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Minor Injury Overreaction

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"You made me swallow my gum. It's going to be in my digestive tract for SEVEN YEARS!"
Gideon Graves, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

In dramatic settings, no matter how much punishment a villain takes, all that seems to really rile them up is deliberate, albeit minor, injury. Especially across their face. Extremely potent with egotists. This tends to send The Fighting Narcissist into a foaming rage. Sometimes occurs with characters who are Nigh-Invulnerable, where the overreaction is because even inflicting a minor injury on them is supposed to be impossible; it might even be the first time that character has ever been injured. Or it could be a matter of humungous ego: 'How DARE this Puny Earthling even think of striking ME!'

Can (un)intentionally coincide with the Rage Breaking Point or Afraid of Needles.

May lead to Disproportionate Retribution, Irrational Hatred, House of Broken Mirrors.

Compare Comical Overreacting and Blood Upgrade.

Contrast with Major Injury Underreaction, and with After-Action Patch-Up where the reaction tends to be humanizing.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Merika from Afganisu-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.
  • Ayane's High Kick: Ayane gets hammered for the majority of her bout with Sakurako, leaving her bloodied, bruised, and unable to stand without leaning against the ropes. Yet, the ref sees no problem with it and allows the fight to continue. But as soon as Sakurako gets a mere scratch on her forehead, the ref jumps in and decides the fight can't go on. So he declares Ayane the winner.
  • 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. Here it isn't exactly vanity: Bambi's a health nut (and Psychopathic Manchild) who is obsessed with keeping her body "perfect."
  • Berserk:
    • For a guy who has literally gone to Hell and back and has the scars to prove it, Guts can't even stand being poked with pointy edges (like the ink quill that Schrieke uses to etch the seals over his brand, that burns like hell whenever he's close to demons by the way) let alone being sewn up with needles after a huge battle. Not even when Casca is doing the sewing.
    • Guts' adoptive father, Gambino, got extremely pissed off when little Guts managed to cut him across the cheek while he was training him as a child. Gambino reacted by slashing Guts across the bridge of his nose incapacitating the kid for quite a while. The resulting scar never healed.
  • 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.
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun: Mikoto throws a doll at Mugino hard enough to give her a cut on her temple. Mugino goes completely berserk, trying to beat her to death with her bare hands.
  • In the Cowboy Bebop episode "Pierrot Le Fou", Tongpu is an insane Super-Soldier who's Immune to Bullets. When Spike 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.
  • Digimon:
    • Digimon Adventure: Once he finally has Hikari in front of him, Vamdemon asks Tailmon if she is the eighth child both he and the Chosen Children have been looking for. Tailmon denies this, but then shrieks her name when Picodevimon does no more than tug at her hair.
    • Digimon Fusion: In episode 11, Lillithmon flat out goes into a berserk rage when Akari slashes her face with a Code Crown, opening a small cut on her cheek. In the dubbed version the blood is edited out alongside the cut, leading Laylamon to flip out for no real reason.
  • Dragon Ball: Frequently happens with the villains 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. It especially happens with villains who take a lot of pride in who they are (overpowered badasses), as well as having an appearance to keep up.
    • Possibly the first instance of this trope comes when Krillin finally scores a hit on the strong- but campy and hammy- General Blue. Unfortunately, this also causes Blue to whip out his psychic powers and paralyze Krillin.
    • A particularly extreme example occurs when Mercenary Tao is enraged because Goku's Kamehameha shredded his clothing, even though he is completely unhurt. In response to this, he dispenses with his usual Self-Imposed Challenge style of fighting and uses his most precise and powerful killing technique, which Goku only survives by dumb luck.
    • During the first fight with King Piccolo, Piccolo is holding Goku by the collar, mocking him. Goku bites his thumb, causing Piccolo to scream in pain and suck his thumb afterwards. It's the only injury he sustained in that fight.
    • Vegeta tried to destroy the Earth because Goku made him bleed a little. This was because Vegeta was an upper-class Saiyan Prince while Goku was a lower-class runt and shouldn't have enough power to challenge him.
    • Goku is routinely beaten within an inch of his life in battle, often as part of his Training from Hell, but in the anime, just put him in a room with a needle, and try to give him an injection, and Goku will COMPLETELY flip out. The first time is implied that he never been given an injection in his whole life, so it's a bit more understandable. The others, though...
    • Earlier in that same battle, Nappa becomes enraged when Krillin does a small cut on his face with his Destructo Disc. He seemed less enraged at the fact that the attack could have beheaded him, and more at the fact that he's bleeding a little.
    • In Frieza's case it made some sense, as by the current scale he was so stupidly powerful that he hadn't had a decent fight in decades, possibly his entire life. When a 20x Kaioken Kamehameha actually burns his hand, he flips out.
    • While Frieza did have a serious moment earlier in the fight, another particularly memorable (and funny) example was when Goku bit Frieza's tail. He immediately goes from strangling Goku to clutching it and blowing on it, squirming and wincing all the while. The fight goes from "Serious battle to decide the fate of the cosmos" to "schoolyard sissyfight" in two seconds.
    • Surprisingly averted with Broly, after Goku kicks him in the jaw hard enough to draw blood. Broly barely reacts, even smirking, and licks off the wound. In fact, the one who overreacted was Goku.
      [Broly turns to Goku with his mouth bleeding, then smirks and licks off the wound]
      Goku: Eew! That was completely unnecessary! Disgusting!
    • This was the intent when Mr. Satan fought Kid Trunks in his reward for winning the Tenkaichi Budokai's junior division (Satan knowing that he couldn't possibly win and trying to cut a deal). Trunks however doesn't see the point of doing that and gives him a full punch that sends Satan flying out of the ring and destroying a wall.
    • During the fight with Merged Zamasu, Vegeta and Future Trunks managed to reflect the ball in his face which does little to no harm as a result of his Complete Immortality. Merged Zamasu, however, immediately flips out and decides to murder Goku, Vegeta and Trunks just because things didn't go his way.
  • Fist of the North Star
    • 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. Yuda, a narcissistic Nanto stylist and Rei's biggest rival, similarly goes berserk when his face gets some minor cuts.
    • Amiba, who swore to blacken the good name of Toki because he accidentally slapped him (more like a not-very-noticeable brush of his hand as he was running past, but villains will be villains).
  • 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 the Gunsmith Cats anime, Radinov the Chaotic Evil Renegade Russian tries to torture Rally to death because our heroine shot her earring off. Then again, Radinov isn't the sanest person around.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya: When Haruhi drags her friends out to play baseball, Mikuru's turn to practice catching instead sees her panicking and ducking down onto the ground. Come her next turn, one of that batch of balls hits her in the thigh while she's still ducking, not even that hard right after bouncing off the ground first, and she still complains that it hurts. Kyon escorts her off the field, and tells Haruhi that she's "injured" when she orders her back in position.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • In Stardust Crusaders, after having his knee sliced open, Jotaro Kujo nonchalantly walks himself to the school nurse's office to get it patched up. However, when he learns that the nurse intends to cut open his pant leg so she can treat the wound, the normally unflappable Jotaro bolts from his seat like a scared child.
    • Played with in Battle Tendency when Esidisi reacts to Joseph cutting his arm off at the forearm by starting to cry like a little kid, loudly sobbing and screaming that "It's not fair", before suddenly reverting to his usual self, explaining that it's simply something he does sometimes to get his emotions under control. The reason this counts as Minor Injury Overreaction is because since Esidisi is a Pillar Man, having his arm cut off is a minor injury to him, which he promptly demonstrates by cutting off the arm of Joseph's dead teacher, whom Esidisi had killed a few minutes earlier, and attching it to the stump of his own arm. Joseph notes that Esidisi essentially throwing a temper tantrum like a three-year old is somehow more creepy than if he had become angry instead.
  • Knight Hunters: Schoen 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.
  • Lyrical Nanoha: Vita is naturally aggressive, but she gets especially pissed off when one of Nanoha's attacks damages and knocks off her hat. Cue Nanoha's "uh oh". It has sentimental value.
  • Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has a variation when Kobayashi comes down with a fever. Kobayashi treats it as more of an annoyance than anything else. Tohru on the other hand has never been sick and her only frame of reference for such things is entire villages or kingdoms being decimated by plagues, so she panics and runs herself ragged trying to find medicine to cure her.
  • Minotaurus' Plate, a Fujiko Fujio one-shot, have the heroine, Minoa, suddenly freaking out over a tiny prick on her finger, and all her servants and handmaidens panicking collectively while Minoa cries her eyes out that she's "tarnished goods". It turns out it's because Minoa is a sacred subject of Human Sacrifice, used as food supply to the cows who ruled over humans in her world.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Yzak Joule 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. This in a setting where scar tissue can be easily fixed by cell regeneration technology, but he keeps it as a memento of being harmed. Subverted later, when he drops his grudge after getting some Character Development and gets it healed eventually. The injury, though not life threatening, was a very painful one.
  • Done in the Gali fight in Monster Rancher when Genki manages to chip Gali's mask in an attack. Gali goes ballistic and turns into a whirlwind while screaming he'll destroy everything.
  • Naruto:
    • In the Chuunin Exam Tournament Arc, Sasuke manages to land a blow on Gaara and manages to draw blood. Since Gaara has always been protected by his sand armor, this is the first time in his whole life that he's seen his own blood. He flips out.
    • Hidan has his head chopped off? No big. But being picked up by your hair fucking hurts!
  • In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, when Negi first manages to inflict damage on Fate, Fate momentarily exhibits an immense rage. He ultimately retreats later, but this act of inflicting minor damage against him sealed a major, long-term obsession.
    • Toyed with during a two-on-sensei training bout when Asuna managed to get a hit on her instructor. While opening someone's cheek and narrowly missing their eye with a BFS would normally be considered a major injury over which a freak-out would border on justifiable; Evangeline 'The Undying Mage' McDowell merely licked a bit of blood before the wound closed, then sealed Asuna in ice.
  • One Piece:
    • During the Baratie arc, 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. (Based on the crew's remarks, Pearl has in fact been injured a number of times — but he flips out the same way each time and apparently has no lasting memory of the episodes.)
    • 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.
    • When Usopp manages to blast Arlong (causing no damage, however) Arlong's tantrum isn't from being blasted... it's from being blasted by a human. He gets so mad that he has to be dragged back to Arlong Park by his mooks so he won't destroy the village in his rage.
      Arlong: He's just a human!!! A PUNY WORTHLESS HUMAN!!! AND HE DARED TO ATTACK ME!!!
  • Played for Laughs in Persona 4: The Animation: when Yu gets his hand bit by Teddie, he responds to Chie's concern with a completely deadpan statement that he's on the verge of tears (or in the English dub, that he is dying).
  • In Pokémon: The Series, a Paras faints from the slightest attack, including a simple jolt from Pikachu.
  • In the Record of Lodoss War Original Video Animation, Ashram — who has gone through a battle untouched due to his skills — gets very angry when Parn manages to scratch his cheek with his sword.
  • Usagi of Sailor Moon would cry after falling down on the sidewalk, whether it was on her face, knees or butt, in the early seasons of the 90's anime (she's 14 years old).
    • Sailor Galaxia from Stars is arguably worse. As the strongest Senshi alive she thought herself untouchable, so when the Sailor Starlights actually manage to land a solid hit on her, she flips out and goes straight to trying to murder them, stating that harming her is an unforgiveable crime.
  • Seiyu's Life!: While on her way to a recording studio with Futaba, Konno trips and gets a bloody nose. She and Futaba treat it as if she was mortally wounded, leading to an I Will Only Slow You Down moment.
  • The Tears to Tiara anime features a Big Bad who is fixated on perfection and so are all the other 'regular' angels, so when Arthur is the first mortal EVER to scratch him, he freaks out. Ironically, his second form is butt ugly.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, villain Jake completely loses it when Kotetsu, the hero he spent mocking for being worthless and pathetic during their entire fight, manages to be the only hero to land a hit on him - by accident no less.
  • Dilandau in The 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-Crazy Psycho for Hire...
  • Played humorously in The Wallflower, where Kyohei is the one whose face gets scratched but Sunako is the one who takes offense.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Yugi has an extreme case of this. It doesn't even have to be a corporeal wound; several times, when his opponents take a chunk out of his Life Points, he acts like he's having a heart attack. Semi-justified as the games frequently become fights to the death and the players can feel the attack as though it were real, which becomes pretty disturbing when teenagers of ambiguous age are taking sword slash and stab attacks. More often than not, it was just a means of building tension. An establishing character moment for Zane in GX is his first duel against Jaden. Jaden destroys some of his monsters and Zane gives no reaction, leading to Jaden comment that he is cool under pressure, because he didn't even flinch.
    • Bakura's infamous "Check his pulse!" line in the dub.
    • 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).
  • In the original version of Yu-Gi-Oh! 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 Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yuya inflicts a mere 500 damage to Hokuto Shijima while he had 4000 lifepoints. Hokuto goes berserk and tries to injure/kill him with a card that summons a meteor shower.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, during the Duel Coaster event (which is a battle royale-style duel), V aka Chris Arclight starts effortlessly defeating people without taking any damage. Then Yuma manages to inflict a mere 400 damage to him while he had 5000 lifepoints. V gets pissed.

    Comic Books 
  • Subverted in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Johnny explodes regularly; when even slightly insulted he starts to scream and rant (and kill people) injuries don't interest him much.
  • Xerxes from 300. Turns out that God-Kings do bleed after all, but he didn't believe it either.
  • In the Silver Age Superboy 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 motivations that are simultaneously less petty and more petty.
  • Doctor Doom was going to be a case of this at one stage of development, the 'horrible disfigurement' that led him to wear a mask at all times truly being a tiny scar. Doom saw it as worse than it was due to his ego; the slightest marring of his perfect features meant his face was ruined. However, there was nothing they could do about the many people who recoiled in horror from the times his face was shown, typically saying they'd heard it was bad but this was much worse, so nothing came of it.
    • Some stories (such as John Byrne's Retcon of Doom's origin, and the Triumph and Torment graphic novel) have said that Doom did, in fact, only receive a minor scar from the accident. His actual deformities came when he placed his iconic mask on his face immediately after forging, before it had time to cool, since he was so desperate to hide that scar from view.
  • In the Alan Moore story "The Jungle Line", Clark Kent reacts to a paper cut in a way that makes him look like a total wimp to Lois Lane. The fact that he can get a paper cut indicates that something is seriously wrong — specifically, he's been infected with a potentially fatal disease from Kryptonian spores that had hitched a ride on a meteorite.
  • One issue of Archie Comics had Archie's friends and students from Pembroke trying to sway a new muscular adonis to join their school and football team, while Chuck repeatedly insists they let Pembroke keep him. It's only after he ultimately joins Pembroke that it's revealed he completely falls apart at even the slightest injury, and Chuck could just tell from years of dealing with such types in sports.

    Comic Strips 
  • Calvin and Hobbes:
    • In one strip, Calvin skins his knee, and he starts screaming, hopping on one leg, and clutching in knee in agony... until he realizes there's no one even paying attention to him, at which point he walks calmly back to his house, and resumes his melodramatic performance in front of his mom.
    • One trip to the doctor has him receive a vaccination shot. As Calvin is deathly Afraid of Needles, he reacts with all the severity that one would expect, much to his mother's embarrassment.
      Calvin: AAUGHH! IT WENT CLEAR THROUGH MY ARM!! Ow ow ow ow!!! I'm dying! I hope you've paid your malpractice insurance, you quack!! Where's my mom??!
    • Calvin tends to react this way whenever he's stung by a bee or other insect (often because his imagination turns them into a Big Creepy Crawly), at one point asking his mother to bandage up the wound from the "harpoon" that "gored" him.
  • Nuts: The Kid's friend falls off a pier and is screaming. The Kid climbs down imagining the horrible, gory things his friend could be screaming about, only to discover his friend scratched his finger.
  • Linus van Pelt, in an early Peanuts strip, panics big-time after bumping his head.
  • In the "Lighter Side Of" feature of Mad Magazine, a teenage girl is jumping around franically, cradling an arm and crying, "It's broken! It's broken!" Her mother is concerned. "What's broken? Her arm? Her wrist? Her finger?" "Keep going," sighs the father. Yes, she broke a fingernail. Which might explain some of the reaction—except that this fingernail is artificial.
  • One Zits strip pulls this immediately after its inverse.
    • Panel 1:
      Jeremy: I'm fine. I just fell out of a tree.
    • Panel 2:
      Jeremy: PAPER CUT!

    Fan Works 
  • FFS, I Believe in You: Played for drama with Uisdean in the sequel. When he and Murchadh were children, they were playing in Jabu Orkú's presence and Uisdean was pushing around and bullying Murchadh, resulting in Orkù giving him a warning nip on his hand. This was a fairly minor bite that only resulted in mild scarring, but because Orkù is the zora's living god, the Province's people took this as a profound condemnation of Uisdean's ability to rule. In turn, Uisdean became obsessed with this injury and developed a seething hatred of Orkù as a result, leading to his eventual descent into tyranny and his attempt to assassinate the god-whale.
  • Pony POV Series: Rancor has a Villainous Breakdown when Spike figures out her weakness (she's immune to violence, but can be hurt by indirect methods) and manages to injure her. Since she's very difficult to hurt, she barely has any pain tolerance.
  • The Prince Of Death: Light. Justified: because he is undead his wounds never heal and he has to be sewn back together.
  • Two Sides of a Coin: From Lieutenant Kate McMillan after being shot in the leg. The prosthetic leg.
    McMillan: Sweet mother of holy fuck, asswipe hobgoblin shot my goddamn leg!note 
    Eleya: (looks her over) Wait a minute, Lieutenant, is that your—
    McMillan: (starts laughing) Yeah, he shot my goddamn fake leg!
  • This parody of Steven Universe's "Jail Break" has Ruby going all No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Jasper for giving Sapphire a small injury that's easily covered up by a band-aid.
  • Misty is going through either this or Major Injury Underreaction, depending on how you interpret her situation in Broken Legs, Unbroken Love. The story doesn't make it quite clear how grave Misty's injuries are, save apparently that they'll take a full year to recover.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Abridged, Joseph was stabbed through the throat and bleeding to death. His complaint that was making him wail in pain? He sprained his ankle.
  • During the VR battle in Total Drama Legacy, this becomes the bread and butter of Drew's playstyle.
    AAAAH! My health is at 65%! That’s almost 50%, which is almost 25%, which is almost 0%! I must find a health pack!

    Films — Animation 
  • How to Train Your Dragon: Tuffnut reacts this way every time he's touched by a dragon before the climax.
  • Louis the alligator in The Princess and the Frog goes into death throes when he gets a single bur in his finger.
    Louis: OW! Pricker bush got me! Gator down! Gator down! [Ray rolls his eyes] The darkness is closing in! I'm so cold!
    Ray: Will you hold still, you big baby?!
    Louis: AAAAAAAAAAAH!
    Ray: I ain't touched it yet.
  • Bee Movie: Layton Montgomery does this in an overly rambunctious way when Adam stings him on the trial's second day to tarnish the bees' reputation, even appearing casted in a baby walker the next day.
  • The War to End All Wars – The Movie: Well, "minor" only by comparison. In "The Unkillable Soldier", Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart stops near a British soldier clutching at a hand that's had the index finger shot off. Sir Adrian, in addition to sporting an eyepatch courtesy of an injury he sustained in Somaliland, gives the soldier a big grin and shows him how his entire left hand is missing.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Played for laughs in Hot Shots! Part Deux. Ramada Thompson rips off a piece of clothing to patch up Topper Harley. The rest of the members of Harley's squad immediately start complaining about their minor injuries hoping to get her to rip off more clothing pieces.
  • Occurs in Lockout when Snow is hit in the head by Emilie (a 90 pound untrained girl) he whines and bleeds (and it is the only injury that stays visible through the entire film). Contrast to when he gets punched multiple times in the face by a 200-pound monster of a military man...he simply makes snide comments.
  • 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." Followed by her mowing down her opponents. Her 'droid-of-honor' calls the victory "pretty good for Rambo".
  • 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!!!
  • The Blues Brothers: "They broke my watch!"
  • 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 Gedren of slaughtering Sonja'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.
  • DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story: "Nobody makes me bleed my own blood!"
  • In Kiss of the Dragon, Inspector Richard gets kicked in the face by Liu Jian, which breaks his nose. Richard decides to throw a live grenade at Jian in response.
  • 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.
  • Never Say Never Again When James Bond throws an exploding pen at Fatima Blush, before it explodes, she has a look of shock as though she's never been bloodied before and then laughs
  • 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 he did have reason...
    Gideon: You made me swallow my gum. That's going to be in my digestive tract for seven years!
  • In Best Of The Best 2, the main character Tommy while trying to escape with his friend Alex manages to cut the cheek of the film's narcissistic villain, Brakus in a brawl. Brakus' response to that injury is sending Mooks to kill Tommy, Alex and his son. Wow.
  • The Torture Technician Serial Killer in Neighbor suffers a minor Freak Out when she cuts one of her fingers while making a sandwich.
  • In the film version of Hearts in Atlantis, a teenage girl is attacked by bullies, leaving her with a broken arm. Not only does she scream and wail loudly enough to wake the dead, but she has to be carried away from the scene, since apparently her broken arm leaves her unable to walk. It doesn't help that during all this carry-on, Anthony Hopkins is telling us what a brave lion she is. Er, no.
  • Craig in This Is the End has one after a huge piece of rubble flies right past him... and he cuts his finger.
    Craig: Fuck yo house, Franco!
  • In Blades of Glory, Chad is given an oxygen mask for a sprained ankle.
  • Miracle on 34th Street
    • Someone plays this trope up to get Kris in trouble. For two out of the three incarnations, Sawyer the Psycho Psychologist reacts overly dramatic to Kris "attacking" him.
    • For the original, Sawyer gets tapped on the head with Kris's cane. Once people enter the office, he pretends to be unconscious and lies through his teeth about the reason why he was hit.
  • I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. While Jack Spade is fighting Mr. Big's men, he gets a splinter in his finger. He goes though a prolonged bout of self-applied first aid, including crying out in agony as he removes it.
  • Gang of Roses: When Little Suzie attempts to rape Rachel's sister, the sister draws a knife and fights back. She nicks Suzie's face, leaving a small cut (and subsequent scar) under her eye. Suzie completely bloes her cool and blows the girl's brains out.

    Literature 
  • A Certain Magical Index: Accelerator 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.
  • In Kanokon this happens when an attack causes a slight rip in a villains jacket. "YOU WILL COMPENSATE WITH YOUR LIVES!"
  • MM!: When Yuno accidentally put a small scratch on then-boyfriend Yoshioka's face (defending against his Attempted Rape), he beat her severely, and then while she was at home recuperating convinced the school that she was a slut, destroying her reputation and existing relationships. Two years later, his anger hasn't subsided at all.
  • A variation in Overlord, where it's not the target of the minor injury that overreacts, but one of their allies. When the Slaine Theocracy's Dominion Authority uses Holy Smite on Ainz, he laughs it off and offhandedly comments "So this is what it feels like to take damage." (Up to that point he had not yet taken any damage at all in the New World where he was isekai'd to). From his reaction, it's clear that whatever damage he took was Scratch Damage at best, but Albedo goes absolutely berserk at the idea of her beloved being caused any amount of pain at all, and Ainz has to calm her down to prevent her from massacring potentially valuable prisoners.
  • Soto, a History Monk in Thief of Time who believed in the sanctity of all life and the ultimate uselessness of violence, decided to kill three Auditors posing as humans when a wild axe swing accidentally sliced off a thick lock of his hair. Somewhat justified as his hair is his Berserk Button.
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: After he offends Buckbeak (who reacts by hitting his arm with a claw), Draco Malfoy uses this trope for attention and to get Hagrid in trouble. He keeps it up for several weeks, acting as though his arm was almost ripped off when everyone knows he's faking (not that Severus or any of the Slytherins will say so).
  • Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle: In "The Crybaby Cure," Melody's first flood of tears after she takes the Crybaby Tonic is triggered by the family dog accidentally scratching her just a little when he puts his paw on her knee.
  • 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 lover 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, running home to cry to this mama.note 
  • 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.
    • Another of Korman's works, the On the Run series, has the character Meg do this frequently to either cause a distraction or sneak in somewhere. To the point that she pretended to be hit by a car so she can sneak into a hospital (counts as this trope because she timed it well enough that she only received some glancing blows from the car, but acted as though she'd been hurt much worse).
  • In Robert Munch's children's book Zoom!, the main character's older brother pricks himself with a fork, causing a small amount of blood to come out, and everyone freaks out and takes him to the hospital. Played for Laughs.
  • One of the Queens in Alice in Wonderland freaks out excessively over a small cut...before she receives the "injury." Afterward, she pays little heed to it.
  • In Field of Dishonor, a man insults Honor to the face of her boyfriend, and when he gets punched in the face, challenges said boyfriend to a duel. This was all an act, as he was paid to kill both Honor and her boyfriend, using the legal dueling code as a cover.
  • Justified in Angelfall. Raffe is not used to walking long distances, so his feet become raw pretty quickly and he starts moaning.
  • In The King of Attolia Eugenides fakes doing this in order to get the court to overlook a very serious wound until he's in his private chambers because if it had been noticed in the throne room it would have started a very costly war. He knows that if he'd played down the injury his queen would have been suspicious so he hides it and complains loudly and dramatically instead.
  • The Elder Scrolls In-Universe Books: Exploited in Hope of the Redoran. Andas was prophesied as a child to be invulnerable to blade or poison. Athyn duels him with a club, and Andas, having never felt the pain of an injury before, is reduced to a gibbering heap by a minor bruise. Athyn takes advantage and beats him to death.
  • Justified in Kushiel's Legacy in the backstory of Favrielle nó Eglantine: being pushed over left her with a small scar on her face that disqualified her from service as a High-Class Call Girl of House Eglantine, which in turn made it nigh-impossible to buy her way out of Indentured Servitude to them and work independently as a dressmaker. Had Phèdre not paid off her debt, that scar could have scuppered her entire professional career.
  • The Rising of the Shield Hero: The Heroes barely manage to hit the goddess Medea with an attack that leaves a small scratch on her hand. In response Medea, who had been taking her time savoring her success, starts obliterating the Heroes.
  • When the pampered maltese Sunshine gets bit by a fox in Survivor Dogs, she freaks out and all but faints, yelling she needs to go to the vet. The other Leashed Dogs freak out as well. Lucky, who has been on his own since puphood, doesn't even know what a "vet" is and finds the whole thing absurd. Sunshine was barely scratched while he's been running around with a worse paw-cut for several days. Lucky teaches the others that licking wounds is perfectly fine medical care.
  • Sword Art Online: Sugou/Oberon has a Freak Out and starts whining about the pain after Kirito gives him a little cut on the cheek; Kirito even lampshades it, pointing out that it's nothing compared to what Sugou did to Asuna. Kirito proceeds to really give Sugou some wounds to cry about... by slicing off his hand, cutting him clean in half, and finally impaling him through the eye, killing him in-game and leaving him with permanent injuries in real life.
  • In Pocket Monsters: The Animation, it's mentioned that Delia cries like a baby over cuts, bruises, little splinters, and other minor injuries.
  • Dispatches by reporter Michael Herr: A marine accidentally kicked Herr in the face when they were both diving for cover after coming under fire, giving him a small cut on the forehead. Herr thought that he had been shot in the head (“I could taste brains sizzling on the end of my tongue”), and started squealing in terror. Meanwhile, men who had been seriously injured were quietly contemplating what had happened to their bodies. He never went back to that unit.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Rise of Phoenixes: Invoked. Ning Yi wants Zhi Wei to stop asking awkward questions, so he pretends she aggravated his arm injury. He drops the pretence as soon as she leaves.
  • Princess Agents: Xiao Ba suffers a — very shallow — cut on her face. She promptly freaks out about the possibility of getting a scar, screaming that her future is ruined and trying to get Chu Qiao to call off the escape attempt so she can get ointment.
  • 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 (UK), 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 Warz 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 done to show how much of a Spoiled Brat Gill is. His Power Rangers Megaforce counterpart Prince Vekar reacts the same way, except there it's a reaction to being shot in the face by Noah, which barely even left a mark on him.
  • In M*A*S*H:
    • Deliberately invoked by Klinger in "It Happened One Night". Klinger is accidentally shot by a nervous private who isn't used to night sentry duty. The resulting superficial graze wound prompts Hawkeye to say, "Could you at least bleed?" while examining him. Since Klinger is constantly trying to get discharged from the Army, he acts like he's just received a mortal wound and starts swooning all over the place and describing visions of his deceased relatives. Naturally, nobody buys it.
    • Frank Burns applies for a Purple Heart twice, both times in response to minor injuries: after throwing out his back in "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", and after his eye was injured by (egg) "shell fragments" in "The Kids". Both times, Hawkeye steals the medal and presents it to someone he considers more worthy of the honor.
  • The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon cuts himself with a scalpel. He looks at the wound... and faints.
    • And later on in the bar, he removes the band-aid to show his wound to Penny and faints again.
  • In an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a Howard Stern expy gets shot by a Moral Guardian and acts like he's dying. One of the EMTs who's forced to deal with him tells the detectives that the injury is completely non-fatal.
    • The beginning of "Informed" had a woman visiting the ER for a rash on her arm. "It itches! And burns!"
  • Lois & Clark has a scene, similar to the comics entry above, where Clark freaks out about a paper cut after his first brush with kryptonite.
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Projections", the Doctor suffers a small cut and freaks out. Justified because he's a hologram and it's supposed to be impossible for him to be injured, so this indicates something has gone seriously wrong.
  • In Ugly Betty, Justin Suarez had gotten into a fight with a boy over something the latter said about his Mom that got him sent home after school. The boy's mother later complains about a scratch that that was hidden by the boy's clothes.
  • Mystery Diagnosis: Quite a few of the mysterious ailments are auto-immune disorders, meaning your own body is attacking itself in a misguided attempt to protect itself. An extreme version of this is turning your muscles into bone after an injury. Oh, and these are Real Life illnesses.
  • Odd Squad: Played with in "First Day". While Dr. O doesn't receive any actual injuries, she does show Oscar a scenario that she feels could potentially play out if he hires an unqualified agent to run the newly-built Creature Room, in order to convince him to let her help out with hiring. Said scenario goes as follows: the unqualified agent forgets to lock a creature in its cage. The creature escapes and gets itself a glass of water. It spills some water on the floor. Dr. O walks by and slips on the water, and as a result, she ends up in the hospital in a full-body cast with her arm and leg in slings, unable to do her job as Precinct 13579's medic. Oscar is so taken aback by her presentation that all he can manage is an "Okay!"

    Music 
  • The five "Pain Series Poems" spread across King Missile's album The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. In short, they're Cluster F-Bomb rants about a minor injuries (e.g., a paper cut, stepping into a cold pool).

    Manhua 
  • Parodied in one Old Master Q strip. The titular character cuts his finger while slicing meat, and opts to have his entire hand bandaged and hoisted on a sling. On his way out, someone steps on Master Q's foot - cut Master Q walking out with his feet in a cast.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • While exaggerating the impact of the opponent's moves (called "selling") is part and parcel of Professional Wrestling, doing this is called "overselling" and is typically considered bad form.
  • 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.
  • 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 was the basis for Cody Rhodes's former character. After Rey Mysterio broke his nose, the narcissistic Rhodes believed his good looks were forever ruined, and went insane. He's no longer a smug pretty boy, but destructive and perpetually brooding (while a broken nose is no picnic, it's nothing big in pro wrestling terms).

    Radio 

    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.

    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 Balrog (Japan) / Vega (North America) 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 II: The Animated Movie where the only thing that really saves Chun-Li is a good set of injuries to his face that send him into a berserker rage she can counter.
  • Yaga-Shura the fire giant in Baldur's Gate II: 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. 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.
  • 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.
  • In Persona 5, the teenage Player Character comes across the Big Bad attempting to drunkenly force himself on one of his female underlings and puts himself between the two, causing him to fall over and get a light scrape on his forehead. He retaliates by getting him arrested for assault while using his influence to silence the witness, kicking off the plot.
  • 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.
  • Thanks to a programming quirk in the original Medal of Honor, Pistol-Whipping an enemy to death will trigger the exact same animations you'd see had you shot them with the gun. Naturally, Hilarity Ensues when using any of your heavy weapons, since the impact of a smack on the jaw from a shotgun barrel or conk on the noggin from an empty bazooka will make hapless Jerrys backflip and fly through the air.
  • Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress will stay bedridden for years over broken toes or bruised fingers. This is, in fact, more likely with incredibly minor injuries — dwarves will usually stay bedridden waiting for a doctor to diagnose them, but due to a glitch, if they heal before the doctor arrives, the doctor won't find anything to diagnose, causing the dwarf to stay bedridden indefinitely, waiting for the diagnosis of an injury they no longer have. 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.
  • In Wild ARMs: Second Ignition, after you fight Judecca in his Devil Spire, he notes that he's bleeding and shoots himself.
  • The manga for Hatoful Boyfriend has Tohri try to sneak into the school, get scratched by a fence, and march to the infirmary with great wrath and indignation to point at the minor wound.
  • In the reboot of Twisted Metal, Dollface was a supermodel until she got one tiny scar on her face in a car accident. After that she went completely nutbars, seeing the scar as a Two-Face-esque deformity. She donned a mask to hide her "ugliness", and is willing to murder god knows how many people and trust Calypso to get rid of it. David Jaffe stated that she's meant to be a satire of the extreme standards of the modelling industry.
  • Freedom Force has the masked Shadow attacking the city, deforming people to join her in her quest to destroy "all beauty." After she's defeated, she's unmasked as former supermodel Amber Autumn, who howls that a minor facial scar has left her hideous. However, her minions, upset at seeing their leader as beautiful, beat her down just as her cavern headquarters collapses on her.
  • In KanColle, Fusou screams bloody murder, when she takes light damage. In contrast, her delivery of her moderate damage line is a lot more subdued.
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: An actor involved in the propaganda film about "Terror Billy" is made to perform a fight scene with a Nazi soldier, despite being a rather posh kind of guy. He takes a gun butt to the face and immediately insists on stopping the casting to go treat his bleeding nose. Adolf Hitler, unimpressed by this "terrible" performance, promptly gives him a wound to really complain about. Several in fact.
  • In Disgaea, units that are targeted by attacks will always go through their usual damage animations and voiced lines, regardless of how much or how little damage they took (even if it's 0 damage), or even if the attack outright misses. In other words, your level 9999 Physical God can complain about how horrible and painful that last attack was, even if the attack was a 0-damage attack from a level 1 early game Mook that missed completely.
  • During the assault on the SF base in Mortal Kombat 11, Young Johnny Cage gets grazed in the cheek by a bullet, which gives Old Johnny Cage a scar in that same area. While Old Johnny's reaction is hilarious in itself ("Whoa, that's freaky like Friday."), Young Johnny, who is still movie-star vain, is close to tears and quite pissed off about it, to the point of taking up a riot shield and charging the guys who shot him.
    Young Johnny Cage: They shot our face, Johnny! They shot! OUR FACE!
  • Rimworld: Colonists with the Wimp trait have a significantly lower pain threshold, which means they will drop to the floor in shock from the pain with much less injury than any other. Needless to say, this is not particularly good for a frontline fighter, but it does increase general survivability; enemies will only target someone on the ground if no one else is standing, so the Wimp's injuries will be much more treatable than the lost limbs or massive external bleeding others usually have.
  • Faust's Overdrive in Guilty Gear -STRIVE- has him accidentally tackle his opponent while trying to observe a four-leaf clover. When he sees them down, he grabs a wheelchair and rushes over them to take them to the hospital, but ends up running into their shins. This is as damaging as the other Overdrives, including a Wave-Motion Gun, magical Guns Akimbo, and a high-altitude back-breaker.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 

    Web Videos 
  • Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has a massive freak out, runs away screaming for his mother, and spends several months in therapy 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.
    Captain Hammer: I'm in pain! I think this is what pain feels like! Mommy!
  • What the Fuck Is Wrong with You? "You shot me in the dick!" (It was a Nerf dart.)
  • This happens a bit with Hat Films due to the dissonance between real-life injury and virtual injury:
    • In Skylands, the lads spend a lot of time falling off cliffs and screaming their heads off. Then at one point Smith screams yet again, and when the others ask if he died again, he replies, "No but I just jammed my knee into my desk!"
    • Trott also gets his moment of this where he screams and when Ross and Smith assumed Trott fell out of the world again, Trott (off mic) says he fell out of his chair. Ross quickly makes fun of him for it.
  • A heroic version in Critical Role. Vax is bitten by a vampire, Silas Briarwood, and he immediately starts acting woozy and begs to be taken to a temple. The priest there explains that vampires actually have to kill their victims to turn them with a bite, and so there's nothing wrong with Vax after all. Probably justified through shock, as Vax had a hell of a night.

    Western Animation 
  • As Told by Ginger episode "The Easter Ham" had Joanne overreacting after waiting for test results that confirm whether she has heart trouble or not after a tug of war between Lois for the last ham, it turned out she merely had esophageal hernia and merely needed to change her diet.
  • Chemistro in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes is brought into the Masters of Evil as a counter for the previously unexpected Hawkeye. Most of the Masters of Evil have a personal beef with one or more of the Avengers (usually their counterparts), and were possibly swayed into being recruited for revenge, Chemistro included. His beef? Hawkeye punched him in the face (during the breakout in the first episode). Hawkeye doesn't even remember it.
  • One episode of Bob's Burgers starts with Bob cutting his "finger crotch" (the space between the bases of two of his fingers) slightly then passing out. Ironically, by the end of the episode he's lost a huge amount of blood yet manages to get through intentionally tearing open his stitches.
  • In the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Easter Yeggs," the Easter Bunny gets Bugs to deliver eggs for him. When Bugs tries to deliver one to a kid "on the wrong side of the tracks," the kid keep repeating "I wanna Easter egg! I wanna Easter egg," while constantly whaling on Bugs. When Bugs grabs the kid's arm, the kid cries, "Ooo, the bad rabbit broke my little arm! The bad rabbit broke my little arm!" Instantly Bugs is surrounded by guns and gangsters.
  • 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.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy:'
    • In "Read All About Ed", a stray newspaper fired from the Eds' malfunctioning launcher lands near Sarah while she's playing skip rope with Jimmy, and gently rolls up against her heels. This leads to Sarah loudly yelling that Ed hit her and threatening to tell their mom on him.
    • Edd from 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.
  • Gargoyles: The original Hunter 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 - let alone, the lives of generations of your descendants - to killing some random gargoyle who, though she scarred you, could just as easily have killed you instead.
  • Done in Gravity Falls when Mabel manages to get her braces stuck in a screen door. While that would undoubtedly suck, she skips over 'this hurts' straight into 'I'm going to die.'
    SOMEONE DICTATE MY WILL! I'M GIVING IT ALL TO WADDLES!
  • 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.
  • Johnny Bravo meets Squint Ringo, the swaggering, macho Steven Seagal expy he idolizes. Johnny accidentally, lightly brushes the side of Squint's face... and Squint instantly collapses, holds his "injury" and bawls like a child.
  • Kaeloo: Mr. Cat is capable of laughing off the pain of having a bunch of knives stuck in his body, but his reaction to having a whisker pulled off involves screaming and nursing the affected area for a long time.
  • Sharptooth from The Land Before Time gets very pissed off (well, even moreso than usual, that is) when Cera headbutts him while he is unconscious, even though he was previously shown to be able to headbutt stone into dust himself. He's not even injured so to speak, but it still sends him into murderous rage nonetheless.
  • The Legend of Korra: Prince Wu gets hit in the chest by a pie and thinks that he's bleeding to death. Mako has to assure him that it's a pie, not blood.
    • Again in a later episode, when he asks Mako to teach him how to fight. Their sparring match consists of Wu collapsing to the floor screaming "WU DOWN! WU DOWN!" and requesting a breather after every punch. Mako was hitting him in the arm. Lightly.
  • A bit more Justified in The Long Long Holiday: Jean is apparently shot in the leg while the kids flee from the Nazis. Understandably, he's pretty hysterical. It turns out that his ankle was just grazed, however, and the other kids get angry at him for worrying them. Later his mother is horrified to find out about this, but an embarrassed Jean tries to play it off as no big deal.
  • An episode of Nightmare Ned revealed that Ned panicked every time he lost one of his baby teeth, despite his parents' reassurances.
  • The Powerpuff Girls pilot, "Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins" had Fuzzy manage to hit one of Bubbles' pigtails with his meat gun, turning it into a drumstick. She gets pissed and goes ballistic on him.
  • South Park:
    • In "It's Christmas in Canada", Cartman is angry that Kyle ruined his Christmas and 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.
    • It happens once again in "Cartman Sucks", this time with Cartman believing Kyle has stole the photos he made with Butters' dick in his mouth and believing he's gonna show them at school to spite him. Kyle legitimately doesn't have the photos, though, but Cartman refuses to believe him and threatens to kick his ass if he doesn't confess. Kyle responds with a light slap, and Cartman goes back home bawling.
    • Done many times by Cartman throughout the series. However as of lately it is suggested he fakes it to gain sympathy.
    • In "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", Token is hit with a rock by Cartman upon "fat ass" being said, through it was Kyle who said after the warning. Token received a black eye, but cut to the scene where Cartman and Token was in the Mr. Mackey's office, with the latter in a sling.
  • In one episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob cries a fountain of tears simply because he stubbed his toe. This is the same character that repeatedly rips his own arms off for a sight gag.
    SpongeBob: I'll have you know I stubbed my toe last week while watering my spice garden, and I only cried for twenty minutes.
    • Memorably exaggerated in "The Smoking Peanut", when SpongeBob throws a peanut at a clam named Clamu to wake it up so it can perform tricks; instead, it throws a loud, long tantrum that can be heard around Bikini Bottom and beyond, setting in motion the "whodunit?" plot. Although it later turns out to have been a subversion as the real reason Clamu started wailing was because Mr. Krabs stole her egg.
  • Total Drama: In "Up the Creek", Geoff gets a splinter the size of his body hair in his leg. With the exception of the cameraman, who initially has no clue what to aim the camera at as Geoff screams in pain, everyone present treats Geoff's as if it's horrific if not life-threatening. Geoff gets pampered the rest of the episode.
  • Transformers: Prime: Knock Out actually has this as his Berserk Button. He's very proud of his paint job and takes any damage to it very seriously.
  • In the What A Cartoon! Show short "Help?", Jof the cat runs to the hospital because he pricked his finger while sewing.

    Real Life 
  • The cast commentary of the first The Lord of the Rings film had a humorous example of this, with a story about Dominic Monaghan getting a splinter and grossly exaggerating how bad it was.
    • Although Dom gets Orlando Bloom back in the second film cast commentary. In the same film where Viggo Mortensen broke two toes and Sean Astin got his wig accidentally ripped off his head, Orlando fell off his horse and apparently spent quite some time complaining about the pain and how he thought he might have broken something (when really he was likely just bruised). The hobbits take great delight in ripping on him through the behind the scenes footage.
  • 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.
    • Doubly so when the proper punishment (yellow card) is given, as it is now considered unsporting behaviour by the official FIFA rules.
    • This is known as "flopping" in basketball circles. Former Laker and Hornet Vlade Divac was considered the best around at drawing fouls from fleeting or non-existent contact.
  • Paper cuts. Compared to a knife, they sting, mostly because the body doesn't release any natural painkillers due to it being such a small wound. They also stimulate a larger number of pain receptors (which cluster most heavily at the surface of the skin and at the fingertips). Futhermore, paper, unlike a knife, has a jagged edge, so the skin is torn instead of being cleanly lacerated, and because they generally don't bleed, the wound stays open, exposing nerves to the air.
  • Most people's reaction to cat scratches would make you think they got mauled by a mountain lion. Granted, if given enough time, a cat can do some serious damage, but then again, so can being hit repeatedly by a paper fan. Minor attacks from other small animals often fall under this. Subverted if the animal has rabies or if it doesn't just swipe or bite you a few times or if an allergy is present.
    • And, like paper cuts, they tend to be very small and shallow wounds
    • Besides which, housecats do (generally) use a litter box, so consider what's likely been on their claws sometime recently. Also subverted when it comes to feline bites, as their teeth are designed to pierce (rather than crush, like canines), and the bacteria in their mouths is second only to other humans when it comes to infection rates. So while the initial bite of a housecat tends to be far less damaging than one from a dog, it can also be far more harmful if left untreated.
  • Young children are definitely the codifiers for this trope. There's just no comparison. Minor scrapes can easily be brushed off by most people, but little kids? No way. For example, if they received a scrape on the knee, watch as the waterworks come down their faces. And as far as they're concerned, you're wicked for using medical disinfectant to clean that scrape, which makes them cry even more.
    • This can be subverted when they're really young, as they take their cues from their parents about how to react. If the parent's hysterical over their bumping their head and drawing blood, the toddler's hysterical, and vice-versa.
    • Part of this is perspective. Most little kids (thankfully!) haven't broken a bone, or had a major burn or cut or something. To them, a relatively minor scrape is literally the worst pain they've ever been in, ever. Another part of this is memory, or lack thereof; when you're too young to have much long-term memory, it doesn't matter that you scraped your knee last week, but the pain subsided relatively quickly and you were perfectly fine. That was last week, which to a little kid is ancient history they may not even remember. Right now, all they know is they're bleeding and it hurts.
  • Certain body parts have lots of nerves that make it so even a relatively tiny bump can send enough pain signals to make you react as if you had just been shot. The ulnar nerve in your elbow, also known as the "funny bone", is one of the best known examples. Your shin is also another sensitive area: because there is little muscle to cushion the blow in contrast to your thigh, wanging your shin on a coffee table means getting all of those pain signals largely unfiltered.
    • In the same vein, aphthous stomatitis. That's a scary name for (usually) little cankers inside your mouth that aren't anything serious by themselves but hurt like Satan himself were trying his new pincers on your gums. When something even midly acidic (such as many fruit juices) touches them...
  • The fear of needles. In essence it's a tiny pinprick that lasts for ten to thirty seconds—but for sufferers of the phobia, the dread, nervousness, pain, and wooziness are very real.
  • School nurses call this "status dramaticus". As in "Little Jimmy came into my office in full-blown status dramaticus, but he only had a hangnail."
  • Breaking a nail is usually not going to have any long-term affects, provided it's taken care of and the wound doesn't get infected. But it hurts like hell, due to all the nerves located just below the fingernail. There's a reason people who break a nail tend to start crying, but to the unaware, they may see what looks like a relatively minor injury and wonder why the person is making such a fuss.

 
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The Supreme AI overthrew Anna

After hearing about the loss of an infantry crew, Scotty immediately tries contacting Linux Anna, only to find that she's been overthrown by the Supreme AI of the Internet. She simply hit Anna with a plastic spoon which made her break down in a panic, and then finished her off with a bioweapon version of Windows Vista. Scotty immediately panics about it and says that it's the epic war with ROFL-9000 all over again, and that he's "totally not advertising the series by Akriloth2160", and he says that he got only a 0.5% in history class.

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