Picture this. It’s Christmas time. Snow falls softly outside and the fireplace roars. There’s a mug of warm hot chocolate in your hand and a comfy blanket draped over your shoulders. Your favourite person is snuggled up against you, and you breathe in the Christmas cheer. You turn on your favourite Christmas movie, Home Alone, and watch the violence unfold against Harry and Marv.

Hold on a minute? Did you say violence? But Home Alone is a cheery Christmas comedy!

What many don’t take into account is the number of pranks pulled against the Wet Bandits that could actually kill them. The bandits always pop right back up with slap-stick comedy that resembles Jerry crushing Tom with a piano. But which of those booby traps would actually land our bandits into the morgue this Christmas? Here are our picks for festive booby traps most likely to kill a man, ranked from “it might land you in the hospital,” to “get ready to meet Scrooge’s ghosts”.

1. Falling down the stairs

The Wet Bandits, Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) both fall down the stairs several times. A good portion of the booby traps in the McCallister home revolved around stairs.

Now falling down the stairs once gives you a 1 in 1,884 chance of dying. (That’s higher than dying in a plane crash). 1,000 people die every year from falling down the stairs. Now it’s important to note that most fatal falls are due in part that the victim was elderly.

Given the sheer amount that the bandits fell down the stairs though, I’d say their chances of at least being seriously injured are fairly high. In one case, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) put ice on the concrete stairs outside. Both Marv and Harry fell down these slippery slopes, but Harry fell directly on his neck on a concrete step. That had to have done some damage.

2. Crowbar to the chest

When Kevin puts a tarantula on Marv’s face, he frantically throws it off and on the unconscious chest of Harry. In an attempt to annihilate the spider, Marv hits Harry’s chest with a crowbar.

New York City Internist Dr Diego Ponieman told Thrillist that “a hit like that could cause cracked ribs, a punctured lung, or even internal bleeding”. Considering how banged up the two are at this point, even just adding a wound like that could land the Bandits six feet underground. It’s safe to assume that Harry isn’t getting up after that hit.

3. Iron to the head

Marv was the unfortunate recipient of this prank. Kevin fixed an iron to a string light in the basement. When Marv pulled on the string to turn on the light, the iron fell from about thirty feet and nailed him in the head. He has a mark shaped like an iron on his face for the rest of the night.

This type of injury could, in fact, murder someone. It’s highly likely that Marv at least suffered a concussion, which is considered a traumatic brain injury.

It would likely cause some sort of long-term issue, and he would need to go to a doctor. Based on this type of injury, he could also have an intracranial hematoma or a blood clot in the brain. That is life-threatening. These blood clots are sometimes linked to a skull fracture, but based on his wounds (which doesn’t give us much to go on because these guys are super-human), he likely doesn’t have.

I also don’t think that it’s a far off assumption to make that his brain might be bruised. If the poor guy wasn’t stupid enough, he’s really going to be struggling now.

4. Shovel to the head

Ladies and gents, we have another head injury.

At the end of the film, Kevin’s neighbour whacks them hard in the head with a shovel, knocking them both out. This marks the second-third time that the Wet Bandits have been hit in the head. If they survived the first few times, they more than likely have concussions. Getting hit by a shovel could absolutely cause another one.

If you get two concussions in a row, it could cause “second impact syndrome.” That would create brain swelling, and could possibly be fatal. If that didn’t kill them, getting several concussions could lead to depression/suicide and Alzheimer’s. This attempt to rob the McCallisters could haunt them in the long term.

5. A fall from a great height

In an attempt to escape the Wet Bandits, Kevin ziplined from the third story of his house to his treehouse. The bandits tried to follow him, inching along the rope, when Kevin pulled out some gardening shears. Cutting the rope, Harry and Marv swing about 30ish feet to the ground and slam into a brick wall. It’s pretty vague what type of damage it would cause, but it would absolutely cause damage.

In a CBS News article about a girl who fell 25 feet at Six Flags, emergency physician Dr. Robert Glatter of Lenox Hill Hospital said that even a fall from a few feet could kill a person.

It creates problems such as a ruptured spleen or spine. Considering the force in which the Wet Bandits hit the wall, it’s unlikely that they would get up and walk away.

6. Hot hand

Harry was really feeling the heat in this movie.

One of the first pranks Kevin unleashed on the Bandits was heating the handle up to his front door. Harry grabbed on to it with gusto, burning his hand so badly that an M for McCallister was still branded in his hand in the second movie.

The Week asked Dr. Ryan St. Clair of the Weill Cornell Medical College a couple of questions about these Home Alone pranks. He said that for the doorknob to be glowing red, it had to be about 751 degrees. A surface that hot should have caused Harry’s hand to burst into flames. This could have set Harry on fire, causing him to burn alive. At the very least, this injury would cause Harry to amputate his hand.

He definitely would not have been able to continue using that appendage. Sorry Harry, forget about continuing on with this robbery.

7. Paint bucket to the head

This one got both of them good. As they were going up the stairs, Home alone hero Kevin dropped paint buckets on Harry and Marv like a pendulum, knocking them both clean in the face. This one is very similar to the “iron to the head” prank and would result in pretty much the same injuries.

EMT Joseph O’Hare was interviewed by Motherboard about this very issue- “what Home Alone pranks are lethal?” He said that if someone was actually hit by a paint bucket in the same way the bandits were, their faces would be completely destroyed. The hit would knock their teeth in, possibly causing them to choke. The force could also shatter their skull, resulting in a stroke.

So yeah, the wrong shade of paint can be pretty deadly.

8. Flamethrower to the head

Harry really got the short end of the stick with this one. Kevin had a flamethrower, yes a flamethrower, attached to his back door. If you opened the door, you’d feel the heat. When Harry opened the door, the top of his head got severely burned. He had the sense to put his head out in the snow, saving him from further damage.

Now, this prank would have absolutely killed Harry if he was two inches taller. If it had been Marv opening this door, he would be dead as a doornail, as he’s a lot taller. It probably would have nailed his face or neck.

The burns caused by this flamethrower would be third degree, and would create black charring and insane scarring. This could lead to death in several ways. A burn to the face like that could block air passages, causing someone to suffocate. The resulting trauma from that kind of burn could also cause someone to go into shock. Realistically, it would have made Harry go into shock. He wouldn’t have put his head out, and he probably would have burned to death.

Dr St. Clair also weighed in on how this specific prank would have played out. He said that Harry was under fire for several seconds, meaning that his skull might actually start to rot. At the very least he would need to have his skin and part of his skull removed and replaced. Doesn’t sound very fun, does it?

Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal

All things considered, it’s a miracle that Home Alone isn’t considered a horror movie with the damage done to poor Harry and Marv. If the booby traps laid out in Home Alone were real, Kevin would be a murderer several times over. His parents would come home to find their juvenile son in jail, or maybe even standing over corpses.

Thankfully, the Wet Bandits in Home Alone are as tough as cartoons. Whatever you throw at them, they will pop right back up to try to ruin your Christmas cheer. Just don’t try these traps out when you’re ‘home alone’.

And that’s our list of traps that would have killed Harry and Marv in Home Alone. What do you think? Did we miss any? Have we ruined your Christmas and enjoyment of the film? Let us know in the comments below.

Check our Christmas movie advent calendar article HERE.

Read IMDB information about Home Alone HERE.