Basic Trope: Pretending to be sick to avoid something unpleasant or to gain sympathy.
- Straight: Alice is not prepared for her test at school. She fakes sickness and her mom allows her to stay home from school.
- Exaggerated: Alice fakes a terminal illness. She's scamming people to gain money for her 'treatment'.
- Downplayed:
- Alice doesn't want to go hiking, so she fakes pollen allergies.
- Alice was genuinely too sick to go to school on Wednesday and Thursday. She claims to need more time to recover on Friday, when she's actually fully recovered, and conveniently gets "better" on Saturday.
- Justified:
- Alice is not above lying and wanted to play hooky from school so she could meet up with Bob in secret.
- Alice was sick and not feeling 100% yet, was erring too much on the side of caution.
- Alice is hoping that if she can convince her teacher, Charles, that she is sick, he will not make her take the test that she was unprepared for.
- Alice's illicit lover died, and she is unable to publicly mourn them.
- Someone tried to poison Alice, and wants to make them think they succeeded.
- Inverted: Alice is sick but pretends to be healthy. She thinks it'll help her deal with her illness.
- Subverted:
- Alice's mom thinks she's pretending to be ill to avoid going to school. It is then revealed that Alice is actually sick.
- Alice turns out to be playing sick in the theatrical sense.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice's mom initially believes that Alice is faking illness to avoid school, but then Alice admits that she was pretending all along to cover up the fact that she was planning a surprise party for her mom. So, her mom's suspicion was correct, but the intention behind Alice's pretense was different from what was initially expected.
- Her character isn't genuinely sick either.
- Parodied: Alice is obviously faking, but Bob still believes her and tries to pamper her as much as he can.
- Averted: Alice does not pretend to be sick.
- Zig Zagged: Alice apparently has chicken pox. Her mom buys it but later finds out that she was faking to get out of going to school and gets angry. However, Alice is actually sick. She has a cold.
- Enforced: The writers want to give Alice a reason to skip a day of school, but don't want her to actually get sick.
- Lampshaded: "You're not really sick. You're just pretending. I can tell."
- Invoked: Bob tells Alice to meet up with him in secret and advises her to fake sick.
- Exploited: Alice is able to use her fake illness to pile on the guilt and get what she wants.
- Defied: "I am not going to fake being sick...I am not going to lie."
- Discussed: "How do I tell if someone is sick or just faking it?"
- Conversed: "Characters who fake sick never get away with it."
- Implied: It is never revealed whether Alice was actually sick or not, but it seems a lot like she is faking.
- Played for Laughs: Her very fake seeming symptoms are a Running Gag during the episode.
- Played for Drama: Lots of Angst because Alice is faking a terminal illness and Mistaken for Dying.
- Deconstructed: The next time Alice is sick, no one believes her.
- Alice's reasons for playing sick are far more sadistic than a simple way to get out of school; she intends to use it as as a way to murder someone...or worse.
- Zigzagged: Alice tries to play sick, but Bob gives her a "homemade" cure that actually makes her sick.
Back to Playing Sick
