Basic Trope Description: A deadly disease created by humans.
- Straight: Troperitis, The Plague, was created as a bio-weapon in an army lab.
- Exaggerated:
- It turns out that any disease humanity ever knew was in fact made by them.
- Troperitis was not just man-made, but even its spread around the world is steered by people.
- Downplayed: Troperitis was created by humans as something much milder, but mutated into something deadly after it Escaped from the Lab.
- Justified:
- Troperitis was intended for biological warfare. Then some idiot just had to bring it out to the world.
- Some Mad Scientist had the idea to cull human overpopulation with a deliberate pandemic. Whether or not he expected it to cull off a specific part of the human population or the entirety of humanity is Depending on the Writer.
- Inverted: Mystical Plague
- Subverted: Troperitis is said to have been created in a lab - but it wasn't a human lab, it was created by aliens to support their invasion of Earth.
- Double Subverted: But then we find out that the aliens just stole human plans for a bio-weapon after all, and enslaved some human scientists to work on it in their labs.
- Enforced: The writer aims for An Aesop about the dangers of genetic engineering and weapons of mass destruction.
- Averted: Troperitis is just a disease that crossed the species barrier or came from the wilderness in some other way.
- Parodied: Bio-weapons in an army lab are secretly plotting how to flee and eradicate humanity.
- Zigzagged: There are always new ideas about how Troperitis came over us: first, it looks like Escaped from the Lab, then infected monkeys are caught, then they turn out to have escaped from the bio-weapon lab, later pathogens are found in the water far away...
- Invoked: Dr. Evil deliberately creates Troperitis as a plague to decimate humanity.
- Exploited: To get his Evil Plan in motion, Emperor Evulz causes a containment breach in a bio-weapon lab to trigger a deadly pandemic.
- Defied: The Government stops the bio-weapon project since they rethought and deemed it too unplannable and dangerous at second thought, not to mention the possible consequences if this bio-weapon actually gets out and is spread throughout society.
- Lampshaded: "Everything apparently began in Tropetown - of course! They have this army lab close by!"
- Discussed: "Do you think we humans are now killed by our own creation?" "Well, first cases reported from this town with the army lab and so on...I think it could be true."
- Conversed: "Damn scary...and this virus could be developed somewhere right now."
- Deconstructed: Man-made plague means that there are already people who know everything about it, and can develop a vaccine quite easily. Maybe it was even part of the plan.
- Reconstructed: There was no time to develop the vaccine yet. And Troperitis killed its own developers first.
- Implied:
- Patient Zero worked in a bio-weapon lab.
- A Spreading Disaster Map Graphic shows an army lab as The Plague's ground zero.
- Played for Laughs: Troperitis was made by some nerds and turns anyone infected into other nerds. Finally they have some company.
- Played for Drama: Humans not just have to deal with a deadly disease, but also with the knowledge that they now factually caused their own demise.
