Disgusting 'donkey juice' stunt that saw Joe Rogan's Fear Factor immediately cancelled
Nowadays, the main reason most of us know Joe Rogan is due to his controversial podcast, with clips regularly going viral for celebrity guests and comments.
But the 58-year-old started off in comedy in the 80s, before working in UFC and then hosting the game show Fear Factor from 2001 to 2006.
The stunt/dare show at first had a bit of a men vs women concept before becoming four teams of two people who have a pre-existing relationship.
These stunts would get pretty grim too, from eating blended rat smoothies to sitting in bathtubs full of leeches. To be honest, that doesn’t sound so different to I’m A Celeb, but Fear Factor was far more extreme in its controversy.
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One 2012 episode ended up causing such an uproar that it was ‘pulled’ and didn’t air in the US, known as the ‘Donkey Juice Controversy’, which Rogan has seen the funny side of.
The episode was part of a revival of the show after it had already been cancelled prior.
It saw sets of twins who had to consume ‘donkey juice’ - AKA, jugs of donkey semen and urine.
There were reports that even some of the cameramen vomited during filming, with most of the contestants throwing it back up after downing the liquids in the challenge.
During a previous episode of his podcast, Rogan explained that the episode was ‘pulled’ but still aired outside of the US.
And, it still went onto YouTube anyway, so he reckons ‘more people’ actually ended up seeing it as a result.
“So that was what killed the show,” he claimed about the ‘donkey juice’ scandal. “They were like ‘that’s a wrap’.
“They cancelled that episode, then they cancelled the show.”
Guest Adrienne Iapalucci responded: “So crazy, over donkey c*m, isn’t that nuts?”
And Rogan said it ‘was awesome’.
“It was perfect,” he added. “Perfect way to end.”
The ‘donkey juice’ episode of Fear Factor never aired as scheduled in the US.
Producers David Hurwitz and Matt Kunitz told Yahoo Entertainment in 2021 that the donkey semen idea had been ‘approved’ and they hadn’t ‘gone rogue’.
But, looking back on it, they could see that it was doomed from the start.
Kunitz added: “I won't be surprised if we Fear Factor on another network sometime in the future because it's a classic show and people love it. Would we do donkey semen again? No! We learned our lesson on that one."
The show revived as Fear Factor: House of Fear with Johnny Knoxville as host earlier this year, with a second season confirmed.
The most controversial reality shows of all time
From severe sleep deprivation to humiliation and even accusations of torture, here are some of the most controversial reality TV shows that have ever aired.
Susunu! Denpa Shonen
Reminiscent of Black Mirror's toe-curling White Bear episode, Japanese gameshow Susunu! Denpa Shonen (translated as Do Not Proceed! Crazy Youth) starred comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, also known as Nasubi, who was kidnapped, stripped naked, and confined to a small apartment with just a bathroom and a foodless kitchen.
Airing from 1998 to 2002 on the Nippon TV network, the idea of the show was to test how long he could last in such awful conditions, but it would later go down in history as one of the most 'evil' reality shows of all time, likened to a real-life version of The Truman Show.
All Hamatsu was given was a load of magazines with sweepstakes in them, which he was challenged to use to raise ¥1 million (approximately $6,500) to win food for himself to survive on. But horrifyingly, the 'food' he won was sometimes actually dog food and dried rice.
Conditions were so horrible that he once had to go 10 months before 'winning' toilet paper, all the while as many as 15 million viewers watched on as he struggled each week to raise enough funds to eat.
Hamatsu had no idea he was being live-streamed the entire time, with graphics and sound effects mocking him throughout his staggering year-long stint on the show. A documentary called The Contestant was eventually released on Hulu in 2023, delving further into the horrors of what Hamatsu endured during his time on the show.
Shattered
The premise for the 2004 Channel 4 reality show was simple - 10 contestants had to stay awake for a week straight to be in with the chance of bagging a whopping £100k cash prize. But of course, there was a catch.
Contestants would have to keep each other awake to avoid deductions from the prize fund. In fact, if anyone closed their eyes for over ten seconds, £1,000 would be shaved off the prize pot.
The group underwent brutal 'You Snooze You Lose' tasks, which were designed to put contestants to sleep by being forced to cuddle soft toys, sit in a warm room, and even watch paint dry in a recliner chair.
It's worth pointing out that to ensure the safety of the contestants, they were allowed to sleep for just one hour per day, but that didn't stop complaints coming in from viewers at the time, while health experts raised their eyebrows at the social experiment
Although 34 complaints were made to Ofcom, they reportedly said none of its programme guidelines were breached. Meanwhile, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy branded the show as 'misconceived and dangerous'.
There’s something about Miriam
There's something about Miriam has gone down in television history as having one of the most unethical and cruel 'gotcha' moments.
Airing on Sky1 in 2004, the reality show followed six men fighting for the love of Brazilian model Miriam Rivera by competing in physical events, with the winner bagging a luxury yacht trip and a cash prize of £10,000.
But what producers didn't tell contestants was that Miriam was transgender, cruelly making her announce it to the group in the final episode of the series.
The heartbreaking scene saw Miriam bravely address the group of men after she had picked contestant Tom Rooke, who was then 23, as her winner. She told the group: "I tried to be honest with all of you as much as I can. Yes, I'm from Mexico, I'm a model and I'm 21.
"But, Tom, I really love spending time with you. I love men and I love being a woman. But I'm not a woman, I was born as a man."
Horrifyingly, the men began to laugh as Miriam opened up to them about her gender identity. Meanwhile, Tom told the cameras that he was 'very shocked' that he had been 'deceived' by Miriam, before going on to use male pronouns when referring to her from thereon out, as he slammed her for 'lying to everybody'.
Pals of the model claimed her speech was 'scripted' by producers of the dating show, who they allege completely misjudged the situation and allowed Miriam to be mocked for the sake of viewing figures.
After the dating show wrapped up filming, Tom launched a legal battle with his fellow contestants, alleging conspiracy to commit sexual assault, defamation, breach of contract, and personal injury in the form of psychological and emotional damage, and ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount.
The series aired the following year, and Miriam withdrew from the spotlight. In 2019, she was tragically found dead in her mother's apartment in an apparent suicide at just 38 years old.
Sperm race
Grappling with falling birth rates and fertility levels in Germany, TV producers decided a good approach to help solve this issue would be to create a reality show where a group of men compete against each other over the speed of their sperm.
Airing in 2005, producers Endemol invited women whose partners were struggling with fertility problems to sign up to receive sperm donations from the participating men.
The idea was that the donors would take themselves off to their respective cubicles and, erm, do the deed to produce a sample, which would then be frozen and transferred to a studio in Cologne.
Under the watchful eyes of medics, the sperm samples were then filmed as they travelled to an egg using chemical incentives, as the men were keeping their fingers crossed that theirs would be the fastest of them all in order to get their hands on the main prize - a Porsche.
At the time, the show was pummelled with criticism as it was labelled a new low point of German television, but Endemol executive Boris Brandt defended the idea, warning that fertility was a very real, serious issue in the country.
"About 1.8million German men are unable to have children because they suffer from poor sperm. And there are disappointed girlfriends and wives, as well as parents who wait in vain for grandchildren," he added at the time, per The Guardian. "The programme isn't immoral. We're only testing, we're not conceiving.
"The main prize in the competition is a Porsche, not a baby. It's actually a very scientific programme and the topic of fertility is massive in Germany at the moment."
Solitary
Airing from 2006 to 2010 on FOX, Solitary tested the limits of the mind as it placed contestants in a small, windowless box and put them through their paces in a series of tough conditions.
The goal was to remain the last man standing, with a cash prize of $50K up for grabs for the person who was able to stick it out.
Sat isolated in the small pod, contestants only had an artificial intelligence bot named Val to talk to, had no access to clocks or the outside world, and the environment was strictly controlled.
This meant everything, including temperature, light, access to toilets and even food, all while they were each referred to simply as their number instead of their name, stripping them of their outside world identity.
The room itself was a pretty strange, octagonal shape, which disoriented those in there as they underwent physical endurance tasks and mental challenges handed to them by 'Val'.
These would often take several hours to complete at a time and included the likes of sleeping on a bed of rods and being subjected to a piercing barrage of loud noises designed to break down their sanity.
Jess Battison