The One Fear Factor Episode That Was Too Disgusting To Air

When aliens search through the detritus of our ruined civilization someday, they'll most likely all agree on the fact that Earth is better off without us after they find the what's left of the show Fear Factor in the rubble that was once the NBC Studios. The game show that goaded moderately good-looking people into doing scary, claustrophobic, and downright disgusting things aired from 2001 to 2006, with a couple much less successful revival years down the road. It appears American television audiences can only take so much footage of people gagging down live worms and insects, reindeer testicles, horse rectums, and dead rats liquefied in blenders, among other absolutely stomach-churning things that Screenrant noted should never go near your mouth.

While those things garnered criticism from groups like the American Humane Society and lawsuits from viewers who claimed they were sickened by just watching it, they all passed muster for NBC executives, who saw nothing but dollar signs on the faces of the retching contestants. But then there actually came a day when the executives said the show's producers had gone too far, and what they had forced those poor $50,000-seeking failed actors to jam down their gullets was too gross, even for American TV.

According to Life & Style, some genius at NBC in 2011 said, "Hey, you know what we haven't made people eat yet?..." And so like some TV Frankenstein that should have just stayed in the grave it had been buried in, they brought the abomination back on air. But one episode simply went too far. In a supposedly fun identical twins special episode, one round included making the contestants drink — sorry, we just threw up in our mouths a little bit. They made them drink the oh-so-tactfully termed "donkey juice." We'll give you a minute to stop gagging ...

There were two types of donkey juice: yellow and white. We're sure you can infer the exact nature of the type of juice from that description and we'll not get any more specific than we need to. To determine exactly how much of the vile liquid the unfortunate siblings were to swallow, they played a game of horseshoes, with various rings indicating how many ounces of the stuff would be in their beer mugs. News of the stunt broke before the episode was set to air, causing many people to have the same reaction you just experienced, so NBC pulled it and replaced it with a rerun. The show was cancelled a year later, only to be revived once again by MTV, with rapper Ludacris at the helm, but thankfully, as all our fellow aliens will agree, it didn't last, either.