History Series / UntoldStoriesOfTheER

* AdultFear: Most cases involving young children fall under this trope but there are some standouts.
** A six-year-old boy who suffers a stroke and is rendered both paralyzed and mute; not only does the doctor tending to him discuss how absolutely ''terrifying'' this must be for the kid but his mother is a nurse so she knows ''exactly'' what could go wrong.
** The daughter in the subplot with a young mother randomly going in and out of flatline in "Diagnose Me!" is deaf and while they are able to get a translator, the mother is well-aware she could die and is quite distressed about this.

* WolfInSheepsClothing: Averted in one episode. A man with hemorrhoids and heart problems was coming in with frequent bouts of bradycardia while his wife was with him. His wife is unbelievably nice to both her husband and the staff. The workers start thinking she might be this trope and is poisoning her husband. They were half right. During one his bradycardia bouts, one doctor asks the wife what happened and she explains that she was just giving him his hemorrhoid cream. The doctor looks at the bottle and discovers that the bottle was his heart medication, nitroglycerine, which expands blood vessels and causes blood to gather in the heart. So while the wife was the one making her husband sick, it was by accident and her kindness was genuine all along.

** Another with a parasite phobia has to treat on a row a woman with worms on her toe, a baby with pinsworms, and a little girl with a bug deep inside her nose.
* YourCostumeNeedsWork: On Halloween, a guy walked in with an axe in his head complaining of a headache. The doctors, accustomed to fake injuries on Halloween, laughed and put him in another room. One of the doctors played along and "inspected" the wound, but came up with real blood on his hand...

* PuppyDogEyes: [[ExploitedTrope Exploited]] successfully and literally by the owner of a dog who ate the amputated finger of her boyfriend, a pianist. She puts the dog on the man's lap and dares him to look it in the eyes before telling the doctors to ShootTheDog so they can retrieve the finger. The man is moved and tells the hospital to retrieve the finger non-lethally, even though it is much more difficult and every second was closer to the finger being damaged irreversibly by gastric acid.

* RightThroughHisPants: Averted. If a patient was naked in real life, they are also naked in the recreation, but the naughty bits are blurred.

* SadClown: A full house is poisoned in "Birthday Party Gone Bad", party clown included. By the time he's wheeled into the ER vomiting, he has no will to make laughs.

** The donor's wife who felt dizzy and turned to be high.

* TheScrooge: One Mr. Morrow keeps refusing treatment, claiming he is healthy and that doctors are lying to take his money. Mr. Morrow also has [[MajorInjuryUnderreaction a giant knife sticking out of his back]]. The hospital board is asked to intervene, but since they have no previous diagnosis of insanity, and Morrow is not unconscious, the doctor is told that he is legally obliged to allow him to leave if he doesn't want treatment. Luckily, Morrow collapses on the parking lot and can be brought back into the hospital and operated before he dies.

** The mother in "Delusional Bride", who acts like her daughter's wedding is her own wedding and accusses her daughter of ruining it by faking an illness... which is actually completely real.
** The titular "Drama Mama", mother to a teenage beauty contestant, who keeps berating the female doctors for not telling her daughter's problem and solving it within seconds, hitting on the male doctors, and questioning every test they try and calling them useless. In the end, it is found that she caused her daughter's sickness by feeding her intestinal worm eggs to help her lose weight.

* NiceGuy: Many of the doctors and nurses featured on the show are very kind and friendly people. A few that stand out are Nurse Terry Foster, Dr. Christopher Michos, and Dr. Kip Adrian. Nurse Terry has a very gentle, soothing beside manner. Dr. Adrian has a reputation among his colleagues for never letting anything get him down. If the dramatization in "Ice Cold Mom" is to be believed, he can even stay friendly to a kid who screams through a shot, throws a lollipop he was just given, and then sticks his tongue out at him.

* OhCrap: A common trope. Usually when a patient suddenly gets a lot worse, they flatline, or the ER suddenly gets swamped.
* OlderThanTheyLook: Dr. Jessica Mason, from "Don't Touch Me!", has this problem. She's a full-fledged doctor in her 20s-30s, but most people assume she is much younger. She has actually been accused of being 12-13, and many patients assume she is either a nurse or intern. Dr. Mason can in fact be a DeadpanSnarker to those who make comments.

** One episode featured a med student with a background in biochemistry and pharmacology who ended up delivering a baby- rather, watching in shock while a nurse delivered the baby. A family with the mother in labor walked into the wrong section of the hospital, where the med student was, and the instructor ordered him to help the woman. He had been a resident for 4 days, and didn't even know where the emergency room was.

** Another case saw an example Open Heart Construction. A guy had stepped in concrete, but by the time he got to the ER it had hardened completely. The doctor had to saw through it in the ER.

** In an inversion, a man brought his beagle who was not breathing and had open wounds to the ER as it was the closest medical facility. The man was so distraught the doctors improvised and saved the day.

** A young armed forces veteran had a bad case of MunchausenSyndrome; he made it appear that he has razor blades in his stomach by taping the blades to his dog tags and then putting the dog tags under his back when he gets X-rayed. Meanwhile, between tests, he regales the staff and fellow patients with stories from his time in the forces, reveling in the attention and sympathy. When his deception is discovered, he tries to use his veteran status to guilt the staff for calling him out. The only possible sympathy here is for the fact that he has an untreated mental disorder.

** A British patient on holiday has a dislocated shoulder and the attending physician's attempts to put it back in place only makes the patient scream in pain. The patient claims to have a brother who is an anesthesiologist back home, said brother later calls the hospital and recommends a certain pain reliever. This helps for awhile. The attending physician tries to have the patient admitted to orthopedics but the orthopedic surgeon refuses. The patient then requests a morphine drip but is told that this is available in orthopedics, not in the ER. A few minutes later, a nurse relays a message to the attending physician: the orthopedic surgeon has changed his mind and even apologized for being rude earlier. The patient gets transferred to orthopedics. The ER staff was practically celebrating finally being rid of him when the orthopedic surgeon storms in, furious that their patient was admitted! ER staff realizes that the patient had often been on his cell phone; he had been calling the hospital's operator, pretending to be his brother and the orthopedic surgeon. He's wheeled back to the ER, where his phone is taken away and the staff finds a number for "Mom". They call her and she tells them to not give her son any more painkillers. They also find out that the patient [[FakeBrit is really from St. Louis]]! And the shoulder? He's been doing this for so long that he can pop the shoulder out and in at will.

* GoodAllAlong: A doctor comes late because her car was broken into and she was robbed of some prized sunglasses, among other things. The patient next door to hers just happens to be a teenager wearing the same sunglasses, who refuses to take them off, keeps changing his story, and is scared of having his parents or the police involved. Naturally, she needles him [[CannotSpitItOut without actually accussing him outright]]. However, it turns out that the teenager's glasses are really his, and that he was dodgy because he was beaten up by [[BarbaricBully bullies]].

** One patient had taken black market Viagra to surprise his girlfriend for Valentine's Day. Problem was it was horse Viagra and he went into the ER after the third day with the erection. The urologist was called as the blood was so clotted it had to be manually drained with surgery.
** Another patient had this when his girlfriend suggested he stick his penis into a camping stove and she would.... have relations with him on the other side. Needless to say, he got stuck and had to come into the ER with the stove still attached. A urologist had to drain blood out to reduce the swelling so the stove could be removed.
** Perhaps the most literal one was a man who was accidentally impaled there with a shovel.

* HeadTurningBeauty: In the segment "Runway Collapse", a FashionModel is brought to the ER after she faints in a show. The whole male staff is stunned and many (male) nurses volunteer to work with her. When a man from the same show arrives with the exact same symptoms, nobody gives a damn.

** This was also deliberately invoked for therapeutic hypothermia. After massive heart attacks, some doctors will lower the patient's internal temperature to 89°F (32°C) to slow down the brain and heart enough that they can heal without aggravating the damage.

* {{Irony}}: A man becomes sick, leaving him speechless, unresponsive and walking around aimlessly. It just happens that it is also Halloween and he is wearing a zombie costume.

** A little girl fell into a cactus and covered her stomach and limbs with needles, so the ER team initially tried pulling the needles out one-by-one using tweezers. When the doctor realized this was going to take hours, he got the idea to use bikini wax, recalling an ad he saw earlier. It worked like a charm, and doubles as a ChekhovsGun, too!
*** A similar technique was used for a drunk man who had fallen naked onto a cactus. The doctor sent a staff member to get some bikini wax, but the store didn't have any, so the doctor instructed him to buy as much white glue as he could find. It worked.

** Believed by a woman who used a defibrilator on herself without even knowing how it is used, and got herself knocked out and two burn marks on her chest for the trouble.

* MissConception: In "Don't Push It!", a full-term 15-year-old teenager is brought into the ER and gives birth to a healthy baby girl. Her boyfriend insists that she cannot be pregnant because, you see, they only did it standing up, and his brother told him you cannot get pregnant that way.

* BloodIsTheNewBlack: And vomit, urine, feces, alcohol... pretty much any doctor can expect to be showered with bodily fluids that you didn't know existed over the course of his career.

** "Delusional Bride" has a bride carted to the ER mere hours before her wedding, with everyone in her family claiming that she is either hysterical or faking because she got cold feet in the eleventh hour. Turns out she got worms under her skin during her bachelorette party in Costa Rica and they are [[BodyHorror growing in her head]].

** How do you treat a patient who believes she has a demon in her liver? Why you call in an exorcist! Patient didn't need to go to Psych, and they were able to treat the actual medical condition that she caused herself in an attempt to get rid of the demon.

** One case had a woman who turned out to be three months pregnant violently hemorrhaging in her uterus. Problem was that the only person who knew her medical history was her husband who only spoke [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_language Punjabi]] and the nearest translator was 30 minutes away, and she did not even have five minutes. Luckily a [[AlmightyJanitor janitor that worked there had immigrated from a country that spoke it.]]

** One woman had a [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/June_Bug_-_Underside.jpg june bug]] crawl into her ear. The doctor had to squirt a lot of lidocaine into her ear to drown the bug. After 20 minutes, he pulled it out only for it to revive and start to struggle in his forceps.

** A man was brought in whose only apparent symptom was intermittent shrieking. The doctors were ready to send him up to psych until a nurse discovered a bug gnawing on the inside of his ear.

* EpicFail: The duel of the drunk knights in "Medieval Mayhem", as it is eventually discovered that each knight injured himself with his own weapon, and on the first strike.

** Happens again in "Who Shot Who?" Several people are brought with bullet wounds to the ER, and the Police arrives later because they believe one robbed a liquor shop. The CCTV reveals that the robber is the one guy the doctor trusted the most and who almost used her sympathy to get away with it, while the others are unrelated to the robbery.
** In a case where two men that seemed to not know each other had both been shot, the wife of one of the men is very agitated the entire time and actively trying to get her husband out of the hospital. Turns out that not only do the men know each other, they're co-workers and lovers...who had been shot by the wife after she caught them together. She gets arrested when it's revealed that she was trying to get her husband out of the hospital in case the cops showed up.

* FanDisservice: Hey look at this cute, blonde, half-naked girl! She has a pencil-thick live worm sticking out of her rectum!

* IAteWhat: Multiple:
** In "Mountain Lion Attack", a rich JerkAss walks into the ER feeling confused and dizzy and demands a diagnosis, using the fact that [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections her husband is a donor]] to the hospital as a pressure tool. The doctor keeps doing more and more negative tests until she finally tests positive... for marijuana. By this point, her husband and nephew are also in the ER. Nephew that just brought some "[[OhCrap delicious brownies]]" from college, that she ate.
** An episode has an agitated female chaplain that tests positive for marijuana. She has no idea where that could have come from until her daughter puts two and two together and asks her about the cookies she put on the top shelf and her mother was not supposed to eat.
** The tripping prostitute of the segment "The Nun and the Other Lady" stole Viagra from a client and swallowed it believing it was Vicodin.

* RaisedCatholic: Terry Foster, which contributes to him feeling bad about having to place an elderly nun next to a foul-mouthed prostitute, then having to lie to her in order to not shatter her misconception that the "lady in labor" she was praying for the whole night was actually tripping on [[IAteWhat Viagra]].

* ShootTheDog: A literal example is proposed (and [[{{Pun}} shot down]]) when a dog swallows the amputated finger of a man. The easiest way to do it is by killing the dog, but they cannot bring themselves to do it.

* RealityEnsues: One episode featured the story of an older White woman with general malaise refusing to be attended to by a younger Black female doctor. Throughout the episode, in spite of the patient rebuffing her, she and her colleagues were still able to get enough information to eventually diagnose the woman with cancer. While the end of the segment, unfortunately, still had the woman hold onto her views, the doctor's competence and compassion was able to tear down some of her defense to the point of not only thanking her for treating her, but she even admitted to being the way she is because of her father's influence.

** The chief gastroenterologist who refused to approve the removal of [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer an amputated finger from a live dog]], even though a gastroenterologist had already agreed to do it... [[EvenEvilHasStandards until she was told]] [[PuppyDogEyes that they'd have to]] ShootTheDog [[ShameIfSomethingHappened otherwise]].

* PreciousPuppy: "Missing: 1 Finger" has one who becomes the center of the episode when she eats her owner's boyfriend's amputated finger.

** A patient was poisoned with antifreeze. The hospital didn't have the antidote in stock, but the doctor was aware that alcohol could have many of the same effects, so he sent someone to buy some cheap rum to give the patient.

* HuskyRusskie: A massive, [[VodkaDrunkenski drunk]] Russian guy wakes up at the ER when he was going to get a head wound stitched and goes bananas. He's big enough to get on his feet and stand despite being tied to a stretcher. When the doctor asks a security guard to do something, he sarcastically asks if he wants him to shoot him, because there is no other possible way he can stop him. The Russian is [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu brought down by an old female nurse]] who walks in, sees what is happening, and immediately pushes the back of the stretcher, throwing the guy off balance and to the ground. The ER run to tie the guy to ''another'' stretcher with {{duct tape|ForEverything duct tape}}.

* ExcitedShowTitle: The segments "Don't Touch Me!" and "Don't Push It!"

* GroinAttack: Usually [[WhatAnIdiot self-inflicted.]]

* HeadTurningBeauty: In the segment "Runway Collapse", a FashionModel is brought to the ER after she faints in a show. The whole male staff is stunned and many (male) nurses volunteer to work with her. When a man from the same show arrives with the exact same symptons, nobody gives a dam.

* HuskyRusskie: A massive, [[VodkaDrunkenski drunk]] Russian guy wakes up at the ER when he was going to get a head wound stitched and goes bananas. He's big enough to get on his feet and stand despite being tied to a stretcher. When the doctor asks a security guard to do something, he sarcastically asks if he wants him to shoot him, because there is no other possible way he can stop him.
** DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The Russian is hilarously brought down by an old female nurse who walks in, sees what is happening, and immediately pushes the back of the stretcher, throwing the guy off balance and to the ground. The ER run to tie the guy to ''another'' stretcher with [[DuctTapeForEverything duct tape]].
* IAteWhat:
** In "Mountain Lion Attack", a rich JerkAss walks into the ER feeling confused and dizzy and demands a diagnosis, using the fact that [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections her husband is a donor]] to the hospital as a pressure tool. The doctor keeps doing more and more negative tests until she finally tests positive... for marijuana. By this point, her husband and nephew are also in the ER. Nephew that just brought some "[[OhCrap delicious brownies]]" from college and she ate.
** Another episode has an agitated female chaplain also test positive for marijuana. She has no idea where that could come from until her daughter puts two and two together and asks her about the cookies she put on the top shelf and her mother was not supposed to eat.

* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Examples include a jogger with a masive branch through his neck, that nearly left the doctor speechlees because the man remained conscious and talking; another man with a shovel [[GroinAttack in the groin]], another with a fence post through his cheek, and two teenage girls who ended with a pole ramming through both (and the car seat of the first one) at a car accident. The small scale versions are two people (a drunk, naked man and a four-year-old girl in a bathing suit) who fell on a cactus in separate incidents, and a stripper who had a metal-pointed stiletto stuck into her face during a fight with a rival.

* HelloNurse: In the segment "Runway Collapse", a fashion model is brought to the ER after she faints in a show. The whole male staff is stunned and many (male) nurses volunteer to work with her. When a man from the same show arrives with the exact same symptons, nobody gives a dam.

** Another one was them treating a boy who was [[HolyShitQuotient internally decapitated, which destroyed five of the spinal disks in his neck]]. After he somehow managed to recover, it then cut to news footage of his junior high graduation.

* BloodSplatteredInnocents: All too often. One woman was cradling the body of her friend who was shot, telling him to PleaseWakeUp. Paramedics had to tell her they would look at the (obviously) dead friend after they checked her out. Turns out all the blood wasn't just his- some of it was from the [[HolyShitQuotient two point blank shots to her head.]]

* RightThroughHisPants: Averted. If a patient was naked in real life, it is also naked in the recreation, but the naughty bits are blurred.

A show on the Discovery Network channels. The show involves dramatic reenactments of cases that have been seen in Emergencies Rooms. Usually the actor [[AsHimself portraying the doctor is the doctor from the story.]] The stories for the most part are real but with some details changed for compression purposes, the patient did not give permission to be used, or the patient could not be found afterwards. Three or four different stories are shown intertwinned in each episode.