Fire Department Chronicles is a short-form show on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook Reels created by Jason Patton, a fireman/paramedic who does one-man re-enactments of the various calls he's been to over his career and humorous critiques of how inaccurately his jobs are portrayed in media.

Has a sister channel, Fire Department Coffee, which involves Jason's fellow firefighters and their shared antics.

Most videos fall into one of several themes:

• Real Things I've Seen as a Paramedic: Jason reenacts a funny or unusual incident he personally witnessed or participated in while on the job. By far the most common type.
• Where Are They Now: Jason provides more information for some of the Real Things videos.
• Green Screening Myself Into Shows to Make Them More Realistic: A clip of a particularly unrealistic scene from a Rescue-type show, only with Jason using a green screen to insert himself into the show to berate the firefighters and paramedics about everything they're doing wrong (and to inform the patient that they're going to die).
• Every Overly Dramatic Medical TV Show: Essentially the opposite of the above, where Jason will create his own over-the-top medical Rescue scene, complete with bad medical jargon, impossible if not nonsensical situations, and bizarre, dramatic-sounding "treatments" for the patients.
• Firefighter Stair Review: Jason will look at pictures of some people's decorative staircases (whether real, photoshopped, or AI-generated), and then explain exactly how that staircase will kill you if you ever needed to use those stairs to evacuate quickly because your house is on fire.
• "Safety PSAs:" Jason will occasionally post a video telling people how to be safe, such as reminding you to not shoot fireworks at another person's head, or to deep-fat-fry your turkey outside and away from your house.

Why are there Christmas tropes in April?:

• Acquainted with Emergency Services: If Jason ever refers to a patient by their first name, it's pretty safe to assume it's not the first time he's paid a visit to them.
• Actually Pretty Funny: A patient tries to lose a lot of weight at once, despite not having exercised for a while and gets called "Mr. Oreo Olympian" by his wife over the phone for it. Jason actually lets out a laugh at that nickname before he can catch himself.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: One skit has Jason approach a patient who has gotten drunk off of hand sanitizer. He refuses to go to the hospital, though he does ask if there's any hand sanitizer in the ambulance.
• Artistic License – Cars: One episode of 9-1-1 that Jason greenscreens himself into has a firefighter claiming that the loose clutch he's holding caused the car accident, even though Jason can clearly see that the "clutch" is actually a gear shifter.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: One greenscreen episode has a firefighter claim that the temperature of vats of sour mash is 650 degrees and climbing, a temperature that only makes sense on the Rankine scale, which is only used by some US engineering disciplines and definitely not by firefighter temperature probes. Most likely, the writers prioritized "big and scary" over "makes scientific sense." Jason himself doesn't remark on this in the video, though a comment left by the sister channel, Fire Department Coffee, sure does:
  Fire Department Coffee: Casually walking around with a temperature of 650+ degrees is next level.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Discussed Trope. Jason has greenscreened himself into various TV shows and movies to scream at the cast about how to properly treat patients.
• Artistic License – Physics: Often discussed when Jason greenscreens himself into TV shows about firefighters.
  • One video features firefighters successfully pulling a lump of cooled magma off a patient's chest without killing him. Jason asks what kind of chest workout the patient does that allows him to survive something that melts two Magill's forceps, which typically occurs around 2500 degrees.
  • Jason has a lot of fun mocking a firefighter who claims gravity holds things up.
    Jason: Guys, the beams are falling! We need more gravity now!
• Asshole Victim: In a "Where Are They Now?" video, Jason explains that one patient who had his leg fractured from sticking it out the car window was wanted for multiple crimes, including child abuse. As an EMT, Jason still gave him the same treatment, since that's his job; upholding the law is the police's job. That doesn't mean he didn't internally rejoice at the patient's suffering.
  Jason: Even though my treatment didn't change that day, I definitely wondered: was somebody driving a giant truck of sweet karma that day?
• Ass Shove:
  • A bystander in one episode helped his friend regain consciousness from an opioid overdose by putting ice cubes in his rectum after dumping ice on him failed.
    Patient: Could be worse.
    Jason: [still processing what had happened] ...yeah...
  • An episode has Jason respond to a man who fell in the shower, only to reveal there's a soap bottle in his butt. Jason is in Stunned Silence before asking if the whole bottle is in there. The patient says yes.
    Jason: [beginning to suspect the bottle's initial entry wasn't accidental] A-And you fell...?
    Patient: Does it really matter at this point?
    Jason: [immediately taking this opportunity to not think about it] No it doesn't! Let's go ahead and get going!
  • Another episode involves a patient whose friends funnel sweetened condensed milk into his rectum whenever his blood sugar crashes. Jason is appalled at the very concept and bewildered that someone even came up with this.
  • A patient with an untreated, badly healed broken leg is persuaded to go to the hospital when he reveals another complication seemingly out of nowhere:
    Patient: Maybe while we're down there, they can figure out why this extension cord is stuck in my butt.
• Awesome, but Impractical: In "Firefighter Stair Review," Jason looks at a series of stairs that, while impressive from an architectural viewpoint, would hinder you, as well as rescue crews, in a life and death situation like a fire.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The (VERY) short film titled "What" begins with an EMT trying to calm down a panicking patient inside an ambulance. Another EMT then runs inside, telling them that he found the patient's finger, so they can leave for the hospital now. The patient just stares at his hands in confusion, reminding them that he isn't missing any of his fingers. The second EMT gives a Title Drop as the film ends.
  • Every short involving a 911 call starts with the assumption that the caller needs medical attention immediately, so calls that turn out to not be about such emergencies result in Jason (and his fellow EMT associates) getting frustrated. One example involves a guy too drunk to go downstairs for water stopping Jason from getting into the house and waking up his parents and instead insisting on Jason getting a water bottle from an outdoor cooler.
• Berserk Button: Jason hates the "Baby Shark" song.
• Body Horror: Happens a lot, usually in the form of limbs bent at unnatural angles, bones sticking out of parts of the body where they shouldn't, sharp objects being impaled into the patient's body, etc. Many times, even Jason and his fellow paramedics will be sickened by the sight.
• Bring My Brown Pants: A short sees Jason trying to redirect a man, since there's a downed power line in the way. The man claims he could simply jump over it, but when the power line suddenly sparked next to him, the man instead turns around and waddles away while holding his butt.
• Butt-Monkey: A number of shorts see Jason in embarrassing situations, such as begging an ambulance driver to drive faster before he craps his pants, getting tossed across the room by a blood-sugar-deprived patient going crazy, etc.
• Cats Are Mean: Jason doesn't trust cat owners who claim that their cat is nice, as demonstrated in one reenactment where such a claim is made as he's putting gloves on to remove a (likely freaked-out) cat from a car engine. Jason learned that lesson the hard way.
• Cat Up a Tree:
  • Parodied by the (VERY) short film "Hey". A firefighter is asked to get Brutus out of the tree, which he assumes is the dog he sees stuck up in the branches. He briefly wonders how the dog even got there, though he decides it doesn't matter and just gets the dog down and returns him to his owner. The owner is very grateful for this, but it turns out Brutus is actually the grown man stuck in the tree.
  • A real-life example occurs in a reenactment short that demonstrates what happens when this trope crosses over with Cats Are Mean as Jason and his team attempt to get a particularly stubborn cat out of a tree, with one EMT sporting scratches all over the right side of his face.
    Owner: He's a passionate kitty.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject:
  • One short involved Jason helping a woman give birth when her boyfriend runs in moments before the baby is born. After noticing the boyfriend messing with his fingers, Jason assumes he's a bit overwhelmed and attempts to reassure him that he'll be a great father, only to learn that the boyfriend wasn't playing with his fingers: he was counting them because he's been away for a year, meaning there's no possible way that he's the father. After some Stunned Silence, and recognizing that this was not going to end well, Jason opts to distract the pair.
    Jason: Okay, who's ready to go to the hospital?
  • A paramedic accidentally injects himself with an EpiPen while trying to teach a kid how to use one, mistaking the real EpiPen for a trainer. As he starts screaming outside due to the epinephrine taking effect, his colleague tries to distract the boy by offering to let him see the firetruck.
  • One patient claims he slipped and fell in the shower and got a soap bottle stuck in his rectum in the process. Jason skeptically asks if that's really how it got stuck there, but when the patient asks whether that's actually important right now, Jason readily seizes the opportunity to drop the subject.
• Christmas Light Chaos: One patient falls off a ladder while hanging Christmas decorations on a 25-foot tree, resulting in a serious brain injury that causes him to think it's April. The caller reports that the injury also caused incoherence.
  Caller: He was hanging Christmas decorations on the ladder, and then next thing you know, he's hobbling around the street confused, calling himself the Crispy Kris Kringle.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like:
  • In a response to a video of CPR machines that viewers worried would hurt the patient by going too deep, since it looks in the video like the machine may break the patient's ribs, Jason counters that the machine is in fact doing a great job of keeping as much oxygen circulating throughout the patient's body as possible. He then reminds viewers what kind of state a patient would be in to need CPR in the first place.
    Jason: In the end, if you're still concerned about that thing possibly hurting somebody, remember this: their heart's not beating, and they're not breathing. They're dead. You literally can't make their day any worse than it already is!
  • Once a patient, another time a family member, complained about Jason wearing boots in the house.
  • A revived overdose patient threatened to kill Jason, presumably because the Narcan interrupted the best high of his life.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": One patient is 40 years old and throws his back out bending over to tie his shoes, leaving him stuck in that position. Jason tells him he has to be carried down and reminds him that he lives on the third floor. The patient says he doesn't need any pain meds... and he's then heard screaming as he's being carried down. A friend asks if he's okay while another paramedic says the patient will likely pass out from the pain before he's halfway down.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Shorts that parody the inaccuracy of TV shows often feature these, with "intravenous IV line" and "thermal TIC camera" being two such examples.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • One instance has a father shove a pencil into his friend's arm... because he gave his son a high-five again.
  • One patient got stabbed in the arm with a solar-powered lawn light by his partner because he brought home the wrong flowers. Moreover, he appears to be worried about what she'll do if he doesn't make it home for dinner on time.
    Jason: Holy crap, we're gonna be here a lot...
• Don't Ask, Just Run: Jason's advice for what to do if you hit a gas line while digging boils down to "Less talky! More movey!"
• Dramatically Delayed Drug: In the second "Where Are They Now?" video, Jason states that this was what happened to the guy who took weed edibles and ended up believing he was a cow. As Jason notes, edibles are much more likely to lead to adverse effects than joints, as not only does the liver convert the THC into a stronger form, but the delay from the human digestive system tends to cause the unsuspecting stoner to eat too many because they were expecting an immediate high.
• Dramatic Dislocation: Jason finds two people trying to do this after one of them dislocates his shoulder. They insist they don't need his help because they've seen this done in movies before, even outright referencing Blade. As they start counting down, Jason wants to stop them, though he admits that part of him wants to see how the imminent disaster plays out.
• Drug-Crazed Savagery: Deconstructed. Most of the stories Jason tells about drug users show that they weren't particularly dangerous. When they take mind-altering substances, users are often found naked and acting in strange ways: one man was convinced he was being pursued by wolves while under the influence of flakka, another urinated on the floor under the belief he was a cow after eating too many edibles, another was calmly enjoying his experiences after ingesting mushrooms, and one man chose to get high in his car after his wife pulled a muscle in her foot. Despite these stories, Jason doesn't undersell the dangers of drugs, jokingly stating that users can still put themselves in danger without realizing it because of their vivid hallucinations.
• Dumbass Has a Point:
  • A bystander tried to wake a patient from an opioid overdose by dumping ice on him, then stuffing the ice cubes up his rectum, a remedy Jason is appalled by, even though it worked in the end. When the patient defends the bystander and argues that things could be worse, Jason (who knows just how bad situations can get in his line of work) reluctantly agrees.
  • Jason clearly doesn't believe a patient who claims he got an entire soap bottle stuck up his rectum when he fell in the shower. However, when the patient asks if it really matters at this point, Jason admits it doesn't, drops the subject, and moves to help get the patient to the hospital.
• Enraged by Idiocy:
  • Tends to happen whenever Jason greenscreens himself into movies and TV shows. He'll often point out that the tactics being used by firefighters or medics make no sense, that people are being put in avoidable danger, and that easier and safer alternatives exist but aren't being used by the supposed professionals.
    • One re-enactment has Jason being not only shocked by someone performing a roadside needle thoracostomy to treat a supposed right collapsed lung, but also furious that the procedure was performed on the wrong side of the body.
    • He gets especially heated when reacting to the "Great Southern Manors" episode in 9-1-1: Nashville, in which a potential sour mash explosion is averted by breaking the tanks.
  • Downplayed in reenactments. Jason is clearly exasperated by some of the 911 calls he responds to, usually because it turns out the caller was abusing the service for non-emergencies or did stupid things that endangered themself and others (one patient who was allergic to peanut butter kept eating it anyway and made enough calls for Jason to remember him by name). However, he does his best to keep his temper under control for the sake of professionalism.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!:
  • Inverted in one episode in which a patient scared for his life call 911 after he seemingly started bleeding from his rectum. After Jason arrives and tries to calm the patient and his friend down, he notices what's sitting on their counter and asks if the two of them have been drinking beet juice lately. The still panicking patient say they have... and promptly realizes, to his embarrassment, what all that "blood" was and quickly sends Jason away.
  • One bystander doesn't understand why the "bag trick" didn't work in helping the patient calm down. Jason asks if he means the practice of putting a bag over the mouth and having the person rebreathe the air, which confuses the bystander before he realizes that he did it wrong—he had wrapped the bag over the patient's entire head instead.
  • One skit has a parent upset that his son ate two pennies. Jason lets him work it out for himself that the son has to poop them out, making the dad react in shock.
  • Jason comes over to a house after 911 received a call from someone pressing a medical alert button several times. The man in the house has no idea what Jason's talking about until he realizes he left his button with his grandson, who turns out to be currently playing with it.
• Faceplanting into Food: One of the videos shows Jason confronted to an oblivious man passing out and faceplanting into his mashed potatoes... repeatedly, for a whole of two seconds, before lifting himself up and forgetting it ever happened.
• Failed a Spot Check: Happens in the (VERY) short film "Hey". After being asked to get Brutus out of the tree, a firefighter looks up at the branches and sees a dog whom he assumes is Brutus. He doesn't notice the grown man stuck up the tree until the dog's owner points him out to the firefighter.
• False Reassurance: One patient called 911 because he was choking but reassures Jason he got it out... after eating vaseline, which was followed by him accidentally drinking bleach that he mistook for water.
• Fingore: Several reenactments feature patients who had their fingers detached from their hands, with causes ranging from angle grinders to fireworks, and one whose ring finger is going gangrenous due to a ring he found in a parking lot 20 years ago.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In most skits, there will be a sheet of paper taped somewhere the background, listing interesting medical facts, jokes, or some bizarre gross thing about rat hair and peanut butter.
  It's impossible to hum while holding your breath.
• Fun with Subtitles: Most shorts include in-video subtitles to go with what the characters are saying and what's happening on screen, including moments of Stunned Silence and Reaction Shots. The videos usually have fun with it:
  • Jason's Stunned Silence after learning that one patient has a soap bottle in his rectum is subtitled as "(processing words)". In addition, his skepticism that the bottle entering the rectum in the first place was a result of the fall is subtitled as "(doing math)".
  • The machete-head patient getting driven away by his friend is accompanied by "(sharp confusion)" and "(runaway cutlery)."
  • Jason's realization that a patient suffering from chest pain is actually a patient suffering from the results of a bellyflop off an 80-foot-high bridge into the river is "(high dive panic)" and "(none of this is good)."
    "Friend": Oh, now tell him the part where you passed out! [mockingly snores] Mama!
    Jason: [calling out of the ambulance to the other paramedics] GUYS, GET BACK HERE!
  • Jason and another firefighter's reactions to learning that a guy had been planning to use a propane grill indoors are subtitled as "(COmplete shock)" and "(beCOming dumber)."
  • The tense waiting of a flatline after the patient is cardioverted or given adenosine affords many opportunities for this:
    Student EMT: [looks down] Oh... Sorry, I hit the wrong button.
    Patient: What? [zapped]
    EMT 1: (getting a new student)
    Patient: (Cardiac night night time)
    EMT 1: (praying)
    EMT 2: (also praying)
    Patient: (greeting dead relatives)
    Student EMT: (peeing pants)
• Gratuitous Spanish: In a "Where Are They Now?" segment, Jason recounts chasing after a patient who was on drugs and trying to give them a sedative, describing the patient as being in the Upside Down with Temu Vecna. His version of Vecna is a burlap mask with a sombrero on his head.
  Temu Vecna: ¿DONDE ESTA 11?
• Groin Attack: In no fewer than five shorts, Jason runs into male patients who were not just subject to this trope, but either nearly violently parted from their genitals or actually violently parted from their genitals, namely by way of: trying to help a nurse remove a catheter without realizing it was still inflated until he pulled much too hard; the patient's balls getting caught in a folding chair; doing, uh, something with a metal straw that caused bloody urine; a horrifically unwise intimate encounter before the stitches from a penile implant surgery had healed; and sliding down a banister and ripping open his scrotum on a protruding nail. All of these viscerally horrify the otherwise irreverent Jason.
• Ignorant About Fire: Being a firefighter, Jason has naturally encountered many such people over the course of his career.
  • A patient tried to smoke a cigarette while in the back of an ambulance. When Jason points out that they're surrounded by oxygen, the patient brushes it off, declaring that oxygen isn't that flammable.
  • One person claimed that a fire extinguisher was defective because it didn't work when he tried to use it... by which he means he pulled the pin out before throwing the extinguisher at the fire.
  • In one episode, a patient wearing a nasal cannula tried to smoke a cigarette, resulting in his face catching on fire due to the pure oxygen he was inhaling. He apparently learned nothing from this, however, as right when they're about to leave for the hospital, he attempts to smoke another one while still wearing the cannula.
  • Another person had the tendency to smoke in their car and then flick the cigarettes to the back seat, to the point they started installing smoke alarms inside the car.
  • While responding to a call about a grease fire, Jason learns that the homeowner's friends tried to put the fire out by dumping water on it. When this ended up making the grease fire even bigger, the friend then tried to throw flour on the fire; the only reason a dust explosion didn't occur as a result was because the homeowner managed to stop him. Averted by the homeowner himself, who knew not to use water or flour and was able to quickly extinguish the fire by simply putting a lid on the pan.
• Ignored Expert: Several of the calls Jason has responded to have involved people who have already been seen by doctors or surgeons, but have neglected to follow any of their instructions, be it walking on a fresh knee surgery (resulting in a DVT), not picking up antibiotics for a week after they were prescribed (resulting in the bladder infection the medicine was meant for going septic due to being untreated), or trying to have sex way before a penile implant's stitches were healed (resulting in the penis rupturing).
• The Intern: A number of re-enactments feature a student working alongside more experienced EMTs, with the student visibly not yet used to the stress and unpleasant aspects of the job.
• Inter-Service Rivalry: A number of episodes depict one existing between firefighters and police officers. Considering which side Jason is on, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the rivalry is depicted as being Driven by Envy from the cops' side.
• It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Often employed to mock inaccuracies in medical dramas. One scene has an EMT declare that a patient's white blood cells have completely stopped carrying oxygen ^note It's the red blood cells that do that, as white blood cells are actually part of the immune system and aren't supposed to carry oxygen to begin with., so they had to saturate him using reverse osmosis^note A process of forcing water through a membrane rectal intubation.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: One man initially planned to jump over a downed power line like people do in movies. However, upon seeing the power line spark, he changes him mind and decides just walk around it like Jason instructed.
• Laxative Prank: Done in the (VERY) short film titled "Huh". A first responder leaves a carton of laxative-laced ice cream in the fridge as a prank for B shift. Unfortunately for him, his shift's driver engineer eats it instead.
• Major Injury Underreaction: A number of shorts have Jason seeing patients with serious injuries that they are not freaking out over (at least, not as much as one would expect).
  • One such patient refused to take the ambulance to the hospital and insisted on being driven to it... despite the fact that said patient had a machete buried in his head.
    EMT: [to Jason] You got a refusal form, right?
    Jason: [holding up a paper titled "Refusal to Use Brain"] Yeah.
  • Jason approaches a patient who called about knee pain and notices he also has a broken arm with a bone poking through, to the point it can been easily seen while he's wearing long, loose sleeves. The patient just nonchalantly says he's had it for years: he woke up, then rolled over in bed, and that's how it was. Seeing Jason's panicked look does make the patient wonder if he should get it checked out, though.
    Patient: Wait, do you think I should get this checked out?
    Jason: Yes, and please let me be there!
• Malaproper: Tends to crop up in episodes that parody overdramatic TV shows.
  • A firefighter refers to the substance inside fire extinguishers as "carbon manoxide" ^note "carbon dioxide" (or rather, "Carbon. Ma. Noxide!").
  • A pregnant woman is diagnosed with acute "placenta primavera" ^note "placenta previa" by an EMT.
• Metaphorically True: When dealing with a patient with a chain embedded in his hand, Jason explains it'll have to be X-rayed so they can figure out the safest way to remove it. When the patient "corrects" him and says they should use an MRI (as in, a giant magnet) instead because it's faster, Jason — after a moment of Stunned Silence — sarcastically agrees that an MRI definitely would make the removal process a lot faster.
• Mushroom Samba:
  • Jason is called for a guy who's incredibly high on magic mushrooms, resulting in him staring gleefully at a snowglobe, trying to grab something he's seeing, and becoming convinced (and trying to convince Jason) that payphones are disappearing, not due to obsolescence in the face of increasingly ubiquitous smartphones, but to remove an escape route out of the Matrix.
    Patient: I can see everything, man!
  • A group of paramedics are chasing a naked man named Mike while guessing what drug he's high on. When one asks if he's being chased by invisible wolves, Mike asks if they can see them too. The paramedics realize it's flakka, a.k.a. bath salts. One follow-up video has Jason comment that every single flakka case he's encountered involved wolves chasing the user, something he still can't wrap his head around.
• Must Have Caffeine: Because first responders must be prepared for emergencies that can happen at any time, they need to consume a lot of caffeine to stay awake during their shifts, to the point the "First Responders Food Pyramid" has caffeine as the first of its four levels. Jason even claims he once saw someone nebulize a soda (and live to tell the tale), and Fire Department Chronicles's sister channel is even titled, Fire Department Coffee.
  Jason: You eat based off of two things: "Will it fill me up?" and "Will it keep me up?"
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: One guy falls off a ladder while hanging Christmas decorations on a 25-foot tree. Jason, initially unaware that this is anything more than a twisted ankle, becomes alarmed when a neighbor tells him that the patient had started roaming the street in a daze calling himself "the Crispy Kris Kringle." The patient also asks, "Why are there Christmas decorations in April?" Twice. And puking in between.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The (VERY) short film "Hey" has a firefighter rescue a small dog that's stuck up a tree. He briefly wonders how the dog even got up there in the first place, though he ultimately doesn't ask the owner about it.
  • In one incident, Jason responds to a group of stoners who ate edible marijuana snacks. One had two, but his friend had the rest, causing the latter to become so stoned that he thinks he's a cow, has stripped naked, and later pees all over the floor. Jason's partner walks in and asks, "Why are they always naked?" as if this has already happened several times before when they responded to a call involving edibles.
  • The EMTs in one episode tell a student that they often encounter patients who get so plastered that they vomit everywhere and end up covered in their own feces.
  • One episode had a bystander ask Jason, who is treating a patient, to move the ambulance, just so that he could get to the gym. The patient is shocked that someone would do that—in fact, he's distracted from the pool stick stuck in his leg—but Jason tells them that this kind of thing actually happens more often than people tend to think.
• Nosy Neighbor: A quite a few videos parody this trope and how all neighbors seem to act this way whenever paramedics answer a call.
  • A video titled "What every neighbor within 10 miles does when we arrive on scene" shows several neighbors trying to snoop on the paramedics in increasingly silly ways, including by running outside with a dog before slowly walking it, carrying the blender to the doorway before turning it on, pretending to sweep the lawn with a broom, hiding in the trunk of a car, using a Newspaper-Thin Disguise with a hole big enough to fit their entire face, and faking getting the mail after furtively putting it inside the mailbox first.
  • One video featuring this trope has "What's Up" by 4 Non Blondes playing in the background, namely the part with the following lyrics:
    And I scream from the top of my lungs
    "What's going on?"
    And I say, hey-ey-ey
    Hey-ey-ey
    I said "Hey, a-what's going on?"
  • In another video, various neighbors are seemingly just going about their day, only to freeze up and robotically declare their intention to be nosy and annoying the moment they hear sirens.
    Neighbor 1: [suddenly speaking in robotic tone while cheerfully cooking] Sirens! Must be annoying! Must be annoying! [leaves stove unattended as a fire starts]
    Neighbor 2: [changing to robotic voice while straining to poop] Sirens! Must be nosy! Must be nosy! [gets up from toilet]
    Neighbor 3: [spotting someone who's lifting weights] Come on, bro! You got this, dude! [shifting to robotic tone] Sirens! Sirens! [drops weight] Must be annoying!
• Not So Above It All:
  • Jason lets out a slight chuckle when a patient's wife mockingly called him "Mr. Oreo Olympian" over his unrealistic goals to lose a lot of weight quickly. He quickly schools his expression for the sake of professionalism, though.
  • When a bystander and patient attempt to fix the latter's shoulder with a Dramatic Dislocation like they've seen done in movies, Jason admits he kind of wants to see how this will turn out and just stands back and watch instead of trying to stop them.
• Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: Not really a weapon, but a similar concept. One short has a paramedic try to teach a kid how to use an EpiPen, only to end up injecting himself with epinephrine, thinking that he was holding a trainer. The paramedic, as calmly as possible, leaves the house before the epinephrine starts making his body freak out.
• Nutritional Nightmare: First responders' diets are this in general. Jason insists that no matter how healthily a first responder eats outside of the job, the second their shift starts, their diet goes completely down the toilet nutrition-wise. He even presents a "First Responder Food Pyramid" with four levels (from base to top): caffeine, snacks, meat, and finally, ibuprofen and ice cream.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • One episode has Jason respond to a patient who apparently got chest pains while he was working on his car. After some questioning, though, he learns the chest pains are actually the result of him being crushed by the car after the jack slipped out when he was under it. When the patient lifts up his shirt to show the bruise, Jason, his partner, and the patient together let out a Mass "Oh, Crap!".
    Partner: What do you want to do?
    Jason: Drive really, really fast!
  • As Jason is examining a patient whose friends found him stumbling around after going missing from a drunken party, one of the patient's friends sees something alarming recorded by the Ring doorbell and immediately makes Jason watch:
    Friend: I think I know why he doesn't remember anything. [hands his phone to Jason with the recording playing]
    (lovely day)
    Patient: (drunk balcony dive) AAAAAAH-!! [crashes into ground]
    Jason: [horrified] You're definitely going to the hospital.
  • Jason responds to a call for a guy who suddenly found himself struggling to breathe and realizes that his leg has gone purple due to complications from knee surgery causing deep vein thrombosis.^note A blood clot in the leg that can potentially dislodge and go into the lung, causing a pulmonary embolism, which has likely already happened. Jason, knowing the man is in mortal danger, can barely suppress his panic once he realizes it's DVT.
    Friend: Yeah, he had his knee worked on, and now he's slowly turning into Barney.
    Jason: [realizes what's happening] Ohhhh, DVT...
    Patient: It really hurts to breathe.
    Jason: (really not good) One second. [into radio] Get the stretcher over here right now!
    Patient: Oh, don't worry about that, man. I can walk to the...
    Jason: Oh, no no no no! For both of our sakes, I need you to stay as still as possible!
• Only in Florida: Jason's based out of West Palm Beach, and a good deal of encounters he's had live up to the state stereotype.
• Palm Bloodletting: An accidental example has a patient, who was washing a kitchen knife, hand it to his brother, who takes it out of his hand while it's blade down in his palm. A "Where Are They Now?" episode has Jason reveal HE was the one who had his palm sliced.
• Punk in the Trunk: One episode has a guy shoved into the trunk of his car because his friend thought it would be a funny prank, at least until he realizes the trunk guy has the keys, and the battery is dead. Jason says to use the release latch inside the trunk, making it pop open, and the trunk guy gives his friend a Death Glare.
  Friend 1: ...I'm sorry?
  Friend 2: Nope. [jumps out and chases his friend in a rage]
• Real Men Eat Meat: The "First Responder Food Pyramid" has an entire level set aside for meat.
  Jason: Now, I say "meat" because meals aren't based off of a combination of food items coming together to make a dish. It's "What kind of meat are we having? Can we add more meat on top of that meat? Should we have a side... SO WE CAN ADD MORE MEAT ON TOP OF THAT?"
• Saw It in a Movie Once:
  • One reenactment has a man dislocate his shoulder and assume he and his friend can simply pop it back into place because they saw it in movies like Blade.
  • A man approaches a downed power line and tries to jump over it, despite Jason telling him to go around, because he's seen people jump over power lines in movies. To his credit, when the power line sparks in front of him, he quickly realizes that action movie stunts are not real life and decides to obey Jason after all.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • One very short video has Jason bring a stretcher into a building for the patient, see the alternating-step stairs ahead, and turn around and leave, reporting "no patient found" to dispatch.
  • One short has Jason deal with a patient who got an IV from a nurse who left for a Halloween party and rushed straight back. And by "deal", we mean:
    Jason: [to the nurse, cutting him off] Let me stop you there. [to the patient] Sir, have a great day! [leaves]
• Seen It All: Zig-Zagged for Jason and his associates. As EMTs, they have seen a great deal of distressing medical emergencies, so it says a lot when something makes an EMT go, "Well, this is new," since they don't know how to deal with that.
  • One skit has a student ask the more experienced EMTs if this happens often, referring to the patient covered in feces that they have to carry downstairs. Much to his dismay, he learns that it does.
    EMT 1: Do people often get so black-out plastered that they blow chunks everywhere and then cover themselves with their own feces?
    Patient: (delighted deuce)
    EMT 2: Yes.
    Patient: Yep!
    Student: [softly] Great.
    EMT 2: Yep.
  • In one short, a bystander seems extremely nonchalant about the large cloud of smoke billowing from inside his home. He remarks that this isn't the first time this has happened as another bystander runs outside with a pan that's on fire.
    Bystander 2: It started off fine, and then it was on fire.
    Bystander 1: And it's definitely not going to be the last.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: A homeowner set off around eighty cans of fumigant to deal with a cockroach infestation, and the house caught fire during the extermination. To add insult to the injury of unintentionally poisoning the firefighters saving his house, Jason returned later and found that the "Cockroach Melter 5000" hadn't worked as well as the homeowner had hoped:
  Jason: And then, one year later, we went back there for an EMS call, and guess what? It still had roaches!
• Share the Male Pain: This usually tends to happen anytime Jason arrives at a call where a man is suffering from some kind of penile injury.
  • One patient had a nurse who tried to remove his catheter... without realizing that he hadn't deflated the cuff yet. If Jason's reaction is anything to go by... the results were not pretty.
    Jason: Hold on, guys, let's take a breath. I mean, there's no way it's that— [looks under the quilt, sees what happened] Holy manhood, it's that bad!
    Patient: Can it be fixed?
    Jason: God, I hope so!
  • In another instance, the patient reveals that he got an implant in his crotchal region but didn't give his stitches enough time to heal before... well, you know. Hearing him compare the result to an over-microwaved hotdog causes one EMT to gag, and a horrified Jason declares that the man can have pain meds and whatever else he wants.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • One reenactment has Jason arrive to find the caller sitting in a car whose door is covered with bulletholes. Though the caller admits that he might've been shot, he's far more concerned about the damage the bullets did to his car than he is over whether he himself might be injured.
    Jason: Sir, do you think we could maybe focus on you for a second? I mean, bullets can hit things like your leg and bounce around in your body, causing more dam—
    Patient: Wait! "Bounce around"?! Do you think it bounced around inside of my door?! Ugh, my window's definitely broken, isn't it?! I'm gonna need new tint! Imma need a whole new paint job!
    EMT: [arrives on the scene] Hey, man, how many times is he hit?
    Patient: [continues to rant about the damage to his car]
    Jason: Your guess is as good as mine.
  • One patient who was turning blue initially refused to go to the hospital because they don't let him smoke cigarettes there. Jason reminds him that he won't be able to smoke in a coffin, either, which thankfully convinces the patient.
• Skip the Anesthetic: A patient whose back locked up is reminded that he'll have to be carried down three floors on that back, though he declines painkillers because he thinks he can take it. Cue a Gilligan Cut to a neighbor and EMT elsewhere hearing him howl in absolute agony.
• Shot in the Ass: One patient is being transported after getting shot in the butt, though Jason says it's just a graze, so he should count himself lucky. The patient counters that being grazed twice in two months isn't very lucky, making Jason remember him from the last time he transported him... for being grazed on his nipple.
• Skyward Scream: In one short, Jason responds to a 911 call made by a nurse for his patient, who came in for an allergic reaction after mistakenly eating shrimp dip. Concerned with the patient's blood pressure after Benadryl and a shot of subcutaneous epinephrine, the nurse administered push-pressor intravenous epinephrine instead. Cue a flashback sequence of the patient practically launching out of his chair with what can only be described as a Super Saiyan battle howl as his heart rate exits earthly orbit.
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • Jason frequently does this whenever he greenscreens himself into movies and TV shows. Many times, he'll ask why the firefighters trying to rescue someone don't bother using a nearby door or window to get to them.
  • After learning that several people have tried treating a jellyfish sting by peeing on it, Jason yells that they could have just soaked the sting in hot water.
  • One caller locked his friend in the trunk of a car, only to realize that he can't get his friend out, since the car keys are locked in the trunk with him and have dead batteries. Jason shows up and points out they could just use the release latch inside the car. The caller's friend quickly frees himself and proceeds to angrily chase the caller around.
• Stunned Silence: Used in more comedic fashion in one short, where Jason, another EMT, and a newly-born baby boy all fall silent when the mother's boyfriend explains he's been gone for a year.
• Suddenly Shouting: A frequent occurrence in shorts in which Jason greenscreens himself into shows and movies to point out how the firefighters and medics are doing their jobs wrong. He'll usually start off simply making snarky comments, only for one particular instance of stupidity to make him hit his Rage Breaking Point.
  • One short has him already unimpressed that a character didn't properly diagnose a injured female patient and wants to do an unsafe roadside needle thoracostomy to treat a right collapsed lung. The thing that finally sets him off, though, is how badly the cast mess up the needle thoracostomy.
    Jason: Is she tough enough to withstand the fact that you telepathically diagnosed her with the right collapsed lung? Then said a bunch of words that you didn't actually understand and then proceeded to do your needle thoracostomy on the WRONG SIDE OF THE BODY! [cuts away to show the procedure being done on the patient's left side]
  • While commenting on "Great Southern Manors" in 9-1-1: Nashville, Jason finally loses it when he sees the firefighters enact their plan to prevent the vats of sour mash from igniting and exploding in a distillery fire:
    Jason: After all that stupid sour mash C-4 "this whole place is gonna explode and everyone's gonna die" crap, YOU JUST DUMP IT ALL OVER THE FLOOR????!!!!????
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Jason yells at the viewers of an AI generated video of a dog running into a burning house, with a fireman following behind him. He tells viewers that, in a real fire, the flames are so hot (1500 degrees Fahrenheit), you would pass out before you got near it. Jason also explains that in such a situation, firefighter gear would start to fail in seconds from being melted by the fire, and the inside of the house would be a lot more smoke-filled instead of clear and visible.
• Tempting Fate: Never say the "Q" word ("quiet").
  • A paramedic saying the word in one video seemingly triggers various accidents by compelling random individuals to act out.
    Paramedic 1: Man, I got to tell you, it's been pretty quiet today.
    Paramedic 2: [looks up in shock]
    Future Patient 1: [robotically, after freezing up while jamming in car] Must wreck vehicle! [swerves]
    Future Patient 2: [robotically while lifting weights] Must drop weight on foot! [drops weight] Ah—!
    Future Patient 2: [robotically while cooking] Must burn self! [raises pan to face and covers self with oil] Ahhhh—!
    Smoke Detector: [subtitled] "Q" word activation [destroys house in explosion]
  • Later episodes feature a character named Murphy S. Law (played by Jason), who considers himself a passive chaos creator compared to his far more pyschopathic brother "Q" a.k.a. Quiet (played by Jason's colleague Fenton), who loves destroying things and spends the day sitting around, waiting for someone to say his name.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Some of the calls Jason gets give him this reaction, like walking into a room and finding a guy holding poo in his hand or a caller turning out to not have a genuine medical emergency.
• Too Dumb to Live: A number of shorts show Jason and the paramedics dealing people who are... alarmingly lacking in medical knowledge and basic common sense.
  • In one episode, Jason is answering a call made by a patient who keeps taking Benadryl and eating peanut butter, despite being deathly allergic to it. Not only that, but this has apparently happened enough times that Jason immediately recognizes him.
  • One patient tried to smoke a cigarette while breathing through a nasal cannula, which resulted in his face catching on fire. As Jason is about to take him to the hospital, the patient, still wearing the cannula, asks if the emergency responders mind if he smokes a cigarette before they go.
    Jason: Sir, do you happen to be familiar with the definition of insanity?
  • One guy preparing for a hurricane had been planning to grill inside the house and is only saved from filling his house with carbon monoxide by the almost equally dangerous mistake of accidentally leaving the gas on, filling his house with propane instead.
    Jason: You and I need to have a really long talk.
  • Jason attends to two men who've just tased and pepper-sprayed each other because they "wanted to see which one was worse." He then learns this is the fourth time they've conducted this experiment.
    Jason: Have you guys ever considered not reproducing?
  • One caller is digging in his yard and worried he hit a gas line because he knows he hit something, and it smells like rotten eggs. Just as Jason is calling the gas company to check, the caller hits the pipe with the shovel (again) and confirms the hard way it is a gas line.
    Caller: ...so, I definitely hit a gas line.
    Jason: [in a state of near-panic] You think?!
    Caller: Well, maybe I should just...
    Jason: No! No! No! Hey! Less talky! More movey!
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream (along with ibuprofen) apparently keeps first responders going more than anything else and is eaten both as a nightly treat and to celebrate pretty much any accomplishment.
  Jason: Got overtime? Ice cream! Made it on the news? Ice cream! Got a job? ICE CREAM!
• Tranquillizer Dart: One video is a Parody Commercial for the Haldol Blowdart! Perfect to deal with that combative patient who was a marathon runner in a previous life... or that pesky, hyperactive kid at home.
• Un-Paused: The patient with a too high heart rate is given an adenosine shot and begins saying, "Oh, I feel..." right before the adenosine kicks in and he flatlines for an agonizing eight seconds. Then his heart restarts and he finishes his sentence: "... weird."
  Jason: God, I hate adenosine.
• Unwanted Assistance:
  • Several episodes have bystanders who attempt to treat the patient themselves. Sometimes it works out, but other times, their methods either don't help at all or are counterproductive (see Worst Aid). Jason's of the opinion that bystanders should not interfere or try to help the patient without instructions or permission from emergency responders.
  • In one episode, a grease fire broke out, and the homeowner's friend tried to put it out by dousing it with water, despite the homeowner explicitly telling him not to. When this made the grease fire bigger, the friend then tried to throw flour on the fire, though the homeowner was able to stop him this time, preventing a dust fire explosion. However, some of the flour got onto the pan and is implied to have glued the lid to it when the homeowner used that to smother the fire.
• Urine Trouble:
  • One short had Jason show up to a call for the patient's eyes hurting... only to find out that the patient and his friend had spent days treating their pink eye with piss. A "Where Are They Now" follow up has Jason frustratedly explain the nasty stuff that is expelled in urine ^note tiny amounts of bile and blood cells, and bacteria, underlining how stupid this "homegrown treatment" is.
    Jason: I am so excited to call the hospital.
  • Another episode has Jason respond to a patient who was stung by a jellyfish. His friends describe how they tried the "old fashioned" cure of peeing on it and don't understand what they did wrong... until Jason yells at them to soak it in hot water.
    Jason: Water! You j-you just soak it in hot water! That's it!
    Friend: Hm. Well, that would have been nice to know... earlier.
    Jason: Ya think?!
    Jimmy: I smell... so bad.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: As Jason explains, first responders show how much they care about one another through Backhanded Compliments, insults, and pranks (Jason's favorite).
• Vomiting Cop:
  • One call involves a call by a man concerned about the patient's foot. The patient, who is sitting covered up in his bed, is unwilling to go to the hospital and, as Jason explains to the caller, the paramedics can't force someone to go to the hospital ("Some would consider that kidnapping"). Everything changes the instant Jason lifts the covers and sees a bone sticking out of the patient's foot, leading him to start incredulously speaking with the caller when another EMT enters the room, sees the foot, and promptly faints.
    Bystander: Told ya you needed to go.
  • A literal example occurs in one skit in which a patient had impaled himself on some PVC pipe but was remarkably chipper about the situation compared to the police officer who had also responded to the call. The latter eventually outright faints.
    Jason: ...well, good news is, you're gonna have a roommate in the ambulance.
  • Yet another variant occurs during a call for a guy who'd stuck his leg out the window, resulting in a complete fracture when a car passed too close. The sight of the injury makes Jason so nauseous, he mentions wanting to throw up into the nearest bush.
    Patient's Brother: My moron brother over here just got his leg rearranged!
    Jason: Rearr—? [sees the leg, immediately starts to sound nauseous] (regretting breakfast) Oh, God!
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Less epilogue and more compilation of some of the more memorable episodes, with fans wanting to know whatever happened to the patients. Most of it is an elaboration on the context around the cases shown.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: One of the episodes of 9-1-1: Lone Star that Jason greenscreens himself into features a patient whose heart will stop if she's not upside down. This means she can't be transported to the hospital in an ambulance, so the firefighters offer to transport her instead. Naturally, Jason questions this idea.
  Jason: Hold on. You're in a fire truck. There's no way you'd be dumb enough to hang your patient upside down and drive them to the hospital.
  [cut to the patient being held upside down by two firefighters on the back of their fire truck]
  (they were dumb enough)
  Jason: [to the patient's husband]'' Hey, man. Your wife's going to die.
• With Friends Like These...: Several calls usually involve friends doing the injuring to the patient, accidentally at best or maliciously at worst.
  • While answering a call about a grease fire, Jason learns that the fire started off small, but the homeowner's friend made it worse by pouring water on it, even when the homeowner told him not to. The homeowner then had to slap the flour out of his friend's hand to prevent him from causing a dust explosion as well, which the friend responded to by slapping him back.
  • One instance involves a man having a taser probe stuck in the back of his head because his friend shot him in the head with a taser. The friend later laughs when the patient says he feels like he's wired for cable, which neither Jason nor the patient is impressed by.
  • In one episode, a patient is having chest pains and unable to breathe, with his friend thinking it's a silent heart attack. Jason asks if the patient's diabetic because he started sweating out of nowhere, but the latter insists his blood sugar is clear, even if he's nauseous. When the EKG shows a result that makes the paramedic give an Oh, Crap! response, the friend asks if he's having "The Widowmaker," making Jason tell him to shut up.
• Worst Aid:
  • Jason will often yell about how medics in TV shows are administering what would be considered medical malpractice in Real Life. In one episode, he angrily observes that one character seemingly diagnosed a punctured lung after examining the patient's right side, only to try and treat this by performing a needle thoracostomy on the left side of the body.
  • Several of Jason's patients have received improper treatment from people (usually themselves or bystanders) who didn't know what they were doing.
    • There was a guy who attempted to treat his pink eye with urine under the instruction of his friend, who also has pink eye!
    • One person gave his friend insulin because his blood sugar was low, making the problem worse, as insulin lowers blood sugar.
    • Another episode had multiple friends try to pee on the patient's jellyfish sting to relieve the pain, only for Jason to tell them that they could have just soaked the patient's leg in hot water.
    • A Literal-Minded bystander gives a patient three sprays of nitroglycerin in quick succession for his chest pain after hearing Jason casually remark, "Three sprays and the chest pain goes away," about the medicine. Unfortunately, he didn't give the paramedics a chance to get the patient's vitals and confirm that he has hypertension, the type of chest pain that nitroglycerin is meant to treat, nor does he wait long enough between each spray. This causes the patient to collapse from hypotension instead.
      Commenter johndickerhoff1179: Sometimes the worst enemy of a patient is just a buddy trying to help
    • One caller stuffed cake icing and mints into his unconscious friend's mouth to get his blood sugar back up, the latter of which could have easily caused the patient to choke.
      Jason: ...yeah, I wouldn't do that ever again.
    • One patient had low blood sugar, which his friends fix by funneling sweetened condensed milk into his rectum. They've apparently done this multiple times already, too. Jason is not impressed when he finds out about this.
    • A man tried to help with a patient's hyperventilation using the bag trick. Unfortunately, he wasn't aware that 1) you're supposed to use a paper bag, not a plastic one, and 2) the bag is only supposed to go over the mouth. As a result, he nearly suffocated the patient by wrapping a plastic bag over the latter's entire head.
  • This will invariably happen in shorts that parody inaccurate and overdramatic medical TV shows.
    • Lampshaded in one scene in which an EMT injects sugar straight into a patient's heart to treat his low blood sugar.
      EMT 2: But won't that kill him?
      EMT 1: Oh, yeah. But it'll also save him.
    • One EMT character tries to restart a patient's heart using a car engine.
    • One parody involves a captain directing an EMT to defibrillate a flatlined patient with 900 megajoules^note an extreme electric shock a commenter compares to "manhandling a residential distribution line for 2 minutes straight" so many times that the patient catches fire. When the patient comes to but suffers a "Transylvania stroke" (presumably due to the repeated electric shocks), the captain directs the EMT to attach the electrodes to the patient's face, something a Fun with Subtitles gag warns you not to do.
      EMT: But we don't shock flatline.
      Captain: That's what they want you to think. Do it!
• "Yes"/"No" Answer Interpretation: From the Real Things I've Seen as a Paramedic subseries, in "I Think He Just Need a Hug":
  Paramedic: Hey man. You still got any pain in that leg?
  Broken Leg Man: [under painkiller] I have legs?
  Paramedic: I'm going to take that as a no.
• You Do NOT Want to Know: One case has a diabetic patient who, in a blood sugar crash, started hulking out. When he asks where his TV is, Jason looks outside, sees the TV is on the patient's car, and tells the patient that he might not want him to answer that question.
• You Won't Feel a Thing!: Often averted.
  • A patient with tachycardia is outright told that his cardioversion will hurt.
  • To a patient with severe back pain:
    Jason: But, uh, speaking of screaming in pain, you know we have to carry you all the way downstairs, right?
    Patient: [groaning] I know.
    Jason: And you live on the third floor?
    Patient: [groaning] I know.
    Jason: You want me to give you some pain medication to take the edge off?