Turn Your Head and Cough - Television Tropes & Idioms

A Stock Phrase and Stock Joke involving the medical community. This usually involves a doctor or physician examining a male patient's testicular region and instructing the patient to cough, turning his head so as to avoid the patient coughing on the doctor. The intended purpose of this part of a medical exam is to check if the patient has a hernia.

More humorously, however, doctors in fiction who get to this part of a physical exam may be revealed to not actually be doing this for any medical reason, thus revealing the doc as a perverted sexual deviant. Inversely, the person may be a perverted sexual deviant posing as a doctor just to feel someone's balls.

Often heard uttered during a Creepy Physical.

Examples

Film

In ¡Three Amigos!, the final part of the titular group's salute involves them turning their heads and coughing, simultaneous with a forward hip thrust.

Live-Action TV

One Saturday Night Live skit involved a doctor performing this test on a male patient, asking him to cough over and over again. Another doctor soon enters the picture and both continue to perform this one part of the exam over and over. Then, a third doctor enters not recognizing the other two doctors already in the room, revealing the first two doctors to be impostors who just like to sneak into examination rooms and feel people's balls.
In one "Scenes From a Hat" segment on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, one situation which came up was "Things You Wouldn't Want to Hear Your Doctor Say After 'Turn Your Head and Cough'."
On Scrubs, when Dr. Kelso asks Dr. Cox to perform a physical on him for his new insurance policy, Dr. Cox issues the heavily sarcastic reply, "The day I willingly cradle your dusty old twig and berries and get a whiff of your chronic halitosis while you Turn Your Head and Cough is the day you can look for me up on the roof singing 'I Believe I Can Fly'."
In the first episode of Police Squad!, Sally Decker plans to rob the bank she works at. Just off-screen, Ralph Twice is opening up an account at the bank, and the overheard signing-up procedure grows increasingly surreal until the bank teller instructs Ralph, "Now, turn your head and cough."

Music

In "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Living With A Hernia," the narrator goes to see his physician, Dr. Jones, who we are told takes off the narrator's pants and tells him to cough. Justified, of course, because he's seeing the doctor about his hernia.
Lyrics in the chorus of the Barenaked Ladies song "Get In Line" are very reflective of things heard during physical exams, including the phrase "turn and cough."

Video Games

In Team Fortress 2, the Medic may say this when holding a melee weapon, looking at an enemy player, and choosing the "battle cry" speech.
For the Starcraft medic, this phrase is one of her "annoyed" lines.
One of the Nurse's lines upon talking to her in Terraria.

Web Animation

Spoken by Dr. Mario in this song number by Brentalfloss, which depicts the character as being a quack.

Web Comics

In an early Arthur, King of Time and Space strip, Arthur suggests to Guenevere during his physical that if she's going to be the ship's doctor, she should work on her beside manner. Her reply is "I'm very friendly. Cough."

Web Original

In The Saga Of Tuck the main character's family doctor has been skipping this point on standard physicals as being needlessly embarrassing. Turns out that, as embarrassing as it may have been, for Tuck it certainly wasn't needless, and if it had been done then half the plot would have been averted.

Western Animation

In the Rocko's Modern Life short "Skid Marks," the doctor performing Rocko's eye exam at the DMV at one point holds Rocko's eyeballs and instructs him to cough.
- In another episode "Flu-In-U-Enza" Rocko visits a "doctor" who asks him to do this several times, and he actually reaches between Rocko's legs for this "procedure".
On Metalocalypse, Murderface once became... "stimulated" when he reached this point of a medical exam, which was unfortunate for the doctor.
In Shrek, when Donkey learns that Shrek has been hit by an arrow, Donkey panics at the thought of Shrek dying from it and shouts irrelevant medical advice, including "keep your feet elevated," a plea for somebody to perform the Heimlich Maneuver, and (of course) "turn your head and cough."
Invoked in The Penguins of Madagascar, "Needle Point".
Skipper: Just a routine visit to the doctor. Turn and cough, boys. Turn and cough.
Robot Chicken: "Okay, turn your head and cough... It's just as I had suspected; you let a stranger grab your balls."