Rake Take

Common in cartoons, an innocuous-looking rake (or hoe, or shovel...) is lying on the ground. A character steps on it the wrong way and gets a face full of the stick part. Ouch.

Obviously Truth in Television for anyone who tried that. In real life, however, it usually results in a nosebleed or, if bad enough, a trip to the emergency room - Looney Tunes jokes notwithstanding. And if an actual rake fails to rise and smack you, it may instead hurt your foot.

Examples of Rake Take include:

Film

A variation happens in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, when Clark keeps stepping on loose floorboards in the attic.

Literature

A humorous aside in the Ciaphas Cain novel The Traitor's Hand notes a group of monks injuring themselves stepping on discarded gardening tools while fleeing from an unexpectedly-landing shuttlecraft. Seems even in the 41st millennium, this joke still happens.

Live Action TV

Happens to the Skipper on the Gilligan's Island episode "Waiting for Watubi"; the "rake" was made of bamboo and coconuts.
Happens to Jack a couple of times on Three's Company.
On One Thousand Ways to Die, one young woman who gardened as a hobby died of suffocation by stepping on a rake with a zucchini in her mouth as she prepared for a date.
In The Late Show with David Letterman's Top Ten List of the most dangerous toys (from November 1997), Number 8 was "'Ouch!' The Step-On-A-Rake Game".

Newspaper Comics

The Far Side has the African Rakesnake.

Other

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Video Games

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time has loose planks on the pirate ship level that smack the player character whenever they step on them. It's the same gag.
This happens to Guybrush in Monkey Island 2 Le Chucks Revenge.
Plants vs. Zombies allows you to buy a rake for your lawn that kills the first zombie that it encounters; it lasts three levels, after which you can buy a new one.
A rare level hazard in the Tiny Toon Adventures game for the Sega Genesis. In some levels, enemies can attack you while the rake has incapacitated you.
One of the rake-type traps is present in RuneScape in Isafdar forest. However, this trap has something else than just a stick at the end of rake.
This can happen to Pac-Man in Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures at the farm.

Web Comics

Sluggy Freelance:

Torg (thinking): Alone, surrounded by vampires. My only hope is to dive for the rake by my feet, breaking the shaft into a wooden stake. But how am I going to find it in this mist?

WAP!*

Western Animation

Tom the cat gets it frequently in Tom and Jerry.
This happens to Sideshow Bob a lot in The Simpsons, particularly in the "Cape Feare" story where he repeatedly stepped on a bunch of rakes in a row. Hanging onto the bottom on a car after it went through a bunch of cacti apparently left him too out of it even notice how they were all there completely littering the ground.
- In the DVD commentary, the creators admit they were filling for time.
- It becomes a Running Gag or possibly even a Brick Joke in later episodes.

Sideshow Bob: Rakes! My old arch enemy...
Bart: I thought I was your arch enemy?
Sideshow Bob: I have a life outside of you, you know.

In "Treehouse of Horror XXXIV" (an Alternate Ending to "Cape Feare" where Bob succeeded in killing Bart) makes this horrifically true, as it is what ultimately dooms Bob; the adult Lisa has become a cruel Serial Killer gunning for revenge, and a rake is what hinders his attempt to flee from her.

In Ice Age, Sid the sloth walks on something in the abandoned human camp and gets whacked in the face.
Monster Allergy has it with Bombo in the opening theme of season 1.