Amusing Injuries / Western Animation

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• The Adventures of Figaro Pho: Used constantly to keep the show more lighthearted.
• The Amazing World of Gumball loves this trope.
  • While Gumball himself is Born Unlucky and prone to these, the other Wattersons aren't that far behind him.
  • Anton the piece of toast deserves special mention, as he dies in practically every episode he appears in: he's been eaten by a flock of birds, crushed by Tina Rex, disintegrated in a swimming pool, etc.
  • "The Curse" in particular is full of these. Gumball slips on soap in the shower (landing in the toilet), gets his finger stuck in the bus's door, gets slammed into a street pole, gets Squashed Flat by Hector, and struck by lightning inside the gymnasium and turned into a pile of ash. Eventually subverted in the end where he falls off of an unfinished highway and is said to have been lucky to survive.
• Beavis And Butthead started out giving the characters gruesome and realistic injuries (missing teeth, heavy bleeding) and playing it for laughs by Snap Back before switching to a more lighthearted approach of just making them bruised or knocked silly by things 10 times worse than had previously harmed them.
• The stars of the Classic Disney Shorts do this more often in modern times, such as on House of Mouse and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers.
• Parodied in Clone High in Scudworth's rivalry with Skunky Poo, which has all the traditional setup and gags of a classic chase cartoon and uses typical cartoonish methods like the Dynamite Candle or Anvil on Head, but also depicts Scudworth's actual injuries in a much less charming light (he screams in genuine pain, frequently bleeds, suffers what are clearly broken bones or lost teeth, and at one point his eye pops out of its socket). In the tradition of this trope, though, he always recovers after the next scene transition.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog has this happen to the title character a lot. He usually (literally) just laughs it off, even in serious situations. Of course, as far as the number of injuries go, Courage has nothing on Eustace, who is the reigning champ of amusing injuries in the show.
• Cracked (2016) runs almost entirely on this. Ed gets injured very frequently and in comically over-the-top manners on a nearly constant basis as he protects his eggs in every episode.
• Dan Vs.: There is not one single episode where a character isn't injured in some way, Chris being the usual victim of this.
• Daria is pretty realistic as far as cartoons go — When the school goes on a paintball-playing field trip (the episode "The Daria Hunter") the Running Gag is "Ow! Those paintball thingies hurt!"
• Darkwing Duck: Lampshaded in one episode when the plot involves a movie theater, Darkwing is hit by a heavy object and explains: "See the difference. A Movie figure would stand up and be okay now. I, on the other hand, am seriously hurt..." Funny because he actually behaves pretty much like those "movie figures" — and in this episode is OK 10 seconds later.
  • And we can't forget the scene that used to be pictured on the trope's main page: "Put out the Darkwing! Put out the Darkwing!" Actually, this happens a lot to EVERYBODY in that show.
• Drawn Together: Every episode has at least one character getting a comically horrific injury, only to appear fine in the next scene (though sometimes, the characters remain this way for the remainder of the episode). There is not enough room on this page to list all of the injuries that the characters have gone through.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy, to a truly extraordinary extent. Injuries only last any length of time if it's funny, but it's effectively averted and deconstructed in The Movie, where unlike most of the other injuries sustained during the show, they don't go away, which is a bit disturbing, to wit, Rolf looks like an angry wolf took bites out of his body for the length of the movie, and, Eddy's treatment at the hands of his brother is treated with horror by the other kids.
• The Fairly OddParents! makes use of This. Timmy has fallen of cliffs, been mauled by dogs, and had several other potentially fatal things happen to him. And yet, he can take it. Mind, his Fairy God Parents have raised the dead at least once.
• Family Guy: Subverted in an episode where we see Elmer shoot Bugs Bunny down dead then snap his neck as he lies in a pile of bloody, mangled flesh.
  • The series also has a habit of pausing the show to have characters provide drawn-out reaction to Amusing Injuries the way a real person would, invariably turning into an Overly Long Gag.
    • "Thhhh... Aaahh... Thhhh... Aaahh... Thhhh... Aaahh... Thhhh..."
  • During Stewie's "Fantastic Voyage" Plot, he shot Peter in the duodenum to distract him. Peter's reaction: "Oh jeez my duodenum is acting up!" and running into the bathroom. Funny mostly because Peter probably doesn't even know what a duodenum is.
  • In the episode "Death is a Bitch", when Death injures his ankle, he's left unable to do his job. As a result, Peter does things like jump off a tall building and get several tough guys to beat him up, all of which he shrugs off. When everyone else realizes that it also applies to them, everyone at the Drunken Clam starts shooting each other in the same way teenage girls would have a pillow fight.
• Futurama has this happen on a regular basis, particularly to Fry. Dismemberment, impalement, decapitation. Of course, they can keep a severed head alive in a jar and it's apparently trivial to reattach or replace something — i.e., in "I Dated a Robot", Fry's hands are bitten off by a T. rex and the next scene has him walking out of "Handcrafters: New Hands in an Hour".
• The Gorillaz both use and subvert this with 2D. On one hand, his injuries are often Played for Laughs, but this quickly delves into Fridge Horror when you realize that 2D doesn't recover like most cartoon characters and has in fact developed a problem with painkillers as a result.
• Invader Zim makes constant use of this trope. Zim has been mauled by rabid dogs, hit with at least four dozen dodgeballs simultaneously, injured his squeedlyspooch multiple times, and has been burned by meat and contaminated water, which apparently he is vulnerable too.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes thrives off this trope, with almost every episode (especially the early ones) featuring major and minor characters being subject to all sorts of violent slapstick in the name of Black Comedy. Somewhat justified by the fact that Miseryville is meant to be a cartoony version of Hell.
• KaBlam!: Henry goes through a lot. Falling off cliffs, melting, having extremely heavy objects fall on him, getting beat up by a sasquatch (or an angry little girl), almost getting attacked by a black widow, however he's fine by the next episode (or after the next cartoon short).
• Kaeloo basically revolves around everybody getting severely injured, only to be perfectly fine. At least Once per Episode, somebody or the other gets shot with a bazooka.
• Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny might as well be called "Po Gets Beaten Up By Everything And Everyone" with how often he is punched, slapped, caned, blasted, or had stuff fall on him. He's never seriously hurt, probably because of his already-established Kevlard.
• League of Super Evil does this almost constantly with Doktor Frogg. Whether it's being crushed by giant doors, or eaten by Doomageddon. Then again he is the resident Chew Toy. So it's expected of him.
• Looney Tunes has a lot of these: Daffy Duck in the course of his career was riddled with countless bullets usually only ending up bare and sooty with a humorously displaced beak. However, near the end of the 1953 short "Duck! Rabbit, Duck!", after getting shot in the face for the sixth time by Elmer Fudd, he finally snaps.
  Daffy: Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers, and gunpowder, and cordite! I'm an elk! Shoot me, go on! It's elk season! I'm a fiddler crab! Why don't you shoot me?! It's fiddler crab season!!!
  • However, not even Daffy can equal the sheer amount and variety of the (highly) amusing injuries inflicted on one Wile E. Coyote (SUPER-genius). Over the years, the hapless hunter has been on the receiving end of everything from catapults to earthquake pills and all possible variations of falling off of a cliff.
  • Surprisingly averted at the end of What's Opera, Doc?. It's... not funny.
• The Loud House: Happens frequently to everyone, with Lincoln being the obvious victim of these.
• Monkey Dust: The toon in the vivisection parts has the standard cartoonish Amusing Injuries, then it gets subverted when he drops an anvil on the (less-toonish) doctor's head. It's not pretty.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Twilight Sparkle suffers several Amusing Injuries in the episode "Feeling Pinkie Keen".
  • Twilight is usually the one who get hurt the most without being the Butt-Monkey, but the entire mane six has their moments.
• Numberblocks: In the episode “Fifteen,” Eight breaks his leg. The amusing part is that immediately afterward, he says “Octoblock, ouch! I’ve got an octo-boo-boo!”
• Oggy and the Cockroaches is essentially Tom And Jerry take up to eleven. To say that the injuries of the characters are amusing is an understatement.
• Pat And Mat: There is no violence, except to common sense, but with the amount of Face Plants they do and things falling on their heads (totally their fault) it's a wonder these two are still alive.
• The Patrick Star Show: The show has plenty of slapstick. For instance, in "Movie Stars", SpongeBob tears tickets for a movie theater and accidentally ends up ripping two people in half.
• Phineas and Ferb is a fairly standard example of this, lampshaded in "S'winter". Phineas, Ferb, and Candace are all riding on a snowboard and they crash into a snowman. Candace (on the back of the board) is the only one to hit it, and Phineas asks Ferb "How did we miss that?" Then they hit a tree, or rather, Candace does. Phineas remarks "Now that's just weird." This also highlights Candace's status as the show's Butt-Monkey. The majority of the show's cast never ends up as fodder for this trope, (unless it would be funnier), but it's about Once an Episode for Candace and Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
  • Ferb is also fodder for this trope. He is specifically thrown around in "Chronicles of Meap", and "One Good Scare Ought to Do It". His mental state is the main target; likely because it's typically unalterable.
  • Parodied in one episode. After Doofenshmirtz gets a new nemesis, the episode treats this like a break-up, complete with Perry and Doofenshmirtz appearing on a parody of Dr. Phil. Doofenshmirtz promises to hurt Perry "the right way: with cartoonish violence and hair-brained schemes."
    • In another, Perry is busy dealing with another crisis, so Doofenshmirtz decides to gloat to "Planty the Potted Plant", an actual potted plant with a tiny hat on it. Somehow, the plant beats Doofenshmirtz and wrecks his lair, and is officially hired by Monogram at the end of the episode.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show is full of this, frequent things that happen include large veiny bumps appear after getting hit on the head, skin would get sucked or ripped off, getting run over or smashed with a large object would reduce them to a puddle, sometimes a blow to the face would knock teeth out or make them shatter like glass, knock a brain out of the head, and leave an eyeball hanging out of the socket.
• A Robot Chicken Alien sketch entails an individual Xenomorph's acid melting through multiple floors, resulting in it fallling through several stories before hitting the pavment.
• Rocko's Modern Life is full of this, most of them happening to the main character, Rocko the Wallaby.
• Ruby Gloom does this too. Misery, one of the main characters is always hit by lightning, only to say "ouch" and come back 10 seconds later in best shape.
  • Inverted in one episode, where Misery isn't hurt at all. The other characters are getting hurt instead.
• The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show: All the time, in all three segments.
• The Simpsons:
  • Played straight in S2 "Bart the Daredevil" in which Homer falls down a cliff, hitting nearly every rock on the way down, only to land on the ground bleeding and with serious injury. He hits his head repeatedly while being hauled back up. Then the ambulance crashes. Then his gurney rolls out and falls down the gorge again.
  • A later episode (the "Reality Show" one in season 11, titled "Behind the Laughter") jokes that he was in remission for a long time and became addicted to painkillers, which is what allowed him to perform the "bone-shattering physical comedy that made the show famous".
    • Mocked, like everything else, in "The Onion" headline: Live-Action Simpsons movie on hold after 11th Homer stuntman dies.
  • The Show Within a Show Itchy and Scratchy defines this trope. It's a Tom and Jerry parody, except far more graphic.
  • The episode "A Star is Burns" parodies this trope as a video of a man getting hit in the groin by a football wins much praise at the film festival (twice).
  • Averted (very much so) in "The Homer They Fall." Whereas most other episodes where Homer is injured has him reacting in comic pain and everything is exaggerated, not so here... in fact, Homer suffers a major concussion in less time than it takes the timekeeper to strike the bell with the hammer, and just as long for Tatum to throw a second blow that, had it connected, would likely have killed him instantly. (Moe rescues Homer Just in Time)
• Slacker Cats: All the injuries are Played for Laughs, even in episode two when Tabitha got her only ear ripped off.
• South Park makes a running joke out of Kenny's horrific injuries. In this case, the character actually dies, and is revived each episode by Negative Continuity rather than by an Unexplained Recovery.
  • In one two-part episode, he miraculously popped back into existence in the first few seconds of the second episode without comment.
    • Later in the series, it's deconstructed when Kenny reveals he remembers every death. Every single one.
  • In the episode "Die, Hippie, Die", Mayor McDaniels shoots herself in the head, and appears in a later scene alive and well with a bandage around the affected area.
• Spliced has a lot of amusing injuries. The most common case is a character getting thrown into a volcano, but there are plenty of other examples as well.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Averted. Injuries suffered by characters (especially the normal people) are treated seriously (with one story arc involving Flash getting a badly injured knee during a football game and spending the next few months with a cast and crutch). Any injuries suffered by Spider-Man are often portrayed seriously; the only reason why he survives some of the hits he takes is because of his powers help him heal faster and take more physical punishment than the average person. Even then, injuries from his fights sometimes linger even after he's won (i.e. sporting a black eye after his fight with the mutated Kraven and having a cold after he had to dive into a freezing river).
• SpongeBob SquarePants adores this trope, especially in the newer episodes. "The Krusty Krushers" is possibly 10 minutes of little more than Amusing Injuries and SpongeBob style gags.
  • And of course, there's the ever-popular "MY LEG!", predominantly from the earlier seasons. The episode "My Leg!" opens with a montage of Fred hurting one or both of his legs in various ways, ending with one shattering to pieces when a single leaf falls on it.
  • In "SB-129", SpongeTron, one of SpongeBob's many futuristic descendants and exact genetic replicas tells Squidward that the Time Machine he needs to use is "Down the hall on the left." Squidward rushes into it, we hear a can opener and Squidward walks out cut to shreds with his body making a funny springing sound. SpongeTron apologizes and tells Squidward to try the room on the right.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • The show parodies the instant-fix medicine displayed in the rest of the franchise, when a wave of the "dermal regenerator" (usually a handheld household object with a lightbulb in it) is enough to heal most things and pills can regrow kidneys. Lower Decks takes it to new heights by having the wavy light bulb instantly fixing things like compound fractures and characters become incredibly nonchalant about inflicting severe injuries or continue to hold conversations with a spear through them.
  • "The Spy Humongous": During anomaly cleanup duty, Mariner is the one on the receiving end of being slimed, electrocuted, or shot with quills by the various items that the ensigns are dealing with, all of which have no true lasting effects beyond wounding her pride.
• Steven Universe:
  • In the episode "The Kindergarten Kid", which is an Homage to the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner shorts, with Peridot in the role of Wile E. Coyote. She is about as successful in her attempts to capture her prey as Wile E. is, and she suffers quite a lot of physical abuse trying. Fortunately for her, she's got the Super-Toughness necessary to be able to survive all of it with barely a scratch.
  • Deconstructed for Steven in the Steven Universe: Future episode "Growing Pains". After getting a physical from Dr. Maheswaran when his powers start going haywire, she notes that his X-rays indicate Steven has suffered countless bone fractures throughout the years, from all of the amusing injuries that he has suffered in the entire series. And it turns out that Steven's internally scarred in more ways than one: after hearing about his life, the doctor concludes that Steven's troubles are primarily psychological in nature. Steven's dangerous and often frightening adventures with the Crystal Gems (coupled with repeated injuries he's only survived because of his healing powers) have given him intense trauma that he needs to find a way to deal with if he ever hopes to live a normal life.
• Superjail! follows the Happy Tree Friends train of thought. Make it as realistic as possible for maximum comedy value. Ditto The Venture Bros.. (Dean and Hank learning about real death when Race Bannon dies in front of them with Brock lecturing them on it.)
  • Another interesting example from The Venture Bros., though an aversion, many villains, but especially 21 and 24, seem to derive a particularly morbid enjoyment from pondering the potential injuries Brock Samson is about to inflict upon someone. Provided they aren't the intended target, of course.
• Teddy Trucks subverts the trope. Wilson getting his foot stuck in a bucket as a result of him playing football with a sponge garners a few laughs from his co-workers but the injury is actually treated with some seriousness as Wilson has to go to hospital and miss out on playing football the following day.
• Tom and Jerry is one of the most famous examples.
  • Animation historian Michael Barrier argued in one book that some of the violence in the very early T&Js was a little unsettling, precisely because the character designs and animation were too realistic. As the '40s progressed into the '50s and the designs became flatter and more stylized (following the lead of Tex Avery, who headed a different MGM cartoon unit), the violence got funnier and more "cartoony".
  • One cartoon actually showed the effects of different injuries Tom subjected to, as he accumulates more bandages through the story. Including a toupee' to hide the fact he'd earlier blown the top of his scalp off with a shotgun.
• Nearly every character in the Total Drama series gets this eventually, especially if they're a Butt-Monkey.
  • In fact, there are so many injuries that its wiki has created its own page for them.
• Touché Turtle and Dum Dum: Touché and Dum Dum often suffer plenty of Slapstick abuse before eventually saving the day.
• Played with in Transformers: Animated; while the main characters themselves are subjected to realistic injuries, disposable household robots are frequently seen blown up or decapitated with hilarious results. There's also the "Starscream Death Montage".
  • In fact, pretty much every time there's a robot on an animated show, they'll have at least one time where they'll have parts ripped or blown off, usually with the separate limbs running about by themselves. Beast Wars did this a lot as well, especially with Waspinator.
    • Waspinator has had to use this to reassemble himself on multiple occasions, because his position as Cannon Fodder and the knowledge that he'll do it meant that no one could really be bother to gather up the bits, and Megatron even thought it was a waste of effort to order someone to.
    Waspinator: Inferno blow up, Waspinator must salvage. Waspinator blow up, nobody salvage. Why universe hate Waspinator?
  • Averted with Blurr's murder. Word of God says his body was crushed into a cube, but his "spark" (a TF's soul) was still alive inside.Then the cube was thrown into a garbage incinerator.
    • He's fine, Cliffjumper pulled him from the trash in the comics.
• Ugly Americans: Being a zombie, Randall seems to perform this trope nicely. The really amusing part is, like the robot example above, it seems in this universe separate body parts retain their individuality. Which is then lampshaded by his mistreatment of his penis resulting in it ripping itself off his body and running away, the final straw having been a one-night stand with an Eldritch Abomination he picks up at a movie theatre. In the first season finale he's carried around missing his lower torso for most of the episode.
• While pain being inflicted on pretty much any human is regularly played for comedy in How to Train Your Dragon and the series Dragons: Riders of Berk, the most regular victim has to be Bork the Very Very Unlucky from the Book of Dragons short, whose entire on-screen time was spent being burned, bludgeoned, beaten, bombarded, buzzsawed, and otherwise brutalised.

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