Actor Shipping: The YouTube comments for "Allergic Reaction at Prom" supported Nick and Amanda (the episode's teen couple) getting together thanks to Nick's chivalrous actions during the episode. However, the teens' remarks during the interviews at the end of the episode made it sound like Nick ended up in the Friend Zone, and years later, one of Amanda's friends left a comment on YouTube and said that Amanda had married another guy and had a family.
While not the first show of its kind, people who watch crime and rescue shows probably started with this show.
While there isn't an exact figure, it's safe to say there are quite a few people who were inspired to become dispatchers, firemen, paramedics, or police officers because of shows like this.
A somewhat meta case: the toddler from "911 Snake Baby" grew up and became a paramedic himself because of what happened.
Hilarious in Hindsight: One episode depicting a Home Invasion has camera footage from the front door in the recreation. This would look exactly like footage from a video doorbell.
At the end of "911 Stalker Save," the victim and the police officers express the belief that once the stalker's jail sentence was up, he'd be back. Horrifyingly, that's exactly what happened when the stalker made parole.
This keeps happening for "University Pipe Bomb," which took place in 1991. It became significantly scarier after the domestic terrorism of The '90s, the September 11 attacks, the wave of school attacks like Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, and the Boston Marathon bombings.
The numerous near-drowning segments became this after William Shatner's third wife, Nerine Kidd, drowned in their backyard pool on August 9, 1999.
"Bob! Get yer gun! There's an alligator with kid in its mouth!"
The student security monitor interviewed in "University Pipe Bomb" acts like he's reciting a rehearsed line during his interview, and he delivers it like he's trying to outdo Shatner in the Dramatic Pause department (and failing at it):
Student: The lobby...had quieted down. Most of the guys were going to bed. A regular...normal...run-of-the-mill night...at JRP. [Looks down and sighs sadly]
The episode about Jerry Anderson has a kid whose nickname is "Pooh"... which sounds phonetically similar to what brits refer to excrement as. This can absolutely ruin the seriousness of that story.
Similarly, the boy in "Toothbrush Trauma" is nicknamed "Pooter."note Someone later commented on YouTube, good-naturedly letting everyone know that Pooter outgrew the nickname not long after the episode aired.
The lightning strike from "Lightning Lads" is very poorly done. The dark clouds also look poorly chroma keyed into the sky, and you can tell that it was very sunny when they shot the reenactment.
"University Pipe Bomb" did a reasonable job with its reenactment of the explosion, but the crater immediately afterward wasn't smoking and didn't look as big as the narration described, and in fact only looked like a little hole that someone had dug in the ground.
In "Runaway Boxcars", you can briefly see the EMD GP38-2 locomotive from the start of the episode pushing the boxcars and the car down the track (at 3:19 in the YouTube upload).
Tear Jerker: By FAR. Especially, but obviously not limited to, those episodes where victims did die (though deaths were less frequent later in the show's run).
It's mentioned that the bombers in "University Pipe Bomb" got 27 or 28 months for planting the bomb, and the word "terrorism" isn't mentioned at all. This alone sets the episode before the Oklahoma City bombing, and very much pre-9/11 (the incident occurred in 1991).
Speaking of pre-9/11 stories, "Swiss Army Knife" involves doctors performing an emergency tracheotomy with a Swiss Army knife while on board an airplane. Possible in 1990, but impossible today with TSA restrictions against knives.
The young woman playing the female intruder in "Teen Hides from Intruders" (set in 1993) is decked out in baggy flannel and looks like she belongs in an early-Nineties Grunge video.
The radio show host in "Stinky's Sewer Save" mentions that, the morning he helped in the rescue of the puppy, he was getting tired of people calling in to the show and "complaining about Clinton."
The series shows how '80s hairstyles, fashions, and culture remained popular into the '90s, especially in Middle America.
There are also scenes of people bicycling without helmets and children's car seats placed in the front of vehicles, which would have been common to the late Eighties and early Nineties, but would be virtually unheard of today. Of course, these segments also often showed even then why those practices were unsafe.
The use of actual people in the United States as Telemarketers is very much an Eighties to Turn of the Millennium thing.
There are segments where people make calls on their mobile phones while driving, before this was made illegal in many jurisdictions.
Values Resonance: "Bradley's Heimlich Save" has Bradley (a young adult with Down Syndrome) saving his father from choking. The episode illustrates quite clearly that his disability doesn't stop him from doing this at all, and that people with handicaps can be capable of helping others just as well as the able bodied/minded.
Twila: I don't think most people who have a handicapped child think of them as being capable of doing something as life changing as life saving. But if they're given the opportunity and the training, they can do it.
They mention that a pig is a very unusual pet. This is deliberately invoked in an episode where a pig has to be rescued.
Repeatedly demonstrated by everyone in "Lizard Finger Lock." No one involved seemed to care for the eponymous pet lizard, although the responding officer did make it a point to say that he didn't want to injure the reptile since he figured it was the boy's pet.
The pinball machine:
Awesome Music: Pretty much the entire soundtrack, which helps turn even the most basic of tasks into a pulse-pounding race against the clock.
Good Bad Bugs: Normally, when starting the Cavern Rescue or Jaws of Life modes for the first time, it locks a ball to start the mode in conjunction with multiball. However, before plunging the second ball, you can still switch the mode using the flippers, meaning you can start any of the modes this way. Better yet, it's repeatable as long as you haven't completed both of the aforementioned modes, making your first go-round through the modes infinitely easier.
Obvious Beta: Overall, the game has a very unfinished feel to it, with at least one unimplemented feature on the playfield, and the DMD often doesn't let you know what's going on or what your shots are doing (for example, the only indication that you've gotten the 30 Million Hurry-Up is that the playfield light turns off).
supported Nick and Amanda (the episode's teen couple) getting together thanks to Nick's chivalrous actions during the episode. However, the teens' remarks during the interviews at the end of the episode made it sound like Nick ended up in the Friend Zone, and years later, one of Amanda's friends left a comment on YouTube and said that Amanda had married another guy and had a family.