"Well, at least here you'll be treated with dignity. Now strip naked and get on the probulator."
— Turanga Leela, Futurama
Medical examinations, particularly the physical exam, are generally not the most comfortable of situations. Real-life doctors generally get specific training to address professionalism and bedside manner.
Fictional doctors, on the other hand, generally come with a selection of flaws that are demonstrated in their overall behaviour. And patients may have their own hangups. Thus, giving or getting a physical is a great way to demonstrate that something isn't quite right. The doctor may be a little too intimate, brutally logical, or obsessive about some minor symptom that turns out to be a major plot point. The patient may have a panic attack, revealed to be related to past trauma. The discomfort of the exam itself is sometimes an allegory for the greater difficulty faced by the character. Or perhaps they enjoy the exam a little too much themselves. The viewer may be meant to share in the discomfort, creating sympathy for the patient, antipathy for the doctor, or a chance to display the emotional attachments of another character.
Often involves a medical Ass Shove gag. See also Strapped to an Operating Table. And whatever you do, never Turn Your Head and Cough. Compare Pervy Patdown.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Black Jack:
- Played with in a story in which Black Jack is called to a village that very much distrusts outsiders, in order to examine the daughter of a wealthy man there. While the daughter is obviously nervous about him examining her genitalia, he reminds her that she has ovarian cancer and thus there's really no other choice. He is perfectly professional about the whole thing, but she still tells everyone in the village he groped her, leading to him being attacked.
- On a separate occasion, Black Jack is called in to examine a teenage girl allegedly suffering from horrible stomach pains. When he realizes she's faking (he sees her drop the act while checking to see if people were still watching her), he rips off her clothes in a threatening manner to scare her. When her mother comes in to see what's going on, he insists he was simply taking off her clothes for examination. He's promptly sent away, though not before telling the mother of the real cause of her daughter's illness.
- Busou Shinki has an instance in the 13th Episode OVA, when the Arnval-type Shinki Ann goes for a maintenance checkup at a Shinki facility. Not only does Ann undergo an electrical test of her power systems that produces an interesting reaction from her, she also gets felt up by the Shinki nurse who also comments that her Master "treats her well" in a creepy fashion while running her hand down Ann's back, presumably to test her sense of touch.
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. When the Major is getting a new cybernetic body she finds herself the subject of some unsubtle come-ons by a Hospital Hottie doctor. Despite the Major's implied bisexuality she's unimpressed, especially when the doctor turns out to be one of the corrupt cops Section 9 are looking for. Only a last minute intervention by a third party saves her life.
- Kochikame: In episode 169, Ryotsu and his fellow officers go in for routine physicals and Ryotsu decides to play a prank on them by dressing up as a doctor and invoking this trope by getting....handsy during the examination. The whole thing ends with them Strapped to an Operating Table and stripped of their underwear as Ryotsu claims he needs to perform a rectal exam. At the last minute, however, he reveals it's really him....and then adds insult to injury by kicking the table they're strapped on out into the hall, causing them to essentially moon the entire hospital.
- Played with in an episode of The Ping-Pong Club, where Maeno and Izawa impersonate doctors in order to force everyone at their school to endure a Creepy Physical. They frighten a teacher by remarking on the size of his nipples, imply that the principal has cancer, examine the entire ninth grade in less than twenty seconds, and get a lot of footage of shirtless girls with their hidden "blackmail camera."
- Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin has one of the first half's main antagonists, boys' correctional facility doctor Gisuke Sasaki, administer "additional" physicals for boys he particularly has interest in. He has had dozens of victims, the most recent being Anchan's late friend and the next potential target being Joe.
Animation
- In the Russian short film Clinic, the hapless Patient suffers a series of Medical Horror nightmares, including a visit to a doctor who makes him suffer all sorts of painful and humiliating procedures, including propping his mouth open with a tongue depressor, giving him a turpentine enema, and choking him with a blood-pressure cuff.
Comic Books
- The Authority: In the middle of fighting the Authority, a villain in temporary possession of the Doctor's nigh-omnipotence goes back in time to the Engineer's adolescence, poses as a doctor, and gives her a very intentionally Creepy Physical so that when he steps back into the present a sentence later and reminds her of it, the traumatic memory resurfaces.
Fan Works
- Craving the Sky: When Weiss calls in her doctor to treat an infected wound, he spends far more time focusing on her wings as opposed to the problem she actually called him in for. While he does eventually treat her wound, he’s very condescending and presumptuous throughout the whole visit, and leaves in a huff after Weiss slaps him for assuming she's a bastard that her father decided to take in.
- Julien undergoing a humiliating medical exam sets up the plot for The Penguins of Madagascar fanfic "Princess". Since he's a lemur, it's not intentional on the vet's part, but an off-hand comment by the vet reveals to the eavesdropping penguins that Julien is Transgender, so it's pretty bad for Julien.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager Parody Fic The Voyorgy Conspiracy, this happens when the Doctor has erotic fanfiction downloaded into his holomatrix during a medical examination of B'Elanna Torres.
- The Omegaverse fic you ruined everything
has a doctor forcing an exam on someone right after learning his secondary gender. When the guy tries to refuse, the doctor drugs him, proceeds to do a pelvic exam and steals the guy's contraceptive implant, patronizing the crap out of him all the while.
Film — Live-Action
- Burglar: When Bernie realizes that a dental assistant is rubbing against her, she takes the appropriate action.
- The Debt: An undercover Mossad agent has to become the patient (claiming to be having some trouble conceiving with her husband) of a Nazi gynecologist known to have performed sadistic experiments on concentration camp inmates. And then he tells her she needs an injection and gets out the needle… Creepy, indeed.
- A major plot point in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
- Hospital Massacre has a long sequence of the protagonist stripped to her panties being examined. The camera lingers over her naked breasts in low light as the examiner auscultates her; it is somewhere between really creepy and Fanservice. A certain fan edit found online with a matching heartbeat soundtrack laid over the scene even more so. Either way, it is a dark scene which gets more so as it goes on, especially when you consider that the examiner isn't actually a doctor, he's the killer.
- The dental exams in Little Shop of Horrors.
- Spiders II: Breeding Ground: The first sign that there's something wrong with Dr. Grbac is the bizarre physical he gives Alex and Jason immediately after their rescue, which is both excessively rough and too detached. That's because he's not a physician at all but a Mad Scientist: he was simply assessing how useful they'd be in his experiments.
- Teeth: Dawn is actually molested by her gynaecologist when she wants to have her Vagina Dentata examined. The doctor's fingers are bitten off in the process.
Literature
- Dave Barry, in the column "Getting Physical", remarks on how physical examinations are almost enjoyable until the doctor pulls out The Glove and horror ensues:
Suddenly you notice that the doctor looks vaguely like Vincent Price, and the room lights are flashing, and the music system, which had been playing "Wonderful World," is now playing the theme from Jaws. And now the doctor is holding up his hand, which has grown to the size of a mature eggplant and has sprouted eight or nine extra digits, and he's struggling to pull on The Glove, which has developed a life of is own, snarling and writhing like some kind of evil mutant albino squid. And now the doctor is turning to you, his eyes glowing like beer signs, and he's saying "Turn around hahahaHAHAHAHA" and you're thinking OH NO PLEASE NOOOOOOO.
- In A Brother's Price, Jerin has to have his sperm tested before he can get married. (Infertility is Serious Business, due to it being widespread) While that does not involve inappropriate touching, the doctor is surprised by Jerin's high sperm count, and voices this, much to Jerin's embarrassment. Later, his bride-to-be checks his naked body for inbred deformities, also a necessary procedure ... and of course she does so with his eldest sister present, which makes it more safe, but even more embarassing.
- One of the first signs Semi and Miranda in Dr. Franklin's Island get that they haven't been rescued and their ordeal is nowhere near over is the impersonal nature of the exam they're given, their bodies checked like they're prized animals by people who only look them in the eye when absolutely necessary, hardly speak to them, and don't answer their questions.
Live-Action TV
- One episode of The Drew Carey Show involves the main characters accidentally getting dosed with a drug that makes them all incredibly aroused. Drew has to testify in court as a witness in a sexual harassment case, but poor Lewis happens to have his annual physical that day.
Doctor: Okay, we're up the part everybody hates... Whoa, maybe not everybody!
- Subverted in an episode of ER. When a doctor performs a routine breast exam, he attempts to put the woman (and himself) at ease by joking about it the entire time. Unfortunately, it backfires and makes her think he was getting off on it when he genuinely wasn't. To top it off, when she complains to his boss, she and several of the other women on staff not only automatically assume that he abused the patient, they essentially accuse all male doctors of going to medical school solely to have the chance to ogle and grope women, all the while sanctimoniously insisting that they would never have an improper thought about a male patient.
- An episode of The Golden Girls has Rose complaining that her dentist touched her inappropriately in the process of checking her pulse after a procedure. When she confronts him, he repeats his claim, stating that she must have been imagining things due to the anesthesia. She believes him... until she catches him doing it again.
- House: Every time there's a physical, this will happen.
- The Handmaid's Tale: When Serena has an OB/GYN appointment, the couple hosting her have prepped a fully equipped examination room in their home to allow the doctor to do a home visit. Then, the doctor asks her out on a date in the middle of performing a prenatal exam, leaving Serena more than a little creeped out and unnerved. Her hosts think she should accept, regardless of how she feels.
- Done in an episode of Law & Order (and the Law & Order: UK episode based on it) when a woman is molested during a routine OB/GYN exam. Attempts at filing a complaint prove futile, so she goes back in order to catch him in the act. Unfortunately, this time he drugs and rapes her. Then it came out that she knew he had molested a friend of hers and went to see him the first time explicitly to try and catch him.
- Raising Hope: Burt has a prostate exam, which he was not expecting. The doctor thinks he may have the beginnings of BPH, so he asks Burt how often he has sex with his wife. Burt replies:
Burt: Not like this.
- One episode of Scrubs features a one-line joke about a doctor who always asks his patients to remove their pants, regardless of their complaint. Another episode focuses on Elliot's complete lack of bedside manner, including giving J.D. a physical which he compares to "when my older brother used to beat the crap out of me". As another, more minor, character asks, "Do you examine everyone that way, or just people you feel have wronged you somehow?"
- Dr. Phlox of Star Trek: Enterprise is a very competent doctor and utterly professional, but his lack of familiarity with human social mores and rather... offbeat sense of humour often cause his bedside manner to leave something to be desired.
- In "Dead Stop", he's putting Malcolm Reed through some painful rehab following a leg injury, leading to this dialogue:
Reed: It can't be ethical to cause a patient this much pain!
Phlox: It's unethical to harm a patient. I can inflict as much pain as I like. - In "Singularity", Travis Mayweather comes to Sickbay with a headache, and Phlox decides to examine him, suggesting it may have to do with Trav's brain being jacked into an alien computer in "Dead Stop" (above)... or it may just be tension. "On the other hand, Terellian plague starts out with a simple headache, and then all manner of nasty things begin to happen..." The look on Trav's face is priceless. Then it goes From Bad to Worse, but in all fairness to Phlox, that's mostly because he was Not Himself due to a Negative Space Wedgie.
- In "Dead Stop", he's putting Malcolm Reed through some painful rehab following a leg injury, leading to this dialogue:
- Star Trek: Voyager:
- In "Darkling", the Doctor decides to improve his programming by incorporating aspects of famous historical figures, including Lord Byron. B'Elanna has turned up in Sickbay for an examination, and warns him against this.
B'Elanna: Behavioural subroutines have a way of interacting with each other which isn't always predictable. You've got to be careful... [Badass Armfold] Or someone might hurt you.
[Reveal Shot of the Doctor's hand fondling B'Elanna's knee. He quickly removes it.] - In "Author, Author", the Doctor writes a holo-novel portraying himself as a hapless victim of antiholographic prejudice and the rest of the crew as colossal Jerkasses. Tom Paris gets back at him by reprogramming the novel so that the Doctor is a sleazy, lecherous creep who drugs the hologram of Seven of Nine with an aphrodisiac and has his way with her when she comes to him about a shoulder pain. The real Doctor is not amused.
- In "Darkling", the Doctor decides to improve his programming by incorporating aspects of famous historical figures, including Lord Byron. B'Elanna has turned up in Sickbay for an examination, and warns him against this.
- In the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman", the cybernetics doctor brought in to examine a partially cyberconverted woman runs his hands over her body in a manner that would earn him a board of inquiry if those parts were still entirely flesh. The character revealed to be her boyfriend is notably discomfited.
Music
- Brentalfloss: "Dr. Mario with Lyrics" has an interlude where Dr. Mario does a seemingly normal checkup on a patient, until he suddenly asks them to do the same to him. In the music video, he even strips down expecting a "yes".
Take off your pants.
Good. Now, let's see...
Turn Your Head and Cough.
Okay, now do me!
[Beat]
...Please?
Webcomics
- This is the plot of the story "Suffer" in Jack (David Hopkins). Dr. Thalamus molests several small children before murdering them.
- Used the very first week in Schlock Mercenary. Of course, given who's being examined, it winds up being more uncomfortable for the doctor than the patient.
Web Originals
- The virus scanner programs from OS-tan, portrayed as doctors, revel in this, especially Dirty Old Man Dr. Norton, who, in most stories, usually gets beaten up by 2K-tan or XP-tan.
- Melina Frost's Start of Darkness in Survival of the Fittest was apparently an incident during a physical-slash-gynecological appointment where the doctors raped her, and she then sued them. The strange thing was that she did it not because she was traumatized, but to see the shocked looks on their faces when she did so.
Western Animation
- Beavis and Butt-Head: Beavis idly mentions to Butthead that his dentist "inspected his nads". Butthead tells him that his dentist isn't supposed to do that, his doctor is. Despite the comedy setting, they both appear genuinely shocked at the realization that Beavis has been molested.
- Peter Griffin's prostate exam in the Family Guy episode "Stewie Loves Lois" — at least, that's how he chooses to remember it. Lois offering no sympathy (even if the reason was stupid) doesn't help matters. It gets so bad that every man starts thinking that Dr. Hartman had molested them, and he loses his license.
Dr. Pirate Hartman: Yaar, I be a doctor!
- Murderface and his doctor both get off during a medical exam in one episode of Metalocalypse.
- Rocko's Modern Life:
- Rocko goes to the doctor when he has the flu. Dr. Bendova gives him an inguinal hernia exam, plus another type of exam that involves a rubber glove and an off-screen Ass Shove.
- Another time, Rocko gets an eye exam at the DMV. The doctor sneaks up on him, in order to induce an Eye Pop, before feeling up Rocko's eyes and optic nerve. He then performs the same type of exam on Rocko's eyes as one would for an inguinal hernia.
- A Hanna-Barbera Tom and Jerry installment from 1975 has the two as animal vets tasked with removing a thorn from a zoo lion's paw. They disguise themselves as a nurse to whom the lion says "I know... turn and cough." The lion does turn and cough, but sans the other formalities (it is a Saturday morning cartoon, after all).
