As anyone who has spent a little too much time on Reddit knows, every now and then you will come across a Nightmare Thread that you shouldn't read in the dark but do anyway. For us, our latest encounter with one of these is a thread of pathologists describing the biggest revelations they've had during an autopsy.

As is the rule of the Internet, we saw it and now you have to. Here are a few of the ones that were sufficiently awful that they're worthy of inclusion, but not so bad that they'll put you off Reddit forever.

One recurring theme was choking. Apparently, it happens a lot more than you'd like; in the US in 2019, for instance, 5,228 people died in this way. Many of them, it seems, were in the vicinity of this anonymous medical student.

Always check the subject (animal and human) is dead.

Alligators are able to survive freezing temperatures. All reptiles are cold-blooded, so when the temperature drops they just slow down as their blood begins to turn cold. This immobile state is reversible. In fact, alligators are able to survive frozen in lakes and swamps, poking their noses out of the water to breathe. When the temperature starts to heat up again the alligators start thermoregulating their body temperatures again. Mostly without having undergone a necropsy.

The simplest explanation is nearly always the best

Leftovers

Undiagnosed conditions

Doctors would basically love to have the access that pathologists have to the human body. It would make life a lot easier if you could look directly inside every patient and see what the problem is, without them being or becoming dead.

So when pathologists look around, every now and then they find previously undiagnosed conditions that the deceased or doctors were unaware of. 

Bullets like to migrate

Surprise

Ones you genuinely don't want to look at

As expected, there are a bunch that you really don't want to know about (and even more over on the thread if you're a glutton for punishment).

Be sure you're ready for grim autopsy stories before reading on.