History YMMV / House

* ShockingSwerve: [[spoiler:Kutner's death.]]

* FunnyAneurysmMoment:
** "Oh no, the death cat is attacking you, you're gonna die," said sarcastically to [[spoiler:Kutner two episodes before his suicide]]. Six episodes previously, he described himself as [[spoiler:exactly the sort of person who would not commit suicide]].
** In a Season 3 episode, Wilson is asked by Cuddy why he's late, and he loudly snaps, "The buses suck!" after his car is impounded by Detective Tritter. His girlfriend Amber is killed in a later episode because of a bus crash.
** In Season 4, a patient is seeing dead people everywhere, Amber makes a comment about seeing ghosts. For the rest of the series, after she dies, she becomes one to House.
---> If the ghost of a man you killed doesn't screw with your head, there's something wrong with your head.
** Doubles as {{foreshadowing}}, but "Lines In The Sand" had House make a speech about what a disappointment the autistic son must to be his parents. Cameron thinks he's talking CloseToHome but he tells her his parents loved him unconditionally. [[https://house.fandom.com/wiki/One_Day,_One_Room Everybody lies]].

** During the Vogler arc, House makes a speech about Vogler using underhanded tactics to avoid dropping prices on his medications. Arbitrary price-hiking of vital medication had always been an issue in the United States, but it became an even bigger issue in 2015, when a company increased the cost of an HIV-treating medicine from $13 a pill to $750 a pill. The man responsible, Martin Shkreli, started being called "The Most Hated Man In America".

* WhatAnIdiot: Taub in late season 7, ''twice'': [[spoiler:cheating on his new girlfriend with his ex-wife, who divorced him because of his infidelity]] and [[spoiler:not using condoms with either woman]].

** In a Season 3 episode, Wilson is asked by Cuddy why he's late, and he loudly snaps, "The buses suck!" after his card is impounded by Detective Tritter. His girlfriend Amber is killed in a later episode because of a bus crash.

** In "Mirror Mirror", Kutner and Amber are debating which of the two the patient is mimicking. Suddenly a new symptom sets in, and Kutner says "it looks like he's mimicking whichever one of us is dying". Both doctors end up dying within the next year or so.

** In "Role Model", House tells a black senator running in the 2008 presidential election that he's not going to be president because "they don't call it the White House because of the paint job". The senator even agrees, though he says it's important to make the try anyway. [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Good thing someone thought the same way]].

** Both in-universe and out of it, Foreman's accidentally killing a patient by having her undergo radiation treatment (thus destroying her immune system and allowing a minor infection to become extremely lethal) and Kutner setting a patient on fire in his first episode are always the go-to examples whenever anyone needs an example of their screwing up. In Foreman's case House even brings up that mistake as late as Season 8, by which time Foreman is the Dean of Medicine and has long-since stopped actively working as a doctor.

** At the beginning of Season 6, House's team briefly reverts to its original lineup of Foreman, Chase and Cameron for the first time in three years. While this was meant to set up Jennifer Morrison's exit and give her a little more focus before departing, the dramatic potential goes largely unexplored. How does the team feel about working together again after so much time apart? How have they changed and grown during that time? How have their approaches to medicine and patient care changed? Are Chase and Cameron a little rusty, having been out of the diagnostic medicine game for a while? None of this is really explored, and instead it's just business as usual for a half-dozen episodes until Cameron [[spoiler: finds out Chase murdered a patient]] and quits, and Thirteen and Taub return.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Season 1's "Role Model" has the patient of the week, an African American United States Senator, running for President. The episode both directly and indirectly pillories as unrealistic his odds of winning the White House. Fast forward four years and an African American US Senator being elected President suddenly doesn't seem so unrealistic anymore.
* UnintentionallySympathetic: The ''very'' divorced parents of the [[IllGirl little]] [[TheWoobie girl]] in "Finding Judas" are dismissed as being worthless and annoying by all medical personnel they meet to the point where they temporarily ''lose custody'' of their child simply because they argued a lot while going through what can only be described as [[AdultFear every parents' worst nightmare]] i.e their child is slowly ''burning to death'' and not even the doctors know why. Even when they agree with advice from the doctors they are still treated as though they clearly don't care about their child and are unworthy of being parents!

** Cameron in the Diabala arc. [[spoiler:Yes, what Chase did ''was'' murder. On the other hand, Diabala [[AssholeVictim was proudly announcing his intention to commit genocide upon returning home]], and no one else could stop him. Her speech about Chase no longer respecting the sanctity of human life and him no longer being able to tell right from wrong rings very hollow and makes her breaking up with Chase and leaving the team seem incredibly naive and childish, as the alternative was letting a tyrant kill hundreds of thousands of people]].
** Cameron again in the Season 5 episode, ''The Itch.'' The patient of that episode has severe agoraphobia and refuses to leave his apartment for treatment, so the team attempts to give him treatment in his apartment. Cameron repeatedly sticks up for him and tries to be as accommodating as possible so that he doesn't have to face his phobia. However, she becomes more and more unsympathetic as the episode goes on and the patient's condition worsens. No matter how bad he gets, Cameron keeps trying to accommodate him and allow him to stay in his house, up to the point where she starts undermining the rest of the team's attempts to get him into the hospital. After a while, it starts to look like she's just trying to make herself feel good for being so willing to help him in spite of how unreasonable is demands get.

** On a similar note, is House simply arrogant and a "jerk" in the sense that he says and does what makes him happy without regard for others, or is he an [[DomesticAbuse abusive prick]] who constantly belittles his staff and accuses them of ulterior motives to make them feel stupid and dependent on him (i.e., {{Gaslighting}})? While his staff never does become ''totally'' subservient to him (and he admits he needs them to disagree with him), [[ToxicFriendInfluence the impact]] he has on their personalities is obvious. He also flat-out admits in one episode that he bases how he treats his staff on his [[DrillSergeantNasty father's training of soldiers and of him]], which is literally abuse and brainwashing. Also, almost whenever a duckling, Wilson, or Cuddy finds happiness elsewhere, he reacts with anger and tries to sabotage it (see MoralEventHorizon below.)

** On a similar note, is House simply arrogant and a "jerk" in the sense that he says and does what makes him happy without regard for others, or is he an [[DomesticAbuse abusive prick]] who constantly belittles his staff and accuses them of ulterior motives to make them feel stupid and dependent on him (i.e., {{Gaslighting}})? While his staff never does become ''totally'' subservient to him (and he admits he needs them to disagree with him), [[ToxicFriendInfluence the impact]] he has on their personalities is obvious. He also flat-out admits in one episode that he bases how he treats his staff on his [[DrillSergeantNasty father's training of soldiers and of him,]] which is literally abuse and brainwashing. Also, almost whenever a duckling, Wilson, or Cuddy finds happiness elsewhere, he reacts with anger and tries to sabotage it (see MoralEventHorizon below.)

** Chase's seems to have been [[spoiler:basically murdering President Dibala because he was a [[AssholeVictim murderous dictator]]]]. This caused Cameron to [[PutOnABus leave him]], anyway; whether or not he actually did the wrong thing is left for the audience to decide, particularly given [[spoiler: Dibala flat-out telling them that the first thing he's going to do when he gets better is go home and ''commit genocide'']].
*** Foreman's and House's may have been helping Chase [[spoiler:cover up Dibala's murder]].

* ValuesDissonance: The moral of the clinic patient B-plot of the 2012 episode "Better Half" is unambiguously "Anybody who claims to be asexual is either lying or suffering from a medical condition that can be cured." It's infamous in the [[{{asexuality}} asexual]] community.

* AwardSnub: Hugh Laurie never won an Emmy award for Lead Actor in a Drama, despite earning 6 nominations. The show itself never won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama series for any of the 4 nominations it earned.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Through much of [[TurnOfTheMillennium 2000s]] and early [[TheNewTens 2010s]], many of the most highly acclaimed TV shows had AntiHero protagonists, from [[Series/{{Entourage}} Ari Gold]], [[Series/GossipGirl Chuck Bass]], [[Series/VeronicaMars Logan Echolls]], [[Series/TheSopranos Tony Soprano]], [[Series/BreakingBad Walter White]], [[Series/MadMen Don Draper]], [[Series/HouseOfCardsUS Frank Underwood]], and, of course, House himself. However, between ValuesDissonance, changing cultural tastes driven by a feeling of DarknessInducedAudienceApathy, and other RealLife factors such as the "Me Too" movement calling out (often white, heterosexual and cisgendered) men's abuse of male privilege at the expense of women, minorities and the LGBTQ, [[https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/10/10/17925740/tv-protagonists-sexual-misconduct-antiheroes TV critics]] and [[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/dec/29/no-more-mr-bad-guy-farewell-for-ever-to-tvs-male-antiheroes-don-draper-walter-white-tony-soprano analysts]] have begun casting a more critical eye at the anti-hero as a character type, with some even decrying their overuse and saturation in stories. By the later half of the 2010s, [[DeconstructedCharacterArchetype deconstructions]] of these characters, such as [[WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty Rick Sanchez]] (who's the closest to House in terms of basic personality), [[WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman Bojack Horseman]], [[Series/{{Ozark}} Marty Byrde]], and [[Series/You2018 Joe Goldberg]], their toxic behaviors, the detrimental effects these behaviors have on their lives and the people around them, and the story forcing them to face devastating consequences, have become more commonplace, as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3wncm9s2AM this video]] by The Take sums up.

* WTHCastingAgency: Misanthropic American doctor being played by British comedian Creator/HughLaurie (though Bryan Singer was genuinely fooled by his accent in the audition)? This later led to SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct.

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: The overall theme of the show is that it's better to be completely honest with your doctor, even if it's at severe emotional cost, than it is to suffer and/or die painfully.
** House chewing out some idiot vegan parents in the episode "Babies and Bathwater" for forcing their baby to live on almond milk, tofu, and raw vegetables. Although [[spoiler:they did consult a nutritionist to make sure the diet was appropriate for a baby, cluing House in there was another reason for her illness]], the point nonetheless stands.
--->'''House:''' Raw food. If only our ancestors had mastered the secret of ''fire''. Babies need fat, proteins, calories. Less important, sprouts and hemp. Starving babies is ''bad''. Not to mention ''illegal'' in many cultures. I'm having her admitted.
** On a similar note, there's the scene in the episode "Paternity" where [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urZLTobAfJc House calls out a mother who isn't vaccinating her baby daughter]].
--->'''House:''' You know what's a good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins.
** The episode "Heavy" deconstructs the argument on body imagery and fat shaming. Not all fat people are fat because they overeat - they can have genuine medical/psychological problems that affect their bodies and you shouldn't shame them for it. On the other hand, however, obesity shouldn't be promoted or excused, because you can develop health problems which can turn fatal. Also, people who use fat shaming as a victim card aren't always saints or victims; they can often be selfish jerks with no respect for others and won't step out of their own way when it comes to their own personal health.

** Season 3, due to DeusAngstMachina and {{Wangst}} during the Tritter arc, the original team splitting up, and the start of the [[NotSoDifferent Foreman is House arc]].

* DarknessInducedAudienceApathy: House is a paragon of DrJerk while one of the ongoing arcs of the series is that he is an incredibly toxic influence on anybody who has to deal with him for an extended period of time (which turns ''everybody else in the cast'' into a DrJerk, and a seriously hostile and backstabbing one at that in various examples), and while many people are saved by them, there is the InferredHolocaust of how much their lives will be destroyed (in the long or short term) by the secrets that House forces them to disclose... after some time it may be pretty hard to watch.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Using Music/MassiveAttack's "Teardrop" as the theme song was, to say the least, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4h-zAV0yP8 a good choice]].

** Skyler Astin as Patient of the Week in the second-to-last episode of the series.

* ValuesDissonance: Even though the series has established from the beginning that House is a horrible human being, much of the racist, sexist and homophobic jokes can be uncomfortable for modern audiences.
** Want a good example? When one patient of the week is revealed to be biologically male despite appearing female for all purposes[[note]]She apparently had a completely immunity to testosterone leading to her just to develop as a girl, but had testicular cancer. Yes this can happen in real life[[/note]] House spends the rest of the episode treating her like a man, and none of the rest of the other staff call him on it. The whole thing comes off as more than moderately transphobic.

** Some fans felt the finale would've been better had Cuddy returned, given that she was the only regular character who didn't return BackForTheFinale.

* InformedWrongness: In the 2nd season, Foreman accuses House of racism for duping an African-American patient into taking blood pressure medication that he had previously rejected under the mistaken belief that it was an inferior product because it was targeted specifically at African-Americans. House lies all the damn time in order to get uncooperative patients to take medication or undergo procedures, meaning that his actions just come across as his usual disregard for medical ethics rather than motivated by the patient's race.

** Season 2 is where the show really hit its stride, with no ArcVillain and many highly rated episodes.