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.

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

 * This gif

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
"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?
 * Sluggy Freelance:


 * WAP!*"

Western Animation
"Sideshow Bob: Rakes! My old arch enemy...
 * 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.

Bart: I thought I was your arch enemy?

Sideshow Bob: I have a life outside of you, you know."


 * 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.