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Playing Sick / Western Animation

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Playing Sick in Western Animation.

  • 101 Dalmatians: The Series: In "Easy On The Lies", Rolly pretends to be injured to keep from having to hear one of the Colonol's boring stories, and end up going to extreme lengths to get to the watering hole without being seen by the Colonol and ruining the lie.
  • The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Jimmy Neutron gives his friends special patches that mimicks illness, allowing them to skip school. Unfortunately, the patches got absorbed and makes them sick for real, forcing Jimmy to pull a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot to develop a cure (hence the episode's title, "Journey to the Center of Carl").
  • Amphibia
    • The episode, "Contagi-Anne" revolves around Anne trying this to get out of some outdoor chores on a stormy day. Taking advantage of the fact that nobody in Amphibia knows anything about human biology, she claims to have a debilitating disease called the "mocha lattes".
    • In "Reunion", during the Earth flashback at the beginning, Sasha pretends to get sick from having to dissect a frog in order to get herself and Anne out of biology class and ditch school for her 13th birthday.
  • The Angry Beavers: In "Fakin' It", Norbert fakes sick to get out of re-twigging the dam on a wet day, going so far as to feign "the Beaver Gargle of Ache". Dagget runs himself ragged trying to care for Norbert, and when he gets sick too Norbert feels bad and tries to care for Dagget. Then it turns out Dagget was also faking sick to get back at Norb.
  • Used in several Arthur episodes:
    • In "Arthur's Chicken Pox", younger sister D.W. pretends to have come down with the titular sickness, since she's jealous of all the special treatment Arthur is getting from Grandma Thora due to his chicken pox. It works until the fake spots she drew on with marker wash off in the bath. She then gets the chicken pox for real at the end of the episode.
    • "For Whom The Bell Tolls" has D.W. faking she has lost her voice (or, rather, keeps pretending to have lost it after it returns) so that everyone spoils her. Arthur overhears her talking and has to get help from his friends to make her admit the truth.
    • In "April Ninth", there's a fire at Lakewood Elementary burns down and Arthur pretends to have a sore throat because he fears his father will be in a fire if he goes to deliver a cake to another school and he knows that his dad wouldn't leave if Arthur had a sore throat as then he'd think he was sick and given him a special kind of chicken soup that only he can make. However, Mr Read sees through the ruse and reassures him that schools are usually safe places and the fire at Lakewood was a one-off.
    • In "Arthur Goes Crosswire", Arthur finds Muffy's boat boring as he didn't see animals and Buster suggests he play sick to avoid doing it again the next day and he thinks it's a good idea, until Prunella and Sue Ellen want to join in to see if it's fancy, Buster says that Arthur is sick, but Arthur states he "got better".
    • In "D.W All Fired Up" D.W does this because she's afraid of going to pre-school when her class has a fire drill. Her mom doesn't fall for it the second time she tries it.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender a city's entire resistance force pretend that they were sick with Pentapox in order to let the citizens flee the occupied city. This mysterious disease was actually just hickies from a Purple Pentapus.
    • Katara also fed Appa a bunch of bright purple berries to make it seem like he was sick, so they would have to stay for longer so that she could be the Painted Lady.
  • In the Bad Dog episode "Nurse Barky", Penelope and some of her friends pretend to be sick to get out of school to go to The Hair Scrunchie Barn at the mall. However, Little Vic and Berkeley believe Penelope really IS sick, and try every remedy they can think of to cure her, which ultimately results in Berkeley infecting her with poison ivy.
  • In the Bobby's World episode, "Ill Effects", Bobby, jealous of the attention his new younger brothers have been receiving, pretends to be sick, only through a series of events, ends up getting sick for real.
  • Bugs Bunny's many "death scenes" to pull one over on Elmer Fudd always work. Most notably in "The Wabbit Who Came To Supper" where Bugs—having been locked out of Elmer's house—says he'll catch "p-neumonia!"
  • One Care Bears cartoon has Hugs and Tugs drawing spots onto themselves to fake that they have some kind of pox. However, when they wash the spots off and declare they're better, the parent figures declare that the illness is getting worse! They end up going on a dangerous Find the Cure! mission for nothing.
  • In Central Park, Season 1 "Garbage Ballet", when a sick Paige plans on killing any rats they might be inside their home, Cole pretends to be sick so he can stay home and stop her from killing any. He eventually catches his mom's cold and is sick for real.
  • An episode of ChalkZone has Rudy faking sick to get out a test he forgot to study for. However, the test turned out to be the next week and instead he was to have gone on a field trip to a dinosaur-themed amusement park, so Rudy makes a portal to ChalkZone to go to the park without getting caught.
  • Happens with Dale on the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Kiwi's Big Adventure"; he pretends that his foot is injured just to get closer to Gadget. Chip is well aware of this, however, and gets Gadget, Monty, and Zipper to see him walk perfectly okay by himself when they leave him alone. Dale would end up breaking his foot for real near the end, though.
  • Code Lyoko does this in countless episodes. "Mrs. Hertz? I don't feel good, I have to go to the infirmary." "Me too!" "And I'll escort them!" Cue running off to Lyoko. With three or four students doing this all at the same time, and it's the same ones every time, you wonder why the teachers don't see through it.
    • The teachers and principal start getting fed up with this in the last Season and aren't fooled as often, so it becomes harder for the heroes to pretend being sick.
    • Keep in mind that most of these visits never happened.
  • Cow and Chicken: In "Playin' Hookie", Chicken pretends to be sick so he won't have to take a test he forgot to study for. When he finally convinces his parents, they call a Doctor who happens to be the Red Guy. After deeming Red's treatments scarier than the test, Chicken admits to be playing sick, prompting the Red Guy to confess he was just playing doctor. Upon getting to school, however, Chicken finds out the students weren't actually taking any standardized tests, but being taste-testers for food and beverage companies, and Chicken's make-up test involves not eating chocolate had he just gone to school in the first place, but trout split and bass shakes from the Fish and Ice Cream Institute, much to his displeasure and distaste, to which he gives us An Aesop: "don't cut chocolate class!".
  • The Cramp Twins:
    • In "Sick Daze", Wayne pretends to have a cold during class so he could be sent home after one of his classmates gets sent home for this reason. Miss Hissy sees immediately through this act, so after classes, he tries to purposefully make himself sick to escape school, which works.
    • In another episode, he draws red spots with permanent marker on his face to mimic chicken pox. It could have worked had he tried to hide the marker from his mother.
  • The Cup Head Show: In the episode "The I Scream Man" Mugman fakes being sick so that Cuphead and Elder Kettle will leave without him and he can read his book in peace.
  • Doug has the titular character try to feign an illness to get out of School Picture Day in "Doug's Big Nose", but the school nurse doesn't fall for his act.
  • The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Cry Ed", although Eddy is pretending to be severely injured instead of sick, and trying to get attention and pity from the other kids rather than out of school.
  • In an episode of The Emperor's New School, Kuzco did it after learning that the Royal Treasury would provide funds to look after him (in luxury) if he was ill. Kuzco did this because he missed living in his palace, and all the comforts of it. Then in a twist of irony, he actually does get sick because of one of Yzma's schemes.
  • Engie Benjy: In one story, Jollop the dog pretends to be sick so that Engie Benjy won't take him to work with him.
  • Peter goes to the extreme in the Family Guy episode "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington", where instead of calling out sick, he tells his boss that he got into a freak plane accident where his family was killed and he's not a vegetable so he can go to a baseball game. When he goes to the game, naturally, Peter's scheme blows up in his face when he happens to have a seat next to his boss. Mr. Weed is not amused by the lies and notes that Peter made a "full recovery", thus he is well enough to see him in his office tomorrow morning. Peter manages to avoid getting fired due to his company being bought out and merged with another company the next day.
  • Fish Hooks: In "Dropsy!", Albert Glass catches a fish disease called Dropsy, causing him to float upside down and is quarantined; upon seeing all the get well gifts that Albert is showered with when sick, Milo pretends to have Dropsy so he can get the same stuff. When Albert is cured after a week, Milo pretends he still has the Dropsy to keep receiving more gifts, but he is instead sent to a tank filled with dead fish.
  • In one episode of The Flintstones, Fred and Barney tried to call in sick to go to a baseball game. Fred's boss believed him, but Barney's wanted him to check with the company nurse. He did, and when she took his temperature, Fred tried to fake a fever for him using his cigarette lighter. Unfortunately that made it register way too high, and the nurse panicked and called an ambulance, and suffice to say, it only got worse from there.
  • Goof Troop did this twice, once played very sympathetically and once played very unsympathetically.
    • The sympathetic example is when PJ plays sick (at Max's coaxing) to get in one last day of freedom before being Grounded Forever for failing his math test, which he thinks he did. Pete is very strict about what counts as "sick enough" to stay home, so Max makes PJ look very sick, which results in him being taken to the hospital and Pete very briefly realizing that he's a bad parent. Unfortunately, PJ didn't even need to play sick in the first place because he didn't fail the test.
    • The unsympathetic example is when Pete pretends to be sick so that he can take the day off fishing. This wouldn't be so bad by itself, especially considering Pete is his own boss, but he tells PJ he's sick and dying and that PJ has to take over his job. He goes so far to make him feel guilty by saying that Peg, Pistol, and Chainsaw will be stuck doing terrible jobs if he doesn't succeed. This starts to backfire when Max and Goofy give PJ the idea to use Pete in some stunts (since he's dying anyway), and backfires even further when PJ tearfully presents the proceeds to Peg and tells her what Pete said.
  • Two instances in The Hair Bear Bunch:
    • In "Rare Bear Bungle," Bubi feigns an illness so Peevly will tend to him while Hair and Square disguise Bananas the Gorilla as Rare Bear (a critter that costs the city $50,000 and was tricked by the bears into going into town).
    • "The Bear Who Came To Dinner" has Square Bear faking an injury after slipping on a banana peel Peevly dropped. Hair threatens Peevly with an animal negligence suit if Square isn't cared for.
  • In Holly Hobbie and Friends: Christmas Wishes, Holly is said to have lost her voice due to a "freak scarf accident" and this is the reason why she has to give up her solo to the widow Kelly Deegan. In reality, it's just a scheme to try to restore happiness to this Broken Bird, and it works.
  • Hey Arnold!: In "Oskar Gets a Job", Oskar gets a job as a paper boy to pay off a debt. This job requires him to wake up early, and Arnold wakes up early as well to make sure that Oskar actually does the job. On the first day, Oskar tells Arnold that he has the Chinese Stomach Flu, and on the second, Oskar tells Arnold that he hurt his back, both times resulting in Arnold having to do Oskar's job for him. Arnold soon discovers that Oskar was faking when he sees him eating pancakes on the first day and dancing on the second. After covering for Oskar on the second day, Arnold outright calls him a "huge loser" while calling him out for his lies after asking him what his next excuse will be since he's not going to cover for him anymore. This episode was likely the maddest Arnold has ever been. On the third day, Oskar ends up doing his job anyway after overhearing Mr. Hyunh and Ernie, and Arnold and Suzie, talk about his tactics of trying to avoid doing the job.
  • Jelly Jamm: Inverted. In "Musical Aurora", Goomo comes down with a case of jelly measles on the night of the Musical Aurora, and he pretends to be healthy so that he can still join his friends in seeing it. Everyone else isn't fooled and Goomo is forced to stay home and drink bitter medicine to help him get better.
  • Kaeloo: Stumpy does this in Episode 138 in order to avoid cleaning his incredibly messy room. Kaeloo immediately sees through the ruse, but Stumpy refuses to admit he's faking. Kaeloo ends up using the fact that Stumpy is Afraid of Needles against him by saying that if he's sick, he must need injections, and she brings in a tray full of them. Stumpy claims to have gotten better and cleans the whole room within seconds.
  • King of the Hill: When Bobby becomes allergic to dogs, he continues feigning his allergies even after his medication takes effect so that he can get his parents' sympathy.
  • The Legend of Zelda (1989): In "Cold Spells", Link pretends to have a cold to get out of spring cleaning. Spryte is fooled but Zelda isn't (the fact that he tried to Glomp the latter right before putting on the act didn't help). But at Spryte's insistence, she chooses to play along for a while.
  • Little Princess:
    • In "I Don't Want to Kiss Great Aunty", the Princess draws green spots on her face so that the adults would think she was carrying "warble dots" and she wouldn't have to kiss her great-aunt. She gives up when the doctor claims that the cure tastes like sweaty old socks.
    • Played with in "I Want My Voice Back". The Princess does lose her voice (albeit probably not due to illness as she seemed fine otherwise), but when she gets it back, she pretends it's still gone as she likes communicating with a bell and pictures.
  • The Loud House:
    • The Loud House:
      • In "Head Poet's Anxiety", Lucy is set to be first kid to perform at the Royal Woods Theatre, something that Luan has been trying and failing to be for years. After learning about this, a guilty Lucy decides to fake an illness so she won't have to steal Luan's dream.
      • In "Gown and Out", when Lola is picked to participate in a regional pageant and becomes anxious that she could lose for the first time, she attempts to play sick by covering herself in spots, using makeup.
      • "Lucha Fever with the Casagrandes" has Ronnie Anne faking being sick in order to watch La Tormenta's final wrestling match before she retires, which happens to be taking place on the same night as her Uncle Carlos's award ceremony. However, Hector and Rosa have spread the word about Ronnie Anne's supposed illness and everyone is checking up on her, making it hard for her and Sid to watch the match.
      • In "A Bug's Strife", Lynn Sr. fakes being sick to avoid visiting Aunt Ruth when she forces the kids to watch her Malls of the Midwest slideshow (with Leni being the only one enjoying it), only for him to contend with an annoying cricket.
      • In "One Flu Over the Loud House", Lincoln, Leni, Luna, Lucy, and Lisa pretend that they have the flu that's going around so that the sick sisters won't try to infect them, as a parody of Pretend We're Dead.
    • The Casagrandes:
  • In the 2007 revival series of The Magic Roundabout, Dougal does this in "A Very Dodgy Exercise" to avoid attending Solider Sam's exercise class.
  • Martha Speaks: In "Truman's Brother", T.D. convinces Truman to pretend he's sick when Truman forgets to do his homework.
  • One episode of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack has Flapjack pretending to be struck dumb by a curse to guilt Captain K'nuckles into taking him to a carnival.
  • In The Mask, Lonnie the Shark's henchman Pete is prone of making excuses to get sick to avoid doing work.
  • Milo: In "Milo's Sore Tummy", Milo pretends to have a stomachache, but he soon finds being treated as sick boring and admits he was faking.
  • Dragon does it in "The Bug Flu" on Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends after seeing Spiderus do the same thing.
  • My Little Pony:
    • The My Little Pony Tales episode "Too Sick to Notice" - Bon Bon feels ignored by her family when her youngest brother gets sick, so she decides to pretend she's sick too. At first she enjoys it, then regrets it when she is forced to stay in bed all day while her friends have fun outside and her family gets more and more stressed by her ever increasing demands. Wracked with guilt, she confesses. Her family seems to forgive her, but then they all claim that they are sick and force her to care for them.
    • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
      • Attempted in "Family Appreciation Day" by Apple Bloom (as shown in the page image above). It doesn't work. Granny Smith, having raised first her own children as well as Apple Bloom's older siblings before her, sees right through it.
      • Fluttershy does it in "Hurricane Fluttershy" to avoid tornado duty, painting spots on her face and making rather obviously fake sneezes. Rainbow Dash isn't fooled, dumping water on her and washing away the spots.
      • "Three's A Crowd": Discord does this by claiming to have the "Blue Flu" and having Twilight and her visiting sister-in-law Cadance tend to him. Naturally he's doing this for his own amusement in the hopes it'll spoil the visit (though he claims it's also a Secret Test of Character for Twilight to see if she really does care for him). It winds up backfiring since Cadance didn't mind it since it gave her some much needed excitement from her princess duties. Plus, he catches a real disease in the process.
      • In "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies", Fluttershy looks after a flock of Breezies (tiny winged creatures who fly on the breeze), and their leader Seabreeze wants them to get home, but the others want to stick around so they pretend to have colds.
    • My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: In "A Little Horse", Zipp tells Pipp about her investigation on Opaline's plan, though she doesn't know her name. Misty, who's secretly working for Opaline, fakes a cough to excuse herself out of it.
  • Pepper Ann had an episode where she fakes she has a fever (by putting the thermometer in a cup of coffee) so that she can have a day off school.
  • Popeye:
    • An old cartoon has him and Bluto feigning illness to get into a hospital and be treated by nurse Olive. As they try to outdo each other and start fighting, Olive sees through their ruse.
    • A later WWII cartoon has the two in the US Navy; Bluto fakes illness to get out of working. Popeye sees through it and proceeds to teach him a lesson.
    • In one cartoon, Popeye, feeling ignored by Olive, pretends to be sick to see if she still loves him. She immediately rushes him to the hospital, where he even manages to fool the doctors. In the end when it seems that the doctors can't do anything and Popeye is dead, Olive sobs over him, and that's when he gets up and reveals the truth. She is pissed.
  • In one episode of Postman Pat, Julian at first actually has a cold, but then when he gets better, he finds it "fun", so he pretends he hasn't recovered.
  • Private Snafu: In "The Goldbrick", Snafu fakes being sick so he can get of drill in the rain, and spends the day cosied up in bed being tended to by a Hospital Hottie. However, avoiding training leaves him unprepared when his unit goes into action in the South Pacific.
  • In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Mindy Pet-Sits", Sean, Jet, Sydney, and Carrot fly out to space in order to look for the Northern Lights. Since Mindy is too young, she cannot go, and she is sad that she cannot go to see the Northern Lights. Sunspot, feeling sorry for her, fakes an injury so he gets to stay with Mindy, and make Mindy her own Northern Lights show in the backyard. All of the other characters are aware of this.
  • One episode of Recess had the main characters pretend to be sick in order to be sent home from a boring school day (every other student is out with a real illness). Unfortunately, Gretchen mixes up the symptoms, so instead of an illness that would mandate being sent home, the nurse thinks that they've contracted some horrible disease that leads to them being quarantined by public health officials.
  • The Rotten Ralph episode "Ralph's Royal Treatment" has Ralph trick his owner Sarah and her parents into spoiling him by pretending that he is afflicted with a fatal illness and only has a few weeks left to live. Ralph's cousin Percy helps Sarah and her parents find out the truth and the four get back at Ralph by pretending that they still believe he's a goner even as Ralph is pressured into confessing that he's not really dying.
  • Rugrats (1991):
    • "Angelica Breaks a Leg" has Angelica faking having a broken leg so she can more easily boss the adults around. It works when there is a mix up with the X-Rays at the hospital.
    • Angelica does this again in the spin-off All Grown Up! in which she starts quoting lines of a deranged character from a soap opera so she can stay in the hospital longer.
    • In "Grandpa's Bad Bug", Lou fakes having a stomach ache to cover up his lying about staying out all night. The babies, hearing him say he has a "bad bug" think he has an actual bug inside him and try various methods to get it out.
  • Seven Little Monsters: "The Two Who Cried Ouch" has Two get sick and enjoy the attention and care his siblings and mother provide him so much that he repeatedly fakes injury to get his way once he recovers. After Mama tells him a story about a girl who repeatedly shouted "Sloth" when there weren't any as a joke nearly paying the price when no one listens to her once there really are sloths, Two feels bad about pretending to be injured and goes off to apologize to his brothers and sisters, only to get his nose stuck in a tree and his siblings initially refusing to help him under the assumption that he's faking yet again.
  • Sheriff Callie's Wild West uses this trope to provide An Aesop of "Playing sick as a means of getting attention is not good, and makes you less trustworthy when you actually are sick. In the episode "Toby's Untrue Achoo", Toby the cactus fakes having a cold having seen how protagonist Callie, a calico cat, got attention and care due to having a sneeze, and he did get it, but the consequences weren't that great for him - he was constantly told to rest, and (almost) missed out on a dance contest, which, by the end of the episode, exposed his deception. It was Played for Drama in that most of the townsfolk Funny Animal characters were angry with him for being a de facto freeloader. However, unlike some examples of this trope, there was no Aesop Amnesia that sometimes happens in this show (or with this trope in general), and Toby seems to have learnt his lesson. But this is a show where Status Quo Is God (usually), so this is one example where that trope did stick.
  • The Silly Symphony "The Wise Little Hen" is a straightforward telling of The Little Red Hen, whose attempts at getting help growing her corn are met with feigned sickness by a pig and his cohort, Donald Duck, in his debut.
  • In The Simpsons Bart does this a few times, in one case pretending to have Tourette's Syndrome (later changed to rabies via Executive Meddling) and various other symptoms while Grandpa warns him against playing the "boy who cried wolf". Eventually he's attacked by an actual wolf that's escaped from Krusty's show and isn't believed.
    • In another episode, Bart eats a jagged O from a box of Krusty-Os and develops agonizing stomach pains. No one believes him except Lisa (although it's also likely that the teachers not believing him was also simply due to callousness on their part rather than previous faking sick attempts, as Krabappel once mentioned that she also won't be held accountable if one of her students [Milhouse in this case] was eaten by the pet snake), though he is eventually taken to the hospital.
    • Ms. Hoover also was speculated to have faked sick by some of the students when she revealed that her Lyme Disease was actually psychosomatic in one episode, to which she confirms it both faking sick and being crazy.
    • Even Lisa got in on the act to get out of a bad birthday party when a lot of the kids get sick from eating raw oysters (which Lisa, being a vegetarian, would have never eaten in the first place).
    • In another episode, Lisa really does got sick and can't go to school. She starts playing a video game and becomes hooked to the point where after getting better she fakes being sick to continue playing it. She succeeds the first time, but Marge is not fooled the second time, and sends her back to school, where she has to take an important test that she forgot to study for.
  • Jokey Smurf does it at least twice in The Smurfs (1981): once in "Jokey's Funny Bone" in order to get attention, and another time in "Calling Doctor Smurf" in order to make Dabbler feel useful as a doctor. Although in the latter case, Jokey actually became sick when it turned out that he was allergic to the pink paint he used to make himself and several other Smurfs look like they came down with a sickness.
  • Sofia the First: In "Lord of the Rink", Prince Hugo pretended to be sick in front of his friends to get out of hockey practice after Sofia reminded him that the hockey team meets at the same time as their ice-dancing class. Later, Hugo told his friends to tell his father, who is the new assistant hockey coach, that his son is sick and has to miss practice. Hugo was never shown fooling his father that way.
  • South Park: Stan and Kyle give one another ludicrously overblown maladies (date rape psychosis and cancer, respectively) in Towelie, telling their mothers that they're too busy nursing one another to bother with baseball practice or school.
  • Done the Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode, Terminal, where Space Ghost pretends he's about to die. In classic Space Ghost style, everyone can already tell from the beginning. Space Ghost himself is shown in his thoughts to genuinely believe he's somehow dying, though, even though he refuses to specify how and gets incredibly nervous once a doctor shows up. He actually does die at the end... sorta.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Squidward hates his job at the Krusty Krab and dealing with the general public, his cheapskate boss, and his annoying coworker (SpongeBob himself, of course, who is also one of two of his annoying next-door neighbors) every day that he does this to get out of work on some occasions, but some of these attempts backfire right in his face.
    • A non-Squidward example is in "Suds", where SpongeBob catches the titular illness by leaving his refrigerator door open all night, causing his house to freeze over. After SpongeBob gets a rather relaxing treatment for it at the doctor's office and gets a giant lollipop out of it, a jealous Patrick briefly pretends to have the same illness in the hopes of getting the same prize. It doesn't work, ending with him getting SpongeBob's treatment in a harsh manner after lying to him and Sandy about the doctor earlier in the episode.
      Patrick: Hey, Doc, I got the suds, too!
      Physician Fish: (Sarcastically) Oh, yes, Dr. Patrick, we have a special treatment for you!
      (Hans takes the guffawing Patrick into the back for his treatment)
      Patrick: (Hans washes him in the sink and painfully stretches out his limbs) Hey, wait! (then rubs him on a cactus) Ouch! Oh, that hurts! (then uses him to clean a toilet) WAIT! HEY, THIS DOESN'T SEEM RIGHT...!
  • In one episode of Strawberry Shortcake, Strawberry finds a fairy with a hurt wing and offers to take care of her until her wing heals. The fairy takes advantage of Strawberry's hospitality and all the attention her friends dote on her, pretending she can't fly even after her wing has healed.
    • Ginger Snap does it in "Ginger Snap's No Light Night of Fright" to try to get out of going on a camp-out because she's scared of the dark, but it doesn't work.
  • In an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, Plucky pretends to be sick to try and get out of a test, and is sent to the school nurse. Unfortunately for him, the nurse (Granny), leaves him in the care of the student nurse, Elmyra. He’s eventually left begging to go back to class and take the test.
  • Thomas & Friends: Two early episodes use this premise. In "Trust Thomas," Gordon advises James to tell Thomas he's sick so Thomas will take his quarry trucks. Their plan falls apart when the trucks take out their frustration with James on Thomas and cause an accident. "Trucks," a later episode (based more closely on the source material) sees Gordon give similar advice to Sir Handel. While repairmen examine him, Peter Sam goes to pick up trucks from the slate mine - and the loaded trucks, thinking he's Sir Handel, break free down the incline and slam into him. Both times, the engine who played sick apologizes to the other engine about the accident and they didn't think it would happen.
  • Tom and Jerry did a variation in which Jerry painted spots on Tom to make him believe he had measles. Tom eventually finds out and goes after Jerry, only to find that now Jerry had the measles for real. Prior to all of this, Tom was pretending to be sick to keep Mammy Two-Shoes from sending him outside in the rain.

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