Amanda's fun day of watching her cousin, aspiring doctor Troy Sommers, play a game of rugby takes a dark turn when Troy crashes his motorcycle off the edge of a cliff. Evidence soon turns up that Troy's death was no accident.
"The Pressure to Murder" displays symptoms of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Medicine:
- Jesse correctly stops Kyle from killing a patient as described below. However, he is never shown removing the tourniquet from the woman's arm.
- He also says Kyle would be removing blood from the woman's artery, when in reality, he'd be removing it from a vein.
- Awesome by Analysis: Jesse stops Kyle from accidentally murdering an elderly patient, telling him if he'd read her chart he would've seen the woman was recently put on blood thinners. Had she been given the injection she would've probably bled to death. Jesse calls out the student doctor for not bothering to read the patient's current chart and instead relying on having read an old version a couple days prior.
- Gilligan Cut: Jesse is happy to look into Billy, Troy's big rugby rival, at a rugby game, saying he's always wanted to try rugby. Cut to the players getting into a big pile, with Jesse at the bottom.
- Hypocritical Humor: When the hospital's computer system is brought to its knees by a virus, Norman asks the computer engineer who fixes the problem to give the staff a lecture on proper computer handling and to remind them that their computer terminals are not toys. The engineer then reveals that the virus on the system is commonly found in a particular computer game - which Norman has installed on his terminal.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: The murderer was hoping Troy's death would look like he took a turn on the highway too fast and crashed. Unfortunately, Amanda took extra steps in Troy's autopsy and found the triptazene.
- Nepotism: Kyle Harding is in no way cut out to be a doctor, and he's only trying to get into medicine because his doctor father insists on Kyle following in his footsteps.
- Papa Bear: In a particularly screwed up example, Nathan Harding killed Troy in order to protect Kyle's medical career.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Kyle offered Troy $2,000 to not report him for cheating on his medical exam. Troy ripped the check up and did go to report him. Unfortunately, the one Troy went to was Nathan Harding, the one who was helping Kyle cheat.
- Slipping a Mickey: Nathan injected triptazene into Troy's sports drink in order to make him drowsy and crash his motorcycle. He chose triptazene specifically because it wouldn't show up in the results of a typical autopsy.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: As stated above, the killer put triptazene in Troy's sports drink to kill him.
