Trauma surgeon unpacks every injury the Wet Bandits sustain in Home Alone and explains what would happen in real-life

There were a lot of injuries inflicted upon Home Alone bad guys Harry and Marv and now a trauma surgeon has unpacked every single one.

Dr Annie Onishi was invited by Wired to unpack every injury the Wet Bandits, which Harry and Marv are known as by the papers in the hilarious Christmas movies, sustained in the Home Alone.

Let's dive straight into it.

Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci play the Wet Bandits in Home Alone (20th Century Fox)

Fall from the stairs

First to feature is Harry - who falls twice while trying to tackle the stairs on the lead-up to the property.

Onishi tells Wired: "If his ribs weren't broken before, I bet you they're broken now. When our ribs break, the little edges can sort of dislodge and damage internal organs.

"So from the back, they can ding a kidney, they can ding a liver, they can ding a spleen."

She then goes on to talk about Marv's falls, saying: "Marv falls down a bunch of stairs.

"But he sort of is at a ground level when he does it and sort of seems like a little bit less velocity and force.

"So I do think Marv is a little younger, which may explain why he's able to bounce back from this injury a little faster."

Harry and Marv don't know what's about to hit them (20th Century Fox)

Iron falls on Marv's face

"So looking straight up and having the iron land on his face, what that's gonna do is what's called an axial loading injury," Onishi explains.

This is an injury to the spine which happens when force is applied along the spine's long axis.

She added that if you strike the back of your head the 'brain gets rocked from there' and as it settles down it will hit the front of the skull as well.

Onishi adds: "So you may expect to see some bleeding in the back of the brain accompanied by some bleeding in the front of the brain as the brain sort of rocks about the skull cavity itself."

Pellet gun to the face

This injury is probably 'more like a bee sting', but a pellet gun could cause some damage if it hit you in the eye, Onishi said.

Harry burns his hand on a doorknob

"If I had to guess what type of burn this is gonna be, my guess is gonna be a second degree," the surgeon said, adding that it would 'heal without a scar'.

Marv stands on a nail barefoot

Onishi explained: "Puncture injuries are notoriously high risk for infections. It's this tiny little deep hole that is dark and warm and full of blood and is a great place for bacteria to grow."

Homemade flamethrower to Harry's head

To figure out the impacts of this particularly violent attack, the doctor compared the color of Harry's head to his burned hand. She noted it wasn't as pink as his hand, indicating it wasn't likely to be a bad burn - but it would still be painful.

Harry gets tarred and feathered

This isn't particularly brutal in itself, but Onishi expressed her concerns over the glue landing on the 'fresh burn' on Harry's head.

"Then feathers on the burn, I think that's gonna make wound care really difficult," she said.

Marv stands barefoot on glass Christmas decorations

Marv steps on 'very fine glass' in the Christmas baubles; an injury which would quickly cause cuts to his feet.

Onishi explained that he would be in a lot of pain, adding: "Well, the patient's gonna go home with the sensation of glass in his feet and he's just gonna have to continue to keep his feet soaked and this stuff will work its way out eventually."

Marv's foot becomes a sore spot after standing on baubles (20th Century Fox)

Marv gets hit by a can of paint

This is a bad one. I'll let Onishi explain: "When the neck hyperextends like that at a fast rate with a lot of acceleration and deceleration, you can get something called a Hangman's Fracture which is when the second cervical vertebrae breaks in a couple of places.

"It's a really unstable fracture. It can be a very high risk for a devastating cord injury at that level. The lay term for these hyperextension-type injuries is whiplash.

"Whiplash really refers to all the muscular stiffness you get after a big hyperextension injury like that. So now we have a couple of other injuries in rapid sequence, so not only do we have this hyperextension injury of the neck, then we have a heavy object in the form of Harry landing on Marv. So if Marv's ribs weren't broken before, my bet is they're gonna be broken now.

"This little sequence, at a very minimum, we have at least soft tissue damage from a whiplash injury. At the worst, we have something like a Hangman's Fracture, a hyperextension injury of the neck. We have, then, a fall from height, we have a head strike, and then we have crushed by a heavy falling object."

Marv hits Harry with a crowbar

While trying to kill a tarantula, Marv accidentally hits Harry with a crowbar - which Onishi thinks is 'very reminiscent' of 'handlebar injuries'.

"So when somebody is riding their bike and they crash and their handlebars jam into their epigastric area and squishes all the organs and bruises them, lacerates them, so that can really cause a lot of damage," she said.

The injuries come in all shapes and sizes (20th Century Fox)

Marv and Harry crash into a wall

The Wet Bandits swing from a rope into the brick wall of the home as they continue their efforts to capture Macauley Culkin's Kevin, resulting in what Onishi described as a 'deceleration injury'.

"A lot of our organs, including our heart... they're tethered to the body wall in certain locations. So when we decelerate, things tear about that tether. These deceleration injuries can be really subtle."

Marv and Harry get hit with a shovel

Kevin's neighbor comes to the rescue just when it seems like the young boy is out of places to run, likely causing a bleed in both of their brains.

Just a few moments later, however, the Wet Bandits are back walking and talking, making Onishi concerned for a 'epidural hematoma'.

"What that means is that there's blood accumulating underneath the skull, but outside the brain and expanding slowly," she said.

"As that blood expands within the epidural space, they then start to lose consciousness again and can even go on to herniate (when the brain swells through an opening in the skull) and die pretty quickly."

So needless to say, the Wet Bandits really go through the ringer. But after all of that, they still manage to make it back for a second movie. It must be a Christmas miracle!