Mythbusters (lost unaired segments of Discovery Channel science entertainment series; 2006-2015)
This article has been tagged as NSFL due to its disturbing subject matter.
Logo for the series.
Status: Lost
Mythbusters is a popular science entertainment TV program, hosted by veteran special effects artists Jamie Hyneman & Adam Savage that puts various myths, storytelling tropes and urban legends to rigorous scientific test. Adam & Jamie then use their results to determine if the myths are in reality "plausible" or "busted". Over more than a decade, this has resulted in some startling and surprising television... but in only one case was it so startling that the footage never made it to air.
Banned footage
In the 2006 Mythbusters episode "Steam Cannon", among the myths being tested is "there's more nutrition in the cardboard box than the cereal." The resulting segment, as aired, is wholly uneventful: Adam & Jamie lightheartedly explore various means of determining the nutritional content of cardboard - including the possibility of trying a cardboard diet themselves, which is promptly shot down in a way that suggests eating the stuff just isn't feasible. Still, it all feels oddly vague and truncated in comparison to the usual in-depth investigation.
In a Q&A some years later (and several times since) Adam Savage explained that this was because the original, more elaborate plan for testing this myth had gone so horrifically awry that it was beyond unusable. According to Adam, the original experiment involved lab mice placed in three groups - a control group eating normal mouse food, another sugary cereal, and the last cardboard box pellets. After several days they had noticed on the Friday afternoon that the cardboard-eating mice were acting strangely; on resuming filming the following Monday morning, they discovered that one of the "cardboard mice" had eaten the other two mice in its cage. All that remained of each victim was, in Adam's words, "...a head, and a tail, and nothing but a ribcage in-between."
The show's producers at the Discovery Channel flatly refused to allow the experiment to be shown in the episode, spawning the unusually awkward-seeming search for alternative test methods that eventually made it to air. Adam & Jamie, on the other hand, found the whole thing gruesomely hilarious; Adam had made a rough cut of the footage by the time the decision was taken to ban it, and in the Q&A he admits to showing it at "Northern Michigan Tech" (likely referring to either Northern Michigan University or Michigan Tech University). When Discovery found out, however, they forbade him from showing it ever again.
Mythbusters ceased first-run production as of 2016 - and it can be assumed that Adam still has his copy of the footage - but due to the graphic animal violence it is very unlikely it will ever resurface publicly. Both Discovery and the Mythbusters team have always done their best to keep a family-friendly image and strictly avoid any hint of animal harm (never testing the myth of "drying a dog in a microwave" in any form, for instance).