For most of human history, every society had its fools—the circus clown, the daredevil, the people who were willing to suffer so that everyone else could laugh. At the beginning of the 21st century, that tradition found its ultimate form in a little television program called Jackass. Over the next couple of decades, Johnny Knoxville and the rest of his crew were set on fire, trampled by bulls, bitten by sharks, dragged by horses, and launched through the air with enough force to leave behind plenty of broken bones. They shattered their teeth, they shattered their brains, and the scars… well, they still remain today. And they’re still doing this stuff today. The pain is real. The injuries are real. And, well, as you know, that just made us laugh even harder. This is the story of the worst slash best injuries in Jackass history and why these foolish fools became legendary legends. Don’t try this at home.
The Johnny Knoxville Files
Johnny Knoxville started off with a bang, breaking his ankle while trying to jump a small section of the L.A. River in the pilot episode of the Jackass series on MTV. During the first Jackass movie, Johnny and Ryan Dunn tried to jump a ceramic pig with a golf cart. They crashed, and Johnny almost crushed his head in what could have been a fatal accident; instead, he walked away with a severe concussion. In addition to that, he got knocked out by the boxer Butterbean, leaving him with a lasting case of vertigo.
Then came Jackass Number Two and the infamous Toro Totter. Knoxville, Ryan Dunn, Bam Margera, and Chris Pontius balanced on a giant seesaw-like contraption while a pissed-off bull repeatedly charged beneath them. As you could probably guess, the entire thing quickly descended into chaos. Johnny Knoxville was pretty badly beaten and almost gored by the animal—common sense was nowhere to be found. The Red Rocket stunt from that same movie nearly killed Knoxville and several crew members when the metal rods inside the rocket came flying out in all directions, missing everyone by mere inches.
Years later came Jackass Forever. By this point, Johnny Knoxville was fifty years old. Most stunt performers would’ve retired long before then, but Knoxville dressed as a magician and stepped into the ring with a bull once again. This bull’s name was Pecker Wrecker, and the stunt was called “The Magic Trick”—a name alone that should’ve been enough to cancel the idea. The bull charged and launched him through the air with such force that the footage looks unreal, almost like a cartoon. The injuries were severe: a broken wrist, broken ribs, a concussion, and a brain hemorrhage that required months of recovery. Probably for the first time in the franchise’s history, the audience wasn’t exactly laughing at the footage. It was so intense that people were genuinely worried about Johnny.
The remarkable thing is that this wasn’t even Johnny Knoxville’s most infamous injury. While filming Jackass Presents: Mat Hoffman’s Tribute to Evel Knievel—a program that Johnny wasn’t even supposed to be in—he simply felt left out and wanted to have some fun, so he joined at the last minute. Mr. Knoxville’s attempt to honor Evel Knievel was to try a motorcycle backflip, even though he didn’t actually know how to ride a motorcycle. The stunt totally failed, mostly because Johnny wasn’t listening to the instructions. He let go of the bike, it flew up nearly twenty feet into the air, and then came crashing back down directly onto his pee-pee. The crash tore his urethra and resulted in what doctors described as a broken penis. Right after the injury, every time Knoxville’s heart beat, blood would pump out of his wiener. The injury was so severe that he later revealed he required a catheter for more than three years, describing the pain of using it as being like stabbing yourself in an open wound.
Most people would’ve viewed that as a sign from the universe—or from God—to stop and pursue a safer hobby or career, but no. Johnny Knoxville returned over and over and over again. Then came the movie Action Point, where Knoxville was injured more than on any other film or series he had ever worked on. He suffered four concussions, a broken hand, whiplash, lost teeth, and much more. But the absolute worst was when he crashed on an alpine slide and shattered the bones around his eye socket. The injury created a bizarre side effect, causing his eye to literally pop out whenever he sneezed or laughed. Among a franchise filled with broken bones and horrific accidents, that may still be the detail that makes people cringe the most.
Steve-O’s Human Experiments
And somehow, after all of that, Johnny Knoxville kept showing up. He kept doing his thing, and so did Steve-O. There are moments throughout the history of Jackass where it genuinely feels like Steve-O is conducting a scientific experiment on himself. In the Little Red Wagon stunt, he climbed into a toy wagon and launched himself down a steep hill, tearing skin right off his ass—footage that wasn’t even aired on television.
As the franchise grew bigger, so did the pain and punishment. This man got a BB gun tattoo on his butt and later performed the BB Gun Nipple Piercing stunt in Jackass 3D. The same movie featured Fire Angels, where Steve-O rode a bicycle while engulfed in flames. Later, Jackass 3D introduced the Fire Gauntlet, a stunt that left him with third-degree burns across fifteen percent of his body. Years later, Steve-O still describes it as some of the worst pain he has ever experienced.
Another serious injury came during a stunt that involved being pulled by a horse while wakeboarding. Steve-O hit a ramp, flew through the air, and shattered his collarbone badly enough to require surgery. Then, during the production of Jackass Forever, he was launched from a high-speed treadmill, knocked unconscious, and slammed headfirst into concrete—and this was less than one week into filming. Looking back now, it’s difficult not to see a deeper story underneath the comedy. Steve-O’s years of addiction and self-destruction often seemed intertwined with the stunts themselves. But then he kept doing it while sober. So yeah, the miracle is that he survived long enough to make a change in his life while somehow still staying true to his Jackass self.
Danger Ehren and the Rest of the Crew
And then there’s that guy, Danger Ehren. He’s the one who had his tooth pulled out by Bam Margera’s Lamborghini in Jackass 3D. But the tooth didn’t simply come out—the force reportedly fractured portions of Ehren’s face all the way toward his eye socket. In the original MTV show, he seriously messed up his arm while doing blindfolded skateboarding. Then came The High Five, which launched him across a room using a giant mechanical hand. And, of course, there was The Cup Test. Professional athletes punched his nuts, fired hockey pucks, baseballs, and other projectiles directly into his groin while discovering that the protective equipment wasn’t exactly that protective. The worst of it came when a pogo stick was repeatedly bounced directly onto his balls, a punishment that eventually resulted in a ruptured testicle and emergency surgery.
The rest of the crew endured their own nightmares as well. In the closing number of Jackass Number Two, Preston Lacy was flung through the air nearly twenty feet straight into a metal camera stand. In Ryan Dunn’s Wild Horses stunt, a galloping stallion violently dragged him away, leaving him with what initially appeared to be nothing more than a sore shoulder. Only later did doctors discover a dangerous blood clot near his heart and brain, turning what looked like another funny stunt into a serious medical situation that required years of treatment. Allegedly, the injury also sent Ryan Dunn into a deep depression, affecting not only his body but his mind as well.
Meanwhile, Brandon Novak endured one of the most devastating crashes in Jackass history during the Doo Doo Falls stunt, breaking nearly every rib on one side of his body. Loomis Fall broke his hand and his collarbone during the Jackass 3D jet engine stunt. Finally, Bam Margera broke his tailbone while jumping a ramp in the Bucket Car stunt, and he literally had his butt cheeks branded like cattle in Jackass Number Two. And of course… the brand was shaped like a male reproductive organ, and of course… the wound got horribly infected.
When Nature Wins
One recurring lesson throughout the history of Jackass is that nature always wins. There was Beehive Tetherball, which remains one of the funniest examples of them playing around with Mother Nature. The cast attempted to play tetherball using a giant, live beehive, and the bees… well… they didn’t like it. They responded exactly how you would expect.
But the most terrifying example arrived years later during a Shark Week crossover event, when newcomer Poopies attempted to channel his inner Fonzie and jump the shark. The jump itself succeeded, but the real danger arrived when he landed in the water. A shark attacked his hand, tearing through muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Blood immediately filled the water as emergency crews rushed in. The stunt stopped feeling like a television show and started feeling like a real-life sequel to Jaws. For one brief moment, everyone watching remembered that the danger had always been 100% real. Oh yeah… and Poopies also got bitten in the face by a venomous snake in Jackass Forever.
The Legacy of the Court Jesters
Sometimes I like to describe the Jackass crew as court jesters of pain. I also like to describe them as idiots. But a more accurate description is probably modern-day stunt clowns. Their work actually has a lot in common with people like Buster Keaton. Like the silent film comedians who came before them, these guys understood the fundamentals of physical comedy. They knew that the audience laughed much harder when the consequences felt real. Johnny Knoxville was actually crushed while trying to recreate a famous Buster Keaton building-fall stunt during that infamous closing number of Jackass Number Two.
Their scars became part of the performance. Their pain became their art, and their injuries became part of the mythology. Through brain hemorrhages, shattered faces, third-degree burns, blood clots, ruptured testicles, broken ribs, broken femurs, shark attacks, broken penises, and countless concussions, they built one of the most beloved comedy franchises of all time. If you really, really, really think about it… it’s absolute cinema.
And ultimately, it’s just fun. Not because people enjoy watching pain, but because people enjoy watching commitment. Few groups of friends have ever been more committed to making each other laugh than the cast of Jackass. These guys became legends, they became myths, and the scars became part of their characters. The audience watched these people grow old, get wiser and dumber, get injured and heal, and somehow, they just keep coming back for more.
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