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!"
