As viewers can attest, some episodes of "Dirty Jobs" are dirtier than others. Interviewed by Wired, Mike Rowe recalled the "pure horror" he experienced while working at a plant that converted food waste into methane. "They're basically lighting farts on fire across the street and it's enough to knock you down," he recalled. 

For sheer trauma, however, Rowe admitted it was tough to the top the time he worked to retrieve a four-ton motorized pump from the bottom of a five-story shaft at a wastewater treatment facility. "Motors in the bottom, motor breaks, shaft fills with s**t, s**t falls down, people scream," he summed up the experience. 

When it was all over, Rowe and the rest of the "Dirty Jobs" crew gathered at a bar, where they just stared at one another in silence for 20 seconds, processing what they'd just been through. Rowe admitted he can still remember the sound produced when the pump detached, "like a hundred yards of sticky Velcro yanked off some giant mat. It'll haunt your dreams."