Sickness Equals Redness

There's a joke about the Red Scare in here somewhere.

"One day Arthur decided he didn't like his nose.

He had a cold and his nose was red.

His sister thought his nose looked funny."

— Arthur's Nose

It isn't always easy to tell when someone is sick in real life. Lots of illnesses tend to affect the inside more than the outside.

In media, however, you'll know when someone is sick just by looking at their nose. If they are sick, their nose (and less often, their cheeks as well) will be bright red, to show the audience that they're sick. It's commonly seen alongside Bedhead-itis. They even look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer! Haha!

This is rarely Truth in Television. Only a few specific conditions (such as skin rashes or irritation from frequent congestion-induced nose-blowing) specifically cause redness of the nose. As stated above, most illnesses are not totally obvious. However, its omnipresence in media has led to the misconception where all illnesses cause red noses. That being said, more localized redness elsewhere on the body is a relatively common sign of disease, being one of the five cardinal signs of inflammation.

Compare Luminescent Blush, which is caused by embarrassment rather than illness, Green Around the Gills, which is specific to nausea, and Polka-Dot Disease, another type of fictional disease that's easy to spot. See also Drunken Glow, where alcohol instead of illness is the cause of the redness.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Digimon Adventure: Kari got this when she fell ill.
• Pokémon the Series: XY: Ash has a red nose and cheeks upon catching a cold while training Greninja at night in the middle of a creek.
• Pretty Cure:
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure: Mepple had a cold and developed mildly red cheeks late in one episode.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star: Saki gets these after catching her death of cold in the rain.
  • Yes! Pretty Cure 5: Milk gets these when she falls ill.
  • HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!: Megumi's face is flushed a gentle pink while she has a cold.
  • Go! Princess Pretty Cure: Towa's face flushes pink when she gets a fever.
  • Exaggerated in HuGtto! Pretty Cure: When Ruru goes to the Nono household and finds Hana sick, Hana's entire face is bright red.
  • Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure: When discussing Asae's weak immune system, a flashback of her in bed with flushed cheeks is shown.
• Snow White with the Red Hair: Zen's nose is noticeably flushed while walking with Obi and Shirayuki in the snow, which he tries to brush off as being due to the cold when he actually has a cold which his red nose is the first sign of. Shirayuki's nose also ends up flushed but not to the same extent and in her case it actually is because it's cold out.
• When Kanata goes down with malaria in episode three of Sound of the Sky her cheeks are bright red the whole time.
• In episode 118 of Tamagotchi, some photos and a flashback show Anemoriritchi putting Moriritchi to bed and taking care of her when she gets sick. Moriritchi has a red blush across where her nose would be if she had one to show her sickness.
• Yo Kai Watch:
  • In "Yo-Kai Sproink", Bear and Eddie both have this after exiting a hot spring, implying them to both be feeling ill.
  • At the end of the episode "Yo-Kai Duchoo", Nate gets a red nose and cheeks upon catching a real cold.

Asian Animation

• In Season 4 episode 5 of Flower Angel, An'an's face becomes red near the nose when she comes down with the flu.
• Happy Heroes: Most of the time, characters who come down with a sickness get red around the nose. This extends to the Supermen and the robot citizens of Planet Xing, the Supermen's Car Knights, and even the expressive Planet Gray logo on Big M.'s headband.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 96, a lot of the flu victims have red blushes near their noses and/or red foreheads.
• Noonbory and the Super 7: In episode "Elephant, Rain Maker", PinkAru has a reddish-pink blush on her face when she has a cold.

Comic Books

• In Supergirl story The Condemned Legionnaires, the first sign that the female members of the Legion of Super-Heroes are falling sick with the Crimson Plague is their faces turning a bright, sickly red.

Fan Works

• A Green Christmas, Robin's nasal bridge is mentioned to be red due to her fever.
• Despite Tissues' (of Inanimate Insanity) condition not giving him a red nose or cheeks in the actual series, there are numerous fanarts of him with this, likely to boost the sickly factor.
• In Intergalactic Illness, Lala’s nasal bridge is red due to her cold, this confuses her because she’s never been sick before, she tries to cover her mouth and nose with a scarf to hide it.
• In this unnamed Mork & Mindy fanfiction, Mork has what appears to be a cold and his nose is described as being "nearly as red as the striped pajamas he was wearing".
• The Kedabory Verse:
  • Referenced in Anything for Family; Hikari sees Joker's flushed face and asks if he has a fever. He doesn't; he was just very drunk.
  • In the Punch-Out!! fanfic Let Me Warm Your Heart, Narcis Prince has a major blush while he is sick with hypothermia. This distresses him quite a bit, given that his main personality trait is vanity.
  • In Ma Fille, Joe has a blush which his daughter Katrina compares to the colour of strawberries when he comes down with the flu.
  • In the Ready Jet Go! fanfic Nurse Jet, Sean's nose is said to have gone pink while he is sick.
  • In the Turning Red fanfic Fragile; Handle with Care, Tae Young's face flushes a gentle pink while he has a cold. At the end, Jesse's face is bright red when he has it.
  • In the Encanto fanfic he sees your dreams, Bruno's face is flushed pink when he has a fever. This also crops up in That Catch in Your Throat.
• In this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) fanart, Donatello has not only a red beak, but red markings on his fingers and toes.

Films — Live-Action

• Talked about in Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, when Algernon is talking about the possibility of an enemy soldier catching a cold and accidentally "hitting the Big Red Button with his big, red nose."

Literature

• When Arthur is sick in the first Arthur book Arthur's Nose, the front of his snout is red.
• In Danger: Boober Cooking, a picture book based on Fraggle Rock, Boober's snout turns pink after he catches a cold from the cold pond water.
• In Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo, the sick girl Felicity is described as having a "red, runny nose".
• In the Mr. Men book about Mr. Sneeze, Mr. Sneeze lives in a very cold place called "Coldland" and everyone has a red nose because they have a cold from the cold weather. Once it warms up, they instantly recover and their noses turn normal.
• A Sick Day for Amos McGee: Amos's nose is red when he wakes up sick.
• In Sick Simon, Simon, as well as everyone who catches his cold, has a red nose.
• In the children's book The Sniffles for Bear, Bear's snout turns red when he has a cold.
• Roys Bedoys:
  • Subverted in “Let’s Go Hiking, Roys Bedoys!”, where Roys is flushed and seems out of sorts, but it turns out he’s just dehydrated.
  • Played straight in “Don’t Share Personal Items, Roys Bedoys!”, where Roys and Loys are sick and the bridges of their noses turn red.
• Played with in The Worst Thing About My Sister when Marty fakes illness by hiding under her whale plushie so that her face will be hot and then scribbling on her face with a red crayon. Her mother is not fooled, though.

Video Games

• Zigzagged in Cold and Flu Invasion: None of the sick customers appear red, but the player character gets a red face if he's close to catching a cold.
• In the online game Vet Set Go, all the pets have red cheeks, even though they're either furry, feathery, a reptile, or a fish. These red cheeks go away when they're cured.

Western Animation

• In Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, whenever Mrs Tiger catches a cold (it's happened twice), her cheeks will be red, even though she's furry.
• An abundance of this was used in the Goofy short "Cold War", to the point where the cold germ's defining trait was its red nose.
• In the Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs episode "Achoo", Harry has a cold and he's animated with a slight pinkish tinge under his nose and eyes.
• How to Catch a Cold: The man has a pink, inflamed nose due to his cold.
• The Looney Tunes short "Odor of the Day" has a dog catching a cold that makes him immune to a Smelly Skunk. The dog's black nose turns red to show this.
• Molly of Denali: In "Steam Bath Ch'oondaii," Layla's nose is red, and she has red, puffy bags under her eyes because she has a cold.
• During his segment of the "Sneezes and Hiccups" episode of The Mr. Men Show, Mr. Stubborn has a pink nose while he has a cold.
• Luz of The Owl House has a deep-red nose when she has the common mold in "Eclipse Lake".
• Greg had a red nose in the PJ Masks episode "Greg's Stay-At-Home Sneezes", since he had a cold.
• Carrot has a red nose in the Ready Jet Go! episode "Endless Summer", due to having a cold.
• In one episode of Time Squad, Otto's nose and eyes turn red when he wakes up with a nasty cold.
• Work It Out Wombats!:
  • In "Special Delivery," Sammy has a red nose because he is sick.
  • Kit and Kat are sick in "Talent Turmoil" and they have red splotches on their faces (they don't seem to have noses).

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