Tragic Details About The Mythbusters Cast

It sure seemed like tragedy, death, or destruction could break out at any time on the average episode of "MythBusters," the long-running, ultra-popular Discovery Channel reality series. In testing human capabilities and exploring (or debunking) commonly held beliefs, the show's cast flirted with danger with its explosive, speed-driven, and pyrotechnic-laden assignments. But even the biggest accidents on "Mythbusters" only ever resulted in near-misses, relatively minor injuries, and acquired knowledge. 

On screen, everything usually turned out okay in the "MythBusters" crew's tireless pursuit of truth, proof, and scientific discovery. Away from the cameras and the set, though, the sprawling cast of enthusiastic testers, busters, drivers, and experts experienced perhaps more than their fair share of tragedy. Before, during, and after the show, the "MythBusters" cast, who usually tried to unlock the secrets of the universe, experienced the ugly and callous side of reality in the form of tragedies and brutal life moments. Here's a look at some of the worst moments in the lives of the cast of "MythBusters."

Grant Imahara joined the "Mythbusters" cast in Season 3, and he would eventually appear in more than 200 episodes as both a host and a hands-on myth tester. An esteemed roboticist and electrical engineer, Imahara also boasted show business credentials via his work as a special effects master for Industrial Light and Magic, the film lab founded by George Lucas. Imahara worked on "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" before delving into reality TV. In 2014, the Discovery Channel scaled back "MythBusters," reverting to original hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, thereby firing show veterans Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Imahara. The trio then embarked on their own series, "White Rabbit Project," for Netflix, testing out concepts, myths, and tech from history.

In July 2020, Imahara began to experience painful migraine headaches. According to TMZ, he was dining with his fiancee when his condition suddenly worsened, leading to pain in his neck and back and loss of feeling in his legs. Shortly after he was taken to the hospital, doctors discovered an undiagnosed aneurysm in Imahara's brain. Two surgeries later, Imahara was unresponsive, and an MRI revealed that a third procedure was unlikely to repair the extensive damage. Imahara died on July 13, 2020. He was 49 years old.

To learn more about late scientist and TV personality's impressive body of work, read our feature about the untold truth of Grant Imahara. 

In the 2000s and 2010s, Jessi Combs was the person reality TV producers went to when they needed someone to demonstrate the capabilities of extremely fast cars. A fabricator and elite racer, Combs hosted "Overhaulin'," appeared many times on "How to Build... Everything," guested on "Jay Leno's Garage," and showed up on seven episodes of "MythBusters," hosting the series in its seventh and eighth seasons.

Combs was well qualified to explore and test automotive common knowledge and misconceptions on "MythBusters." Before and concurrent to her time as a contributor to the series, Combs was a world-class motorsport competitor. In 2013, she earned the title of "fastest woman on four wheels" when she set a land speed record, pushing a jet-powered vehicle to 398 miles per hour. Five years later, she crushed her own record, taking another jet car up to 483 miles per hour. In August 2019, Combs once more set out to create a new record with an attempt in Oregon's Alvord Desert, but the pursuit of world records is a notoriously danger endeavor. During the experimental, high-speed run, Combs lost control of the vehicle and it crashed. The accident claimed the life of the automobile builder, driver, and expert. Combs was 39 years old.

For the first decade of "MythBusters," hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were joined by Kari Byron as an on-screen personality and active experiment participant. Or, as Byron explained in her memoir "Crash Test Girl," "My role was to be the happy girl, the one who could be relied on to laugh and squeal at gross things." That persona belied a serious mental health experience: "No one on the show or in my wider social circles knew a secret I'd kept for some 30 years: I contend with severe bouts of depression."

Byron believes that her depression first presented when she was 12 years old, brought on by adolescent fluctuations in hormones. She wrote that she "kept [her] mouth shut and got really good at hiding [her] symptoms," including sadness, mood swings, and sleep difficulties. When the reality star reached her 20s, she sought medical assistance, received an official depression diagnosis, and was prescribed medication to treat the disease but found that the antidepressants didn't much alleviate her symptoms at first. The depression grew especially tough when it evolved into postpartum depression. For six months after the birth of her daughter, Stella, Byron lived with that particular form of mental illness.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

When the subject of rockets came up on "MythBusters," and it often did, the regular crew brought in an expert who knew far more about the mechanics of that field than they did. Also seen on the rocket-based reality competition series "Master Blasters," Erik Gates offered his unique knowledge base on four episodes of "MythBusters," including the 2003 pilot, billed as an "Amateur Rocket Expert." Gates would also assist on experiments in 2004 and 2005 episodes involving primitive and historical rockets and aeronautics.

When Gates wasn't on television, he was an electrical contractor, the owner and operator of Gateco Electric in Ventura County, California. In 2009, the cancer survivor was laboring on the roof of a business complex when the surface collapsed. Gates plunged 30 feet and through a skylight. The local coroner's office determined that Gates, who died at the scene, suffered blunt force chest injuries in the accident. The rocketry expert and reality TV contributor was 47 years old.

With its various hosts blowing up stuff, launching projectiles, and using themselves as test subjects in unpredictable experiments, all as a matter of course, "MythBusters" was one of the most dangerous shows on TV. Many series have a medical team on standby, and the "MythBusters" cast required the services of an emergency crew so often that on-set paramedic Sanjay Singh became a recognizable member of the crew. He'd ultimately appear on three episodes of "MythBusters" between 2004 and 2007, helping to dispense medical attention and driving an ambulance. The Season 8 installment "Storm Chasing Myths" would mark Singh's last contribution to "MythBusters," and it would end with a card dedicating the episode to the memory of the emergency medical technician and, according to a posting on the show's Facebook page, "Honorary MythBuster."

"I'm a very sad Mythbuster," host Adam Savage wrote on X, then known as Twitter, in October 2010. "Sanjay Singh, a regular EMT for us for 8 years, passed away this week."

Considering the number of explosions Adam Savage witnessed, documented, and caused in his time as a producer and host of "Mythbusters," you probably won't be surprised to learn that he experienced significant hearing loss. But the condition has nothing to do with blowing things up at close range; Savage has a congenital birth defect in his Eustachian tubes that affects his ability to hear, even after undergoing surgery to reconstruct the bones and replace the eardrum in his left ear. While the condition does not seem to have slowed him down professionally, Savage has described a substantial impact on his intrapersonal relationships and emotional well-being. "Hearing loss can sequester you away from the rest of the world," he said in a 2019 video for his "Tested" YouTube channel. 

Despite those feelings of isolation, Savage says he was reluctant to seek treatment in the form of hearing aids, citing the stigma surrounding hearing loss. "It was ... at least a couple of years before I was willing to consider hearing aids ... because the idea of not being able to hear clearly made me feel lesser," Savage revealed in an installment of his YouTube series "Ask Adam Savage."

He reported a dramatic improvement to his overall well-being when he finally got the devices. "They didn't just improve my life; they improved the life of everyone around me because I could hear them," he said. "When you have hearing difficulty and you're not addressing it, you end up with a lot of coping mechanisms."

Want to learn more surprising facts about the "Mythbusters" host? Read our feature detailing the untold truth of Adam Savage.

On November 1, 2013, longtime "Mythbusters" cast members Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara were traveling to Delaware for a pumpkin-launching competition. While waiting to board their plane at Los Angeles International Airport, Belleci heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. The doors were quickly locked, and Belleci found himself trapped at his gate in Terminal 3, while Imahara was locked down upstairs in the Virgin America first-class lounge. Both men heard a series of gunshots, but neither had any real idea that, outside the terminal, one man had already been shot dead.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly shortly after the shooting, Belleci described conditions in the terminal as "complete panic ... Everybody was running from where [the shooter] was to where we were. We were trapped, there was nowhere to go." After several minutes, the doors were opened, and Belleci and his fellow travelers fled outside to the tarmac. Shuttle buses eventually picked them up and delivered them to a holding area, where they were sequestered for several hours while law enforcement subdued the shooter, secured the airport, and conducted a preliminary investigation. Imahara was also safely evacuated.

The shooting left one TSA officer dead and several people injured. Authorities would identify the shooter as 23-year-old Paul Ciancia, an anti-government conspiracy theorist who specifically targeted TSA agents in the attack. In 2016, Ciancia pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder, and several other felony charges and was sentenced to life in prison.

Salvatore Paul Belleci, better known to the "Mythbusters" faithful as Tory, had several close calls while he was growing up in Monterey, California. As a child, he nearly set the family home ablaze with a homemade flamethrower. When he was 19, he almost landed behind bars when he built — and then detonated — a pipe bomb.

However, the moment that made him face his mortality had nothing to do with amateur explosives. Belleci underwent sinus surgery when he was 19 years old and experienced complications while awakening from anesthesia. After learning about his family medical history, doctors told Belleci he had a potentially fatal congenital heart defect — a condition that ran in his mother's family. "I got my whole life ahead of me, and now they're telling me at any moment you can drop dead," Belleci recalled in an interview for the "Navigating Hollywood" podcast. "I was like, well, I don't want to get a defibrillator installed, I don't want to get this surgery — I don't want to go through all this."

Belleci was referred to a cardiac specialist, and subsequent tests showed his heart to be normal — an outcome that Belleci, a devout Christian, attributes to divine intervention. "I was like, oh my gosh, this is a real miracle," he said. "They have tests that showed it one way and then now ... it looks completely normal."

For more info about the show's hosts, technicians, and resident experts, read Grunge's feature on what the "Mythbusters" cast is doing now.