Playing Sick in Live-Action TV series.
- In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, the aliens get the idea of calling in sick. As usual, they think they are total geniuses and that no human has ever thought of this:Sally: Taking a sick day when you're not really sick? It sounds like a crime to me.
Dick: It's not a crime... it's the crime of the century! - In an episode of The Addams Family entitled "Cat Addams", the Addamses hire a vet to look at Kitty Cat the lion, but the vet is too scared to. In order to make him braver, Morticia and Gomez have Fester, Thing, and Cousin Itt play sick so the vet can treat them and they can pretend to get better so he'd think he was amazing.
- The Adventures of Pete & Pete: In the season 2 finale "Sick Day" (the one where Little Pete sticks President Martin Van Buren up his nose), Little Pete fakes food poisoning by tapioca pudding to get out of school for a day, and breaks cardinal rule number one, "Don't leave the house".
- Katie pulls off an interesting variant of this in Big Time Rush. When her mother laments that nether Katie nor her brother need her much anymore, Katie acts as if she was sick to make her mother feel needed. Katie has to admit to pretending after her mother goes from caring to nearly suffocating.
- The Big Bang Theory:
- In one episode, Amy falls ill with the flu and Sheldon takes care of her, rubbing Vicks on her chest and helping her bathe. Amy enjoys the attention so much that she pretends to be still sick once she's gotten better.
- In another episode:Sheldon: I can't go in today. I'm sick.
Leonard: You're not sick. You just don't want to face Kripke.
Sheldon: No, look. [hands Leonard thermometer]
Leonard: 128?
Sheldon: See?
Leonard: What did you do, put this in your tea?
Sheldon: Oh, dear. Now I'm not even smarter than you. - In "The Contractual Obligation Implementation", Amy gives an account of how she strategically tricked her manager into believing she was sick, in order to skip work and join Penny and Bernadette in their trip to Disneyland note :Amy: I did it in stages. At 7 last night, I called him about a problem at the lab and casually mentioned I was going out for seafood. At 9:30, I called him and told him that one of my scallops tasted weird. At 11:30, I called him and told him I was throwing up like a fire-hose! At 12:45, I called him and made nothing but dry-heaving sounds. And now I'm going to Disneyland!
- On The Brady Bunch, When Bobby pretends to know Joe Namath Cindy tries to help out by writing him a letter, claiming Bobby is terminally ill in the hope that Namath will give him his autograph. However, when Broadway Joe decides to visit the house and comfort him, Bobby has to fake it.
- Peter also does it in one episode, to try to avoid going to a party where a girl with a big crush on him will be.
- In "Today I Am a Freshman," Marcia uses it on the first day of high school; she's incredibly nervous about going to a school where she doesn't know anybody.
- On Breaking Bad, Walt needs an excuse for disappearing for two days after he was kidnapped due to his meth-making. So he walks into a supermarket and calmly strips off all his clothes, giving the impression that he had a mental break due to his cancer.
- In the Broad City episode "Working Girls," Abbi calls in sick so she can sign for a package her crush Jeremy is expecting.
- In one episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Santiago realizes she's booked her romantic weekend away on the same day she promised to help Captain Holt with some community out-reach. Not wanting to give up her weekend nor disappoint her idol, she pretends that she has broken a tooth, is in horrible pain, and has to go to the dentist that weekend. It all backfires magnificently when the concerned Holt immediately books her in with a family friend, who's the best dentist in the city, for free. When Santiago tries to get out of it, citing a broken car, Holt insists on driving her there in his. The dentist almost immediately realizes that she has no broken teeth, and she gets called out. However, turns out that her overly aggressive brushing technique rubbed away all her teeth's enamel, and her whole mouth is filled with cavities.Holt: For the record, you deserve this.
- On the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Killer in Me", Kennedy fakes being sick to get out of going on a vision quest with the other slayers, giving her a chance to take Willow out on a date.
- In Clarissa Explains It All, in the episode "Sick Days," Clarissa tries to pretend to be sick to get out of playing a pillar in the Ancient Greece Day pageant at school, but her parents don't buy it. She ends up getting legitimately sick just a day or two later however... and finding out that Queen Latifah will be performing at the pageant, so she doesn't want to miss it after all.
- Combined with Crying Wolf on an episode of Community. Leonard's comrade Richard continually says, "Where am I? What year is this?" and the rest of the seniors laugh at this genius ploy of getting out of trouble. This leads to a Tear Jerker moment towards the end when Pierce and the others discover Richard is actually suffering from dementia, and may or may not have been previously faking.
- Jeff does this to get out of helping Annie move, telling the group that he's at the hospital when he's actually shopping for clothes at the mall. The saleslady, without being prompted, asks for his insurance card and the name of his primary care physician to help the ruse.
- It is implied in several episodes that Pierce is constantly faking heart attacks to get out of trouble, appeal to sympathy or dodge awkward situations.Abed: Last week, he did it to get out of lending me a stick of gum.
- The Crowded Room: The state's psychiatric expert witness claims Danny is faking his DID, as he says this isn't a real disorder, hoping to get off on the charges against him with the Insanity Defense.
- In one episode of CSI: NY, most of the police officers of New York City call in sick. They're striking due to not being paid.
- The "Blue Flu", a tactic used by police unions because police officers are not legally allowed to go on strike, appears in several television series, including CSI: NY, Barney Miller, and Babylon 5 (in the third case, involving underpaid-and-overworked space station dockworkers bound by a no-strike contract).
- A similar incident happened an an episode of ER. Nurses are also not legally allowed to go on strike, but after Carol rearranged their work schedule which resulted in them working more hours for less money (she was trying to avoid having to fire two of them, which was what the hospital wanted to do), they staged a sick-out, leaving Carol the only nurse on duty.
- Another show that combined this with Crying Wolf was the BBC drama Dangerfield. An elderly thief knows that the police have to interview her within 24 hours before they can charge her. So to avoid being questioned, she first complains of a bad back, gets examined and given some painkillers. A few hours later she then complains of having a sore throat, and it examined again, and is recommended to take some throat lozenges, however since they can’t be prescribed on the NHS, a police officer has to go out and buy them for her. Later she then complains about feeling dizzy. By this point everyone knows that’s she’s having them on, but she gets examined again, and is told to rest. When the police do eventually get into a interview room, she then starts to show symptoms of having a heart attack. This time it’s genuine, however the 24 hours are up, and since they can’t question her anymore, and therefore have no legal responsibility or duty of care towards her, the annoyed police officers tell she has to make her own way to the hospital.
- Dark Desire: Alma pretends she's unconscious when Esteban is holding her captive, and then escapes when he unshackles her to check on what's wrong.
- Doctor Who. In "Frontier in Space", Jo Grant suggests doing the "pretend to be sick" trick to lure the guard inside so the Doctor can use his Venusian karate on him. The Doctor points out there's no point in escaping because the spacecraft they're prisoner on is taking them where they want to go anyway.
- On Doogie Howser, M.D. 's Christmas Episode, Doogie fakes an illness while at the hospital (where he’s worked for 36 hours straight), to go home on Christmas Eve and attend a party with his girlfriend, Wanda. Being a teenage kid, as well as a doctor, he was able to get away with this quite well…but he later feels guilty and decides to return to work.
- The Dukes of Hazzard had an episode where a guy got arrested, then showed signs of having the plague (in reality, he was allergic to poison ivy, which gave him the skin rashes, and he just faked the other symptoms). This was done as a gambit to get the local doctor to quarantine the Hazzard court house (with both of Hazzard's police officers inside) so his friends could rob the bank.
- In one episode in El Chavo del ocho, a character played this, and used her (supposed) very contagious illness to scare all her neighbors. It ended with all the cast sick... except for El Chavo, who wanted most to get the illness so he could enjoy of hospital attention and regular income of food.
- Emergency!: Both the paramedics and the doctors at Rampart have to deal with this.
- In one case, Johnny and Roy are called to help an old man with crippling back pain. After he's transported to Rampart, his reported symptoms confound the doctors because they don't add up to anything recognizable. Eventually the truth comes out: he's been faking it all just to have fun and to get a few days of pampering in the hospital. He's done this so many times that he knows just what to tell the doctors in order to keep them guessing a little while longer.
- Another run involves a house the paramedics have been to before: an aggrieved wife who repeatedly fakes collapsing in order to get back at her husband. Johnny wakes her up with a vial of smelling salts, then explains to the couple that these repeated calls for fake emergencies are a waste of the paramedics' time, and they really shouldn't be doing it.
- In a more serious example, a man says he was hit and seriously injured by the squad as the paramedics were racing to a call. A police detective starts investigating, and it looks bad for Johnny and Roy. However, the detective eventually finds out that the man is an ex-circus acrobat and faked his injuries — and he's done it at least three times before, each time getting significant amounts of money from insurance settlements.
- The Eternal Love: Xiao Tan pretends to be sick after the falling-off-a-cliff incident. Lian Cheng gets a doctor to play along and tell everyone she's seriously ill.
- A French Village: Hélène is counseled to fake meningitis and so escape from the makeshift prison for Jews. Later, Lucienne also fakes some problem with her baby so Gestapo agents leave the house. However, it doesn't fool them entirely—they hang around to nab Hélène after she leaves the house.
- Rachel has done this a couple of times on Friends, for example when she had kissed her co-worker and thought it would be awkward to see him.
- DJ did this in an early episode of Full House in an attempt to get Stacey Q's autograph. It almost worked, but Joey and baby sister Michelle just happened to show up at the mall as DJ and Kimmy were leaving. Of course, Michelle discovered them and led Joey over, thus blowing DJ's cover and embarrassing her at the same time.
- In the Get Some In! episode "Medical", Teddy boy Jakey Smith tries to fail his medical exam in order to be disqualified from National Service by pretending to be hard of hearing. The Medical Officer asks him to repeat what he says, then whispers, "Six pounds of lettuce." Jakey simply replies, "When you're ready, Sir!" The MO then tells him to sit down, and he happily complies... giving himself away in the process. His backup plan of swallowing cotton wool before having his chest X-ray taken so that it looks like he has shadows on his lungs is also seen through immediately.
- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: After slipping a disc out at Gull Cottage in "A Pain in the Neck", Claymore continues to malinger after his back is better so he can take advantage of Mrs. Muir's sympathy and hospitality.
- In one episode of The Golden Girls, Sophia really is injured and must stay in a wheelchair, so Dorothy hires a nurse to look after her mother. The nurse takes excellent care of Sophia but makes life miserable for the other three housemates, who want to fire her. Sophia fakes being injured long after she recovers in order to go on being pampered by the nurse, noting that the way she treats the other three characters is 'just a bonus'.
- Henry Danger: In "Sick & Wired", Henry has a cold and was bedridden for three days, but when Ray hears of this, he assumed Henry was only pretending to be sick so he can get out of going to his job. He has Schwoz install cameras around the house and traps Charlotte in the tubes so she can't warn Henry of what Ray was doing. And when Ray has Jasper trick Henry into meeting him and confessing the truth, Charlotte finally has Schwoz free him and warns him. Once Henry goes to reveal his true illness, he and Ray argue until Henry vomits the brown soup he ate all over Ray's pants, causing Ray to realize Henry was right.Ray: Okay, that was brown soup.
- On House, the title character once pretended to have terminal cancer so he could get a pleasure drug injected directly into his brain. Even for House, this was considered despicable.
- In the I Love Lucy episode "Lucy Fakes Illness", Ricky discovers Lucy is faking a nervous breakdown, and hires an actor playing as a doctor to diagnose Lucy with "the go-bloots", a rare and lethal tropical disease. As the doctor says she has minutes to live, Lucy fakes her impending death until Ricky's orchestra starts playing the upbeat song, "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You".
- Intergalactic: Genevieve pretends she's ill so the guards will come to check on her, then attacks them with her hair tendrils when they get close.
- Carrie from The King of Queens actually gets the flu and Holly makes soup for her. After discovering that Holly is a great cook, she decides to pretend to be sick when she isn't anymore to get Holly to continue bringing her food, even when Holly gets sick.
- In an episode of Lizzie McGuire, Matt tries to pull this, but his mom sees through the act from the start. Rather than send him off to school anyway, she cheerfully proceeds to make Matt miserable by feeding him borscht and sweating out his "fever" by swaddling him in a wool blanket with the heater on. Ironically, this and Matt's further attempts to fake sick did end up making him genuinely sick by the end of the episode.
- A positive example happens in the Llan-ar-goll-en episode, "Dirgelwch y Llythyr Coll". It's Prys' birthday and yet nobody seems to have remembered it. Ceri appears to come down with a cold, so she tells him that she can't help solve the mystery of Prys' lost letter, but she still tags along with him anyway. Near the end, it's revealed that Ceri was faking her sickness and stole Prys' letter, much to the surprise of everyone in the room. The reason she did so is that she could help Prys solve the mystery of the day for once, and it worked. He finally figured out the mystery of the day by himself, and the letter was revealed to be a sweet birthday card for him from Ceri, thanking Prys for being the best detective in Llan-ar-goll-en.
- In the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Krelboyne Picnic" Malcolm pretends to have thrown up (by using a can of vegetable soup) to avoid going to the Krelboyne picnic. Lois doesn't fall for it and grounds Malcolm for wasting soup.
- In the TV Documentary Menudo: Forever Young a former member, Angelo, was accused of this when he complained of stomach pains before a concert. In a subversion, in the middle of performing, he ran backstage and started throwing up blood, later needing appendectomy.
- In "Valentine's Day III" on The Middle, Axl, stumped for an assignment where he has to give a speech about a life-changing moment, makes a video where Brick fakes being terminally ill.
- Midsomer Murders: In "Days of Misrule", Tom attempts to get out of a team-building exercise by claiming to have tendonitis:Tom: I think my tendonitis is flaring up again.
Joyce: It was your other arm before. - Mimpi Metropolitan: After a minor motorbike accident with Alan in episode 24, Wawan pretends to be injured so that Alan will have to pay the hospital bills and compensation for the broken motorbike. Also, hospital rooms are very nice to stay in. Alan can tell Wawan is faking it, but Wawan and the doctor insists on going through an expensive medical test "just to be sure". Eventually, the test proves that Wawan is just faking it and Wawan is the one who is forced to pay compensation for the test bills.
- In the Modern Family episode "Virgin Territory", Cameron fakes an injury while at brunch in the Dunphys' house so, when everyone's out, he can search it for a Tupperware bowl Claire insists she's returned to him.
- On Orphan Black, Sarah pretends to be her clone Beth, and unwittingly ends up in the middle of a hearing to determine whether or not Beth is fit to resume duty as a police officer. She promptly goes into a nearby bathroom and chugs the contents of the soap dispenser, so that she can visibly throw up before she has to testify and buy herself a few more days to figure out what's going on.
- Our Miss Brooks:
- In "Babysitting for Three", an early radio episode, Miss Brooks phones Mr. Conklin to say she won't be in today as she's sick. In reality, she was roped into babysitting for three children while their mother is in the hospital.
- In "Blue Goldfish", Walter Denton and Miss Brooks play sick in order to convince Mr. Conklin to raise the temperature in the school. They are convinced that if Mr. Conklin thinks he's causing an epidemic, he'll spend more money on coal for the furnace. A Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of "Not Enough Coal At Madison High".
- In "Trial by Jury", Miss Brooks has to appear in traffic court and does not want Mr. Conklin to hear about it. She decides to play sick. Unfortunately, Walter Denton, Bones Snodgrass and Mr. Boynton each try to help. They each play sick and ask for Mr. Conklin to have Miss Brooks escort them home. Mr. Conklin is less than convinced; the four of had come to his office feigning illness at almost the exact same time. A Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of the radio episode "Traffic Court".
- The Professionals
- In "Long Shot", as part of a plan to infiltrate a high security area a terrorist takes pills that give him the symptoms of a heart attack. He gets caught but CI5 is forced to put him on an airliner out of the country to avoid further terrorist acts to free him. Another passenger however is a CI5 agent who takes the same pills, causing the plane to divert to the nearest airport, which happens to be in a country whose ruler believes in shooting terrorists on sight.
- In "Hijack", Doyle is about to get into bed with his Girl of the Week when he gets a call telling him to take over a surveillance job because Bodie is off sick. The next day shows Doyle looking tired, cold, unshaven and out of coffee when Bodie struts in with a smug look on his face.Doyle: I thought you were ill.Bodie: I tell you, Ray, you wouldn't believe it. I was so bad, I couldn't even get into bed.Doyle: Whose?
- The flashback portion of one episode of Psych had Henry catching a young Shawn pretending to be sick so that he wouldn't have to have dinner with their neighbors. Shawn then explained that he didn't want to go over to the neighbors' house for dinner because they were vegans—at which point, Henry decides he's going to play sick.
- From Reba, two of the title character's kids each try to use this trick once. They both fail.
- The Rise of Phoenixes: The emperor pretends to be sick to avoid dealing with the case of Lady Wang framing Ya Le.
- SAS: Rogue Heroes. During the Benghazi raid the SAS are trying to bluff their way past a checkpoint without identity papers. Major Stirling notes that immaculate appearance of the Italian officer in charge, so pretends to have dysentery so he will rush them through rather than let Stirling take a dump behind his tent as he asks.
- ROY does this in one episode when he finds all of his friends have come down with an illness, but he can't because he is a cartoon (although he does get ill later in the episode). He then discovers his sister Becky isn't ill either and uses that as blackmail against her.
- Budnick and Michael pretend to get sick in an episode of Salute Your Shorts in order to get out of instructional swim class. Budnick had a recipe for convincing looking fake vomit, and Ug wouldn't let them out of class unless they were blowing chunks. They quickly regret this when they realize that Ug was taking the class to the beach as a surprise.
- Played with by Sándor and Tamas on Schloss Einstein: Alexander figures out pretty quickly that Tamas isn't really sick, but lets him skip class anyway; and whenever anyone comes into the room, one of them has to hide depending on who it is (either someone from the Schloss Einstein staff who thinks Tamas is Sándor, or Sándor's father, who knows that Sándor is Sándor).
- Somewhat hilariously, they are found out in the very next episode, when Sándor's father shows up unexpectedly and sees Tamas being called "Sándor" by everyone.
- Subverted in The Secret World of Alex Mack: the titular heroine uses her powers to raise the level of mercury in the thermometer — but accidentally takes it too far, breaking the thermometer, gets scolded by her mother, and is sent to school.
- In the Seinfeld episode "The Scofflaw", Jerry learns that his friend Gary Fogel (played by Jon Lovitz) had only pretended to have cancer in order to, according to Jerry, "get some free hair" (Jerry had bought him a hair club membership).
- This comes back to bite him, in a later episode Jerry mentions he crashed his car and killed himself while adjusting the hair piece in the rear view mirror.
- In an inversion of this trope, George spends the week on vacation, but keeps his car in the parking lot. After Kramer and Jerry have to clean it from bird droppings, they crash it on the way back, but still park it back in the same space. George has to come back pretending to be seriously injured after the crash to keep from being fired. It still bites him in the butt when he doesn't get the raise he was hoping for as they thought he was seriously inured or dead and had to fill the position.
- Sirens (UK) had a mother call 999 because he had a slight cough. Stuart was less than impressed and immediately singled out the cause of his cough was a dislike of Rugby. Oh, and then he insinuated that the 12-year-old was gay.
- Junior in The Sopranos feigns dementia to avoid criminal prosecution. Invoked and then twisted as Junior is really going senile.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Babel", a virus is giving everyone aphasia, and Quark pretends to be infected while babbling to patients who work for him about money, to make sure they aren't faking it.
- Star Trek: Picard: In "Broken Pieces", Narissa suspects that Ramdha is somehow faking her coma.Narissa: Dr. Kabath says there's no medical reason for this, Auntie. I do believe you're malingering.
- An episode of That's So Raven, after Raven's principal breaks his back and it looks like he'll be leaving, she faking sick to avoid putting up with him for one more day. However, the principal's back healed, meaning that he's staying. And to add insult to injury, he took the school on a field trip to a water park to celebrate his recovery.
- In Unnatural History, Henry does this to get out of the school when it is under lockdown due to a mysterious disease to get the cure from the medical repository.
- In Wolf Hall, Anne Boleyn accuses Thomas Cromwell of faking because he didn't want to carry out her command of arranging a French marriage for her daughter Elizabeth. Cromwell was ill and says so, having ended the previous episode with a delirious fever so bad that Henry went so far as to actually visit him (albeit in cut scenes, but in the book he's noted to have a dread of contagion). Anne just replies that Cromwell wouldn't be ill unless he wanted to be.
- Two sketches in You're Skitting Me, "Barf in a Bag" and "Cold-n-Flu Sick Kit", depict Parody Commercials peddling products designed to help students invoke this trope. Unfortunately, if they're misused, they have the potential to make the user actually sick.
