Basic Trope Description: The first infectee of The Plague or The Virus.
- Straight: Alice was the first person to ever get infected with Troperitis.
- Exaggerated:
- In a world with no disease up until now, Alice is the first person to ever get sick.
- There is more than one Patient Zero.
- Downplayed: Alice wasn't the first person infected with Troperitis, but the first one to spread the virus to others.
- Justified:
- Alice worked on Troperitis, a Synthetic Plague, and caused the lab accident that made it escape due to being The Klutz.
- Alice was personally selected for being the Troperitis test subject, but the scientists experimenting on her made the mistake of accidentally exposing her to society. Cue the mass disease!
- Alice was out in the rainforest as a scientist and happened to get bitten by an infected bat.
- Inverted: Alice is the last person ever to be infected with Troperitis.
- Subverted: Alice is believed to have been the first one to be infected. But the bat that bit her and gave her the virus was a human once.
- Double Subverted: The virus as it is known came to be in Alice's body due to a mutation.
- Enforced: The writers are setting up a Find the Cure! plot.
- Averted: It is never known who the first Troperitis patient was.
- Zigzagged: Due to a very variable incubation period, it is hard to trace the infection chain back. Alice is believed to have been Patient Zero...but no, she got it from Bob, who is a Typhoid Mary. But Bob got it originally from Alice, and Alice has met another bat scientist the week before she fell sick, who got sick some days later...
- Parodied: Alice has to wear a sign spelling "I am the one who infected everyone" around her neck.
- Lampshaded: "You were the first, Alice. You are maybe carrying the unmutated strain."
- Discussed: You say I was the first?" "Yes, and that is the reason your cooperation could help us finding the cure."
- Conversed: "You were the one who made everyone sick. Imagine living with that knowledge."
- Deconstructed: Even in Alice's body, the virus isn't the unmutated strain anymore. So it is pretty useless to know that she was Patient Zero.
- Reconstructed: Alice allows to be researched on anyway, what gives away valuable clues about the virus.
- Implied: Alice is the first one ever who shows symptoms of Troperitis.
Back to Patient Zero
