Convenient Coma

Dr. Wilson: I thought you had lunch with coma guy.

Dr. House: This is persistent vegetative state guy, much more interesting.

—House

In Real Life, having a friend or family member fall into a coma is a heart wrenching tragedy. On the one hand they are physically present and alive... but for all intents and purposes they are dead. Waiting for a family member to come out of a coma can be like a slow, painful torture that might never end.

Not so in fiction.

In Medical Dramas and Live Action TV series, coming out of a coma isn't a matter of if, but when. More often than not it's an ideal way to have a character Put on a Bus without dropping a bridge on them (never burn drop a bridge you may want the casting department to cross again, eh?). If a Superhero's Secret Identity is exposed, a Convenient Coma to the hapless discoverer solves those dangling plot threads without resorting to killing or changing the status quo. Speaking of killing, it's also a good way for moralistic heroes to do away with a bad guy without losing their no-killing reputation. Of course, the coma was the villain's own fault.

A favorite for writers is that as soon as the hero clears the table and is ready to settle down with his first love, that plucky Unlucky Childhood Friend turned Human Popsicle will wake up and be a Fish Out of Water. Oblivious to all the extant romantic Character Development, she reintroduces entire layers of confusion, angst, guilt, and other soap opera staples to the once clean equation. The same is true for villains or people who found out the hero's secret ID.

If they're not long term, comas are usually treated as the step before death for someone who's ill. Being told that the patient has "slipped into a coma" is generally a signal to the heroes to hurry up and find the cure. Staying beside and talking to the comatose person, often in shifts to allow each character in an ensemble to pour their hearts out, is usually a given. Expect a Mistimed Revival to result just as they leave. If they don't make it in time, the comatose friend will invariably wake up, say they heard everything, and deliver a heartwrenching Final Speech before quietly slipping off.

Sometimes, interrogating a comatose person for info will start to wake him up, or at least spike his EKG or EEG. He is then a Comatose Canary. In Speculative Fiction stories, heroes with Telepathy or telepahy-like technology may try an Orphean Rescue to wake them up. Other times, the coma is caused by an Astral Projection gone Horribly Wrong.

The comatose person may start waking up either with the eyes or the fingers.

Many a pregnant comatose mother will give birth while in a coma, at times resulting in spectacularly tragic Death by Childbirth as the mother never sees the child.

Expect the comatose person to wake up with selective memory problems. May overlap with Angst Coma, in which the coma is either caused by the sufferer's personal problems, or cured by dealing with them, or both. Compare Empty Shell.

Examples of Convenient Coma include:

Comatose Childbirth

Film

• Another case of 'pregnant in a coma': the Bride from Kill Bill, who got a bullet in the head by Bill himself after taking a hell of a beating from her fellow Deadly Vipers while she was pregnant. It's a wonder the kid even made it to term, really.
• The Pedro Almodovar film Talk to Her is about two men who visit two comatose women at hospital. one of them impregnates the one he visits.

Literature

• In Wicked (the book version) Elphaba gives birth to Liir while in a fugue state. Not quite a coma, but close enough.
• In De Vere Stacpoole's original The Blue Lagoon novel, Emmeline comes walking out of the forest with the baby she had a few hours earlier. She explains to Richard that she felt ill, went to sit in the forest, and then "remembered nothing more" until she woke to find the little creature lying beside her. Apparently she remembers more about the birth later.
• This happens to the titular character Karen in Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma. She gets pregnant a few hours before falling into a coma for seventeen years.

Live-Action TV

• Meg on Veronica Mars. Originally was supposed to have died in the season two bus crash/explosion, network meddling led to Meg surviving and for added trauma, pregnant with Veronica's old flame Duncan Kane's child. She ultimately woke up long enough to give birth and warn Duncan and Veronica to not let her family raise the child, before Rob Thomas could finally kill her off via her dropping dead from an sudden aneurysm.
• All My Children's Kendall was in a coma when she gave birth to Spike. This led to much argument over whether to deliver him early (risking his health) or wait until he was stronger (risking the mother's health.)
  • As of this writing, she's in a coma again (not pregnant this time) to allow Alicia Minshew to go on her honeymoon.

Happy Place Comas

Comic Books

• In the Superman story "For the Man Who Has Everything..." (by Alan Moore), Superman has an alien parasite attached to him which grants his fondest fantasy; a normal life on Krypton. He has to force himself to deny the fantasy to wake up and save his friends.
  • In the animated adaptation in the series Justice League Unlimited, Batman and Wonder Woman manage to help him, by disrupting its hold when trying to pull it off, allowing him to shake himself awake by realizing that Krypton's survival is false—only for the parasite to end up on Batman, of course being Batman he breaks himself out quite quickly, after watching his dad savagely beat the living daylights out of the mugger who should have killed him. (Wonder Woman didn't get away unscathed, either: while this was going on, she had to fight Mongul, who had sent the thing to Clark in the first place.)

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of Supernatural a Djinn did this to Dean.
• Earl and his fantasy of "The Hickey's" in My Name Is Earl.

Video Games

• Fei in Xenogears had an inner child personality that was functionally comatose and constantly reliving his happiest memories. Of course, Fei himself was in a coma as well for a while there.

Medical Drama Comas

Film

• Talk to Her: The entire premise of this film is: "Will the girls wake up?" Where, in real life, there is usually little question and the person simply stays that way until he or she dies.

Live-Action TV

• House woke up a comatose guy just to ask him some questions.
  • As the page quote can attest, House also tends to use the comatose patients' rooms as his personal cafeteria, since that way no one bothers him.
    • Plus their rooms have cable.
  • Also as the quote attests, House woke up "Vegetative State Guy" and the method he used would only work once due to the body gaining a resistance. "Coma Guy" is somebody else and he's still in a coma.
  • Also, many episodes include the patient of the week slipping into a coma. This adds the urgency and time limit for House&company to find out what's wrong with them.
  • Alternatively the doctors sometimes deliberately put the patient into a chemically-induced coma, in one case to initiate rapid cocaine detoxing.
• Grey's Anatomy does the exact same thing with "Really Old Guy", who's in a coma. I think a year after House did it. Lazy Grey's Anatomy.

Web Original

• Tuck in The Saga of Tuck is in a short coma after a vicious criminal assault.

Western Animation

• On Futurama, the only role Bender was suited for in All My Circuits was a comatose robot. On another episode, Leela goes into a coma after a space wasp sting, although the episode actually follows Leela as she dreams Fry died trying to save her from being stung. Her dream gradually keeps getting stranger, and it seems she's going insane from guilt over Fry's death. The audience isn't shown that Leela was comatose until right before she wakes up.

Put on a Bus Comas

Anime and Manga

• In Bleach, Komamura was put into a coma after his fight with Tenken in the Zanpaktou arc. Since the last time we see him (episode 235) until the end of episode 253 (near the end of the arc, it ends at episode 255) he's unconcious, he presumably stays this way until then. Since he hasn't done anything in the other filler arcs, this troper wonders if this was the writer's way of keeping him out of the arc this time. When he starts slaying Gillians, it's revealed that he's still sore from that fight.
  • Made worse that in the long run, both Sajin and Tenken wind up pointless to the arc. There is no interaction between them after that fight, in the final battle, Tenken stands behind Komamura but it's like he never existed. The fans of Koma were not pleased at this.
• In Naruto Tsunade was put in a coma after the Pain Invasion Arc, but recovered two arcs later, conveniently allowing Kishimoto to get Danzo killed.

Comic Books

• President Rexall of Give Me Liberty has one of these, which keeps him out of the limelight for most of the series.

Literature

• After her defeat in The Russian Connection, Opal Koboi falls in a coma.

Live-Action TV

• Justified in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Faith wakes up from her coma a year afterward, and she had the healing abilities of a slayer.
  • Odd that she had no neurological symptoms, though. Even with special healing skills, she should at least have had serious brain damage for awhile after awakening. Indeed, someone in a coma doesn't just 'wake up', there are several intermediate stages (look up Glasgow coma scale).
  • There's a fanfic set during Faith's coma that deals with her fading in and out of various states, including ones where she's semi-aware but unable to move, and slowly trying to get her body under enough control to be able to escape the hospital without falling over. At which point the Watchers turn up and put her into a magical coma.
• Similarly, Cordelia in Angel, comatose for half a season before coming Back for the Dead.
• Paroded in Friends when Joey's character on Days of Our Lives fell down an open elevator shaft and was put in a coma. All this because he said he helped write the scripts in an interview.
• Jonathan Turner in Boy Meets World. (He never did come out of it).
  • His long absence is later lampshaded when Minkus (another character who disappeared) informs Cory and Shawn that he and Mr. Turner have merely been in/teaching classes on the other side of the school. So apparently he did come out of it.
• Michael Corinthos in General Hospital. Said bus went through a time warp and he woke up five years older—a year later.
• Parodied in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Will replaces a cast member of a soap opera, and his character is put in a coma. He wakes up to find that the Jodie he was reading about in the script was a man.

Video Games

• In the PSP port/remake of Persona 3, you get the option to play as a girl and romance some of the resident guys, discovering Hidden Depths in some of the major male characters that couldn't be explored in the original game or the male path of the PSP version due to them not being social links. One of them, Shinjiro Aragaki, dies from a gunshot wound if you're playing as a guy (which was the only option in the original and its Updated Rerelease, Persona 3). However, he's a possible love interest for the female main character, and maxing out his Relationship Values opens up a short fetch quest where if you complete it, in the scene where he would normally die, he survives the gunshot. But since he dies in every other continuity, in order to keep the plot on the same path he spends the rest of the game hospitalized and in a coma. If it's a New Game+ and you successfully romanced him and saved his life, then he can wake up just in time to come and spend the ending of the game with you, turning it into a different kind of Convenient Coma.

Western Animation

• Ultra Magnus in Transformers Animated, which neatly cleared the stage for Sentinel Prime to take over. The odd with this one is that he's still in it by the end of the series.

Other

Anime and Manga

• Ayu Tsukimiya in Kanon turns out to have been an astral projection; her real body's in a coma, and has been for the past seven years. Unlike Key's usual Downer Ending fare, she gets better.
  • Fuuko in Clannad is a revisiting of the Ayu story, but with some changes. You find out about her condition right away instead of at the end of her arc, and though she's been in a coma for a much shorter time, the amnesia spell surrounding her is magnified by ten.
• Hitomi from ICE winds up in a coma after an accident, which causes her mind to blend with that of a woman in the dystopian future.
• StrikerS Sound Stage X, set three years after the events of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, ends with Subaru learning that Ixpellia is only partially functioning and that she will soon slip into a coma that will last for maybe ten years... The two of them spend her last day being naturally awake together, until the latter falls asleep in Subaru's embrace.
• Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (aka Rumbling Hearts) visual novel and anime. Haruka is run over by a car and falls into a coma right after the protagonist confesses to her, and when she wakes (after three years!) he's dating her best friend. Drama ensues.
• Satoshi of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, at least in the anime, is in a coma for almost the entire series. It turns out that he developed the Hinamizawa Syndrome, escalated to Level Five, and needed to be sedated to avoid harming himself/others. And of course they didn't tell his little sister.
• Angel Sanctuary puts Raphael in one of these after discovering his true love. But just in case that doesn't pan out, the decades or possibly centuries he'll spend in recovery will take care of the Triangle Relations he'd established previously with the main character's sister.
• Johan's coma at the end of Monster is neither medically improbable nor taken lightly, but it conveniently serves to eschew the question of his redemption and repentance.
• In The End of Evangelion, Asuka came out of her mental breakdown-induced coma just in time to take Unit 02 and kick ass (then get brutally killed a few minutes afterwards).
  • More specifically, she awoke in the entry plug right as the JSSDF started dropping depth charges. One of the charges hit the Eva's head and started her "I don't wanna die" mantra. Finally, the Eva had enough and revealed her identity^[1] to Asuka, which instantly fixed her breakdown. What happened afterwards was her biggest Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• Frequently used to Never Say "Die" in the Bowdlerisation of several Anime dubs intended to be syndicated on US television "For Kids". Not really convenient for the victim, but rather for the dubbing company.
  • Case-in-point, Shun's mom in Bakugan. (Which, admittedly, is dubbed by Nelvana...)

Comic Books

• The Riddler was smashed in the noggin with a mace during Infinite Crisis, was in a coma for the "One Year Later" time skip, and woke up A) having forgot Batman's secret identity, and B) free of his compulsions for both riddling and crime. He's currently a successful private detective, so fair play Edward!
  • An explosion has since restored the Riddler's criminal nature, though given the reality reboot that occurred shortly after there's no telling what the Riddler's mental state is.
• "Special Officer" Matthew Bright falls into a coma and is visited every day by fellow superhero Jason Miller in Rising Stars. When Jason eventually dies defending his comatose friend, immediately Matthew wakes up, declares to have heard everything told to him during the years and sets off on a revenge trip.

Fan Fiction

• Astral Journey: It's Complicated has Emma in one, allowing her astral to see what was happening to her and her friends, giving vivid details. However, she struggles upon coming back.

Film

• Good Bye, Lenin! used the coma of the lead's mom as a form of Time Travel from communist Germany to capitalist Germany.
• Kickin It Old School used a similar (but 20-year) Convenient Coma much less believably.
• In the movie Just Like Heaven, Elizabeth had become comatose after being in a car crash. Her sister wanted to pull the Life Support after a while, but the Power of Love made her wake up at the last second. She can't remember the time she spent as a "ghost" when she was comatose until she touches David at the very end.

Literature

• Dread, the psychopath from Tad Williams' Otherland ends up in a coma where all his victims as hideous monsters forever chase him through an eternal Outback. Unusually vengeful end for a villain of this author but ah, so fitting.
  • The basic plot premise for the novels is that the Grail Brotherhood and its massively complex computer network are implicated in the unexplained comas suffered by thousands of children around the world, including the protagonist's brother. The comas turn out to be caused by the Mind Control powers of the Other. True to the trope, the destruction of the Other releases the children, but the story is at least realistic in how it treats the physical effects of a months- or years-long coma.

Live-Action TV

• The early'90s Canadian TV series The Odyssey had a comatose young teen undergoing a sort of internal hero's quest as the basis of the series.
• Desperate Housewives had Susan's main love interest Mike put into a coma. Over six months later, she tentatively hooked up with a man she met at the hospital who's wife had been a coma for many years. Of course, the prominence of this trope has lead viewers to assume that all coma patients wake up eventually, and thus accuse them both of cheating on people who were going to wake up any second. (Although, this being TV and not real life, Mike actually did...)
  • Previously, in the first season, Carlos's mother was run over by a car a few minutes after discovering Gabrielle's adultery. After several weeks spent in a coma, dreaming about the moment where she will wake up and tell her son; she suddenly awakes in the middle of the night when the nurse is taking a break; she jumps on her feet, slips, falls down the stairs and dies
• The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor spends the majority of the Doctor Who episode "The Christmas Invasion" special completely out of it while aliens are in the process of invading.
• Louis Lewis' coma in Season 5 of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Video Games

• Used twice in Ace Attorney.
  • Bat, brother to Acro, who was put into a coma after Regina put pepper on his scarf, causing her lion to sneeze when Bat stuck his head in the lion's mouth. This is why Acro tried to kill her. By the end of the game he hasn't woken up and it's unclear if he ever will.
  • Godot/Diego Armando was poisoned and sent into a coma for years. He woke up to find that his love interest Mia had been murdered and set out on a crusade against Phoenix Wright, who he blamed for not protecting her.
• The Fallout 3 add on Broken steel has both the player and Sarah Lyons(if she survived) fall into a coma for two weeks after the purifier is activated.

Visual Novel

• In Suika, after spending the whole time in a coma, Sayo wakes up just in time for the epilogue.

Western Animation

• In the original G.I. Joe cartoon movie, Duke is grievously and bloodily wounded by Serpentor's snake staff. He uses his last wheezing gasp to force out the words "Go... Joe..." before collapsing, at which point one of the bystanders hilariously exclaims "he's slipped into a coma!" He stays in it for the entirety of the movie and comes out at the end. The original plan had been to kill Duke off, but Transformers: The Movie came out a short time earlier and the writers hastily rewrote the scene to avoid seeming to copy Optimus Prime's death.
  • "Hastily" isn't the word: these two lines of dialogue are all that indicates Duke's in a coma. In some releases of the movie, Duke actually dies.
• In Once Upon a Forest Michelle's coma after inhaling toxic fumes serves as the main plot point, and her friends have to set out on a quest for the herbs that will revive her.
• Archer becomes a Journey to The Centre of The Mind and an Out-of-Genre Experience for the titular character after the season 7 finale. He is in a coma awaiting the writers decision for him to die, wake up or remain an Empty Shell:
  • Season 8 takes place in an extended dream sequence and full blown dream state, which is entirely inspired by Film Noir.
  • Season 9 sees the dream state continue but the location and era change to the South Pacific.

1. ↑ the Soul Jar of Asuka's dead mother