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Minor Symptom Foreshadowing - TV Tropes

  • ️Wed May 29 2024

A cough. A headache. Light nausea. Minor discomfort such as this is no big deal, right? You can just ignore it? It's probably just a slight cold?

In real life, sure. But in fiction, The Law of Conservation of Detail means that if a symptom gets mentioned at all, it's going to be relevant somehow. Keep an eye on those minor symptoms, because they have a very high chance of Foreshadowing. This is either the onset of a more serious condition, or a manifestation of an already serious condition, such as Secretly Dying.

Sub-Tropes

The Inverted Trope of Only a Flesh Wound, where what in real life would be a serious health problem is not a big deal in fiction.

Also see Definitely Just a Cold, where a character writes off serious symptoms as unimportant, but the narrative does not agree with them. For ominous signs that aren't bodily symptoms, see Portent of Doom.

If a character gets sick and recovers all in a single episode, it's Sick Episode.

Examples:

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Comic Books 

  • Batman: In One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze, Nora Fries’s terminal illness begins with a mundane cough and sore throat.
  • The Death of Captain Marvel: Mar-Vell is seen early on coughing badly, but brushing it off initially to his companions. It isn't until he grows lightheaded confronting a group of aliens worshiping the statued form of Thanos that he reveals that, yes, he's dying.

Fan Works 

  • Ghostbusters (1984) fanfic:
    • Under the Weather:
      • Egon mentions he feels hot, then later he has a tickle in his throat, loses his appetite, snores, and, the next morning, is congested. He initially thinks he has allergies, but when he tries to go on a mission and has trouble keeping up with the others, he realises it's a cold.
      • Later, Janine also feels hot, in addition to her eyes streaming. She also thinks it's allergies, but the next morning reveals that she's actually caught Egon's cold.
    • In Driving Dr. Spengler, Winston gets a mild pain in his stomach. He thinks he's okay, but it turns out to be appendicitis.
    • In Love Sick, Egon gets a pain in his side, which later turns out to be appendicitis.
  • No Guts, No Glory: Buttercup has a bad stomachache and spends most of the story trying to cover it up. It turns out to be a Ruptured Appendix and she gets hospitalized for it.

Films — Live-Action 

  • Cast Away: At a dinner party, Chuck bites hard into some food that hurts his tooth. He doesn't have time to see a dentist before taking the trip where his plane goes down. On the island, his agony gets worse and worse over the first few days. It culminates in the scene where he finds a makeshift solution to extract the tooth himself, after which he passes out.
  • Letters from Iwo Jima: During the start of the film, the naval commander Admiral Ohsugi is noted to look thin and sickly compared to the other high-ranking Japanese officers, even occasionally suffering from an Incurable Cough of Death. By the second act, Ohsugi is ultimately forced to leave the island thanks to both his sickly condition and his disagreements with General Kuribayashi, being replaced by Admiral Ichimaru.
  • Superman: The Movie: As the Kents find the baby Kal-El, Martha briefly brings up Jonathan's heart condition, foreshadowing how he dies during Clark's teen years.

Literature 

  • Adrian Mole: In The Prostrate Years, Adrian's prostate cancer is foreshadowed by frequently needing to urinate.
  • The Hole We're In: Carolyn — the Education professor who's having an affair with Roger — concludes one of her chapters in the 1990s feeling a lump under her arm. She disappears from the story after breaking off the affair and Roger finishing his PhD. Her daughter calls Roger in the 2000s and reveals that Carolyn has died after a long battle with cancer.
  • Ramona Quimby: In Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Ramona thinks the spoon she's using to eat oatmeal is feels "heavy", then later that her feet do, and the bus ride to school seems to take longer than usual, and all the while she's feeling very apathetic. This later turns out to be stomach flu. Downplayed Trope, given the level of peril that a slice-of-life children's series deals with.
  • Ranger's Apprentice: In Halt's Peril, Halt takes a scratch from a crossbow bolt in a confrontation with the Genovesan assassins. It bothers him, and he also acts unusually sentimental. Then he begins referring to events and people long past, followed by passing out, and Will and Horace realize something is horribly wrong.
  • Station Eleven: Miranda develops a sore throat while she's on the plane. She goes through several protected hours of denial while getting progressively sicker, before dying on a beach in Malaysia. This is especially notable because she is the only main character confirmed to die of the Georgia Flu.
  • Temeraire: In the second book, Temeraire catches a flu, which is mostly played for humor and cured a few pages later by feeding him a dubious and incredibly noxious mushroom from a Capetown forest. Several books later, it's revealed that the flu is epidemic among British dragons and lethal — Temeraire only experienced its early stages. A huge number have already died by the time Temeraire returns to Britain, where he's immediately dispatched back to Africa in a desperate attempt to find more of the mushrooms.
  • Thinks: Ralph Messenger keeps complaining of indigestion. When he sees the doctor, it is discovered that he has a lump on his liver, which the doctor cannot identify. Ralph suspects it might be cancer, and even starts planning his own suicide. It turns out to be much less harmful than cancer, when he is seen by a liver specialist, and is surgically removed.
  • Torchwood (BBC Books):
    • "Something in the Water": Bob Strong, alongside many people in Wales, begins falling sick with flu-like symptoms, such as a persistent cough. It's one of the earliest symptoms of becoming impregnated with the offspring of a Water Hag, which in males ends with the host's head being brutally torn apart.
    • "The Undertaker's Gift": Ianto begins falling increasingly sick with symptoms such as paleness, sweating, and a rash just below his ribs. It turns out to be Xilobytes eating him from the inside.
  • The Wheel of Time: The protagonist has several bouts of flu-like symptoms in the first book that are revealed to come from him subconsciously beginning to channel the One Power. "Channeling sickness" is universal in those whose powers awaken spontaneously, but without a tutor, it often escalates to a deadly Superpower Meltdown within a few years.

    Moiraine: You felt nothing special at the time, but a week or ten days later you had your first reaction to touching the True Source. Perhaps fever and chills that came on suddenly and put you to bed, then disappeared after only a few hours. None of the reactions, and they vary, lasts more than a few hours...

Live-Action TV 

  • CSI: NY: During "The Ride-In," Mac walks into the Morgue, finds Sid belching and looking a bit queasy, and asks if he's okay. Sid makes light of it, saying he had just finished a spicy meatball sub. Later, Stella arrives at the Morgue and finds Sid passed out on the floor with his cranial saw buzzing beside him. She shouts for help then immediately performs CPR. Another worker rushes in and administers an Epi pen. Sid is rushed to the hospital and later tells Mac he didn't check his sandwich carefully enough for an (unnamed) ingredient that he's allergic to.
  • Frasier: The episode "Bristle While You Work" has Niles dealing with a toothache that turns out to be something more serious concerning his heart that he needs surgery.
  • The George Lopez Show: In "The Kidney Stays in the Picture", Max starts wetting the bed. It's initially played for Toilet Humour until it's revealed that it's actually due to a kidney infection.
  • The Gilded Age: Rev. Luke Forte complains of a bad back soon after getting back from his honeymoon, worsened by carrying Ada over the threshold, and goes to get it looked at. It turns out to be cancer, which is implied to be at a late stage considering how soon after he dies, compounded by the series taking place in a time before chemotherapy. Discussed by Marion and Agnes.

    Agnes: But how can that be? He was here the other day. The only thing wrong with him was a bad back.
    Marion: This one starts with a bad back, and then it spreads.

  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Video Games 

  • Crusader Kings II: Characters who have caught an disease, will start off showing a variety of three symptoms (such as Malaise, Chest pains, Vomiting, Cramp etc.) which due to the game's mechanics will be presented as negative traits, each with its own drawbacks and reduction to overall health, over a brief period of time before its revealed what they actually have (at which point all their earlier symptom traits will disappear to be replaced by the disease), it is only at that stage they can hope to take treatment to cure themselves.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Musosai is an elderly samurai who takes the Warrior of Light as his apprentice. While Musosai's wits are sharp, he falls to his knees from exertion in the Level 58 Samurai quest, worrying the Warrior and their friend Momozigo. Musosai brushes these worries aside, but it's clear to all that the samurai is gravely ill. Indeed, Musosai knows that he doesn't have much time left and forces the Warrior into a life-or-death duel as The Last Dance as the final battle of the Level 60 Samurai quest.

Western Animation 

  • Arthur: At the beginning of "Arthur's Chicken Pox", Arthur says he feels "a bit funny". Later on, it turns out that he has the chicken pox.
  • Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood:
    • In "Daniel Gets a Cold", the kids play a game where they hold their heads upside down, and only Daniel gets dizzy afterward. A few scenes later, he turns out to have a cold.
    • In "Margaret's First Thank You Day", Margaret coughs while on the way to the Thanksgiving ersatz festival. It isn't until quite a while later that she's revealed to have some kind of throat disease and taken home by Mrs. Tiger. This disappoints Daniel, since he wanted to see his sister have her first "Thank You Day".
  • In the earlier scenes of Granpa, Granpa shows minor symptoms of age-related frailty here and there, which are Played for Laughs: e.g. back pain when he dances too energetically with Emily, or dropping off to sleep while trying to read her a bedtime story. By the later scenes, however, it becomes clear that Granpa's health is seriously declining, as he eventually needs a cane to walk. and then becomes confined to his armchair with a blanket on his knees. In the end, he dies.
  • Milly, Molly: Not the books, but in one episode of the cartoon, "Goodbye, Alf". Early on in the episode, Pepper the horse sneezes. Later on, she's revealed to have a serious, potentially fatal, disease, requiring Alf's grandmother to treat her, but she does recover.
  • Miraculous Ladybug: Nathalie Sancouer resorts to using the Peacock Miraculous in order to become Mayura and rescue her boss Hawk Moth after he is pinned down by the heroes. Unfortunately for her, the Peacock Miraculous is damaged, and its powers are unstable, and as she keeps using it in the vain hope of winning Hawk Moth's love through her loyalty, she starts to develop a cough, which then turns into fainting spells and then becomes a degenerative condition that leaves her unable to use her legs without the aid of mechanical braces. Adrien notes that his mom had the same problems just before her "disappearance".
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Hurricane Fluttershy", Thunderlane coughs. Later on, it's revealed that he, and many other flying ponies, have a disease called feather flu.
  • The Owl House: In the episode "The Intruder", Eda becomes seriously drained of energy and starts exhibiting owl-like behavior more frequently after she magically creates a protective forcefield. She's shown to be so exhausted that she falls unconscious while trying to teach Luz her first spell. This is attributed to Cast from Stamina, but later in the episode, it's revealed that Eda has turned into an owl-like monster as the result of a Curse that drains her magic — which is treated much like a fictional chronic disease in the setting.
  • The Real Ghostbusters:
    • "Doctor, Doctor": The team feels tired and sore after a chase resulted in them getting covered in goo, which took a lot of scrubbing to get off. A few minutes later, Egon notices something moving under his skin, and they end up in the hospital, covered in the goo again, with appendages growing out of it.
    • "Ghostworld": Egon sneezes in the middle of saying it's good to be home. Later in the episode, it's revealed he has a cold.
  • The Simpsons: In "Goo Goo Gai Pan", the episode starts with, Selma giving Mr. Burns his driving test to replace his old license. During the test, Selma started experiencing a hot flash, and went through a few mood swings, until she crashed the course. Not too later, she would be sent to the hospital, as it would reveal that Selma went through menopause, as she won’t be able to birth anymore children, saddening Selma.