Basic Trope: Someone is mistaken for having rabies.
- Straight: Tropey the Wonder Dog gets into some toothpaste and everyone assumes he has rabies due to him appearing to be foaming at the mouth.
- Exaggerated:
- Not only does Tropey appear to be foaming at the mouth, he shows many of the physical symptoms of rabies including hallucination, muscle spasms, nausea, and irritability, but there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why.
- Many animals are mistaken for having rabies.
- Downplayed: Tropey isn't necessarily mistaken for having rabies, but some are seen to be worried about him due to appearing to be foaming at the mouth.
- Justified:
- Foaming at the mouth is a symptom in late-stage rabies.
- Tropey made contact with a potential carrier of rabies (such as a raccoon that was acting strangely), so it's understandable that they'd believe that Tropey could have caught it.
- In cases such as the "exaggerated" case, the rabid animal was also clearly showing other symptoms of rabies.
- If the animal is also showing other signs of rabies, this could be due to irritation/poisoning from the substance they got into.
- Inverted: Tropey actually does have rabies, but nobody thinks he does.
- Subverted: Though they believe Tropey just got into toothpaste or something similar, he really does have rabies.
- Double Subverted: That was a misdiagnosis.
- Parodied:
- A non-mammal is mistaken for having rabies, despite it being impossible for non-mammals to be affected by rabies in the first place.
- Tropey gets into the toothpaste and somehow instantly acts just like an animal that's in the late stages of rabies.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: Nobody is mistaken for having rabies.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Tropey is given a substance that makes him foam at the mouth to try to invoke You Don't Want to Catch This.
- Exploited: Tropey's owner is trying to rob people, so he pretends his dog is rabid in order to make people run away and potentially drop their items.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played for Drama: Tropey ends up getting euthanized due to people believing he's contracted rabies.
Back to Fake Rabies
