MythBusters/YMMV

• Accidental Innuendo: A visual example. The Build Team was testing the myth of the Ballistics Barrel, but one of their first tests involved strapping a test dummy on the top of the of the barrel, filling up the barrel with rocket fuel. The ignition came in from a remote-controlled car pushing a firecracker to the hole and repeatedly ramming it there to try to get ignition. In fact, most of the tests in Ballistics Barrel can be considered Accidental Innuendo depending on the actual setup.
• Awesome McCoolname: names dont get much cooler than Adam Savage!
• Broken Aesop: Played straight and subverted. In the Viral Videos episode, they warned that the viewers shouldn't believe every video they see online... yet all four of the videos tested were Confirmed. However, they did make their own example involving Rubik's cubes, in order to show how someone could easily fake an online video.
• Fan Dumb: It's not uncommon for people to declare that the Mythbusters replicated a myth wrong simply because they didn't come to the same conclusions the fan did. This is sometimes a legitimate complaint and viewer feedback has, on more than one occasion, caused them to re-examine myths. But often times it's just sour grapes because they don't agree with the show.
  • Also, the show's fanbase can be a little... aggressive in defending the show. Basically if you do think they did a myth wrong, or if maybe the show isn't as good as it used to be, or maybe the explosions really have gotten out of hand, you'd better be behind some ballistics glass of your own.
• Growing the Beard: The first season had a significantly slower pace than later seasons, one point being that the show would stop to have Heather Joseph-Witham give elaborate and unnecessary information regarding the myth. As well, a higher percentage of the show focused on Jamie and Adam's efforts to acquire the parts needed and their interactions with the bemused sellers (e.g. Jamie trying to get the JATO rocket). Evidently the charm of the show was still there, but the second season started featuring the Build Team and had a greater focus on the actual experimentation and their efforts to recreate the myth.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Not a huge one, maybe, but a lot of the fandom always assumed that Adam and Jamie were Heterosexual Life Partners, and their camaraderie and friendship added a lot to enjoying the show. Then Adam revealed in an interview that their relationship is purely professional and that otherwise they don't even really like each other. It sort of takes some of the fun out of older episodes when you know that their quipping and teasing each other isn't coming from a place of friendship.
• HSQ: Whenever you can get one of these guys to go "Holy Shit!" you know you got something big. Among them is the Cement Truck Explosion, the near supersonic Rocket Sled and the terminal velocity See Saw Catapult. The Rocket Sled experiment made Adam stay speechless for several seconds, immersed in pure awe.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the Bug Special episode, Jamie likens the toy helicopters on a sheet to a man trying to move a sailboat he's on by blowing on the sail: You don't get anywhere, and can't. A few episodes later, the Build Team enacted that thought experiment. If you have a strong enough fan, and a large enough sail, this can work. Not very well, but the boat does move
• Internet Backdraft: A common problem when the Mythbusters test a particularly controversial myth. While there are legitimate criticisms in their testing methods which led to retests, such as using the wrong type of scope for Carlos Hathcock's famous Scope Snipe, there are just a many complaints due to viewers just being plain unhappy that the results of the myth didn't conform to their expectations. However, the Mythbusters are all Genre Savvy enough to Lampshade the trope, joking about how they'll be deluged with angry e-mails and forum posts.
• Large Ham: Everyone except Jamie. Adam will frequently get into the character of myths. Tory and Grant are known to do it too, to the chagrin of Kari, but she's been known to indulge a time or two herself.
• Memetic Mutation (Usually due to becoming part of the opening sequence.)
  • "I reject your reality, and substitute my own."
  • "Am I missing an eyebrow?"
    • In a retrospective Adam said that he asked the question in jest, he was trying to calm people down and let them know he was okay. When Jaime responded "Yeah." and added that his hair was also scorched you can see that look of shock on his face.
  • "Quack, damn you."
  • "When in doubt... C4!"
  • "Well there's your problem."
    • A number of these were featured in the 25th Discovery Channel anniversary episode.
• Misblamed: While the Mythbusters do make mistakes from time to time, complaints that they are "highly unscientific" is quite a glorification of how science works. Science is all about coming to any conclusion through testing and then retesting the results. They are also under a time constraint to complete the testing or are given incentive to twist the results in some way (which will happen with scientists just the same, they get money from somewhere). As well, in order to fit X number of myths and make it interesting, not just reducing it to pure testing and zero goofing around, a lot of footage will be excluded from an episode where it shows them doing even more experimentation, so complaining that they are "Doing it once and calling it good" is also false.
  • Similarly, despite jokes that they are haphazard and dangerous (Adam: "You know what seperates us from a couple of 15 year old pyromaniacs [knocks on panel] ballistics glass..."), they are very much conscientious about safety and if they ever handle the explosives rigging they are being supervised by professionals. The same goes for other situations where they call in experts in how to safely test weaponry, vehicles and other dangerous situations. In particular, the Dec 2011 mishap got a lot of people upset that the Mythbusters could have killed people but the testing was done at a bomb range with those same experts used to make sure the testing was done safely. It was just a freak accident.
  • When rocketry expert and "Honorary Mythbuster" Eric Gates was tragically killed in December of 2009 critics automatically assumed it was due to an experiment gone awry and called the show unsafe. Gates had died in a completely unrelated construction accident.
• Seasonal Rot: They ran out of authentic myths to bust a handful of seasons into the run. They then turned to busting things like movie scenes... which is (depending on your viewpoint) either still fine, the point where the rot sets in, or it varies depending on how obvious it was that the original scene was never meant to be realistic and/or whether the episode is just a blatant promotional tie-in to some movie coming out or something Discovery Channel is airing. At this point they're essentially "busting" vague concepts that someone might have heard of once on the internet.
  • The explosions. While it's true they may not "just blow something up and call it science", they have taken to using a lot more explosives as the show has gone on, and they really do have a tendency to at some point say "Okay we know this 'myth' is busted by now, but we're going to strap a pound of C4 to this thing and blow it up anyway because why the fuck not."
• Older Than They Think: Adam Savage's memetic quote regarding substitution of reality actually comes from the film Ragewar(with an alternate title of The Dungeonmaster).