On-Set Injury

You know those disclaimer that say that No Animals Were Harmed during the making of this movie? Well, they need one of those for people because holy sh*t that did not applied here.

CJ, review of Roar

Filmmaking is a very difficult process to work with. It is extremely taxing to the physical and mental well-being of the cast and crew, as they fight against Executive Meddling, tight deadlines, arguments with the director and various mishaps on-set that occur regularly.

And these are the moments that actually cause physical or emotional harm to the cast and crew such as actors injured during stunts or being completely traumatized by scenes involving emotional trickery. This can sometimes lead to Enforced Method Acting, Throw It In! and Written-In Infirmity if the cast and crew try to make the best of the injuries.

It's a serious sign of a Troubled Production, which can be aggravated if several of these incidents continue to occur or causes death during production. These incidents can lead to delays in the production or worse, the production forced to shut down for safety reasons. If it's especially bad, it can be a Career-Ending Injury.

There is a reason why safety guidelines and protocols exist to prevent these types of incidents from occurring regularly, as well as actor labor unions such as SAG-AFTRA protecting the well-being of actors.

In Professional Wrestling, because of its live action pseudofighting nature and the high risk of injuries due to mistimings, botches, or plain ol' shoot fighting, injuries are very common among wrestlers. It's not uncommon for promotions to have most of their roster on the shelf due to injuries. Because of this, no pro wrestling examples are allowed, as we would need more than one page to cover all the examples.

---

Example subpages:

• Films — Live-Action

Other examples:

Arts

• Ophelia (Millais): The model for the dead Ophelia became extremely ill while posing in icy water. It was often blamed for her chronic illnesses afterwards.

Creators

• Jackie Chan has suffered multiple injuries while filming stunts throughout his career. He's taken so much damage in his career that no insurance company on the planet will cover him anymore. These include:
  • Enter the Dragon: Bruce Lee accidentally struck him in the face with one of his fighting sticks. He immediately apologized and insisted that Chan could work on all of his movies after that. Unfortunately, Lee died before he could keep his promise.
  • Hand of Death: Chan wrote in his memoir that he was knocked unconscious while doing stunts for the film.
  • Drunken Master: He nearly lost an eye when Jang Lee Hwang kicked him in the head during the final fight scene. When Hwang became aware of this, he refused to do more takes for the shot.
  • Snake in the Eagle's Shadow: During a sword fight scene, Chan's co-star slashed him across the arm with what was supposed to be a prop sword with a blunted edge, but was actually sharp. Chan screamed in pain but continued acting, the camera kept rolling and the injury, with real blood spraying everywhere, ended up in the final cut.
  • The Young Master: He nearly suffocated when he injured his throat while performing a stunt.
  • Dragon Lord: He injured his chin during a stunt, making it difficult to say his lines and direct.
  • Project A: Chan injured his neck while filming the bicycle chase.
  • Police Story: Chan slid down a pole that peeled the skin off his hands, leaving him with injuries similar to second-degree burns, then crashed through a glass ceiling and landed on his back, dislocating his pelvis and pushing his vertebrae into nearby organs causing internal bleeding. Chan claims it's one of the only times in his career when he's been afraid that injuries he sustained on set would kill him.
  • Wheels on Meals: Keith Vitali accidentally kicked Chan in the throat after numerous takes for a particular fight scene. When Keith hit Jackie, he realized the danger of the situation and broke character by concern for Jackie's health. By doing this, Keith was yelled at by the entire crew as he was supposed to wait for the director to yell "Cut!", no matter what had happened in the scene.
  • Armour of God: Chan attempted to jump onto a tree branch, but missed and fell headfirst to the ground below, suffering multiple injuries including a brain haemorrhage, a broken skull, jaw and nose, and losing several teeth. He was rushed to hospital for emergency brain surgery and now has a plastic plug covering a hole in his skull, hidden beneath his hair. This incident is probably the closest Chan actually came to dying.
  • Police Story 2: He smashed into the wrong glass pane, causing severe cuts to his wrist and head. This scene is actually used in the movie, and the outtakes show the pain.
  • Supercop: He jumped from the top of a building onto a rope ladder suspended beneath a helicopter. The ladder then crashed into a billboard, breaking his shoulder.
  • Police Story 4 First Strike: During a stunt that involved Chan jumping through an extension ladder, he got tangled in the rungs and was unable to escape before it fell to the ground, knocking him unconscious and breaking his nose.
  • Miracles: He sustained a deep cut over his left eye while performing a stunt in which he flipped backwards onto a rickshaw.
  • Armour of God II: Operation Condor: While filming the underground base chase scene, he was supposed to swing to a platform with a long chain, but he lost balance and fell to the ground face-first, dislocating his sternum.
  • Mr. Nice Guy: Chan took a two storey fall as part of a stunt - he was supposed to land on some safety mats out of camera range, but missed them, tearing some ligaments and dislocating some of his neck vertebrae.
  • Crime Story: His legs were crushed between two cars during the opening scene.
  • Rumble in the Bronx: Chan broke an ankle while jumping from a bridge onto the deck of a hovercraft. He tried to turn his body to stop himself hitting a wall as he landed, but didn't take into account the non-slip surface of the deck, and his foot didn't turn with the rest of him. Although his doctor advised him not to do any more stunts until the ankle healed, Chan finished the movie, wearing a plaster cast painted to look like a sneaker.
  • Rush Hour 3: He had a cracked sternum and bruises to his shins from the third movie's stunts. In the credits, there is an outtake where he throws a table backwards with his legs into himself, accidentally, in Genevieve's suite.
• Tom Cruise has a penchant for doing his own stunts in movies, leading to several injuries over the years:
  • He crashed a race car into a wall while filming Days of Thunder, resulting in minor injuries to his neck and shoulder.
  • He went all out for the bare-knuckle boxing scenes in Far and Away, resulting in him receiving bruises to the chest and face from being punched.
  • Mission: Impossible Film Series:
    • In Mission: Impossible (1996), he twisted his ankle and received cuts on his legs from broken glass during the scene where the fish tank is blown up.
    • In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, he broke his ankle filming a scene where Ethan jumps the gap between two buildings, resulting in production being delayed for a few weeks so he could heal.
  • He got into a very real car accident on-set while filming Collateral; Jamie Foxx was supposed to crash into Cruise's vehicle but slammed into the car a little too hard, causing him to crash into a wall, with Cruise getting a concussion and a gash on his head.
  • During a fight scene in Jack Reacher, Cruise had to kick an opponent. It took nearly fifty takes to get right and by the end Cruise's foot was extremely swollen, to the point he had to have his boot cut off to remove it.
  • He got into yet another car crash filming a car chase with Emily Blunt for Edge of Tomorrow. Blunt - who was driving - accidentally crashed the car into a tree. Cruise suffered some bad bruises though luckily didn't receive more serious injuries, although Blunt joked about the time she "nearly killed Tom Cruise".
• Harrison Ford:
  • On Raiders of the Lost Ark, his knee was run over by the plane. Rather than trust the Tunisian medics, he put some ice on it. He also suffered bruised ribs being dragged behind the truck.
  • He herniated a disc in his back filming a fight scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, forcing him to fly back to Los Angeles for an operation. He returned six weeks later, and during the period the priorities were stunts, specially as Ford's double looked very much like him.
  • He damaged some ligaments in his leg during the filming of the scenes in the woods for The Fugitive. He refused to take surgery until the end of filming so that his character would keep the limp. The limp can be seen in any subsequent scene where Richard Kimble is running.
  • While filming The Force Awakens, the remote-operated door for the Millennium Falcon was accidentally shut early, causing it to break his leg. To work around him needing to sit while healing, the bar scene on Takodana was pushed up in the schedule, resulting in the plans for an animatronic Maz Kanata being shelved for a CG depiction. (An animatronic Maz would eventually appear two films later).
• Michael Jackson narrowly avoided death twice in his lifetime, but both accidents would permanently affect his career and health:
  • In 1984, his hair caught fire as he was filming a commercial for Pepsi. He suffered second-degree burns to his scalp and he had to undergo treatment for his injuries; the general consensus is that this was the beginning of the prescription drug dependency problems that ultimately cost him his life in 2009.
  • In 1999, during a charity concert in Munich, Jackson was performing "Earth Song" on a suspended bridge over the stage. The stage split apart as part of the routine, and the portion Jackson was standing on was raised up high above the stage. However, the wires holding the bridge piece gave out, and Jackson plummeted fifty feet to the ground, holding on for dear life. Jackson severely messed up his back from the fall, which would end up hamstringing his dancing for the rest of his life, and worsened his already severe Demerol addiction.
• Sir Christopher Lee was no stranger on on-set injuries and accidents during his long and prolific career:
  • During a scene in the 1951 adaptation of Quo Vadis, he was thrown from a chariot he was driving.
  • In The Curse of Frankenstein, he got his eyes burned by fake blood in a scene where the Creature gets shot. The scream of pain used in the final film is quite real.
  • While filming a swordfight for The Dark Avenger, Errol Flynn accidentally cut Lee's hand so badly that his finger nearly came off and was permanently injured. Later, Lee cut off Flynn's wig while Flynn was still wearing it.
  • On the set of The Three Musketeers, he was one of many who suffered accidents, getting off with just a sprained knee and a pulled shoulder muscle.
  • He really suffered making The Mummy:
    • A door through which he was supposed to crash was accidentally bolted by a grip before the scene was shot. Lee's shoulder was dislocated when he broke down the door, but the shot remains in the movie.
    • He was burned by squib marks and threw out his back carrying the girl.
    • He also injured his knees and shins while doing scenes in the studio-tank "swamp". He couldn't see where the various pipes and fittings under the swampy water were.
  • He tripped over power cables and injured his back while filming the 2011 movie The Resident.
• Sylvester Stallone:
  • He and Carl Weathers really hit each other in Rocky. Stallone got cracked ribs, while Weathers got a broken nose — the opposite of their injuries in the movie.
  • He did the stunt in First Blood where he leaps from a cliffside to a tree himself. The look of pain is real, as he cracked several ribs doing the stunt. Also, while filming for the scene where Rambo first runs into the abandoned mine shaft to elude the guards firing at him, Stallone seriously injured his hand after failing to realize that his hand was on the top of a gunfire squib that went off after. The injury was so severe that he almost lost his thumb. After performing for a stunt in a deleted scene, the stunt driver for Brian Dennehy, Bennie E. Dobbins, suffered a lumbar compression fracture.
  • He once dared Dolph Lundgren on the set of Rocky IV to punch him at full force. Long story short, he wound up in the intensive care unit for several days. He sustained bruising of the heart muscle, which normally only occurs to people hit by cars.
  • He sustained fourteen injuries making The Expendables, including breaking a tooth, rupturing his ankle, and getting a hairline fracture in his neck that required the surgical insertion of a metal plate. He also had bronchitis and shingles during the shoot.
  • Both he and Arnold Schwarzenegger had to have shoulder surgery after filming The Expendables 2.
  • On The Expendables 3, he suffered a serious back injury from a bad fall, requiring surgery that involved adding metal plates to his spine. In a separate scene, Antonio Banderas sustained a knee injury.

Live-Action TV - Scripted

• David Boreanaz injured his knee filming the final season of Angel. This required surgery, so some episodes were amended (most notably "Smile Time", where Angel is turned into a puppet and Boreanaz only has to do voiceovers).
• The Avengers' episode "Mandrake" featured Honor Blackman having a fight scene with wrestler Jackie Pallo. In one take, she accidentally knocked him out for four minutes (she forgot to feint first, then kick, and simply kicked him in the head, knocking him onto the concrete floor of the studio). The incident garnered plenty of publicity in the British press. Blackman was in tears when it happened and sat by him until he recovered.
• Babylon 5 had a few incidents but these stand out:
  • Claudia Christian (Ivanova) broke her ankle during "The Geometry of Shadows" but, thanks to a hasty rewrite (Susan getting trampled by the Drazi), was able to work through it. Though she might have wished she hadn't, since filming the 'injury' scene aggravated her real-life injury, generating such a blood-curdling scream that it was rumored she actually broke her ankle on-camera.
  • Jerry Doyle broke his arm for real during the filming of "Severed Dreams". Unfortunately the scene showing him with a broken ankle was filmed BEFORE the accident and later episodes ignored the broken ankle and show Garibaldi with an arm cast, explaining that this was the injury sustained in the fight.
• Batwoman:
  • Ruby Rose was injured doing a stunt, causing two herniated disks near her spinal cord. She had to undergo emergency surgery to avoid paralysis.
  • Amanda Smith, a production assistant, was struck on the head by a bucket of a lift while on a location setup shoot and was paralyzed from the waist down.
• John Cho tore his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) filming a Cowboy Bebop night scene, which caused months-long delay in filming before they could resume.
• CSI NY had at least three instances.
  • While filming episode 1.21, "On the Job," Gary Sinise tore a leg muscle running down some subway entrance stairs. He was taken to the hospital, given morphine and driven home. The incident occurred on his 50th birthday, and he spent the evening on the couch feeling a bit loopy.
  • Mr. Sinise suffered the exact same injury to his other leg filming a fight scene in a cemetery for episode 8.06, "Get Me Out of Here!" His character, Mac Taylor, spent the rest of that episode and most of the next one either seated or leaning on things due to Sinise's recovery.
  • Melina Kanakaredes has a scar on her left leg from tripping while running up a fire escape during the filming of episode 5.01, "Veritas."
• British comedian Charlie Drake was known for performing his own stunts but one - being broadcast live - went horrifically wrong. Drake was supposed to be dragged through a bookcase and out a window, but knocked himself out and was taken to hospital where it was discovered he had fractured his skull. He remained unconscious for two days and after he recovered he announced his retirement. However he returned to performing two years later and went on to have a long and popular career.
• Charlie's Angels: While filming "Angel in a Box", stuntman Bobby Bass was high on cocaine and drove a car that the stuntwomen Julie Ann Johnson and Jeannie Coultar were supposed to jump out of faster than instructed. Coultar suffered multiple injuries and a concussion. Johnson was injured far worse; though knocked out, Johnson was writhing on the ground. Stunt coordinator Ronnie Rondell had to pin her down to stop the chance of her further injuring herself.
• While filming an episode of Chips, Erik Estrada lost control of his motorcycle and was hurled into a parked car before the 900-pound motorcycle landed on him. Estrada sustained fractured ribs, partially collapsed lungs, a fractured right wrist, and a cracked sternum and clavicle.
• Dad's Army:
  • John Le Mesurier strained a ligament in his leg during a take where he threw himself to the ground in "Battle School".
  • Desmond Cullum-Jones (who played background platoon member Private Desmond) badly cut his foot during the barefoot beach scenes from "Boots, Boots, Boots".
  • While filming the desert scenes in "The Two and a Half Feathers", Colin Bean lay down on a pyrotechnic charge that exploded, cutting his hand, while Bill Pertwee got sand his eyes, causing conjunctivitis and three days of moderate discomfort.
  • Filming the cricket match sequence for "The Test" ended with Clive Dunn and Arthur Lowe taking nasty blows from cricket balls; Dunn was hit in the face and got a cut on the inside of his mouth, while Lowe was left with bruising on his head.
  • During the filming of "Battle of the Giants!", Pertwee lost control of the motorbike he was driving during a take, and he, Frank Williams, and Edward Sinclair all ended up in a ditch. During that same episode, Arnold Ridley hurt himself trying to get out of the way of Jones' van, which was revealed to have caused him to pull a cartilage in his leg.
  • While the location shoots for "All is Safely Gathered In" were being done, Ian Lavender cut his hand on the trigger of the Tommy gun, and platoon extra Freddie Wiles walked into a tree branch and scratched his eye.
  • Pertwee was injured yet again while filming "We Know Our Onions", bruising his thigh when he walked into the corner of a van.
• One sketch on The Dangerous Brothers required Adrian Edmondson to be set on fire. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, he forgot the safety word and as he rolled around on the floor screaming to be put out, one crewmember commented on his professionalism — because he didn't need the safety word!
• Lita suffered three cracks in her vertebrae rehearsing with a stunt double while filming a fight scene for Dark Angel. She attempted a hurricanrana but the stunt double dropped her on her head and shoulders. She would finish and film the scene, but the neck injury kept her out of the wrestling ring for a year.
• Doctor Who:
  • William Hartnell cut his hand on one of the Dalek casings in "The Daleks".
  • In "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", Hartnell injured his back when a prop ramp malfunctioned. Following discussions between Hartnell's solicitors and The BBC's, the BBC denied liability and paid for an X-ray. Hartnell was given a week off to recover, and the fourth episode underwent minor rewrites
  • During the scene in "The Rescue" where Barbara fires a flare gun at Vicki's pet, Jacqueline Hill was injured, suffering shock and a sore face. This occurred when the explosive connected to the wooden prop gun went off with more force than expected.
  • "Terror of the Autons": While filming the Doctor and Jo's escape from the Auton policemen in the quarry, on location, which was virtually Katy Manning's first scene, the short-sighted Katy tripped and sprained her ankle. Production assistant Nicholas John took her to hospital, and joked about the producer having to replace her. Manning took this seriously and when Jon Pertwee found out he told off John for upsetting his new co-star.
  • On "The Sea Devils", Pertwee injured his ribs during recording when he dived forward and fell on the sonic screwdriver prop, which was stowed in his breast pocket.
  • While filming "The Sontaran Experiment", Tom Baker broke his collarbone; depending on who you ask, he either slipped on wet grass or tripped on his own scarf, the large size of which came in handy for covering up his neckbrace.
  • Peter Davison would later jokingly claim that the staff were actually attempting to kill him while taping "The Caves of Androzani". Among these accidents are two notable instances:
    • During a scene in which Sharaz Jek backhands the Doctor, the mask Christopher Gable was wearing impaired his vision enough to make him legitimately strike Davison by mistake.
    • As the Doctor carries Peri back into the TARDIS at the end of the story, he flinches at a nearby mud burst. This is because the explosion was prematurely triggered by the technicians, shooting sand into Davison's eyes and forcing him to recoil in pain.
  • Came within a hair's breadth of happening to Sophie Aldred on the set of the Doctor Who serial Battlefield. For one sequence, Aldred had been put into a plexiglas water tank for a cliffhanger. However, the tank had been poorly engineered and was straining under the pressure of the water, something only Sylvester McCoy noticed just as filming started. Had the tank ruptured, all that water and Aldred would have been dumped directly onto exposed power cables, potentially killing her. To make sure that the crew knew he was voicing actual concerns and not just adlibbing as The Doctor, he yelled out "Shit! Get her out!", knowing that that sort of language wouldn't be something he'd say in character. They got Aldred out in time and drained the tank before a fatal accident occurred. The BBC kept the footage and used it in a safety-training film shortly thereafter.
  • Anthony Ainley recalled that for the Doctor and the Master's final confrontation in "Survival", Sylvester McCoy found the contact lenses he had to wear painful. Ainley accidentally struck him in the wrist with the bone and apologised. McCoy quipped that thanks to the pain in his wrist he couldn't feel the pain in his eyes.
  • The cane Matt Smith uses in "The Time of the Doctor" was actually necessitated by Smith injuring himself on set.
• Andrew Sachs was injured a couple of times on Fawlty Towers:
  • In "The Wedding Party", John Cleese nearly knocked him out with a heavy saucepan when he made an unexpected move during filming after five days of rehearsals. He had a headache for two days.
  • In "The Germans", when Manuel attempts to put out a fire in the kitchen, firemen were on standby to put out the flames. However in the next shot where Manuel walks out to alert Basil of the fire, two chemicals were added to Sachs' arm, to create smoke. During rehearsal and filming these chemicals soaked into his clothing causing him second degree chemical burns on his arm and back.
• In the Friends episode "The One Where No One's Ready", Joey quickly leaps into a chair as part of a plot where he and Chandler fight over said chair. While Matt Le Blanc was able to leap into the chair without issue for three takes, upon shooting a fourth take, he tripped over a coffee table and hit the chair in such a way that he dislocated his shoulder. The injury required him to wear a sling, temporarily postponing production of the episode and requiring the injury to be written into the show for the following two episodes, humorously explained as an injury Joey received while jumping on his bed.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Rory McCann sustained a knee injury while filming the Season 7 episode, "Beyond the Wall" where he's carrying the actor who played the wight on his shoulders. According to him, a dummy wouldn't work so they have to use a real person.
  • Kristian Nairn got back problems due to carrying his co-star, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, for six seasons. After leaving the show, he had to undergo six months of physical therapy.
• The Good Wife: Kristin Chenoweth (who played a political reporter on the show) received a skull fracture, broken nose, spinal and rib injuries, and cracked teeth when a piece of the lighting rig fell on top of her, which led to years of physical therapy.
• The Grand Tour:
  • While filming in Mozambique for the second season, Richard Hammond was seriously injured after falling off his motorbike.
  • While filming another segment, Hammond was hospitalized after crashing a Rimac Concept One during a hill climbing event in Switzerland. He was able to escape the accident with a fractured knee, despite the car flipping and catching fire shortly afterwards. The crash footage was shown in the first episode of the second season, and the hosts would rib at it in later episodes.
  • While filming in Scandinavia, James May broke a rib and gashed his head after crashing his car into the wall of a tunnel during a speed test. Since this happened in the middle of filming the special, the footage and May's recovery were incorporated into the finished product.
• When Irene Handl guest starred in Hancock's Half Hour episode, "The Bequest", she insisted on having her chihuahua on-screen with her. This was unfortunate for Sid James, who got nipped by the dog and had to hold back swearing on live TV.
• During the filming of the Hi-de-Hi! episode, "Carnival Time", when the burning float falls into the pool, Chris Andrews' costume dragged in the water and he got swept under the float and was stuck underwater, needing to be rescued by Simon Cadell. Series co-creator David Croft later remarked that out of all the shows he ever produced, this was the closest one ever came to tragedy.
• Matt Smith injured a disc in his neck while filming for House of the Dragon during a stunt.
• iCarly:
  • "iGet Pranky" has a scene where Gibby falls from the ceiling of the electrical room due to a failed prank, resulting in Gibby breaking his arm. The stunt double in this scene actually broke his ribs filming this scene, according to Gibby's actor Noah Munck. They kept that take in the episode.
  • Katina Waters, another stunt double, severely injured her leg during a high-wire stunt, where she was dropped to the floor without warning. Reportedly, she sued the production company over this.
• Jackass is no stranger to injuries since it has the cast doing dangerous stunts under supervision. But some have been more serious then others, especially during the films. Examples include concussions, blood clots, fractured bones and ribs, nasty gashes from being pierced or gored, losing teeth and a lot of near fatal misses. A lot of this portrayed directly on-screen after a stunt.
• While filming the original Kamen Rider, the actor behind the protagonist, Hiroshi Fujioka, initially did his own stunts in the suit. However, this came back to bite him when filming a motorcycle scene, as his leg got stuck on a wire, followed by the bike coming back and hitting him, shattering his leg. This necessitated Fujioka's character being written out and replaced with someone else taking up the mantle of Kamen Rider. Although Fujioka got better and returned to the show as the second half of the Double Riders, with few exceptions, no actor for Kamen Rider has done their own stunts since.
• The reason Kung Fu (1972) ended after three years was because David Carradine sustained too many injuries.
• While filming an action scene for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Mariska Hargitay suffered a collapsed lung after landing wrongly, requiring multiple surgeries to correct the injury.
• Leverage Christian Kane shows up in "The Inside Job" with a bandage over his nose, due to an on-set injury. The writers decided that it fit his character of Eliot Spencer as "The Hitter", and that they'd already agreed that the audience only saw 1:3 of the Leverage team's adventures, so they wouldn't need to film a scene to explain the injury.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: No less than 3 stunt actors suffered severe injuries while filming for the show.
  • Stunt performer Dana Grunt suffered serious head injury that developed into a brain aneurysm. Rumors are that she accidented herself after being forced to make stunts she was not comfortable with, probably because they were not safe enough. Thankfully, she got a brain-surgery and is fine is present.
  • Another one, Alyssa Cadwell ended up with a head injury after striking a bolt while filming for Galadriel's water scenes. She was paid 500,000 dollars by Amazon for her hospital expenses.
  • And the last stunt double was Thomas Kiwi, who got his right shoulder seriously injured after performing backflips with an improper support wire system. After his injury, he retired from the production and warned them to be more careful with the safety of the stunt performers.
• While filming the final episode of Lost, Terry O'Quinn mistakenly stabbed Matthew Fox with a real knife instead of a collapsible one. Fox's life was saved by the kevlar vest underneath his shirt.
• The Mandalorian: On the filming day for the scene in Chapter 8 where Mando's helmet is removed to reveal his severely injured face, Pedro Pascal actually did seriously injure his face and had to get stitches across his nose (which caused a hell of a time for the poor hospital staff having to pick out which wounds were real or makeup).
• In spite of the lack of danger based around the show, a few singers on The Masked Singer have reported accidents on the show. Note that this has never stopped any of them from performing.
  • In season two, shortly after her first song, Black Widow/Raven-Symoné broke her arm, as shown by the sling she wears in her next two performances.
  • From the same season as the above, Butterfly/Michelle Williams was electrocuted by an exploding carbon dioxide canister.
• The Masked Dancer: Cotton Candy/Gabby Douglas fell off a hoop she was latched onto at the beginning of a rehearsal.
• During the first season of Miami Vice, Phillip Michael Thomas was injured during a stunt in "Made for Each Other". As a result, he doesn't appear in the following episode, "The Home Invaders".
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers:
  • In "Switching Places", the pyrotechnics used in Billy's brain-switching machine had caused both Amy Jo Johnson and David Yost to accidentally catch on fire while filming the scene. Amy Jo would later be wary of being too close to such special effects equipment because of the accident.
  • Thuy Trang filmed the second season for about eight weeks with a high ankle sprain. In one episode, she sits on the bench while the others play football.
• Dominic Purcell suffered a broken nose and a head injury while filming Prison Break in Morocco after an iron bar used as a set piece had fallen onto his head. He was immediately airlifted from Marrakesh to Casablanca for treatment where he recovered.
• Jon Bernthal broke his hand, tore ligaments and dislocated the same hand doing action scenes for The Punisher (2017).
• Red Dwarf: Craig Charles nearly drowned whilst filming "Backwards", which featured a scene where he had to walk backward into a lake. This may have been referenced in the book "Last Human", in which we learn that Lister has a lifelong fear of drowning.
• Rizzoli & Isles: Angie Harmon sprained her ankle badly while filming an episode, and the injury (and her character wearing a medical boot) had to be incorporated into a few Season 4 episodes.
• The BBC's Robin Hood suffered multiple examples:
  • Harry Lloyd (Will Scarlett) was running through the Nottingham Market set when his cloak caught on the edge of a stall, he tried to wrench it out to avoid ruining the take and the entire stall fell over, causing an extra carrying a bucket of water to drop it on Harry's eye. Lloyd carried on running round the corner, unaware of how badly he'd been injured until Joe Armstrong (Allan a Dale) caught sight of him and he saw his reaction.
  • Gordon Kennedy (Little John) tore his hamstring and was taken to a hospital whilst still in full costume (minus his trousers, which had been removed to pack ice onto the injury), resulting in the hospital mistaking him for a vagrant, and he was about to be deloused before a producer arrived to explain. Kennedy then sprained his ankle ligament on his first day back filming.
  • Keith Allen (the Sheriff of Nottingham) lost a tooth during an action scene on the last episode of the first series. This was written into the script as the Sheriff losing a tooth and getting a bejewelled fake tooth, which actually become a minor plot point in one or two later episodes.
  • Jonas Armstrong (Robin) broke a metatarsal bone in his foot during a fight scene on the second series.
• Russell Howard's Good News: Russell Howard was actually injured during filming after absent-mindedly doing a press-up on a breakable stool. Russell broke his hand (specifically one of his fingers) and had to receive first aid. The next episode he appeared in a cast and saw it as a very stupid thing to do.
• Saturday Night Live:
  • Chevy Chase suffered a groin injury doing a pratfall with a podium in the first episode of Saturday Night Live. This caused him to miss the second and third episodes.
  • During the "Samurai Stockbroker" sketch from the October 30, 1976 episode, John Belushi accidentally slashed host Buck Henry's forehead with the katana he was using. Henry spent the rest of the show with his forehead bandaged.
• Star Trek:
  • While filming "Arena", William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy both suffered permanent hearing damage and tinnitus from a special effects explosion that they were too close to.
  • William Campbell dislocated his shoulder while filming the climactic chase in "The Squire Of Gothos". Fortunately, his instinctive reaction of throwing his arms back in pain caused the shoulder to pop back into place.
  • Marina Sirtis asked to perform her own stunt of being knocked backward in "Power Play", only for her to land wrong and badly bruise her tailbone, leaving her unable to walk for 3 weeks. Worst of all, according to Sirtis, was that the shot ended up being from so far away "it could have been Worf in Troi's costume and you couldn't tell the difference!"
  • Patricia Tallman, a stunt double for several of the female leads in the series, was injured while doubling for Nana Visitor when Tim Russ slugged her for real in "Invasive Procedures". Russ wanted to stop so she could be treated, but Tallman told him to finish the fight so they could get it on film.
  • Doug Jones suffered a serious shoulder injury while filming the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, which required surgery and sidelined him from a cameo role in the Hellboy reboot.
• Top Gear:
  • Richard Hammond crashed a dragster at 288 mph, seriously injuring his brain. His front-right tire failed on the seventh run that caused him to hit the grass and roll the Vampire he was driving. During the roll, his helmet had embedded itself into the ground, flipping the visor up and forcing dirt into his mouth and left eye, damaging the eye. Rescuers felt a pulse and heard the unconscious Hammond breathing before the car was turned upright.
  • Hammond also hurt his neck in the "Cheap Car Challenge" when his Suzuki Super Carry rolled over.
  • James May suffered a severe concussion in Syria and had to be hospitalized when he was knocked down by a tow rope and cut his head on a rock. This ended up being incorporated into the episode, with Jeremy and Hammond incorporating some levity by greeting him in full-body veils once he got out.
  • During the Burma special, Hammond fell off a horse (after Jeremy's horse tried to mate with it) and had to be rushed to a hospital, which was incorporated into the finished episode.
  • In the Patagonia Special, May cracked three ribs while attempting to mount a horse.
  • Jeremy Clarkson injured his neck during the Lorry Challenge episode when he intentionally crashed a semi-truck into a makeshift brick wall^note The other 2 presenters also had to wreck their trucks into makeshift structures. Clarkson's was just mistakenly overbuilt compared to the other two . He also injured his neck test driving the Nissan GT-R, not from crashing it but simply from not being used to the sort of G-forces that car can pull.
• Torchwood: A last-minute rewrite had to be undertaken on "Ghost Machine"'s opening chase sequence. Originally, Jack, Owen and Gwen were to pursue Bernie Harris through the streets of Cardiff. However, John Barrowman twisted his ankle while filming on the Hub set just a few days before, preventing him from running. The scene was therefore rewritten to have Jack show up partway through in the Torchwood vehicle.
• Norman Reedus was injured three times during filming The Walking Dead. First in 2015, while filming the episode "Them" where he suffered a nasty cut on his arm that spilled. It was captured by the cameras, but didn't make the final cut. Then while filming the 11th and final season he suffered a cut on his face during a fight scene. In March 2022, while filming the final episodes, he suffered a concussion, though it is not known if it was during filming.
• Ralph Ineson slipped over on a staircase and dislocated his shoulder while filming a nighttime fight scene for Willow (2022) in July 2021. He ended up suing Disney for damages in late 2023, with his lawyers stating the shoulder injury was severe enough that it prevented Ineson from taking on other physically-demanding roles and alledging that the crew bear responsibility for the injury because the set wasn't properly prepared for safe filming (partly due to pressures to meet production deadlines).
• Henry Cavill tore his hamstring while filming The Witcher (2019) Season 2. He admits that an injury like this could have ended his acting career.

Live-Action TV - Reality and Game Show

• America's Got Talent: Extreme: Stuntman and contestant Jonathan Goodwin performed a stunt where he needed to escape a straitjacket while suspended in mid-air before he was crushed in between two cars. The stunt went wrong, and he was nearly crushed in-between the cars, fell the ground, missing the air mattress and landing on his head. Miraculously, he survived, but ruptured his kidney, punctured a lung, and fractured his ribs and spine, and was left a paraplegic. The show was pulled afterwards and Goodwin would later file a lawsuit due to alleged lax safety standards.
• Dog Eat Dog: Contestant Darin Goka was doing a physical challenge on the NBC show where he had to hold his breath underwater, and the mechanism that was supposed to raise him from the pool failed, leaving him underwater for an extended period of time. He went unconscious and later taken the hospital. Darin later sued NBC, claiming the stunt left him with brain damage, with "memory impairment, a decline in intellectual abilities, and severe levels of depressive symptoms." The suit was dismissed.
• Gladiators (2024): Gladiators is a very arduous, physical show, with plenty of scope for injury. If a contender is injured during filming, it's likely to be worked into the show and discussed at length. In the very first episode both male contestants end up injured. Finley hurts his knee, abruptly ending one of his early challenges, and the commentary repeatedly questions whether he'll he able to continue. His rival Myles then injures his calf during the final Eliminator obstacle course run. Wesley injures his hamstring in the Eliminator in the final.
• Opposite Worlds had several injuries throughout its run as detailed by YouTube pop culture commentator Jenna Nicholson:
  • During a challenge, Charles is tackled off of a podium by his opponent, and he missed the safety cushions on the ground, breaking his leg. Another contestant Lauren injures her finger during the same challenge.
  • Steve gets hit in the face with a frozen tomato during a challenge, and the rim of the safety goggles breaks and cut his face deeply, which required stitches.
  • Another contestant sprained his ankle while in their "cave" dormitory and is seen on crutches.
• Short-lived American reality TV series Splash (based on Dutch reality series Celebrity Splash where celebrities high dive into water) saw a lot of injuries. Out of the 10 celebrities that participated, six were injured.
  • Chuy Bravo (sidekick to Chelsea Handler) had to pull out of the competition due to a broken heel. He didn't even know how to swim.
  • Louie Anderson pulled out as well in week 4 after suffering from bruised ribs.
  • Pageant competitor Katherine Webb had to pull out of the show after suffering a back injury.
  • Drake Bell got a concussion and two black eyes during a practice dive after accidentally hitting the water face first.
  • Skier Rory Bushfield ruptured his eardrum during practice but continued with the competition and eventually won.
• Survivor saw it's first major injury in the The Australian Outback season when Michael Skupin passed out from smoke inhalation into the fire he was tending, burning his hands severely. He was then medically evacuated, becoming the first Non-Gameplay Elimination in Survivor history.

Music

• Britney Spears received four stitches after a piece of the camera hit the back of her head while filming the music video for "Oops..I Did It Again".
• Chanwoo of iKON injured his ankle while his group's music video. While his doctors stated that it was not a serious injury, his agency YG Entertainment caution him not to do some heavy dancing during his group's Yokohama concert.
• Kiseop of U-KISS got second-degree burns and many fragments lodged into his body after a product he was holding exploded during the filming of his group's music video.
• As seen in the behind-the-scenes of Linkin Park's "New Divide" music video, bassist Dave Farrell injured his wrist during the first day of filming. This explains why he doesn't appear much in the music video except in the special effects scene.
• Mariah Carey got a shoulder injury while filming the music video for the remix version of "Beautiful".

Theatre

• Some of the live shows based on Bottom were so violent that Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson were hospitalized afterwards.
• Groundhog Day: Andy Karl, the original Phil Connors, famously tore his ACL in Broadway previews while leapfrogging over another performer during "Philanthropy", finishing the performance on a walking stick. He missed several performances, but returned for opening night, performing with a knee brace. Some theorize that this, plus the production's technical difficulties, were what lead to the show's early closing, despite a successful West End run and great reviews.
• Julius Caesar: In the 1937 production, Orson Welles (Brutus) decided to use a real dagger as a prop because it looked more dramatic than a fake one. The potential for disaster should be obvious. Sure enough, on 6 April 1938, Welles accidentally stabbed Joseph Holland (Caesar) for real. Holland was rushed to hospital, bleeding profusely from wounds to his chest and arms. Luckily he made a full recovery.
• Starlight Express: The original production, performed on roller skates at speeds of up to 40 MPH, was widely known as one of the most dangerous plays on the West End, with the 21 actors averaging three injuries per run each, and one actress later suing the company. The Broadway production, which was faster and on a larger set, was just as bad, if not worse, with one actor snapping his ankle in rehearsals and another blowing out his knee after falling 15 feet.
• Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was such a Troubled Production that the play's page in The Other Wiki has a subsection dedicated exclusively to cast injuries:
  • Natalie Mendoza had a concussion on November 28, 2010 after being struck by a rope. Against medical advice, she went back a couple of days later, even though her role of Arachne entailed flying sequences. She felt sick and her understudy had to take over her part for about two weeks. Mendoza ended up withdrawing from the show on December 30, 2010.
  • Stunt performer Christopher Tierney fell 21 feet (6.4 m) off a piece of scenery, through the stage and into the orchestra pit. His harness was not connected to the safety cord.
  • Actor and stunt performer Daniel Curry was pinned under a piece of equipment, injuring his leg.
• The Tsukiuta stage play series has has a few:
  • During the run of the fifth stage play, Rabbits Kingdom, Shuuto Washio (You) suffered an injury, after which he did not appear in the dance live segment of the second act.
  • During the run of the twelfth stage play, Ura-Zanshin, Tatsuki Jonin (Aoi) hurt his ankle. Several performances were cancelled, and when they resumed, they performed most of the sword action scenes in the play (of which there are many) without him, and he did not dance in the dance live.
• Wicked: Original Elphaba Idina Menzel suffered an accident during her second-to-last performance on January 8, 2005, when the trapdoor for the melting scene partially descended without her, causing her to misstep and break her ribs. While this meant she had to miss her final performance, she did, however, make a surprise appearance at the curtain call as a farewell.

Web Videos

• Channel Awesome:
  • Almost everyone involved with Kickassia was injured somehow, the worst being cameraman Rob Walker getting a nasty leg injury on the first day, but he still kept cramming himself into tight places and waiting until filming was over to seek any medical attention. Also, LordKaT twisted both his ankles, which forced his role to be severely reduced. Ironically, the only one who didn't get injured was Noah Antwiler, who was infamous for his fragile health.
  • On Suburban Knights, Elisa Hansen was duct-taped to a wall and began to feel light headed, requiring them to take her down and just wrap her in a blanket secured with tape for the scene. (Elisa later debunked rumours she passed out on set.) Bennett the Sage, Iron Liz and Orlando all suffered stunt-related injuries which Allison Pregler later blamed on a lack of safety precautions. After Liz's knee was stomped in by Orlando, she alleged that Rob withheld ice from her unless she signed a contract absolving the site of liability for the injury.
  • At the start of Bennett the Sage's Elfen Lied review, Sage has a skit where he was lured into a hotel conference room and being "beaten" severely^note (they were using wiffle ball bats and other harmless Improvised Weapons) by his fellow (at the time) co-creators, which culminated on someone breaking a pool cue stick on his back. This was supposed to be faked, but the cue was broken several inches below the break spot. This ended up with Bennet actually taking the hit, which ended up leaving a long welt across his back.
• During the first broadcast of Generation Loss, one of the wires supplying power to Ranboo's mask came loose when he laid down, and ended up pressed against his back. He did not break character and finished the show, but had to go to the ER afterwards for what turned out to be second-degree electrical burns.

---