Actor Allusion: Enforced. When planning the show, producer Arnold Shapiro thought William Shatner would be a good fit as host because of his then-recent role as a police officer on T.J. Hooker.
Breaking News Interruption: The seventh episode of Season 1 was interrupted for CBS coverage of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. That episode was re-aired in its entirety on December 5, 1989.
California Doubling: The show rarely, if ever used this trope. One of the few examples was in "Runaway Truck" - the actual incident recreated was in Nova Scotia but according to a YouTube comment by the daughter of one of the truckers involved the episode was shot in California.
Creator Backlash: Abigail, the little girl who was featured in "Speed Dial Burn Save," stumbled upon an upload of the episode on YouTube years later, and requested that the video be taken down due to hateful, judgmental comments about her mother. She also felt that the episode was extremely personal, and didn't want people to watch it. The original uploader gladly complied, and removed the episode.note Another user has since reuploaded the segment; Abigail has again requested its removal, but so far it is still online. In 2014, Abigail made a since-deleted video to answer questions and explain her point of view. Some were quick to state that Abigail has no right to have uploads of the episode taken down as CBS has the rights to the series.
Edited for Syndication: As detailed in this video, the syndicated version of the show repackages and edits segments, and begins with a new opening narration and reedited opening titles. The Pluto TV feed features these repackaged syndicated episodes, only showing two segments in a 30 minute block.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Though popular in its own right, this show has yet to see an official DVD release, and is currently unavailable via streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.note This is likely due to the true stories involved, and possibly because the master tapes of the original uncut versions of the episodes were lost at some point. However, that hasn't stopped people from posting various episodes on YouTube. Reruns of the syndicated versions of the episodes also air on the GetTV network, and Pluto TV has a channel dedicated to it as of September 2020 (also using the syndicated cut).
In the show's early days, you could call a 1-800 number and order individual episodes on videotape, but this practice was later done away with.
The show did get a VHS release in 1997 as Rescue 911: World's Greatest Rescues; however, it is edited together with international stories and a new narrator.
In a few episodes, callers didn't have a 911 service, so they called a specific number for a police or fire department. The show's popularity actually coincided with the adoption of the 911 emergency service in the U.S. and Canada, and certainly helped spread public consciousness about it. This was notable in "Wrong Number Rescue," where the girls had to look up the emergency numbers, since they lived in a town that was too small for a 911 service.
Dictaphone reels are usually seen during reenactments of 911 calls; nowadays any emergency calls would be recorded and stored digitally.
"911 Under the Bed" featured the victim going for a rotary phone, before grabbing a digital phone to save time on dialing. It's worth noting that cell phones existed at the time of the segment, but the only available models were expensive and bulky. They also lacked GPS, making it difficult to locate the caller.
You actually can see these sometimes. The victim's cell phone in "911 Honeybee Horror" is a prime example of just how bulky those old cell phones were.
One episode had a dog get caught in the phone cord and hit the 911 autodial. This became less and less common during The New '10s.
A few episodes showed garage doors trapping people underneath them. In those cases, the houses had to have been built in the 1980s or before, when garage doors were much more dangerous because they lacked sensors and would keep descending no matter what (or who) was underneath.
With episodes dealing with carbon monoxide poisoning, one might wonder why the victims didn't have CO-detectors. Common carbon monoxide detectors at the time tended to be pads that would turn brown or black when CO was present. Audible alarms didn't become commonplace until the 1990s, after carbon monoxide deaths had increased. Many jurisdictions later made them mandatory in newly-constructed and rental homes.
The scenario in "Freezer Tongue" might be more difficult today, since a lot of refrigerators have freezers on the bottom or on the side.
Similarly most televisions seen on the series are wood console tube TV's.
Another episode had a five-year-old girl call 911 after coming home and finding the house completely empty. What had happened was a case of communication failure: the girl normally took a bus to another school where she was picked up by her mother; however, on that particular day she was instead taken straight home by a friend's parents, and her mother was at the other school looking for her. Naturally, with the prevalence of cell phones today, such a scenario may seem antiquated to the modern viewer.
One episode features a toddler getting burned by hot oil when he trips over a fryer's electric cord. Modern fryers have breakaway cords that are designed to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening.
The episode wherein a mother was locked in the bathroom by mistake mentions that the safety was broken, which is why she was trapped. This happens pretty rarely today, thanks to newer construction and renovation, but older locks could break and sometimes they couldn't be opened from the outside except by a locksmith or by force.
Similarly, this is unlikely to happen today because the mother is much more likely to have a cell phone.
One reason locks are often changed is because sometimes, bathrooms may not have windows, or only have privacy windows that one couldn't climb in (or out of) easily, even if they are on a second floor. Obviously this is a fire hazard.
Some scenarios involved a total stranger being let into the house or a burglar breaking into the house. The rise of video recording doorbells and Internet connected cameras in The New 10's have made it a lot easier to see who is trying to enter or is lurking around so help can be sought much more easily.
One episode depicts an elderly couple who were lost at sea for five days, and non-parachute flares are shown. Many flares released after are parachute flares specifically so they would be visible longer.
"Escalator Trapped Boy" features a boy nearly getting strangulated by an escalator when his coat gets caught under the comb plate. In most every developed country newly installed escalators (and retrofitted older ones) have new safety measures that shut the escalator off if something should get caught in the comb plate.
A few episodes featured house fires that resulted from older Christmas lights (the ones with very large bulbs that get very hot when lit) overheating or having a defective wire that wound up igniting the Christmas tree. Newer Christmas lights (including revival-style lights with the large hot bulbs) now have safety fuses in the plugs that cut power to the string if they detect an overheat or short.
The episode in which a kid called 911 when his mother was choking on a cough drop features a phone line being installed in the bathroom. This situation would be seen as downright ridiculous after the prevalence of smart phones in the Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s, but in The '80s and The '90s this was not unheard of. A few shows well into the Turn of the Millennium would often use a line about having a phone in the bathroom as a joke about how opulent their living quarters are.
A few episodes tell stories of people who were lost in the wilderness. With the advent of GPS trackers (which did exist in The '80s and The '90s but were expensive) and cell phones with built-in GPS capabilities, it has become much more common specifically to aid in these scenarios.
The episode about the telemarketers saving someone from suicide not only depicts actual people working as telemarketers, but also features an answering machine message on a landline. These are not common in The New '20s.
The telemarketer episode also depicts a suicide attempt by letting the car run in the garage. While still a hazard (and even a reality) in The New '20s, widespread adoption of electric vehicles are predicted to make this more difficult to occur.
What Could Have Been: According to this article, while planning the show, CBS entertainment head Kim LeMasters suggested Leonard Nimoy as host. This suggestion led Arnold Shapiro to consider Nimoy's Star Trek co-star William Shatner instead, because of the T.J. Hooker association mentioned above.
For the pinball:
Dummied Out: The playfield has four white targets that have no known effect. Rumors are that they were supposed to spell K-I-R-K for a game mode, which fell through when William Shatner's likeliness wasn't available.
. That episode was re-aired in its entirety on December 5, 1989.