bunny. In reality, he just didn't like the taste of carrots.
- Kiernan Shipka is allergic to cats, unfortunate since she was cast as the titular character on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina which meant the character of Salem, played by a real cat this time, had to be downplayed in that adaptation.
- The "lactose-intolerant cow" example from Epic Mickey is Truth in Television. Cow's milk is only intended to be drunk by the calves, so they lose their ability to digest it as they grow up, just like other mammals. Humans are the weird ones in that some populations from Europe, India, the Middle East, and Africa developed mutations that allows them to digest milk even as adults.
