House (TV series)/Trivia

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• Fake American: Hugh Laurie as Dr. House. His American accent is one of the better examples, though the way he pronounces some words can give it away. Strangely, he keeps the accent even when he's screwed up lines, as can be seen in the outtakes. When executive producer Bryan Singer saw Hugh Laurie's audition tape, he turned to the casting department and said, "See? This is an American actor!" The casting department had to correct him.
  • Lampshaded in season one when House calls a doctor in the early hours of the morning. When asked to explain why he is calling at such an early hour he "puts on" an English accent and pretends he was calling from the UK and hadn't considered the time difference. For this scene Hugh Laurie is of course putting on the silly voice he used for oddball sketch comedy in the 80s.
  • Like most fake-American accents, Laurie uses a "gruff voice" as a cover-up in order to fake an American accent over his British-- ala Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and John Mahoney on Frasier; not coincidentally, they're all playing stereotypical "tough American detectives" who supposedly all speak in gruff Midwestern dialects.
• Did Not Do the Research: When House steals Wilson's pad, we can see what he writes. The prescription is for "Vicodin ES 5/500", which doesn't exist. So, House is either taking regular 5/500 mg Vicodin or 7.5/750 mg Vicodin Extra Strength. Or he's usually prescribed the lower dose, but intentionally throws the ES on in a futile attempt to confuse the pharmacist.
• Artistic License Pharmacology: Vicodin is prescribed more than 100 million times each year in the US to treat moderate pain (like arthritis) and to treat coughs. Even in long-term users, Vicodin withdrawal is usually characterized by symptoms no worse than lack of appetite, mild nausea, irritability, anxiety, and restlessness. The withdrawal symptoms House usually displays (vomiting, insomnia, sweats and chills, depression, mood swings) are what would typically characterize frequent diacetylmorphine (heroin) abuse. Vicodin is also not known to cause disassociative disorder (conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception).

Methadone is an long-acting synthetic opioid agonist that, like any opiate, causes euphoria. It is prescribed to treat pain in opioid-dependent patients as well as addiction in heavy users of high-potency opiates. Because methadone is many, many times more powerful than hydrocodone (it's listed as a greater than 2 to 1 conversion compared to baseline (morphine), whereas hydrocodone has no consensus but is known to be less than 0.33 to 1), methadone is never used to treat even the heaviest Vicoden abuse. That would be like prescribing 99 Bananas to someone addicted to wine... no matter how much wine they drink, taking shots of vodka just isn't going to improve the situation. There are also other opioids which are more effective at managing pain, so if they specifically wanted to curb House's vicodin use (likely, due to the risk acetaminophen poses to the liver) they would step up to oxycontin (0.33 to 1) or ms-contin (1 to 1).

Methadone is used to prevent heroin abuse, mainly because there are a limited number of opioid receptors in the brain and methadone fills them up (preventing heroin's effects from being felt), and because it delays the onset of withdrawal symptoms for many hours, thus reducing both the cravings and incentives for abuse in patients who take it correctly. Methadone users continue to experience physical dependence, but after the addiction is under control, the dose can be lowered to reduce dependence.

• Michelle Trachtenberg (best known for playing Dawn Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) guest starred in the episode Safe. She's admitted to having a crush on Hugh Laurie and wrote "I love you" on her inner thigh before a scene where he'd seen it. We might be getting to Stalker with a Crush territory with that.
• Wait...Sir William was the energetic Butt Monkey host of Ka Blam!?
• Hey It's That Girl/Guy: Blair Waldorf had a crush on House in season three.
  • And amusingly enough, Blair was once asked by Chuck if "Bertie Wooster is satisfying your needs."
  • My, my, what's the call girl from the first episode of The West Wing doing as Dean of Medicine of a hospital?
  • Smith Jarred stars in House's favorite soap.
  • Staff Sergeant James plays an ailing punk rocker in season four.
  • Emerson Cod is House's chairman arch-nemesis in season one.
  • Libby is Wilson's (first) ex-wife. Juliet and Richard have also stopped by.
  • Dr. Cleo Finch was hired and then fired by House.
  • Usnavi was House's roommate and friend at the mental hospital.
  • Harriet the Spy had a tick...down there.
  • Dave Matthews is a musical prodigy and his father is Red Forman.
  • The Bass Player is a shifty drug dealer in season six.
  • Harold stops by in season one, sadly way before Kumar shows up in season four.
  • Peter Gibbons is a doctor who may have gotten TB in Africa.
  • Miranda Hobbes has Munchausen's in season two.
  • The Master of Ceremonies is euthanized by Cameron in season three.
  • Romy is a doctor stuck in the South Pole in season four.
  • Lola sleeps with House at the mental hospital.
  • Donna Pinciotti appears as a patient who writes about everything on her blog.
  • Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is House's dad!
    • Actually it might be Mr Brown/Uncle Monty/Il Duce/Dain Iroonfoot, A.K.A. Billy Connolly. House's mom sure had an "interesting" taste in men..
  • Lincoln Burrows shows up in season one as a man whose wife is suspected of having African sleeping sickness.
  • Jen Scotts is a patient of the week.
  • Teresa Lisbon is House's very first patient.
  • Noah Bennet is House's patient in S 7 E 06.
    • In a much earlier episode, Matt Parkman knees House in the groin.
  • Emma Pillsbury, ironically enough, had the Black Plague.
  • Billy Kennedy killed Darth Vader.
  • House and Wilson compete for the affections of their new neighbor, Special Agent Kate Todd.
  • Murphy Brown is Cuddy's mother?
  • Paul Kinsey shows up as Taub's brother-in-law in S 7 E 11.
  • Apparently, after Joan Girardi graduated high school, she became a med student and ended up working at Princeton-Plainsboro.
  • After defeating the Blight, Alistair became House's first (and thus far only) Lupus patient.
  • Urkel was a fellow convict who supplied House with vicodin while in prison.
  • Fred Durst was a bartender in two episodes from season four.
  • "Alvie", House's Bipolar I rehab roommate, is Shock's beatboxing buddy from the New Electric Company.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Well yeah you see James Earl Jones but do you really care about anything but the voice?
  • House's Italian dubbing voice is also Johnny Bravo.
    • And in French, his voice is Jafar's.
• Celebrity Resemblance: Omar Epps, i.e. Dr. Foreman, looks a LOT like Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin. This was referenced in the episode "Ignorance Is Bliss":

House: Got all of my starters back plus a couple of free agents. I feel like Mike Tomlin. (looks at Foreman) Probably not as much as you do, but you get the idea.

• Superlative Dubbing: The Spaniard dub is one of the best in an American TV series in recent memory. Specially House's voice actor, Luis Pórcar. Eventhough his voice doesn't sound like Hugh Laurie's (although it fits him, nonetheless), his performance is so good that even a lot of people that are normally against dubs watch each episode twice: once in English and once in Spanish. All just to enjoy both voices.
  • This is specially surprising considering that, due to the huge popularity the series has in Spain, they have to dub every chapter insanely quickly in order to not loose TV audience when they broadcast it.