# Its Not Lupus "It's Not Lupus" is a catchphrase from the medical drama House, spoken by Dr. Gregory House whenever his team floats lupus as a diagnosis for a mystery patient. The line became a running joke on the show and got remixed into image macros during House's late-2000s peak[1][2]. ## Origin House debuted on Fox in 2004 and ran until 2012, built around Dr. Gregory House and a rotating team of younger doctors at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey[3]. The show's per-episode formula, in which the team cycles through wrong diagnoses under a ticking clock, gave the writers repeated openings for a junior doctor to suggest lupus and for House to shut it down[1]. The exact debut of the specific phrasing across House's eight seasons is not fixed to a single episode in the available sourcing, but the joke was established early enough that fans treated it as a signature bit by the mid-2000s[3]. A season 4 episode eventually flipped the gag by giving a patient actual lupus, which fans still cite as the payoff to years of setup[4]. - **Platform:** Fox (House TV series) / YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** House writers (David Shore, series creator) - **Date:** 2004 ## Overview "It's Not Lupus" is a running-gag catchphrase from the Fox medical drama House, delivered by Hugh Laurie's character Dr. Gregory House whenever one of his junior diagnosticians floats lupus as a possible answer to a baffling case[1]. The line reads as both a diagnostic dismissal and a character tic, because House almost always rules the disease out before the team even finishes writing it on the whiteboard[3]. Lupus, or Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, is a real autoimmune disease that attacks healthy tissue and mostly affects women between roughly 20 and 40 years old[2]. Its symptoms overlap with a long list of other conditions, which is exactly why the House writers kept it in play as a red herring and why the line landed as a joke inside the show's diagnostic-mystery formula[2]. ## How It Spread The catchphrase jumped from TV dialogue to internet joke during House's late-2000s ratings peak, when the show was one of the most-watched dramas on American television[3]. On April 9th, 2010, YouTube account Camilladilla uploaded a supercut of the team suggesting lupus and House refusing it, giving the running gag a single shareable clip to link[3]. From there "It's Not Lupus" spread through the Advice Animals wave, with the Dr. House image macro reusing the line as a punchline over stills of Hugh Laurie[3]. In 2011, academic outlet The Conversation published an explainer on why lupus was written as the show's perpetual wrong answer, pointing to the disease's overlapping symptoms and difficulty of diagnosis[2]. In 2016, BuzzFeed followed with a listicle rounding up 29 on-screen moments where the diagnosis was wrong, keeping the joke in circulation years after the finale[5]. ## How to Use The catchphrase is typically used two ways online. In House-specific image macros, a still of Dr. House gets paired with a setup line about a mystery illness and the punchline "It's Not Lupus" (or the harder variant, "It's Never Lupus"). Outside House fandom, people often drop the line as a reply whenever someone floats an unlikely diagnosis or an obvious wrong answer, medical or not. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Its Not Lupus? It's a running catchphrase from the Fox drama House, said by Dr. Gregory House to shut down his team whenever they suggest lupus as a diagnosis[1]. ### Where did Its Not Lupus come from? The line comes from House, which aired on Fox from 2004 to 2012 and built each episode around the team guessing at rare diseases[3]. ### What does Its Not Lupus mean? In-show, it means House is rejecting a lazy or unlikely diagnosis, because real lupus is hard to identify due to symptoms that mimic many other diseases[2]. ### How do you use Its Not Lupus? People typically use it as a punchline in Dr. House image macros or as a quick reply when someone offers an obviously wrong guess[3]. ### Is Its Not Lupus still popular? It's a classic 2000s TV catchphrase that peaked with House's original run and still circulates in listicles and House fan content, like BuzzFeed's 2016 roundup of 29 wrong-lupus moments[5]. ## References 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(TV_series)]() 2. [https://theconversation.com/why-its-never-lupus-television-illness-and-the-making-of-a-meme-1198]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-not-lupus]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bueW1i9kQao]() 5. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres/29-times-it-wasnt-lupus-on-house]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/its-not-lupus Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library