Gregory House

House's medical career prior to his employment at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital is shrouded in mystery, but it appears that although his skills as a diagnostician were unmatched, his disregard for the finer points of medical ethics/protocol, his inability to cooperate with subordinates and administrators alike, and what appears to be a disregard for routine work made him an almost unrivaled liability. It's known, however, that during this time he did indeed live in Princeton.

7 years before the series picked up, House found himself out of work, but he found out that Lisa Cuddy, now 32, had just been appointed as the Chief of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Seeking employment, House approached her for a job and was hired despite his poor professional reputation. Cuddy once remarked that she hired him because she knew of his extraordinary skill as a diagnostician, although at a lower wage than would be acceptable for a doctor of House's expertise. To placate House and keep him from having to interact with the rest of the hospital staff on a regular basis, Cuddy created a whole new department just for him; the Department of Diagnostic Medicine, the only one of its kind in the entire country, enabling House to pick and choose any cases he desired, whenever he desired. House spent the next several years as Department Head doing as little as possible to keep his job, although he was assigned a star diagnostic team that he regularly abused and belittled. Nevertheless, he soon proved his worth as the "go to" doctor for complex and problematic cases.

5 years before the start of the series, House suffered an infarction in his leg while playing golf. Unfortunately, the only symptom was leg pain, and by the time House himself realized that he was suffering from muscle death, the leg was in such a bad state that amputation was the recommended course of action. However, House rejected the suggestion and instead suggested that he undergo a procedure to bypass circulation around the dead muscle. The result was intense pain during the healing process, with the muscle death leading to cardiac arrest, House was then put into a chemically induced coma. However, while House was comatose, Stacy, acting as his medical proxy, decided to go with Dr. Cuddy's suggestion to have the dead muscle surgically removed. Although this most likely saved House's life, it left him with permanent intense pain in his right leg. The wound on his leg still bears an obvious scar from where the muscle was removed and there is a divot in his skin where the muscle used to be.

Equipped with a dry and acerbic sense of humor, House is enigmatic and conceals many facets of his personality with a veneer of sarcasm. He appears and sometimes himself claims to be narcissistic, and appears to have a disdain for most people, leading some to label him "a misanthrope". He has contempt for most societal institutions, including feminism and religion. House is an atheist and it is implied that he is nihilistic. These traits make him something of a byronic hero. Despite his cynicism, he does seem to care about his colleagues to a certain extent and while considering them "idiots" is able to sometimes put aside his pride and apologize when he has offended them in a particularly sardonic fashion. House uses his flippancy to conceal his affection toward his colleagues, and denies it to the extent that he himself sometimes forgets it. House is a total maverick and has stated that he frequents prostitutes. In one episode, his best friend Dr. Wilson states that House could have Asperger's Syndrome, but later tells House that he only wishes he had Asperger's so he could get away with more in life. Wilson has also told House that his obsession with solving cases has nothing to do with saving lives but that while "some doctors have a Messianic complex, House has a Rubik's complex", that is to say, he's more concerned with figuring out what is wrong with his patients than he is with saving their lives. The latter he does simply because it's his job. This is shown when he sometimes tries to diagnose patients after they're dead, such as in the episode "97 Seconds". However, there have been more than one occasion in which he put at risk his career, freedom and sometimes even his life to save a patient, leaving open how much he doesn't care about his patients' lives.

Occasionally, House can display the same sort of hypocrisy he decries in others, such as his derision for Cuddy when she had the naming ceremony for her daughter. A particularly egregious example would be his acquisition of a handgun after being shot by Moriarty, while stating to Masters that the Second Amendment is the part of the Constitution which says that people have the right to be stupid. He also apparently has inherited John House's service automatic and Mameluke sword. No Reason, Euphoria (Part 1), Last Temptation, Perils of Paranoia.