Since its airing, "The Injury" has received critical acclaim from television critics. The scene featuring Dwight crashing his car received specific attention. "IGN" ranked the scene with Dwight getting in a car accident as its seventh-best moment in the first two seasons, noting that "fact that this show can get such inspired and unusual comedy from what is essentially a puke joke is a testament to how clever "The Office" is." "Rolling Stone" named the same scene as the twentieth-funniest in "The Office"s first three seasons. TV Squad's Michael Sciannamea said that "The Injury" was "another solid episode" and that the "show gets better with each and every week." M. Giant of Television Without Pity graded the episode with an "A–". Francis Rizzo III from DVD Talk wrote positively of the episode and praised the performance of Rainn Wilson as Dwight and wrote that "nothing he does compares" to his performance in "The Injury". He called Wilson's performance as Dwight "flat-out strange" and noted that the episode, along with several others, "wouldn't be nearly as entertaining" without his character. Mindy Kaling later stated in an interview that it was her favorite episode of the show that she had written. She later expanded that the entry's "full-on loopy" quality made it humorous. She noted that the episode was "so funny to me, because what happened to is so stupid."