From The Three Stooges to America’s Funniest Home Videos to viral videos, footage of people hurting themselves will never go out of fashion. There is just something innately funny of someone causing an injury in a super silly way—especially when it’s self-inflicted. As these clumsy folks on Reddit recently shared, the simplest of tasks is often complicated with a serious injury caused by just one dumb, misguided decision. Here are some of the most particularly dumb and funny ones—and remember, don’t try these at home!
1. Paul Blart Enters the Chat
As a security guard, I was running to deal with an issue and my flashlight came out of its pouch and went between my foot and the ground. I stepped on it and broke my ankle.
2. Go, Go Gadget—CRASH
I was eight years old and running home on my lunch break so that I could watch Inspector Gadget, which came on at noon. I decided it would be neat to look down at my feet while I ran, and next thing I know I crashed full speed into a parked car. I think I laid like a dead body on the road for a good five to 10 minutes because it hurt so badly.
I was late for my Inspector Gadget episode and never told anyone what happened.
3. Don’t Doubt Your Parents’ Advice
Remember when your parents told you to tie your laces or you would hurt yourself? Well, they were right. I was that kid who ran with untied laces. I fell and instinctively put both my arms out. I landed on my right hand/arm and managed to snap my forearm and dislocate my wrist. I had dislocated my wrist before because I was pretty accident-prone.
I attempted to “pop” it back in myself, out of panic. I can’t describe the crunchy noise that my arm made, or the pain I felt. I then had to walk to the nurse’s office at my school, and wait for my parents to pick me up—they didn’t think it was serious. At the hospital, the x-ray showed some extreme damage, and I had to have surgery to correct my arm.
14 years later, and my wrist still isn’t the same, and it still hurts in the cold. Life tip: tie your laces, people!
4. A Puzzling Injury
I was finishing up this intense jigsaw puzzle, which was on a low table, so I spent the entire night crouching on the balls of my feet. The next morning, my right foot turned purple and swelled up to the size of a large orange. I was on crutches for a couple of weeks.
5. One Pesky Wasp Leads to a World of Hurt
This wasn’t me, but my sister. She swung a loaded shopping bag at a wasp, which was flying between her and my mother. She missed the wasp but hit my mother, who had no idea what was going on, and just thought my sister had lost her chill and whacked her with a heavy shopping bag out of pure spite. So, my mom rolled up her sleeves and set about my sister.
I walked on as though I had never seen either of them in my life before.
Wikimedia Commons, Toby Hudson
6. None of the Grace and a Hurt Body
My girlfriend was once reading something on her phone while walking down the stairs. Being not the most graceful person, she managed to slip and land on her butt about halfway down the stairs. Without ever taking her glance off the phone screen not eight inches from her face she proceeded to begin standing but something somewhere didn’t click and she did not bend her knee to continue her path down the stairs.
What resulted was a giant step forward into mid-air as she was standing up, causing her to careen down the stairs face and shoulder first into the wall at the bottom of the landing. I sat across the room on my computer facing the stairs as this happened. To this day, I am still bewildered by the memory of her tumble.
7. What Goes Around, Comes Around
My brother was teasing me while I was doing homework—I think I was maybe eight or nine at the time—and after a few minutes, I snapped. I took my pencil and went to jab him with the eraser end, so as to not hurt him too badly and get him to shut up. To get a bit more force behind it, I decided to wrap my index finger over the other end...the end with the point.
I’m sure you can guess what happened next. A lot of crying and a trip to the emergency room later, I had a pencil point being removed from my finger.
8. Horsin’ Around Has Its Drawbacks
When I was five, I was rushed to the ER twice in the same week. First, I slid down the banister as the door below swung open, and I crashed head first into the corner of the door. Then three days later, I was playing on the radiator, slipped off, and smashed my head again. Doctors thought my parents were abusive and there was an investigation over it, apparently.
9. All for a Pesky Window
This happened six years and three days ago. I was home alone early afternoon, or at least I believed I was home alone. But then, I heard a noise that I thought was inside the house. No one else should be home but me so I was spooked. I crept out and listened for movement and thought I heard a voice downstairs. I tried to sneak down the stairs but only made it to the first step.
By the second step my heel slipped out from under me and I planted hard on the step and slid down to the last three steps, finally able to stop. My shoulder was sore trying to save myself on the rail. My back is beat to hell from hitting all the steps down. My butt and my tailbone is pulsing nothing but pain. Trying to get up made it worse. Nothing felt broken.
I was able to get up after a minute or so and baby step around the corner where I found the source. It was my neighbors talking in their backyard, and my brother had his window open, allowing it to carry into the house. For five years, if I sat longer than an hour my tailbone/coccyx would hurt. Watching movies, which I love, was always troublesome. I got seat cushions for it that I couldn’t go without at home.
About seven months ago, it just stopped. No more pain.
10. Luckily It Was Only a One-Story Drop
I once went on my balcony to smoke a cigarette, only I forgot there was no balcony anymore because it was getting fixed. So I broke my leg falling one story down. Now the real irony was that my mother wanted to fix the balcony because it was old, and she was afraid it might break off and I might hurt myself.
11. The Mark of a Wizard
I was leaning over a fence post trying to straighten a nail I’d just miss-hit and bent. Only rather than use the claw of the hammer, I used the face of the head of the hammer, slipped off, and smashed myself in the forehead. A good 15 years later and I still have a scar on my forehead like a knock-off Harry Potter.
12. Another Entry Into Shaqtin’ a Fool
I was shooting hoops when I was a kid and kept missing. I got really mad and threw the basketball as hard as I could because I was done. It ended up hitting the pole and bounced back hard enough that it smashed me in the face, completely knocked me off my feet, and I smashed my head on the asphalt.
13. Work-Related Injury
I was at work in a high-stress office complex in Virginia. The work made you eat quickly and often at your desk. I was eating a baby carrot and tortilla chips, when all of a sudden I get stabbed with the edge of a chip midway through chewing a carrot. Blood all down my throat—the chip was sharp—and I turned blue choking on baby carrots.
Good times nearly getting killed by a chip and a carrot. I learned to slow down when eating.
14. Ouch, This Sounds Painful!
I no longer have a toenail because the garbage was too heavy. I was taking the garbage out in sandals but the garbage bag was too heavy to carry so I put it on my skateboard and rolled it down to the street. The tip of the skateboard lodged under my big toenail and ripped it off. Three faulty regrows later, I just don’t have a toenail on my big toe anymore.
15. Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me
In high school, I was showing off with a staple gun and accidentally stapled myself in the chest. Then, when telling the story later, I picked up a staple gun to demonstrate and accidentally did it again. I am not a clever person.
16. The Blurry Line Between Dreams and Reality
I was being attacked by aliens in a dream, again. When they backed me into a corner, I kicked one hard in the head. I woke up immediately in pain because I had just kicked my wall in real life. I badly sprained my ankle and couldn’t walk properly for a week.
17. TMJ Blues
Anybody who has TMJ knows you can aggravate it in the stupidest ways. When I was in high school, I was eating an apple and my jaw completely froze as I was taking a bite. The apple was just hanging from my mouth suspended by my teeth. I looked like a horse with brain damage. I had to get my dad to extract the apple from my mouth. It hurt for a looooong time.
I couldn’t chew or talk properly for months and my entire face was crooked because my jaw was stuck off to one side. It healed eventually, but later I set it off AGAIN by eating a cookie. I once set it off by yawning too wide. It sometimes goes off on its own for no reason. I wish I knew what it was like to have a working jaw.
18. The Dangers of Being Bored at Work
I was at work, very stressed and tired. There was a skateboard on the ground about ten feet away from me. I didn’t know how to skateboard beyond just being able to slowly roll around. We just kept it around to casually ride whenever we needed a break from our work. I saw the skateboard as I was pacing around and, without thinking, ran over to it and jumped on.
As you would expect, it went flying out from under me, and I slammed into the concrete floor. I just stayed there on the floor for a minute, baffled by what I had just attempted, while my hip bone throbbed from the impact. I have no idea where the impulse to do that came from, and my brain was too sluggish to stop myself before it happened.
I’m so glad I didn’t hurt myself more seriously since I was the only one in the building. I was even more relieved nobody was there to see me do something so incredibly stupid.
19. Bachelor Party Mishap
I was at a cottage with a group of friends for a bachelor party weekend. Needless to say, alcohol had been consumed. We had a pretty large fire that had now died down and become a nice bed of coals. Someone got curious and asked what would happen if we put a sealed can of beer on the fire. So I grab a can and walk up to the fire.
I saw the coals and my drunk-ass mind had the audacity to think, “You know, the trick for firewalking is that you gotta be quick. Your feet don’t get burned if they aren’t touching the coals long enough... I could do that!” I proceed to take my flip-flops off, take a step into the fire pit, bend down, place the can of beer in the middle of the fire, and take a step out of the fire pit.
My technique about being quick did not pan out at all and I horribly underestimated how long it took to place something down. At this point, I had been standing on red-hot coals for probably about three full seconds. I looked it up later, turns out coals glow red when they are about 600°C. I immediately put on my flip-flops and went straight for the lake to cool off my feet.
I couldn’t walk normally for about two weeks and it took about three months to fully heal. And that’s how I got the nickname Firefoot.
20. Icy Conditions and Martial Arts Maneuvers Don’t Mix
In November of 2009, during my second to last semester in college, I was out drinking with some buddies in our small college town. It was wintertime and it was pretty icy out. I found a soda can on the street, got everyone’s attention (“HEY GUYS WATCH THIS HAHAHAH!”), threw up the soda can, attempted a roundhouse kick. OOPS.
Landed wrong and completely shattered my ankle. The doc told me he had never seen a MORE shattered ankle. Nine screws and a two-inch metal plate were inserted into my ankle permanently. I was in a cast for about seven months and almost didn’t finish college. All because I tried to roundhouse kick a can.
21. When the Window Washers Go Too Far
When I was 21, I was applying for my first job at a very famous company. After the interview was done, I wanted to grab something to eat, so I decided to go to the cafeteria across the street. The cafeteria was a big one and very well maintained. It had a glass door, very polished, to the point that it became invisible at first glance.
I didn’t see where the handle to open it was since I was in a rush. I bonked my head right on the door, in full public view. Didn’t get hurt, but had a big bump right in the middle of my forehead for a few days.
22. I Never Trusted a Screen Door
Early one morning, I was taking my dog outside to use the bathroom and Snoopy decided he had to go really bad and started flying down the stairs of the back porch. He was on a leash and I didn’t want to hurt him and make him fall down the stairs, so I rushed out behind him. I was wearing a pair of wool socks and slippers and as I awkwardly started following him, the bottom corner of the screen door clipped me on the heel.
It hurt a bit and I just limped around as he did his business. When I got back inside I decided to take my sock off because it was uncomfortably hurting and I see there is a good amount of blood that has seeped through the sock. I pull it off and see that I actually have a pretty big gash across the back of my ankle. A screen door did that to me all because of crappy timing.
Don’t underestimate screen doors, they can hurt you.
23. Bleacher Injury Report
I was a freshman in high school at our homecoming game. I was standing on the bleachers with some friends waiting for the game to start. We were sitting about five rows up. I’m standing on top of the seat part of the bleachers trying to watch the halftime show. At some point I had forgotten I was standing on the seat part and not the ground.
I took a step forward and went face first all the way down all five rows. Once I had face surfed down the bleachers I then hit my face on an oil drum that was being used as a trash can. Everyone saw me go down. When I got up I was still in a daze. I didn’t realize I had bitten a hole through my bottom lip until my friend pointed it out.
I had to call my mom to tell her I needed to go to the ER. She didn’t believe me how I hurt myself until she came to pick me up.
24. Playing With Fire
This happened about two weeks ago. I work in a gas station, and we have quite a few novelty cigarette lighters for sale. One of them is shaped like a gun, but there’s one that’s shaped like a strange blowtorch. The opening where the flames come out is hidden, and only opens when you press down on the button. There was a bit of downtime at my work so I was looking this blowtorch lighter over since it was the first time I saw it.
I couldn’t tell where the opening was and I didn’t notice the little warning sticker that pretty much says, “This is where the flames will be”, so I held it upside down, thinking it must be a bit like the gun lighter. I pressed the flicker with the lighter aimed right at my fingers. Ended up with blisters on my two fingers for about a week for the trouble. Thankfully, it seems to have healed pretty nicely now.
25. At Least This One Has a Happy Ending
My house was directly across my high school from the freeway. I rode my bike home from school one day and the only way to get across the freeway is this big overpass that connects the two sides. I was texting this girl I liked while biking across the overpass and just as I finished my return text and closed my phone, I looked up and saw a stop sign directly in front of me.
There was no way to avoid it since I was on the downhill end and that I was practically kissing distance already so I ended up hitting it, flying off my bike and dislocating my shoulder and leaving me with a nasty scrape on my elbow. It left a nasty scar. As I sit up to piece together what just happened, a minivan rolls up to ask me if I’m alright.
When I look up I see the girl I was just texting in the passenger seat. She saw the whole thing. Her mom drove me to the hospital and my dad picked me up. Just pity stares from my dad the whole ride home. The girl and I did end up dating soon after that though.
26. Where’s the Wet Floor Sign When You Need It
I was in a small bathroom when I was younger and just got out of the shower. The floor was slightly wet, but not too slippery, and the very high countertops made it easy to hold myself up. However, when I sneezed, my head flung forward with the force of a thousand suns and smacked the countertop knocking myself out cold.
I woke up bleeding from a broken nose, butt naked in a pool of blood, and shower water surrounded by my family members. At least it was a very satisfying sneeze.
27. A Friendly Reminder to Not Lick Things That Shouldn’t Be Licked
So my family moved to a farm when I was six and we had electric fences. The gates were also electric and had a handle with a metal hook to close it. I assumed the hook wasn’t connected to the fence and decided to lick it as I was holding a gate open for my parents to take the horses through.
It hurt so much. Ever since I have been anxious whenever I am near an electric fence.
28. PSA: Machetes Are Not Bug Swatters
I was cutting a trail through some thick forest with a machete. I was wearing shorts and I felt something crawl on my leg. I looked down and there was a huge spider. I panicked and swatted at it with the side of the machete blade, but it wasn’t completely turned when it struck skin. I had to take off my shirt as a tourniquet for my leg and limp out of the forest.
29. Maced in the Face
I was helping my buddy look for a screwdriver. We were digging through his toolbox and found this weird leather pouch with a red plastic tab on the top. The red tab simply had the word “PRESS” embossed upon it. So I obliged and pressed. By sheer fate, I had it aimed directly at my left eyeball. I smelled it before I felt the burn.
I collapsed about halfway to the bathroom. My friend, after I was finally able to explain what had a happened, ran a quick Alta Vista search (yeah, this was a while ago) for remedies. I’m not sure what he found but it led him to mix TUMS and water in a spray bottle and spray me in the face with it. Did not help.
30. What are the Odds!
I was in my uncle’s convertible when I was thirteen. I put my hand up, and I hit a bird. It exploded all over my uncle’s nice sports car, and I fractured my wrist.
31. Adding Insult to Injury
Me and a friend of mine were building a bush house, essentially a treehouse...in a bush, because we had no real big trees around. My parents just refurbished the garden and we had some poles and wood, we could use. We wanted to make a door, so we tried to get the poles into the ground. We didn’t have enough strength to do so, but luckily my friend remembered his dad had a big hammer laying around that “we could use.”
He snatched it and we started hitting the pole. After a while we were almost happy, but not until I decided to give it one more big hit. I raised the hammer above my head, and made a swing as hard as I could... COMPLETELY missing the pole and hitting myself in the knee. I then dropped the hammer on my toe of my other foot, dropping to the ground.
We weren’t allowed to make bush houses anymore.
32. Power Washer Versus Big Toe
I was using a gas-powered power washer to blast some moss and crap off my parents’ back porch and stairs. As I’m blasting the stairs I accidentally shoot a burst of water point-blank into my big toe and slice it in half. Lots of blood and stitches ensue.
33. I Have So Many Questions
I shaved my tongue when I was five. Yuuuup. Me and my friend were playing with my dad’s razor, pretending we were adults and shaving our face, then I wondered what would happen if I shaved my tongue too. I never wondered anything again. I realized what I’d done a millisecond later. I started heaving and ran to the bath with my tongue sticking out, blood dripping into the tub.
After a few seconds, I stuck my tongue back in my mouth, went downstairs to my mum and when she asked what was wrong, I didn’t talk; I just showed her by opening my mouth. She had to get a tea towel to soak up the blood and I asked her if she could put a bandage on it. She couldn’t. The stuttering of the triple-bladed razor going through my tongue is something I will never forget.
34. Pogo Stick Pain
When I was about 12, I was playing on a pogo stick in front of my house. My foot slips off and the pedal slices the side of my leg pretty bad. In my anger, I throw the pogo stick at the ground. It bounces back up and hits me in the face. I end up with a broken nose to go along with my hurt leg.
35. When It Hits the Fan
I once ate some funky food that gave me the ability to fart on command for like two days. My sister was in the kitchen and I thought it would be funny to run in and do one of those “Jump and click heels” maneuvers, but spice up the gumbo by letting a fart go at the moment of clicking. Well, the up-jump went well, the heel-clicking succeeded, and then I just straight up pooped my pants.
The shock of pooping myself sort of threw off my mojo and I fell without catching myself properly. This resulted in me hitting my head on the counter and three stitches. Awkward scar to explain to people.
36. Don’t Trust Your Sister
My sister and I got these new state of the art children’s bicycles that had pedal brakes, in addition to the regular hand brakes. Basically, pedal brakes work and stop the bike when you pedal backward. So one fine stupid day, while we were out just randomly cycling, I challenged her repeatedly on our cycling skills and won most of them.
I’d shout out randomly like “Let’s see who can cycle past that lamp post first!” And without warning, I’d dash and win. After frequently losing, she got upset and argued that the challenges weren’t fair because I was older and had more practice. She proposed that we challenge each other on the new pedal brakes since we were both new to it.
On a highly confident winning streak, I agreed. The challenge was to bike as fast as possible towards a wall and pedal brake really hard so that we would not hit into it. Ready, set, go! I adhered to the rule, hit the wall while she used both the pedal brake and hand brake to avert my fate.
37. Helmets and Proper Planning Go a Long Way
I’ve been building a zip line all summer. The line drops about 30 feet and spans 310 feet long, so it was a pretty big project. I decided to throw the actual line up to see what trees needed to be cut down and how it looked. When I got it tightened up it looked beautiful. I got too excited and decided to test it with my body.
There were a few thin-trunked trees in the way but I figured I could kick them over on my way down. So I hooked myself up and took off. About 60 feet down the line, I hit a tree pretty solid; the following jerk on the line caused it to come loose and I fell about 15 feet. Luckily, I was wearing a helmet and didn’t get seriously injured but it hurt like hell and my pride took a serious shot.
After that, I did all my testing with weights like I should have done in the first place. That was about a month or so ago; the line is up and safe for riding now!
38. Foiled by Microwaveable Pizza
I went to take a plate of Totino’s Pizza Rolls out of the microwave. The plate was so freaking hot that I dropped it. Molten cheese bounced up and was burning through my ankle. I went to stick my foot in the sink to run it under cold water as if I am flexible enough to stand on one foot and get my leg up that high. I fell backward and cracked my head like an egg.
I had a third-degree burn on my ankle, second-degree burn on my fingers, and six staples to the dome. All for some pizza rolls. By the way, I was 30 when this happened.
39. Sneeze Away From the Desk
I sneezed so hard that my head slammed into my computer desk. I ended up with a pretty decent sized gash in my forehead. Still to this day when I look like I’m about to sneeze, my friends will scream, “Someone find a helmet!”
40. Have It Your Way
I cut my eye with a Burger King’s hamburger wrap while trying to eat the cheese stuck to it. I wasn’t aware until immense pain had kicked in and I went to visit the ER. I was a phenomenon for the whole night shift.
41. Dang Kids and Their Heelys
At school, I was showing off my Heelys tricks by jumping and stuff. I tried too much to show off when I tried to jump off a bumpy ramp and I scraped my knee hard on the pavement. That’s not the stupid part though. My parents and I were going to visit my grandparents’ place for a while so we started packing stuff into our car.
I stayed near the car and decided to CLIMB it (It’s something like an SUV). They called me to carry something, so I JUMPED from the roof of the car and landed, on the scab that was healing from my initial accident. The scab was stuck on the pavement and my knee started bleeding so bad. I know this isn’t as painful as a dislocation or a fracture but how I got this was by extremely stupid decision-making, and the experience told me to never ever take a blind eye to what might go wrong.
42. Will Never See a Can of Pork and Beans the Same After This
I hadn’t eaten all day so I was hungry and didn’t feel like making anything. It was a little after lunchtime. I decided to have a can of pork and beans because the pantry was pretty bare. My can opener isn’t the most reliable so the lid only opened about halfway so I bent it up and poured the beans into a bowl, then I went to bend the lid back down so it wouldn’t cut the trash can.
But I went too far and my finger slipped past the lid that was predisposed to bending upward at this point. I had a knee jerk reaction to my finger getting stuck and pulled it out quickly slicing into my skin creating a medium-sized flap of skin on my finger that was sort of just floating. Having not eaten or drunk anything all day and it being 2 pm, the adrenaline from getting cut all of the sudden wore me out.
I fell out of the chair I was sitting on waiting for my brother to bring me gauze so I didn’t get blood everywhere. I ended up hitting my head on the floor and ended the day with four stitches and a pretty bad headache.
Sources: Reddit, ,
