Biblical fans will be disappointed to know there’s more to this trick than meets the eye. Magicians may appear successful in managing to cross a liquid surface as if it were solid, but there’s actually something hidden in the water.

Perspex boxes are incredibly hard to see when submerged so they are placed where the magician plans to walk. With these in the water, magicians easily traverse the surface to maintain the illusion.

Some performers will put on a show while doing this, like pretending to lose balance and potentially fall, but it’s just part of the act. Not such an impressive trick now that you know.

Another popular trick with magicians is the levitating man. Even street performers try this one, and it does go down a treat.

The trick has the magician floating with nothing below them. The only thing connecting them to the ground is a stick they hold, but this can’t be enough to hold them up while levitating for so long, can it?

Most people have no idea how these performers manage it, so it’s a really convincing trick.

If you think there was something dodgy about that stick then you’re right. If magicians were genuinely levitating then they wouldn’t need anything to hold onto.

There is more to that stick. Connected to it are two metal plates,with one at the bottom and another higher up. The lower plate gives stability and is hidden by a piece of prop design, with the performer’s clothes concealing the other.

The magician can sit on this plate all day and appear to be levitating to onlookers.

Many of us are familiar with this one since it’s one of the oldest in the book, but it never fails to impress regardless. There’s not much to the act either since all the assistant has to do is get in a box with their head, arms, and feet sticking out of holes.

The magician takes several implements to stick through the box which then appears to separate the assistant’s body.

And despite looking as if they’ve been dismembered, the assistant just smiles as the audience is shown the trick.

It’s not possible for a person to be cut in half and survive, so it’s not a surprise that more than one person is hiding in that box.

The feet hanging out belong to a second assistant, who’s been in there from the start.

Their body fills the bottom half of the box, as the assistant on stage takes up the top half. It’s not the most comfortable of positions, but the illusion is worth it.

This trick needs a glamorous assistant from the audience. That’s how magicians like to perform this trick. They have someone lie on a board suspended on several chairs.

The trick happens when the magician pulls the chairs away, and that assistant looks to still be floating in the air.

Some audience members might think they’re suspended by wires, but the magician proves them wrong by running a hoop over the assistant’s body. How do they manage it then?

And once again, there’s no real magic at work here. There’s just something in place holding the assistant up that the audience can’t see.

Behind the magician is a platform with a metal rod connected to it which runs around the performer’s body and attaches to the board that the assistant is lying on.

It’s strong enough to hold the assistant in midair, and it isn’t affected by the metal hoop when the magician moves it around.

This trick is a classic and if a magician can’t make a rabbit appear out of a hat, then they weren’t paying attention during training. It’s what all budding magicians learn when first starting out, and is still a crowd pleaser.

All it takes is a top hat which magicians show to be empty.

Then they put it down on the table and tap their wand, and suddenly a bunny rabbit is inside. It’s cuteness overload for the people watching.

We’d love for someone to be able to conjure up cute critters whenever we wanted, but these magicians aren’t pulling rabbits out of thin air.

They’re hanging in a bag under the table and a long tablecloth conceals the trickery, so the audience has no idea that the rabbit is already in the room.

For this trick to be successful, performers discreetly scoop the bag into the hat, allowing them to pull the animal out and show that magic exists.

We’re all pretty precious with money, so none of us really want to see any of it go to waste. But we can’t help but be impressed when a street performer successfully bites a coin in half.

This trick has the magician asking someone in the audience for a coin and have them bite it to prove that it’s real.

They’ll do the same thing, but this time they’ll break it. It blows our minds every time but how?

Sleight of hand is a magician’s best friend so if you want to pull off this trick, you’ll need to have refined motor skills to convince your audience of the magic at work.

This requires a substitute coin that looks similar to the real one. But this one will split apart when bitten.

The exchange is done between the audience member biting the coin and the magician, so they don’t have time to pull it off. Your money is still intact.

This trick is usually done at dinner parties. A performer will take a spoon from the table and work their magic with it.

Onlookers will see the piece of cutlery bend out of shape to extreme portions. The spoon’s ruined, right? Wrong.

The magician follows up by returning the spoon to its original shape without any difficulty. This is an easy illusion for performers to do, but how do they manage it?

The reality is that the spoon is never bent at all. The magician holds the implement in his hand, while also holding a silver coin stuck between his thumb and forefinger.

This tricks the audience into thinking that it’s the end of the spoon’s handle. So as the performer press the spoon down into the table, it moves deeper into their grip while the coin stays in place.

This gives the audience the impression that the spoon is being bent, when it never actually does.

Magicians love cutting their assistants apart. And they’re not content with putting saws through them, since they’ll even use this contraption to remove an entire part of the body.

The assistant steps into the box, and then the magician moves their midsection out of the way. But rather than showing any discomfort, the assistant looks fine, despite part of their body already out of line with the rest.

It’s not done with mirrors as evidenced by this magician sticking his head in the gap.

Mirrors may not explain how this one is performed, but it’s done in a way that doesn’t disfigure the assistant. It requires someone incredibly flexible to stand in the contraption, since they need to stand at an awkward position to pull it off.

Having certain body parts sticking out of various holes makes the trick even more difficult, but the pay off is always worth it.

It’s one of the more dazzling acts during a magic show.

This trick can be a little unsettling for squeamish viewers. A magician balances on a pole then things suddenly take a dark turn.

After defying gravity and holding their entire body on the tip of the pole, they suddenly plunge down. From the audience’s point of view, it looks as as if the magician has been impaled.

They eventually get back up, and there’s no sign that the pole ever entered the body.

If this trick makes you uncomfortable, don’t worry because it’s not as gruesome as it seems. Instead of balancing their body on the pole, they’re just lying on a special platform that the audience can’t see.

When they get impaled, it’s just the platform dropping down and giving off the impression that the magician met a grisly end. To further the illusion, the magician wears a corset. It’s designed to make it seem as though the tip has penetrated their body.

Some magicians don’t have the power to make their body levitate. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t make anything appear to be suspended in midair.

A great trick at parties is to levitate a paper cup. There’s not much to it, but it amuses guests to no end.

Who wouldn’t be impressed by seeing this? Not a single one of them can control the laws of physics the way you do.

The levitating cup seems like a great trick, but it’s easy to be caught out on this one. Stick your thumb through the side of the cup so that you can control its movement with your hand.

For performers who don’t want to be called out, they need to find proper distraction techniques with their free hand.

This stops the audience from seeing through the illusion and doubting your magic.

Some of the tricks are just too daring to even consider. Who wakes up and thinks that swallowing a sword would be a good idea?

The ramifications could be deadly, yet so many performers pull off this trick without issue.

Some have attempted the trick without putting the sword in their mouth, instead using visual effects to create the illusion. However, those versions aren’t as impressive as the real deal.

Unlike other tricks, sword swallowing is done for real. It takes great confidence to pull this off since one wrong move won’t go down well.

The trick is done by holding your head back in the right position.

This aligns your mouth with the esophagus, creating a straight path down for the sword to go in. Without the right angle, performers would hurt themselves doing so.

Michael Jackson was an incredible musician, known for more than his infectious songs. The man had style, and he knew how to stun audiences with his performances.

One of the moves that has impressed us for years is the lean in the video for the 1988 song Smooth Criminal.

The movement appears impossible. How does someone lean so far and not fall over?

Michael pulls it off without a problem, and it’s hard not to be blown away by this.

The man was not a wizard. It wasn’t magic that helped Michael, but rather specially-made shoes.

The heel had holes designed for nails to slot into. These were on the floor during the famous lean scene, so when it was time to do the lean, they slipped into place below MJ’s shoes.

This allowed Jackson to lean forward without falling over. No wonder we’ve never been able to recreate that iconic move.

This trick is like the assistant being cut in half, only more extreme. This gruesome magic trick involves an assistant placed on a table beneath a huge buzzsaw.

When the magician is ready, the saw is brought down, so the assistant appears to be cut in half. It’s horrific but luckily they survive the ordeal.

They’re perfectly fine lying there with their body split in two.

Naturally, all is not as it seems here. It’s similar to the assistant being cut in half, and the truth isn’t too different either.

The assistant has a secret compartment allowing them to hide their lower body so that it’s not cut off by the buzzsaw. Where the real feet were, a pair of fake ones are put in place to maintain the illusion that they’ve been split in two.

But audiences are usually too horrified to realize the trick that’s been played.