Shout Out / House

• In "The Jerk", a patient mocks Australian doctor Robert Chase by repeatedly calling him "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" or simply "Skippy".
  • It also happens to be a common somewhat pejorative (depending on context) nickname non-white immigrants from Europe called white Australians.
• To Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Season 7, Episode 15 with Cuddy's Bolivian Army dream sequence.
• To various zombie movies, trippy musicals a la Moulin Rouge! and Across the Universe (2007), Two and a Half Men, and fifties family dom-coms.
• "Save the cheerleader, save your world." (Season 5, "Locked In")
• "Did you deduce that by removing your sunglasses to the strains of a Who song?" (Season 5, "Simple Explanation"; when House becomes an amateur detective after Kutner's death.)
  • The same episode (and conversation with Cameron) has House mention "If he's gonna do this, he's gonna do this for love", referencing the Meat Loaf song, what with him being the guest star.
  • And Meat Loaf's character is named Eddie.
• The Season 6 premiere episode, "Broken", is a freaking Scream Out At The Top of Your Lungs to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
• Wilson, after thinking he and House have finally interviewed someone to replace Cameron, shouts "That's our Hitler!"
• To Jeremy Piven from "Epic Fail":
  Patient of the Week: I think it's mercury poisoning. I ate a ton of sushi.
  Thirteen: And you're currently getting mixed reviews in Speed-the-Plow on Broadway? [blank stares] Google it.
• And we finally get Robert Sean Leonard singing some Broadway in "The Down Low". He does a short rendition of "One", from A Chorus Line.
• There's a framed picture◊ of Stephen Colbert behind House's desk in the episode "Open and Shut".
• The show has made plenty of references to 24 over the years:
  • When House had a famous baseball player as his patient he greeted him with: "I'm Dr. Gregory House, and today is the coolest day of my life", spoofing 24s first season narration "I'm federal agent Jack Bauer, and today is the longest day of my life.".
  • When they have a patient with an unknown, contagious disease Cuddy puts the patient's dead body in isolation, telling House he needs level three clearance to see it. House suggests they should call Jack Bauer.
  • When House needs a drug dealer to give him the drugs he had been dealing in "The Down Low", he shouts "I NEED THE DRUGS!" Cue a Beat, followed by "Huh... works for Jack Bauer."
  • When brought in by the CIA for a consultation, he says the building looks better on 24.
• When one of the new duckling candidates is revealed to be Mormon, House promptly nicknames him Big Love.
• In the episode "Wilson", House and Wilson are talking in House's office, when Wilson says "I'm not here for an argument". House retorts with "Oh right, that's room 12A". Room 12A was the Argument Clinic room in the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch.
• Plus, most hospitals don't have a room 13, they go 12, 12A, 14.
• In the episode "Deception", after House cuts a patient's bruise and confirms his current diagnosis because of the fruity smell of the pus (no, seriously), he looks up, takes a long whiff off the scalpel, and says "I love the smell of pus in the morning. Smells like... Victory." This allusion was used again in the Season 6 episode "The Tyrant".
• In the episode "Knight Fall", House addresses the apothecary employee as "You embossed carbuncle", in reference to King Lear.
• In the episode "Massage Therapy" the patient and her boyfriend are named Jenny and Billy respectively, would be a coincidence if not for the fact that Jen's actor plays Jenny.
• In "You Must Remember This", Taub says that he figured Foreman's apartment would be more "Mod Squad". Omar Epps Starred in the Mod Squad Remake.
• House's driver license lists his address as 221 Baker Street, Apt. B. This is the same address as Sherlock Holmes.
• House says "There is only one truth" - a famous Sherlock Holmes quote.
• In the episode "Bombshells", Taub tells Foreman that he stayed up until 3:00 in the morning watching classic Doctor Who.
• In "Last Temptation", the patient is mentioned to be slowly turning blue, prompting House to say, "At least we can rule out the blue gum."
• In "Two Stories", House fills his story to the fifth grade class with obvious film references, including Pulp Fiction, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and also quotes from A Few Good Men and Ghostbusters (1984). Each time the same kid calls him on it.
• From "Perils of Paranoia", we have House mentioning Arceus as having created the world with three types of matter. When Taub asks "Arceus?", House casually says "Look it up." and continues on with the conversation.
• During the pre-credits sequence of "Known Unknowns," the Patient of The Week drags her friend along stating: "C'mon Phoebe, victory or death! Or possibly cake." Cake or death?
• The man who shot House in the episode "No Reason" is named Moriarty.
• In "Cane & Able", a young boy claims he's being tortured by aliens and the team discover cells which differ from his DNA.
  Chase: Alien DNA.
  House: Anybody watch any X-Files that inspired an explanation?
• In season 3, episode 19, Cameron and Foreman had stayed up all night with tests, finding nothing. Suddenly Chase arrives with one test-result he just left on overnight and picked up after a night's sleep. House nods and says that this is good. The two other stare at him. "But he didn't do anything!" House's reply? "Work smarter, not harder." All the while, Chase is holding a cup of coffee.
• In another season 3 episode, "Lines in the Sand", he yells "Attica! Attica! Attica!" at Cuddy and persuades a teenage stalker to stop obsessing over him by adapting the famous "Here's looking at you, kid" lines from Casablanca, probably correctly guessing that she wouldn't recognize it.
• Season 3 episode 7 "Son of a Coma Guy": House says "I have to get back to our Sleeper before he goes looking for the Orgasmatron."
• Blackadder is among the shows House has on his TiVo. Hugh Laurie appeared in several series of that show. And House's 80's-night getup.
  • Another partial reference to this is in Series 1 episode 16 when House fakes a British accent (Hugh Laurie's actual accent, so he's an British man, pretending to be American pretending to be British...), followed closely by a scene where Chase references The Madness of King George, referencing Laurie's role as Mad King George's son the prince regent in Blackadder.
• Indeed, the entire series itself is a gigantic Sherlock Holmes reference. House's name is similar to "Holmes", and they're both of great deductive mind, though while Holmes seems to be a free agent, House is an employed diagnostician. Indeed, Wilson is similar to "Watson" in both name and the fact that both men are loyal companions to House and Holmes. It even makes reference to an Irene Adler at a few points.
• The Other Wiki has a paragraph about this.
• In the episode "Wilson" from season 6, while talking into House's office, Wilson is upset and says that he doesn't want to have an argument. To this, House says "No right, that's room 12A". Room 12A is the room where Graham Chapman sends Michael Palin to have an argument in the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "The Argument Clinic".
• In the third season episode special guest starring Dave Matthews, House is busy faking a brain tumor so he can get a certain procedure done. His patient name for the purpose is Luke N. Laura, from General Hospital.
  • Early in season one House also complains that he's missing an episode of General Hospital to be there.
• A Shout-Out to Fantastic Voyage in "House's Head". "The shortest distance to your memory is through your pre-frontal cortex. All we have to do is access it." "Great idea. I'll build a giant submarine. You get the miniaturization gizmo."
• 4x2 "The Right Stuff" opens with a shout out to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a pilot suffering synesthesia that looks like the whacky multi-color mind-trip from the end of the movie.
• Season 5's "Joy to the World" has a Shout-Out to Heathers. A teenager is the subject of an embarrassing prank. House says "Let's see where (the school) falls on the Heathers scale."
• Season 1, Episode 5, "Damned If You Do" features House prescribing cigarettes to a patient, a Shout-Out to a classic sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
• Season 7, "Fall from Grace" brings us a Shout-Out to Superman: The Movie. A patient is refusing to give his name or medical history, which either makes him a criminal or a superhero. When the patient says "I'm not a criminal." House replies "Awesome! What colour is my underwear?"
• From the finale: "Didn't you ever see Dead Poets Society? Carpe Diem!"
• Season 5 Episode 18, "Here Kitty" has a combined Shout-Out and Stealth Pun. House sets up a makeshift habitrail-type ramp, so he can make a toy car Jump The Shark.
• Also in season 5: when dead Amber's ghost starts appearing, he calls her Gazoo.
• Season 7's "Unwritten" has a little Shout-Out to Misery (maybe). A cynical writer is in the hospital bed, and House tells her he wants her to write more books. She says she's "done," after attempting suicide, and doesn't want to write any more books with the character who made her fortune. He says "Don't you say that, you dirty birdy," a la Annie Wilkes.
• House quips, "How do you solve a problem like dermatitis?" as a shoutout to The Sound of Music in "Damned if You Do", as his patient was a nun.
• In "House Divided", House puts on Public Enemy's song Fight The Power on a giant boombox. In Do the Right Thing, one of the characters constantly plays the song on his boombox.
• In "Blowing the Whistle", House asks a teenaged patient to hop on one leg and sing the theme song to iCarly.
• The season 7 episode "Two Stories", begins after the introduction with an extended homage to Pulp Fiction, specifically the scene at the beginning, when Jules and Vincent kill Brett. The episode is written somewhat non-chronologically and even namedrops the film later on.

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