History Fridge / House

** In another sense, a real horror sets in when you realize how realistic that was. Contrary to what one sees in a movie, suicidees often leave no letter or note or any sort of explanation, nor there are any obvious signs beforehand. Just thinking how many people you know actually could consider suicide is aviation-grade ParanoiaFuel.

* ''Series/{{House}}'' has House and Wilson. Compare to: [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Holmes and Watson]]. I can't believe I just thought of this. It should probably be obvious, but this is what I get for only half paying attention to the TV while this show is playing.
** I had a similar reaction on a slightly larger scale. House and Wilson = Holmes and Watson. House is hooked on Vicodin; Holmes on cocaine. They both can't resist a good mystery, and always assumed that someone - or everyone! - was lying. They are also both talented musicians. But the best hint is in plain sight in some many episodes: House lives in apartment 221B. Holmes' abode? 221B Baker Street. Can't believe it took me well into the third season to get it. - Tropers/Ixtli_Awakening
** And in the series finale, House fakes his own death, just like Holmes does in ''The Final Problem''.
** The episode "House Divided": I didn't realize until starting to watch the episode the second time that... Amber is House's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus anima]]! Way to use what I've been studying in class this semester, writers!
** Take a look at what the name of the person who shoots House in the Season 2 finale - I'm pretty sure it was the season 2 finale... - is named. For that matter, several of the producers have referred to House as a "medical Sherlock Holmes."
*** "Moriarty"... and he's played by Casey Jones!
*** Although he only got that name in House's head. In the real world, he's not named at all. Which means either House thinks he is Holmes, or somehow thinks that's a reasonably name.
** There's also been a couple of references to someone named "Adler" or "Irene Adler". The show has a whole other level of enjoyment if you're a Sherlock geek.
** Even more brilliant when you remember Holmes was based on a medical teacher Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had.
*** AND in the season 5 christmas episode, House receives an antique medical textbook- written by Joseph Bell, the teacher that Doyle based Holmes on.
* Also, every single season finale has been building to season 5's finale. Season One had House's mental jumping-around, not in itself unusual, but it's hard for a stable mind to tell three stories is jigsaw order like that and be totally consistent. Season 2 is, I think, pretty obvious. House's gunshot-induced hallucination. Season 3 gives us the magical reviving woman, a case I don't believe ever happened, because no one has ever brought it up since and it doesn't seem to have effected squat. Season 4 really gave House some gas, with the brain problems and the hallucinations and the electroshock. It's all been foreshadowing.
* What's more, I just now figured out why Amber's hallucination tried to kill Chase that time. Up to that point, House didn't treat the fact that he was seeing Wilson's dead girlfriend as something he should take seriously, and instead took advantage of having an "all access key to [his] brain". Amber causing House to attempt to kill Chase without him realizing it was House's brain trying to tell him that it ''is'' serious, and that he needs to get rid of Amber.
* It took this troper a couple of viewings to realize just how clever the Season 2 season finale is. Consider the show's central conceit, WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief-challenging enough as it is - genius doctor has to solve an apparently unsolvable medical mystery every week, virtually all of which are inexplicably concentrated in one corner of New Jersey. What's the plot of the episode? House is faced with a medical mystery, but the fact that the mystery in this case is ''literally'' unsolvable is what tips House off that he's dreaming. It's at least a LampshadeHanging, and arguably even a DeconstructedTrope, of the basic concept of the show - driving the consequences of a medical mystery which cannot be solved to their logical extreme. Additionally, it occurred to this troper that in the episode, all the other characters are just manifestations of House's personality - try imagining some of the team's medical-related lines as if House was saying them.
* I had a rather minor moment of this. It always bugged me how each episode would spend time building up this drama to do with the patient, and then as soon as they were diagnosed, it would just be left unresolved. I found this a little unfulfilling, until I realised. Thats what it's like for the Doctors. They see small snippets of each patients life, never seeing the full story, and so the audience gets the same experience.
* In the very first episode, House tells Cameron he hired her because she was pretty (therefore she could have likely had a comfortable life without becoming a doctor)...In real life, "Cameron" is just as attractive as her actress, who is a successful actress in Hollywood.

* Another example from the episode "Three Stories", where House is giving a lecture. In the lecture, he tells the stories of three past cases of different people with leg pain. At first he hides their identities by saying that they're two middle-aged men and Carmen Electra, which we see in the scenes of those people being treated. Eventually some of the interns attending the lecture ask questions that require House to reveal the actual ages and genders of the patients. One of the middle-aged men turns out to be a 16-year-old girl, and Carmen Electra turns out to be a man screaming in pain who is then revealed to have just been a drug seeker. When this is revealed, they change to who they actually are in the scenes. Eventually it is revealed that the pain seeker was actually House, though the man wasn't seen as House until later, and it was never revealed to the interns that it was House. Now, the FridgeBrilliance comes in when you realize that even though we don't see that the pain seeker is House, when we first see him as a man, and not Carmen Electra, he's dressed the same way House dresses.
** This troper always thought that given the expressions on the faces of the three students who had been asking questions, that they had figured out House was talking about himself.
*** The three students never realized House was talking about himself as House used Unreliable Narrator as much as he could - with one big example of it being House claiming that the "patient" with infarction in his leg seeing the other two patients in his hallucinations. House's infarction case was years ago, before he even knew his team or broke up with Stacy. Furthermore, their expressions never imply that they figured out who that patient actually was.
* In the season one episode, "Paternity", House goes through the Surgical Sieve in trying to rule out causes for the patients symptoms. He uses the Mnemonic Midnit (pronounced Midnight) to go through metabolic, inflammation, degenerative, neoplastic, infection, trauma; ruling each out. He ponders that Midnight also has a g and an h. The Fridge Brilliance sets in later when we discover that the patient is adopted, so his disease could be genetic, the G in "midnight". This turns out to be red herring as the disease was a rare complication arising from a case of measles in the first months of the patient's life.
** Should H, then, go for Medical '''H'''istory?
* A minor one, but Taub's ringtone for his ex-wife is the "Piña Colada Song". At first it just seems like a catchy tune but it actually makes a lot of sense that he'd choose it. It's about a couple who each try to cheat on the other but in doing so end up accidentally scheduling a date with one another (because her personal ad caught his eye and he responded to it, not realising it was her). Once they're reminded how suitable they are for one another, it's implied the couple ends up staying together. Taub had cheated on his wife repeatedly and she had an emotional affair. He still wants them to end up back together. So the song actually fits nicely.

* The fact that all the medical tests are run by the main characters is somewhat annoying, but it kinda makes sense: they usually only deal with the cases that the others were unable to diagnose, and therefore everything that could have prevented the disease to have been diagnosed earlier should be eliminated. And that includes human factor - that is, incompetence and negligence of the laboratorians, which means it is preferable to have all the tests run by the team themselves. Of course, the question remains of how they could be qualified enough to personally run every possible test...

** Start over. Make a new life, with new friends, and never forget his old ones. That's kinda the point.

** They missed an easy one in the "one month on" montage at the episode end: Show Thirteen receiving an envelope, opening it and reading something like "When the time comes: gwilsonhouse@gmail.com".

* In Season Five, Episode 20, Lawrence Kutner commits suicide. Whilst I understand that RealityWritesThePlot, there never was a suitable explanation in-story. However, in Episode 18 "Here Kitty", they meet a cat called Debbie which supposedly predicts the death of people it snuggles up to. When House discovers that Kutner is superstitious, he torments him with the cat. Not only do House's pranks keep the cat close to him, but on one occasion it stares him down suspiciously. This could be a coincidence, but considering that he dies two episodes later, I can't help but feel like there's a connection.
** Actually, a real horror sets in when you realize how realistic that was. Contrary to what one sees in a movie, suicidees often leave no letter or note or any sort of explanation, nor there are any obvious signs beforehand. Just thinking how many people you know actually could consider suicide is aviation-grade ParanoiaFuel.

* A minor one, but Taub's ringtone for his ex-wife is the "Pina Colada Song". At first it just seems like a catchy tune but it actually makes a lot of sense that he'd choose it. It's about a couple who each try to cheat on the other but in doing so end up accidentally scheduling a date with one another (because her personal ad caught his eye and he responded to it, not realising it was her). Once they're reminded how suitable they are for one another, it's implied the couple ends up staying together. Taub had cheated on his wife repeatedly and she had an emotional affair. He still wants them to end up back together. So the song actually fits nicely.

'''As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''

* In Season Five, Episode 8, the patient is a stage magician. And the diagnosis is lupus. After three and a half years of misdirection ("It's never lupus!"), that's one heck of a magic trick to pull on the audience, isn't it?

* In Season Five, Episode 20, Lawrence Kutner commits suicide. Whilst I understand that RealityWritesThePlot, there never was a suitable explanation in-story. However, in Episode 18 "Here Kitty", they meet a cat called Debbie which supposedly predicts the death of people it snuggles up to. When House discovers that Kutner is superstitious, he torments him with the cat. Not only do House's pranks keep the cat close to him, but on one occasion it stares him down suspiciously. This could be a coincidence, but considering that he dies two episodes later, I can't help but feel like there's a connection.

** And in the series finale, [[spoiler: House fakes his own death, just like Holmes does in ''The Final Problem'']].

*** [[spoiler: "Moriarty"... and he's played by Casey Jones!]]

* Also, every single season finale has been building to season 5's finale. [[spoiler: Season One had House's mental jumping-around, not in itself unusual, but it's hard for a stable mind to tell three stories is jigsaw order like that and be totally consistent. Season 2 is, I think, pretty obvious. House's gunshot-induced hallucination. Season 3 gives us the magical reviving woman, a case I don't believe ever happened, because no one has ever brought it up since and it doesn't seem to have effected squat. Season 4 really gave House some gas, with the brain problems and the hallucinations and the electroshock. It's all been foreshadowing.]]
* [[spoiler: What's more, I just now figured out why Amber's hallucination tried to kill Chase that time. Up to that point, House didn't treat the fact that he was seeing Wilson's dead girlfriend as something he should take seriously, and instead took advantage of having an "all access key to [his] brain". Amber causing House to attempt to kill Chase without him realizing it was House's brain trying to tell him that it ''is'' serious, and that he needs to get rid of Amber.]]
* It took this troper a couple of viewings to realize just how clever the Season 2 season finale is. Consider the show's central conceit, WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief-challenging enough as it is - genius doctor has to solve an apparently unsolvable medical mystery every week, virtually all of which are inexplicably concentrated in one corner of New Jersey. What's the plot of the episode? House is faced with a medical mystery, but the fact that the mystery in this case is ''literally'' unsolvable is what tips House off that [[spoiler: he's dreaming]]. It's at least a LampshadeHanging, and arguably even a DeconstructedTrope, of the basic concept of the show - driving the consequences of a medical mystery which cannot be solved to their logical extreme. Additionally, it occurred to this troper that in the episode, all the other characters are just manifestations of House's personality - try imagining some of the team's medical-related lines as if House was saying them.

* Another example from the episode "Three Stories", where House is giving a lecture. In the lecture, he tells the stories of three past cases of different people with leg pain. At first he hides their identities by saying that they're two middle-aged men and Carmen Electra, which we see in the scenes of those people being treated. Eventually some of the interns attending the lecture ask questions that require House to reveal the actual ages and genders of the patients. One of the middle-aged men turns out to be a 16-year-old girl, and Carmen Electra turns out to be a man screaming in pain who is then revealed to have just been a drug seeker. When this is revealed, they change to who they actually are in the scenes. Eventually it is revealed that the pain seeker [[spoiler:was actually House, though the man wasn't seen as House until later, and it was never revealed to the interns that it was House]]. Now, the FridgeBrilliance comes in when you realize that [[spoiler:even though we don't see that the pain seeker is House, when we first see him as a man, and not Carmen Electra, he's dressed the same way House dresses.]]

* In the season one episode, "Paternity", House goes through the Surgical Sieve in trying to rule out causes for the patients symptoms. He uses the Mnemonic Midnit (pronounced Midnight) to go through metabolic, inflammation, degenerative, neoplastic, infection, trauma; ruling each out. He ponders that Midnight also has a g and an h. The Fridge Brilliance sets in later when we discover that [[spoiler:the patient is adopted, so his disease could be genetic, the G in "midnight". This turns out to be red herring as the disease was a rare complication arising from a case of measles in the first months of the patient's life.]]
** [[spoiler:Should H, then, go for Medical '''H'''istory?]]

* In Season Five, Episode 8, the patient is a stage magician. And the diagnosis [[spoiler:is lupus. After three and a half years of misdirection ("It's never lupus!"), that's one heck of a magic trick to pull on the audience, isn't it?]]

* In the series finale, [[spoiler:House fakes his death so that he can share Wilson's last five months of life.]] House has, many times, stated that [[spoiler:Wilson is his only friend, the only person he considers something close to family in the entire world, and that if he dies, he will be completely alone.]] [[spoiler:What do you think is going to happen when Wilson finally dies from his terminal cancer?]]
** [[spoiler:Start over. Make a new life, with new friends, and never forget his old ones. That's kinda the point.]]
* Also in the finale, [[spoiler:House uses the body of the drug addicted patient to make it look like he died in the fire. A question arises, however... What happened to the drug addict in the first place? On somewhat popular interpretation is that House ''purposely'' caused him to overdose on heroin, thereby murdering him and getting access to his useful body.]]
* Thirteen's dad has already [[spoiler: lost his wife and son to Huntington's]] and will probably end up [[spoiler: losing his daughter to it as well.]] There is no evidence that [[spoiler: he has any other family members]].
* If House is [[spoiler:supposedly dead as far as most of the world knows]], who's going to [[spoiler: MercyKill Thirteen when the time comes]]?
** House. He is [[spoiler:supposedly dead, not actually dead. He would just track her down and bid her au revoir just as planned. Thirteen will even see it as a sign as he went to receive her from heaven! (A bit too romantic, I know, but you get the point.)]]

*** It'd probably still be [[spoiler:House that did the actual killing, even if he let said girlfriend in on what happened. House wouldn't ''like'' killing her, but he could emotionally handle it. Not everyone could; even Thirteen, who mercy killed her brother at ''his'' request, obviously had some issues related to it, even if she feels she did the right thing.]]
* In Season Five, Episode 20, Lawrence Kutner [[spoiler:commits suicide]]. Whilst I understand that RealityWritesThePlot, there never was a suitable explanation in-story. However, in Episode 18 "Here Kitty", they meet a cat called Debbie which [[spoiler:supposedly predicts the death of people it snuggles up to]]. When House discovers that Kutner is superstitious, he torments him with the cat. Not only do House's pranks keep the cat close to him, but on one occasion it stares him down suspiciously. This could be a coincidence, but considering that [[spoiler:he dies two episodes later]], I can't help but feel like there's a connection.