Reality and Game Shows often feature tests of physical abilities. In some shows, it's simply a part of the larger competition, while others are centered around them entirely. Be it a short sprint, a grueling feat of endurance, a dexterity-driven endeavor, or anything in between, anything asking contestants to exert themselves is fair game.
Expect physical challenges to be a major selling point for shows that include them, as their action shots tend to make great footage for advertisements. Also expect said challenges to take a large portion of the show's budget, especially if they require a lot of set pieces.
As with Sports, people like watching other people in action. However, the appeal of the two genres is vastly different. At the highest level, sports are played by paid professionals who dedicate their lives to the game. Meanwhile, though a dedicated fan may spend quite some time preparing for a gameshow, these superfans are exceptional and doing so on their own time, for a chance to play once. For the same reason, game show challenges are, in some ways, harder to prepare for, as they are more likely to contain gimmicks, rotate out, use equipment that can't be obtained easily, or otherwise be unpredictable. And as another given for the genre, sports are typically aired live, whereas game shows are either edited for length, or otherwise use shorter challenges to fit a time slot. For all the above reasons, a game show challenge often has appeal in people failing in the competition, while said fumbles are a lot more frustrating to the average sports fan.
A Sadistic Game Show may amp up this element and make it legitimately dangerous or even impossible, such as asking the contestant to run around the world in a single day. Similarly, Deadly Game includes game shows and competitions that are physically exerting and/or involve competitors killing one another.
Examples:
Live-Action TV
- The Amazing Race: Teams race around the world, completing various challenges so they can advance. Besides the running between waypoints, many challenges are, in part or whole, physical, such as climbing or moving freight on foot.
- American Ninja Warrior revolves around competitors trying to complete a series of difficult obstacle courses.
- Beat the Clock: A game show that had contestants attempt some wacky stunt, and accomplish a goal within two minutes or less. The challenges weren't especially athletic, as women participated in the games since couples were usually the contestants. One such stunt had the husband ride a child's tricycle around a loop, while the wife tries to drop rubber balls from a stepladder into a clear tube attached to the husband's helmet.
- Big Brother: In most scenarios, a round of the show will begin with a challenge between all houseguests to become the head of household (excluding the previous HOH). Later in the round, the head of household, the current nominees for eviction, and three others compete in a challenge to be able to veto one of the nominees. While several challenges are predominantly mental and/or social, obstacles and tests of endurance are also common.
- Double Dare (1986) features several physical challenges. They are most prominently featured at the start of each trivia round to decide which team gets control. Teams who cannot answer a question on a double-dare are forced to do an additional physical challenge, and the final prize round involves completing eight physical challenges within a time limit.
- Gladiators (2024): Gladiators is a game show, but all of the challenges are physical contests. Either contestants are competing against each other, they're directly competing against a Gladiator, or they're trying to complete some sort of task while one or more Gladiators try to stop them.
- Hell's Kitchen episodes start with a team challenge (with rewards for the winners and punishments for the losers) and end with a dinner service (with one chef being eliminated afterwards). All the team challenges involve cooking somehow, but some of them start with a physical challenge unrelated to cooking. The results of the physical challenge determine aspects of the cooking part of the challenge (for example, the ingredients each team must use, or how much time each team has to cook their dishes).
- Hole In The Wall: Players or teams compete to fit themselves through a hole in the approaching wall. Holes will often require flexibility, balance, or other agility, especially since players can't leave the narrow staging area.
- Nickelodeon GUTS is built around physical challenges, such as long jumps, bike races, and obstacle courses. Each episode invariably ends with a climb up the Aggro Crag, a rock wall with multiple activators.
- Legends of the Hidden Temple: In a four-phase show, teams start with a race to cross the moat, usually requiring balance. After a quiz, the remaining two teams go head-to-head in assorted competitions. At the end, the remaining team has three minutes to navigate a large temple, full of puzzles, obstacles, and locked doors, retrieve the legendary item, and return to the exit.
- Ninja Warrior tasks players to complete incredibly difficult obstacle courses requiring very high speed, muscular strength, and balance.
- Survivor: Most, but not all, immunity and reward challenges involve physical exertion. While the most common challenges take the form of an obstacle course with a puzzle, or a test of physical endurance, other formats may be present, such as head-to-head combat and slingshot golf. Perhaps the tamest was a self-moderated game of bocce ball, while the other extreme includes an obstacle course in the blistering heat, requiring one player to be evacuated for heat stroke while two others needed medical themselves.
- Takeshi's Castle is built around tricky obstacle courses, with the expectation that players will fall and the audience will laugh.
- Wipeout (2008) is a comedic game show where the contestants try to complete various tricky obstacle courses, often failing and spectacularly falling into the water (or worse liquids) below.
Web Video
- Jet Lag: The Game is a travel competition built around completing tasks, sometimes physical in nature. Some physical challenges include climbing to a high point in season two and Zorbing in season five.
In-Universe Examples:
Films — Live-Action
- Sorry to Bother You: The show "I Got The Shit Kicked Out Of Me!" is exactly what it sounds like, and it's the most popular show on the air, getting hundreds of millions of viewers. Cassius Green goes on the show to play a clip to everyone watching showing WorryFree's human-horse hybrid experiments.
Web Animation
- Battle for Dream Island: A lot of challenges involve physical competition, such as running up a flight of stairs as fast as possible, doing the longest long jump, or completing an obstacle course.
Western Animation
- Phineas and Ferb: In the episode where Phineas and Ferb put on a Calvinball-esque game show, it includes physical challenges, in the form of Pie in the Face. Candace takes several of these during the episode and ends it Covered in Gunge and with a branch in her hair for some reason.
- Total Drama: A typical episode consists of players competing in one or two physical challenges, often dangerous, to determine who wins immunity from the vote. In a layered example, one of the challenges from World Tour had players run around a giant pinball machine on the set of a Japanese game show.
