For me, things like lots and lots of torture a la the Passion of the Christ don’t do it. But one moment that always has was that one in Back to the Future II. Marty’s trying to get back the almanac and Mr. Strickland has it, so he goes to his office, hiding under the desk. At one point, his hand is crushed when Strickland unknowingly smashes his chair against his chair, and Marty has to wait in pain until he stops. And also not scream. That moment ALWAYS gets me.
Also, stuff involving medical procedures. I guess because it’s like…you HAVE to experience it. Even if you don’t want to. It’s for your own good or whatnot. So that spinal tap in the Exorcist, for example, REALLY got to me.
Anything involving nosebleeds gets to me. Two weeks in a row, er showed things involving noses bleeding and it was awful. The second was them cutting inside a nose and blood gushing–it happened so fast I didn’t have time to look and the image skeeved me for days after.
Greg Kinnear getting beaten up in As Good As It Gets is painful too.
There was a UK show starring Mathew McFadyen - I think it was called Spooks in the UK and MI5 in the US. There was an episode where a female noobie spy and MM are captured by a bad criminal, who takes them to a kitchen. He then shows MM that he is serious by putting on special gloves and - well, it’s so disturbing I will spoiler it:
shoving the woman’s head into the deep fat fryer.
I still can’t think about it without getting chills - and frankly, I resented the fact that it came with no warning - there had been nothing about the show up to that point that had led me to think they would include something like that (I had seen maybe 3-4 eps at that point). I never watched it again…
That famous film of Joe Theisman’s leg snapping during a football game. Blood, gore, and violence in general does not affect my stomach, but that one shot makes me want to throw up every time.
Odd, but when I watch one of those Funniest Home Video shows, whenever somebody impacts on water really hard I feel it. It’s like a shock going through my body.
Any scene shot from a very high location looking down makes me cringe. I watched a documentary on the steelworkers who walk on those girders way way up, and saw about half the show due to turning my head away so many times.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover has many moments, but the one near the opening, when the guy is getting dog crap smeared all over his naked body, is especially hard to watch.
This will sound silly, but the scene where the guys in Jackass give themselves paper cuts between the fingers and toes. While the injury of it is minor, I have far more direct experience of that kind of pain than the graphic ultraviolence in various other movies.
The episode of The Simpsons where Homer tries to get rid of the springs he bought to make Olympic mascot figurines and ends up attempting to sell them as prank cans and they get stuck in people’s eyes. Both funny and disturbing.
And any time anyone puts eye drops in their eyes- both in real life or on television- it involuntarily causes my eyes to water. I guess I have a thing about eyes.
The Serpent and the Rainbow – scrotum nailing scene.
Lost – torturing Sawyer with bamboo shoots under his fingernails.
Grindhouse – Trampoline. Knife. Vagina. I only saw a clip, and didn’t really even see, and I’m traumatized.
Supernatural – Sam getting his fingernails pulled out by the root by the pagan gods. Also, Dean slipping in the shower and cracking his head open – another one where I only heard the slip, scream, crunch sound effect, and it freaked me out.
Simpson’s – the family turning inside out at the end of one of the earlier Treehouse of Terror episodes. Especially when Santa’s Little Helper drags Bart off by his intestines.
I think I’ve mentally edited that out, or at least dulled it. But also from Pan’s Labyrinth: the Captain’s face… and drinking at the *wrong * time. Ow.
Spiderman 2: When Peter is just getting his powers back, he leaps between two buildings, falls, and slams in-between two cars. The way his back hits the car, then his head slams against a dumpster…I gasp every time.
For me personally the unexpected hits me harder than something graphic.
I just got done watching the season finale of Lost and…
(Spoilers. Insignificant but just to be safe…)
Jack getting hit in the head with the toolbox made me flinch. Nothing else did. I don’t even particularly like the character. I just wasn’t expecting it.