Hollywood Healing

"Zoro: So, how's it look, Doc? Give me a few bandages and call it a day?

Chopper: I'm afraid this is quite serious. You've taken heavy damage to your abdomen -- We're going to have to remove most of your colon.

Zoro: What's that, Chopper? "Band-Aids heal everything"?

Chopper: (holding up a colostomy bag) This is going to be your new rectum.

Zoro: Heal everything."

- This Comic of VG Cats

No matter how badly he's injured -- be it from gunshot, blade, burning, acid, you name it -- an action-adventure hero never ends up with permanent scars anywhere that is normally visible to the audience. (Although he may have one or two hidden under a shirt so he can take it off and reveal just how tough he really is.) You'd expect at least one missing tooth or broken nose in a lifetime of fighting crime. Yet Bruce Wayne's corporate headshots are perfect time and time again, and James Bond never shows up at an embassy dinner with two shiners and a wad of gauze over his nose, even if he's just been hit in the face by an iron bar.

This gift for complete and utter regeneration of wounds no doubt contributes the hero's ability to get up and beat the villain to a paste after suffering a concussion, third degree burns, and a compound fracture of both legs in the previous scene. (See Made of Iron, Heroic Second Wind.)

The Big Bad may also be similarly indestructible, but his badness always results in hideous scars or mechanical limbs whenever he gets injured.

Either way, the damage suffered is often shrugged off as Only a Flesh Wound.

Between them, Made of Iron and Hollywood Healing cover the two extremes of the Action Hero -- the Terminator-type that can walk unscathed through a bomb blast, and the hero who gets hurt badly but somehow always manages to come back and triumph in the end.

Compare Bottled Heroic Resolve.

Also known as "The Cinematographic Law Of Heroic Injury". For video game examples, compare with Heal Thyself, Walk It Off, and Trauma Inn. Contrast Healing Factor, Healing Hands, where this level is justified. See Scars Are Forever for the most common aversion of this trope.

Anime
"Doctor: I'm afraid you've suffered some very serious injuries. You'll need several weeks of bed rest, followed by months of intense physical therapy, and even then, there's a very real possibility that you may never make a full recovery.
 * Spike from Cowboy Bebop was constantly suffering gunshot wounds or severe beatings that would have him wrapped up head-to-toe in gauze, but he'd be perfectly fine in the next episode. This might be realistic because there is no actual definition of time between episodes. With the exception of two-parters, Spike may have had more than enough time to heal. Still doesn't explain how his gunfighting or Kung-Fu abilities don't suffer for all the damage beyond his natural status as a Badass.
 * In Samurai Champloo, this gets taken to an extreme in the final episode: Mugen winds up suffering multiple lacerations, a broken arm, and is gut shot. Jin gets gut stabbed. Keep in mind before the invention of the I.V., gut injuries like this were usually fatal. Even with IV feeding, these injuries would take weeks if not months to recover from, especially considering that they had been going all out and not really resting for months previous to this. At the end, it's mentioned that Jin and Mugen have been out for about a week, and they get up and go about their business.
 * Priss from the original Bubblegum Crisis OVAs was bad for this, especially in episode 6: "Red Eyes". She is nearly hit by an orbital strike, thrown from her bike, stabbed in the gut, has her own railgun spike driven through her shoulder, is thrown through a window to fall several stories, is beaten by three large cyberdroids, hit by a multi-spectrum laser that strips most of her armour off, and still wins the fight. Of course, she was supposed to die in that episode.
 * Very heavily used in Hellsing, mainly by Seras Victoria. This is somewhat justified by the fact that she's a lesser vampire, though, and it's only Hollywood Healing for her because the horrible injuries she receives look like paper cuts next to what Alucard and Father Anderson suffer on a regular basis (in their case, they benefit from a natural Healing Factor). Subverted when she loses her left arm to Zorin; although the shadows that she gained afterward can be shaped into a new arm, the arm itself does not actually regrow.
 * Also, Integra doesn't flinch (or miss) when she gets
 * Subverted in Trigun, where, underneath his Badass Longcoat, Vash the Stampede's body is absolutely riddled with scars. Badly. Some patches are actually held in place by metal implants.
 * Plus you know, he's missing his freaking left arm! The only odd thing is that his face stays suitably Bishonen.
 * Until Hang Fire, that is, where he does suffer from repeated punches to the face. He gets better, though.
 * Vash's brother suffered severe injuries from being blasted by the Angel Arm cannon from Vash, injuries which he doesn't fully regenerate from until 23 years after the fact. This implies that all of those injuries could be healed if Vash tried.
 * Berserk Abridged parodies this:

Casca: Are you sure?

Doctor: Of course I'm sure! I'm a doctor! I've got my doctor hat on! I'm always sure!

Casca: Well, you know, he is the main character of an action anime.

Doctor: Oh! Well hell, that's different then. I'm sure he'll be up and about very soon."


 * It's a subtle Running Gag in Ranma 1/2: no matter how badly beat-up the characters get, all they ever need to recover after regaining consciousness is a small first-aid kit that has some cotton wads, disinfectant, band-aids, and very little else.
 * At one point, early in the series, Ranma was sent flying into a wall hard enough to leave a sizable crater; the foes claimed he had broken every bone in his body, and, indeed, his bones and joints kept popping and snapping audibly. However, he recovered from these injuries (even after being turned into a girl) only a few minutes later, and was still in perfect condition to punch through ice boulders, take Ryouga's kicks and suplexes, and even have a skating rink's worth of ice collapse on top of him with no ill effects.
 * Averted when, after falling from well over a hundred feet while carrying four girls on his back, he landed perfectly on his feet and broke his legs on impact. He was laid out with casts for several weeks afterwards.
 * Black Lagoon is absolutely full of this. Revy gets a few gunshot wounds and several stab wounds that are wrapped up and never mentioned again. The most blatant example, however, is her bare fist fight with Roberta, which literally lasts for hours, resulting in only some bruising, black eyes and bloody noses. By the next episode, she's fine. Then again, there is no indication of how much time has passed between the episodes.
 * Shizuo from Durarara spent most of his childhood utterly destroying his body via habitual overexertion -- everything from ripping apart muscle and ligaments to shattering his pelvis and spinal column. Most people who receive such injuries understandably never walk again. Shizuo, on the other hand, slowly developed Charles Atlas Superpowers.
 * Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure does this constantly. It's made even worse by the heavy amount of damage characters take to the face during fights. One particularly notable example is Doppio

Comic Books

 * Particularly noticeable in The Punisher arc "Barracuda", in which The Punisher (as ever) doesn't suffer any kind of permanent injury, while Barracuda loses several fingers, some teeth and an eye.
 * The Punisher regularly takes massive damage. In the very first story arc of the MAX title he gets shot in the chest with a shotgun (noting that his rib is not broken, but is actually gone) and afterwards a man jams his fist into the wound and tries to pull his lung out, an injury that is never referenced again. Possibly justified by the fact that each story arc takes place six months after the last one, giving him some time to heal. But this ends up being averted in the Jason Aaron run (set in the same continuity), where after a particular brutal fight he consults with a doctor he knew in 'Nam. While Frank's top priority is getting out of his hands out of their casts, the doctor tells him that he has to let them heal if he wants to keep his motor control. He also notes that if he doesn't already have arithritis he will now, that he has high blood pressure, cartilidge damaged in his knees and hips, noise induced hearing loss and most likely chronic pain from improperly healed wounds and herniated discs. He flat out tells Frank that the days of him recovering from a broken leg in three weeks are over and that despite him keeping himself in excellent shape hes just too old for doing what he does.
 * More of an editorial oversight than true Hollywood Healing, but still: in the first volume of The Invisibles, Dane MacGowan gets the tip of his little finger cut off and devoured. Subsequent artists forgot this and would draw it in from time to time.
 * A similar problem happened in the Comic Book Hitman, in which Hakken's hand (which he chainsawed off after it was bitten by a zombie seal) would sometimes be drawn as a stump/prosthetic and sometimes drawn in as if it were healed.
 * Scars or not, Batman's continued ability to move without agony, do incredible gymnastics, and avoid of brain damage can all be attributed to Hollywood Healing. How many times has he been hit over the head or crudely stitched up a bloody wound and kept using the injured portion because he didn't have time to see to it properly?
 * Notably, one of his most famous storylines was about his back being broken. This seems to have had no real lasting effect.
 * Played entirely straight with the Joker, who is still pretty agile for a guy whose had his kneecap blown off and most of his teeth knocked out.
 * Several speedsters have a Healing Factor as a side effect of their speed, by the reckoning that their body's metabolism works fast enough that they heal faster (questions about why they don't, say, age faster tend to get Handwaved). However, this explanation still invokes Hollywood Healing, since they recover from injuries that would /never/ heal as an extension of natural healing processes, no matter how sped up. One especially blatant instance, from Ultimate Marvel, is Magneto blasting Quicksilver point-blank in the kneecaps with a shotgun, which puts him out of action for the rest of the miniseries but doesn't leave any permanent damage at all.
 * Subverted however with DC's Bart Allen, who also got shot in the kneecap. It was explained to the doctors that he "heals fast, but not right", meaning that the tissue damage was repairing itself, but the bone remained ruined. He ended up needing an artificial kneecap, and on the operating table the doctors had to keep breaking the bones over and over so they could be removed.
 * Keep in mind that anesthesia was not an option, his 'super healing' means it wears off in seconds. So he was perfectly awake for each and every re-break.
 * Possible Handwaving allowed, as the Scarlet Witch is certainly capable of making sure her beloved brother heals up nicely.
 * Subverted in the She Hulk comics when she's working at a law firm that employs super-powered people such as speedsters as mail clerks. It's mentioned during an attack on the firm that said speedsters will need immediate medical attention for even minor injuries. The reason being that their super speed means that the effects of their injuries will simply occur faster too. So a minor cut might still be minor... but the blood loss might be occurring at super speeds!
 * Parodied in French comic strip Rubrique à Brac (by Gotlib): it says that even after a horrifying car crash or similar accident, the hero will only ever need a Band-aid on his upper left arm (or right arm if he's left-handed!)
 * The protagonists in Runaways appear to be pretty healthy considering that they are virtually the only crime fighters in LA to stop various supervillains while living in various underground bunkers which probably lacks resources to deal with serious medical emergencies. On the other hand, the series subverts this when Chase is shown with his arm in a sling an unspecified amount of time after having his arm pulled out of his socket by a Doombot and Klara Prast is shown to be rather black and blue from her husband's various abuses. There's also the fact that most of the hideouts were designated and stocked by their parents who were filthy rich and geniuses, so it's not too much of a stretch that they included some stuff to deal with serious injuries.
 * In Sin City, people can be grazed by machine gunfire, fall out of buildings, and even get hit by cars and get up once they caught their second wind and slapped a band-aid on the wound.

Film
"Lets see, the ship is all fixed up and you are completely healed... about 3 days."
 * Rocky Balboa. Made even worse by the fact that in nearly every Rocky film there is some sort of worry about his health, (in Rocky 2 he already has trouble following his trainer's moving finger, in 3 it's commented that the beatings he took in the first two movies should have killed him, 5 is all about how he has sustained brain damage and might well die if he ever gets in the ring again) and each time these health concerns and the physical toll taken on him mysteriously vanishes by the next movie.
 * Parodied in Last Action Hero when the titular hero gets shot in the Real World... and rapidly goes into shock from massive blood loss. The Genre Savvy sidekick manages to save him by bringing him back into the world of movies, where he gets right up and shrugs it off, since it's only a slight flesh wound according to action movie tropes.
 * Miller's Crossing: Tom is beaten repeatedly by almost every other character in the film, even taking a hard kick to the face at one point, but doesn't have so much as a black eye to show for it.
 * Lampshaded in the DVD commentary on Serenity by Joss Whedon when asked by Baldwin about how long after the big battle the final scene happened.

"Word of God says the epilogue really happend, but next time Travis won't be a hero."
 * In Eraser, Arnold uses a fridge door as a shield to protect against a grenade that apparently fires straight shards of metal. One pierces his right hand between the knuckles of the index and middle finger, which forces him to drag his hand off the spike. This in no way affects his accuracy for the rest of the film.
 * In the Home Alone films, Harry and Marv survive all manner of injuries that should be crippling or fatal, especially in the second film, with only minor lumps and bruises.
 * In Taxi Driver, Travis gets shot in the neck and lives, with no scar being visible in the epilogue. Of course, the epilogue may not have really happened....


 * In the original Shaft, the title character gets shot once in the shoulder at rather close range by a machine gun and hits the floor, apparently unconscious. After minimal medical attention, it doesn't seem to take long for him to get back in action.
 * The major plot point in Unbreakable, where Bruce Willis (Creator)' character is found by Samuel L. Jackson's Genre Savvy character, precisely because he walks away from a major accident that should have killed him.
 * Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle has at least a couple examples of this, with Seamus O'Grady walking through a wall of fire, and with Natalie looking all prettied-up for the red carpet even after we saw her pull a hand-sized chunk of glass out of her abdomen mere minutes before.
 * The Darkman movies have a particularly blatant example of this. The character Durant appears to have been killed in a helicopter explosion during the first movie. He returns in the second movie with a limp, but no scarring or disfigurement whatsoever. Durant's survival may have been a Retcon, but it's still very jarring when you consider that the title character got the way he is also because of an explosion.
 * In Cloverfield, the protagonists locate Beth who is impaled by a length of rebar. The protagonists simply heave her off this spike, a process which would almost certainly kill her IRL. She is able to limp out of the wrecked building with minimal assistance. Once they reach the street and the alien monster threatens, she is able to run along with the others.
 * Given a handwave in Wanted. As part of his Training From Hell, Wesley is regularly stabbed and beaten to a bloody pulp, but the Fraternity has these special baths that allow for rapid healing, and so after a good soak, he's barely worse for wear.
 * A Knight's Tale: William is stabbed in the shoulder with a lance, and the tip breaks off inside, causing sufficient injury that he can no longer grip his own lance unaided. As soon as he wins the competition, he is able to dismount without difficulty and fiercely hug his love interest. No further mention of the wound is made.
 * In Black Caesar, Tommy . He magically returns for the sequel, Hell Up In Harlem, which offers a Retcon that he's able to get patched up via Hollywood Healing and seek revenge.

Literature

 * Contrary to the intro text, the James Bond of Ian Fleming's books has a noticeable, comment-worthy scar on his face from the corner of eye down his cheek to his jawline. Various injuries aquired in the course of the stories are remarked on in later stories and recent injuries definitely affect the near-term capacity. For example, Bond spent the second half of Live and Let Die with his left hand bandaged and splinted after Tee-Hee broke Bond's pinkie finger.
 * Played with in The Dresden Files, particularly with Harry Dresden himself. As a wizard with a potential lifespan of centuries, he has a very slow but effective Healing Factor on his side. So, while he takes wounds and hurts that leave him with very evident damage and scarring (such as his left hand being burned to near-uselessness), he will inevitably recover from them almost completely (such as with said burned hand slowly becoming useful again). It's just going to take a few years... or decades... to reach that point.
 * Generally averted in the span of a single book, however: when Harry takes a beating (and he takes a lot of beatings), it hampers his abilities for the rest of the book. While he's generally okay by the next book, they tend to take place a full year apart.
 * Justified in the Animorphs series, because the morphing technology works with DNA, so any injuries to the body are irrelevant and the kids just need to morph to heal.
 * Handwaved in the Alex Rider series, in which being young and very physically fit counts as a Healing Factor. It's mentioned that an adult would not have survived his injuries. In the later books, there are references to all the scars he has, but they never seem to show up in visible areas or hamper his physically improbable stunts. A lot of the books do end with extended hospital says, however.
 * Justified in the Percy Jackson and The Olympians books, where the demigods carry around ambrosia, the food of the gods. It kills mortals, but even a small piece (and it has to be a small piece, or it will kill them too) can heal any injury a demigod has, and even stop pain and exhaustion.

Live Action TV

 * Law and Order subverted this early in its run, with Det. Logan visiting his partner Det. Cerreta in the hospital as he recovered from being shot several episodes prior. In even further subversion, Cerreta tells him he'll be retiring to a desk job instead of returning.
 * Torchwood's particularly bad at this. In one episode half the characters were shot at and beaten up by cannibals, and in the next they were scratch-free. While Owen's  injuries were consistent in the second season, in a scene where he was shirtless he showed no signs of the gunshot wounds he received at the end of the first season and the start of the second.
 * Characters on Lost get shot, have appendectomies, and have blast doors crush their legs, but are traipsing around the jungle the next episode. This is sometimes addressed in the dialogue and attributed to the island's proven healing powers. At other times, it's Scotch Taped with a throwaway "You can't go running off into the jungle! You just had surgery!"
 * On Bones, Booth was shot in the chest; a couple of weeks later he was completely fine with only a tiny bandage to show for it.
 * In the season five premiere Bones gets stabbed in the arm by a scalpel and bleeds heavily - two scenes later she wears a dress and doesn't even have a bandage.
 * Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds pretty much epitomizes this trope, to the point where it's a major character trait of his that he will. Not. Stay. Down. Getting shot in the arm annoys him. Getting shot in the stomach might drop him in about half an hour. Getting impaled through the gut with a sword is a minor inconvenience that ends the moment he rips it out. Being tortured him to death....that just makes him angry. And by the next episode, which generally takes place maybe a week or two later, Mal is perfectly healthy again.
 * Possibly justified by the power of futuristic medicine. They do have a brilliant medic on board.
 * According to the movie, the episodes span just about 8 months. There is a little bit of time cut off at the end allowing for
 * House had a particularly ridiculous example in Season Two when got infected with  - and spent the greater part of a two-part episode progressing through the disease symptoms until he could be diagnosed and treated. They completely overlooked the fact that his symptoms were being caused by, which was conveniently all healed up by the next episode. Surprising this same after-effect was averted in a previous episode regarding
 * Similar occurrence when
 * In Supernatural, Dean claims that after all of his scars have vanished. Dean never had any visible scars in any of the earlier episodes.
 * The third season of Gossip Girl ends with Chuck Bass being shot. When the fourth season begins we find out that he's recovered from his gunshot wound thanks to a hooker pouring alcohol over the wound. Impressive.
 * Towards the end of the fifth season of Gilmore Girls, Rory's boyfriend Logan gets injured base jumping off a cliff and getting a punctured lung, some broken ribs, and bruises over most of his body, but he's able to magically heal within an episode with only a limp by the season finale when he has to go to London.
 * In Misfits Nikki is able to leave the hospital almost instantly upon receiving a heart transplant, and the scar from the operation disappears after that episode. Given the short time frame the episodes take place in, it also seems very unlikely that the rest of the cast's injuries would have healed completely from episode to episode.
 * Happens to a point with Danny on CSI: NY. He does walk with a cane for a few eps after ditching his wheelchair, but still seems to have learned to walk again a bit fast.

Real Life

 * Against all probability (and fairness), there are professional boxers who are known for their looks. For example, Floyd Mayweather's nickname is "Pretty-boy".
 * John Cena. Full stop. He's made a career of not just being a Determinator, but when he DOES get legitimately injured, he almost always ends up coming back surprisingly fast through sheer grit and pushing his rehab. In one case he had surgery on the vertebrae in his neck. Granted, it was a much improved procedure that basically left him with just a small scar on the side of his throat (described by other wrestlers "looking like a bad mosquito bite or he cut himself shaving or something"), but he was still told he'd be out for at least a year to 18 months. Less than six months later he makes a return to win the Royal Rumble.

Tabletop RP Gs

 * Surprisingly, played straight in the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. In order to avoid forcing one of the players to play the "Cleric" "with a blunt weapon", the designers decided to embrace this trope and give every player character the ability to spend "Healing Surges" at will when they have a five minute rest. This is one of the most controversial changes in the game.
 * They can also do it once in the middle of a fight, not to mention the Warlord powers that let you shout people back to health in the middle of combat. This absurdity is somewhat justified by the abstract nature of D&D's hit points.
 * And to top it off, they have full Trauma Inn action going on, except that you don't even need an inn. One night's rest will restore you to full HP and full Healing Surges.
 * In GURPS the Advantage Very Rapid Healing not only does exactly what it says on the tin but allows total recovery from essentially anything but death or having a limb removed.
 * Exalted averts it for mortals, devoting a lot of time in the systems section to describing how long it takes for a wound to truly heal, how fast someone can bleed out, and how prone wounds can be to infection. But then again, these are mainly meant to contrast mortals against the titular Exalted, who heal at a faster rate naturally and get access to Charms that allow upping the out-of-combat healing rate tenfold.

Video Games

 * In Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake receives a broken arm in the animated intro sequence and has to be airlifted to hospital, but is back in the field two weeks later. During the game, Snake can set broken bones and sew up injuries without any problems.
 * Also lampshaded with game mechanics: during the "prologue" mission, Snake's stamina reduces very slowly; it's possible to finish the whole thing with three-quarters stamina. After he gets his terrible wounds and is reinserted a week later, his stamina drains much faster. In addition, Para-Medic will remark that because he is not fully healed (or even partially healed) he really shouldn't be in the field, and his performance (stamina) will suffer for it.
 * And averted with losing his eye and gaining a scar to match it. But of course, this is a prequel, and he had the scar and eyepatch in the first Metal Gear.
 * In The Punisher arcade game, like most such games, you will get a game over after losing enough "lives". During the countdown (the time left to insert another quarter), you will actually see a medic performing CPR on your character. Insert a coin before the time runs out and you are back to full health. Amazing how pushing on someone's chest for ten seconds can magically make the hundred bullets lodged in their flesh disappear...
 * Particularly noticeable in both God of War games: Kratos gets stabbed, cut and slammed into walls numerous times, and he bleeds, but he never seems to sustain an injury for very long. Hell, he managed to fight Zeus after being stabbed in the gut with a giant sword! There is a reason for this, however:
 * Not to mention he literally climbs out of Hades through sheer determination and anger.
 * Stunt Island was a flight simulator by Disney Interactive set on a fictional island where movie aircraft stunts are filmed. If you crashed while attempting a stunt, the island's Herr Doktor would rattle off a random list of injuries: "You haf a crushed spleen, a pierced kidney, and three broken ribs. Ve'll haf you patched up and flying again tomorrow."
 * Fallout 3 has the odd system of 'health' and 'limb health' being somewhat separate, it is quite possible to be at full health but not full limb health as some methods health health but not limb health (e.g drinking water). Other things heal limb health but not overall health. Healing a limb with a Stimpack (health kit) restores some overall health, but mostly limb health.
 * If you help out Moira with her survival guide research and return to her with over 600 rads of builtup radiation, she accidentally gives you a mutation that heals wounded limbs.
 * Mostly averted in Hardcore mode for Fallout: New Vegas: crippled limbs require a doctor bag to repair, stimpacks heal gradually, not all at once, and food's healing effects are sharply diminished. But you can still go from almost dead to completely healthy by eating enough gecko meat (just don't expect it to heal your crippled body).

Webcomics

 * MAG ISA -- Eman gets beaten, has entire clips of ammo emptied on him... and survives it all as if nothing's happened. Also, Claudita gets chomped by demon plants... and gets healed and looks good like nothing's happened.
 * Subverted in Johnny Saturn. When he was shown with no shirt on, he is horribly scarred with cuts, bullet wounds, and burns. He is also addicted to pain killers just so he can fight. In fact, one of his spinal disks is herniated, so he needs morphine just to move.
 * In addition to the quote at top, VG Cats subverts this big time in this strip.

Western Animation
"Homer: Attention was like a drug to me. But was even more like drugs was the drugs."
 * Family Guy loves this one. Anything from cuts and bruises to broken bones or  will be gone by the next scene, unless it's a plot point.
 * The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series consistently loses teeth when he's punched. They all grow back. Then again, those are very white teeth. They could be fakes.
 * Earlier portrayals show diseased yellow teeth. On the other hand, those could also be fakes...
 * Pretty much every Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Classic Disney Short and Tex Avery cartoon ever. It's what puts the "amusing" in Amusing Injuries.
 * One of the earlier Tom and Jerry shorts averted this to a degree. Half way through the short, Tom blows the top of his scalp away with a shotgun and wears a toupee to cover for the rest of the short. He also sports more bandages as the short goes on. That being said, he's still able to go after being sawed in half (his midsection is taped together in the next scene).
 * In Beavis and Butthead the duo have suffered many injuries throughout the series including knocked out teeth, severed fingers, eye trauma, broken limbs, gaping wounds, etc, but they heal quickly, completely, and sometimes within the same episode.
 * Homer's many injuries from The Simpsons including breaking nearly every bone in his body, horrific gaping wounds, knocked out teeth, eye trauma, multiple shots to the groin,etc.
 * But what the audience didn't see was the unfunny aftermath. Somehow, Homer became addicted to painkillers. It was the only way he could perform the bonecracking physical comedy that had made him a star.


 * Most of the characters in South Park (unless it's Kenny or a minor character) will shrug off major injuries pretty quickly unless it becomes a plot point, one of the most notable examples is in "Poor and Stupid" in which after being in a race car accident Cartman is diagnosed with two fractured ribs, a broken femur, torn ligaments in both knees, and a level 2 concussion, he just gets up and recovers quickly.