Cupcake Wars is fake?!?! (Purported details come from this Reddit thread .)
Contestants on Cupcake Wars supposedly find out the ingredients months ahead of time.
"I worked for a bakery that was on, and won, CupCake Wars. The premise of the show is to surprise the bakers with a few, more often than not, odd ingredients and see what they're really made of. In reality, we found out the ingredients a few months before the show. Had we not known, there's no doubt we'd have lost.
There are definitely people who thrive under pressure, both in performance and creativity, and they have better things to do with their time than crank out cupcakes for Food Network. Tell an unprepared contestant they have 40 minutes to make a delicious cupcake using tater tots and nine times out of ten you'll have a middle aged woman sobbing into her mixing bowl." - Sallymoustacheride
Sometimes the person on House Hunters has allegedly already bought a house.
"Met someone on a plane once who was on House Hunters. After she purchased her new house, the show came and taped her viewing that house. Then they took her to two other houses to make it seem like she was going to pick between the three. In reality, she had bought a house before they even taped the show." - hopeuci
"I was on an episode of a show where people hunt. For houses. Internationally. They film the show after the people have already bought the house. They just take everything out and have them walk through it like its the first time they've seen it." -familyorfriends
The Voice isn't as simple as it seems.
"I auditioned for The Voice last year and it is a horribly long process. I was at the audition site for more than 5 hours. But the strangest part is that they put you into rooms by genre, even if you don't sing that genre. So an incredibly talented 'pop' singer won't get in because they were placed in a 'country' genre room. It's pretty odd." - youdaftget
Guy Fieri allegedly ogles women on his show, and this has to be masked with special editing.
"My sisters friends hubby works on editing a couple of that cook Guy somethingthatstartswithaf. Apparently all he does is hit on the women and stare at their boobs. He stresses trying I find enough non pervy scenes to put together a whole episode." - akua420
