Warning: SPOILERS for Novocaine.

Jack Quaid’s character in Novocaine might not be able to feel pain, but he can and nearly does die multiple times throughout the movie. Nate’s unique ability actually stems from a rare genetic disorder called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, or CIPA. Nate lives an incredibly sheltered life because of it, but he uses his physical insensitivity to his benefit when his love interest is taken hostage by violent bank robbers. By the time of Novocaine’s ending, he finds that not all risks are life-threatening.

But considering everything Nate goes through during his adventure, maybe embracing risk is the wrong takeaway. Anhidrosis (the inability to sweat) is already dangerous on its own. That and risk of hyperthermia are big parts of why CIPA patients only have a life expectancy of 25 years. And while its over-the-top action played no small role in earning Novocaine’s glowing reviews, suffice to say that Nate puts himself at risk of dying from way more severe causes than mere temperature exposure.

4

Countless Instances Of Extreme Head Trauma

Nate’s Brain Hemorrhage Is Confirmed Onscreen

Even counting his animated DC films, it’s doubtful that any of Jack Quaid’s most successful movies have portrayed fight scenes nearly as brutal as those in Novocaine. The action starts strong in his first kitchen fight against Ben, during which Nate’s head is viciously slammed into numerous surfaces, often in quick succession. To make matters worse, it’s been less than an hour since he was pistol-whipped so hard by main villain Simon that he nearly lost consciousness.

It’s dangerous enough to hit someone hard enough to knock them out once, but Nate nearly pᴀsses out from a head blow in over half the film’s fight scenes. Considering Simon later gets a brick broken over his skull without it even slowing him down, it’s clear that this isn’t the kind of action movie where we’re meant to care about that sort of reality. Even so, Roscoe’s later reveal at the hospital that Nate’s brain was hemorrhaging from the constant abuse suggests that he probably shouldn’t have survived quite that many knockout blows in a single afternoon.

3

Straight Up Ignoring Severe Blood Loss

That Can’t Be What Epinephrine Is For

After realizing he was sH๏τ during his fight with Ben, Nate visits the store to patch up his wound with some super glue. He also later lets Roscoe patch his wounds following Novocaine’s torture scene. But aside from these two instances, Nate doesn’t staunch the bleeding from any other wounds in the movie. It’s also notable that Roscoe’s specifically shown patching Nate’s leg, apparently ignoring that Nate’s spine was impaled by a spiked ball several minutes earlier. It’s hard to believe that injury wouldn’t have bled at all, especially not after Nate gets dangled upside down shortly afterward.

What makes this particularly egregious is that even the first bullet wound already seems like it’s led to severe blood loss before Nate gets it patched up. He starts to lose his footing when leaving the shop, and he regains his bearings by simply shooting himself full of epinephrine. Nate’s not wrong that epinephrine has uses outside of overcoming anaphylaxis. It can even be used to reverse cardiac arrest. But even in these cases, a patient can still die without immediate follow-up treatment. Using it to walk off extreme blood loss probably doesn’t increase one’s lifespan.

2

Getting His Neck Snapped By A Giant

The Spinal Cord Can Only Take So Much

Nate’s mission to save Sherry eventually brings him to a hulking tattoo artist named Zeno. Not only does Zeno appear to have a solid 200 pounds on Nate (at least), but most of it looks to be pure muscle. Any blow by Zeno should be enough to incapacitate a tiny banker, but one of Zeno’s first attacks is an uppercut that snaps Nate’s neck back so hard it looks like it should break. In fact, a few of Zeno’s blows look like they should be tangling Nate’s neck around more than the Slinky in the back of a child’s closet.

Ironically, this is a rare instance where many other action movies would treat the body as more fragile than it is. A human being can absolutely survive a broken neck, but the issue here is the same as with Nate’s probable TBIs during the kitchen fight. It’s one thing to survive a potentially spine-breaking neck injury, but it’s another to survive several in a row. By the time Simon uppercut-kicks Nate’s chin later in the film, he should at least be too paralyzed to continue fighting off his would-be killers.

1

Electrocuting His Heart During An Ambulance Crash

Not Even 1 Out Of 10 Doctors Would Recommend This

While most of Nate’s near deaths were especially dangerous due to repeтιтion, Nate should probably die immediately when he crashes Simon’s stolen ambulance by attaching one defibrillator paddle to his heart and the other to Simon’s face. After they both miraculously survive and Simon snaps Nate’s arm in two like a twig, Nate recovers by again shooting himself with epinephrine. Using a defibrillator when not in cardiac arrest is plenty dangerous on its own, but dosing with epinephrine right afterward is probably what causes the heart attack Nate suffers while in his pursuant coma.

The scene is incredible, and for action fans it elevates Novocaine to rank among Jack Quaid’s best movies, but it’s outrageous how much trauma Nate imposes on his own cardiovascular system in the span of a few minutes. And he does it all while surviving a flipping vehicle and bleeding profusely from a compound fracture. As it turns out, Nate’s real superpower was plot armor all along.