Cartoons are prone to exaggeration, and the Mythbusters are out to prove just how real some of The Simpsons' stunts truly are.
Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, hosts of the science-based Discovery Channel show, will be recreating some of the wacky stunts pulled off by Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and the rest of the folks from Springfield.
"We set out to test Bart throwing a cherry bomb into the toilet that makes all toilets in the school act like geysers," Savage told Entertainment Weekly. "And then there's one from season five's 'Sideshow Bob Roberts' in which Homer's house is about to be destroyed by a wrecking ball and Homer places his body between the wrecking ball and the house to keep it from being destroyed."
"We ended up building two replicas of the Springfield house out at a landfill," added Savage. "Then we had to make a Homer - this was the first time we made a non-human crash-test dummy because Homer is human, but he's also a cartoon character, which means his proportions are totally not human. It's a very elaborate process that we went through using three or four different technologies that we've used over the years in special effects. But there's a weirdness standing next to a 5'11" tall Homer Simpson proportioned correctly to the cartoon in real life."
The hosts of the MythBusters have long been eager to do a special Simpsons episode ever since they were featured in the 2002 episode "The Daughter Also Rises."
The Mythbusters are out to test more stunts pulled off in films and TV shows. Fans can expect an Indiana Jones and Breaking Bad episodes when Mythbusters returns to Discovery on January.