Johnny Knoxville brings Jackass back to the big screen — minus the late Ryan Dunn, who sadly lost his life in 2011 — with this week's Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, a feature-length series of pranks that revolve around his aged Jackass 3D granddad Irving Zisman. Though for the first time marrying its stunts to a narrative framework — in which Zisman and his ten-year-old grandson Billy take a cross-country road trip — Bad Grandpa revels in gags both crass and inventive, many of them predicated on societal assumptions about, and prejudices toward, the elderly. In honor of Knoxville and company's latest cinematic slap to the face, here's a look back at ten of the most wildly inventive bits from the film franchise.

"The Mini Loop"

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A challenge of athletic skill as well as pain tolerance, this Jackass 2 feat involves riding an electric mini-bike up and over a circular ramp without crashing or falling off. First delivering multiple failed attempts that result in bodily harm before offering a thrilling payoff, all via a stunt that looks like it'd be a blast if only one could survive it, it's something like the ideal Jackass bit: dangerous, exciting, and decidedly clever.

"The Toro Totter"

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Going toe to toe with a bull is daring and stupid but also, from a conceptual standpoint, relatively dull. But if you throw into the mix crisscrossing seesaws, the level of anticipation and tension is upped to another level. That fact is incontrovertibly proven by this Jackass 2 stunt, which takes the man-against-beast conflict to idiotically ingenious new heights, all while subtly commenting on its own childishness via Knoxville and co.'s propeller beanies.

"Bad Grandpa"

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A precursor to this week's film starring a latex-clad Johnny Knoxville, this sketch, again from Jackass 2, is cunning because it's been designed not just as a vulgar joke but also as a provocation aimed at cultural expectations of etiquette. By having a young boy smoke and drink in public, Knoxville eagerly courts social disapproval and, once attained, then mocks and taunts those good Samaritans for their weak-kneed refusal to truly intervene in such (fake) child abuse. It's profane commentary with a knowing wink.

"The High Five"

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Brilliant in its simplicity, this Jackass 3D sketch hilariously plays off the expected safety of humdrum office spaces. Using a gigantic open-palmed hand attached to a slingshot-style axle, Knoxville and cohorts smack unsuspecting cast members when they walk through a doorway — upping the ante by nailing Ehren McGehey while he's holding a tray of soup, and then Bam Margera while the hand is strapped with bags of flour. It's the unforeseen cheap shot amplified to an absurdist extreme.

"Electric Avenue"

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Forcing most of the Jackass team to navigate a daunting gauntlet of live tasers, Jackass 3D's sketch generates its humor from both the terror of being repeatedly zapped with electricity, as well as the inspired construction of the hallway itself, designed with planks, tires, and hanging and whirling stun-gun mobiles. Plus, by dressing its participants as striped-jumpsuit prison inmates, it goofily nods to old-school cinematic clichés while updating them for its new-school theater-of-cruelty comedy.

"Bungie Boogie"

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A stunt that promises pain only if not properly executed, Jackass 3D's "Bungie Boogie" hits that sweet spot between immature idiocy and creativity. Slingshooting themselves along a slip-n-slide to a ramp that then launches them into an inflatable pool, the Jackass crew deliver a scenario that's clever precisely because it engenders simultaneous desires to see the men fail miserably (because their self-inflicted agony is amusing) and succeed triumphantly (because the trick itself seems doable). It's the rare Jackass stunt in which the urge to see them prevail is almost greater than the wish to see them suffer.

"Rocket Skates"

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The Jackass franchise is about watching adults do dangerous things only moronic kids might dare attempt, and with "Rocket Skates," Johnny Knoxville fulfills a juvenile fantasy by trying to maneuver down sidewalks with skates outfitted with rockets. The results are unsurprisingly disastrous, ending with him rolling around on the ground as sparks fly.

"Bicentennial BMX"

"Why wouldn't they just make two of the same sized wheels?" asks the late Dunn about the antiquated bikes that he and Knoxville ride around a parking lot. It's a valid question, and one that immediately prefaces Knoxville attempting — with head-smashing results — to ride over a ramp made of snow. Amusingly dim-bulb, it's an inspired bit of anthropological critique mashed up with contemporary BMX daring.

"The Electric Limbo"

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No one really likes to limbo, but leave it to the Jackass gang to find a witty way to enhance the game's unpleasantness. With an electrified limbo bar hovering above their faces and crotches, it's only a matter of time before someone gets shocked — unless, of course, you're Wee-Man, and can just saunter underneath it unscathed.

"Big Red Rocket"

In grand Loony Tunes tradition, Johnny Knoxville takes rocket-propelled flight — at least on his second try — in this signature Jackass 2 set piece. What's inventive here isn't necessarily the stunt itself — it's just Knoxville in a jumpsuit and helmet holding tight to a rocket launched into the water. Rather, it's the way that such a feat so clearly replicates a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, and how that in turn speaks to the influence those seminal cartoons have on Jackass's humor-via-physical-abuse spirit.

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Nick Schager Nick Schager is a NYC-area film critic and culture writer with twenty years of professional experience writing about all the movies you love, and countless others that you don’t.

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