Basic Trope: A character has a disease that is implied to be a particular one, but it isn't named.
- Straight: Alice has seizures and it seems like epilepsy, but nowhere is the word "epilepsy" actually said.
- Exaggerated: Even doctors and nurses who know Alice's condition don't say it.
- Downplayed: Alice is said to have a seizure disorder, and the signs point to photosensitive epilepsy, but the phrase "photosensitive epilepsy" isn't said.
- Justified:
- Alice lives in a time period where no one knew what epilepsy was.
- Alice doesn't bother going to the doctor, so even she herself doesn't know why she has seizures.
- Inverted:
- Alice is said to have epilepsy but it seems more like narcolepsy.
- Alice mentions her epilepsy every few sentences.
- Subverted: Alice has seizures and people make references to her "condition", which is eventually revealed as epilepsy in the last scene.
- Double Subverted: In the sequel, Bob has a disease which is implied, but never stated, to be AIDS.
- Parodied: Alice clearly has a splinter, but the other characters go out of their way to avoid referring to it as one.
- Zigzagged:
- Averted: Alice is clearly described as epileptic.
- Enforced:
- At the time the work was created, epilepsy was such a taboo that even saying the word for it was shocking.
- The creator is superstitious and wrote the work while pregnant, and she thinks that if she mentions epilepsy, her baby will grow up to be epileptic.
- The creator can't be bothered researching epilepsy, so if she gets something wrong, she can easily point out, "I never said it was epilepsy..."
- At the time the work was created, epilepsy wasn't discovered.
- The work is (at least partially) a Name the condition exercise for medics (in training).
- Lampshaded: "This is Alice. She has a severe case of probably-epilepsy-but-no-one-calls-it-that."
- Invoked: Alice decides to never tell anyone what she has, after the doctor whispers it to her.
- Exploited:
- Defied: "I... have... EPILEPSY!!"
- Discussed: "Why does no one outright say what Alice has?!"
- Conversed: "Why can't that movie/book/TV show/etc just say, 'epilepsy'? It's not a swear word!"
- Implied:
- Deconstructed: Since no one says what Alice has, nobody knows, putting Alice's health in danger.
- Reconstructed: Alice lets the characters know her condition via a Silent Whisper, but the audience is left in the dark.
- Played for Laughs: Alice's illness is treated like a mind-raping Eldritch Abomination and that so much as uttering it's name, of course rendered in incomprehensible black speech, would drive the speaker to blabbering insanity. It's a common respiratory illness.
- Played for Drama: A Downplay of Soap Opera Disease; Alice is terminally ill with a vaguely defined disease, but this time it acts like a certain disease (maybe cancer or TB).
- Played for Horror: Alice's disease that shall not be named is lycanthropy.
Back to The Disease That Shall Not Be Named
