ER/YMMV

• Acceptable Targets: Adult gamers. A character buying himself an XBox to relax with (after he's been working twelve-hour shifts at one of the most stressful jobs imaginable, as the show is keen to remind us) is presented as a sign of his deteriorating mental health and that he's becoming a Jerkass. Bonus points for Pac-Man Fever noises as he plays.
• Author Tract: Any of the "Doctors Without Borders" episodes.
  • It should be noted that not even the cast liked those episodes very much, and in interviews have said they would have preferred it had the show just stuck to Chicago.
• Complete Monster: Most of the African Terrorists in Seasons 9 and 10, the abusive father in Season 7 who slaughtered everyone between himself and Dr. Greene when Greene had his son taken away, the teenager in Season 4 who went around raping old ladies, and, oh yeah, STEVE. CURTIS.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: A trope-savvy Carter gleefully plays "Ride of the Valkyries" when he gets the chance to take out Benton's appendix.
• Designated Evil: The man who shot the psycho who was rampaging around the city killing people with the intent of getting to Greene's family. Keep in mind said psycho had already shot this guy before he pulled a gun of his own and shot back. But just to assure us that guns are evil and anyone who would use one is a Jerkass at best, he's smug over his "kill" and Carter lectures him on how it's pure luck he didn't shoot a baby or something.
• Die For Our Political Views: One character (young, idealistic, and full of promise) gets sent to Iraq and dies basically just to give a medical show set in Chicago a chance to criticize the war.
• Double Standard: The female staff ogling handsome male patients/relatives of patients and commenting on their good looks is seen as perfectly normal and not the least bit unprofessional. Male staff ogling gorgeous female patients/relatives of patients and commenting on their good looks are viewed as lecherous perverts.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Still too many to list, but the most popular are Carter/Abby and Luka/Sam.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Abby's one episode storyline regarding breast cancer given that actress Maura Tierney was later diagnosed with the disease.
• Ho Yay: Many instances, but most notably Heterosexual Life Partners Doug and Mark in the early seasons.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Neela. During the course of the show she gets to date Gallant, Gates, Brenner, and Ray, not to mention her short-lived crush on Kovac as well as Dubenko's crush on her.
  • A cross between this and Genre Launcher might be Abby. Once ER became the most popular show on television, it seemed like every new show from then on required at least one small, average-looking brunette with a rather caustic personality who is considered the ideal woman by most of the male cast.
• Les Yay: One of the female med students planted a kiss on Neela once. She was surprised, to say the least.
  • And before that, there was Maggie Doyle, Kim Legaspi, Kerry Weaver, Sandy Lopez...
• Marty Stu: Carter. He's rich, handsome, kind, and a very talented doctor.
  • Interestingly enough, when he isn't a Marty Stu, he's usually a Butt Monkey.
    • This is due to Character Development. When the series started, Carter was a naive newcomer who made many rookie mistakes and whose upbringing had made him nonchalant about peoples money-problem. As the show went on he lost his fumbling and his social ineptitude, but kept his money and his handsomeness. His kindness where there from the start.
  • He eventually became Marty Stu, Dropper Of Anvils with the whole Doctors Without Borders thing not only making him seem even more heroic and selfless but giving him (and the show) opportunities to lecture the viewers about social consciousness.
• Nausea Fuel: Many, many of the patients' injuries.
• Nightmare Fuel: Innumerable, but Gant's death was probably the most blood-chilling of them all.
• Official Couple: Ray and Neela.
• Relationship Sue: Kem, who makes her significant other, Carter, look like the most flawed, well-rounded character ever created in comparison. A selfless manager of a Congolese AIDS clinic, which is already a pretty Sueish occupation, she's never allowed to be wrong about anything and often expresses what are almost certainly the writers' views on US foreign policy. She and Carter don't get along, which of course leads to wild hatesex and her getting pregnant, and suddenly Carter's willing to give up basically his entire life as he knows it for her sake. The kicker? They break up. Offscreen.
• Seasonal Rot: The show had a tendency to get preachy in later seasons. Many consider the show to have effectively ended after Season 8 with Greene's death and Benton's departure, some don't make it past the departures of Ross and Hathaway.
  • Early Season 6 was a mess, with new characters being introduced or old characters leaving the show every other episode. However, the season was redeemed in the end by giving us the first death of a main cast member, Lucy, and a happy ending for Carol and Doug.
  • Because it was Carter's last season, Season 11 tried to be all about him and gave a storyline that deliberately went into Tear Jerker or heartwarming territory. It didn't go well, and while most people credit Season 13 as the season the show went back on track, Season 12 was already a big improvement over 11.
• Strawman Has a Point: Kerry Weaver's insistence that staff abide by rules and policy. Unfortunately, this was undermined by her aforementioned hypocrisy as well as the way she basically tried to bully people into submission.
• Tear Jerker: Dozens; most notably, "Love's Labors Lost".