History Main / InfectionScene

->''"Good lord! Flu germs entering every orifice of my head!" ''[faints]''''
-->--'''Seymour Skinner''', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''

* A very ''chilling'' example in ''VideoGame/TraumaTeam'': [[spoiler:there's a single event showing a subway where a woman walks out sporting a heavily advanced state of the Rosalia virus before she collapses dead. The people around her stand in shock as the entire scene is slowly covered in different shades of black that signify that the virus is spreading out, unbeknownst to the people.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Marge in Chains", a worker at a Japanese kitchen appliance factory begs another employee not to tell the supervisor he has the flu, right before he coughs a visible cloud of germs into a box carrying a juicer to Springfield. This cuts to shots of several Springfieldians opening their juicers and inhaling the germ clouds, and within a few days the entire town is suffering an Osaka flu outbreak. Oddly, the germ clouds aren't just visible to the audience, but to the characters, who all react in terror as soon as they open the boxes.

* ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'': In "Sick Day", Kim comes down with a cold and wonder how she caught it. Wade "helpfully" illustrates this by showing camera footage of the "germ trail": Showing that when she went to give her twin brothers, who were sick at the time, a tissue, one of them had place their hand on the table where she unknowingly put her hand on and then covered her mouth with it, unwittingly infecting herself.

Without a microscope, it's impossible to know whether a person or object is contaminated with germs. Because of this, [[DiseasePreventionAesop many stories encourage people to be hygienic and vigilant to avoid getting infected or infecting others.]] To make this clear, it'll often show the exact moment somebody contracts a disease, cluing in the audience [[DramaticIrony before the person even knows they're infected.]] It can come before the character gets sick to serve as {{foreshadowing}}, or a flashback can show how an already-sick character caught the illness- even [[OnceMoreWithClarity showing an earlier scene with more obvious focus on the contaminated things they touched.]] There may be a montage of these scenes that show the illness jumping from person to person, setting up a full-blown epidemic.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': In the teaser of "The Naked Time", Spock and [[RedShirt Lt. Joe Tormolen]], both wearing hazmat suits, beam down to a research station where everyone is dead, and there's no immediate clue as to why. Tormolen's nose itches, so he [[IdiotBall takes off his hazmat glove to scratch his nose]], then kneels down to scan under a desk, and we get a close-up shot of a red liquid coalescing into droplets and flowing onto his hand. Tormolen then scratches his nose again and puts his glove back on, at which point Spock comes in and reminds him [[LampshadeHanging to be sure not to expose himself to anything]]. Naturally, Tormolen contracts a deadly disease as a result, which he brings back to the ''Enterprise''.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "The Naked Now", everytime someone new is infected with the virus a kind of shimmering sound plays.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Hitman|2016}}'', a gameplay-assisting variation happens. The mission "Patient Zero" highlights all infected targets as red silhouettes, and when they get infected (or the infected infect someone else), they begin coughing to signify this change.

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* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'': In the pilot, just before returning from the Galardon homeworld, Commander Ransom is bitten on the neck by a bug. As the away team steps off the transporter pad, Lt. Cmdr. Stevens suggests he should go to sickbay to get it checked, and Ransom cheerfully replies that [[TemptingFate he'll be fine]]. Less than a minute later, there's a huge purple swelling on his neck. Two minutes after that, he turns into a BadBlackBarf-spitting HatePlague zombie.

* The very last scene of ''Film/{{Contagion}}'' is a flashback to "Day 1" of the fictional MEV-1 virus, showing how patient zero, Beth Emhoff contracted the illness. [[spoiler: Bulldozers owned by [=AIMM=], the corporation Beth works for, clear land in the forests outside of Hong Kong, causing several bats to seek out a new roost. One bat flies into a barn where pigs are kept, transmitting its germs to the pigs. One pig is sold to the kitchens in the casino that Beth visits. The chef preparing the pig doesn't wash up before shaking Beth's hand.]] This is an "Emphasis with Editing" example, as the camera tracks [[HowWeGotHere the exact chain of events]] that led to patient zero's exposure to MEV-1.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls:'' The Amoeba Boys catch a cold after sitting outside in the rain, and Slim sneezes near an apple cart, leaving a green trail that immediately infects the apple seller, who sneezes another green trail all over the apples. A man eats one of the apples and immediately gets sick, sneezing right before getting on a bus; when the bus hits the next stop, all the passengers are sick, and even passing by another person will infect them. This soon escalates into an epidemic.

* The Skittles commercial in which a boy has Skittles Pox, indicated by his face being dotted in a regular pattern with colorful Skittles candies. A girl picks a Skittle from his face, eats it, and breaks out in Skittles Pox.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Squick}} Eeeewwww...]]]]

* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' used a visual cue in "My Cabbage," covering infected people with a SicklyGreenGlow to show how easily germs can spread. Sadly comes back at the end of the episode, [[spoiler:the bumbling intern picks up a dirty glove, turning his hand green, and then shakes the hand of an old lady who was just about to leave the hospital, turning ''her'' hand green. Then she touches her face, and her whole face turns green. The disease kills her several episodes later.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13257247/1/A-Little-Too-Much-Of-A-Good-Thing A Little Too Much Of A Good Thing]]',' Mabel finds herself teamed up with her own personal clone, who at first seems perfectly friendly. However, it turns out that Mabel 2 is a CloneByConversion and her condition is contagious: around the time people start keeling over and transforming into identical copies of Mabel, it's realized that 2's habit of hugging and high-fiving anyone in range was deliberately calculated [[PlagueMaster to spread the infection as far as possible]]. [[spoiler:Mabel later realizes to her horror that ''she'' is PatientZero: 2 is actually Dipper, having been accidentally infected by Mabel herself when she shook him awake in the first chapter of the story.]]