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Playing With / Pull the I.V.

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Basic Trope: A hospitalized character yanks out their IV.

  • Straight: After being beaten up quite badly by Irene's mooks, Philip wakes up in hospital with an IV. Hungry for revenge against her, he pulls it out and leaves the hospital.
  • Exaggerated: Philip wakes up with dozens of tubes in him. He removes them all and leaves the hospital.
  • Downplayed: After hearing that the IV is just a painkiller or something similarly non-vital, Philip carefully removes it.
  • Justified:
    • Irene is a dangerous criminal, and Philip figures out that leaving her alone is riskier than forgoing his treatment.
    • Philip believes, correctly or not, that the doctors want to poison him.
    • Philip wakes up in hospital after a suicide attempt, and doesn't want to be saved.
    • Philip is critically ill. The IV is just prolonging his life. He feels that he has nothing to lose, so he decides to spend his last days fighting Irene instead of dying in hospital.
    • Phillip has a Healing Factor. The IV is quite literally wasted on him.
  • Inverted: Because all the doctors and nurses are busy, Philip has to insert his IV himself.
  • Subverted: Philip grabs the IV, but at the last second, he decides to send his ally Tom to deal with Irene instead.
  • Double Subverted: When Philip hears that Tom was kidnapped by Irene's accomplices, he decides to take matters into his own hands, pulls out the IV and tries to track down Irene and rescue Tom.
  • Parodied:
    • Philip wakes up in the middle of a lung transplant. He stitches himself together and goes to get revenge on Irene. He has no lungs, but isn't particularly bothered by that.
    • After being beaten up quite badly by Irene's mooks, Philip wakes up in hospital with a colostomy bag. Hungry for revenge against her, he pulls it out and leaves the hospital.
  • Zig Zagged: Philip wakes up, yanks out the IV, yelps in pain, and begrudgingly eases the needle back in. When we see him escape from the hospital later, he has an IV bag under his shirt: He doesn't rip it out for good until the end of the film.
  • Averted:
    • Philip follows the Doctor's Orders and stays in hospital for as long as he's supposed to.
    • Philip drags his IV drip around him.
  • Enforced: The author thinks this looks cool.
  • Lampshaded: "Doctor, the patient just removed his IV!"
  • Invoked: Tom encourages Philip to skip the medical care and go back to get revenge against Irene.
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: The doctors and nurses monitor Philip to make sure that he doesn't try to sabotage his treatment.
  • Discussed: "This IV is giving you an important medicine. You must not try to remove it."
  • Conversed: "Why do they always drag out their IVs? What if it's keeping them alive?
  • Implied: Philip escapes after being hospitalized. A slightly bloody IV needle is seen on his bed.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Philip's wound gets infected.
    • It turns out that the IV was saving Philip's life. He dies painfully as a consequence of removing it.
  • Reconstructed:
  • Played For Laughs: Philip wakes up, notices the IV, Screams Like a Little Girl because he's Afraid of Needles and quickly yanks it out.
  • Played For Drama: Philip wakes up in hospital, knowing that Irene and her accomplices are still out there. When he grabs his IV, Diane the doctor informs him that he has been poisoned and will die painfully without treatment. He hesitates for a moment to consider his options before deciding that he will do everything within his power to destroy Irene. He yanks out the IV with a determined look on his face while Diane looks at him in disbelief, wanting to save him but knowing that she isn't allowed to force treatment upon him.

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