12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: If there is no evidence provided in the Opening Post that the page is broken, the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what constitutes evidence.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
In Project A-Ko there was the "My Cheek... It's cut!" moment.
In Full Metal Panic ? Fumoffu's second fanservice episode, Kurz Weber takes a small laser burn to his backside, and convinces Shinji Kazama to go on without him as if he were dying.
In Kanokon this happens when an attack causes a slight rip in a villains jacket. "YOU WILL COMPENSATE WITH YOUR LIVES!"
Frequently happened with the villains in Dragon Ball (mainly in Z and GT), and was most often prompted by outrage that Goku or whoever was fighting them actually managed to not only hit them, but do some damage (in Frieza's case it made sense, as by the current scale he was so stupidly powerful that he hadn't had a decent fight in decades. When a 20-x-Kaioken Kamehameha actually burns his hand, he flips out.). Vegeta tried to destroy the Earth because Goku made him bleed a little.
Nappa: Aaaagh! No! My face! My precious modelling career!
Dilandau in Vision of Escaflowne descends further and further into madness as the show goes on after receiving a wound from Van that resulted in a facial scar. Given that he started out an Ax CrazyPsycho for Hire...
During the Baratie arc of One Piece, one of Don Krieg's crewmates, "Invincible" Pearl, boasted about never having spilled a single drop of blood... whereupon Luffy fell out of the sky and smacked Pearl's head into his armor, giving him a nosebleed. Pearl's response? Panicking and lighting his armor on fire.
Subverted in the Arlong Park arc. After Zoro sliced off part of Hachi's hair, the Fishman decides to... forgive Zoro. It's only hair, after all.
Bleach: Szayel Aporro's Fraccion, Medezeppi. Renji pokes the skin on his palm with his sword and Medezeppi (a man at least 16 feet tall) throws himself on his back and begins thrashing around and crying.
Subverted with Nnoitra. Nnoitra constantly boasts that he cannot be harmed and demonstrates by letting opponents hit him to no avail. When Kenpachi finally manages to cut him, he's shocked, then orders Kenpachi not to get cocky and keeps fighting normally.
Played straight with Charlotte. When a large lock of his hair is sliced off he goes berserk.
In the Record of Lodoss WarOVA, Ashram — who has gone through an entire battle untouched due to his skills — gets very angry when Parn manages to scratch his cheek with his sword.
In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot Le Fou", Tongpu is an insane super soldier who's Immune to Bullets. When someone manages to injure him for what's probably the first time since he snapped, he's so shocked from experiencing pain that he breaks down crying. Because he has the mind of a child, he reacts like a child would.
Yu-Gi-Oh!!'s Yugi had an extreme case of this. It didn't even have to be a corporeal wound; several times, when his opponents would take a chunk out of his Life Points, he'd act like he was having a heart attack.
Let's not forget Bakura's infamous "Check his pulse!" line in the dub.
Of course some times it's a psychological impact (Kaiba's disks were designed for that effect in the anime) and other times damage to life points rips part of your soul out.
And other times the common hologram is so realistic that it can cause heart attacks(see Yugi's grandfather, who was hospitalized after losing a duel).
Fist of the North Star has two notable characters like this — the fat man, Mr. Heart, is almost invulnerable to most attacks, but the mere slight of his own blood changes him from genial and polite into a bloodthirsty psychopath. Juda, a Red Haired Pretty Boy, similarly goes berserk when his face gets some minor cuts.
Schoen of Weiss Kreuz is an incredibly vain former model. She takes Ken trying to kill her in stride, right up until he scratches her cheek. She spends the rest of the series trying to kill him for it - though, since she was trying to do that anyway, Ken doesn't really notice the difference.
While Vita of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is naturally aggressive, she gets especially pissed off when one of Nanoha's attacks damages and knocks off her Nice Hat. Cue Nanoha's "uh oh". It has sentimental value.
In one episode of Jigoku ShoujoFutakomori, a man sends a total stranger to hell for accidentally dumping coffee on him.
All of the damnations come off as simple overreactions when you think about it. Even when someone is being a complete dick, doesn't it come off as a bit much to take the "YOU GO TO HELL!" option?
Some are made in spur of the moment for self-defense, as often the targets of the curse are trying to kill or seriously injure the victims who contacted Enma Ai. A few even do it to save others. There's plenty of examples of the curses being laid out of sheer spite or minor offenses, though.
Bambi from Bambi and her Pink Gun overreacts tremendously to any kind of injury or even possible injury that might be inflicted on her; she, at one point, nearly killed a man for smoking near her. Of course, here it isn't exactly vanity: Bambi's a health nut (and Psychopathic Manchild) who is obsessed with keeping her body "perfect."
if someone had shot off a chunk of my ear i'd be pretty pissed too.
Accelator in To Aru Majutsu no Index has something of a berserker freak out when Touma manages to lightly slap his hand. Considering that his powers are utterly broken to the point of usually being untouchable, apparent flight and bending matter around him with vectors, it sort of makes sense. Plus he's not exactly the model of mental health.
Slight subversion in Mahou Sensei Negima!. Through his taunting, Kurt Godel manages to get Negi pissed off enough to begin flaring up his magical energy. Though it does nothing to actually harm him, it causes a small rock to fly up and brush against his face. Though it's extremely obvious that Godel wasn't even fazed by it, he uses that as an excuse to unleash his force of bodyguards on Negi and friends.
Earlier, there was an incident where Asuna managed to nick Evangeline's cheek during a training exercise. Eva's response was to encase Asuna in a block of ice.
And she was surprised that Asuna lived.
Even the ever-stoic Big Bad Fate Averruncus is not above this: He wants to get Negi personally because he's the first one to ever land a punch on him. Twice.
Even before going crazy, Yubel in Yugioh GX regularly injured people that Judai dueled with until it got to the point where nobody would play with him anymore. One guy who stopped Judai from summoning her in a duel wound up in the hospital. When Judai visited him, she made him even worse.
Played humourously in Yamato Nadeshiko Shichihenge, where Kyohei is the one whose face gets scratched but Sunako is the one who takes offense.
Trigun's Knives (being the complete opposite of Vash) is capable of casual murder and wholesale massacres with all the compassion of a pest exterminator. He takes one bullet in the leg though (small potatoes compared to what he's willing to dish out), and flips his shit so hard he can barely comprehend what's happening.
My leg... my leg, it hurts. Why? Why? There's so much pain in my leg. Did you shoot me? Did you actually shoot me? I can't believe this, did you really shoot me!?
Mind you, while Knives was shocked at being wounded, he was more shocked at being wounded by his own twin brother. The incident echoes in the "Lost July" incident later on, when Knives seemed to dare Vash to actually shoot him again, this time with a huge SEEDS cannon for an arm. He did, too, though somehow not fatally.
Merika from Afghanhis-tan, a one volume manga based on the modern history of Afghanistan, went batshit on Afghanistan after a cat bit her hand. If you didn't notice, this was their depiction of 9/11.
Considering he had a hole punched in his shoulder, and looking at the not-inconsiderable amount of resulting blood coming from the wound, YMMV on whether it was a "Minor" Injury Overreaction.
In the original version of YuGiOh 5Ds, Yusei is impaled by a shard of debris after almost getting killed by Ccapac Apu (complete with landing on his head), knocked unconscious, bleeding pretty badly as a result and has to be rushed to an orphanage with one of probably few doctors in Satellite. In the dub of the same incident, he comes out of it with bruising on his abdomen.
In Tiger & Bunny, Jake Martinez goes absolutely nuts when Kotetsu/Wild Tiger, the hero he's been spending the entire episode mocking and deriding as incompetent and second-rate, manages to be the only hero that actually manages to get a hit in against him — accidentally, no less. This does not go well for Kotetsu.
Justified in that because Jake is using his telepathy to know just what his opponents will do, he's probably genuinely not used to being hit.
In Gundam SEED there's Yzak Joule, who takes HUGE issue with a big scar on his face given to him by Kira Yamato, during a battle in which shrapnel broke his visor. Subverted later, when he drops his grudge after getting some Character Development.
Comic Books
Doctor Doom's entire hatred of Reed Richards stems from an exploding experimental machine that gave Doom a pronounced, yet relatively minor, scar on his face. The marring of his perfect face also caused him to become so eager to cover it that he put his armored mask on while it was still hot off the forge, disfiguring himself for real.
Subverted in The Venture Bros., where Baron Underbheit, a Doctor Doom Captain Ersatz, has suffered a truly horrendous injury at the hands of Doctor Venture in college. Though Venture never was proven responsible (a fact he's quick to remind everyone), he does not think Underbheit could still harbor a lethal grudge against him. Despite the fact that Underbheit lost his entire bottom jaw in the incident.
We later find that this incident was caused by the Monarch attempting to kill Rusty Venture.
Doom's Ultimate Marvel counterpart puts his own unique twist on things. Doom, like the members of the Ultimate Fantastic Four, was transformed as a result of the teleportation experiment, and he blames his change on Reed Richards... despite the fact that he was the one who altered the coordinates without telling anyone or even with permission. He later mirrors his original counterpart when Ultimate Mr. Fantastic angrily uses one of Ultimate Doom's quills to scratch a small scar in the metal maniac's face as a parting gesture, further enraging the egotistic supervillain.
Subverted in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Johnny explodes regularly; when even slightly insulted he starts to scream and rant (and kill people). However, injuries don't interest him much. Although he poured a bottle of Bactine over his head once, but that's because he's nuts.
Xerxes from 300. Turns out that God-Kings do bleed after all, but he didn't believe it either.
In the Silver AgeSuperboy storyline, Lex's resentment towards Superboy had been building for some time, but he didn't become Superboy's archnemesis until the accident that gave him his trademark baldness (which he blamed on Superboy). A later retcon would give Lex better motivations.
In Watchmen, the Comedian guns down a woman pregnant with his child, because she slashed his face with a broken bottle. Of course, thisisthe Comedian.
Given the scar he sports decades later, I'd say it was a pretty nasty injury, even if it didn't warrant that response.
But again, people receiving nasty injuries are usually in pain, as opposite to take time drinking booze while lecturing their comrade about technical pacifism. Disfiguring injury, sure. Nasty, not so much.
Film
In Shark Night 3D a girl accidently cut her boyfriends cheek so three years later he lures her and all her friends to a shark infested lake and kills them all. This isn't even a spoiler because you knew this from the trailer.
A hair-related version in Spaceballs: after refusing to handle a gun, saying she hates them, Princess Vespa's hair is shot... the resulting reaction? "My hair! He shot my hair! Son of a bitch." [promptly mows down their opponents] Her 'droid-of-honor' calls the victory "pretty good for Rambo".
In I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Jack Spade gets a splinter during his death-defying siege of Mr. Big's headquarters, and treats it like a life-threatening wound that has to be dealt with immediately. So he dresses the wound, sews it up, and cauterizes it with a disposable lighter.
In more ways than one, this Trope is a driving force behind the events of Death Becomes Her. Helen Sharp's childhood "friend" Madeline Ashton is always ruining Helen's serious relationships by stealing her boyfriends, including Helen's fiance near the film's beginning, even though Madeline herself has no feelings for them. This prompts Helen to hatch an elaborate plot to KILL Madeline, a goal she is still pursuing obsessively fourteen years later. As extreme as THAT may seem, it somehow manages to pale in comparison to Madeline's amazingly petty motive for repeatedly hurting Helen (arguably ruining her life multiple times) in the first place: Helen thought Madeline was cheap, and by all indications merely in the sense of not being classy...BACK WHEN THEY WERE SCHOOLGIRLS!!!
In the B-Movie "The Horror of Party Beach", the lead female Elaine, SCRATCHES HER LEG ON A ROCK, and begins moaning loudly in pain. Well, she moans, anyway; she doesn't moan like she's in pain.
When Red Sonja accuses the evil queen Gadrin of slaughtering Sonya's family, the regal bitch dismisses the accusations as the victims' lives are nothing in compare with a minor scar on her cheek.
In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Robin's first encounter with the Sheriff of Nottingham ends with the former cutting the latter's cheek for no other reason then to piss him off (oh, and to exert the first portion of vengeance for murdering his father, perhaps). Sheriff is (in)appropriately enraged, and utters the famous threat to Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon.
Minor note: in Italian translation, this line as been translated as the equivalent "Nobody makes my bloody blood bleed!"
Louis the alligator in The Princess and the Frog goes into death throes when he gets a single bur in his finger.
During the raid on Mathilda's home in The Professional, Mathilda's father manages to shoot Norman Stansfield in the shoulder. Stansfield is pretty subdued about this until he has the time to notice the damage done to his suit, whereupon he follows the injured suspect through the apartment, shooting him in the back. He does this until he's out of ammunition... and then starts to reload so he can continue shooting the guy's corpse.
In Nothing to Lose Tim Robbins' character spends several minutes moaning and crying in agony after being shot in the arm, but once he finally gets his shirt off to inspect the wound, it turns out that the bullet barely grazed him.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Gideon has one, not to a cut along the cheek that would normally elicit this reaction, but to an earlier attack which left no visible mark. But of course, he did have reason...
Gideon: You made me swallow my gum. That's going to be in my digestive tract for seven years!
Cross-reference Draco Malfoy with getting slashed by Buckbeak the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, resulting in the beast's apparent execution after Big Daddy Malfoy freaks out.
"You made Cu-Sith bleed his own blood!" The overreaction is such that he completely drops his guard and then gets his head smashed in
Older Than Feudalism: In The Iliad, Aphrodite gets cut by Diomedes. As a goddess, she cannot die, but she's completely unaccustomed to pain, causing her to run screaming to her brother Ares and plead with him to teach Diomedes a lesson. With the aid of Athena, Diomedes cuts Ares as well, and he has the same reaction, literally running home to cry to this mama.
In Gordon Korman's The Zucchini Warriors, one of the Macdonald Hall football players (who has ironically given himself the nickname The Beast) gets a bruised elbow. He then insists that it's actually a compound fracture and walks around with his arm in a sling for nine weeks.
Live-Action TV
Played with in a episode of Scrubs where JD talks about the "Pain Chart", noting that gender can affect the perception of pain. Cut to a woman giving birth and her husband whining about how he just bit his finger out of nervosity.
On Friends, Rachel accidentally head-butts Ross while giving birth, and he moans "you have no idea how much this hurts." All of the women in the room give him epic death glares, and he shuts up.
In The Office, Michael Scott burns his foot on a George Foreman grill and is dismayed when nobody takes his injury seriously. He even tries to monopolize the doctor's attention at the hospital when Dwight is taken there with a pretty serious concussion.
Adam Savage tends to ham it up whenever he gets a minor injury on MythBusters.
Variant: In Top Gear, under hypnosis, presenter Richard Hammond was led to believe the tiny toy car he was riding was his new car, and that co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson had dinged it (by bumping it with another tiny car). He pitched a credible minor fit.
In Chuck, the title character is dodging bullets on a regular basis, and actually sees many people get shot, but when pretending to be a doctor and kidnapped by the bad guys, he is accidentally cut in the hand with a scalpel and immediately freaks out and starts babbling about how he gets woozy at the sight of blood. Needless to say, the baddie is not amused. At least, not until they both inhale an almost lethal amount of Nitris Oxide, and start laughing about how they're both about to die. This is sort of reversed when Chuck ends up hurting his leg when a windowsill closes on it. He tells everyone that it is only sprained, but later learns that it is actually a hairline fracture. He openly objects to having it treated at first, and later expresses unhappiness at having to wear a cast.
The short-lived sketch show Fridays had a sketch in which guest star William Shatner played a man at a disco who overreacted to minor pain. When his dance partner (played by cast member Brandis Kemp) accidentally steps on his foot, Shatner's character reacts so violently that he tosses Kemp onto the ground and accidentally exposes her butt clad only in thong underwear (when the episode that had that sketch reran, the shot of Kemp on the ground with her thong exposed was cut).
In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, Big Bad Oiles Gill freaks out when Gokai Red manages to graze his arm with a single bullet, and spends the rest of that episode (as well as the next one) whining about how much it hurts and how he'll make the Gokaigers pay. This is, of course, done to show how much of a Spoiled Brat Gill is.
Newspaper Comics
Linus van Pelt, in an early Peanuts strip, panics big-time after bumping his head.
Professional Wrestling
At one point in WWE's history, Chris Jericho and Kane had a long and bloody feud over the fact that Jericho had accidentally spilled coffee on Kane at the catering table backstage. Seriously.
Pretty much any move ever taken by Shawn Michaels, Marty Janetty, or Curt Hennig.
A lot of the finishers are essentially sold to the crowd by doing this. The Stone Cold Stunner is a notable example (as is the hilarious way The Rock always flopped across the ring after receiving one).
Almost anytime someone uses a grapple in pro wrestling, it's this. Grapples are usually applied lightly without using too much pressure, while the other wrestler screams and writhes as if it's agonizing. It's done for the kayfabe.
In WWE, this is the basis for Cody Rhodes's current character. After [[Rey Mysterio]] breaks his nose, the narcissistic Rhodes believes his good looks are forever ruined, and goes insane. Now he is no longer a smug pretty boy, but destructive and perputually brooding (while a broken nose is no picnic, it's nothing big in pro wrestling terms).
Video Games
The primary tactic involved in fighting Super Punch-Out!! opponent Narcis Prince is first hitting him in the face, which enrages him and causes him to use a series of attacks that can be easily countered.
The vain antagonist Vega from the Street Fighter series is so afraid of this happening to him that he wears a protective mask in the ring (the mask is shown shattered in his loss scenes). This becomes a plot point in Street Fighter The Animated Movie where the only thing that really saves Chun-Li is a good set of injuries to Vega's face that send him into a berserker rage she can counter.
Vega starts wearing a mask in the western cartoon series because Blanka scratched his face and has a personal vendetta against him for the rest of the series.
Yaga-Shura the fire giant in Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal will run away for even more reinforcements (there's already a small army fighting you) the first point of damage he receives. This perfectly demonstrates his lack of Genre Blindness and his understanding of the threat the player character poses, especially as the player succeeded has in removing his Nigh Invulnerability (of the instant regeneration kind).
In the introductory video to Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life, the evil captain's slapping of the main character is what sets off mutiny. Of course, it's previously established that he's a complete bastard to his crew, so that was probably a Last Straw moment as much as anything else.
Subverted with Kuja in Final Fantasy IX. When Queen Brahne summons Bahamut to blow him to atoms, Kuja simply steps protectively in front of his dragon and takes the full blast. He is smirkingly uninjured, until a trickle of blood runs down his forehead, causing him to react in shock for a moment... then immediately sing the praises of the powerful summon monster.
Kuja: You even managed to hurt me!... a little.
Vamp had a similar reaction to Kuja in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty when Raiden managed to have one shot graze him on the cheek with his SOCOM.
In Final Fantasy VI Kefka gets lightly stabbed. He spends half a minute running around the screen, screaming: "I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE YOU!" in one translation, and an extremely long list of insults in the other translation. Shortly afterward, he destroys the world. Though this probably had more to do with his general insanity than anger at that particular wound.
The Shadow from Freedom Force goes nuts after an accident "damages her face". She goes underground (literally), gathers an army of ugly mooks and giant ants, and then looks for vengeance. The Reveal after the heroes knock her around shows that the "damage" was one minor scar (see Doctor Doom, above). Cue the mooks turning on her.
Possibly the best example would be the Witch from Left 4 Dead. All you need to do to flip her crazy switch is to get too far inside her personal bubble. Stay there for a second too long and you'll be wondering how the pale, weeping waif just tore out your entrails.
In Starcraft II, one of the Battlecruiser unit's off-screen, "I'm-under-fire"-voice alerts is "Abandon ship!", regardless of whether it is under attack by an enemy fleet of capital ships or a single, puny marine. Especially hilarious seeing as how the Battlecruiser is the Terran paramount of military power.
Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress will stay bedridden for years over broken toes or bruised fingers. This leads many players to design their hospitals to include magma-powered euthanasia devices.
The pedestrians in inFAMOUS will occasionally trip on the sidewalk or other low obstacles and then lay there squirming in pain until the player heals them.
Theatre
A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel are rife with this. A running gag in both plays involves a character {usually Malfoy} being hit in the face by something and repeating this routine a few times before someone tells him to shut up: putting his hands to his nose, taking them away, looking at them in shock,and turning to someone else while constantly repeating "I'm bleeding . . . Look at this!" in an incredulous tone. Repeat
Web Comics
Starcross'd Destiny has Juno warning the cops not to scratch or dent her Shelby Daytona, or else...
In Chimneyspeak, a small cut across the nose of wealthy heiress Chelsea Grinn caused her to go absolutely insane, and turn into an absolutely insane woman who is now covered in scars, is nigh unstoppable, and kills for basically no reason at all. The voice in her head representing what is left of her reason at one points gets angry and reminds her that they could have had a perfectly normal life if they just applied a small amount of makeup.
Captain Hammer from Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has a massive freak out and runs away screaming for his mother after suffering what appeared to be a fairly minor injury. Justified, since it is apparently the first time in his life that he's ever actually felt pain.
The original Hunter in Gargoyles was just someone that Demona scratched in the face when he was a kid. Granted, this was a major injury, with his face ending up deeply scarred for the rest of his life, but it still borders on a flimsy pretext for devoting your life to killing some random gargoyle.
Spoofed in Drawn Together when Xandir, while trying to escape from a Terminator spoof, sprains his ankle, acting as if it were life threatening (despite the fact that over the course of the show Xandir has suffered some of the worst injuries to any of the main characters).
Subverted in the episode "Orphan Hero", when Captain Hero during his childhood montage, falls off of his bike and scrapes his leg. When he reveals his scrape, it turns out that a large section of his leg is missing, but his mother treat it as a minor injury anyway.
In an episode of South Park, Cartman is angry that Kyle ruined his Christmas tells him that he's going to really kick his ass. Kyle responds by very lightly slapping him and Cartman wails like he's in major pain.
Done many times by Cartman throughout the series. However as of lately it is suggested he fakes it to gain sympathy.
Hulk vs Wolverine has Deadpool trying to stop Hulk by sticking a grenade in Hulk's mouth. This naturally fails, Hulk being Nigh Invulnerable and having a Healing Factor, and makes him angrier than before. This is a minor injury because earlier Hulk was stabbed and slashed by Wolverine in several vital areas, and actually screamed in pain, despite the Healing Factor. The overreaction is justified because, well it's the friggin' Hulk.
One of the earliest episodes of The Simpsons had Nelson going from regarding Bart as a minor nuisance to practically wanting him dead, solely because Bart whacked Nelson in the face and gave him a nosebleed in reaction to Nelson's cronies picking on Lisa.
An episode of Nightmare Ned revealed that Ned panicked every time he lost one of his baby teeth, despite his parents' reassurances.
Geoff did this in an episode of Total Drama Island, while walking he suddenly fell over and grabbed his leg, screaming in pain. While all the other contestants rush to his side and agree he's way too injured to move on, the camera man zooms in on his leg and scans it over several times, confused that nothing's actually wrong. Finally, we see zoomed-in he has a tiny splinter. Needless to say, he's pampered for the rest of the episode.
Edd from Ed Eddn Eddy tends to react this way at times.
Eddy: *after the kids ambush them for quarters* Double D! Tell me you saved some! Tell me we're okay!!
Edd: Eddy! It was horrible Eddy! LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO MY SHIRT!!
It's almost the whole plot of the episode 'Cry Ed', when Jimmy manages to hurt his foot with a clothespin, and everybody in the Cul-de-sac starts fussing over him, leading Eddy to decide to get "injured" and sympathy, too.
Paper cuts, grass cuts...not sure why it is, but they hurt a lot worse than an equal cut with a knife.
The main reason is because they usually happen on your fingers, which have far more nerve endings than other parts of your body. It's the same reason why getting your finger pricked for a blood sample hurts far more than getting a shot in your arm.
In addition, paper cuts are so shallow they don't bleed much. Because of this they remain exposed to the air for longer and don't heal as quickly.
Also, deeper and more serious cuts tend to be caused by a knife or similarly sharp object. Cuts from dull objects (like paper) hurt much more. Ever accidentally sliced yourself with a razorblade? You could be bleeding all over the place and not even feel it until a few minutes later, whereas snarling your knuckle on some jagged metal hurts like hell.
Adding to the above, a stubbed toe. Nothing is broken, and we should be used to them, since you've probably had dozens in your life, but every time, without fail, it hurts something TERRIBLE!
And stepping on a LEGO or a d4. They could have been invented purely as a form of torture.
there's a REASON why d4's sometimes nicknamed "caltrops".
The cast commentary of the first Lord of the Rings film had a humorous example of this, with a story about Dominic getting a splinter and grossly exaggerating how bad it was.
In Association Football, players often try to draw free kicks, etc. by "diving" - falling to the ground and pretending to be much more seriously injured than they actually are. The trope is effectively lampshaded when, more often than not, said player gets up and runs off at full tilt when their pleas are ignored.
