We Made (And Ate) All This Fake Blood So You Wouldn't Have To
Halloween is just around the corner, and no matter what your costume is, there's a pretty good chance it'll involve some gore. (Come on, Halloween is still the ghastliest of holidays.) And, if you're anything like us, you don't necessarily have all-purpose fake blood just lying around the house, and you're not willing to shell out for a gallon of "simulation blood" at the appropriately named Anatomy Warehouse online.
Of course, a quick search of "fake blood recipe" turns about bajillions of results. So who's to say which one is the right blood for you?
MTV News is, of course.
We scouted out six very different make-at-home blood recipes and their ingredients, mixed them up, and ran the whole gamut of tests on them. How to do they look? What kind of residue do they leave on your skin? Are they stinky? Will it come out of your clothes? How do they taste? (Yes, we tasted all of these.) Is it better for an Instagram pic or IRL?
Here's what we came up with.
The Ingredients
This is just some of what we used. Yes, you can find fake blood recipes that require the use of crushed-up cornflakes. We aimed for ingredients you could probably find around the house, like chocolate syrup, food coloring, corn starch and more.
Acquire spray bottle. Mix water and red food coloring in that spray bottle. Spray it. Sound too simple to work? It is. This is the blood you use if you just don't even want blood at all.
Looks like: Faintly pink water.
Smells like: Water.
Tastes like: Also water.
Does it stain? No, because it's water. Hit that sucker with a Tide stick and you're fine.
Instagram or IRL? NEITHER. We object to this water-blood.
This combination of corn syrup (a perennial favorite of fake blood chemists everywhere), food coloring and powdered cocoa intrigued us. As any non-dummy knows, realistic blood isn't just straight-up red, it contains exciting nuances and shade differentiations. This recipe had a fairly good end result, with one markedly weird side effect: it was a little grainy, making it look sort of sparkly. Which, hey, might be what you're going for!
Looks like: It dripped realistically well, but was a little too bright red to look realistic in person, in addition to cocoa grains making it look somewhat sparkly.
Smells like: If you're looking to sniff fake blood all day, two thumbs up. It smells like chocolate milk.
Tastes like: Same goes for the taste: it's hard to go wrong with corn syrup spiked with hot cocoa mix. What a delightful treat.
Does it stain? The one drawback is the sticky aftermath. Your skin will be left tacky, but the blood came out of fabric surprisingly well with our trusty Tide pen.
Instagram or IRL? Though this is the tastiest of the bloods, the stickiness and nearly hot pink appearance of it in person are drawbacks. If you need to deck yourself out for pics, though, look no further.
This was the simplest of the recipes and, surprisingly, the most effective. Mix together cheap hair gel and red, yellow and green food coloring and voila: a deep-red, extra-realistic blood mixture. To be honest, it has the look and texture of a very specific type of blood, if you catch our drift.
Looks like: On fabric and on skin, this is a fairly realistic, thick blood, especially for clotting purposes.
Smells like: Hair gel. Nice and clean!
Tastes like: Also hair gel. Would not recommend ingesting.
Does it stain? It came easily off of skin, but even a Tide stick left our white t-shirt extremely pink.
Instagram or IRL? Honestly? Both. This was one of the few specimens that looked appropriately gross both in-person and on-camera.
Yes, Virginia, you can make fake blood out of gravy. It's pretty simple: get a packet of instant gravy, stir that nonsense up with hot water, add food coloring. It looks pretty realistic, honestly! But be careful of the gravy powder-to-water ratio. We ended up adding extra gravy mix to thicken out our mixture. Your feelings about this blood will honestly correlate with your feelings about gravy. For us, it sounded like a great idea...until we realized we had instant meat gravy smeared all over our body parts and started gagging a little.
Looks like: Pretty realistic! It drips really well, and stays put, as you can see from the imitation animal gashes we applied above.
Smells like: Here's the controversial part: it's just gravy with some dye in it. So if you're cool with gravy smell, congrats! If not...bad news. You're covered in gravy.
Tastes like: Again: gravymania. Moreso, condensed gravymania. To get the consistency right, we added a lot of gravy mix to not a lot of water. Get ready for your sodium to spike and for everything you eat for the rest of the day to taste a little meaty.
Does it stain? Nope! It'll leave its signature aroma on your skin and clothes, but it came off of fabric remarkably well with the stain stick.
Instagram or IRL? This depends on your tolerance for meaty liquids in your life. You're definitely a go for Insta, but YMMV in person.
Fruit Punch Blood
This was the most complex of the recipes we tested. Boasting an impressive ingredient list including fruit punch, chocolate syrup, corn starch, cocoa, corn syrup, food coloring and more, this concoction intrigued us. Did it live up to its lengthy components list? Uh, not really. We ended up adding much more chocolate syrup to try and tone down the bright, bright red color, but mostly succeeded in just making it messier.
Looks like: The color was a little too bright, even with added chocolate syrup, and the application onto fabric didn't look too realistic. Great dripping action, though!
Smells like: This is the dessert treat of every kid's dreams, boasting half a dozen different forms of sugar and sweetness. Mainly chocolate, with undertones of sugar coma.
Tastes like: It tastes like chocolate milk, enough so that we wonder what would happen if we stirred it into a cold glass of 2%.
Does it stain? It was definitely sticky when we wiped it off our skin, but it came out of fabric OK with some TLC from the Tide stick.
Instagram or IRL? We'd recommend IRL for the dripping movement, but overall, found this one a little too cartoony for our tastes.
Cornflake Scabs
Last but not least, we were drawn to this recipe, labeled "scabs," for its unique and creative nature. As you can see, there are plenty of drippy-droppy gash blood recipes out there, but not as many for different types of wounds. So how did this cornflake-food coloring-water mixture go over? Not great, to be real. While mashing together crushed cornflakes and dye into a paste sounds like it would make something cool, it mostly results in hot pink pre-chewed cereal that won't stick to your skin. Womp, womp.
Looks like: What if you lost a tooth and decided you didn't like the cereal you were eating at the same time, and spat the whole thing out? It's like that, except more dry.
Smells like: We probably shouldn't have been so surprised that it still smelled like cornflakes, but we were.
Tastes like: Soggy cereal without the milk. It also turned our teeth red. Bummer.
Does it stain? It left a weird pink continent after we tried (unsuccessfully) to mash it into our skin and make it stick, but it just sat on top of a t-shirt. No stain remover necessary!
Instagram or IRL? Neither, unfortunately. It wasn't even a good snack.
So, which fake blood recipe will you be whipping up to meet your Halloween needs this year? Personally, we'll be whipping up the hair gel blood and going to town.
