section_path: Disability in society/Societal norms/Tropes/Disability Drop
section_name: Disability Drop
paragraph_text: Disability Drop
  
  The "disability drop" trope is when a supposedly disabled character is revealed to have been faking, embellishing, or otherwise not actually embodying their claimed disability. Jay Dolmage offers Kevin Spacey's character, Verbal Kint, in the film Usual Suspects as an example of this, and depictions like this can reflect able-bodied society's mistrust of disabled people. In addition, this reveal of a character's nondisabledness often serves as the narrative climax of a story, and the use of disability as a source of conflict in the plot, narrative obstacle, or a device of characterization aligns with other disability studies scholars' theory of "Narrative Prosthesis ", a term coined by David T. Mitchell and Sharon Snyder.