Share the Sickness

When a person is sick, they're generally expected to take care to not infect others with their disease. While many people do this, some diseased people are so sick in the head, that they will do the opposite by actively spreading the disease to other people. They'll cough in people's faces, sneak their infected fluids into people's food, or donate their infected blood to healthy people. Other people are merely uncaring about speeding their sickness, being willing to do things like have unprotected sex with people despite having an STD, not bother protecting people from their disease, or even lying that they are well.

The motives of why a person would do this can vary. Perhaps they feel bitter about their illness and want to share their misery with others. If they worship a god of disease, perhaps they might view the act of spreading their illness to others as some kind of holy mission. If the disease is deadly, perhaps the person seeks to take as many people as they can with them before they die. A simpler possibility is that the character is a jerk who just doesn't care about other people's health or gets a kick out of making other people sick.

Some variants of this trope are less about spreading the disease in general and more about hurting specific people or groups. A person who hates or wants revenge on a specific person might try to give their disease to said hated person.

While this trope is usually done out of malice, there are some cases where someone gives someone a disease for benign parties. A real-life example of this is "pox parties", where parents try to build up immunity to chicken pox by deliberately exposing their children to other children with the disease. A more fantastical example would be a character who is immune to all diseases being exposed to a disease in order to develop antibodies that can then be given to others.

Supertrope to Typhoid Mary, where a character is sick but unintentionally spreads their sickness to others rather than doing it with intent (though villains can weaponize such a character to deliberately spread illness). A Plaguemaster is sometimes this. Compare/Contrast Getting Sick Deliberately, where a person makes themselves sick. No Real Life Examples, Please!, as there a quite a number of real-life controversies and recent events where this happened.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Karane attempts to invoke this trope in Chapter 2 as an excuse to kiss Rentarou after a wayward sneeze leads the girls to pretend he's sick to try and get his Sacred First Kiss.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: In "Sickness Crisis", Little M. catches a cold, giving Big M. the idea to spread it across planet Xing, and getting himself infected as well for more ground coverage.

Films — Live-Action

• The Cassandra Crossing: One of the protesters of the US military's presence in Switzerland manages to break into a research lab where dangerous biotoxic cultures are stored. Naturally, he gets bashy-smashy with this stuff, infecting himself. He later escapes onto a train bound for Nuremberg, spreading the contagion to the other passengers.
• Cool Cat Fights Coronavirus: Zigzagged — Dirty Dog apparently has COVID, since he tries to spread it to children by coughing on them. However, he also claims that he is using magic to spread COVID, and that COVID is a scam.
• It Follows incorporates this with elements of a Curse. The Curse is a sexually transmitted disease where a person follows you relentlessly and then kills you when it gets too close. It can only be survived by being spread (and then spread again and again), giving It someone else to follow. After being unknowingly infected from a one-night stand who, it's implied, did know what she was doing, Hugh infects Jay with the STD and encourages her to pass it on. Which she does, though not to anyone unaware. She gives it to Greg (who's willing, but doesn't believe in it), and then to Paul (also willing, but this time he believes in it). It's implied that Paul may pass it on to a sex worker at the end, but it's not confirmed.
• Operation Delta Force: This is the eventual endgame of the terrorist leader and Big Bad, Johann Nash. Raiding a bio-lab in Johannesburg for samples of a powerful viral strain and its antidote, Nash and his mooks were intercepted by the Delta Force before they can escape, with the Delta Force obtaining the virus but not the antidote. Then the virus sample's canister turns out to have sprung a leak, leading to everyone getting infected; since the terrorists have the only antidote around Nash decides to send his men to several neighboring cities to spread the virus as far as possible.
• Smallpox 2002 is an entire film with this premise. A man walks through New York City at rush hour, having purposefully infected himself with (eradicated) smallpox stolen from a foreign power. He is discovered to have committed suicide mere days after the outbreak started, having driven the world to the brink of collapse. His motive for doing this is never confirmed; some people suspect that he's a foreign agent. His suicide note implies (but does not confirm) that he's a religious fanatic, as he quotes a passage from the Bible about the plague and the purification of society.

Literature

• In Nineteen Eighty-Four one of the crimes many of the political criminals publicly confess to is purposefully contracting syphilis and attempting to spread it to their family members.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: The [Super Spreader] benefit allows Carl to pass on his ailments to other people on contact. It turns out that the inability to heal after marking someone with the Ring of Divine Suffering counts as an effect that can be spread in this way.
• In a Paul Jennings story, two grumpy old men are in a feud, and there are magical leaves nearby where if you play "Click Go the Shears" by blowing through them, everyone who hears the song gets whatever disease or injury you have. Thus, whenever one of the old men gets sick, he plays the song to give it to the other.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Hook-Handed Man mentions having a “lovely dream” where he sneezed without covering his mouth and giving everybody germs.
• The Word Is Murder: This turns out to be a major aspect of the killer's motivation. When Damian was at RADA, his classmate, Dan Roberts, got the role of Hamlet in the final-year play. Damian was angry, as he felt he deserved the part. Damian got his girlfriend, Amanda Leigh, to seduce Dan, as she had glandular fever. He contracted glandular fever and lost the role of Hamlet, having to play Laertes, while Damian took over Hamlet. Damian became extremely successful, while Dan's career stalled, and he blamed it on Damian and Amanda. He killed Amanda but wasn't able to get at Damian due to his extraordinary Hollywood success. He killed Damian's mother, Diana, instead, to lure Damian back home and kill him.

Live-Action TV

• The Brittas Empire: In "A Walk on the Wildside", Carole brings Sophie, a friend of her young son Ben, to the leisure centre so that he can catch chicken pox from her, citing wanting Ben to get the disease over and done with whilst he's still in his childhood. By the next night, Ben is covered in spots, and Colin uses it as an incentive to gift Carole samples of more serious diseases in case she wants to do the same regarding them.
• Chicago Fire: The episode "I Am the Apocalypse" has a suicide bomber infecting himself with a disease he claims to be worse than Ebola and blowing himself up in the lobby of Chicago Med so that his infected remains will land on everyone present. However, it turns out that the bomber was in such a rush to try and make a name for himself that he didn't incubate said disease long enough to reach the stage where it would've been contagious, causing it to die with him and the lack of an actual body count from the initial explosion to render his efforts for naught.
• El Chavo del ocho: Double-subverted in "La Mentira de la Chilindrina".^Translation "Chilindrina's Lie" Chilindrina pretends to have contracted chickenpox in order to skip class. When her teacher shows up to see how she is, she mischievously tries to hug him, and the prank escalates until the entire neighbourhood is terrified to go near her. However, the episode ends with the revelation that Chilindrina really had a latent infection, which spread throughout the neighbourhood as a result of her actions.
• In the Head of the Class episode "And Then There Were None," Arvid is Obsessed with Perfect Attendance and refuses to miss school, even though he has a severe and highly contagious case of the flu. He stubbornly continues showing up even when it's clear that he's making everyone around him sick, to the point that by the end of the episode, it's heavily implied that he has managed to infect the entire school.
• In one episode of Home Improvement, one of the Taylor kids gets chicken pox, so Jill tries to make the other kids catch it from him to ensure the household only has to go through this once.
• Homicide: Life on the Street: In the sixth season episode "All is Bright", Ballard and Gharty investigate the murder of a man who had AIDS, and the primary suspect is Rita, an ex-girlfriend whom he infected with the disease. Ballard is very reluctant to arrest her because of this.
• In Law & Order episode "Carrier", the second half is about trying to stop someone with AIDS from trying to infect as many women as possible.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The episode Quickie has a misogynist who infects women with HIV because of a prostitute gave it to him and his anger at his mother. He intentionally tries to infect Olivia when she mocks him about his mommy issues.
• Mirai Sentai Timeranger: One Monster of the Week was a bioterrorist turned Serial Killer who accidentally infected himself with his own disease, which he planned to spread to as many people as he could before he died by sneaking his infected blood in the water supply.
• Orphan Black: In season 3, the Leda clones discover that the Castor clones have developed a unique pathogen which they are deliberately spreading to various women on the orders of Dr. Coady. Dr. Coady wants to study the effects on the pathogen for its potential as a bio-weapon. It causes infected women to become infertile, which is relevant to Neolution's eugenical plans. The pathogen is found in bodily fluids, so the Castors have been spreading it through sex (including sexual assault). In one instance, Sarah is forced to receive a blood transfusion from Rudy, but her body is able to fight off the infection. Subverted with Mark, who had no idea about the pathogen before spreading it to his wife, Gracie, which results in her suffering a miscarriage.
• Sesame Street: In one cartoon skit, a little girl has a cold and, apparently not realising that spreading a disease doesn't mean you no longer have it, tries to give it to her dog Bozo to cure herself. He doesn't catch her cold, but apparently is already sick with an unrelated cold and doesn't want another one.
• Small Wonder: In "Bank Hostages", Ted suddenly contracts measles, not having had it as a child, and later infects Brandon when his family comes to visit.
• Warehouse 13: The B-Plot of the Season 3 episode "Trials" involved Claudia and Steve on the trail of "Typhoid" Mary Malone's butcher knife, an artifact which causes sickness and injury to pass from one person to another when the handle is touched by two people. However, it's ultimately an inversion; the man who stole the Artifact did so in order to give himself his son's leukemia and save the latter's life.

Music

• In the song "I'm Giving You My Cold for Christmas" by Lee Rosevere, the singer has a cold on Christmas. He's so fed up with this that he wants to deliberately spread it to his girlfriend so he won't be alone.

Radio

• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe radio play Slipback, Captain Slarn is in the habit of psychosomatically giving himself diseases, which he then passes on to his crew.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: Nurtured Ones of Yurtrus are orcs that have contracted a disease, and they charge into enemy lines to sicken them.
• Games Workshop: A central part of the lore of Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is Chaos, part of which is represented by the Chaos God Nurgle. Nurgle represents stagnation and acceptance of the inevitability of the life/death cycle, and this is manifested by its cultists, Plague Marines in 40K, and Nurgle's daemons all being horribly diseased, bloated with rot, and infested with flies, maggots, and other such fauna. Despite this condition, followers of Nurgle are strangely jovial, viewing the spread of the filth and infections they carry to other worlds and civilizations as a mark of Nurgle's love for all forms of life and at times not understanding why anyone would resist their gifts.
• Pathfinder:
  • In contrast to The Paladin's Ideal Illness Immunity, their Evil Counterpart the Antipaladin becomes immune to the symptoms of all diseases, helping them spread plague as part of their mission to cause chaos and destruction.
  • Ghlaunder is the god of parasites, infection, and stagnation who desires to spread diseases to as many people as he can. His priests possess a unique form of healing magic that makes people immune to diseases while not actually removing them, which they use on themselves in order to secretly spread their own diseases to other people.

Video Games

• The plot of Batman: Arkham City begins with the Joker being infected with a deadly disease as a result of being injected with the Titan serum back in the previous game. In order to force Batman to find a cure for him, he injects Batman with his blood, which doesn't work because Batman is fine with both of them dying. Unfortunately, Joker knew he would do this and tells him that he sent packets of his blood to hospitals, forcing Batman to find a cure in order to save the lives of civilians.
• In Board Game Online, if you're infected with an STD, having sex with other players will infect them. This is central to the playstyle of the Succubus class, which is passively immune to the negative effects of STDs, encouraging them to catch 'em all, and has a skill allowing them to seduce other players to spread the diseases or receive new ones.
• Dishonored: The Heart describes some NPC as wilfully trying to spread the Rat Plague, describing a female weeper as "She intends to spread the plague to others, if she gets the opportunity." Likewise, a Courtesan can be described as such: "She is a plague carrier. Infectious, but not ill. And she knows it."
• The "Patient Zero" campaign of Hitman (2016) centers on Agent 47 stopping a doomsday cult from unleashing a weaponized virus on the world. The final mission in Hokkaido centers on 47 eliminating Owen Cage, one of the cult members and the man who developed the virus. Cage infected himself hoping to become Patient Zero, but was detained before he could spread the virus and is now in the GAMA facility. As a result of his infection, he is able to spread it to other members of the hospital staff (forcing 47 to kill them too in order to contain the virus), and is so delirious from the virus he won't notice 47 doing anything illegal.
• Stellaris: The Irassian Concordat was a Precursor civilization which had enslaved many others. When a disease surfaced that was lethally dangerous to Irassians but harmless to their slave species, the latter decided to weaponize it by deliberately infecting themselves and spreading the plague across the whole empire, getting rid of their oppressors.
• The infamous "Corrupted Blood Plague" that ravaged World of Warcraft in 2005 happened because a group of players deliberately spread the disease throughout the world, even finding ways to "incubate" the disease so that it would survive after Blizzard tried to purge the servers. Their campaign was so successful for so long that the entire fiasco is now studied by real-world bio-terrorism experts.

Web Animation

• Revenge Films: Emily was the target of two Attempted Rapes, the first being an indirect attempt at this, and the second being a direct one; Carl was engaged to Emily and caught an STD from his affair with his ex-girlfriend Abby, who also was sleeping with a CEO behind Carl's back. Carl tries to get back with Emily, who refuses, and he tries to rape her out of anger but is stopped by Emily's friend Charlotte and arrested. Later, Abby tells the CEO to break into Emily's house and rape her because Abby blames Emily for her getting an STD and wants to give it to Emily. Fortunately, Emily wasn't home, and Abby and the CEO are arrested for breaking and entering as well as attempted rape.

Webcomics

• In The Warrior Returns, the Plague Warrior was imbued with the ability to formulate any plague imaginable within his body and spread it to others as a means of harvesting their life force. He can then use this life force to create even deadlier applications of his virulent powers. Even this is a means to an end, as his ultimate goal is to become the "Perfect Warrior" with the abilities of every organism in existence to wipe out mankind.
• Whenever Guy of Two Guys and Guy gets sick, she demonstrates her Jerkass nature by spending all day riding public transit in hopes of infecting as many people as possible.

Western Animation

• Codename: Kids Next Door: The Common Cold is a supervillain infected with a permanent cold whose goal is to spread it to every kid in the world.
• Family Guy:
  • Quagmire is infected with numerous STDs as a result of his promiscuity but is perfectly willing to have unprotected sex with women despite this fact.
  • In "Herpes the Love Sore", Brian infects Stewie and Chris with Herpes, being perfectly aware that he had it (and willing to downplay it when confronted), but being too embarrassed to admit it in front of them.
• Futurama: In "Cold Warriors," a sick teenage Fry plans to study the effect of zero gravity on the cold virus by infecting his guinea pig to use as a test subject.
• The Loud House: Defied in "One Flu Over the Loud House", which parodies the Zombie Apocalypse by having a case of the flu spreading. In a parody of Pretend We're Dead, Lincoln, Leni, Luna, Lucy, and Lisa fear that their sick sisters will deliberately try to infect them with their flu, so they pretend they already have the flu.
• Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart: In "Sick Mao," Mao Mao is weak with a flu-like virus and unable to fight the Ice Monster in a traditional way. When the Ice Monster eats him, Mao Mao defeats it by rubbing himself all over its mouth, infecting and ultimately overpowering it.
  Mao Mao: My body burns with a terrible fever... and it's your turn to feel the heat!
• The Simpsons: At the end of "Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens and Gays," the children of Springfield hug all the adults before they vote to block funding for children's services. It doesn't change their minds...but the adults begin suffering flu symptoms, revealing the kids' actual plan was to exploit the adults' lack of immunity to children's germs to incapacitate all the voters, forcing the polls to close.
• South Park:
  • The episode "Tonsil Trouble" has Cartman accidentally getting infected with HIV as a result of a surgery. When Kyle learns this, he laughs, considering it karma for all of Cartman's bad deeds. Cartman, in retaliation, decides to sneak into Kyle's house at night and inject Kyle with his blood.
  • An episode has the kids' parents make them have a "pox party" to get them all infected with Chicken Pox while they're still young. The kids retaliate by hiring a hooker with Herpes to use their toothbrushes.
• In the plague arc of X-Men: The Animated Series, a disease is spreading that has the potential to mutate into a devastating plague if a mutant catches it. Time-traveller Bishop wants to prevent this from happening, while time-traveller from a later era Cable knows that if it is nipped in the bud too soon, it will be even worse when it makes a resurgence. Cable ends up solving the problem by ensuring that the first mutant to be exposed to the disease is Wolverine, whose healing powers allow him to rapidly develop antibodies, which Beast uses to make a vaccine and eradicate the disease entirely.

---