Basic Trope: A character is sick but pretends not to be.
- Straight: Alice tells Bob that she is perfectly fine despite the fact that she is coughing and her voice is hoarse.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice tells Bob that she is perfectly fine despite the fact that she is coughing up blood and vomiting.
- Alice is just outright Secretly Dying.
- Downplayed: Alice tells Bob that she is slightly sick, but that she doesn't feel that bad.
- Justified: Bob will become extremely worried if he knows Alice is sick, and she doesn't want him to stress out.
- Averted:
- Alice tells Bob that she is sick.
- Alice isn't sick, so she is telling the truth. It's just that it's pollen season today, which makes her sneeze a lot.
- Inverted: Playing Sick
- Subverted:
- Alice thought she was sick when she told Bob she wasn't, but when she checks her temperature, she doesn't have a fever! Seems like she really is healthy...
- Alice is Playing Sick by pretending to be "toughing it out".
- Double Subverted: ...until she learns she has a disease without fever symptoms. Or that she's actually immune to the disease, which still poses a risk of spreading to others.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice tells Bob she is feeling fine even though she is sick. The next time she gets sick, she tells him the truth. She gets sick again and lies again.
- Parodied: Bob offers to take Alice to the hospital. She says "OK, but don't think this means I'm sick!"
- Enforced: Bob and Alice's wedding is coming up, and the writers forgot about this when deciding to make Alice sick. They don't want to delay the wedding episode because of the sickness.
- Lampshaded: "Alice isn't feeling well, but she tried to insist she was fine."
- Implied: When Bob asks Alice how she is feeling, she says she is fine, but then she coughs and Bob looks worried. It's never addressed if she was coughing because she was sick.
- Defied: Even though she really wants to spend the day with Bob, Alice chooses not to lie about her condition, not wanting him to get sick too.
- Discussed: "Why do people pretend to be healthy when they aren't? They could be getting other people sick!"
- Conversed: "Don't pretend you're healthy like in those sitcoms. Anyone can see you aren't feeling well."
- Deconstructed: Alice gets Bob sick after convincing him to hang out with her. He gets really angry at her for lying to him.
Go back to cough Feigning Healthiness! Don't worry, I'm perfectly [cough] fine!
