Top 20 Craziest Magic Tricks Ever Performed

The Pendragons
This illusion has been around for a long time. Although it was invented by John Nevil Maskelyne in the 1800s, it was most famously performed by Harry Houdini. Typically, a magician is tied up and locked in a box. The assistant climbs on top and holds up a curtain. When the curtain is dropped, the magician appears on top of the box, then opens it to reveal the assistant tied up inside. Jonathan and Charlotte Pendragon’s version was best known for how fast the switch occurs. Even if you can figure out how Jonathan gets out of the box and Charlotte gets in it, it seems impossible that they should be able to swap places so quickly.

Paul Daniels
Magic shows on television often claim there are no camera tricks involved, but this illusion is a camera trick. That is, Daniels makes an entire TV camera disappear while it’s filming. Daniels locks the huge, heavy piece of equipment into a wooden crate along with its operator. As a forklift spins the crate around, we have a continuous view of the camera’s live feed. Daniels then takes out a starting gun and fires it into the air. At that moment, the live feed stops and the crate collapses, revealing nothing but the confused cameraman inside. With tricks that impressive, no wonder Paul Daniels’ TV show ran for 15 seasons.

Harry Blackstone Jr.
One of Harry Blackstone Jr.’s most famous tricks starts off with an amusingly jovial tone, and keeps it throughout. He begins silently, miming some funny gestures with a light bulb. The first time he makes the object “float,” he appears to absent-mindedly release the orb into the air, earning laughs from the crowd. His act escalates as he hands the bulb to the crowd to prove its authenticity, culminating with Blackstone sending his trinket flying across the room. Some have insisted that it’s one of the greatest tricks ever done, even implying that it’s miraculous. One thing’s for sure, the unfolding of this trick sure had his audience mesmerized, and the whole thing invites cheerful rewatchability.

David Berglas
This one admittedly looks more impressive when it’s done as a close-up street magic trick. But David Berglas – one of Britain’s most famous magicians – was known for doing it on stage in front of hundreds of people. As the two nurses take his pulse, he makes his heartbeat slow and eventually stop. Even weirder, the pulse stops in each arm independently. You might assume that the nurses are plants, but if you watch a street magician do the same trick with strangers, you can see their baffled faces as the pulse winds down and stops.

Jon Dorenbos
From professional football player to magician? Jon Dorenbos played in the NFL for 14 seasons, where he was known for showing off magic tricks to his teammates. He appeared on “America's Got Talent” the year before he retired and wowed the judges and the audience with his magic. This trick gets our vote for the best of his repertoire. Dorenbos invites guest judge Ne-Yo to pick a card. But he doesn’t just guess the card correctly. He draws a deck of cards on a piece of paper and somehow makes Ne-Yo’s card rise out of the two-dimensional image. Judging from the look on Heidi Klum’s face, the illusion is even more impressive in person.

Derren Brown
This is mentalism at its finest. In addition to being a magician, Brown is also a painter who creates caricatures of famous people. When one of his paintings is displayed in an art gallery, he takes the opportunity to perform an incredible psychological illusion in front of a group of people. After choosing a volunteer at random, Brown asks the man to think of a celebrity. He continues prompting the man to cycle through different names in his mind until Brown is confident he’s settled on the right one. Then comes the big reveal, and of course, the man has guessed correctly. We can’t even begin to guess how he pulled this one off.

Richard Ross
Richard Ross starts this routine with fire and a pocket watch. As he proceeds, more of the time pieces seem to appear out of nowhere, with such rapidity you miss them even if you don’t blink. Ross then enlarges his act–literally–by pulling out oversized watche s from places that they seemingly could never fit. By the end, he’s dangling half a dozen oversized fobs from his hands. Not only is the concept of the trick impressive, but Ross’s execution is as smooth as a choreographed ballet. When he combined all of that with his fierce stage presence, Ross had an unforgettable illusion that he would go on to recreate multiple times. And each performance was filled with applause from the crowd.

Dynamo
Steven Frayne took on the name Dynamo back in 2001, when he was just 18 years old. Since then, he’s toured the world performing for sellout crowds. He even produced his own short TV series, in which he traveled to major cities to do street magic. For this episode in New York, he first chooses a young couple and magically causes their cell phones to call each other without touching them. Then, incredibly, every cell phone in Times Square starts ringing at once. Even if the first two people were plants, surely the entire crowd can’t be in on it. But perhaps most shocking is that all those people actually had their ringers turned on.

Hans and Helga Moretti
This one is less a magic trick and more just a really dangerous stunt. Hans Moretti was born Johannes Crewe in Poland all the way back in 1928. He and his wife Helga were known for performing death-defying feats on stage, including playing Russian roulette with actual loaded guns. This act involving a crossbow seems just as crazy. Moretti does several different versions of the stunt, including one in which he shoots an apple off his wife’s head over his shoulder and blindfolded. And did we mention that he spun in circles before shooting, so he’s also dizzy? Helga places an amazing amount of trust in her husband.

Robert Gallup
There are dangerous magic tricks, and then there’s this. Gallup’s legs are chained together, his hands are handcuffed, then he’s stuffed into a mailbag which is locked from the outside. He’s confined in a giant metal cage and dropped out of an airplane flying at only 18,000 feet. He has just 60 seconds to escape the shackles, bag, and cage and get to the parachute attached to the outside. Even if the locks and chains aren’t real, there’s no faking the fact that he’s plummeting toward Earth at high speed. If he can’t get out of the cage fast enough himself, it’s unlikely that his assistants will be able to help him in time. Our hearts are racing just thinking about it.

Paul Daniels
One of the first magic tricks the world has ever seen, a cups-and-balls routine involves cups and disappearing balls. Paul Daniels, however, put his own twist on this classic trick. With an act that could even put stand-up comedians to shame, the Godfather of Modern Magic keeps his audience engaged with his unique brand of British banter, while the ball appears and disappears impossibly quickly in his version of Chop Cup. The trick usually ends up with the ball turning into a lemon, and we still can’t figure out how. The former “Magician of the Year” sadly passed away in 2016, but his chop cup performance is still one of the best because of Daniels’ showmanship.

Thomas Blackthorne
Sure, sword swallowing was popular back in the day, but to keep up with technological advances, Thomas Blackthorne decided to go more modern. Probably infinitely more dangerous than putting a sword in your mouth, Blackthorne takes it to the next level by slowly lowering a working jackhammer down his throat on live TV. He might look a little like the Undertaker, but this insane feat thankfully hasn’t done him in... yet. Well, what do you expect from the world record holder for lifting the heaviest object with his tongue? We still don’t know if the jackhammer trick is even real, but for Blackthorne’s sake you have to hope not!

Criss Angel
Gross! This trick definitely isn’t for the faint of heart. Criss Angel, the same magician who rips people’s bodies in half and raises people from the dead, doesn’t disappoint with this stunning act of self-mutilation. After swallowing a coin, Criss makes it flow down his arm until he uses a knife to cut his skin and take it out, blood and all, to show it to his disturbed audience. Maybe this trick works so well because it’s so hard to watch without looking away. We know Criss walked on water like a modern messiah, but the coin trick is more imaginative, and the shock factor alone is enough to give it a spot on this list.

Lance Burton
Let’s face it: when people think of the typical magician, they picture Lance Burton (or at least someone who looks like him). And this entry is just what you imagine when you hear the word magic. No delays, no banter, just intense music and continuous sleight of hand. Burton performs a series of tricks involving live doves, playing cards... and fire. But don’t worry. No animals were injured in the making of this illusion. You will most likely be baffled throughout most of the fast-paced tricks, but you’ll be kept wondering: Where the hell does he keep those birds? If you want to see a classic act that brings you back to the golden days of magic, then Lance Burton’s dove performance is for you.

David Blaine
Ah yes, David Blaine – an illusionist so unbelievable, people have accused him of calling on the forces of the Underworld to perform magic. You know, setting loose live frogs from within his body seems to be the wrong way to deal with those accusations. Drake, Dave Chappelle, and NBA player Stephen Curry get hysterical, but mostly disturbed when Blaine leans back and hocks up a living, moving frog into their champagne glasses. And he does this THREE times! The frogs even try to escape! Hmm... maybe Blaine does have some deal with the Dark Lord.

Jon Armstrong
So how did Jon get his arm strong? By playing with his tiny plunger, of course. Penn and Teller loved every second of this performance, which first sees Armstrong lifting numerous cards at the same time with a plunger. It gets crazier when the magician lifts up the exact number of cards called for, and even cuts the cards with the plunger on a precise card that’s unknown to the magician, but which someone previously chose. Armstrong brings his unique brand of comedy to the act, keeping us entertained – and possibly distracted – throughout. But maybe it’s not him who should get the credit, as he tells us that it’s the plunger doing all the work.

Harry Houdini
One of the most famous magicians of all time brings us this unfortunately named trick. Invented in 1911 in England, and having nothing to do with China, this act was one that Houdini routinely performed throughout the remainder of his career. Restrained by the legs, suspended from above, and then slowly dunked into a chamber of water seems torturous enough, but Houdini, known for his escape routines, would always come out unscathed. Houdini made it a mission to call out frauds at the time, so maybe this escape isn’t an illusion at all and he was actually in danger whenever he performed this trick. But that’s just what we expect from one of the greatest escapologists and stuntmen to have ever lived.

Cyril Takayama
If you ever hear this magician say “Let me just clear my throat,” you should run... far away. Well, unless you want to see a man’s head suddenly drop down to his stomach area, where he catches it and then painfully places it back on his shoulders. It’s even scarier when he decides to walk towards you with it in his hands, like on this Japanese show. We have no idea how he does this. His clothes stay at their regular height, but his neck is just gone. It’s certainly one way to make an impression.

David Copperfield
Since he’s one of the most successful magicians in history, and holder of 11 Guinness World Records, we don’t know why David Copperfield would ever want to make himself invisible. After a lighting effects demonstration, which shows lasers causing sparks on his clothes, he gets his two lovely assistants to cover his midsection as he somehow separates himself in two. Moments later, we see him separate himself in two again, except this time, his body isn’t covered and he’s able to hold onto his legs and “walk” alongside his torso. We’re pretty sure there’s either a top half or bottom half that’s invisible here...uh...right? Copperfield making the entire Statue of Liberty disappear is remarkable, but in accordance with this list, this trick is crazier!

Penn & Teller
While the trick itself is old, Penn and Teller have been performing it since the 90s, introducing their own brand of humor to the act. Audience members sign their initials on bullets that are placed into separate guns. Penn and Teller then shoot at each other, coming up with the other’s bullet in his mouth. Shocking to say the least! And while it’s easy to dismiss it as an illusion, the trick has actually killed or wounded numerous artists over the decades. The elevated risk of danger, and the sheer badassery of catching a bullet in your mouth is enough to give this trick our top spot.

Which magic tricks blew your mind? Let us know in the comments below.