Image by Jean-Claude Claeys
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."Take off all your clothing,
We've only just begun.
We have no anesthesia,
It's 1841!"
We've only just begun.
We have no anesthesia,
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:
- Abandoned Hospital
- Abandoned Hospital Awakening
- Afraid of Blood
- Afraid of Doctors
- Afraid of Needles
- Anatomically Ignorant Healing
- An Arm and a Leg
- Artificial Limbs
- Back-Alley Doctor
- Battleaxe Nurse
- Bedlam House
- Bio-Augmentation
- Bizarre Alien Biology
- Body Horror
- Body of Bodies
- C.A.T. Trap
- Comically Inept Healing
- Conjoined Twins
- Contamination Situation
- Creepy Physical
- Creepy Souvenir
- Cuckoo Nest
- Cyborg
- Deadly Doctor
- Depraved Dentist
- Dr. Psych Patient
- Escaped from the Lab
- Evilutionary Biologist
- Eye Scream
- Flesh Golem
- Frankenstein's Monster
- Freak Lab Accident
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke
- Guinea Pig Family
- Harmful Healing
- Lobotomy
- LEGO Genetics
- Life-or-Limb Decision
- Mad Doctor
- Mad Scientist
- Mad Scientist Laboratory
- Magic Genetics
- Malevolent Mutilation
- Meatgrinder Surgery
- Medical Rape and Impregnate
- Monstrous Germs
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate
- Orderlies Are Creeps
- Organ Autonomy
- Organ Theft
- Patient Zero
- Playing with Syringes
- Professor Guinea Pig
- Prosthetic Limb Reveal
- Psycho Psychologist
- Psycho Serum
- Roadside Surgery
- Room Full of Crazy
- Self-Surgery
- Skip the Anesthetic
- Strapped to an Operating Table
- Super Serum
- Symbolic Mutilation
- The Virus
- They Would Cut You Up
- Two Beings, One Body
- Unwitting Test Subject
- Viral Transformation
- Walking Transplant
- You Won't Feel a Thing
