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: Twin siblings who are born fused together.
- Contamination Situation
- Creepy Physical
- Creepy Souvenir
- Cuckoo Nest
- Cyborg: A being who is half-human and half-machine.
- Deadly Doctor
- Depraved Dentist: A dentist who enjoys causing their victims pain.
- 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
- Guinea Pig Family: A scientists conducts his experiments by using his relatives as test subjects.
- Harmful Healing
- Lobotomy
- LEGO Genetics
- 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.
- 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.
- Monstrous Germs
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: A villain who happens to be a doctor of some sort.
- 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
- Professor Guinea Pig: A scientist tests their experiment on themselves.
- Prosthetic Limb Reveal
- Psycho Psychologist
- Psycho Serum: A serum that makes people insane.
- Roadside Surgery
- Room Full of Crazy
- 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
- The Virus
- They Would Cut You Up
- Two Beings, One Body
- Unwitting Test Subject
- Viral Transformation
- Walking Transplant
- You Won't Feel a Thing
