To the untrained eye, it’s chaos. Blood-smeared corridors, limbs severed mid-bone, newborns lying motionless, and nurses fighting for a pulse. But this isn’t Holby ED in the grip of another emergency — it’s the prosthetics room at Casualty, where illusion is art and realism is everything.

Express reporter Fran Winston recently stepped into this uncanny world at the BBC’s Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff. And what she discovered wasn’t just a warehouse of fake gore — it was a symphony of craftsmanship, a visual effects orchestra working in silence to fool the nation week after week.

At the heart of this body horror ballet is makeup designer Victoria Jackson, along with her elite team: Venice Marshall, Lauren Jenkins, and Megan Keepence. Together, they turn the ordinary into the shocking, building bodies that bleed, limbs that break, and babies that—well—don’t cry.

One of the eeriest elements? The “jelly babies.” These hyper-realistic rubber infants aren’t candy — they’re screen stand-ins. With real babies only allowed on set for limited periods, the team uses these wobbly replicas to simulate everything from childbirth scenes to neonatal emergencies. Each one is stored by age, race, and even named after Casualty cast members — a detail that’s as sweet as it is surreal.

But the uncanny doesn’t end with babies. Lining the studio shelves are racks of severed legs, bisected arms, and torso slabs cracked open to reveal glistening innards. Some are scarred, others pristine, waiting for a script to demand their sacrifice. These aren’t Halloween props — they are surgical-grade fakes, detailed down to the veins and sinew, each ready to star in the next emergency.

Jackson explains how authenticity isn’t just for show — it’s built into every layer of planning. “If a character is losing an arm, we try to use an actor who already has an amputation,” she says. “That way, we can attach a prosthetic for the scenes before the loss, and it looks incredibly real.” If the actor has both limbs, they strap the real one down and build around it — a trick of the eye and the camera.

Then there’s the “skin.” It doesn’t feel like human flesh — it’s more rubbery, more elastic — but under the studio lights and surrounded by frantic cast members in scrubs, it reads perfectly on camera. Whether it’s peeling back layers for a heart surgery scene or simulating a crush injury from a building collapse, this skin plays its part with award-worthy consistency.

When Holby City ended, Casualty inherited its entire prosthetics archive. That means even more limbs, torsos, and body parts now live in this macabre museum. Every piece is catalogued, ready to be plucked from the shelf for a storyline that needs surgical shock and awe.

This attention to detail is why Casualty remains one of the longest-running and most visually gripping medical dramas on TV. Viewers flinch, wince, or look away — and that’s exactly the goal. The illusion works so well that even those on set sometimes forget it’s fake.

From “jelly babies” to full-body trauma dummies, Casualty’s gory scenes aren’t just sensational — they’re painstakingly handcrafted. The horror is synthetic, but the emotional impact? Very real.

So the next time you watch a surgeon reach inside a chest cavity, or see blood pool around a trauma victim’s crushed leg, remember: someone behind the scenes made that from rubber, paint, and pure genius.

What shocked you most — the jelly babies, the prosthetic torsos, or the fact that you never noticed the difference?