The Incredible Hulk was a TV series in the late 70s to early 80s in which a man travels the country, becoming a dangerous green monster whenever anything makes him angry. What makes him angry? Well, the TV series’ creator, Kenneth Johnson, was good enough to provide us a list--compiled by Incredible Hulk superfan and assistant director with Mr. Johnson on JAG, Kevin Koster--of all the reasons Dr. David Banner became the Hulk on the show.
Hover over the slices of the picture for the list items. Click the categories listed to see where the events in those categories are.
Problems with flat tire
Nightmare
Thinking about either of his wives
Cut off from somebody in danger who needs his help
Being hit over the head
repeatedly with a metal object
Having his cure destroyed
Quicksand
Being mauled by a bear
Being bit by a dog
Being place in a car compactor
Being punched out and thrown down a flight of stairs
Being punched out and thrown over a balcony
Being punched out, period
Being buried in a sand pit
Having a row of computers fall on him
Being hit with a blast of steam in the face while trying to turn off the nuclear reactor that is melting down
Receiving a lethal injection, and then having the person say, "Oh. I just gave you a lethal injection. Sorry, David."
Dropping a C02 cannister on his foot after being insulted
Being pushed down a mountainside by a bigfoot impersonator
Dealing with a pesky operator in a phone booth ("I DON'T HAVE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS!!!")
Getting into a car crash
Having a burning 2x4 fall on his head while trying to get the horse out of the burning barn
Being trampled by a crowd AND having the hot coffee spilled on his hand while trying to get to the sniper
Being tied up and fed soup by an elderly Japanese woman who doesn't understand words like "You've GOT to cut me loose!"
Grabbing the pipe that is below freezing temperature
Falling through a rickety staircase while trying to get to the drunk girl who is about to jump off the roof, and then finding that she's locked the rooftop door
Trying to get out of the basement cage while handcuffed to a chair only to fall over a stack of boxed bottles and have them all fall on him
Being placed in a dumpster by the two garbagemen who think he's a thief, and who don't believe him when he says "Hey! There are rats in here!", and then being bitten by the rats to add injury to insult
Having two mean football players snap wet towels at him and shove him into the steam room which they have turned on to full blast
Being trapped inside a football stadium drunk tank while his friend is in danger, and THEN having one of the drunks hit him over the head with a metal object
Being caught taking photos of toughs committing monkey business in the restaurant, and then being beaten up and thrown under a table
Getting his jacket caught in the printwheels at the newspaper printing room, and then inexplicably sticking his hand into the rollers
Yelled at by a mean cop, and then having mace sprayed in his face by same mean cop
Handcuffed to a woman who is falling over the cliff
Somehow running into a bear trap
Beaten up and placed on a car going through a car wash, and then being dragged under the car
Placed in a small room with a ravenous black panther
Somehow locking himself in an old, dark basement, and then nearly electrocuting himself (really has to be seen to be believed)
Falling into the churning water of a boathouse, and then inexplicably being repeatedly carried over the paddlewheel (this one is stranger than 39)
Being trapped in the middle of a forest fire
Listening to ultrasonics
Attempting to turn off the boiling hot water for the waxmaker, only to have the faucet break off in his hand and scald him, and then inexplicably slipping and rolling around in same boiling hot water
Kicking over a beehive and then being surprised when the bees are mad at him
Being beaten up and thrown down a well
Having his friend tell the New York "syndicate" that David has their money, so that their enforcers chase David back to his apartment, and then having all his neighbors close their doors on him rather than listen to him saying "Please! You've GOT to let me in!!!", and then being beaten up and thrown over the balcony into the smelly trash cans by same enforcers
Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic - "You don't understand, I have to be there by 4:00!" - "Hey, mac, it's rush hour, we ain't gettin' there til five, so relax." - "BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!"
Helping Ray Walston out with a magic trick by allowing himself to be chained up and put in a tank of water, only to find that drunk Ray has forgotten to leave the escape key inside the tank
Beaten up and locked in a car trunk
Receiving a speeding ticket
Having Thor the Thunder God push him around
Locked in a drunk tank with a crazy person who insists he is Ernest Hemingway and then beats the stuffing out of David
Being tear gassed
Buried in a mine cave-in
Injecting himself with the wrong cure
Somehow getting himself into a bellfry and then realizing that a bell is there, just as it strikes the hour
Being pushed out of a plane at 30,000 feet by a mean guy who yells “You’re gonna land a lot sooner than the rest of us!”
Being forced to land a 747 without any training or instructions or help, at the risk of his, the Hulk's, and everybody else on the plane's lives
Being put in a strait jacket because he's seen the videotape that proves that the sanatarium doctor is performing unnecessary lobotomies on the patients, and then thrashing around so much that he bangs his head on the floor
Being stuck in the police department's voice mail system when he knows his friend is about to be the next lobotomy subject, only to have the police finally pick up the phone after he's turning into the Hulk
Being stuck in a cabin that the police are turning into swiss cheese with their shotguns, even though he and the pregnant woman have no guns and have waved the white flag, only to have the police bullets start a fire in the cabin, etc., etc.
Beaten up by a bunch of mean cops who won't listen to him saying "Hey! Don't touch that woman! She's pregnant! No!"
Being grazed in the face by a bullet while running after the bus carrying his friend's hysterical mother, and then running into the messy, overturned garbage cans
Being rear-ended fifteen times in a row by a mean bully with a bigger car than his
Buried in cement by the mob
Being showered with electrical sparks because Jack McGee has spotted him and is running after him shouting "Hey, John Doe!"
NBeaten up by the rag trade mob, and having his arm placed in a press iron
Being placed in a cage with an angry gorilla
Making some Hell's Angels very angry with him
Being run over by same angry Hell's Angels
Wandering into an Army dump to get the deadly canister of army nerve gas that has blinded his friend, only to be caught by a mean MP who knocks his gas mask off and throws him back down the hill, knocking the canister open so that David can frantically try to put his mask back on before looking up to see that the MP has somehow brought in a crane and is dumping two tons of garbage on him (this is an unusually bizarre situation)
While blinded for the episode, wandering across an Army training course, and then veering into the training minefield (see parenthetical at #39)
Being chained to a truck while his friend for the episode has been taken inside the trailer by the natives to be punished under the rites of La Culta de Cabeza Chocolata
Cut off from somebody in danger who needs his help
Beaten up by all the other prisoners in the work camp, in the middle of the night while he is trying to sleep, when he emphatically told them not to beat him up that particular night
Falling in a pitfall set by the crazed man who is hunting David on his private island, and then being stung by the scorpion when trying to climb out
Being horsewhipped by same crazed man who is understandably upset that David will not accomodate his polite requests to "turn back into that thing"
Being thrown under a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade float by a mean guy in a gorilla suit who gives David a few kicks for good measure
Making the High Priest of the Baba Yaga voodoo cult so angry with him by challenging a perfectly normal ritual sacrifice that several of the Priest's minions are obliged to beat the stuffing out of David and throw a cloak over his head
Cut off from somebody in danger who needs his help
Being beaten up by the thieves and thrown in the store vault, having the vault door closed on his foot, and then having the air supply cut off by the giggling thieves
Being placed in a cargo crate with his friend for the episode because he’s found out about the problems at the waterfront, and being hoisted onto an outbound freighter, but having all the dockworkers ignore his screams of “Hey! Hey! Help! HELLLLPPPP!!!”
Being mistaken for mob boss Mike Cassidy, who looks exactly like him, and who everybody wants to beat up, so that David is repeatedly beaten up for no reason
Being placed in a room that is filled with carbon monoxide gas
Wandering around in the service ducts of a hotel (akin to Bruce Willis) only to accidentally yank several of the steam pipes loose and get a full blast of hot steam
Beaten up and thrown in a closet, and while thrashing around and trying to get out, sticking his hand in a box of broken glassware
Foolishly running in and trying to help a man who brought a lit cigarette into a room full of toxic vapors, only to have an explosion throw him across the room and into the row of heavy C02 containers, which all fall on him
Hit in the face with a high powered beebee gun, which causes him to fall over the balcony and plunge 40 feet into the seats below
Being trapped by McGee in a back room, and when he tries to run away, bashing his knee, crashing into a backboard, and doing generally clutzy things culminating with falling down the stairs and crashing into a giant flower pot
Beaten up while trying to keep the incoherent man from stabbing the woman who accidentally locked David in the closet, and then having same man attempt to close the door to same closet on David's head
Being hit by a car and knocked twenty feet so that he tumbles down a conveniently open manhole
Being shot at close range with a silenced pistol, after standing up to the mob's enforcers
Being trapped in the middle of a forest fire so that burning branches keep falling on him and setting him on fire, and a giant, burning tree falls directly on him as the last straw (Different from last forest fire predicament)
Being caught in an explosion on the edge of the fire that throws him into a tumbling, rolling pile of large, heavy pipes
Foolishly trying to open the door to the shed of airplane propellant that is on fire, and then being caught in the explosion
Falling out of a plane without a parachute, then being given a parachute (which causes the person who pushed him to be told "That guy has nine lives", to which the mean person responds by pulling out a rifle and saying "Yeah, but I got ten rounds"), and then having the straps to his parachute shot off when he is still 30 feet above an empty house so that he falls through the roof and hurts himself
Deliberately going to a disco club and picking a fight with some very large and angry men because while trying to cure himself, he injected himself with a solution that has unleashed his "dark side”
Crawling through the sensitive, highly dangerous electrical service tunnel for no apparent reason, only to accidentally kick several of the electrical cables loose and flailing around near the hot water pipes so that he can be practically electricuted and fried at the same time
Accidentally leaving the laser beam on in the chemical lab so that it cuts across the room and into the highly toxic chemicals so that David is enveloped in poisonous fumes
Trapped in a burning room in the scientific project with ten other people by the crazed mercenary who is trying to capture the Hulk, and then trying with everybody else to ram open the door with a jagged metal shelf set, only to get his hand caught between the edge of the shelf set and the door during a group ram
Punched out and thrown in the cactus bed so that David can thrash around on the cactus, even though he has plenty of avenues of escape
Coming to the aid of the gumshoe in the garage who is being beaten up for not minding HIS own business, and getting beaten up himself, kicked under a low riding sportscar that has been jacked up for repairs, and whose jack is removed so that the car can fall on David. Gumshoe's reaction, in voiceover narration: "It was a big green thing, and it definitely wasn't happy about something."
Being caught at the old studio backlot with same gumshoe, by same nasty bad guys, and trying to run away so as not to get angry with them, only to have them pull a heavy old scene facade down on top of him. Gumshoe's reaction: "It was that green thing again, and it still wasn't happy."
Beaten up by a couple of punks under the Santa Monica Pier, who ask him for his wallet, query him why he only has $5 on him, and then forcibly baptize him several times
Tied up by same punks and left attached to a bench press machine as bait for the bodybuilder (played by Lou Ferrigno) and his girlfriend to find and become upset over, except that David becomes upset first
Being fed poisoned sushi
Tied up by the Japanese mob in San Francisco and thrown in his bathtub with the shower blasting scalding hot water on him (why he doesn't simply get out of the tub is a mystery)
Having several clay pots broken over his head in the middle of the now-burning room (why is the room always burning?), and then knocking an entire case of same clay pots onto same head, and then, while lying very still and struggling not to get angry, having his pants catch fires
For Dell Frye (whose hulking out predates David by 30 years): Having David rudely turn off the gamma radiation machine when he's trying to turn himself back into the green creature he used to turn into in the 1950s
For Dell Frye: Going to a bar and deliberately picking a fight so that he can get mad, turn into the creature and kill someone
For Dell Frye: Having David rudely inject him with a cure so that he won't be able to turn into the monster anymore
While paralyzed for the episode, somehow getting caught in the middle of a barroom brawl, and while trying to quietly wheel himself out of the room, being hit by a flying body and knocked down the stairs (what David is even doing in such a situation goes unexplained)
Thinking about either of his wives
While still paralyzed, trying to drive a car to the bank to stop his friend for the episode (who is going to try to obtain an immediate loan by robbing the bank), only to drive so slowly that the big guy in the truck behind him keeps yelling "Hurry up! Learn to drive!", and then getting so caught up in watching his friend wheel into the bank that he forgets to look both ways before entering the intersection, crashes into a car trying to cross in front of him, and gets rear-ended by the big guy in the truck, who remarks as David begins turning into the Hulk: "You IDIOT!!"
Trying to escape his apartment before Jack McGee finishes bashing in the front door with an axe, by smashing the bathroom window, only to grievously cut himself on the broken glass
Trying to help his friend for the episode, the midget wrestler known as "Half Nelson", by climbing into the ring for him, only to be clobbered by a large, beefy wrestler who practices numerous combination moves on David, in spite of David and Jack McGee)'s numerous cries of "Stop! You don't know what you're doing! You're making me ANGRY!"
Somehow being caught under a rockslide, and then foolishly exposing one of his hands on the mountainside so that a big, heavy rock smashes it
Being attacked by some mean cops who handcuff him even though he has told them his hand is broken, and who then let him flail around so that he falls on his bad hand
While working as a cabbie for the episode, trying to get the pregnant woman whose water has broken to the hospital, only to find that his cab is out of gas, and then having every gas station in town refuse to give him any gas, having a really mean gas station attendant yell back at him “I heard that one already!”, and then having same mean attendant slam the door on his fingers (As an interesting touch, after the Hulk trashes the place, he ambles over to the taxi to find out that the woman HAS DELIVERED HER OWN BABY and is now happily smiling at the Hulk with the baby!)
While still working as a cabbie, somehow being thrown into a rock crushing machine that sucks David through a sandpit while rocks slam into his head and hands (Leads to a bizarre shot of the Hulk being carried along the conveyor belt…)
Trying to stop the psycho from driving off with his friend only to be dragged by the car across the parking lot, and then having the psycho yank the wheel so that David is thrown across the lot into a bunch of broken boxes
Being handcuffed in an office by the psycho (who turns out to be the chief of police), and then having an angry mob break through the door and through the makeshift barricade David tries to make (while still handcuffed), and then having the mob proceed to throw him against the wall and beat the living daylights out of him (Somehow, nobody notices that he’s turning green and going from a size 5 to a size 9 until it’s way too late)
Being lassoed by the mean cowboys and dragged behind their horses across a bunch of dirt and rocks, and then being dragged into the river
Being thrown into a holding pen with an angry bull by the mean cowboys, hitting his head on the ground, and while he’s lying on the ground trying to recover, having the bull literally kick his behind (and his side, and his leg, and his gizzard, etc)
Finding out that his somewhat slow friend Ricky has locked himself in a shed in a car with the engine running, and then trying to break the lock with a shovel, only to have the rusty shovel snap and clobber his fingers
Driving into the demolition derby because good old Ricky has driven a potentially explosive car into the derby, only to have his car bashed by every other car on the field so that nobody can hear his frantic cries of “No! Ricky! RICKY!” (One could presumably ask why David doesn’t just have them stop the derby…)
Unknowingly having one of the other guys in the rock band crew helpfully add some “orange sunshine” LSD to David’s orange juice, so that David has a really bad trip
TBeaten up and locked in a storage chest.
Trying to help the sweet old lady with her robbery, only to have one of her mean friends chain him up and throw him into the bay. (Leads to an underwater hulkout!)
Wandering around inside the carnival funhouse, only to have someone turn on the machinery so that David is somehow caught in a rolling tumbler and flipped over a few times and then thrown down a convenient slide
Konged in the head by the crazed bible quoter in the back storeroom, and then waking up to discover that not only has the guy set the room on fire (Again!) but that David himself is now on fire
Going to all the houses in the neighborhood to tell them that the boy in the house next door is being beaten by his father, only to have everyone close their doors on him rather than help
Being caught in a gym by the mean guy who’s been beating up his son, and then being beaten up by the guy and thrown out into the hallway