Well, if you are going to bring the circus into it... you have the whole falling off the trapezze or being squashed by an elephant option t even less helpful

Ooh! The elephant could fall off the trapeze! And squash whoever is walking by, unsuspecting!

It is like the Flitcraft incident all over again!!

But always, they go for the artistic eyebrow-cut.

Well, I think the simplicity in assumption is that you always get one of these.

The other easy stuff no one gets (ripped nostrils=less easy) is a fat lip. Those are fucking trivial to obtain, yet a lot harder to create with the magic of makeup (as are ripped nostrils, I'd wager).

Can the horse stumble on some rocks and break its leg?

As fragile as horses can be, low speed dramatic fractures such as would cause a spill are also unlikely.

A FoaF (admittedly not an experienced rider) took a low speed fall and landed on his face. The fall fractured his cheekbones and caused his sinus cavities to fill with blood. I could see how that could lead to some pretty serious breathing difficulty if treatment isn't readily available.

Gorgeous found photographs -- developed film from vintage cameras:

The pages below show prints I made from processing film I found in old cameras. In many cases the exposed films were over fifty years old. You are seeing them for the first time as they were lost by the photographers that took these images.

I'm sort of surprised the chin scrape is not more common. Fully half the men I have ever met have a scar on or just under the points of their chins (this is less common among women, who apparently do not get caught up in horse-falls or explosions nearly as much). Also, unlike a fat lip, it's pretty easy to draw on for the movies.

I do sometimes see scrapes along the plane of a cheekbone, when the possessor of the face in question is especially cheekbonealicious. It makes me laugh and laugh, as if people only injure their faces along that one plane, like being stuffed into a deli slicer.

Fully half the men I have ever met have a scar on or just under the points of their chins (this is less common among women, who apparently do not get caught up in horse-falls or explosions nearly as much)

I have two (scars, not horse-falls or explosions), but neither of them would be visible, so they're of no real value in a movie.

I do sometimes see scrapes along the plane of a cheekbone, when the possessor of the face in question is especially cheekbonealicious. It makes me laugh and laugh, as if people only injure their faces along that one plane, like being stuffed into a deli slicer.

Well, the reason you see the brow stuff is because the skin splits much more easily if there's bone right underneath. I'm not going to get those sorts of scrapes anywhere lower on unless I'm going against something very rough, but someone with magnificent cheekbones will definitely be more likely. Especially if you have time to reflexively turn and protect the nose.

I have a chickenpox scar on my eyebrow. NSM with the dashing.

God, I wish today were done.

Like how action heroes have artistic cuts through eyebrows

I have one of those. Not from anything particularly action-oriented. Or artistic, for that matter.