What are some of these extreme questions and scenarios these folks are getting? Is it a company check airman, a fed, or a dpe?
As an aside, I did my ATP on my own, in a Seminole, with a DPE a long time back. After the maneuvers, the examiner offered to take the controls while I set up the plates. When I took the controls back and added power, I realized the old buzzard had leaned the mixtures just enough to fail BOTH of them. Some of those old b#st#rds were crazy.