diff --git a/plugin-server/src/worker/ingestion/process-event.ts b/plugin-server/src/worker/ingestion/process-event.ts
index 73e8249626a7b..cc488f494e796 100644
--- a/plugin-server/src/worker/ingestion/process-event.ts
+++ b/plugin-server/src/worker/ingestion/process-event.ts
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 import ClickHouse from '@posthog/clickhouse'
 import { PluginEvent, Properties } from '@posthog/plugin-scaffold'
 import * as Sentry from '@sentry/node'
+import { captureException } from '@sentry/node'
 import { DateTime } from 'luxon'
 
 import { activeMilliseconds } from '../../main/ingestion-queues/session-recording/snapshot-segmenter'
@@ -306,21 +307,21 @@ export type ConsoleLogEntry = {
     timestamp: ClickHouseTimestamp
 }
 
+function sanitizeForUTF8(input: string): string {
+    // the JS console truncates some logs...
+    // when it does that it doesn't check if the output is valid UTF-8
+    // and so it can truncate half way through a UTF-16 pair 🤷
+    // the simplest way to fix this is to convert to a buffer and back
+    // annoyingly Node 20 has `toWellFormed` which might have been useful
+    const buffer = Buffer.from(input)
+    return buffer.toString()
+}
+
 function safeString(payload: (string | null)[]) {
     // the individual strings are sometimes wrapped in quotes... we want to strip those
     return payload
         .filter((item): item is string => !!item && typeof item === 'string')
-        .map((item) => {
-            let candidate = item
-            if (candidate.startsWith('"') || candidate.startsWith("'")) {
-                candidate = candidate.substring(1)
-            }
-
-            if (candidate.endsWith('"') || candidate.endsWith("'")) {
-                candidate = candidate.substring(0, candidate.length - 1)
-            }
-            return candidate
-        })
+        .map((item) => sanitizeForUTF8(item.substring(0, 2999)))
         .join(' ')
 }
 
@@ -362,18 +363,23 @@ export const gatherConsoleLogEvents = (
         // it should be unnecessary to check for truthiness of event here,
         // but we've seen null in production so 🤷
         if (!!event && event.type === RRWebEventType.Plugin && event.data?.plugin === 'rrweb/console@1') {
-            const level = event.data.payload?.level
-            const message = safeString(event.data.payload?.payload)
-            consoleLogEntries.push({
-                team_id,
-                // TODO when is it not a single item array?
-                message: message,
-                log_level: level,
-                log_source: 'session_replay',
-                log_source_id: session_id,
-                instance_id: null,
-                timestamp: castTimestampOrNow(DateTime.fromMillis(event.timestamp), TimestampFormat.ClickHouse),
-            })
+            try {
+                const level = event.data.payload?.level
+                const message = safeString(event.data.payload?.payload)
+                consoleLogEntries.push({
+                    team_id,
+                    // TODO when is it not a single item array?
+                    message: message,
+                    log_level: level,
+                    log_source: 'session_replay',
+                    log_source_id: session_id,
+                    instance_id: null,
+                    timestamp: castTimestampOrNow(DateTime.fromMillis(event.timestamp), TimestampFormat.ClickHouse),
+                })
+            } catch (e) {
+                // if we can't process a console log, we don't want to lose the whole shebang
+                captureException(e, { extra: { messagePayload: event.data.payload?.payload }, tags: { session_id } })
+            }
         }
     })
 
diff --git a/plugin-server/tests/main/process-event.test.ts b/plugin-server/tests/main/process-event.test.ts
index 94587c6770773..d067b92fed75c 100644
--- a/plugin-server/tests/main/process-event.test.ts
+++ b/plugin-server/tests/main/process-event.test.ts
@@ -1484,20 +1484,46 @@ test(`snapshot event with no event summary timestamps is ignored`, () => {
     }).toThrowError()
 })
 
-test('simple console log processing', () => {
-    const consoleLogEntries = gatherConsoleLogEvents(team.id, 'session_id', [
-        {
-            timestamp: 1682449093469,
-            type: 6,
-            data: {
-                plugin: 'rrweb/console@1',
-                payload: {
-                    level: 'info',
-                    payload: ['the message', 'more strings', '', null, false, 0, { blah: 'wat' }],
-                },
+function consoleMessageFor(payload: any[]) {
+    return {
+        timestamp: 1682449093469,
+        type: 6,
+        data: {
+            plugin: 'rrweb/console@1',
+            payload: {
+                level: 'info',
+                payload: payload,
             },
         },
-        null as unknown as RRWebEvent, // see https://posthog.sentry.io/issues/4525043303
+    }
+}
+
+test.each([
+    {
+        payload: ['the message', 'more strings', '', null, false, 0, { blah: 'wat' }],
+        expectedMessage: 'the message more strings',
+    },
+    {
+        // lone surrogate pairs are replaced with the "unknown" character
+        payload: ['\\\\\\",\\\\\\"emoji_flag\\\\\\":\\\\\\"\ud83c...[truncated]'],
+        expectedMessage: '\\\\\\",\\\\\\"emoji_flag\\\\\\":\\\\\\"\ufffd...[truncated]',
+    },
+    {
+        // sometimes the strings are wrapped in quotes...
+        payload: ['"test"'],
+        expectedMessage: '"test"',
+    },
+    {
+        // let's not accept arbitrary length content
+        payload: [new Array(3001).join('a')],
+        expectedMessage: new Array(3000).join('a'),
+    },
+])('simple console log processing', ({ payload, expectedMessage }) => {
+    const consoleLogEntries = gatherConsoleLogEvents(team.id, 'session_id', [
+        consoleMessageFor(payload),
+        // see https://posthog.sentry.io/issues/4525043303
+        // null events always ignored
+        null as unknown as RRWebEvent,
     ])
     expect(consoleLogEntries).toEqual([
         {
@@ -1507,7 +1533,7 @@ test('simple console log processing', () => {
             log_source_id: 'session_id',
             instance_id: null,
             timestamp: castTimestampToClickhouseFormat(DateTime.fromMillis(1682449093469), TimestampFormat.ClickHouse),
-            message: 'the message more strings',
+            message: expectedMessage,
         } satisfies ConsoleLogEntry,
     ])
 })