A list of the 131 reasons David Banner turned into The Hulk

81. 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

106. Being fed poisoned sushi

117. 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

122. 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

Incredible HULK Provocations (Via Filled With Chocolate Pudding)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Roose_Bolton

What a smashing list.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

Numbers 43, 44, 73 and 90 make me want to go back and watch the entire series again as an adult. Those make it sound like the series was written by a really huge fan of the Three Stooges.
planettom

I guess these aren’t in consecutive order, because #51 referenced Thor, which was the TV movie 6 years after the show was cancelled.

Also, I can’t tell if the second TV movie (1989) with Daredevil is in this list.

And the final TV movie, THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1990), has the Hulk falling out of an airplane, and then, he reverts back to Banner and dies (sort of like the ol’ standard dying werewolf scene in werewolf movies), if I remember correctly. This doesn’t seem to be the falling out of an airplane referenced in that list of 131 items, because in that, he hits a house, and apparently lives, I think in the final TV movie, he landed on an airport tarmac.
- bryan rasmussen
  
  What are you talking about? This was all in one episode.
  That was a great episode.
http://twitter.com/jmaynard8888 Joe Maynard

In retrospect I remember him throwing his car into a ravine after getting frustrated changing a flat tire (#1 on the list, the very first hulkout). I wonder how much time he spent mentally kicking himself for that as he had to hitchhike across the country for the rest of the series…
- Boundegar
  
  Why is it so hard to change a flat on TV? It’s really not that hard in real life.
  - mccrum
    
    “Oh gawd, it’s unscrew the lugnuts and then jack up the car! Why can’t I get this right? Hulk smash!”
  - bkad
    
    My parents used to have a car where it was tricky to find the jack points (and if you got it wrong you would just fold/crush stuff, or have a really unstable lift). My new car is pretty obvious though. (Also I’m not the ignoramous I was at 16. I hope.)
- oasisob1
  
  Actually he hurt himself while changing the tire.
- 10xor01
  
  Yeah, but if he kept his car, they’d need to replace that solemn hitchhiking piano riff with Golden Earring’s Radar Love or some other road trip music.
Janessa Pagliaccio

David Banner? Do you mean Bruce Banner?
- Roose_Bolton
  
  His name was changed to David Banner for the TV series.
- Mark_Frauenfelder
  
  I don’t like it either. Wikipedia: “Johnson changed the name of the Hulk’s comic book alter ego, Dr. Bruce Banner, to Dr. David Banner for the TV series. This change was made, according to Johnson, because he did not want the series to be perceived as a comic book series, so he wanted to change what he felt was a staple of comic books, and Stan Lee’s comics in particular, that major characters frequently had alliterative names.”
  - oasisob1
    
    It appeared to fool the nation for 4 years.
  - sam1148
    
    Also at the time Johnny Carson would do gay jokes using the name ‘Bruce” as a stand in for ‘gay. I had heard the network didn’t want “Bruce” as the name because it was considered effeminate.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Yes, Bruce was a standard comic meme for comedians who had no actual joke to tell and wanted to get a laugh with a simple homophobic reference. Sort of odd when you consider Bruces in pop culture. We already had an Olympic athlete, a martial arts star and a superhero at that point.
dr

I always thought of “Hulk” as the natural state, and “Banner” as the thing he gets turned into.
- Josh Bisker
  
  That’s what I’ve always seen as the central divide between Spider Man and Superman; Spidey’s really Peter Parker in disguise, but Supes is really Supes, disguising himself as Clark. As far as the Hulk goes, this question — the “is Mr Hyde the real personality after all”sort of thing — ends up being one of the deeper issues that the comics explored over their run. Some of the writers did a really good job of it.
fredh

There’s a lot more “Banner gets thrown into some form of garbage receptacle” in that list than i expected. Disgruntled writers maybe?
Philboyd Studge

Dear Marvel,
Please let Sam Raimi direct the next Hulk film, starring Bruce Campbell. It writes itself!
- Frank Diekman
  
  Or Liam Neeson. “Take the fucking elephant!”
Riche Bright

Banner’s life sure did suck.
petz79

He changed into the Hulk with a broken hand. As I understand it, the Hulk is unvulnerable. So was his broken hand automagically fixed after the change? Or was it re-broken again when he changed back? I don’t really get these Hulk physics.
http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

I’m more interested in the reasons Eric Banner decided to turn into the Hulk. That can’t have been a good career move.
James Mason

Bad luck Bruce is more like it.
Petzl

To be charitable though, who doesn’t go into a Hulk rage when receiving poison sushi at your favorite restaurant?
Josh Bisker

The Credible Hulk
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbwzgz8QnJ1qbql3go1_500.jpg
http://www.facebook.com/noel.a.black.1 Noel Andersen Black

Here’s a reduction poem of that list:

Provocations (a reduction)

—for Adam DeGraff

1. Problems

3. Thinking about either of his lives

4. Cut off from anger

5. Being destroyed

8. Being a bear

9. Being a dog

10. Being placed on a tractor

11. Being a flight of stairs

12. Being punched by a falcon

13. Having his period

14. Being juried by a sand piper

15. Having a computers

17. “Oh. Sorry, David.”

18. Jennifer Aniston being insulted

19. Bigfoot impersonator

21. Getting a trash

22. Having head

23. Being trampled by “The Sniper”

24. Words like “soup”

25. The pipe

26. Trying to get drunk

27. Trying to

28. Being a dumpster, two garbagemen, a thief, and rats add injury to salt

29. Having two wet football players turn to steam

30. Being trapped inside a football

31. Monkey in the business. Then being thrown up.

32. Printwheels, inexplicably

34. A woman who is the cliff

35. Boulder

36. Somehow becoming a bear

38. Placed in a small room with a raven

40. Falling into the church water of a bathhouse, and one stranger.

41. Being the middle of a forest.

45. Well?

46. New York

47. You don’t understand

48. A magic drunk tank

51. Having Thor the Thunder God around

52. Ernest Hemingway beats off

53. Being bear-assed

57. A guy yells “You’re a Goon!”

60. Being stuck in the lobotomy subject

61. Being “swiss” pregnant.

62. “Hey! Don’t touch that woman!”

71. Wandering into tons of garbage

73. Natives to be punished under the rites of La Culta de Cabeza Chocolata

74. The nasty rattlesnake

75. Beaten up by “the other”

76. Falling in a pitfall.

77. Being housewifed by some man.

78. Being thrown under New Orleans by a gorilla

81. Air Supply

82. An outbound freighter

88. Hit in the face by McGee

90. Inchoherent head

90. Being a conveniently open manhole

93. Being caught in a pile of large, heavy hippies

94. Foolishly trying

95. Falling out of himself

96. Deliberately going to a disco club with a “dark side”

97. Trapped with a heart, and showered with sparks.

99. Leaving the laser beam

- Noel Black
niktemadur

What about today, surely Mr Banner would go Hulk in the following situations.
1. Arguing with trolls in internet forums.
2. Dealing with ISP tech support.
3. No upvotes on Reddit, no “likes” on Facebook.
4. Teens on cell phones in movie theaters.
5. Slow car in front, clogging up the traffic, the driver is texting.
6. Falling for a Goatse, 2Girls1Cup, etc.
7. Just one more “news” item about the Kardashians.
8. Eleven-inch foot-long Subways.

Since Bruce doesn’t seem to have a permanent address, picture a guy sitting quietly at Starbucks, then suddenly his shirt starts ripping apart at the seams.