The Two Unaired 'Jackass' Stunts That Finally Made It Into 'Best and Last'
Knoxville talked about how one stunt started it all for the Jackass franchise, and how the other is the only stunt/prank that he regrets having done at all.
Published July 7 2026, 9:10 a.m. ET
Jackass: Best and Last is the last outing in the franchise. It compiles some of the greatest hits into a single montage alongside a number of never-before-seen stunts.
Among that new footage are two stunts that trace back to the earliest days of the franchise’s pilot, one that led to a crew member’s arrest, and another too extreme to ever air on television.
One Stunt Almost Saw Knoxville Get Shot
As with most Jackass installments, Best and Last includes footage too extreme or too graphic for television. That includes a segment showing Johnny Knoxville, the mastermind behind the franchise, with several guns drawn on him by police.
In the stunt, Knoxville posed as an escaped convict, walking into a hardware store in an orange jumpsuit with dirt on his face and handcuffs on his wrists, asking for a hacksaw. Bystanders quickly left the store and called the police, and several carloads of officers arrived with guns drawn. Once the situation was resolved, the production was banned from filming in West Hollywood for a decade.
Knoxville has said he regretted how the incident played out, since it led to the arrest of Veena Mehta, one of the show’s producers, rather than himself.
“It got a huge reaction, and four or five carloads of cops show up, and they all have their guns out. One of our producers got arrested, Veena Mehta got arrested, and I regretted that because I was on the set. I was the one who should have got arrested, but I really didn't know how things worked,” he said on Steve O’s Wild Ride podcast in 2024.
Another Prank Did Actually See Knoxville Get Shot
Knoxville and the Jackass crew have had numerous near-death experiences over the years, but the stunt that effectively started the franchise was filmed before Jackass existed as a show and before MTV was ever involved.
Knoxville set out to test self-defense equipment on himself, including a bulletproof vest, with a crew member on hand to film it.
When the crew member declined to pull the trigger, Knoxville turned the fun on himself and fired at point-blank range. The vest he wore was stuffed with pages from an adult magazine for extra padding, a detail he has discussed on the Howard Stern Show.
The footage, which shows the crew trying to talk him out of it in real time, went unaired for decades before finally appearing in Best and Last.