The Real Reason Fear Factor Was Canceled

In the scene, pairs of twins played horseshoes to determine who would get the honor of drinking "donkey juice." In this case, that means their drink options from bartender Joe Rogan were either 30 ounces of donkey urine or 24 ounces of male donkey reproductive fluid — that's a pint and a half of the stuff.

Somehow, a member of each team guzzled the stuff down and survived til the next round. Unfortunately, the show wouldn't survive the backlash that followed. The show hadn't even aired when the network pulled the episode. Reading about it in TV Guide was presumably disgusting enough for the average American. 

According to TMZ, the episode did eventually air... in Denmark, which also has its own version of the show. It's not alone — there are around 40 international spin-offs of Fear Factor, including Pakistani and Albanian versions.

The real tragedy was that it was only the second of three challenges for "Fear Factor: Tijuana", meaning that what contestants called "the hardest 15 minutes of [their] life," brought them neither fame nor fortune; only the pride of knowing they were able to do something that made others around them gag just watching. 

"If you vomited you would have to start over, I ended up just vomiting in my glass and drank that. The camera men were vomiting," a contestant told Fox News. "It smells. It's so bitter, and it has a little hint of hay."

Well, at least they've got a backup career as a "semmelier."

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