We might be living in a golden age of superhero TV, but long before Marvel was a dominant force at the box office there was the delightfully silly 1978 Incredible Hulk TV show. If you need a reminder of just how absurd the show could be, this round-up of every time the Hulk actually appeared in the series provides ample proof.
The list comes from Kenneth Johnson, who produced and created The Incredible Hulk. Some years after the superhero show, he worked with an assistant director named Kevin Koster on the series JAG. Koster just happened to be a Hulk superfan who delighted in calling out all the reasons poor Dr. David Banner (played by Bill Bixby) would turn into Lou Ferrigno’s green-skinned monster.
Turns out, it’s often quite a bit weirder than just getting mad at something like you’d expect. Some choice excuses for going green:
- Receiving a lethal injection, and then having the person say, “Oh. I just gave you a lethal injection. Sorry, David.”
- Wandering around in the service ducts of a hotel (predating Bruce Willis) only to accidentally yank several of the pipes loose and get a full blast of hot steam
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Being tied up and fed soup by an elderly Japanese woman who doesn’t
understand words like “You’ve GOT to cut me loose!”
- 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
- Receiving a speeding ticket
- Wandering around inside a 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
Seriously, the whole thing — there’s 131 in total — is worth a read through if you need a chuckle… and perhaps a bit of a reminder about how far live-action superheroes have come.
[H/T John Wenz]