Injury Tropes - TV Tropes

The Order of Release by Sir John Everett Milais

For when you don't quite reach Death Tropes — or even miss them by a mile.

See also A Tortured Index, Bloody Tropes, Indexitis, This Index is a Real Pain, Toxic Tropes, and Weapons and Wielding Tropes.

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Tropes

• Accordion Man: When crushing a cartoon character makes them fold up like an accordion.
• After-Action Healing Drama: After an action scene, a person is seriously injured and must be healed.
• After-Action Patch-Up: Someone gets helped for injuries after an action scene, but they're not seriously injured.
• Agonizing Stomach Wound: A stomach wound which may lead to a long, painful death.
• Agony of the Feet: Someone hurts their foot.
• Amputative Sentencing: A criminal is punished by having a limb or appendage cut off.
• Amusing Injuries: Injuries are Played for Comedy.
• And Show It to You: Someone kills someone else by tearing their heart out and showing it to them.
• Annoying Arrows: A main character gets shot with arrows, but is not killed or seriously injured even when they should be.
• Anti-Regeneration: Healing Factor is nullified for some reason.
• An Arm and a Leg: Someone loses a limb.
• Ass Shove: Sticking something up someone's rectum.
• Attack the Injury: Someone tries to attack an existing injury, usually in an attempt to gain the upper hand in a fight.
• Attack the Mouth: Someone is hurt or killed by being attacked in their mouth.
• Attack the Tail: An animal gets attacked in their tail.
• Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: It looks like someone is getting shot, but it turns out that either the gun is not loaded, the shooter gets shot, or someone else gets shot.
• Bandaged Face: Someone has bandages over their whole face.
• Bandage Wince: Someone winces at getting bandaged up.
• Barely Missed Cushion: A character tries to break their fall on something soft, but misses it by that much.
• Beef Bandage: Using meat as a bandage.
• Belated Injury Realization: Someone gets hurt, but doesn't notice.
• Blinded by the Light: Someone is blinded (or at least annoyed) by having a light shone in their face.
• Blinding Camera Flash: When Blinded By the Light is caused by a camera flash.
• Blood from Every Orifice: Someone bleeds out of their mouth, nose, ears and/or eyes.
• Blood from the Mouth: Someone bleeds out of their mouth.
• Bloodless Carnage: Violence happens, but nobody bleeds.
• Bloody Handprint: A hand-print in blood.
• Bludgeoned to Death: Repeated head trauma.
• Bottled Heroic Resolve: A medicine that cures even the worst injuries instantly.
• Breast Attack: A woman gets hit in the breast.
• Bullet Holes and Revelations: Two characters are fighting over a gun and one gets shot, but it's initially unclear who.
• Butt Sticker: Someone sits on another character, who ends up stuck to the sitter's rear end.
• Career-Ending Injury: Someone gets an injury that makes them unable to do their job or something they wanted to do.
• Cartoon Throbbing: A character's body part gets injured, turns red, and starts swelling and expanding.
• Carved Mark: Someone carves a pattern or words into themselves or another person's body.
• Childhood Brain Damage: Someone's brain was damaged in their infancy or childhood and makes them dumb or even just eccentric.
• Choke Holds: Someone chokes.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: Someone must be dead if their head is ground to a pulp.
• Clawing at Own Throat: A character scratches their throat.
• Climactic Maiming: A character suffers a severe injury at the end of the story that will affect them after.
• Clothing-Concealed Injury: Someone wears clothes to hide injuries.
• Concussions Get You High: A concussed person seems like they're high.
• Cranial Eruption: Someone, after getting bumped on the head, gets a huge lump on it.
• Cranial Plate Ability: When a character acquires new abilities thanks to a steel piece implanted (accidentally or via surgery) in their head.
• Crippling Castration: The attacker sterilizes (neuters) the victim.
• Crippling the Competition: Someone injures someone so they can't do something they're good at, in order to not have competition.
• Cut Himself Shaving: A wound is explained in a ridiculous way that's often a lie.
• Dangerous Backswing: Someone gets hit by a weapon's backswing in melee combat.
• Deadly Nosebleed: Someone dies or almost dies due to a nosebleed.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: Someone gets decapitated by a rotary fan.
• Deadly Scratch: A relatively minor injury proves disproportionately dangerous.
• Deep Sleep: Someone's in a very heavy sleep. Doesn't need to be injury-related, but often is.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Someone lets themselves get injured on purpose as part of a plan.
• Dented Iron: Someone appears to be Made of Iron, but still sustains a few injuries.
• Dismemberment Is Cheap: Consequences to lost limbs? What are those?
• Doomed Hurt Guy: Someone is injured and attempts are made to help them, but they die anyway.
• Dragged by the Collar: A stubborn character gets dragged away by their collar.
• Dramatic Dislocation: A dislocated joint Played for Drama.
• Dramatic Spine Injury: Someone's back gets badly broken.
• Ear Notch: A gritty or evil character has a bit out of their ear.
• Envying the Afflicted: Somebody envies an injured, ill, or disabled character.
• Eye Poke: Someone gets poked in one or both eyes.
• Eye Scream: Someone gets injured in their eye.
• Facial Horror: Someone gets hurt in the face.
• Fake Arm Disarm: Someone's artificial limb gets wrecked.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: Violence that's played seriously.
• Feel No Pain: An inability to feel pain.
• Fingore: Someone gets hurt in the finger.
• First Blood: Two characters are fighting and things turn serious once one bleeds.
• First Injury Reaction: A character who has not been injured or felt pain in their whole life or a long time, or believes themselves immune to harm or pain, gets hurt and stops whatever else they're doing to react.
• Fold-Spindle Mutilation: Someone gets injured due to being squeezed into a space.
• From Dress to Dressing: Someone's clothes are used as a bandage.
• Game-Breaking Injury: A hero gets injured in an important moment.
• Garden-Hose Squirt Surprise: A character gets pranked by having to look in a hose and then getting squirted.
• Getting the Boot: Someone gets literally thrown out of a door.
• Giving Up the Ghost: Someone astral projects for a little bit while unconscious, but neither dies nor has a significant out-of-body experience.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: A character gets seriously injured, but they have powers which means they can heal themselves.
• Goofy Malfunctioning Robot: Robots act silly when damaged, malfunctioning, or defective.
• Groin Attack: Someone (usually a man) is hit in the privates.
• Ground by Gears: Someone gets ground up by machinery.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Someone gets their body split in two. They might survive this.
• Hammered into the Ground: Someone gets driven into the ground.
• Hard Head: Someone gets hit in the head, but doesn't get concussed.
• Heal It with Booze: Using alcohol as anaesthesia or pouring it on a wound.
• Healing Herb: Plants that have healing powers.
• Healing Potion: A potion that can heal people.
• Heal Thyself: Someone is injured in a game, but finds a med kit and heals himself.
• He's Okay: Someone tells someone else that an injured character is okay.
• Holding Your Shoulder Means Injury: An injured character holds their shoulder with their other hand.
• Hospital Epilogue
• Hot Food Hurts: Someone hurts themselves on some food that's too hot.
• How Many Fingers?: Someone asks a potential injury victim how many fingers he's holding up.
• Human Pincushion: Someone gets a lot of weapons, such as arrows, stuck into him.
• Hurt Foot Hop: Someone suffers a foot injury and hops around while grasping the injured foot.
• I Can Still Fight!: Someone has serious injuries, but insists they are nothing.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Someone gets hurt in a place that shouldn't be hurt, either a body part that doesn't feel pain (like his hair) or some part that's not a body part (like his soul).
• Impaled Palm: Someone gets stabbed in the palm of his hand.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Someone is impaled all the way through.
• I'm Okay!: Someone states he's okay even if he logically shouldn't be.
• Improvised Bandage: Using unconventional objects as bandage.
• Injured Limb Episode: A character's arm/leg/wing/flipper is injured.
• Injured Self-Drag: Someone has received numerous and/or severe wounds on their body, but will continue moving forward regardless.
• Instant Bandages: Someone instantly gets bandages after being injured.
• Instant Soprano: When a man gets hit in the balls, it makes his voice higher.
• Invisible Holes: Someone is stabbed with no apparent injuries, but when they take a drink, it pours out of holes in their body.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Someone is injured and left unable to walk on his own during a fight or a chase scene, but asks to be abandoned as he believes that being healed or carried would slow the pursuer(s) down.
• Jawbreaker: When a monster tries to eat someone, that someone stops it by forcing its jaws open until they break.
• Karmic Injury: A character is injured in a manner identical or similar to injuries they have inflicted on someone else.
• Kicking My Own Butt: Someone hits himself on purpose.
• Knee-capping: Deliberately hurting someone's knee(s) to slow them down.
• Knee Fold Fall of Defeat: A defeated fighter falls to his knees before collapsing.
• Lip Losses: Someone suffers wounds to the lips — or has them severed entirely.
• Literal Ass-Kicking: Someone injures another on their butt.
• Literal Disarming: Lopping off someone's limbs to remove their ability to wield weapons or fight.
• Lodged Blade Removal: Removing a knife or some other edged object from someone who's been stabbed with it. Generally, not a good idea unless done by trained medical personnel in a hospital environment.
• Made of Iron: Someone is able to get injured a lot, but still function, or do things that would lead to injury, but not get injured.
• Made of Plasticine: Someone is a lot weaker and easier to injure than would be realistic.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Someone shrugs off a serious injury.
• Mind Your Step: Someone gets injured due to stepping on a wonky stair.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Someone freaks out over getting a minor injury like a paper cut or a stubbed toe.
• Moe Greene Special: Someone is shot in the eye.
• Mutilation Conga: Someone gradually gets more and more injured, and it's often Played for Laughs.
• Named After the Injury: A character has a name, nickname, or alias related to an injury they've sustained.
• Nasal Trauma: Someone suffers damage to their nose.
• Nautical Knockout: Someone on a ship is knocked by the boom (the bit under the sail).
• No One Should Survive That!: Someone gets into a situation that should be lethal, but it doesn't kill them.
• No OSHA Compliance: An extremely unsafe industrial area.
• No Product Safety Standards: A new product is not tested and it injures or kills someone.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Determination and/or toughness prevents a character from dying from extremely serious injuries.
• Nose Shove: Someone, usually a child, ends up in hospital from shoving an item up their nose.
• The Not Catch: Someone tries to catch a falling character, but misses.
• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: Additional injuries are inflicted upon a corpse to mask the true cause of death.
• Occupational Hazard: The various risks faced by numerous career types.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Someone gets injured, but seems finer than they should be.
• Organ Dodge: A potentially fatal injury is avoided because the organ in question is not there.
• Organ Theft: A character's organ(s) is/are stolen. Depending on the organ/species of the victim, this may or may not result in a serious injury.
• Out Sick: Someone is unavailable due to being injured, ill, or otherwise compromised.
• Pain and Gain: You get stronger as you receive damage.
• Palm Bloodletting: When you need a little bit of your own blood, how do you get it? By slicing up your hand, of course!
• Paper Cutting: Someone gets a tiny cut from an attack that couldn't logically have made that small a cut.
• Pathetically Weak: Someone is phenomenally feeble and weak by the standards of their demographic.
• Piano Cover Slam: Someone's fingers get crushed by a piano's keyboard cover.
• Plank Gag: Someone is carrying a long item like a plank and accidentally hits someone else with it.
• Plaster Cast Doodling: After someone's limb is injured and is encased in a plaster cast, they have their cast doodled on either by themselves or someone else.
• Pointless Band-Aid: Someone has a band-aid on even though they're not hurt.
• "Pop!" Goes the Human: Someone is inflated like a balloon or force-fed until they explode.
• Post-Injury Desk Job: Had to work from a desk thanks to an injury.
• Post-Op Ditziness: After a surgical procedure, a character is left in a loopy state from the anesthetics.
• Prank Injuries: Pretending to be injured as a prank.
• Real Men Get Shot: Getting hurt proves how tough or "cool" someone is.
• Revealing Injury: Someone reveals something because the person they're talking to is injured.
• Roadside Surgery: Injury so bad it gets immediate surgical attention, regardless of location.
• Secret Stab Wound: Someone hides a serious wound.
• Self-Harm: Someone injures themselves on purpose.
• Self-Harm–Induced Superpower: Someone harms themselves to trigger their superpower.
• Self-Mutilation Demonstration: Someone proves they can heal themselves or are immortal by injuring themselves.
• Self-Surgery: Someone tries to treat their own injuries.
• Share the Male Pain: When a guy gets hit in the privates, it makes other men's privates hurt in sympathy.
• Sickening "Crunch!": A cracking noise is heard when a character breaks their bone.
• Sleep Squashing: A character gets crushed by a bigger character that unknowingly rolled over on top of them in their sleep.
• Squashed Flat: A cartoon character gets squashed flat, but survives.
• Staircase Tumble: Falling downstairs.
• Standard Bleeding Spots: In manga or anime, bleeding in the mouth, cheek, shoulder, forehead, or (for women) the back, chest or stomach is most common.
• Staying with the Suffering: A character stays with an injured friend while they recover.
• Stop Hitting Yourself: Forcing someone to hit themselves.
• Sweeping Ashes: A cartoon character gets turned to ash, swept up, but revives themselves.
• Symbolic Mutilation: Someone gets mutilated in a symbolic way.
• Tap on the Head: Someone gets knocked out via a hit on the head, but suffers no damage from it.
• Tear Off Your Face: Someone gets the skin on their face torn off.
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: Someone survives being shot in the head.
• Tongue Trauma: Someone gets hurt in the tongue.
• The Tooth Hurts: Someone gets hurt in the tooth.
• Torso with a View: Someone gets a hole through their torso, but neither falls down nor dies.
• Treadmill Trauma: Someone who gets hurt by running on a treadmill.
• Twisted Ankle: Someone who must flee hurts their foot or leg and it slows them down.
• Undressing the Unconscious: A unconscious character has their clothes removed to check or treat their injuries.
• Verbal Salt in the Wound: Deliberately offending someone by bringing up a past injury — often one you inflicted.
• Victory by First Blood: A person loses a duel by being made to bleed.
• Villainous Medical Care: A hero is injured; the villain either treats them or gets them treatment (the reasons why vary).
• Waking Up Elsewhere: Something bad happens, which leads to someone getting hit on the head, fainting and then waking up somewhere else.
• What a Drag: Someone tortures or kills someone else by dragging them along.
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?: Someone survives despite literally not being all in one piece.
• Wipe the Floor with You: Someone drags another character against the wall or floor.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: A wound that never heals or takes a long time to heal.
• Wounded Hero, Weaker Helper: Someone is injured and must be healed by a weaker or more inexperienced character.
• You Call That a Wound?: Someone can be resurrected if they're a main character in a video game.
• You Won't Feel a Thing!: Someone tells someone else "you won't feel a thing", which may or may not be a lie.
• Yubitsume: Cutting your own pinky off.

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