A Gross Garbage Scene In Bones Had The Cast Surrounded By Bugs And Carcasses

Even Pinhead might've blanched at some of the sights that "Bones" had to show its audience. Across 12 seasons and just short of 250 episodes, Hart Hanson's screwball comedy/procedural hybrid saw its heroes come face-to-face with all manner of stomach-churning crime scenes involving long-dead corpses in putrid conditions. Be it a bathtub full of human ooze or a severed head that nearly had Hanson puking his guts out, you could always count on "Bones" to bring on the grossness. There were, however, times when the show's more disgusting moments got a little too real. That includes one particular second season episode featuring what sounds like the smelliest set this side of Carla's place from the Thanksgiving food fight episode of "Cheers."

That would be a reference to "Bones" season 2, episode 3, "The Boy in the Shroud." Things kick off with Bones (Emily Deschanel) and Special Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) arriving in the wake of a collision between a garbage truck and a driver who, unwisely, tried to beat the truck through an intersection. What else should they find amidst the scattered trash bags but the body of a boy who's been dead for several weeks? It wasn't, per se, the grossest situation the folks at the Jeffersonian Institute were ever called upon to investigate — although, when your day job involves studying the remains of potential murder victims, "gross" swiftly becomes a relative concept. But it was certainly the stinkiest — and not just for the characters within the show.

Turns out, there actually is something deadlier than "Garbage Day" in the best worst Christmas slasher ever, "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2," and that's "Garbage Day" in the world of "Bones." According to Paul Ruditis' book "Bones: The Official Companion," the show's production team went above and beyond to make the trash in "The Boy in the Shroud" convincingly foul and odorous. That meant surrounding the cast with actual bugs and (to be crystal clear, non-human) carcasses. In the words of prop master Ian Scheibel:

"When the scene was first shot the cast and crew were joined by thousands of maggots, flies, beetles... and a few turkey carcasses. A lot of the disgusting close-up shots were shot several weeks later — the shots that looked like old meat mixed with Jell-o were, in fact, just that."

Literal hazardous waste material aside, "The Boy in the Shroud" also finds Bones down in the dumps emotionally when the primary suspect in the case turns out to be a foster kid just like her. As might be expected, though, our rarely-forthcoming hero keeps her feelings to herself, which leads to her butting heads with her new boss, Cam. (Bear in mind, at this point Tamara Taylor's "wisecracking pathologist" was only meant to be a glorified guest star on "Bones" and not a longterm player.) Of course, with a little assist from Booth, they're eventually able to iron out their differences and even take the next step on their journey to becoming committed work buddies.

Such was the "Bones" formula in a nutshell: One minute, it would make you want to hurl; the next, it was working overtime to get you entangled in your emotions.