50 Weird Facts about Bizarre Game Shows – Part 2

The contestants on the popular TV show 'The Great British Bake Off' have to pay for their own ingredients. They are only provided ingredients if they make it to the final rounds of the competition.

27. The 60s game show 'Match Game' was set to be canceled and with nothing left to lose a, question writer for the show started writing risqué questions. As a result, the ratings picked back up and the show was uncancelled.

28. Nasubi was a contestant on the Japanese game show ‘Susunu! Denpa Shōnen.’ On the show, he was forced to live alone, naked, in a small room and was required to enter contests in magazines to provide himself with physical objects, such as food and clothes. He never knew he was on TV as the producers had lied to him. The show ran for 15 months.

29. ‘The Late, Late Breakfast Show’ was a British TV show in the 1980s which allowed random members of the audience to perform dangerous, movie-style stunts. This resulted in regular injuries and eventually death (due to an improperly attached bungee rope).

30. Superstar USA was essentially "Anti-American Idol." Only the worst singers progressed on the show, but they were told that they were performing well. In the finale, they revealed to the "winner" that she was actually a terrible singer, and the show was all a prank.

In 2005, a contestant from the infamous 'Hands-on A Hardbody' Competition killed himself after staying awake for over 48 hours. Other contestants have stayed awake much longer to win. The story made it to Broadway.

32. During one episode of the Uruguayan game show "A Challenge to the Heart", 7 contestants were run over by a train they were pulling, while 3000 kids were watching.

33. In 2019, the National Spelling Bee titled 8 co-champions after running out of words in a 3.5-hour finale. Starting with 562 contestants, the final 8 continued for 20 straight rounds of spelling words without any errors.

34. Jenna Jameson hosted ‘American Sex Star,’ a pay-per-view reality show, where 5 contestants competed in a series of sexual performances for a panel of judges. It premiered in 2005 and ran for 2 seasons.

35. In the American game show, "Win Ben Stein's Money," money won by contestants was actually paid by the producers. Money left over at the end of a season was given to Stein. If the total amount paid out exceeded that budget, the production company paid the excess. So Ben Stein was never in any danger of losing his own money.

In 1999, in an episode of 'Hollywood Squares,' the contestants got so many questions wrong that the episode only lasted a single round, to the point Gilbert Gottfried began berating them.

37. After surviving a year-long experiment on an isolated island for the British reality TV show, ‘Eden’, its 10 contestants learned that the show had been canceled 4 months into production.

38. From 1982 to1983, 3 men in Allentown, Pennsylvania competed in a radio contest in which they lived on top of a billboard in tents. Whoever stayed up longest would win a house. Due to economic pressure from the recession, none of the contestants wanted to give up, so the contest lasted almost 9 months.

39. In 2007, a Dutch reality show called "De Grote Organshow" pitted contestants in dire need of organ transplants against each other, resulting in outrage across the globe. The show finally revealed that it was all a hoax to highlight the serious problem many patients needing organ transplants face. Over 50,000 people then signed up for the organ donor's list.

40. A bachelorette-type TV show named “There’s Something About Miriam” aired in the UK in 2004, where unbeknownst to the contestants, the 'Bachelorette' was a pre-op transsexual woman the whole time.

In 2005, Fox aired a reality television series titled 'Who's Your Daddy?' The show's premise was that an adult who had been put up for adoption as an infant was placed in a room with 25 men, one of whom was their biological father. If the contestant could guess correctly, they won $100,000.

42. Steve-O from Jackass was the host of a show called "Karaoke Killer," where contestants were required to perform a series of challenges, some of them terrifying while singing Karaoke. In order to win, you had to keep singing, no matter what.

43. When a contestant leaves Hell's Kitchen, they are immediately taken for a psychiatric evaluation and then go to a house where they are pampered.

44. The US version of 1 vs 100 did a special "Battle of the Sexes" episode with 1 woman vs 100 men and 1 man vs 100 women. The woman contestant was eliminated at $50,000 and the man became the show's first and only $1 million winner.

45. All the contestants on 'Shark Tank' are made to see a psychiatrist after their pitch, no matter the outcome. It is meant to ensure they are able to come down from the emotional rush and deal with the possibility of appearing in front of seven million Americans.

Richard Dawson, the longtime host of 'Family Feud' who was notorious for kissing female contestants, began said tradition while trying to calm the nerves of a flustered player.

47. Richard Hatch, the winner of the first 'Survivor Contest' ended up going to jail for tax evasion over his million-dollar prize.

48. On the game show, ‘Newlywed game,’ a contestant once answered, "In The A*s" to a question about the strangest place they ever had s*x. For years, host Bob Eubanks denied it occurred, even offering a $10,000 reward for proof.

49. In Russia's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" the audience misled the contestants so often they avoided the "ask the audience" lifeline.

50. The first Carmen Sandiego TV show was a PBS Kids game show.