Because of Mythbusters' widespread love and popularity, a lot of people probably think
they know all the secrets behind this explosively entertaining show.
That would be a myth, though.
Here's a couple fascinating facts about everyone's fave mad scientists.
Before appearing in MythBusters, Kari Byron was a student of film and culture at San Francisco
State University, and she ultimately wanted to join the special effects industry.
That interest eventually led her to M5, the F/X company founded by fellow Mythbuster Jamie
Hyneman.
She was actually an unpaid intern for a while, and that opportunity eventually blossomed
into a job offer to join Mythbusters.
"Everybody loves an intern.
They work hard, they're trying to prove themselves, and they are cheap or free."
But she never lost her artistic streak.
If anything, she learned to marry the more explosive elements of the show into her own
artistic expression.
One very clear example of this is her explosive paintings.
To create these works, she lights gunpowder on fire and then scrapes burnt clay away from
the page to make a series of haunting images.
She likens the process to quote "controlled chaos."
"Exploding Pants."
"Killer Whirlpools."
"Have you ever really looked at the sky?"
With so many experiments over the years, you have to wonder if there are any myths the
group regrets having busted.
Adam Savage apparently wishes he'd ixnayed one segment.
Not because the experiment was particularly dangerous or difficult to film, but because
it involved... magic.
At least, that's how Savage sees it.
The experiment itself involved determining whether or not keeping a shaving razor beneath
a makeshift pyramid would actually keep it sharper, due to so-called "pyramid power."
Savage regrets filming the segment, because he believes it was ultimately impossible to
apply the scientific method to that particular experiment.
He believes they were tasked with quote "trying to prove a negative," since there was real
no way to measure success or failure.
Mythbusters was all about science, which means it never let something like corporate sponsorship
get in the way of truth.
Right?
Alas, it sounds like even Mythbusters wasn't immune to advertiser pressure: They reportedly
decided to ax an entire episode about RFID, that handy technology that lets you wave your
credit card in front of a card reader so you don't have to swipe it.
You've no doubt heard that RFID isn't necessarily secure.
Well, Mythbusters got wind of that, too, and planned an entire episode about the hackability
of the technology.
But according to the Register, lawyers for major credit card companies intervened, and
the episode never saw the light of day.
In 2008, Adam Savage opened up about the situation at a Hackers on Planet Earth conference.
"They absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode
talking about how hackable this stuff was."
He claimed Discovery quote "backed down" because they relied so heavily upon advertising revenue.
That sounds like the honest truth, but something must have happened behind the scenes: Savage
later backtracked and changed his tune, saying:
"The decision… was made by our production company … and had nothing to do with Discovery…
."
Whatever you say, Adam.
Mythbusters was billed as a "family show," so there were certain things the program simply
wasn't allowed to do.
For example, they couldn't even show a simulation of a particular body part while testing the
legendary "Peeing on the Third Rail Myth," even though they were clearly using a synthetic
tube.
Oh, and in case you're wondering how that experiment worked out:
"One…"
"Ayyy!
Awww!"
Anyway… according to TV Tropes, censors forbade Mythbusters from airing an entire
episode about farting.
"Knock yourself out."
Undeterred, the team tried a segment on farting later on, but this time they followed all
sorts of oddball rules, like only using the word "flatus" instead of "fart," supposedly
to make the whole thing sound more scientific.
To work around all the bodily functions they couldn't show on screen, the Mythbusters team
built a fart machine.
"I am planning to build a machine that can also eject a flatus.
That's what all this equipment is."
The result was really funny and actually rather vulgar... even though they were basically
using a whoopie cushion.
Twerking Stormtroopers prohibited
Mythbusters was a geeky show.
You can gloss over that fact as much as you like, but pretty much every cast member was
unabashedly geeky.
And if you watched the show, you were pretty geeky, too.
And what's the holy grail of geekdom?
"But I was going to Toshi's station to pick up some power converters!"
As you can imagine, it's not particularly easy to work something like Star Wars into
your mythbusting franchise.
After all, Star Wars is a closely guarded property, and there are hoops to be jumped
through before you can start busting lightsaber and stormtrooper myths.
Adam Savage told The Hollywood Reporter he was surprised how open Lucasfilm turned out
to be with their permissions.
The team wasn't allowed to animate lightsaber effects, but other than that, they were pretty
much given free rein.
There was one important provision: Savage joked that MythBusters couldn't depict stormtroopers
shaking their money-makers.
He told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I don't think they wanted us to twerk with a Stormtrooper or something like that."
Makes sense.
The LucasFilm people probably didn't want another Christmas special on their hands.
"Please, please, I have enough aggravation."
The Mythbusters had some very public mishaps, but people might not entirely realize just
how common it was for the cast to injure themselves in the line of duty.
According to CNet, Mythbuster accidents ran the gamut from explosions to an injury by
goat.
In fact, Adam Savage once said the show was quote "four minutes of science and 10 minutes
of me hurting myself."
"He holds his breath, tugs on the door, pushes his whole weight against it, but nothing happens."
In one infamous experiment, the team wanted to find out if an explosion could actually
'knock the socks off'" a mannequin.
The explosion wound up shattering the windows of a nearby home.
Ironically, the blast quite literally knocked a woman off her couch… sort of like knocking
the socks off a mannequin, but not really.
Co-host Tory Belleci's on-set accidents included getting kicked in the crotch by a goat, and
spectacularly wiping out while trying to jump over a red wagon on
a bicycle.
"I'm okay!"
Savage was the recipient of one of the show's more serious injuries; He once broke his hand
on a blast chamber.
Surprisingly, most of the injuries on the show were fairly minor… just stitches and
broken fingers.
Not bad for a show with a premise that's firmly grounded in blowing stuff up.
Hopefully, the safety experts were well-compensated.
No one deserved that paycheck more.
Mythbusters is real science, not mad science.
It's not like they ever received orders to build a death ray or something.
Except that time President Obama quite literally gave them orders to build a death ray.
"MythBusters is about is testing out various hypotheses, and I think we've got a big out
that hasn't been thoroughly tested."
"Which one is that?"
"Well, it is Archimedes solar ray."
In a 2011 lecture, Savage said he'd never met anyone with as much charisma as Obama.
"Then Obama walks in and immediately releases all the tension.
I've never seen anything like it.
He walked in, he introduced himself to us, he shook hands with the crew."
The former president goes on to gently admonish Savage and Jamie Hyneman for failing to thoroughly
test the solar ray back in 2006, when they first attempted to create it.
The likely-mythical device dates all the way back to the second century, and it was designed
to ignite the sails of enemy ships with highly-focused mirrors.
The team recruited 500 people with mirrors to retry the experiment.
Once again, they failed to prove the concept.
According to Gizmodo, the president's appearance on Mythbusters was actually part of a White
House initiative to get kids more interested in science, and let's face it: A death ray
is the perfect gateway drug to the world of physics and beyond.
"Keep those mirrors on the sail!
Oh!
Oo!
He just took out one of your great cameramen!"