Basic Trope: A character conceals a disability.
- Straight: Bob is blind, but nobody knows.
- Exaggerated:
- Nobody knows that Bob has a spinal injury which paralyzes him from the neck down.
- Bob goes to absurd lengths to hide his trick knee.
- Downplayed:
- Bob has a trick knee, but nobody knows.
- Bob is blind and only a few confidants know.
- Justified:
- The organization Bob works for (or where he's applying to work) won't allow disabled people, whether for a good or bad reason, so he acts as though he's not.
- Bob wants to avoid being discriminated against.
- Bob isn't one to bring up his blindness in every discussion he engages in, due to the personal and sensitive nature of the topic.
- Inverted:
- Obfuscating Disability.
- Bob is blind and doesn't bother withholding his disability from others.
- Subverted: Bob's boss Charlie gets papers saying Bob is legally blind — but then when he tests his vision with an eye chart, he passes.
- Double Subverted: ...But it turns out Bob had Alice help him with the vision test. He really is blind.
- Parodied: Bob says "I have all my original body parts and they are all in good working order" apropos of nothing to everybody who even greets him. Nobody questions this assertion.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob is open about being blind, but keeps the fact that he has a trick knee hidden.
- Averted: No one is disabled or hiding anything.
- Enforced: The producers want An Aesop about accepting disabled people for who they are, and they decide that would be best served by introducing a character who feels compelled to hide their disability to avoid discrimination.
- Implied: Bob is not shown actively working to hide his blindness, but he acts in such a manner that a casual observer wouldn't notice it, and no one around him appears to know about it.
- Lampshaded: "For somebody who can see, Bob has many mannerisms associated with someone who can't."
- Invoked: Bob thinks less of himself for being blind and thinks others will, too.
- Exploited: Dan, the Professional Slacker in the office, blackmails Bob and enjoys watching him squirm.
- Defied: Charlie runs extensive tests and gets medical papers from all his employees so that nobody could conceal a disability from him.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob finds it increasingly difficult to avoid situations where his blindness would be revealed, casting suspicion on himself.
- Bob attempts to do something that would be outright impossible for a blind person to do safely, and causes a serious accident.
- Played for Drama: Bob feels he has to hide his handicap from everyone, and the inability to let his guard down around anyone for fear of revealing his secret leaves him desperately lonely.
- Played for Laughs: Bob makes a feeble attempt at hiding his blindness, but constantly bumps into things. Despite that, no one around him suspects anything.
Back to Hiding the Handicap
