Trivia / MythBusters

• Acting in the Dark: A few myths tested by their nature were conceived in a way to provide a more genuine response as part of the myth is about people caught by surprise or otherwise not anticipating the event. In more conventional experiments this would be called a Blind Study (withholding information from researchers and/or subjects as to remove bias). This largely involves Jamie and Adam bringing in the Build Team for something, notably Recalling Events through Hypnosis by staging an altercation between Jamie and deliverymen/actors and Latex Perfection seeing how long and how close they get before realizing something is off.
• Adored by the Network: This was Discovery Communications' Cash-Cow Franchise, and the execs knew that. When someone at The Science Channel put forth an idea to revive the series just days after the show ended production, the higher ups at Discovery approved of the plan almost immediately.
• Cast the Expert:
  • The Mythbusters crew frequently brought onboard experts as consultants to determine the veracity of what they were testing, and occasionally a few to participate in the experiments themselves, such as MMA fighter Brendan Schaub to test a Doom myth on the Hyperspace Arsenal trope, metal singer/vocal coach Jaime Vendera to test breaking glass with your voice, and the 501st Legion cosplay collective to act as Stormtroopers during their Star Wars special.
  • One amusing instance where casting the expert turned out to be counterintuitive was inviting Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Nathan Adrian to partake in the "Swimming in Syrup" myth (the myth claiming that it was faster to swim in syrup than water). The idea was that he would provide much more consistent test results than Adam, but swimming in syrup turned out to be such an alien experience compared to what he was used to that his times were far more inconsistent than what Adam had achieved, leading them to throw Adrian's results out (Adrian would agree with Adam and Jamie's conclusion that Adam's test results were more conclusive on account of him being an amateur generalist as opposed to someone who spent their training very specifically for water).
  • Adam described an early near-miss from the show while filming the "Tree Cannon" myth (one of the first times they had ever made a big explosion for a test), which almost had disastrous consequences due to them bringing the wrong kind of expert. They initially brought in a pyrotechnician as a consultant on how to handle explosions, but learned too late that his job was of simulating explosions for special effects in film and TV, not handling actual explosions that could be potentially dangerous. Due to his misplaced expertise, the cannon explosion they did create (the footage of which made it in the final episode) ended up being much bigger than anticipated and came extremely close to injuring the cast and crew. From there on out, the producers consulted with the FBI and dedicated bomb squads to handle future explosions.
• Contest Winner Cameo:
  • Most times when they need extra guinea pigs they turn to the crew, but for larger groups and very specific requirements they have been recruiting fans from Twitter. Subverted in that it's not much of a contest, usually the first X number who meet the requirements (and get their paperwork in on time).
  • "No Pain, No Gain": Men, women who have never given birth, women who had given birth without epidural, and redheads were recruited to test pain tolerance. Recruits needed to be over 18 and in good health (without chronic pain).
  • "Hair of the Dog": Approximately 200 fans formed a crowd to test myths about how to fool a sniffer dog. Recruits needed to be over 18 and free to stand around all day for filming.
  • The "Young Scientists Special" featured four kids who won a Discovery-sponsored science competition.
  • While not strictly a MythBusters cameo, Adam and Jamie used the 150,000-strong crowd at the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) to test whether a large-enough crowd jumping simultaneously could cause an earthquake on national television. Busted. Although it had the strength of 100 35-mph car crashes.
• Corpsing: During the Build Team's "outrun a horde" test in the Zombie Special, you can clearly see one of the volunteer zombies get the giggles when Kari rolls a wheelchair-bound (with duct tape, no less) Tory out to use him as bait.
  Kari: Hey, zombies... zombie food!
  Tory: KARI! You son of a-*zombies eat him*
• Creator Backlash:
  • Adam Savage has general disdain for 'heebie jeebies' myths^note myths that are either not scientifically sound, or verge too close to people's personal faiths and beliefs, and has repeatedly stated on his personal "Tested" series that his least favorite episode is "Pyramid Power" due to it being too far removed from reality, being a dumb idea that shouldn't have been tested in the first place. Part of the reason is because Adam didn't want Mythbusters to be a "gotcha" show, something that actively tried to tear people down, and instead wanted it to be a show anyone could enjoy.
  • He and the rest of the crew also don't look back at "Exploding Hair Cream" with any sort of fondness. A last minute Screwed by the Lawyers moment resulted in them having to remove all references to "Brylcreem" from the episode and spend hours in a recording booth saying "Hair Cream" with hundreds of different inflections so that the unavoidable moments could be replaced in editing. The episode is (in their minds) a chopped together mess as a result and the mere mention of the word hair cream made Adam gag for quite a while.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Tested.com was a YouTube channel started in 2010 that focused on maker culture, Adam and Jamie joined the channel to serve as hosts towards the tail end of Mythbusters. When the show ended, Jamie left and Adam took over as permanent host of the channel, with it rebranded as Adam Savage's Tested. The videos would be on a wide range of topics from technology, tools, props, film/tv history, answering questions about his career and share Mythbusters stories.
• Dye Hard: Kari is actually more of a brunette and in some episodes her natural hair color can be seen (such as in the pilot).
• Edited for Syndication: The "rough cut" of each episode is about 52 minutes long, but in the US, those episodes get edited down to 42-45 minutes. Most of the cut material winds up on the website. In one first-season episode, most of the "Octopus Pregnancy" segment (including all the testing) was chopped out of the US release. Adam has said that the US versions of the episodes tend to cut out the punchlines of his jokes. Additionally, episodes from earlier seasons are often re-edited to be aired as part of the kid-friendly Head Rush.
• Executive Meddling:
  • For the most part, the Discovery Channel executives gave the MythBusters a lot of creative freedom and basically let them call the shots. The only times they stepped in to block a test was when really when they felt that the test might offend their sponsors or provoke legal action. The channel's insurance agents have also squashed or put serious restrictions on a lot of tests due to safety concerns for the crew. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say concerns for the hosts. They once vetoed Adam doing a stunt, but they were fine with Tory doing it.
  • Early in the show's history, Discovery execs pushed for Jamie and Adam to have American Chopper-style Docu Soap arguments on camera. There's a couple episodes where this made it into the finished show (the Quicksand episode notably), but the two of them finally told the execs no, that behavior wasn't professional, and they weren't going to do it any more.
  • When they tried to see if a car could be flung into the air by a jet engine, the company that initially loaned them the jet nixed it late into the process out of a worry that their plane would be damaged. Luckily, they found another company willing to take the risk. Even after seeing that his plane was powerful enough to rip up tarmac while standing still, the owner shrugged and said to go ahead.
  • For one myth, they were going to do experiments on how easy it is to hack RFID chips, and per policy, called up the manufacturers (Texas Instruments) to schedule a conference call to talk about it. When they actually sat down to the scheduled call, lawyers from most of the larger credit card companies were involved, saying they were not to do the episode. Discovery could not afford to lose the advertising, and they had to cancel the episode. You can see Adam explain it at The Last Hope hacker conference here.
    • The Build Team would lampshade the situation while discussing the results of the "RFID in a MRI" myth in the Myth Revolution episode, with Tory commenting on how the chips should be put to the test, with Grant retorting that they're already on too many government watch lists for it to be worth the trouble.
  • When the MythBusters tested whether sugared cereal was less nutritious than the box it came in, their original approach was to use mice (one group was given the cereal and another cardboard pellets, with a third group given "regular" mice pellets as a control). They returned after a weekend away from M5 to find that one mouse in the cardboard group had decided to get nutrition from its brethren instead of the cardboard. The MythBusters thought this was hilarious, but the Discovery suits were not amused, and forced them to cut that particular test from the episode. Watch Adam discuss the situation here.
  • Episodes that crossed over with other Discovery Channel shows, like Deadliest Catch and Bering Sea Gold, were done at the behest of network executives who wanted to piggyback off of the Mythbusters' success. Adam says that each crossover was good for one episode, but that follow-ups were thin on material and a struggle to finish.
  • For the famous Missing Episode that covered fart myths, the crew was under strict orders to never use the word "fart". Instead, everyone had to use the scientific term "flatus" or polite euphemisms like "toot". In the end, the episode was prohibited from going on air for reasons of taste.
  • Adam went through a brief phase where he wore black polo shirts on camera. He dropped it when a producer observed that the look made it hard to believe that he was someone willing to get dirty.
• Funny Character, Boring Actor: The main reason Jamie brought Adam in on the show is because he is naturally The Stoic and uninteresting by himself. Adam's high energy level and their good working relationship manages to mask this on camera, but they've also said the editing makes Jamie seem more quick-witted and eloquent than he really is.
• Fake American: Robert Lee is British-born and Australia-based, but he uses an American accent when narrating the show.
• Friendship on the Set: Most of the goofiness between the Mythbusters was not staged, while the degree to which anyone knew the other before the show varied. Adam and Tory were fairly good friends beforehand, while Grant was highly respected between Battlebots and ILM. Kari was the main newcomer, with an M5 Industries internship (where she famously ended up getting her butt scanned for a myth) being her first industry job before being recruited for the build team.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Adam and Jamie have a complicated relationship. When they have a project in front of them they have a fantastic working dynamic and have a high level of respect for each other, Jamie brings an ambitious engineering quality and Adam has a spontaneous but instinctual method of problem solving. These opposing qualities also result in Adam being frustrated with Jamie's nitpicking and Jamie annoyed with Adam clowning around. Adam mentioned on his Tested show that they have never had a non-business dinner together and drive each other crazy if in the same room too long. But during development of the show Jamie felt he was not a good showman and suggested Adam as co-host, having a high level of respect for his work and knowing he would be better fitted to take charge on camera.
    "If you’re like me, then what’s the use of you? I need someone different to work with. I think you see this setup as a very kind of Yin and Yang setup that worked well in the MythBusters."
  • Their pre-existing tension was sometimes exploited by producers attempting to inject "drama" into the show by showing more of their disagreements. Via some contrived, obviously staged arguments and Manipulative Editing trying to make something worse than it was, this can be observed in a handful of episodes. As they gained more executive power over the show they both refused to keep up that image, saying that they wanted to be professional and it was more important to show them working well together in spite of their personal feelings.
  • Peter Rees, the show's creator and original executive producer, did not have a good working relationship with many people behind the scenes, and had a personal dislike for the show's hosts, especially Adam. While the hosts themselves remained tight-lipped about the matter, many behind-the-scenes articles, interviews, and books often mentioned a producer during the show's early seasons that were borderline abusive to much of the cast and was widely hated (Kari Byron in her autobiography alluded to a sadistic and abusive producer she called "Colonel Kurtz"). Rees infamously had the crew set up an electric fence for a prank on Adam, a move that was widely criticized behind the scenes that led to him leaving the show. The confidentiality of this dynamic went out the window when in 2017, Rees blew up on Reddit and Facebook making inflammatory rants about his hatred towards many of the show's elements, including his former coworkers.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The 100th episode was celebrated by testing a bunch of stunts from MacGyver (1985).
  • The 10th anniversary was celebrated with a revising of the JATO myth. And finally definitively busting it.
• Missing Episode: A lot of general footage and some mini-myths are left out of the show, many of which they put on their website; the show then invites viewers to visit said site to see what was left out.
  • One famous myth, though, was actually kept from airing at all because it was deemed a little too risque/immature. It involved the flatulence myths and testing if you can actually set your farts on fire. Confirmed, but most of the footage is of Adam spread eagle on a specialized chair holding a lighter near his crotch. Nobody really wants to see that. They finally did the experiment when the cast were guests on an episode of The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. It worked. The segment itself finally partially aired during the "25 Best Moments" special.
  • At a live Q&A, Jamie mentioned that they once tested the myth of whether a cardboard cereal box was more nutritious than the cereal itself. The test as a whole did air, but one experiment which was cut involved feeding three mice cardboard pellets with a little sugar-free sweetener for taste. The next day Adam and Jamie, instead of finding three mice, discovered one fat mouse (and some remains)... Discovery Channel (or the producers) decided not to air the footage so the Q&A is the only way fans learned of it.
  • The footage from the errant cannonball incident will not be released, in accordance with the wishes of the family whose house said cannonball went through. The myth itself aired in late 2012, but was preceded by a short commentary by Grant, Kari and Tory explaining what happened. They showed the build-up to the incident and showed the cannon being fired, but did not show the aftermath. Then, the team explained what had happened afterwards and then the episode showed them continuing the myth months later at a remote quarry where there was no risk of a repeat of the incident.
  • The Mailbag Special was another instance, like the above-mentioned "lighting farts on fire" myth, where previously unaired footage was finally shown, this one concerning a myth that a van filled with flammable gases could blow up when someone used a keyless remote. The myth never made it to air because it was confirmed too quickly — the team went straight to a full-scale test and immediately blew the van up with the remote, leaving no need for small-scale tests or replicating the results through other means. They didn't believe it would work so well, but Grant's comment really should've tipped them off.
    Grant: It's quiet out there. Almost too quiet.
  • Another clip from the Mailbag Special showed more unaired footage from the flatulence episode, exploring the myth that girls don't pass gas (not surprisingly, this was busted).
  • The entire Laws Of Attraction episode seems to have simply vanished.
  • As has "Plane Boarding/Bite the Bullet." Both of these episodes as well as a third investigating the fastest way of navigating traffic were removed due to a copyright lawsuit.
    • All three (Laws of Attraction, Plane Boarding, and Traffic Tricks) finally aired in the US in August 2014. The last two had previously aired overseas.
• Never Work with Children or Animals:
  • A few cases with children, such as the "Taking Candy from a Baby" myth (turns out crying is one of the baby's greatest defenses) and plenty with animals, such as the goats they couldn't get to faint (though one did punch Tory in the balls), the skunks they couldn't get to spray them, and the crocodiles they couldn't get to chase them. Their experience with uncooperative ducks while trying to see if a duck's quack really has no echo is also an example, resulting in a recurring clip of Jamie holding a duck in a threatening manner.
    "Quack, damn you!"
  • Another infamous test involving animals that they did involved testing the myth that sugary cereal is less nutritious than the box it comes in. The team feed 3 different groups of mice sugary cereal, regular mouse food, and cardboard. After leaving the mice alone over the weekend, the team returned on Monday to find that the one mouse in the cardboard group had eaten the other two out of desperation. While the myth was busted, the producers decided that the conclusion of the experiment was too gruesome to show on TV.
  • Though funnily enough, the Mythbusters themselves feel the trope is Inverted, often greatly enjoying the episodes involving children and animals.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Most of their myths to test are now from fans, as are ideas of what to re-test.
  • Unfortunately, on November 7, 2012, Discovery shut down all show discussion forums, including Mythbusters', and with the unofficial fan site having been shut down several years ago due to "creative differences", there is one fan site used by researchers for myths, but is largely unknown, for whatever reason.
  • The Mythbusters "Submit A Myth"/discussion page has been officially reinstated here, via a Disqus comment feed.
• One for the Money; One for the Art: Jamie Hyneman uses the income from his time on Mythbusters to fund more esoteric engineering projects that interest him.
• The Other Darrin: Occasionally, the team will pass off one of the Simulaids as Buster for some unexplained reason. This video, within two minutes, has Adam admit that every new dummy they used was named Buster.
  • Some episodes give reasons: While they made their own crash test dummy in a specific Buster-centric clip episode, a later episode introducing a new dummy has the Build Team happy they don't have to repair/replace parts on their original. It was likely a time issue and better budget that brought about new dummies (as well as the trashed nature of the original).
• The Pete Best: Scottie Chapman left the Build Team just when they got a bigger role on the show, and was replaced by Grant Imahara.
• Production Posse: The cast ended up the way it did because they were all FX artists who worked together on different projects and Industrial Light & Magic. Jamie brought in Adam because of their history and Adam recalled being encouraged by Tori to do the show, when Grant came on board he was was especially revered in the community. Kari was the only one of the core cast who didn't have that pre-existing history.
• Protection from Editors: Only a handful of myths were vetoed in the planning stages, with Jamie and Adam given a lot of executive power over how the show was produced. Adam said this mostly manifested in their filming schedule, where instead of cramming a season into 4 months they were able to extend production almost year-round with spreading out week-long breaks every few months. When things do get canceled from the upper level it's usually due to insurance or possibility of lawsuits.
• Reclusive Artist: Jamie Hyneman was never comfortable with the attention the show brought to him and M5 Industries. Once it ended, he downsized his company and shifted his focus to engineering and prototyping projects that that interest him personally while making only sporadic public appearances to encourage people to pursue STEM careers.
• Referenced by...: El Goonish Shive: NP: "An NPC by any other name", the naming of the Cleric has tons of shout-outs running through Ellen's head◊, with the third-to-last first-half involving ending with "Adam Jamie".
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Peter Rees, the show's creator and original executive producer, already behind-the-scenes notoriety for being difficult to work with, but was officially booted from his own show in the middle of season 2 after staging a prank on Adam during the "Baghdad Battery" episode, where he led Adam to unknowingly grab a live electric fence from a previous myth that no one was amused with. While the incident was known to the public, the identity of the producer who pulled the stunt went unspoken for years until Rees publicly admitted to being the one responsible during a Reddit thread in 2017.
• Short Run in Peru: Though the show is made in America, the episode "Plane Boarding"/"Bite the Bullet" aired overseas two full years before it finally aired in the United States, apparently due to the above mentioned lawsuit. A few other episodes were similarly delayed (including Traffic Tricks), though no others were delayed for that long.
• Sleeper Hit: Before Mythbusters there was little concept of a Discovery Channel show gaining such acclaim and popularity. It became quite the Breakthrough Hit that reached well outside the normal channel demographics, in part due to their awareness of internet culture and catering to it. Due to scheduling it wasn't until they were filming the third season that they started to realize the audience response to the first season.
• Star-Making Role: A few years into the show now, Adam and Jamie are big draws as speakers and have hosted a booth at Comic Con at least once. Failing that, they are fairly recognizable to most people, if not by name, at least as "the MythBusters".
• Troubled Production: The show on occasion had some difficulty at the network level of how to make the show, but when its' popularity was established Jamie and Adam had immense negotiating power on what myths they will tackle and how grueling the filming schedule would be. That said, individual myths have produced some of their own problems.
  • One of the more infamous moments was when testing a cannonball-related myth and one of their shots, done at a bomb range, missed their backstop and deflected off the hill into a neighborhood over two miles away. Luckily no one was hurt but due to the incident the footage for the myth up to that point was not aired, except for a brief clip of the cannon firing with Tori, Grant and Kai explaining what happened, and the Build Team basically started over. In turn, those type of myths from then on were relegated to a quarry several hours out of town.
  • "Lead Balloon" was up to be filmed several times but each company they contracted to roll special ordered lead foil had their equipment break in the process. It was a German company that managed to deliver after almost a year of stalled work.
  • "Rocket Car" was the first myth they tried out and, partially due to Early-Installment Weirdness, they really didn't even test the myth (a rocket placed on a car made the car take flight and crash into the side of a mountain) as much as they just put a custom rocket on a car to see what it'll do on a dry lake bed. For an anniversary special they attempted to revisit with a proper ramp and see how far it would fly, but the rocket they had special ordered instead made the car explode on the ramp. A third attempt several years after that finally managed to bust the myth.
• Unfinished Episode: Several myths were in the production pipeline with early filming, testing and rig building before being cancelled due to various reasons.
  • They got as far as constructing a giant prop boulder for an Indy Escape outrun-the-boulder myth, but once Jamie finished the paint he asked what the myth was about and they couldn't remember.
  • They wanted to do an episode on RFID tags and how easy they are to capture and spoof. They scheduled a research meeting with Texas Instruments who brought in lawyers from all major credit card companies, which let them know testing this myth will not happen.
  • One myth involved a common household item being surprisingly explosive. The initial test proved it was incredibly dangerous with minimal set-up that they voluntarily destroyed their own footage and canceled the rest of the myth.
• What Could Have Been: The most common question fans ask is any myths they wanted to test but didn't/couldn't.
  • While testing the alleged explosive properties of a common substance, the build team created something that was so explosive and so easy to make that they voluntarily destroyed their footage and agreed never to disclose what they had learned (the only group they ever informed was DARPA, and it was in response to a public solicitation about potentially unknown bomb risks).
  • Adam once mentioned in an interview he wanted to test nuking the fridge.
  • Jamie discussed his interest surrounding the "Vector Vengeance" myth tested by The Build Team, where throwing an object backward off a moving vehicle at the same speed as the vehicle is traveling forward will cause the object to drop straight to the ground thanks to Newton's third law cancelling it out. Jamie noted that after The Build Team successfully confirmed it (using an air cannon to fire a soccer ball off a truck at the same speed), he wanted to take the place of the soccer ball, volunteering to be launched at a high speed out of a moving truck as it drove in the opposite direction. Due to the substantial risks (in addition to being just plain crazy), Adam, the show's producers, and their insurance companies vetoed it.
  • Jamie once proposed the question of how fast a wet noodle would have to be launched in order for it to be lethal, a question which Adam loved. They even had access to potential testing facilities (namely New Mexico Tech, which they went to for the finale of "Compact Compact" — one of their amenities included a gun arrangement that can accelerate an object up to mach 15), but for whatever reason, this was never pursued further.
  • One myth was that a Formula One race car could drive upside-down and remain on the road (via a combination of forward momentum and the aeredynamics of the shell creating so much pressure it could function as upward lift). Unsurprisingly, they were unable to find anyone to loan them a Formula One race car to test that claim.
  • Despite having a distaste for "heebee-jeebie" myths, Adam says that he considered putting dowsing to the test. He ultimately decided against it because the only way claim that the myth was rigorously tested would have required bringing in a dowser and busting it would have most likely humiliated that individual on TV. This would have been too mean spirited for the show, because its ethos was to encourage curiosity and scientific exploration rather than saying "gotcha" to those who believe in myths and urban legends.
  • One of the myths that they considered doing during their Indiana Jones special was whether or not Indy could realistically outrun the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which they planned to test by designing an outdoor obstacle course, getting as far as Jamie constructing a boulder to scale and design. However, once Jamie finished the prop, he questioned whether this was a myth that could be replicated with any kind of integrity, and upon realizing there were virtually no consistent or replicable parameters (we don't know the exact weight of the boulder, its physical composition, its rolling speed, etc.), the idea was scrapped.
  • In response to a question on myths that "got away", Adam stated two myths he wanted to do but fell through for scope/budget reasons: first was the "keep your ear to the ground" adage — Native American hunters supposedly did it in order to hear the sounds of hoofbeats from far away — and talks were in place with actual Native American trackers to assist in the story, but it was ultimately scrapped due to being expensive and difficult to properly express for an episode. The second was a hunting myth involving acclimating ducks to floating pumpkins on a pond or lake, and was well into the production stage in the final season before being scrapped due to another myth segment (likely the Tanker Crush myth) eating up too much time because of its surprising result.
  • Adam expressed interest in doing an episode on gun silencers — asking if pillows, potatoes, water bottles, etc. were effective as impromptu suppressors. However, this never happened due to potentially providing dangerous knowledge to the public.
  • Outside the show itself and specifically related to Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition, an interactive exhibition featured in several science museums during the 2010's: one idea that Adam and Jamie fought for was a "flatulence" exhibit based off their infamous episode on flatulence myths, with Jamie (of all people) pushing for a "fart vending machine" where by putting in a quarter, it would pump up a plastic bag with gases that would make a fart-like stench that kids could take with them and pop at any time. The idea was scrapped due to being too much of a potential safety hazard.
  • Another thing revealed on Tested was that in the early seasons Adam was unsure if Jamie was gonna return for the following season as Jamie had a rather hard time adjusting to being on such a widely known show (as said further up, Jamie is a bit of a Reclusive Artist). Although he eventually adjusted some time around season four and five, there was a real chance that Jamie would step down and someone would need to take his place — both Adam and Jamie even agreed on the potential replacement: Michael Lynch, a model maker and Adam's former superior at Industrial Light and Magic, who is reportedly just as eccentric as Jamie.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: In the early days, Adam, Grant and Kari posted occasionally on the Discovery forum. Adam was driven off by a death threat over the results of their first Scope Snipe test, Grant left after being harassed by Monday morning quarterbacks and Kari left after receiving lewd comments by fanboys. Also, when Discovery Communications started leaking out the details for the reboot, fans were quick to jump the gun and criticize the changes made to the series on the official Facebook page, even if some of them were only temporary or inevitable. Observe.
• Written-In Infirmity: Kari's pregnancy and ensuing maternity leave during the 2009 season.

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