Runs with Scissors

Ruuuuuun!

Woman: They're coming for you, Howard Scissorfists!! You have to run!

Howard: I'm not allowed to run. [beat] Should I give them my paper snowflake collection?!

—Cyanide & Happiness, Strip #1540

One of the basic safety rules we learn as children is "never run with scissors." Thus, references to this rule and instances of characters running with scissors show up in the media all the time.

Do Not Try This At Home, obviously. Please.

Examples of Runs with Scissors include:

Film

• In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, while fleeing from a giant runaway fishbowl, Brent, carrying ceremonial scissors, comments, "I really shouldn't be running with these!"
• In Happy Endings, Charley has a scar on his chest from when he ran with scissors at age six.
• Billy Bones's Final Speech in Muppet Treasure Island:

Billy: Beware...
Jim: The one-legged man?
Billy: Aye. But also beware o' running with scissors, or any other pointy object. 'Tis all good fun, til somebody loses an eye.

Literature

• The title of one of Augusten Burroughs's memoirs is Running with Scissors.
• In Shades of Grey, to "run with scissors" is a set expression for "doing something incredibly dangerous."

Live Action TV

• Frasier did it on Cheers once to prove he was "dangerous."
• During a silent comedy sequence in in Frasier, Niles starts to dash across the room with a pair of scissors, but then remembers what his mother told him and moves more carefully.
• I can't believe I remember this, but a very old edition of Dave Letterman had him and Paul Schaffer using this gag to explain how Paul's band "The World's Most Dangerous Band" got their name... basically they cut to a shot of Paul running with a pair of scissors.
• An episode of Oliver Beene had a boy with one testicle. Guess how he lost it.
• A round of new cable channels on Late Night With Conan O'Brien around 2004 had the "Running with Scissors Channel." It showed people running around with scissors... then everyone injured.

Music

• The music video for Green Day's "Warning" depicts a young man who spends his entire day defying "conventional wisdoms" of various types. Towards the start of the video, he runs down a hallway, picks up a pair of scissors that are hanging up on a peg on the way and sets them back down on another peg at the end of the hall.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic put out an album in the late 1990s titled Running with Scissors. The cover photo depicted Al doing the titular activity on a professional track (as #27, naturally). The liner art shows that the only person not seriously injured in the event was Al.

Newspaper Comics

• One Dilbert cartoon had Dogbert giving bad advice for a discounted price to the Pointy-Haired Boss. One panel pictured the Boss running with scissors.
• Similar to the Cheers example above, Jon Arbuckle in Garfield once did this because Ellen likes men who live dangerously.
• The Far Side: In one cartoon, a new employee at a scissors factory is curious about an elderly woman watching over the production line from an elevated chair. An older employee says: "You must be new here. That's Miss Crutchfield, and she's there to make sure nobody runs with scissors."
  • And another where a man is no longer permitted to go running with an anthropomorphic pair of scissors at the track.

Toys

• From Bionicle:

Vezon: So, what am I supposed to do on Destral? Theft? Assassination? Running with sharp objects?

Video Games

• The Sims 2 had a downloadable object that was a large pair of scissors. If you forced the Sim to run with them, he would be killed.
  • Needless to say, this was a fairly popular way to kill Sims, either for malicious purposes or to fulfill a Knowledge Sim's desire to be saved from the Grim Reaper, being quick, having a high success rate, and lacking in the possibility for collateral damage.
• A World of Warcraft one-shot comic references this as the reason Rend Blackhand lost his eye.
• The studio that developed Postal and sequels is called Running with Scissors.

Web Comics

• In a series of Freefall strips, Sam swipes the giant scissors from a Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony and run off with them. The mayor, who was about to open the museum, recommends they shoot him before he hurts himself.
• In Sluggy Freelance, running with scissors is actually an event during a Tournament Arc. Naturally, the panel showing Torg's victory is a recreation of the Weird Al Running With Scissors album cover.

Web Original

• Spoony does this in his video review of Pumpkinhead, satirizing the heroes' careless thrillseeking and eventually winding up with the scissors stuck in his eye.
• Given as the explanation of what happened to Tristan's original voice in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series.

Joey: Tristan's Voice, have you been drinking?
Trisan's Voice: I can't remember, because I'm so drunk!
Joey: Hey, wait! Don't run with those scissors!
Tristan's Voice: You're not the boss of me! [trip] OUCH!
Joey [completely deadpan]: Oh no, he's dead.

Western Animation

• In The Venture Brothers, Dean Venture is shown to have died by running with scissors and tripping.
  • The death montage shows that they are so much death prone that even ridiculously safe activities like flying a kite has killed both Hank and Dean at least once.
• In the Pilot Movie of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Frankie admonishes one friend about running with Scissors — Scissors being another imaginary friend.
• There was a Dexter's Laboratory short-short where Dexter advised Dee Dee never to run with scissors... unless you have the proper safety equipment.
• In one episode of South Park, the boys visit the Island of Misfit Mascots commune and meet "Oinky, the Run-Around-With-Scissors Pig". When one of the boys points out that's bad advice, they're informed that it's why Oinky is on the island.
• According to the Evil Con Carne opening, this is how General Skarr got his scar.
• The regular villain of Dog City challenged a Darker and Edgier villain to a "Senseless Showdown" to determine who would take the title of Dog City's crime boss. Running with scissors was one of the regular's "senseless" moves.
• In an episode of American Dad, Steve becomes a childrens' book author and Stan advises him to play the bad boy in order to attract attention. His "bad boy" actions include various acts of Poke the Poodle, including this.