I saw one of the recent Fast and Furriest movies and the lack of realistic physics was so mind-nboggling it was hard to keep watching (but of course, I was already wsting time watching it… so…) People flying theough the air 30 feet or more with a drop of 10 feet or more, get up and shake it off, magnets that pull cars from 15 feet away (with no “equal and opposite” reaction, aircraft that can yank a car into the air etc.
Hollywood lives by a different set of rules.
Some people with extraordinary cinematic powers are able to plunge down a stairwell several flights, landing on a dead body which magically breaks their fall so they can get up and walk away with no more than a few temporary aches and pains, allowing them to continue an endless search for their true identity.
Human recuperative ability is marvelous. 
As far as defying physics is concerned, it is hard to beat “Crank”…unless you watch “Crank: High Voltage”. Rumor has it that a protest letter was sent to the producers that read “Dear Sirs, Are you out of your cotton-pickin’ minds??
Signed
Bugs Bunny
Wile E. Coyote”
That’s why I mentioned it.
I’ve heard some judoka remark, “We hit you with the Earth.”
Agree completely.
Crank ended by him jumping out of a helicopter at altitude with no parachute, but the exorcist was that he was going to die anyway. Crank High Voltage starts with him hitting the ground and bouncing. And somehow his heart keeps going.
Another knockout trope that bugs me is the old Taser to the throat that is a modern replacement for the blow to the back of the head. Magic off switch.
A Taser can be an off switch, though, particularly if applied mutiple times. Permanent off.
There’s nothing I can say I encountered during my 8 years as an EMT that is any different from the info provided in this thread. They’ve covered everything, and accurately.
However, while admitting that anecdotes are not data, many years ago I was walking down a busy street in Louisville, Kentucky. I was scheduled to be performing about 30-45 minutes later than what the current time was.
As I was walking, I’ve gathered from police reports, ER reports, and people who were present, someone driving by threw a beer bottle that hit me in the back of my head. I fell to the ground, unconscious. According to what I’ve read and been told, I was out for about 4 minutes. The cops were on scene, and the ambulance was pulling up as I started to lift myself off of the ground. Me being a guy in his early 20s, I ignored everyone telling me to stay still and get medically cleared before I moved.
I did go perform my show, and never got checked out. So far as I can tell 20+ years later, I’ve never had any problems or issues.
But in all honesty, that was a stupid thing to do, and that I had no lingering symptoms or problems was probably more a fluke than anything.
I watched about 10 minutes of that highlight reel - he only throws roundhouse haymakers. This kind of goes against boxing convention and wisdom. He makes it work though.
Oh, yes, he’d a novelty, even his name Butterbean is funny, and his technique only goes so far into a fighting career. But he was great at it.
If you’ve come this far, maybe you’ll come a little further? There’s a clip where Johnny Knoxville challenged Butterbean to a fight which is held & filmed in a retail-flashmob Jackass-like setting. It’s brief, hysterical, and Johnny’s dazed “Is Butterbean ok?” one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
OMG, that’s hilarious. He will probably be paying for that moment the rest of his life.
The George of the Jungle theory of evolution.
That’s what I pictured.
On the topic of being knocked unconscious and traumatic brain injury:
Stranger
Weird how he goes down like a sack of potatoes from being hit between the shoulderblades or on the shoulder. At least the trident got him on the back of the head.
Between the few dozen TBIs from head impacts and blast injuries suffered, the various toxic substances that he’s been forced to ingest, inhale, or that have been injected into him, and the copious amounts of grain alcohol he consumes, Bond’s brain is positively mush as this point. It is the just the delicate balance of high proof alcohol, human growth hormone, and nutrients from caviar plus a splash of Lillet Blanc (which Bond in his brain-addled pseudo-dementia continues to refer to as “Kina Lillet” despite the fact that it was rebranded nearly a century ago) that allows him to function through the brain damage, emotional trauma, multiple forms of amnesia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and constant state of inebriation that for anyone else would be a lethal blood alcohol level. It’s shocking that he doesn’t fall over into a psychogenic nonepileptic seizure every time someone bumps into him.
Stranger
I remember watching a WWII documentary where a vet was talking about how sometimes when people were in a lot of pain and no one had any morphine, they’d ask for someone to hit them in the head and knock them out. Would that it could have been true.
As mentioned, its bullshit. If someone is knocked out and wakes up minutes or hours later, they likely have severe brain damage.
FWIW in the real world I think that various depressants are used to ‘knock someone out’. I vaguely recall reading a story of a suspected terrorist who the US wanted to transport to a foreign country. The government agents forced a medical suppository inside him and he lost consciousness. Aside from losing control of your own consciousness, it is also a sexual violation, and it also leaves you unconscious for so long that you don’t even know what country you wake up in. Its all designed to make people feel helpless and easier to control.
This is a different field of discussion - there are no “knockout gasses” (like sprayed from a plane in Goldfinger ). The Russians tried something like that when they were dealing with a terrorsit attack in a theatre, and IIRC a significant number of hostages died. One of Gacey’s victims who survived and escaped apparently had liver damage from the chlorofform used on him.
Anesthesia is a complex art, even when feeding the gas directly with a face mask; it requires constant monitoring for the right amount and ensuring sufficient oxygen is feeding too. I suppose there are some decent injectables.
The Russians used carfentanil as the gas, which isn’t a good choice due to the high risk of overdose.
There are drugs that induce sleep but also have a high LD50. Benzodiazepines and antipsychotics for example. I’m sure there are others too. Keep in mind these were government agents so they would’ve had access to pretty much whatever they wanted.
Also in the situation I describe, the administered the drug as a rectal suppository, not as a gas. I have no idea what kind of drug they used, or if they used a combo of 2 or more drugs (one for a quicker knockout, then a longer acting one to keep them asleep).