Mythbusters takes on The Simpsons in season premiere

Could Homer Simpson really keep his house from getting knocked down by positioning his blubbery body between it and the wrecking ball? Could Bart make a spectacular waterworks show in the boys' bathroom of Springfield Elementary just by dropping a cherry bomb down a toilet?

Ok, you probably were too busy guffawing at the cartoon antics to consider their physical implications, but that's what Mythbusters is for. The upcoming 13th season premiere of the popular Discovery Channel show is all about replicating some of the Simpsons clan's many near-death encounters in real life.

You may remember that Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman appeared in a 2012 episode of The Simpsons which spoofed their program - now it looks like the pair are ready to return the favor. Adam Savage told Entertainment Weekly that recreating the wrecking ball stunt was surprisingly difficult - not only did the team need to construct two houses to test on, it also needed to create a realistically scaled (but cartoonishly) proportioned Homer crash-test dummy. Standing next to it was 'peculiar', Savage notes.

Expect more pop-culture torture tests to follow in the weeks ahead, including stunts pulled from Indiana Jones and Breaking Bad, after the Mythbusters season premiere airs in January.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.