Characters getting “knocked out” in films and TV shows

Adam Adamant Lives made a joke out of this as early as 1966: "I find concussion quite invigorating."

 

The only one I can think of that looks real is the cop knocking out Michael Corleone in the Godfather. Apparently the after effects are very realistic too.

Otherwise, it always looks a little silly and takes me out of whatever I'm watching.

 

First guy that I thought of.

 

You are correct, I think Pete got knocked on the head in nearly every episode!

 

I love A Fish Called Wanda, but the ending sequence has one of these ridiculous moments, when Wanda clubs Otto over the head and knocks him out, and it is not even two minutes later that he is awake and on the rampage again like nothing happened (and still armed, as she didn't think to disarm him when he was out, LOL).

 

My favorite is when someone grabs the flimsiest vase in the room and smashes it on someones head and they go down. I saw security camera footage of how this actually works. A ***** was trying to rob a liquor store and an owner came up behind him and smashed a liquor bottle on his head. That stunned him. Then the other owner smashed another bottle on his forehead and he stumbled a little. But the third bottle finally took him down and sent him to the hospital. That was a lot of booze!

 

“Mannix was, by one count, shot 17 times and knocked unconscious another 55 during the show's eight-year run, and how great is that?“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-d...007111600181.html?hpid=features1&hpv=national

 

Was the owner looking over the shelves to make sure that he chose three of his cheapest bottles before he hit the guy?

 

Concussions are terrible. In years past not as much was known of them and many people thought it was more akin to a bruise where you just rest a few days and then it's back to normal. But it's not quite that easy. Each one has a cumulative effect and can have lingering effects for life. Outcomes are different for each person. I've had several of them, including at least two really bad ones in childhood, and I'd say it has definitely affected my memory at the least. And each subsequent injury had a prolonged recovery and greater side effects. The last one took me months to feel remotely normal again and each day was a struggle with bright lights, continuous headaches, fatigue, etc.

 

All through all the Avengers (I binged through the Tara and Purdey series recently) and am always amazed at how these supposedly professional agents are always getting coshed, leaving their doors unlocked and never noticing the villains car parked a few feet away from their own vehicle

 

It may have been here but I remember asking once whether all the head-butting in so many action movies was the least bit realistic. To me it would seem the butter would as likely get concussions as the buttee.

 

Getting knocked out as portrayed in movies and TV shows is usually unrealistic. Like someone said upthread, you will probably end up sending them to the hospital (or killing them) or just end up annoying the hell out of them.

Though, in sports (mostly boxing and football,) getting knocked out happens all the time. Concussions are likely. Long-term CTE is most probable after taking many blows to the head in a career (knocked out or not.)

Personally, I knocked out at least two people, to my knowledge, over the years when I played football. Once in youth football and once in Semi-Pro ball. In youth football, it was just a teammate at practice who tried to tackle me and I flattened him. In Semi-Pro ball, it was in an actual game against an opponent. I was running the ball up the middle and the middle linebacker (who used to play at Clemson in college) hit me harder than I had ever been hit. But I was going full speed, like he was. He must've taken the worst part of the hit since I knocked him out and dislocated his shoulder. But, I was woozy as hell after the play and when I got up from the pile, I started to go to the other team's huddle for the next play. A teammate had to come over and grab me and walk me back to the huddle. Coach took me out for a play to make sure I was okay. LOL. I ended up being fine after the trainer and coaches checked me over. I didn't have to go to the hospital, doctor's office or anything.

I've been knocked out once myself when I was a little kid (6 or 7 years old,) but it was from slipping on grass on a steep hill. I fell backwards and the back of my head landed on a flat rock. Knocked me out cold. The next thing I remember after that was waking up in the backseat of my parents' car.

 

half the time it was his fault stop opening your door to obvious thugs, Jim. at least move into a real apartment with a security system

 

Happened to me twice as a kid and while I wasn't out long each time, I was slow to get moving once I came to.

Getting the hero/heroine of a story knocked out is a cheap and lazy way to get a scene change. That's all it is, a scene change.

 

There was a Star Trek where Kirk just heaves a guy down the corridor and the guys just lands face down, passed out.

That’s all it took??

 

Kind of along the same lines, but what about fights in some martial arts movies? Three or four people are ganging up on the protagonist, but they all take their turns getting their butt beat then knocked out by the good guy. They never try to gang up on them, and they never think to themselves "This guy is good...I'm not getting knocked out, I'm leaving."...nope! They will wait watch their buddies get their butts handed to them before going in for the same.

 

In rewatching Lost from the beginning recently, I noticed how often they use this trope and it definitely bugged me. I know I'm suspending all disbelief in a show like this anyway, but there were people getting knocked out left and right. Many times the person doing the clubbing would say something after like "I'm doing this for your own good"

 

On a related front: I wonder how many people are alive today because their would-be murderers thought you could strangle someone to death in a minute or less, like in TV and movies. In reality, in that timeframe the victim would generally just pass out and come to a few moments later; to really finish someone off would take five to ten minutes.

 

I could never watch the Canadian show 'Republic of Doyle' for this very reason. I think it ran for 6+ seasons (my other half watched them all...seemed like forever) and to be honest Doyle and his father should have been dead or had serious brain damage by Season 1 Episode 3.

I think they got knocked unconscious at least once every episode. They need some better tropes/cliches for 'Private Detective' shows.

 

I think with headbutts, it works a lot like punches. If you are the one braced and knowing its going to happen, you will likely respond and endure it better than the person who doesn't. I think the sudden shock/surprise is a big component of the headbutt.

 

Yes! This show! It wasn't just the two male leads, either - the entire cast, at some point (I got through Season 3 before the plot holes and Newfoundland tropes got the better of me), had a blunt-object-induced nap, followed by a slight headache, no medical attention, and then right back into the action. The worst side effect anyone ever suffered was a moment or two of confusion when they came around, usually at a convenient spot to reveal something pertinent to the bad guys and escalate the situation.

Mind you, this was produced recently, after the repeated head injuries typical in some contact sports made headlines with their long-term effects (confusion, memory loss, changes in personality and demeanor...cumulative football head injuries have been speculated to have been a major component of Aaron Hernandez's murder of Odin Lloyd, but that was in 2017, after I believe this series wrapped).

 

LOL, I just coincidentally came across this passage on Jim Shooter's blog about 1970s Marvel Comics:

Gerber and the Duck – Part 1 – JimShooter.com

I was generally against violence without consequences in comics. Every time a character in comics was hit on the head with a heavy, blunt instrument, went to sleep for as long as it was convenient for the writer and woke up just fine and rarin’ to chase the miscreants, I wondered, no concussion? All bones intact?

You saw that idiotic “knocked out” convention oft employed in TV and movies of the time, too. That and crashing through plate glass without so much as a nick.

As Editor in Chief I campaigned against concussion-free head trauma and other consequence-free violence.

Stan had always been conscious of the blow-to-the-head thing. To his credit, most Marvel characters either had some degree of invulnerability (Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk) or part of their power-set was the ability to avoid being hit (Spider-Man, Daredevil, battle-savvy Captain America).

 

Well don't watch the Punisher TV series on Netflix.

 

I think it comes from a time when the movie industry was new and anything that added, or seemed to add, a bit of excitement or drama was acceptable. You didn't always what the character killed, just out of the action for a certain time.

It would not surprise me to learn that the sound that was supposed to be the impact of fist on chin was in fact some stock recording with the same one used in hundreds of movies - a bit like the stock standard scream.

The casual killing in moves is of course a whole other topic. It's never ceased to amaze me that you can't show simulated scenes of explicit sex in movies without them having to have a special restricted rating. but it's OK to show people getting knocked out or even killed, even in cartoons intended for children.