TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life

Reality Is Unrealistic - MythBusters

When the MythBusters bust a Hollywood myth, like, say, Blown Across the Room, you can almost be certain that there will be a large number of fans who clamor to have the myth re-tested because they’re so used to seeing such myths on the media for so long that they have difficulty believing that real life won’t live up to what they expect based on said myths.

• When testing the method of slowing the detonation of a bomb by cooling it with liquid nitrogen like in Lethal Weapon 2, it turned out that not only did it work, it actually worked a lot better than in the movie. In the movie, cooling the bomb gives Riggs and Murtaugh two or three seconds of time to dive into cover, but in the test they had to wait for the bomb to completely thaw before it would explode 15 minutes later. To quote Adam: “The technique used by the bomb squad is far more effective in reality than it is in the movies. When does that ever happen?”

Tropes That The MythBusters Deem Busted

• Air Vent Passageway: Climbing through a metal venting system using magnets and/or suction cups in a stealthy manner was rather thoroughly busted. (“Why, Thor the God of Thunder is trying to enter my building!”) However, in another episode, Jamie and Adam did manage to escape Alcatraz by climbing through its ventilation system (which consisted of extremely large gaps between the walls).
• Banana In The Tailpipe: Shoving something in a car’s tailpipe will not cause it to explode, no matter what Axel Foley or Hollywood tells you. Nor will it cause the car to stall; the blockage will simply be ejected first.
• Brown Note: There is no sonic frequency that will cause involuntary bowel movements.
• Fruit Cart: While you can drive through one, the car is not driveable afterward.
• Improvised Zipline: Busted in the case of using your pants to zip down a ski lift: There’s too much friction, the angle of the lift isn’t steep enough, and either the pants or your grip will fail first.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Several myths about the almost supernatural superiority of the katana, especially against modern weapons, were shown to be completely false.
• Laser Hallway: No security system would be that poorly designed, and the dust trick might actually break the beam and trigger the alarm.
• 90% of Your Brain : Even at rest, over 15% of Tory’s brain was in use at one time. While actively thinking, this went up to 30%.
• Outrun the Fireball: Nope.
• Saint Bernard Rescue: For one, Saint Bernard rescuers of this type don’t exist. Two, drinking alcohol while your life is in danger from exposure to cold is a really, REALLY bad idea. This is because while it does warm you up, it does so because it allows blood to flow to the extremities more easily, thereby warming up your arms and legs at the cost of lowering your core body heat faster. Thus, your fingers and toes will warm up for a bit, but you’re going to freeze a lot faster in the end.
  • In fact, lowering blood flow to the arms and legs is exactly what your body does in the cold, because they act as radiators, bleeding off heat. In extreme circumstances, sacrificing a few fingers or toes to frostbite is better than freezing to death, and alcohol undoes this procedure. That said, alcohol is legitimately administered after a rescue once the victim is near a heat source, specifically to promote blood flow to the extremities to prevent or reduce frostbite.
• Shoot The Fuel Tank: Shooting the fuel tank will not cause a car to explode. Using tracer rounds, you might set the fuel on fire. (Which is still a dangerous situation, but not an instant explosion.)

Tropes That The MythBusters Deem Plausible

• Balloonacy: Okay, it’s technically possible to lift someone in the air with helium balloons. It just takes a hell of a lot of them and most certainly cannot be done by accident.
• Beating Lie Detectors: Grant was able to beat an MRI-based brain blood flow detector, albeit only making the operator conclude he had stolen the wrong thing. Kari and Tory weren’t. Tory and Grant couldn’t beat the current state-of-the-art lie detectors, either via physical (poking with a pin on truth questions) or mental (thinking happy thoughts when lying) means.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: (Sub-variety) Elephants, when suddenly confronted with a small animal such as a mouse, will apparently actively avoid it. However, unlike in media, they don’t run away in a frenzy, causing a deadly stampede.
• Eyepatch of Power: Specifically, wearing an eye-patch over a good eye improves its night vision, meaning there may have been pirates who wore them for this reason.
• Silver Bullet: Although lead bullets are cheaper and more effective, silver bullets work. However, their efficiency in neutralizing werewolves remains unproven.
• Trash Landing: With the caveat that the majority of dumpsters contain items that would be uncomfortable at best (fatal at worst) to land on; in a “best case” scenario (a dumpster filled with mattress foam), Adam pulled off the jump-and-run-away perfectly.
• Wall Crawl: Adam’s suction-cups-and-vacuum-pumps rig got him partway up the wall of a skyscraper, though he lacked the stamina to get much further.

Tropes That The MythBusters Deem Confirmed

• Beach Bury/Buried Alive: Tory took over 80 minutes to dig himself out of dry sand, Grant gave up after ten minutes in wet sand, and neither were tied up. If you’re buried like that and have no aid, you’re dead.
• Delicious Distraction: You can distract an Angry Guard Dog with a steak. Kari was able to walk in an enclosure, open a safe, take what was inside, and probably would have made it out if Tory didn’t throw the steak inside. They did advise against viewers repeating the stunt shortly afterward as dogs can be trained to ignore this sort of thing.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Urine from a female dog in heat works wonders on an Angry Guard Dog—so long as it’s male.
• Duct Tape For Everything: Two episodes to date devoted entirely to what they could do with duct tape, with a comment from Adam that they could do an entire season based on duct tape alone. So far, they’ve managed to lift a car, seal a potato cannon, provide backing for a steel cannon, build an entire black powder cannon, tape Adam to a board using just twenty pieces, plug a boat leak (but only dry, since taking on water would prevent the adhesive from working), build a boat (in that they made sheet layers of it and then formed it around a frame for the boat cover and sail), made a bridge, repaired a heavily damaged car, and also stopped a car from starting by duct-taping it to a telephone pole. They also tried to stop a car traveling at 60 miles per hour with a duct tape barrier, but that was busted. The original myth called for just a single roll of duct tape, but even when they ramped it up to around a hundred rolls, the barrier still would not hold.
  
  • Their newest feat was to repair a badly damaged airplane using duct tape. They then went one step further by building the skin of an airplane almost entirely out of duct tape
• Farts on Fire: Not to the extent of the large gouts of flame usually present in the trope, but they did confirm it for being possible at all. This segment was part of the episode on flatulence myths; Discovery execs would not permit the segment to air in the US until relenting for the 2010 “top 25 myths” special. This one got an extra big Don’t Try This at Home as the flames can potentially travel back up your body and scorch your insides.
• Jumping on a Grenade: This Heroic Sacrifice will significantly reduce the damage to everyone else.
• Spy Tux Reveal: Jamie was able to swim a fair distance in scuba gear, take it off, and look perfectly immaculate in the tuxedo he had worn underneath.