By Kayla Cobb@kaylcobb
Published March 21, 2018, 8:20 a.m. ET
Photo: Fox
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Between HBO’s revolting robots, Netflix’s Cloverfield monsters, FX’s surprise alligators, and whatever’s happening on Ash vs. the Evil Dead, you would be forgiven for excluding network television from the fight for crazy TV. You would also be making a dire mistake. Fox’s freshman drama 9-1-1 is undoubtedly one of the most insane dramas to ever grace television. The first responder plots are insane, the characters are so great at their jobs they’re essentially superheros, and the dialogue is just as quip-filled as you could ever want. Ryan Murphy‘s latest Fox show is a disastrous masterpiece that everyone should watch.
It’s also a series that’s so out there, it forces viewers to constantly question, “Could that really happen?” More often than not, the answer is yes. When the show first premiered, the executive producers behind 9-1-1 admitted that they used real-life 911 calls as inspiration for some of the show’s stories. Now that there’s only one episode left of this crazy drama, we have to ask, how much of 9-1-1 was fiction, and how much of it can be traced back to a bonkers, real-life news story? Buckle up and get ready to embrace the idiom that truth is stranger than fiction.
1
A newborn baby really did get stuck in a bathroom pipe.
Because 9-1-1 is a show that only knows one speed, the Ryan Murphy drama started with its firefighting team responding to a man who claimed there was a baby stuck in the pipes of his apartment. After every officer gives the stoner the required amount of skeptical looks, they hear the crying too. The team then jumps into action, forcing the building to stop using the plumbing, tracking down the young mother, opening up the wall, and rescuing the baby before it was hurt. Surely this zany story was just invented for television, right?
The Real Story: Shockingly no. This really happened to a young woman in Jinhua, China. The baby fortunately lived and is now in the care of her grandparents. The team behind 9-1-1 has even admitted that they based this shocking TV moment off of real life.
2
People have been strangled to death by their giant pythons.
Right after rescuing that baby from the pipes, the 9-1-1 team has another call— saving a woman from her pet snake, which is now in the process of strangling her. After a heated argument about whether they should or shouldn’t kill the snake, Buck (Oliver Stark) makes an executive decision and cuts off its head. Problem solved.
The Real Story: Unfortunately, this emergency really happened with disastrous results in August of 2017. A British man and snake enthusiast was found dead in his apartment. The coroner’s office showed that his body had clear signs of asphyxiation, and the believed cause was the man’s giant python, which he had owned since it was a baby.
3
People fall off roller coasters more often than you want to know.
9-1-1‘s second episode opens on a scene that’s even more thrilling than its pilot. A joyous night at a local amusem*nt park turns into a horror show when the safety bar of a roller coaster stops working. Hanging upside down, the rescue team tries to save the one remaining passenger, but they unfortunately can’t.
The Real Story: From the Pennsylvania child who fell off a roller coaster in 2016 to the disabled man who fell from over 30 feet in 2017, this is something that doesn’t happen infrequently. However, no one seems to know just how many people have died from roller coasters and amusem*nt park rides. In 2013, NBC dove into this lack of knowledge, and though the article doesn’t answer how many people die from these rides, it revealed that roughly 4,400 children are injured by them a year.
4
Bouncy houses fly through the air all the time.
This Fox drama always opens on a big responder call, and in Episode 3, that call has to do with a children’s bouncy house. A huge gust of wind turns a sweet birthday party into a nightmare when the bouncy house is blown 50 feet into the air. Thankfully, everyone survives, even the divorced dad who only started playing with his kid out of guilt.
The Real Story: OK, this doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens way more often than you would think, which should be “never.” It happened in 2017, and it happened again in 2016. That bouncy house even slammed into some power lines in a Final Destination-esque twist (no children were inside). However, the most shocking bouncy house story happened in 2014 when the inflatable rental took flight with three children inside. All three survived falling out of the airborne house.
5
It's possible to survive a spike through your head.
9-1-1 is a show that thrives on insanity, so naturally it reserved its most bizarre and shocking plots for one of its own. In Episode 3 the poorly nicknamed Chimney (Kenneth Choi) goes on an angry drive after his girlfriend doesn’t accept his proposal. Because life is cruel, he ends up in a car accident with a metal rod shoved through his skull— and lives.
The Real Story: This has actually happened at least two times in human history, though no one seemed to have as quick of a recovery time as Chimney. The most famous case was Phineas Gage, a man who got into an accident while working on the railroad in 1848. Surgeons were able to remove the iron rod running through his brain, and he made a full recovery, but according to his friends and family, he was never the same person. A similar thing happened to an older Chinese man in 2013 while he was working on a DIY project.
6
A dance floor in Spain did collapse.
The big responder call in Episode 5 also takes place at a joyous occasion, a wedding. While the new bride and groom are celebrating their big day among their family and friends, the unthinkable happens, and the floor falls out from beneath them. In 9-1-1, this accident results in 16 deaths and many injuries.
The Real Story: A floor collapsed at a nightclub on theSpanish island of Tenerife. However, there were no deaths in this accident and 22 injuries.
7
Power lines do sometimes fall into pools.
After the responding team sorts out the traumas of the aforementioned wedding, fireman Buck and 911 operator Abby (Connie Britton) meet for the first time. Sparks fly, but they don’t last for long because there’s a little girl to save. While a little girl was swimming in her backyard pool, a live power line fell into the water, and she was only able to stay alive by staying on her float. Thankfully, some quick thinking from Abby lets them save the day.
The Real Story: This 9-1-1 plot doesn’t have a direct real-life counterpart, but wires do fall into pools on occasion. A wire, which thankfully wasn’t live, fell into a pool in 2013. This accident happened again the same year. However in the latter case, which took place atBrookside Swim Club in Lexington, North Carolina, one young girl tragically passed away.
8
A man did get stuck in a car wash brush.
Most of the emergencies on 9-1-1 are appropriately dramatic, but there is room for levity, even in the world of first responders. At the end of a particularly trying episode, the team responds to a call at a car wash. It turns out one of the workers managed to get trapped in the car wash’s brush and needs some help getting out.
The Real Story: This plot was likely inspired by a real-life viral video, which is just as funny as the Fox recreation.
9
Once, a man did eat another man's face.
While the rest of their team is helping a prenatal yoga class that’s going into labor all at once (9-1-1— it’s a wild ride!), Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Athena (Angela Bassett) are forced to confront a drugged up man who has been behaving strangely. When they finally track him down, it’s clear he’s been eating another person’s face, and if the weird filter the show uses is any indication, he’s on something a lot stronger than weed.
The Real Story: If you pay attention to major crime stories, you likely already remember this one. In 2011, Miami police shot and killed a man who was eating another man’s face. It was believed for a while that he was on bath salts.
10
Foot-long tapeworms are disturbingly real.
Let this be a warning to everyone— never eat while watching 9-1-1. Buck and Captain Bobby (Peter Krause) answer a home call. A man has been feeling sick for days, feels like there’s something inside of him, and as his boyfriend tells the officers, has been eating nothing but gas station sushi for too long. You know where this is going. He has a tapeworm, but not just any old tapeworm. This man has a seven-foot tapeworm that network television gleefully shows.
The Real Story: Though it’s not seven feet long, show star Angela Bassett was happy to remind viewers on Twitter that a man once had a five foot tapeworm inside of him. This is what live-tweeting is for.
11
People die in tanning salons a whole lot.
Here’s another reason not to tan. Toward the beginning of Episode 8, “Karma’s a Bitch”, a man who was mean to his dog is found trapped in a tanning bed. Hen tries to resuscitate him, but the man’s skin is so baked, her hands go through his chest. Again, never eat while watching 9-1-1.
The Real Story: This isn’t just a crazy plot device reserved for 9-1-1 and Final Destination. This happened as recently as this year. In New Jersey, a dead man was found trapped in a tanning salon. There were no suspicions of foul play.
12
Garbage compactors do cause deaths.
Episode 9 starts by following a homeless man. Looking for a comfortable place to sleep for the night, he settles into some nearby trash, but he’s so out of it, he doesn’t wake up until after he’s in a garbage truck. It’s up to the 9-1-1 crew to save him from this horrifying and Star Wars-esque fate.
The Real Story: There’s no perfect real-life story that aligns with this 9-1-1 plot. However, in 2013 a young garbage collector tragically died at a plant in Brooklyn.
13
A man did die from homemade booby traps.
9-1-1 ended its penultimate episode with a plot right out of Home Alone. Two brothers who had rigged up their house with intruder-deterring booby traps accidentally trap themselves in their own Saw-like maze, and it’s up to Chimney to break them out.
The Real Story: It turns out that people do really booby trap their homes, and those booby traps do really kill people. Or at least this set up killed one person. In 1998, after multiple break-ins, a Mississippi man filled his home with elaborate traps, one of which killed an intruder by shooting him in the neck.
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