During its 14-season run on Discovery Channel, MythBusters had something for everyone. Science lovers enjoyed the details of the creative experiments, movie fans loved the special effects and stunts, and anyone who likes to laugh enjoyed the winning chemistry of hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. However, even if you were a devoted fan of the show, there are probably a few things you don't know about its production. From the one qualification Lucasfilm had for the show's Star Wars parody to the experiment that Adam Savage regrets, let's take a look at what no one told you about MythBusters.
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00:00Because of MythBusters' widespread love and popularity, a lot of people probably think
00:04they know all the secrets behind this explosively entertaining show.
00:08That would be a myth, though.
00:10Here are a couple fascinating facts about everyone's fave mad scientists.
00:13Before appearing in MythBusters, Kari Byron was a student of film and culture at San Francisco
00:19State University, and she ultimately wanted to join the special effects industry.
00:23That interest eventually led her to M5, the FX company founded by fellow MythBuster Jamie
00:28Heineman.
00:29She was actually an unpaid intern for a while, and that opportunity eventually blossomed
00:32into a job offer to join MythBusters.
00:35"...everybody loves an intern.
00:36They work hard, they're trying to prove themselves, and they are cheap or free."
00:41But she never lost her artistic streak.
00:43If anything, she learned to marry the more explosive elements of the show into her own
00:46artistic expression.
00:48One very clear example of this is her explosive paintings.
00:51To create these works, she lights gunpowder on fire, and then scrapes burnt clay away
00:55from the page to make a series of haunting images.
00:58She likens the process to, quote, "...controlled chaos."
01:02Exploding pants?
01:03Killer whirlpools?
01:04"...have you ever really looked at the sky?"
01:08With so many experiments over the years, you have to wonder if there are any myths the
01:11group regrets having busted.
01:13Adam Savage apparently wishes he'd ixnayed one segment.
01:16Not because the experiment was particularly dangerous or difficult to film, but because
01:20it involved magic.
01:22At least, that's how Savage sees it.
01:24The experiment itself involved determining whether or not keeping a shaving razor beneath
01:28a makeshift pyramid would actually keep it sharper, due to so-called pyramid power.
01:33Savage regrets filming the segment because he believes it was ultimately impossible to
01:37apply the scientific method to that particular experiment.
01:40He believes that they were tasked with, quote, "...trying to prove a negative, since there
01:44was no real way to measure success or failure."
01:46Mythbusters was all about science, which means it never let something like corporate sponsorship
01:51get in the way of truth, right?
01:53Alas, it sounds like even Mythbusters wasn't immune to advertiser pressure.
01:58They reportedly decided to axe an entire episode about RFID, that handy technology that lets
02:03you wave your credit card in front of a card reader so you don't have to swipe it.
02:07You've no doubt heard that RFID isn't necessarily secure.
02:10Well, Mythbusters got wind of that, too, and planned an entire episode about the hackability
02:15of the technology.
02:16But according to The Register, lawyers for major credit card companies intervened, and
02:20the episode never saw the light of day.
02:23In 2008, Adam Savage opened up about the situation at a Hackers on Planet Earth conference.
02:28They absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode
02:34talking about how hackable this stuff was.
02:36He claimed Discovery, quote, "...backed down because they relied so heavily upon advertising
02:41revenue."
02:42That sounds like the honest truth, but something must have happened behind the scenes.
02:46Savage later backtracked and changed his tune, saying,
02:48The decision was made by our production company, and had nothing to do with Discovery.
02:53Whatever you say, Adam.
02:55Mythbusters was billed as a family show, so there were certain things the program simply
02:59wasn't allowed to do.
03:00For example, they couldn't even show a simulation of a particular body part while testing the
03:04legendary peeing-on-the-third-rail myth, even though they were clearly using a synthetic
03:09tube.
03:10Oh, and in case you're wondering how that experiment worked out…
03:13One…
03:14Hey!
03:15Anyway, according to TV Tropes, censors forbade Mythbusters from airing an entire episode
03:22about farting.
03:23Knock yourself out.
03:26Undeterred, the team tried a segment on farting later on, but this time they followed all
03:30sorts of oddball rules, like only using the word flatus instead of fart, supposedly to
03:35make the whole thing sound more scientific.
03:37To work around all the bodily functions they couldn't show on screen, the Mythbusters team
03:42built a fart machine.
03:43I am planning to build a machine that can also eject a flatus.
03:49That's what all this equipment is.
03:50The result was really funny, and actually rather vulgar, even though they were basically
03:54using a whoopee cushion.
03:57Mythbusters was a geeky show.
03:58You can gloss over that fact as much as you like, but pretty much every cast member was
04:02unabashedly geeky.
04:03And if you watched the show, you were pretty geeky, too.
04:06And what's the holy grail of geekdom?
04:08But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!
04:11Star Wars, obviously.
04:13As you can imagine, it's not particularly easy to work something like Star Wars into
04:17your myth-busting franchise.
04:18After all, Star Wars is a closely guarded property, and there are hoops to be jumped
04:22through before you can start busting lightsaber and stormtrooper myths.
04:25Adam Savage told The Hollywood Reporter he was surprised how open Lucasfilm turned out
04:30to be with their permissions.
04:31The team wasn't allowed to animate lightsaber effects, but other than that, they were pretty
04:35much given free reign.
04:37There was one important provision.
04:38Savage joked that Mythbusters couldn't depict stormtroopers shaking their money makers.
04:43He told The Hollywood Reporter,
04:44"...I don't think they wanted us to twerk with a stormtrooper, or something like that."
04:48Makes sense.
04:49The Lucasfilm people probably didn't want another Christmas special on their hands.
04:53Please, please, I have enough aggravation!
04:55Thought I didn't like any of this.
04:57The Mythbusters had some very public mishaps, but people might not entirely realize just
05:02how common it was for the cast to injure themselves in the line of duty.
05:05According to CNET, Mythbuster accidents ran the gamut, from explosions to an injury by
05:10goat.
05:11In fact, Adam Savage once said the show was, quote, "...four minutes of science, and ten
05:15minutes of me hurting myself."
05:16"...he holds his breath, tugs on the door, pushes his whole weight against it, but nothing
05:23happens."
05:24In one infamous experiment, the team wanted to find out if an explosion could actually
05:28knock the socks off a mannequin.
05:29The explosion wound up shattering the windows of a nearby home.
05:32Ironically, the blast quite literally knocked a woman off her couch, sort of like knocking
05:37the socks off a mannequin, but not really.
05:39Co-host Tori Belleci's on-set accidents included getting kicked in the crotch by a goat, and
05:44spectacularly wiping out while trying to jump over a red wagon on a bicycle.
05:54I'm okay."
05:55Savage was the recipient of one of the show's more serious injuries.
05:59He once broke his hand on a blast chamber.
06:01Surprisingly, most of the injuries on the show were fairly minor, just stitches and
06:05broken fingers.
06:06Not bad for a show with a premise that's firmly grounded in blowing stuff up.
06:10Hopefully the safety experts were well-compensated.
06:12No one deserved that paycheck more.
06:15MythBusters is real science, not mad science.
06:18It's not like they ever received orders to build a death ray or something.
06:21Except that time President Obama quite literally gave them orders to build a death ray.
06:26"...MythBusters is about is testing out various hypotheses, and I think that we've got a big
06:30one that hasn't been thoroughly tested."
06:32"...Which one is that?"
06:33"...Well, it is Archimedes' solar ray."
06:36In a 2011 lecture, Savage said he'd never met anyone with as much charisma as Obama.
06:41"...Then Obama walks in and immediately releases all the tension.
06:45I've never seen anything like it.
06:46He walked in, he introduced himself to us, he shook hands with the crew."
06:50The former president goes on to gently admonish Savage and Jamie Hyndman for failing to thoroughly
06:54test the solar ray back in 2006, when they first attempted to create it.
06:59The likely mythical device dates all the way back to the second century, and it was designed
07:03to ignite the sails of enemy ships with highly-focused mirrors.
07:06The team recruited 500 people with mirrors to retry the experiment.
07:10Once again, they failed to prove the concept.
07:12According to Gizmodo, the president's appearance on MythBusters was actually part of a White
07:16House initiative to get kids more interested in science, and let's face it, a death ray
07:21is the perfect gateway drug to the world of physics and beyond.
07:24"...Keep those mirrors on the sail!
07:27Ooh, he just took out one of your great cameramen!"