Face Split Incident 2009 (2024)

This entry contains content that may be considered sensitive to some viewers.

About

Face Split Incident 2009, also known as the Face Split Accident 2009 or Diving Face Split Video, is a viral gore video in which a man dives off a bridge aiming for the water but instead splits open his face vertically. The jump video is then followed by footage of the man in the ER, showing that he's still conscious as a doctor pushes his face back together that's split down the middle. It was purportedly filmed in Beruit, Lebanon sometime in June 2009. It gained infamy online during the late 2000s after it was posted to Reddit, potentially first surfacing on the now defunct website Liveleak. The video later gained increased awareness in 2022 and 2023, via newfound notoriety on TikTok as a form of shock media.

Origin

The earliest-discovered upload of the original "Face Split Incident 2009" video was shared by Redditor zombiedub to /r/videos^[1] on October 16th, 2009, who captioned it, "[Warning! Very Graphic!!] Man splits face open after trying to jump of bridge." The post gained roughly 1,100 upvotes in 14 years. The video was later removed by the subreddit (screencap shown below).

In the comment section of the Reddit^[1] post, Redditor YourHumbleNarrator left a long-form comment^[2] that outlined the purported background of the video. The contents of the Redditor's comment were originally written by journalist Robert Lindsay, who published a post to his blog Robert Lindsay Returns^[3] on October 8th, 2009, titled "Face Split Diving Accident Video." Within the blog post, Lindsay claimed to know a lot about the video's context, writing:

A teenager, a 16 year old boy, dives off the seaside promenade in Beirut and slips before the dive. The slip causes him to miss the ocean and instead hit the concrete slab below where fishermen fish. He hits the concrete face first, then goes into the ocean. In a short while, the ocean for yards around has turned red with blood. There are people and boats in the water trying to help the guy and girls are screaming all over the place.
The scene then shifts to a hospital where the poor guy is being overseen by a team of doctors and nurses. His face has been split clear in two down the middle vertically!
He is still alive and conscious, he's still breathing, and his eyes are still moving around. He looks terrified. A couple of times, the doctor takes the sides of his face and pushes them together to make a whole face again. The doctor supposedly says, "Where do I begin?" a few times in Arabic.

Lindsay then shifted as to whether or not the video was real or fake, citing rumored speculation about the secondary ER video being unrelated to the first diving video, writing:

There are reports linking to a different Web video that supposedly proves that this video is fake. The video shows the same hospital footage. In the other video, which appeared on the Net around the same time this one did (June 1, 2009) the hospital footage is said to be of a failed 9mm gun suicide. However, a 9mm cannot do that kind of damage to your face.
Furthermore, in a longer video version of the ER scene, the two doctors are discussing in Lebanese Arabic how the young man landed "on a rock" when he jumped into the water. This dialogue would not exist in a gun suicide video.

As of July 2023, the contents of Robert Lindsay's blog^[3] are unconfirmed.

Spread

Robert Lindsay's blog post was shared on Twitter^[4] in late 2009. Going into the 2010s, the video was sporadically shared on YouTube and then reposted to Twitter.^[5] However, the video would consistently get removed by YouTube for violating its community guidelines.

In the early 2020s, the "face split" video gained more infamy as it started to be covered by YouTubers en masse. For instance, on July 30th, 2021, YouTuber^[6] Disturbed Reality uploaded a video called "THE DIVING FACE SPLIT GUY | A GRAPHIC OG SHOCK VIDEO" in which he discussed the video and its purported origin as relayed by Robert Lindsay's blog.^[3] The video gained roughly 1 million views and 16,000 likes in two years (shown below).

More viral YouTube^[7] videos about the video surfaced in 2021 and 2022, eventually spreading to TikTok. For instance, on September 30th, 2022, TikToker^[8] @ceo.of.face.split.dude posted a meme using the start of the original video, gaining roughly 960,900 plays and 12,200 likes in 10 months (shown below, left). On May 21st, 2023, TikToker^[9] and Roblox VTuber @poorybacon posted a video that dubbed the video the "Face Split Incident 2009," gaining roughly 5.7 million plays and 307,100 likes in two months (shown below, right).