Man vs. Truth

Bear Grylls IS PRETTY AWESOME YEAH WOOAlthough I generally don't care if TV magic isn't real, I know that the truth is important to a lot of people. That said, I used my contacts in the survival-themed reality TV circuit to get more dirt on Bear Grylls. What fallows is a list of falsehoods and fictions proliferated by Bear Grylls and his Man vs. Wild fantasy series.

• In the episode set in Kimberley, Australia, Grylls suggests urine drinking as an extreme method of staving off dehydration. He demonstrates this by drinking his own urine - or so he would have you believe. This was staged, as he was actually drinking the urine of a crewmember and not his own.

• While surviving in the Florida Everglades, Grylls claims that eating live frogs is safe and even provides a demonstration. However, astute viewers will note that the frog he eats is actually a Marshmallow Peep.
  

• The unicorn Grylls tamed while stranded in Akron, Ohio was actually a pony with a cardboard paper towel roll jammed in its skull.
  

• The episode set in the Sierra Nevada was actually filmed in a shopping mall. You can see this clearly when Grylls uses an Indian throwing stick to kill a goth kid standing outside of the Hot Topic wearing a My Chemical Romance shirt.
  

• While in the Alps, Grylls cuts a hole through ice and pulls out a turkey sandwich. Turkey sandwiches generally do not occur naturally, though this could have all been one great and lucky coincidence.
  

• In the real word, whittling a warp whistle would not work or help you escape the Costa Rican rainforest.
  

• In virtually all of the survival stories Grylls tells, there are no sources cited. This is what many of us in the Wikipedia community would refer to as weasel words, that is, statements or stories lacking any sort of verifiable source.
  

• The bog Grylls jumps into while in Scotland was actually just a hot tub with the word "BOG" painted on the side. To be fair, these do occur naturally all throughout Scotland.
  

• Grylls' use of shoelace snares to catch animals is dubious at best. When employing this technique in Iceland, he was able to catch a 4 lb salmon. This incident was obviously staged as salmon are not known to cross dry land.
  

• The termite larvae Grylls eats while lost in the Alps all have the letter "M" written on the side.
  

• While sleeping in a makeshift shelter in the Rocky Mountains, Grylls is woken up by the noises of a bear. If you are quick with your freeze framing skills, you can clearly see that the interloping bear is an animatronic creation. Dead giveaways include its sequined suit, mechanical motions, guitar, and spirited singing of "Love Potion No. 9."

• In the Mount Kileuea episode, Grylls uses smoke to pacify bees long enough for him to steal their honey. The bees were actually horseflies painted brown and yellow hovering around a paper-maché beehive full of store bought honey.

• In the episode where Grylls fought off the Wendigo that was trying to steal his falcon eggs, it was actually just an actor in a suit and not a real Wendigo.

If you ever find yourself lost in the wild, I recommend that you just panic or call 911 on your cellular telephone and not actually try to survive. You really aren't qualified to anyway.

– Josh "Livestock" Boruff (@Livestock)