Take off all your clothing, We've only just begun. We have no anaesthesia, It's 1841! —
Emilie Autumn, "Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches"
The glint of a sharpened scalpel, the roar of a dull, rusty dentist drill, the look of terror on a patient's face when he realizes just what that
Saw is for. There's something about being helplessly
Strapped to an Operating Table, with the surgeons looming over you cutting you up and anesthesia slowly dulling your mind, that seems to have a certain appeal to horror authors. Expect plenty of
hypodermic needles, oversized bone saws, and of course the good old lobotomy tools.
Psychological horror, involving soothing happy pills and a nice padded room, also fits in this index.
A subtrope of
Adult Fear.
Tropes: