An index of surgical tropes.
Autopsy tropes don't qualify. They deserve their own index.
Tropes:
Related indexes:
- Back-Alley Doctor: A doctor with no medical license.
- Brain Transplant: Swapping brains is as easy as changing a battery.
- Easy Sex Change: Unrealistically fast and easy sex change.
- Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: The performance of a tracheotomy is Played for Drama in fiction.
- Like a Surgeon: Characters who aren't surgeons act like they are, performing something that is not surgery.
- Lobotomy: Taking care of a being's brain to change their behavior.
- Magic Plastic Surgery: Plastic surgery being portrayed unrealistically.
- Meatgrinder Surgery: Flagrantly careless surgery that still manages to get positive results (mostly).
- Open Heart Dentistry: A doctor has to perform an operation that's outside of their competence zone.
- Organ Theft: Stealing people's organs via surgery.
- Plastic Bitch: A character has undergone plastic surgery (possibly many times) as a sign they're vain or unpleasant. And rich.
- Psychic Surgery: The power to reach inside you and rip out the bad parts as a Magic Antidote.
- Quack Doctor: A "doctor" whose medical legitimacy is quite questionable.
- Roadside Surgery: A proper hospital room isn't always available, so surgery must be done wherever is available.
- Ruptured Appendix: A character comes down with appendicitis and needs their appendix out.
- Self-Surgery: There's no one to do your surgery except yourself.
- Skip the Anesthetic: A person chooses not to have painkillers before a procedure.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Mad scientists tend to keep their victims strapped to operating tables.
- Surgical Impersonation: Somebody gets reconstructive surgery that gives them a certain person's face.
- The Tonsillitis Episode: An episode where a character gets tonsillitis.
- Traumatic C-Section: A baby is crudely/violently torn out of the mother's womb.
- We Can Rebuild Him: A badly injured character returns as a Cyborg.
- We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: In fiction, the first thing you need to do to treat a gunshot wound is to get the bullet out. Warning: This is usually the worst thing you could do in real life.
- You Won't Feel a Thing!: Except you will.
