This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UCT chapter.
Grey’s Anatomy is an American medical drama series centred around the life of aspiring surgeon Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo. With sixteen seasons underway, it has its fair share of hidden details and easter eggs that even long-time viewers can miss! This list brings you some of those details. Major spoilers ahead!
- In the pilot episode, George O’Malley asks “We’re going to survive this, right?”. It was a direct foreshadowing of his own death in season 5. He is also the only member of the original interns to die.
- At the start of season 5, Meredith starts having nightmares about Derek Shepherd dying. One in particular that they show on screen is where Derek dies in a motor vehicle accident. In season eleven, Derek dies in a motor vehicle accident where he was T-boned by a semi-truck.
- In the season 2 finale, multiple victims of a shooting in a restaurant are being treated by the interns and attendings. While taking a patient to get imaging, Derek remarks to George “Can you imagine? You’re at work, you’re doing your job, and someone comes in and shoots you?” This later turned out to be a prediction to the hospital shooting tragedy that takes place in season six, where Gary Clark walked in and shot Derek, and many other hospital staff, causing many fatalities and leaving trauma in his wake after turning the gun on himself.
- Meredith even foreshadows her own fate, when earlier in the show she tells Christina she would rather do community service, and ends up doing just that in season sixteen after committing insurance fraud.
- Every episode is named after a song, except the first episode of season fourteen which was named after the National Domestic Violence Hotline, as the episode dealt with Josephine Wilson’s abusive ex-husband – Paul.
- Certain songs reappear at meaningful times. Grey’s fans are well acquainted with Chasing Cars and How to Save a Life by now. But two significant songs are Like a Virgin and Portion for Foxes. Christina sang Like a Virgin when her ex-boyfriend Burke won a Harper Avery Award and did not give her any credit. We see the song feature again in her final episode on Grey’s Anatomy when Burke offers his job to Christina in Switzerland. Similarly, Portion of Foxes was the first song ever on Grey’s Anatomy that came to a full circle in the 300th episode of the series where Meredith won a Harper Avery Award.
- In season 5, after Mark Sloan was… injured… Lexie Grey stated, “I’m now going to climb into bed with you and stroke your hair because that’s what I would like to have done when I’m hurt.” Mark does exactly that for Lexie when she passes after the plane crash, stuck under debris.
- When Amelia gives birth in season sixteen, it pays homage to what George did for Bailey when her son was born. The day that Bailey’s son was born in itself was very chaotic – a man came into the emergency room with a bomb in his body cavity, which resulted in the entire operating room floor to be evacuated. Derek, however, did not evacuate, because he had Bailey’s husband on his operating table! George helped Bailey by sitting directly behind her during the birth and allowed her to squeeze his hands as hard as she needed to. When Amelia is found alone during her birth due to Richard Webber’s faulty knee replacement induced cobalt poisoning, Bailey does the exact same for Amelia.
- The operating schedule sometimes contains the names of actual set crew members.
- Lastly, the actress who plays Bokhee – a scrub nurse – is a scrub nurse in real life!