Why Scrubs’ Opening Credits X-Ray Gag Was Deeper Than You Realized

A small goof in Scrubs‘ opening credits was turned into a running gag, and the way it was done has a much deeper meaning than it might seem. Scrubs‘ opening credits don’t seem particularly exciting at a glance: they feature the show’s main characters hanging up an x-ray of a human chest with the show’s title. The general idea of the opening credits remained the same throughout the show, bar a few small changes season-to-season and a brief remix at the start of season 2.

However, the opening credits actually contain a small gag regarding the x-ray that became something of a running joke. In what fans assumed was a mistake, the chest x-ray in the Scrubs intro is hung up backwards. In Scrubs season 5, after the x-ray with the title card is put up, Kim Briggs (Elizabeth Banks) appears, takes it down, and turns it around, explaining that it’s been “bugging her for years“. Kim was one of Scrubs’ best guest stars, and the gag highlighted the medical inaccuracy in the opening credits.

However, the joke actually runs much deeper than a quick nod to the apparent mistake. In fact, the x-ray had been backward for years by design, and the way in which Kim appears to correct it was a deliberate nod to fans’ belief that it was wrong. In one small moment, the opening credits x-ray joke proved itself one of the show’s deepest, which is telling of Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence’s attention to detail.

Why Scrubs Opening X-Ray Was Backwards (And Why It Was Fixed)

Scrubs benefitted from a number of doctors who acted as on-set consultants, and Lawrence actually included the backward x-ray as a means of subtly conveying how overwhelmed his young doctor characters were. However, after years of being hounded about the perceived goof, Lawrence had one of Scrubs‘ side characters, the newly introduced Kim Briggs, fix it on-screen. Briggs was introduced as a slightly neurotic and highly-strung (but ultimately well-meaning) love interest for J.D., and her reaction to the backward x-ray was very much in line with her character.

By using a character’s nature to reveal his awareness of the backward x-ray, Lawrence pointed out that the show was well aware of it, but he also made use of Scrubs‘ signature sense of humor to do it. While the show didn’t often break the fourth wall, it did make use of strange and unusual visual gags on many occasions, and Briggs’ correction of the x-ray was very much in line with that. However, it’s worth noting that unlike one of Scrubs‘ main characters, Dr. Cox, Lawrence took the opportunity to joke about the “mistake” without making it known that most fans had missed the point of the backward x-ray.

It was a classy way to acknowledge the show’s fans’ awareness of the x-ray without patronizing them by explaining its meaning, and it served to highlight just how perfect Scrubs‘ sense of humor could be. In having Banks’ Kim be the person to correct it, it also set her up as someone who would force J.D. not to allow the difficulty of his situation to affect him outwardly, which is a particularly interesting way of foreshadowing J.D.’s perfect Scrubs ending and Kim’s role in it. Ultimately, Scrubs‘ opening credits x-ray gag was one that took five years to pay off, but it was well worth the wait.

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