The Biggest Secrets Revealed by Autopsies... Post Mortem PLOT TWISTS

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]The biggest secrets revealed by autopsies. Postmortem plot twists.

[00:00:06]When my parents were in medical school, they attended an autopsy of a patient who had been in a car accident. The autopsy revealed that apparently this guy had survived a chest shot in Vietnam years ago that the surgeons and medics had left in rather than perform a risky surgery. The accident had actually migrated the bullet to his heart and was ruled the cause of death.

[00:00:27]I assisted with a postmortem when I was a student. Female patient died in her 40s. Her medical history had extensive complaints of abdominal pains. One doctor even referred to her as a hypochondriac and others commented on apparent anxiety. We opened her abdomen and she had extensive scar tissue. She was absolutely massacred inside from endometriosis. She suffered for a decades and never got referred for a laparoscopy. She didn't have freaking anxiety. She had a medical condition.

[00:00:56]Honestly, I'm not even surprised by this story. Oh, it's just women's pain. Been there, done that. It's so awful that some doctors don't take conditions like endo or polycystic ovary syndrome seriously and won't refer a woman to go and see a specialist or a gyno. That poor, poor woman. I hope she has some comfort and peace now.

[00:01:17]My friend once cremated a lady and when they pulled the table out, there were three sets of forceps just sitting there. Most likely she died in surgery, but I always thought it was crazy that those were left in and whatever metal they were made of clearly has a higher melting point than cremation temperatures. After my mother was cremated, my sister was curious and wanted to take a peek at her ashes inside the urn. She opened it and said, "Oh, right on top of those fine ashes was the hardware from the broken ankle repair she had gotten years before."

[00:01:46]Not [clears throat] mine, but a doctor I used to work with. Back when he was in school, he'd do his cadaver labs really late at night. I would see many people during the day. One time it was really late, around 2:00 a.m. He was listening to his lecture on his headphones and he saw the cadaver's arm move, like you know, twitch. He thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him and then he saw it again. Proceeded to run away in a panic. He told a few of his classmates what happened, but nobody believed him.

[00:02:12]Next day they had a group cadaver lab with that same cadaver. The arm twitched yet again. The professor did some digging and it turns out the patient's pacemaker was still fully functional and occasionally fired, causing the arm to twitch. He was so relieved. He thought there was a zombie in there.

[00:02:30]Yeah, but that scenario was one overconfident superior and a jump scare away from being the start of a zombie post-apocalypse movie, so I don't really blame him.

[00:02:39]In medical school, my group's cadaver was an 80-plus year-old female who was extremely unfit, morbidly obese with muscles half the size of any other cadavers. Her pectoral muscles were paper thin to get some reference. We figured she was bedridden during her last few months, which would somewhat explain these findings. When we started our neurology unit and began to dissect the infratemporal fossa, I discovered a small pellet under the skin behind her right ear. My tankmates and I went on to find dozens of these metal pellets strewn around her head's anatomy with some lodged into the cranium and others in the bones of her face. We contacted her living relatives to get some clarification and they ended up revealing that when this lady and her brother were children, like 8 years old, they were playing with an old decorative rifle that the family had mounted above the fireplace. Long story short, the brother accidentally discharged the weapon into the girl's face. The aftermath was that this lady was blind and wheelchair bound for the rest of her life and the pellets weren't all removed. It was an interesting dissection with that information from then on, but a sobering moment in reminding our class that cadavers are humans with their own struggles and rich lives. If you're considering donating your body to science, please know that we don't take the responsibility lightly and a million thanks aren't enough. My old martial arts instructor was a policeman in the '80s. He was shot with birdshot in his torso and many of the pellets weren't removed. He said that sometimes they make their way to the surface and he could just kind of scratch them out.

[00:04:08]While in medical school, we had to observe an autopsy and could assist. One of the lectures was to observe for head trauma. You do this by hitting the skull with a hard object, scissors or the like. A hollow sound is normal, but a dull sound indicates trauma. One of the other students did this exam and found the dull sound. The coroner had not yet himself examined the person and was very [clears throat] surprised as he had not been informed by the police of head trauma. They then continued to examine the head and they found the shot wound through the skull. All of a sudden, this guy was a crime scene and they had to call the police again and leave the person as untouched as possible. I believe it was later confirmed that the person had ended things himself, but for all we knew, it could have been a murder. There must have been some information that was missed between the police and the coroner. I myself wasn't present, but I do believe the story is true as it's now a lecture in why you should always examine for skull trauma and not just assume something before knowing.

[00:05:05]Master's in forensic pathology here.

[00:05:08]You'd be surprised to know the number of people that have life-threatening issues that never went diagnosed and that they didn't die from. Seeing an older guy who died of pneumonia in hospital. On autopsy, the guy both had an enlarged heart and a couple of medium-sized aneurysms in the brain. Another guy in his 70s apparently came into the ER and had chest pain and then died shortly after. Died of a heart attack, but also had cancer. In less natural circumstances though, we saw a guy who had been shot in the head a couple of times, three definite entries and a blown out skull, but police found only one bullet. Couldn't find the other bullet in his head at all. We assumed the police missed it. Went on as normal with the autopsy until he got to the chest cavity. The other bullet was just chilling beside his lung. Turns out it entered the skull, hit the inside, ricocheted down his neck and into the chest. That was pretty wild.

[00:06:00]We had one cadaver that passed away from natural causes in his late 60s. Given what we found, I'm inclined to believe he never saw a doctor in his life. When we begin our dissections, we start with the muscles of the back, arms, and legs.

[00:06:12]Then we move on to the nervous system and eventually the abdominal, thoracic, and pelvic cavities in that order.

[00:06:19]Everything was textbook up until we exposed her abdomen initially. The anatomy was present, but something just seemed off. After cleaning up some of the fascia and visceral fat, we exposed the liver, GI tract, stomach, and spleen. Yet something just seemed off, but we couldn't place our fingers on it.

[00:06:38]It's amazing how something so apparent that's right in front of your eyes doesn't click until someone finally said, "Hey guys, why is his liver on the left?" This man's entire anatomy was mirrored. We found his heart and spleen to be on the right as opposed to the left and everything on the opposite side of where it was supposed to be. This cadaver had situs inversus totalis, a condition where the internal organs develop on the opposite side of where they're supposed to be. It's incredibly rare. Cases where just the thoracic cavity are mirrored have an estimated frequency of about 0.001%.

[00:07:11]This gentleman had all of his internal organs mirrored. It almost certainly contributed to his death, unfortunately.

[00:07:18]The reason I mentioned him probably not having seen a doctor is because if you try to listen to the heart of someone with this condition, you just won't hear it because it's not in the regular spot.

[00:07:27]The body was eventually taken from our students in order to be dissected professionally and presented to more future students down the line. When parents tell their child they're one in a million, it's not usually true, but it very much may have been true in this one gentleman's case.

[00:07:42]I'm a veterinarian and sometimes I do necropsy, basically autopsy for animals, and one of the more notable cases involved a prized Wagyu cow that died mysteriously. Wagyu cows are very expensive to rear and fetch a good price at the slaughterhouse. After cutting her open, I found her metal wires extending from her stomach into her heart. It's what we call hardware disease.

[00:08:04]Apparently, the cow decided that eating metal wires for construction fences was a good idea. Normally, the farmhands are quite good at keeping these hazards away from inquisitive bovines, but I guess slip-ups do happen from time to time.

[00:08:17]Huh, so I guess horses aren't the only ones to nonsensically eat things that demonstrably don't taste or feel good inside them and then just keep doing that same activity until they die. I thought the bovines had a bit more brain than the horses. The more you know, I guess.

[00:08:34]I took forensic lectures, so I saw quite a bit of crazy stuff, but the thing that sticks in my mind most is an autopsy revealing a history of a very troubled domestic life. Sad stuff. There was a slightly more funny one. A skeleton was found in the nearby mountains. It was very clear he died in an accident 20 or more years ago. However, he had to be identified via DNA. Turns out his dad was not his dad, but his uncle. Sparked a whole public family drama show because the family was well-known in my area.

[00:09:04]Not exactly an autopsy per se, but it was a patient found unresponsive with CPR in progress by emergency medical services. The man was clearly homeless based on his appearance and smell. He reportedly hadn't been seen for several days by his friends and was eventually found behind a fast food restaurant dumpster. We were [clears throat] briefly able to get a pulse back and when the nurse cut his pants off to place a catheter, we saw the cause. He had fashioned some sort of makeshift ring out of the neck of a plastic bottle. It was way too tight and completely cut off the circulation. His member was fully black and necrotic. I did a bedside ultrasound and found his abdomen full of free fluid, which is real bad. Most likely his bladder had ruptured from being unable to pee for days. His labs suggested he was in septic shock and full-blown renal failure as well. He didn't survive much longer than that. As another one I remembered, in my final year of training, we had a cadaver lab to practice advanced airway management techniques. We're talking things like difficult intubation, cricothyroidotomy, that kind of thing. While I was helping an intern do a basic intubation, she commented that the tube wouldn't pass. I think she has some kind of growth or mass in her airways. I took a look, asked for some forceps, and pulled a half-eaten hot dog out of her larynx.

[00:10:20]It, of course, had been embalmed along with the rest of her. Cause of death identified.

[00:10:26]You can submit your own stories to be featured here on the channel. The story submission link is in the description below. Don't forget to subscribe to MI the genius.

[00:10:36]Sheep farmer here. I have to know how to do a necropsy for when something dies to know if it's something that could spread. Had a ewe fall over dead after losing a ton of weight. And after treating her for everything under the sun, she would gasp for air and struggled to breathe, but antibiotics, steroids, and anti-inflammatory meds didn't touch it. She finally passed away and I cut her open to see what the heck was happening. Fully expecting to see lungs riddled with some kind of disease.

[00:11:02]Her heart was five times the normal size and as hard as a river stone. My guess is that she'd had that issue her whole life and it didn't kill her until she was two. I'm a ranch manager and at the end of season, ranchers submit an end of season report that basically says how many, what dates, in what pastures, and number dead and from what. The sheep ranchers just have so many more deaths.

[00:11:25]I swear that sheep wants to die.

[00:11:28]My dad used to perform autopsies. His best story was they bought a body that had no real indication of any issues.

[00:11:35]After examining the body, the only thing of note that was there was blood coming out of the guy's rectum. They began the autopsy and the guy's organs were completely liquefied and the body cavity is filled with lead shot. It became apparent really quickly that somebody had shoved a shotty up his butt and pulled the trigger. This was in the 70s and I still have to wonder what this guy did to tee someone off enough to get a firearm up the wazoo.

[00:11:59]Training in the medical examiner's office. This elderly woman found dead by herself in her home. There was nothing suspicious, so I was given the case. We took out all of her organs and dissected everything. Completely unremarkable so far. I cut through the larynx as the last step before I could clean up and finish the case and boom. Giant piece of chicken trapped in her windpipe. Died choking on dinner.

[00:12:23]I did the autopsy of both a robber and his victim. The robber shot the victim in the back when he tried to escape in a motorcycle. And the robber was shot by the police in the exact same situation.

[00:12:34]What's interesting is that they both died by exactly the same lesion. Both of them had their fourth lumbar vertebra shattered and their aorta, the main artery of the body, sectioned at the same level. I thought of it like an extreme example of instant karma.

[00:12:49]In college, I took a figure drawing class and the teacher was adamant that you couldn't draw the figure if you didn't know what was in it. So, he dragged us over to the anatomy lab and had the anatomy teacher show us two cadavers that were being dissected by their medical students. When it came time to ask questions, of course, "Have you ever found something weird in a body?" came up. The story is as follows.

[00:13:11]They get a body and for legal reasons, they aren't told much about the person aside from medical history. They were told that the old man was a sort of rock star type and was a one-hit wonder from his youth and to use extra discretion with him in particular and not tell the students who might recognize him. The lab was full of 20-year-olds, so nobody recognized who he was. I'm unsure if the teacher even really knew, but it didn't sound like she did. They didn't know what his deal was, so they wrote it off as a non-useful information aside from his lifestyle. He had substance use and alcohol issues in his life and they were told that he partied a lot. Cool, seems par for the course. And the man's downstairs is fully engorged, like rigid, like 100% of the time. Teacher didn't think much of it aside from that he was particularly well endowed and everybody wrote it off as not important to their studies. So, they go through the general dissection that they usually do. One kid wants extra credit and the teacher said, "Sure, dissect his member.

[00:14:06]See why it's still hard. Write a report." Apparently, they don't normally do that for that particular class. So, that particular organ itself goes untouched from their dissections. So, it would have otherwise always been a mystery. And the kid finds an actual rod that the guy had medically inserted under the table, i.e. not in his medical records. So, this guy had ensured that he'd always have a raging one and could get it up while on substances. They suspect it was done 30 to 40 years prior to his death. They removed it and kept it in the lab, I believe, to show students as part of a section on under the table medical surgeries. Anyways, that was probably the best day in figure drawing class I've ever had.

[00:14:46]I once heard a story about a guy who died and completely unrelated to the main complaint during the autopsy, they found a grapefruit up his butt.

[00:14:54]Apparently, it had just sort of been there whole time.

[00:14:57]I guess at the end of our lives, the real friends are the ones who stick a grapefruit up your butt along the way.

[00:15:03]Is this better or worse than being found in dirty underwear when you die? My mom didn't cover this one.

[00:15:09]I worked at a coroner's office for a while and once we had a guy who we thought had passed away from taking too much crystal. Well, we started the autopsy and I went to cut his lungs out and blueberry muffin mix started coming out of them. I stuck my finger in his mouth and it was full of blueberry muffin mix and it was in his throat.

[00:15:27]Turns out he'd taken just enough crystal to pass out while eating the muffin mix and ended up choking to death.

[00:15:34]I'm a pre-med student and one time while shadowing a forensic pathologist, 3 days before Christmas, he was doing an autopsy on an automobile versus pedestrian accident. The man's face was completely smashed in. When they take samples of the brain, they cut the skin, pull it over the face, and they cut off the top of the skull. When they did that, the skull was basically shattered and bone fragments pulled back with the skin. And when they cut off the skull cap, the brain was obviously damaged and the eyeballs had been pushed back {slash} fallen through the orbits into the cranial cavity. The guy also had 10 grand in cash in his jean pockets.

[00:16:10]According to the police, he had a record involving substance deals. So, the theory was either a deal gone bad or he'd stumbled onto the road while under the influence.

[00:16:20]Not a doctor, but a whole body scientific donation technician. I'm the person who dissects cadavers after they're donated. We very commonly would get young cases, normally people who'd taken too much illegal substances. Had a mid-30s female, went to the medical examiner prior to donation, but they only did an external evaluation. I went to check her downstairs to see if I could palpate a uterus and found a condom full of pills. Similar to most cases, the body became a crime scene and we couldn't touch her. When we finally were able to continue, they asked us to photograph the pills to send to the examiner's office. They were mostly Advil and Zyrtec, easily one of the weirdest things I've ever found.

[00:17:02]Forensic pathologist here. Two come to mind. I just moved back to my home state where my family lives. Get a case with a man with a distinctive last name in the family tree. I put a text out to my mom to see if we were related, but before she texted back, I pulled the sheet back and already knew. He looked like me. It was my great uncle. Then I got a case where it was a house fire death. On exam, he's got multiple textbook blade wounds. I spend the next 30 minutes getting quizzed by the PD, like, "Are you sure?" Completely gaslighted because they thought that this was just a straightforward house fire. Unfun fact, fires are not an uncommon way for people to try and conceal a homicide.

[00:17:44]I worked as an animal hospital. They did necropsies for zoos all the time. An alligator had died and they shipped it to the hospital, refrigerated and stuff to stop the decay. They took it out and put it up on the table. After doing all the paperwork, they started opening up said alligator. After the first cut, the alligator opened its eyes. Turns out it wasn't dead. The zoo vet mistook an illness for death and the low temperature basically put it into a coma.

[00:18:11]During my internship rotation a couple of years back, a 40-year-old guy came in because he's suddenly collapsed while drinking with friends. He came in unresponsive, mouth bleeding, and not breathing. So, we had to intubate him.

[00:18:24]For some reason, the endotracheal tube, the stiff tube placed inside the trachea to help the patient breathe, just wouldn't go in. But we managed to suction copious amounts of blood clots.

[00:18:34]After CPR, still with unsuccessful intubation, so we had to bag him with a face mask, this patient was declared dead and diagnosed with a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. During the autopsy, they found out the guy was apparently shot by a weapon from the top of the head. The entry wound was obscured by his hair and was barely bleeding at all. The bullet somehow went through the back of the guy's throat and made a hole [clears throat] behind the base of the tongue, which the endotracheal tube kept slipping into.

[00:19:03]I used to assist with wildlife necropsies for the state fish and wildlife department. Two come to mind.

[00:19:09]Somebody had shot an otherwise perfectly healthy-looking deer and they brought it in because, quote, "We found something weird." When they cut it open to gut it.

[00:19:18]Sure enough, there was a cantaloupe-sized sphere of tissue in its belly. It had thick, very smooth, slightly rubbery walls. The vet was pretty sure it was an abscess, but said it was the largest walled-off one she had ever seen whole like this. Cut it open and sure enough, the walls were about a quarter inch thick and then it was just all pus. A meat cantaloupe filled with pudding-thick pus. Got to say, a meat cantaloupe filled with pudding-thick pus is one hell of a sentence.

[00:19:50]My grandmother had a massive stroke her 30s that paralyzed her entire left side and died in her 60s from a heart attack.

[00:19:58]But while doing the autopsy, they found out she had bad lung cancer and she never had any pain from it because it was in her left lung. She was a very heavy smoker, so it made sense. It's just crazy that she had lung cancer and never even knew about it.

[00:20:13]When you subscribe, make sure to hit the bell to turn on notifications. Put the playlist on in the background to finish listening to all of the stories. And if you like am I the genius, give am I the jerk a shot. Everything linked in the description.