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 whine 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. Most of the things here are also Medical Treatment Tropes.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Hospital
- Abandoned Hospital Awakening
- Afraid of Blood
- Afraid of Doctors
- Afraid of Needles
- Amputation Stops Spread
- 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
- Chemical Messiah: A drug that people hoard and worship insanely even though it does more harm than good.
- Comically Inept Healing
- Conjoined Twins: Twin siblings who are born fused together.
- Contamination Situation
- Creepy Physical
- Creepy Souvenir
- Crisis Point Hospital: A hospital overwhelmed and failing in the face of a crisis - or maybe just by nature.
- Cuckoo Nest
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul
- Cyborg: A being who is half-human and half-machine.
- Deadly Doctor
- Depraved Dentist: A dentist who enjoys causing their victims pain.
- Doctor's Disgraceful Demotion: A Mad Doctor or Mad Scientist loses their license for malpractice.
- Dr. Psych Patient
- Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture
- Escaped from the Lab
- Evilutionary Biologist: An evil geneticist whose goal is to improve the human race on their terms.
- Eye Scream: Violence inflicted on the eyes.
- Flesh Golem
- Frankenstein's Monster
- Freak Lab Accident
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke
- Giant Medical Syringe: "Big needle, big needle!"
- Guinea Pig Family: A scientists conducts his experiments by using his relatives as test subjects.
- Harmful Healing
- Human Resources
- Infection Scene
- In Place of an Eye
- Kidnapped for Experimentation: When the Mad Scientist resorts to abducting test subjects.
- LEGO Genetics: Genetic modification, far from the intricate process in real life, can be performed quickly and haphazardly in media and still turn out okay (most of the time, at least).
- Life-or-Limb Decision: A character gets one of their limbs trapped and has to choose between dying by staying where they are or cutting off the trapped limb to escape.
- Lobotomy
- Mad Doctor
- Mad Scientist
- Mad Scientist Laboratory
- Magic Genetics
- Malevolent Mutilation
- Meatgrinder Surgery
- Medical Rape and Impregnate: Using medical equipment to impregnate women without their consent.
- Mega-Microbes
- Monstrous Germs
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: A villain who happens to be a doctor of some sort.
- Obscene OB-GYN: A morally-compomised gynecologist or urologist.
- Orderlies are Creeps
- Organ Autonomy: Body parts that are sentient and able to live independently of the bodies they belong to.
- Organ Theft: Stealing people's organs.
- Patient Zero
- Playing with Syringes
- Predatory Big Pharma
- Professor Guinea Pig: A scientist tests their experiment on themselves.
- Prosthetic Limb Reveal
- Psycho Psychologist
- Psycho Serum: A serum that makes people powerful at the cost of also stripping away their sanity.
- Quack Doctor: A "doctor" whose medical legitimacy is quite questionable.
- Raised in a Lab
- Roadside Surgery
- Room Full of Crazy
- Scary Stitches
- Self-Surgery: Someone ends up having to perform surgery on themselves.
- Skip the Anesthetic: A character undergoes surgery or some other painful medical procedure without any sort of pain-reliever being used on them.
- Strapped to an Operating Table
- Super Serum: A serum that enables super powers.
- Symbolic Mutilation
- They Would Cut You Up
- Two Beings, One Body
- Unwilling Roboticisation
- Unwitting Test Subject
- Viral Transformation
- The Virus
- Walking Transplant
- Wrongfully Committed
- You Won't Feel a Thing!
