Amateur Surgeon - Television Tropes & Idioms

Amateur Surgeon is a series of medical based action puzzle games on [adult swim].com (or to put it simply, Trauma Center with idiots). The series centers around former pizza boy Alan Probe and his life after discovering the world of surgery. The games provide plenty of examples of morbid, gross-out humor with a unique difficulty curve. The series goes for more scatological and dark humor, easily seen with Alan's arsenal of improvised medical tools. The most iconic is a pizza slicer he uses as a scalpel.

This series provides examples of:

Back Alley Doctor: The premise for the whole shabang. And we should also mention Back Warehouse Doctor, Back Old Folks Home Bathroom Doctor, Back Chicken Coop Doctor, Back North Pole Doctor... the one time Alan performs onscreen in a hospital it's an Abandoned Hospital!
Big Bad: Dwaine Pipe, responsible, direct or indirect, of most of all the bad things which happen to Alan Probe
Bonus Boss: Stuporman, the H.O.B.O., and... a secret.
Chainsaw Good: Good for getting past that pesky ribcage, anyways.
- And removing organs like lungs and livers.
Chekhov's Skill: More like Chekhov's Lack Of Skill in this case. Alan ends up removing a bug infestation from Dwayne Pipe early in the game without Dr. Bleed there to overlook the surgery, only to find out that he accidentally overlooked the worst one... which ends up incapacitating the guy when he tries to make his escape at the end of the game.
Earn Your Happy Ending: After being put through decades of misery by Dwayne Pipe, Alan's manages to rebuild his reputation and reconnect with his family.
Exact Time to Failure: If the clock hits 0:00, the patient dies immediately. Doesn't matter what their vitals looked like at 0:01.
- Somewhat justified, in that the longer it takes an operation to finish, particularly to fix a life-threatening problem, the less chance of survival. (Complications setting in, and all that.) But this justification is partly subverted, because in Real Life, there is no exact Point of No Return. Not time-based, anyhow.
Extreme Omnivore: Junkyard Guts from the first game. You have to remove a magnet from his stomach. And it draws out screws as well. In the last act, he even eats a bomb that was disguised as a sandwich using two pieces of bread.
The Gift: Alan Probe is a natural genius when it comes to trauma surgery, capable of even performing brain surgery using a lighter, a chainsaw, a pair of tongs, a corkscrew, and a bottle of liquid pain reliever.
Guide Dang It: Unless you know that you can shock the tapeworm more than once each time he pops his head out, (and you need to shock it like 5 times) you are not going to beat 2nd Bleed (file 3, patient 6), because the tapeworm's going to make just too many little bleeding cuts that will drop his heart rate really fast. You need to be careful, though, lest you miss and stop Dr. Bleed's heart instead. If that happens, you're basically screwed... unless you react quickly enough. It's not so much a problem with Joe (file 2, patient 6), because his tapeworm only needs zapped 3 times.
- The final regular patient, Dwayne, has a millipede crawling around inside him. It makes little bleeding cuts just like a tapeworm does, but it doesn't pop its head out. You have to chainsaw a little ahead of the last cut it makes, then you can deal with the bug queens and mooks it spawns in the various body cavities.
- The Bio-Utility Mechanoid, or B.U.M., is the first Bonus Boss you unlock. To even get inside him, you need to gel his red button.
- Not to mention, you don't zap the scorpions - you chainsaw them.
Heal It With Fire: One of Alan's tools is a lighter, a respectable cauterization method. Yet this also repairs bones, cuts in vital organs, and metal. The guy is a frickin' genius.
- In the christmas sequel, it's a match and a can of spray paint. Very Precise.
I'm a Humanitarian: Case 2, Patient #9: Animal the Cannibal.
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the sequel, Alan tells Bradley that they made a video game about him at the height of his fame. Bradley's played it, but laments that he never got the hang of the corkscrew and hopes that if a sequel is ever made they replace it with "something less awful." Then they both wordlessly look at the player. This is followed almost immediately by the level that introduces the syringe, which replaces the corkscrew.
Luke, You Are My Father: Bradley in the sequel eventually reveals that he is Alan's grandson.
Mad Doctor: Alan is pretty much a good guy version of this by the second game.
Meat Grinder Surgery
Must Have Caffeine: Karl of Case 2, Patient #8 suffers from this. Unforunately, this makes the requirements for beating the level to Nintendo Hard levels. See No Damage Run.
My Greatest Failure: The Old Hospital fiasco, in which many, many people died for Dr. Bleed. Turns out it wasn't his fault after all.
No Damage Run: Required in file 2, patient 8 (Karl) of the original game (once you get inside him). Karl is a coffee addict, and as a result, his heart rate gets faster as time passes, rather than slower. You have to remove the coffee beans and drain (and suction out) the poison to stabilize his heart rate, then heal all the cuts you had to make. Dr. Bleed warns that the slightest injury (that means any unnecessary damage) will kill Karl. He also dies if you let his heart rate get to 200. Add that to the fact that each patient is a Timed Mission anyway, and you've got yourself a Nintendo Hard level.
Open Heart Dentistry: Alan is the only source for criminals to get medical care, ranging from lacerations to poisonings. With the occasional extreme body piercing and mechanical restoration.
Significant Anagram: Flip the lan in Alan's name and you get... well, at least it's not called Amateur Proctologist.
- Names to Run Away From Really Fast: You usually don't want to go to someone named Dr. Probe... And his Mentor is called Dr. Bleed, of all the people. The name of his clinic? "Bleed Everywhere"
Punny Name: Tons and tons of them. Not surprising considering this company's track record.
The Reveal: Lampshaded with Alan's mystery patient in the second game. After Alan leaves the room, the patient tells Bradley to turn the lights on before he leaves, so he can have his dramatic reveal.
President Dwayne Pipe: DUN DUN DUN!
Running Gag: Alan seems to have problems when it comes to dealing with exterminanting bugs. Especially when it comes to Dwaine's bugs.
Saving Christmas: The plot of the Christmas Edition game. Alan goes to save christmas after he utterly decimated it! (see Turbine Blender below). After crashing his private jet into the North Pole Alan sets about pulling christmas lights out of an elf, reanimating a reindeer carcass with candy canes and coat hangers, and patching up Santa with wrapping paper.
Shared Universe: With Spiritual Successor games Amateur Ninja and Gigolo Assassin
Shout Out: One level has the player trying to disarm a bomb, like in Trauma Center.
- The Bonus Bosses in the first game are pretty much walking Shout Outs, from Back to the Future to Superman to Short Circuit.
Too Dumb to Live: Almost all of Alan's clientele fit into this category, with this trope being what got them to him in the first place.
Turbine Blender: In the introduction of the Christmas Edition (a sendup of the intro to the first game) Alan Probe, flying his private jet distractedly while reading an article about his rise to fame, collides with Santa's Sleigh. One of the reindeer is sucked into the turbines and shredded, causing Alan's jet to crash into Santa's Workshop.
Vigilante Man: The end of the 2nd part and most of the 3rd part of the first game have Alan patching up characters from earlier in the game, who this time are the victims of a rampaging vigilante who's parents turn out to be among the people who died in the Old Hospital fiasco.
Worst Aid: Separating the hemispheres of a woman's brain with a chainsaw, while using a dumpster as an operating table. And she survives... long enough to pay Alan, anyways.
- You actually have to remove the brain temporarily, destroy some... things (Cancer growths? Warts? Mold?) to cure her mental disorder, then put the brain and skullpan back and heal them both with your lighter.