In real life, symptoms of most mass illnesses tend to be rather similar. Not so in fiction,
where imagination's the limit, leading to superbugs that do anything from disrupt the
space/time continuum to make people give birth to dinosaurs. These are the craziest fictional
diseases from movies and TV.
The world depicted in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, adapted into
the hit HBO series Game of Thrones, is chock full of scary, ugly, and disturbing things,
from wrongful beheadings to hellish weddings. In this land of dark magic and deception,
though, one of the most disturbing ailments is greyscale, a highly infectious disease
that slowly turns a person's skin hard, cracked, and stone-like.
"Stone Men. Good luck stopping the spread of greyscale with prayer. You'd have better
luck dancing away the plague."
Just the slightest touch from someone's infected skin will rub off, meaning that all patients
must be strictly quarantined to prevent a greyscale pandemic. To make matters worse,
the maesters believe that while a person can live with greyscale for a few decades, it'll
only takes around six months for the infection to creep into a person's mind, rendering them
psychotic.
So, if you're creeping around Essos and catch this horrifying ailment on, say, your arm,
what's a person to do? Immediate treatment from the right doc seems to have some effect,
as seen with Shireen Baratheon, who managed to get away with only half her face being
damaged. The standard treatment, on the other hand, is The Walking Dead approach of just
severing the infected area. That said, the bright and brilliant Samwell Tarly did eventually
figure out a way to completely cure this "incurable" disease, to the relief of every germaphobe
in Westeros.
The gritty 2002 horror flick 28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy and Naomie Harris,
often gets praised as one of the all-time great zombie apocalypse flicks. And, to be
fair, it is one of the best. For sure. Except, well, there aren't really any zombies in it.
As die hard fans are now tumbling over one another to point out, 28 Days Later actually
depicts the gory results of a so-called "Rage Virus."
"Infected with what?" "To cure, you must first understand…"
"Infected with what?" "Rage."
This contagion infects living humans instead of dead ones, is derived from Ebola, and has
often been compared to a sci-fi version of rabies. The virus is transmitted through either
saliva or blood, and once a person becomes infected, their conscious brain is overwhelmed
by the mindless, bloodthirsty urge to commit violence and devastation, accompanied by hemorrhaged
capillaries, for requisite horror movie effect, which cause these poor individuals to bleed
from their eyes, nose, and mouth.
Where did such a nightmarish disease come from? A lab, of course. The first sequence
of 28 Days Later depicts a group of well-intentioned activists breaking experimented chimpanzees
out of a lab, and accidentally getting infected as a result. Lest you think humankind would
get this kind of thing under control, well, don't forget that there's a sequel, titled
28 Weeks Later.
Time travel simply doesn't make sense. Such is the nature of the beast. Whether you try
to explain it by shrinking down into the quantum realm, or hitting the gas on a groovy DeLorean,
you'll be dealing with paradoxes and phony science jargon. So hey, why not say it's caused
by a disease?
Enter The Time Traveler's Wife, a novel by Audrey Niffenegger which was adapted into
the 2009 Rachel McAdams/Eric Bana film of the same name, and depicts the heartbreaking
relationship between an ordinary woman and her husband, Henry. This fellow suffers from
a rare condition known as Chrono-Displacement Disorder, which causes him to unwillingly
travel through the past or future, though not sequentially, leading to such incidents
as him disappearing at a time of great stress, or his adult self meeting his future wife
when she's still a young girl.
"Barrel of laughs, first he beats up a guy in the alley and then we burglarize the army
navy store. And then he tells me that he's a time traveler."
This obviously fictional condition leaves the poor guy stranded and naked in random
times, leaving a pile of clothes behind him - kind of like a time-hopping Bruce Banner,
who you might remember Bana also playing back in 2003 - and thereby making the most unimaginably
epic relationship challenge for a timeless love story.
When you're living in the 24th century, in a timeline wherein interplanetary alliances
are a thing, utopian ideals are something everybody strives for, and a cup of coffee
comes from the same machine that makes your boots, you can't expect the human race to
still be bothered by any of the old-school, Earthly diseases of the 20th and/or 21st century.
Those were cured centuries ago. Unfortunately, humankind's desire to propel themselves through
space does result in people getting infected with freaky galactic diseases instead.
Take Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome, aka the intron virus, as depicted by Star Trek:
The Next Generation. This disease was named after its progenitor, the Enterprise NCC-1701-D's
Lieutenant Reginald Barclay, and is the result of Dr. Beverly Crusher using synthetic T-cells
to treat an infection.
The symptoms? Well, it starts with ordinary things like anxiety, fever, and chills, and
then causes those who are infected to, uh, "de-evolve," meaning that crew members physically
transform into earlier life forms from their respective home worlds, including primates,
an amphibious human, and a spidery arachnid creature.
Thankfully, yes, they do find a cure. After all, this is Star Trek, not Alien.
Many fictional diseases are wild, wacky afflictions that seem about as realistic as your average
Fast and Furious flick.
On the other hand, leave it to Stephen King to come up with something altogether more
horrifying. While King's novel The Stand - later adapted into a cult classic nineties TV miniseries
- is most remembered for being a truly biblical showdown between the forces of good and evil,
the whole shebang launches with a disease outbreak that, at the very least, feels frighteningly
real.
"What's he got, you got any idea?"
"Maybe it's food poisoning, you know, he's got California plates, maybe he got some bad
chow at a roadside stand or something."
The disease in question is Captain Trips, aka the Blue virus and/or tube neck, and it
leads to the decimation of 99 percent of Earth's population. Of course, it doesn't start that
way. Originally developed as a biological weapon, Captain Trips initially manifests
as nothing worse than a common cold, before it mutates to survive any medicines or interventions
used against it. It ends with delirium, crippling body aches, and death... unless, that is,
you're one of the very few humans who is immune.
While 1994's The Stand series has its fans, it won't be the last time Captain Trips rears
its menacing head, as the book is set for a new television adaptation from Josh Boone,
according to Den of Geek.
Futurama fans might remember "That Guy," aka Steve Castle, the slick businessman from the
eighties who was basically an animated version of hedge fund guy and former White House communications
director Anthony Scaramucci a good number of years before anybody knew who Scaramucci
was.
As depicted in the episode "Future Stock," Castle cryogenically froze himself back in
the 20th century due to a terminal diagnosis of so-called "Boneitis," and upon his reawakening
in the year 3002, he swiftly applies his ruthless, dog-eat-dog mentality to the poor denizens
of the future.
"Naturally, I froze myself until a cure was found. And now here I am, ready to sleaze
my way back to the top, '80s style."
Unfortunately for him, he gets so busy making more cash and buying people off that he forgets
to treat his condition, leading to the Boneitis suddenly acting up in fast-motion, and presumably
killing him. Futurama doesn't waste a lot of time explaining the rules of this made-up
disease, and why would they? But based on Castle's death scene, it appears to suddenly,
and dramatically, cause a person's entire skeleton to contort and break down in mere
seconds, without any warning signs. Yikes.
Waylon Jones, aka Killer Croc, is one of those fringe Gotham City rogues that geeks love,
but casual fans haven't quite figured out. Part of the problem, frankly, is that Croc's
signature disease has been wildly inconsistent, whether in the comics, Batman: The Animated
Series, or Suicide Squad.
Early appearances usually tagged him as a regular guy with an unfortunate skin condition
resembling epidermolytic hyperkeratosis, but he now regularly pops up with a dinosaur snout,
a tail, and an appetite for human flesh.
In the cartoon world, he went from five fingers to four, gray skin to green, and somehow developed
the ability to eat an entire chicken in a few bites. This is a far cry from the character's
origins.
So, what's the deal? What kind of disease starts out as scaly skin, then turns you into
a living crocodile?
These days, Jones is generally described as having "regressive atavism," which results
in scaly, bulletproof skin, super strength, and enhanced senses. It certainly isn't meant
to describe a person getting more crocodile-like with every passing year. Regardless, Croc's
disease also seems to affect his mind, since he has also gotten increasingly animalistic.
When it comes to cinematic visions of a dystopian future, Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film Children
of Men had proved eerily prescient, with the one least accurately predictive part being
the film's central premise: a mysterious pandemic. In the film, though, it actually renders the
human race infertile, meaning that at the time in which the movie is set, no new human
beings have been born in 18 years.
"We all know this government would never acknowledge the first human birth in 18 years from a fugee."
This quiet killer, effectively, means that mass extinction is only a matter of time,
with no bombs needed to do the job. Realistic or not, it's a haunting vision of how the
human race could die out.
Now, as for the disease itself? It is largely unnamed and unexplored within Children of
Men, though its implications are obviously terrifying. Regardless, the story does point
toward the species developing a form of immunity, seeing as the primary narrative thrust is
the effort to protect Kee, the first pregnant woman that the Earth has seen in decades.
The original 1968 Planet of the Apes shows an Earth dominated by apes, with humans as
their slaves, and Tim Burton's remake did... well, something sorta similar, but with a
darker vibe. But a large part of what made the Planet of the Apes trilogy of the 2010s
stand out was its willingness to pull back the curtain, set its story in the present
day, and depict how the planet could suddenly get overtaken by non-human primates. The cause?
"It's a virus. We don't know the human-related effects."
Simian flu, to be precise.
The simian flu of the films is the result of humans monkeying about with diseases. It
starts life as ALZ-113, an Alzheimer's cure developed by James Franco's character, Dr.
Will Rodman, which he moves forward on way too quickly, in an effort to help his ailing
father. Unfortunately, simian flu winds up being deadly for humans, and a later evolution
of it goes a step further, by turning humans voiceless and animalistic. Rodman's not-so-miracle
virus works amazingly on apes, though, causing the brains of chimpanzees like Caesar to evolve
into brilliant creatures possessing human-like intelligence.
For those who missed out, and those who might've been too young to buy tickets, Carnosaur was
the sleazy, Roger Corman-produced B-movie Jurassic Park meets Alien ripoff that you
never asked for, and probably never wanted. And if the whole shebang wasn't hokey enough,
it was also thrown together just fast enough to hit theaters a week before Stephen Spielberg's
own dinosaur epic, presumably hoping to snag some confused - and horrified - parents with
their kids.
"That's really fabulous. Make a great theme park."
The so-called "plot" of Carnosaur, murky as it may be, revolves around a mad scientist,
Dr. Tiptree, who genetically engineers... a virus. And when women catch the virus, it
causes them to become pregnant with dinosaurs. Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds, and
it plays on screen just as ridiculously, complete with mindlessly gory chest-burster scenes
of dinosaurs babies erupting from impregnated humans.
Nobody involved with Carnosaur was aiming for cinematic greatness, and as far as movie
viruses go, this is definitely one of the freakier ones.
By now, it goes without saying that the living, extraterrestrial robots from the planet Cybertron,
whether they be Autobot or Decepticon, are no ordinary hunks of machinery - and not just
because they can transform into cars. The Transformers are sentient, emotional creatures,
capable of feeling love and loss, or being killed in action. This is what makes them
so endearing, but unfortunately, it also means that they can fall prey to diseases.
Now, while human ailments won't catch onto a Transformer's steel hide, the alien plague
known as cosmic rust is a serious condition. First depicted in the classic eighties cartoon,
and displayed as a series of moldy streaks across a Transformer's body, cosmic rust is
caused by a microorganism that eats away through a Cybertronian's metal body until nothing
remains.
The condition is curable, but can easily become fatal if not treated. Later Transformers media,
including the film Transformers: Dark of the Moon, have shown the disease being weaponized,
in the form of grenades, cannons, and so on. Scary stuff… if you're a robot.
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