Call it Black-eye Friday.
Since around 1952, the day after Thanksgiving has been regarded as the official start to America’s Christmas shopping season, but only until recently have we been able to witness to what lengths people will go to get a deal, thanks to the rise of smartphones that can instantly capture video.
As you perhaps wind down from your own godforsaken excursion into the land of commerce this post-holiday weekend, take a look back at some of the most insane brawls to breakout on Black Friday.
Modesto mall melee
Nice effort, guy in red hoodie.
Showing utter disrespect for JCPenney’s, a group of young men began wailing on each other in front of the department store at the Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto, Calif., in 2016.
No one knows what started it and security had to be called to break it up, but local police say they never got word of the incident.
Flatscreen free-for-all
It wasn’t exactly the high definition of holiday spirit.
At a Houston-area Walmart in 2014, four people ended up piling on top of a box to lay their claim to a $218 50-inch flatscreen TV.
Cops would eventually have to pull them off the deeply discounted appliance as well as each other, but authorities say there were no arrests.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” shopper Lorranie Henderson told KPRC. “The way people are acting to save money you can’t blame them. They are just trying to save some money.”
California Shove
Not cool, bra.
In an incident from 2012 that began inside a Victoria’s Secret at the Westfield Galleria in Roseville, Calif., shoppers went wild, eventually attacking each other in front of the innocently named Air Joy Bungee ride.
“I’ve been in the retail business six years now, and I’ve never see a Black Friday this bad,” Jessica Wilbourn, an employee at the lingerie store, told KTXL. “They were throwing merchandise in the air, and we had some boxed gift sets and it hit another girl in the head.
“Some people got trampled on, and a 15-year-old got punched in the stomach.”
South African shopping showdown
#BlackFriday Chaos over toilet paper. CE pic.twitter.com/7sveqQk3IH
— EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) November 25, 2016
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It’s not just the US of A that takes its shopping too seriously.
As we can see from this footage taken last year at a department store in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, South African deal-seekers ended up swarming a cage of discounted toilet paper so furiously that a woman got helplessly stuck in the container while trying to hand the items out.
Things got even dirtier when a box containing bars of soap spilled onto the ground, sending people scrambling for the suds.
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tazer
Talk about shocking stuffers.
During a late-night fight between two couples inside the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia in 2013, a woman apparently got desperate and pulled out a stun gun.
In footage of the terrifying incident, you can hear the weapon crackling as well as see blue light coming from the sparks.
Security quickly broke up the incident and escorted both parties out.
Food court fracas and discounted nights in jail
In 2015, brawls broke out at Walmart retail stores and other shopping centers across the country.
In Kentucky, Texas and Louisiana, tempers flared among shoppers as law enforcement agencies struggled to keep control.
At a Louisville mall on Thanksgiving night, shoppers wrestled each other to the ground in a packed food court.
The fracas knocked a woman to the floor as shoppers at Mall St. Matthews gawked at the sight of two unidentified men slapping, punching and tearing at each other’s shirts.
A police officer broke up the fight, as shown in video capturing at least 30 seconds of the melee. It’s unclear who or what sparked the fight or if the assailants will face criminal charges.
At least one participant in the fight was shown being ushered out of the food court by his friends. He made sure to pick up a shopping bag he had dropped on the floor.
In addition, a fight video circulated on social media showing a scuffle between a group of men at a mall in Florence, Ky.
In both videos, onlookers shouted “World Star,” a reference to a hip-hop website that aggregates fight videos into monthly compilations.
In El Paso, Texas, a man can be seen swinging wildly at a police officer during an ugly brawl at Walmartcaught on video.
A shooter wounded one person who was left with non-life threatening injuries outside an Alexandria, La., mall, but local authorities quickly determined the attack had nothing to do with Black Friday.
Big crowds drawn to Black Friday have drawn scrutiny for unruly behavior especially after the 2008 trampling death of a Walmart worker in Long Island.