Bubble Boy

Someone living in a bubble—literally.

The usual reason is because the Bubble Boy or Girl possesses a weak immune system or other serious illness and simply can not venture out into the world without protection. Any attempt to do so would prove nearly or completely fatal. So obviously this trope is almost always played for comedy. Either it will set up a situation where characters are expected to treat someone like a woobie when they're all Jerkass, or they'll be in a mobile hamster ball that's used for physical humor. If the bubble is broken, expect the character to be fine. Serious depictions are rarer, but can be good.

Frequently The Woobie as a result.

Example:

Anime and Manga

• In Fullmetal Alchemist, the original Homunculus who later became "Father" was an amorphous alchemic creation who could not survive outside of a specially-prepared flask. He then made a new "flask" that's essentially a human body.

Film

• The movie Bubble Boy. It turned out his immune system recovered several years prior and he no longer needed the bubble - it was just a way for his mother to control his life.
• The more obscure and insane Crystal Heart. How insane? It includes a scene where the main character and Tawny Kitaen have "sex" by rubbing on either side of a crystal window. Nuff said.
• The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, starring John Travolta in the title role. A made for TV movie Very Loosely Based on a True Story (See Real Life). It became the Trope Codifier and the inspiration for most of the works who employed the trope.

Literature

• Royd Eris, the captain of the ship in the George R. R. Martin short story "Nightflyers", is this trope in space. He was born on his ship and has never set foot outside it, and when he takes on passengers (which is rare), the section of the ship that they are allowed into is totally cut off from his own section.
• Inverted in one of the stories from Palahnuik's Haunted, in which young carriers of lethal viruses are quarantined at a secret government facility so their ailments won't overwhelm everybody else's immune systems. So far as the isolated kids' lives are concerned, it's the same trope: sterile housing, airtight suits to wear outdoors, and no physical contact with other humans unless another kid with the same strain shows up.
• The Hitek in Man After Man, due to being crippled by an accumulation of genetic flaws, must spend their lives sealed in cybernetic exoskeletons.

Live Action TV

• The Seinfeld episode "Bubble Boy." The Bubble Boy was a bit of a Jerkass though.
• The made-for-TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, starring John Travolta as a kid born with an immune-deficiency disorder who had to live in a germ-free environment. It was based on two Real Life people, David Vetter and Ted DeVita.
• The My Name Is Earl episode "Joy in a Bubble."
• On Northern Exposure Anthony Edwards played a man who had developed severe allergies to artificial materials (basically, to US civilization). His whole house was encased in a bubble. At one point he borrowed a space suit from Maurice (a former astronaut) to go among the townsfolk.
• Though not quite a bubble, a teenage girl on House who'd just undergone a heart transplant was confined to her sterile bedroom by her germ-paranoid mother.

Newspaper Comics

• Pearls Before Swine: Pig's sister Farina lives in a plastic bubble, though not because of her immune system but because she's a germaphobe. Shockingly, though, she's actually let other suitors like Dilbert and Hagar the Horrible inside, which drives her lover Rat insane.

Video Games

• The entire quarian race in Mass Effect. Tali, your Quarian teammate, is much more of a woobie than the rest of her people, though.
• A girl in Growlanser III, though it's more of a clean room than a bubble. One of the game's potential love interests can cure her, after which she can become a love interest herself.

Web Animation

• This happens in an episode of Weebl and Bob where a boy in a bubble (named "Bubble Boy") asks if Weebl's clean and if he can use his toilet. However he refuses to come out for fear of "the germs" (that's why he's in the bubble in the first place) and starts urinating in his bubble, and drowns in his own wee.

Webcomic

• Guardian Angel's Barrier Warrior powers in PS238 have effectively made her this. Since nothing even temporarily harmful can reach her, she can't be immunized, and since the barrier keeps all disease away from her, she has never developed an immune system.

Western Animation

• White Knight of Generator Rex keeps himself in a sealed room after an accident that cleansed him completely of the nanites that have infected everyone on the planet. Notable in that it's very hard to sympathize with him due to it being willing. And that he's a big jerk.
  • White Knight explains that since he is the only person on the planet not infected with nanites, he is only person who can be fully trusted to not turn into an EVO and turn on his allies. Given his fear of germs, he probably would be quite happy to stay in his clean room even if it didn't give him a position of authority.
• In the Family Guy episode "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz", Stewie ends up one of these after a botched baptism makes him sick.
• Ned was stuck in a bubble in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.
• My Gym Partner's a Monkey has this episode where Adam has to be in a bubble because he was thought of having allergies. His animal schoolmates were even jealous about him.
• SpongeBob SquarePants when he gets infected with the "ick".
• The main characters of Recess ended up in one of these when they faked the symptoms of a severe illness (they were aiming for a more minor one but Gretchen messed up).
• The Simpsons episode "Little Girl in the Big Ten" had Bart in a bubble to prevent others from getting sick after being infected with the contagious "Panda Virus" from being bitten by a Chinese mosquito that was in a Krusty Burger toy.
• Boog in Fanboy and Chum Chum lived in a plastic bubble during his childhood because he had an air allergy.
• Batman Beyond: Scientists develop a special iso-field to envelope people like this. Unfortunatly someone weaponizes this into an impenetrable force field.
• Carl in Jimmy Neutron becomes a Bubble Boy when a disease is going around town.
• On KaBlam!, a Sniz and Fondue cartoon had Fondue moving into a sanitized bubble habitat after being freaked out by a documentary on skin parasites Sniz showed him.
• Cameron from Total Drama: Revenge of the Island, who admits to having an overprotective mom and has never really done much outside of the bubble before auditioning for the show at age 16. He doesn't seem to mind the bubble, though, and even cries out for it in one of the challenges. He struggles through the show so that that prize money can go towards more oxygen to pump into the bubble, but by the end, he decides that since he left the show in one piece, he won't need it.

Real Life

• David Vetter was the inspiration for The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, and thus many of the works that were inspired by it. He lived till the age of 12 where he died from a failed bone marrow transplant. The psychological effects of being a 'bubble boy' were ... not pretty.
• Ted DeVita was the other person used as an inspiration for The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.
• In some places you can pay to be encapsulated in a giant hamster-ball-style bubble and run along plains for a set amount of time. This is a sport called Zorbing.