Netflix's The Push Is Just the Start of Derren Brown's Schemes

Since the trailer dropped, everyone has been buzzing about Netflix's The Push. In it, British illusionist and hypnotist Derren Brown runs an elaborate experiment in which he sees just how far one man will go when authority figures and social pressure demand that this person straight-up murder someone. And yeah, the whole thing — including what would be a pretty violent crime — is just a twisted reality TV show, but the man at the center of the experiment doesn't know that when it's happening. Instead, all he knows is that if he doesn't push a man off a building, he might go to jail — and so might all the people around him.

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The Push is Brown's US debut, but he's well-known throughout the UK for his elaborate tricks and schemes. Not only that, they've already seen their own version of The Push called Pushed to the Edge. Want some spoilers? You can find the whole thing on Channel 4 or YouTube, as well as tons of the illusionist's other experiments. And, to be frank, some of them are pretty f–ked up. Like, seriously f–ked up. Want to see all the legit insane things Brown's done in the name of entertainment? Check out some of his other "illusions" in the gallery below.

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He tried to make a man commit a (fake) murder.

The Push already aired in the UK as Pushed to the Edge back in 2016, testing a man in a series of compliance-based tasks to see how far they could push him in a controlled experiment. They started small — knowingly marking meat pastries as vegetarians at an event when the vegetarian pastries hadn't yet arrived — and then scaled up to legit murder. Yeah, they full-on tried to convince the poor guy to push someone off the side of a building. That's dark. Especially considering we already know from the Milgram experiment that people can be susceptible to doing something wrong when instructed or pressured by authority figures. Sure, the whole thing is a fake experiment, but we would not want to find out that we're the kind of person who could kill someone when pressed.

Derren convinced a man he was living through an apocalypse.

Yep, in his TV special Apocalypse, Derren used his masters of deception to convince someone through phone hacking, an elaborate set, and hypnosis that he had lived through a meteor strike that had decimated most of the planet. The crew snuck hidden cameras into the man's house and the rest of the set and followed his movements as he discovered what he thought was a world-ending tragedy had taken place. Oh, and that he had to fight to survive everything that came after it, including an infectious plague. The point was to get the man to realize how precious life is — but turning the world into a zombie horror story might be going a little far.

Derren made a man think he was on a plane that was going down.

Throughout the Hero at 30,000 Feet special, ordinary man Matt was pushed by Derren to confront his fears to take control of his life. Not only does dear old Derren tie Matt to the train tracks as a train is approaching like a literal cartoon villain, he also tricks Matt into thinking he's on a crashing plane — and that only he can save the day and land the plane safely, despite not knowing how to fly. Uh, we'd rather learn our lesson without thinking that a plane full of other passengers' lives were in our hands, thanks.

He tricked a bunch of people into thinking they couldn't stand out of their chairs.

As part of Derren's The Events series, an episode called How to Control the Nation focused at least, in part, in making people think they were literally stuck to their chairs. And while it worked flawlessly for most of the people on screen, it also worked a little too well at home. DailyMail.com reported that a Channel 4 spokeswoman said that over 50,000 viewers also called to complain that they were stuck, too. Derren's own website claims that, for some, the effect lasted all weekend.

Derren faked spiritual healing.

In an effort to shed light on scam artists who are "faith healers," AKA pastors who claim they can call upon the holy spirit to heal people's ailments in exchange for donations, Derren endeavors to create one himself in Miracles For Sale. Only he does too good a job, and when the fake pastor he's enlisted "heals" someone, they report actually feeling better — only to get the news broken that they're not actually "healed" at all, just experiencing temporary placebo-like effects.

Derren pushed a man to admit to a murder he didn't commit.

And no, he doesn't even trick the guy into some kind of false memory where he committed a murder, like in the zombie apocalypse scenario. In The Mind Game, one episode of The Experiment, Derren legit just throws a man into the middle of what he thinks is a real murder mystery, leaving him to fend for himself, doubt his memory, and irrationally feel guilty enough to actually commit to a murder. Since false confessions are like a real, actual thing, we're not totally sure what Derren was trying to prove here. But scarily enough, the subject of his experiment fell right into his trap.

Derren hypnotized a man into committing a (fake) assassination.

And of Stephen Fry, no less. In The Assassin, another of The Experiment episodes, Derren uses his skills to get an unwitting participant in a situation where he could assassinate someone without even realizing he's done it. Not only do we see the man shooting what he thinks is a real gun at Stephen Fry, we also see him watch the footage later with absolutely no idea what he'd done. That's pretty messed up.