RANKED: the most painful jackass movie stunts

In 1997, Stephen “Steve-O” Glover was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his sister, Cindy. (Let the record reflect that he did go by Steve-O at this time.) While his sister was working as a local reporter, Steve-O was figuring out the best method to blow fire, because he wanted to be a professional stuntman. 

At this point in time, Steve-O was technically a professional skateboarder and had some traction in the world of skateboarding media. He practiced all his tricks nonstop, hanging out at a local skatepark and mixing his standard board stuff with stunt attempts, all the while sacrificing his second attempt at a college degree for a very clear vision of fame. Albuquerque was not a town particularly interested in his antics, so when he got word that the staff of the raunchy skateboarding magazine Big Brother was coming through the city for a national tour, he made it his mission to get in the magazine. Why? Because after months of practice, he had finally cracked his signature fire-breathing stunt.

This means that on the day of the tour stop, he followed the staff to a kegger.

Every account says that Steve-O talked big game about some stunt all day to anyone who would listen. To be clear, the cool Big Brother guys from L.A. immediately found him annoying, but there was free beer at the party that needed to be consumed or else the beer would be sad, so Dimitry Elyashkevich agreed to watch whatever Steve-O had planned, record it for the magazine, and MAYBE publish it.

This was how that stunt was supposed to go: some guy would blow a fireball at Steve-O’s head, Steve-O would use this flame to also catch his arm on fire for some reason, once on fire he would do a backflip, and the grand finale would be him spitting a second fireball while mid-flip. 

Cut back to this random backyard party: Everyone was standing in a huddled crowd, including Big Brother’s staff, and the guy in question who was selected to blow the fireball was skateboarder Kris Markovich. (Steve-O picked him because it would be easier to get in a magazine with a pro in the shot.) Essentially, his job was to spit rubbing alcohol at Steve-O’s head, where Steve-O had already lit the fire in his hair. 

If you can believe it, that is not what he did. Instead, Markovich accidentally spat the rubbing alcohol directly onto Steve-O’s face, sending the flames there instead.

Steve-O said that time moved really slow in that moment where he, his face engulfed in flames, stared at the crew of cool guys he was trying to impress and they stared back, camera recording and waiting for something. And you know what he did? 

He did the fucking backflip.

Eventually, that stunt did take Steve-O to the pages of Big Brother. As well as to the hospital. 

Steve-O talks a lot about pain in his memoir, Professional Idiot, and reiterates over and over that he would much rather be really hurt for a short amount of time (ex: electrocuted) than regular hurt for a long time (ex: road rash). Jackass seems to kind of operate on a similar idea, that’s to say, considering the duration of pain and the intensity of pain. So they seem to largely write stunts that create extreme pain for a short amount of time. Or, rephrasing that, they write stunts with big enough payoffs that any accident that could occur is worth it.

Factass: The fire-breathing trick going wrong put Steve-O in a pretty dark place, and eventually he decided he needed to get even more serious about being a stuntman. So he went to clown college. The next time the Big Brother guys found him, mainly for a little TV project they were putting together, he was a pro clown. It was in those halls of clown college that he learned later iconic Steve-O bits like stapling various body parts to other various body parts and eating glass. Genuinely beautiful how life works like that.

In the world of Jackass, you, the viewer, actually don’t see them get really hurt. Which kind of creates a perception that they’re weirdly lucky and don’t get bruised or bloody or have to visit the hospital much. But they absolutely do get hurt. A lot of these guys are thrill seekers (like Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O) and extreme sports athletes (I’m being generous saying athletes but this encapsulates basically everyone else) which all means that they’re pretty used to getting hurt or at least know that one right way to fall so they don’t get that injured. But all that being said: Bam Margera has broken his left wrist like eleven times, Steve-O was cut from stunts in Jackass Forever because of a back injury, and you might know about Johnny Knoxville’s dozen concussions but do you know about his brain hemorrhage? 

If I were writing a bad essay, this is the part where I would ask something nonsensical like: what even is pain anyway? 

So, what even is pain anyway? And what constitutes a Jackass stunt as painful? I guess it depends. In Steve-O’s multiple written works (two), he discusses being asked if he has a high pain tolerance, to which he often says something like “have you watched the show?” And he’s totally right — he straight up screams in these movies regularly. While there is variation, in the sense that Chris Pontius can take an animal bite very calmly while Johnny Knoxville yells at the camera when it happens to him, none of the guys have a high tolerance for pain. It’s obvious, sure, but that’s what makes the show work. If all of them just stood there straight-faced while they took skateboards to the shins at 100 mph or whatever, it would be boring. That’s not what jackasses do, that's what perfect dudes do. Whoa…perfect dude….dude perfect…that sounds like a group that would really suck. But I’m just spitballing here.

Also, here is where I think everyone sits on the pain-tolerance scale.

There’s kind of a thin line here with all of this, right? Like they want to do something that will get someone hurt, but they don’t want someone to get incredibly hurt to the point that it's unwatchable. They also personally seem to want to get hurt to the point that they get some kind of credibility for handling it, or at least get a lot of laughs for not handling it. It’s totally personality and character dependent.

All in all, I think anything can be painful in Jackass. It just depends on the person it's happening to and what their immediate reaction will be. So, for this essay, I am using that as an indicator of something being the “most painful,” as well as considering the intensity of it and the longevity of the injury acquired. Also, this is very biased. Like, these are the stunts that seem most painful to me based on my experiences, not some truly scientific breakdown of what hurts the most. It's what I perceive as painful and what makes my skin crawl the most, but that’s fine because the audience is important.

So this list will probably be wrong, but that’s why I like it.

You will notice that several people don’t show up in this list. My theory is that the public-prank guys Preston Lacy, Chris Pontius, and Wee Man don’t really do pain-related stunts compared to people like Steve-O, who basically crave it. Dave England is also pain-avoidant but in a slightly different way. You’ll see. I also want to note that this list is limited to the movies that had totally different rules with their R ratings than the TV show with its 9 pm slot on Sundays and OSHA rules. That’s a different essay.

Author’s note: I don’t have anything from the new guys here, who again, all did painful stuff in Jackass Forever, just not the most painful. However, Zackass’ body surfing was very rough looking and Rachel Wolfson sticking her tongue in a taser without making a sound was legendary.

My point is that pain and injuries are the name of the game and some of these guys are, for whatever personal reason, dedicated to the game. So without further ado, here are the 5 objectively most painful Jackass injuries ranked by me.

5. paper cuts – jackass: the movie

Okay, immediately starting with a weird one because I think Paper Cuts is actually just the most painful to watch as a viewer. And like, viewers are part of this whole thing so I think this is fair game to include. 

This is the stunt that I think resonates most with a viewer’s understanding of really really uncomfortable pain. When Chris Pontius is sticking a fish hook through Steve-O’s cheek, the audience can understand that it hurts, but unless they have had a fish hook personally put through their cheek, it’s kind of hard to imagine just how bad it feels. That is not the case with Paper Cuts, which is so visceral that I can hardly watch it. Like even while writing this I turned it on to make sure I had the details right but paused it as soon as Johnny Knoxville said that he was getting paper cuts through the webbing of his fingers, which is of course, like, the first thing he says.

The stunt starts off easily enough, potentially the most lo-fi the first movie ever gets, with all the guys hanging out in a gross little motel room. They’re all awkwardly piled on one side of the room, either standing against the wall or sitting on the floor or bed. Johnny Knoxville is sitting in the room’s only chair, curled in on himself as Ryan Dunn brandishes a manila envelope. It’s a bit throne-like. The rest of the stunt is easy to guess. Over a lot of yelling, Dunn mercilessly gives Knoxville repeated paper cuts between his toes and fingers with the envelope. Every time Dunn slices through his skin, the whole room groans with delight and Knoxville yells. The funniest line is probably from Dunn, who in his very even voice suggests, “If I do your hand, you’ll forget about the pain in your foot.”

The pièce de résistance is mid-stunt, when Lance Bangs, who had been filming with the crew, suddenly starts to gag. The whole room stops to jeer, Bam Margera making barf noises, as Bangs starts to wobble before fully puking and passing out on the motel carpet. Everyone erupts. One of my favorite shots in all of Jackass, is Bangs on the floor surrounded by Miller High Life.

They collect themselves for one final test, in which I don’t think I have to say anything else. In the words of a very stunned Steve-O, “that sucked.”

4. riot control test: jackass number two

Bam Margera is an annoying crybaby. He’s a lot of things, but first and foremost, he’s a crier. Second and soremost, he’s a loudmouth. And honestly? It is needed. There are several stunts that Bam shines in because he is unafraid to complain in the lead-up and cry when he’s hurt. The best display of this combo is in the second installment of the Riot Control Test stunts, which ends with him tearing up on a cement floor. 

Riot Control Test in Jackass Number Two is the twin of Riot Control Test in Jackass: The Movie. These are all kind of the high-tech spawn of Knoxville’s first Jackass stunt, the Self Defense stunt that he did for Big Brother which ends with him getting shot. In these tests, the guys have riot control weapons aimed and fired at them just to see what happens. In the first installment, Knoxville takes a “less-lethal” Pen-Prevent projectile to the abdomen. Ever the showman, Knoxville explains to the camera that he can’t take the 40-gram bean bag to the chest because it will be flying at him at 250 feet per second, and if it struck his heart, it would stop it. So he takes the hit to the stomach and is left with this bruise. 

Knoxville explained how, after that stunt, he could hardly stand up and sit down, which leads to my point that these tests are lightly anti-Jackassian in the sense that they leave long-lasting injuries guaranteed. Again, they generally aim for short-lasting pain. But who cares I guess, because they brought it back for Jackass Number Two and added Dunn and Bam and about 744 more projectiles.

So this stunt’s weapon, which I cannot believe exists, is called the I-460 Stingmore Mine, and it shoots these tiny rubber balls at 500 feet per second, which is double the speed of the other test. Chilling, incredibly dangerous, etc. At least one person agrees with me, because Dave England, who was going to be in the stunt, dropped out when he watched a test run of the firearm.

I feel mildly vindicated for my assessment that Dave England largely doesn’t do pain-related stunts here, since he immediately says this is giving him an anxiety attack because it's “too gnarly.” This isn’t to say that he can’t take pain or like won’t take pain (he was a professional snowboarder at some point) but that it’s not the purpose he serves on Jackass. I think it's because when he gets hurt, he freaks out and runs around, and this stunt physically can’t let him do that. The weird part is that on camera, Knoxville doesn’t even negotiate with him to try it — he just goes straight for Bam and Dunn, knowing that they will probably take the 745 hits this weapon deploys.

And he’s right. Knoxville obnoxiously lies to Dunn and Bam that the weapon is just loud and not scary, they line up, and Knoxville pulls the trigger, or pushes the button to be more accurate.

YouTube comments love to point out that Knoxville doesn’t fall over and essentially hops off the hit while Bam and Dunn are left on the floor. I think that's supposed to mean that he’s like stronger or something, but I think he just didn’t get hit as hard in the spray as the other guys. More so, I think that it’s just not in Knoxville’s character to fall down. For him, it’s funnier to stay standing, so he does. Dunn meanwhile stops crawling when the smoke clears and they notice that Bam is still collapsed on the ground and the most damning question is asked: “Are you crying?”

Jackass and its depiction of masculinity is a very talked about thing and I don’t think this is the essay to get into all of that but I think that Bam’s crying is one of those things that makes this whole project endearing. I often think about the world of stunts that Jackass inadvertently set off and how those videos rarely catch crying when something is painful, let alone mistakes, but that’s kind of a signature Bam thing. It makes everything he does feel DIY and real. In the CKY skating tapes that initially got the attention of Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine, Bam always edited them to highlight his skateboarding mistakes, so his audience has quite literally always seen him fall and react to falling his whole public career. I think Riot Control Test is kind of an extension of this — while Johnny Knoxville has to stay standing for his character, Bam Margera has to hit the ground and cry to be Bam Margera. It also probably really hurt.

In other words:

3. beehive tetherball: jackass 3d

Dave England’s panicked “What are we doing here?” as Manny Puig explains that 100 bee stings are usually deadly, while hundreds of bees fly around them, is probably one of the most encapsulating moments of the franchise. 

So I’ve written about this before but the point of Jackass isn't to be in pain, it’s to test out what happens, and if pain happens, they will react accordingly (this also supported by the fact that they usually just do one try with no practice). So the franchise runs on bad ideas and low pain tolerances. We now turn our attention to Beehive Tetherball in Jackass 3D.

While Dave England gracefully bowed out of the Riot Control Test stunt in the previous movie, he and Steve-O teamed up for a friendly game of tetherball with a bunch of angry bees in a makeshift hive. 

What’s good here is that the pain happens while the stunt does not, in the sense that England is so nervous he starts freaking out before the game even begins, gets stung, and runs off as bees continue to sting him and the rest of the crew. I think this stunt is objectively one of the most painful for that reaction alone, demonstrating the sliding scale of pain tolerance and real fear that can take hold of these guys when doing something they totally signed up for. 

Knoxville and Tremaine are obsessed with getting the footage, and while the stunt didn’t go off right, they got exactly what they wanted. England’s reaction. Or did they?

SURPRISE TWIST ENDING! The reality of this stunt is under review by fans because there’s a pretty controversial rumor that a lot of this clip was edited to make it look worse than it was. You can’t really see the bees, you can only hear them, and Jackass has been known to edit sound. So the questions are: Is this real? Were these real reactions? Did England actually get stung that much? A lot of old fans say no and have debunked it through the production’s animal safety agreements and human safety agreements. Steve-O and England stand by it, though. So. You be the judge.

3.5 lamborghini tooth pull: jackass 3d

Because of the insider fan drama over Beehive Tetherball, I am adding another painful stunt from that movie in this slot. Danger Ehren you’re off the bench, get on the damn court, this is Lamborghini Tooth Pull.

The Lambo Tooth Pull is something I would categorize as both painful for the audience and painful for Danger Ehren. It's painful for the audience because it makes you reflexively rub your jaw. It’s painful for Danger Ehren because it fractured his skull up to his eye socket. Let me repeat myself, it fractured his skull up to his eye socket.

Author’s note: The first time I made this list, I realized I didn’t have anything for Danger Ehren who did stuff like survive Mousetraps in Jackass: The Movie and revisit the Cup Test in Jackass Forever. The conclusion I have reached here is that Danger Ehren’s stunts are pretty much all painful but none of them are the most painful. Also, in Mousetraps he purposefully rolled in the traps to get more of them stuck to him, which is overkill in my opinion. But I ended up adding him in here so whatever, because:

It fractured his skull up to his eye socket.

2. the bulls: assorted installments

It must first be noted that Johnny Knoxville has a cartoon-based obsession with bullfighting; in fact, I would almost argue a bull is more symbolic to the series than a shopping cart. Anyway, Johnny and the bulls are a two-fold thing. 

Generally, a lot of Jackass can be explained by understanding that the guy in charge, Knoxville, grew up as avid Looney Tunes and Evel Knievel watcher, and his understanding of pranks and physics seem to be inspired by these characters. Like, think about it, launching yourself on a faulty rocket is very Bugs Bunny meets Evel. But nothing is so glaringly cartoon-inspired as Knoxville and the bulls. I mean:

Factass: That is actually a yak. So that’s why this stunt is not on this list below.

The other thing here is that Knoxville is interested in pranking animals, too. That’s his phrasing — pranking them, tricking them, which is a way to look at the world that I frankly don’t think anyone has done.

Jackass and its affiliates have a long and storied history with animal-based pranks, I mean that’s almost the entire premise of Wildboyz, plus Steve-O is an animal rights activist now. Maybe I am being generous, but the more I think about it, the more I kinda understand the hazy logic of the animal pranks, even if I don’t like them personally. Like in Knoxville’s mind, getting absolutely skewered by a bull’s horn is fine since the bull is part of the prank too. If Bam can punch Dunn in the arm when he’s mad at him for screwing with him, then it’s only right for a bull to be able to flip Johnny Knoxville for annoying him too.

Like I have discussed before, the point of the stunts isn't to get really hurt, it’s to see what happens when you do [BLANK], and if you get hurt, well, that’s what happens. It's a scientific experiment. 

So for the sake of science, testing cartoons, and appreciating the wild world around them, Knoxville (and other crew members) have gotten fairly-mauled by bulls many, many, many times.

the toro totter: jackass number two

I made the mistake of showing The Toro Totter to my friend who had never heard of Jackass because I forgot how fucked up they get. In my mind, it was just them playing seesaw and then hopping over a fence — I forgot that, like, most of them actually don’t make it over the fence.

Basically, what starts with a funny rodeo clown-style game turns freaked really fast. The crew of people doing the prank is, just an aside, an all-star lineup. It’s divided into two teams, Knoxville and Pontius vs. Bam and Dunn. I say all-star because generally, anything with Bam and Dunn is automatically funny, Knoxville is obsessed with getting the perfect bull footage, and Pontius rarely ever does stuff like this. I have a working theory that Pontius agrees to do the weirdest and grossest stuff early so he can mostly just hang out and riff on the side, so having him here fully doing Wildboyz for Jackass is really notable. I know I just said something in Jackass was of serious note, and you know what? It is. 

Anyway, they bounce up and down on the quad-seesaw and have fun for a split second with little hats and lollipops before the bull starts charging. I think they didn’t account for the fact that the bull is strong enough to demolish the seesaw, but they realize that very very quickly. This is a stunt where pure panic sets in and the normally level-headed Dunn makes a break for it before getting pinned against the wall and slammed to the ground by the bull. According to r/jackass, Dunn got pretty hurt here, which made Bam upset and bail out early. He does this by jumping over the fence so smoothly. That leaves a delighted Knoxville and a pissed off Pontius on the seesaw. After Pontius’ leg gets caught by a horn, he makes a run for it too (he does not hop the fence as neatly as Bam), and that leaves Knoxville to get the bull’s attention. I don’t know, it’s all a mess and ends with Steve-O essentially watching between his fingers before telling people to call it for the day.

Actually, it ends with Knoxville laughing with a huge smile while the rest of the crew stares in a pretty stunned silence. This is what I would call a fun-but-tense-car-ride-home stunt.

the invisible man: jackass 3d

I could not, for the life of me, remember what this was called and spent like a good long moment googling “johnny knoxville jackass 3d bull,” “johnny knoxville jackass 3d flip,” “johnny knoxville jackass 3d painting,” and was just getting nothing. I started to think I was making it up, but my mind could never come up with something so Knoxvillian. Anyway, I found it. 

The Invisible Man is another cartoon-like stunt in which Knoxville camouflages himself into a big happy painting in the middle of a bullring and basically waits for a bull to charge him. I think this might have something to do with the lack of red in the picture and the lack of movement in the stunt, which are things bulls are supposedly attracted to. So the question is like, will the bull charge? This is also Jackass 3D which as I have said before, I think has like really grim vibes, and this stunt is no exception. It (it meaning the stunt, the enthusiasm, and the crew’s interest) feels really forced. Anyway, this is Jackass so the bull of course charges him and sends Knoxville into a full 360 spin before he uses his neck to catch his fall. 

As the crew mumbles about how hard of a hit Knoxville took and how he clearly landed badly, Knoxville ignores people asking how he’s doing to ask the camera, “Did we get it?” Probably an essay for another time, but that’s perhaps one of the most telling moments when explaining how much pain doesn’t matter when the perfect shot is on the line.

the magic trick: jackass forever

Okay, while I personally think that the Toro Totter is more gnarly, The Magic Trick is the most violent bull stunt. Due to the brain hemorrhage.

I find Jackass Forever to be generally weird. I like it, but it is just kind of this bizarre mix of excitement and desperation? Like they’re so pumped to be making this and have been essentially working on it for over a decade as far as writing stunts goes but the crew is different so the camaraderie is different and they’re older now and their bodies hurt because of the thing they’re famous for, and then also on top of all of that they need it to be really really good. The Magic Trick really needles all these problems by combining a bull (nostalgia) with a really cartoon-y stunt (the best Jackass stuff) with a very concussed Johnny Knoxville (the Captain). 

The stunt was like a magic trick joke where Johnny the Magnificent would disappear a glass of milk by putting milk in his hat, getting hit by a bull, and then I guess no milk would be in the hat because of the inevitable flip. It’s kind of a bad magic trick.

During the press for Jackass Forever, Knoxville did a very well deserved interview with GQ where he broke down the stunts in a very smart, custom cardigan. It’s a good video, but really explains what went wrong with the Magic Trick stunt, which was everything.

The first problem is that what the viewer sees is the second try. Jackass doesn’t normally do second tries like that, they like filming and publishing the first try. So on the first try, Knoxville got hit in the ribs, but the bull was kind of boring. Sure. In his words, “it was one of those things that really hurt, but it didn’t look amazing.” So they did it again with a new bull and a pre-injured magician. He got the shot.

He also got a broken wrist, a broken rib, a concussion, and a brain hemorrhage.

The ending is that Johnny Knoxville had a brain hemorrhage after this stunt and is still unhappy with it because he forgot to finish the magic trick in the take they used. He was, of course, unconscious and in the back of an ambulance. Now that I wrote it out, Knoxville’s obsession with his craft really comed out with these bulls.

Note: Ram Jam from Jackass 3D is disqualified from this category. That was a ram. 

Note: Roller Buffalo from Jackass 3D is also disqualified from this category. Those were buffalo. 

1. department store boxing: jackass: the movie

The clear and obvious choice for the most painful stunt is Knoxville getting knocked out by Butterbean in Department Store Boxing. It’s also a fan favorite and incredibly funny. Kind of the perfect combo. 

The stunt is simple — Knoxville boxed heavyweight champion, Butterbean, in a department store. This is a stunt, despite how scrappy Knoxville is, where injury was imminent/ But the opportunity was too good, in Knoxville's obsessive eyes, to pass up. It’s a stunt that makes me say this is what Jackass is for — danger, public humiliation, comedy bits, unbelievable pain, reckless bodily harm. This is why we tune in.

So dressed in their boxing best, Knox and Butter enter the store, a ref (Loomis) starts the match, and they’re off. There are brief scuffles against clothing racks and shoe shelves, but the round ends in seconds after Butterbean just repeatedly smashes Knoxville’s head. 

The final round is probably the most iconic part of the stunt. In like one second, Butterbean knocks Knoxville out cold between two department store counters. This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone actually get their lights punched out. I thought that was a metaphor, not a real thing that could happen. You can hear him snoring —literally put to sleep. For the record, according to Knoxville, he wasn’t actually snoring though; he was choking on his tongue. He eventually wakes up with emergency responders shuffling around him as he stares with a dazed expression. It’s in this confused state where he says potentially the funniest improv ever spoken to a camera: “Is Butterbean okay?”

final thoughts

After a lot of consideration, if I had to pick one of these stunts to recreate, I think I would take Paper Cuts. Even if it makes me fold in on myself just to think about. And that’s like that stunt is obvious, right? That’s what a reasonable person would pick out of this list. It’s short-term pain for a huge payoff. But weirdly, the ones I was choosing between were Paper Cuts and Department Store Boxing. Like, really oscillating between one of the easiest one and one of the most catastrophic. I’m not sure why it was those two, pain is going to happen regardless and I kind of understand Knoxville’s excitement in going for the one and done punch. I just wouldn’t crash into a giant glass case and would duck. I would also, of course, say an even funnier one-liner.

Anyway, this thought exercise made me think about how they start doing this anyway. I imagine it's physically a list of approved stunts and they just kind of split it up based on specialities and character and reactions but like I mean the mental space. How do you start rationalizing how bad and how long something will hurt and how much it’ll impact whatever else you do? Plus, imagine that you’re getting paid for it and could even walk a red carpet if you do it the best.

I guess that’s why Steve-O did the fucking backflip.

Thanks for reading! This post is dedicated to my friend Carolina who edited my last essay despite never seeing Jackass and suggested that I try a listicle for my next one. I also want to end on this screenshot from Riot Control Test, where Ryan Dunn angrily smokes a cigarette at Knoxville. This is one of my favorite stills from the franchise. The random patio, the pack, the Blackberry, the discarded protective ear muffs. Enchanting.