Yes, this is a joke question. It also has a real answer — which is exactly the point. Absurd scenarios don't break recordkeeping analysis; they decompose into the same regulatory questions every real incident does: whose employee is this, were they in the work environment, does an exception apply, and does the injury meet a recording criterion. Watch.
Start with the easy one: the bus passengers the bear ate. Not recordable — not by you, not ever. Your OSHA 300 log covers injuries and illnesses of your own employees (29 CFR 1904.31 defines covered employees). Members of the public are never your recordables, regardless of what consumed them. Their fate is a matter for the transit authority, their families, and the bear.
Now your employee. Two red herrings die immediately. The forgotten clock-out changes nothing — recordkeeping does not run on payroll status. And 'on break' doesn't trigger the personal-task exception (29 CFR 1904.5(b)(2)(v)), because that exception requires the injury to occur outside assigned working hours — and OSHA has said in writing that breaks count as assigned working hours (interpretation letter, July 29, 2019). The real question is geography: was he in the work environment (29 CFR 1904.5(b)(1)) when the chase began? Injuries arising in the work environment carry a presumption of work-relatedness (29 CFR 1904.5(a)), and the list of nine exceptions in 1904.5(b)(2) contains no bear clause — animal encounters in the work environment are work-related. If the chase began at the establishment and ended under a bus, the causal chain started at work; if he then suffers death, days away, restricted work, or medical treatment beyond first aid (29 CFR 1904.7), the case goes on the log. A bus tends to meet the criteria.
The bear faces no citation. The OSH Act regulates employers, not fauna. The serious takeaway for anyone who made it this far: when a scenario sounds unanswerable, run the same four questions — whose employee, what environment, which exception, which criterion. They have never once failed to sort the circus into paperwork.