Hellboy (2004)

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Mythbusters HELLBOY Test

Mythbusters is a long running reality TV show that tests popular urban legends and myths to see if they are plausible. In a 2011 episode titled "President's Challenge," the Mythbusters team tried to perform an action scene shown in Hellboy. The moment in question was the now famous shot of Hellboy punching a car speeding towards him on the hood so that it pivots up and does a 360-degree flip in the air above Hellboy and lands on its wheels on the other side.

For the first experiment, the crew dropped an extremely heavy weight from 20 feet onto a car going at 30mph, reasoning that a heavy weight falling would have the same effect as a superhuman punch. After two cars were totaled by miscalculations that resulted in the punch landing in the wrong place, the fist-shaped weight did manage to hit the hood of the car. The vehicle's front was crushed to the ground, but the car still slid forward for several feet and did not flip.

The team then tried the test on a small scale using a remote controlled car and lighter weights. The effects were the same--the car's front could be crushed, even to the point where the axel broke, but the car would not flip.

Using a real car for the final time, the Mythbusters team weighted the car incorrectly and built an elevated platform on the hood. This, obviously, did not represent the actual dynamics of the car, but was simply to see if there were any circumstances which could cause a flip. The car did pivot when hit with the weight (which was no longer fist-shaped), but did not flip.

Mythbusters deemed the Hellboy car flip myth "BUSTED."