Trivia / Jeopardy!

• Adored by the Network:
  • Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time received very heavy promotion by ABC before and during the event, including an ad that aired immediately before the Times Square ball drop on New Year's Eve 2019. It was promoted so much that employees at ABC affiliates, including their news anchors, had betting pools on who would win. Banner advertisements for the show were even hardcoded into ABC airings of Wheel of Fortune (the opposite was not done for that show's ABC primetime debut a year later). ABC also reran the first three episodes in a marathon the Saturday after they first aired. In some markets, this immediately followed a repeat of the syndicated show.
  • ABC treats Celebrity Jeopardy! far better than it does its benefactor Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. In Season 1, both shows were on Sundays opposite NFL. In order to prevent the entire season being buried by it, ABC placed first-run episodes of Celebrity Jeopardy! on a hiatus for the month of December 2022, at which point only the first 8 of 13 episodes had aired, after which the show permanently moved to Thursdays, traditionally the best day of the week for ratings. For Season 2, ABC took a similar approach, placing the show on a December hiatus before moving it to another day. In both cases, the remainder of Celebrity Wheel's episodes after the holidays were burned off on random days. Not once but twice in Season 2, ABC ran three reruns of Celebrity Jeopardy! as the entire primetime lineup. ABC also did not reduce Jeopardy!'s 13-episode order for this season despite doing so for Wheel and The $100,000 Pyramid as a result of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
  • Jeopardy! is often highly regarded by its affiliates due to its high ratings and high viewer interest in the returning champions. If a "superchamp" is currently reigning, stations will go out of their way to make sure the show is not pre-empted. This was especially true during James Holzhauer's run. When the April 26, 2019 episode got pre-empted on all ABC affiliates by the NFL Draft, WABC-TV posted multiple announcements and ran several promos announcing that episode would air Saturday, April 27 at 7:30 PM, the time slot normally used for reruns of Wheel. ABC O&O KGO-TV in San Francisco aired the April 25 and 26 episodes in their entirety shortly after the Draft coverage signed off (and still at a reasonable hour, while Wheel was bumped overnight), then aired those episodes again the following Sunday night in primetime, pre-empting a new episode of Shark Tank. On June 3, 2019, Pennsylvania affiliate WBRE-TV was scheduled to pre-empt Jeopardy! and Wheel for an hour-long local telethon. However, once it was leaked that Holzhauer would be defeated on that day, WBRE shortened the telethon broadcast to half an hour to allow that episode to air at its regular time. During this time, Philadelphia ABC O&O WPVI-TV even boasted on their social media that their broadcasts of Jeopardy! were getting higher ratings than Game of Thrones.
  • If Jeopardy!'s time slot is scheduled to be pre-empted, sometimes stations will move it to Wheel's time slot to replace that show (which still gets roughly the same ratings as Jeopardy!, except when there's a superchamp), or another show in the rare case that the affiliate does not carry Wheel. Dayton affiliate WDTN will have Jeopardy! replace Inside Edition whenever the 7:30 PM time slot is pre-empted, such as during the Olympics. Many affiliates also pulled this move when the January 6, 2021 episode (Alex Trebek's third-to-last episode before his passing) got pre-empted by breaking news coverage of the storming of the U.S. Capitol, with much of them airing that episode the next day in place of another local or syndicated program. ABC O&O WLS-TV in Chicago opted to pre-empt its local program Windy City Live for this. Other affiliates aired the January 6 and 7 episodes consecutively on the latter date, with one of the two replacing Wheel.
  • Some West Coast affiliates such as KRQE in Albuquerque, New Mexico will insist on running Jeopardy! in its entirety when it is slotted immediately following a sporting or political event that ends up running long, joining Wheel (or other programs) in progress immediately after the credits roll. They even do this with the shows' Saturday repeats. If the event's overrun is more than 30 minutes (but less than 60), Jeopardy! will get joined in progress and fill the rest of the half-hour slot, with Wheel (or whatever program was meant for that slot) getting skipped entirely. This is also common during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, which frequently run over. Pacific Time Zone affiliates typically move Jeopardy! and Wheel to the 10 PM hour, but will always run the 8 and 9 PM primetime shows in their entirety following the Convention, and do not run the 10 PM hour programming in its entirety in order to start the 11:00 news on time. Most affiliates that schedule Jeopardy! at 10 choose to air it in its entirety following network primetime and join Wheel in progress afterwards, while most of the ones that schedule Wheel at 10 join it in progress following the network shows. Despite these efforts, both game shows are usually in reruns during these events.
  • Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV-TV often prioritizes Jeopardy! over all of their other programming, even NBC network shows at times. Any time the 7:30 PM slot is pre-empted (including when Thursday Night Football aired on NBC, and during the Summer and Winter Olympics for pre-show The Olympic Zone), Jeopardy! moves to 7:00 PM, pre-empting Wheel of Fortune. At least once, this even happened on a day where Wheel had a contestant from Detroit. There were also at least two instances of WDIV airing Jeopardy! in primetime slots, pre-empting the NBC network feed. At one point in May 2019, during James Holzhauer's run, WDIV aired a one-hour local special at 7:00 and aired Wheel and Jeopardy! at 8:00 and 8:30 PM, pre-empting a new episode of The Blacklist. On April 2, 2020, an address from Governor Gretchen Whitmer on the COVID-19 Pandemic pre-empted both game shows on most Michigan stations; WDIV did not make up that day's Wheel (which was a repeat), but aired Jeopardy! at 8:00, pre-empting a new episode of Superstore. On June 2, 2022, when a speech from President Joe Biden pre-empted most of Jeopardy!'s slot, WDIV ran the show in its entirety following the speech, pre-empting about half of a repeat of Law & Order.
  • Columbus, Ohio CBS affiliate WBNS-TV adores Jeopardy! so much that they will go out of their way even on weekends to make sure reruns air in their entirety. The station frequently moves Jeopardy! to Wheel of Fortune's 7:30 time slot and bumps the latter overnight or doesn't air it at all, either to make room for local specials that air at 7:00, or for a special edition local newscast at 7:00 that airs whenever CBS schedules a sporting event that pre-empts the normal 6:00 newscast. This is the case every Saturday during college football season (a day where both game shows are almost-always reruns, barring one occasion in 2016 where Wheel did schedule a new episode), when WBNS does local news at 7:00, immediately following college football, which always runs long, but the newscast will not run past 7:30, unlike other affiliates that opt to always do a full 30 minutes of news and join the following program in progress. As a result of this, Jeopardy! Weekend moves to 7:30, and Wheel of Fortune Weekend moves to late Sunday night (technically Monday) at 12:30 or 1:00 AM. Not only that, but should college football run past 7:30 PM Eastern on Saturday and cause the Jeopardy! rerun to get joined in progress, it re-airs in its entirety the following night after Wheel in place of an infomercial, even if the majority of Jeopardy! still managed to air on Saturday.
  • In 2022, Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI-TV announced they would be swapping Jeopardy! and Wheel's time slots starting July 4, with the former now at 7:30 PM instead of 7:00. Although local Jeopardy! fans were annoyed with this move, the station insisted that this was done for Jeopardy!'s benefit due to its increasing ratings and expected it to do even better as a lead-in to NBC primetime. On Saturdays during NFL season, the 7:30 time slot is pre-empted by local Steelers program The Jerome Bettis Show. Shortly after the swap, on Saturdays, WPXI decided to permanently move Wheel to 4:30 AM and Jeopardy! back to 7:00 since the 7:30 slot is frequently pre-empted by local Steelers program The Jerome Bettis Show and by occasional college football and NFL broadcasts from the NBC network, such as Notre Dame College's games. When the latter happens, WPXI prioritizes Jeopardy! repeats over its own program by keeping it at 7:00 as a lead-in to the game and bumping Jerome Bettis to early Saturday morning preceding E/I programming. Also, whenever WPXI locally airs Steelers games, they refuse to touch the Wheel/Jeopardy! block for pregame, so any pregame shows air at 6:00 PM (pre-empting local news and NBC Nightly News), followed by the game shows, and then the game.
  • On January 27, 2023, most East Coast CBS airings were pre-empted by the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament. However, Tampa Bay affiliate WTSP opted to cut off the tournament coverage half an hour early at 7:30 PM to air that day's Jeopardy! episode at its normal time, likely due to the returning champion on that episode being from the area (Wheel was not aired that day, but did not feature anyone local).
  • When Thursday Night Football began airing on network television (CBS and NBC interchangeably from 2014-17, FOX from 2018-21), affiliates that air Jeopardy! at 7:30 PM Eastern quickly learned that the pregame show would pre-empt it. As mentioned above, several affiliates worked around this by moving Jeopardy! to 7:00, mostly pre-empting Wheel. It's worth noting that in 2014, Wheel was still almost-always the higher-rated of the two shows nationally. Affiliates that routinely did this move during TNF's run included WBZ in Boston, WTHR in Indianapolis, WDIV in Detroit, and WOIO in Cleveland. WXIX in Cincinnati also did this at first, but Wheel fans were quick to complain, as the station was already airing Daytime Jeopardy! only an hour prior at 6:00 PM. WXIX responded the following season by moving Wheel to 6:00 on TNF days while still moving Jeopardy! up to 7:00, satisfying both fandoms. For the final two seasons, however, the station was now airing local news at 6:00, and this time decided to keep Wheel at 7:00 and bump Jeopardy! overnight.
• Author's Saving Throw: In response to criticisms that the 2022 National College Championship format meant that a contestant would win a semifinals game but miss the finals, Michael Davies announced that said semifinalist would be invited to the Second Chance Tournament.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Modern-day "I'll take ____ for $X Alex" jokes where X is $100, $300, or $500 ^note not $1500 or $2500, as Super Jeopardy! was played for points are technically quoting the show correctly, but only pre-2001 episodes when those values still existed. In the Jeopardy! of this millennium, even the first round goes $200-$400-$600-$800-$1,000. Additionally, real-life contestants almost never say the host's name when choosing clues. Most contestants today shorten this phrasing to "[category] for $X," often with just the hundreds digit stated (e.g., "History for two.")
• Blooper: The scoreboards are also prone to this.
  • On at least the second Trebek episode, during Final Jeopardy!, a contestant's wager was accidentally deducted from another player, although this was quickly fixed.
  • On another occasion, a contestant rang in with an incorrect response, but the value of the clue was briefly added to their score instead of subtracted from it.
  • On the January 10, 2020 episode, the last clue revealed in the Jeopardy! round required a contestant to identify the country in which the Church of the Nativity was located; contestant Katie was ruled wrong for "What is Palestine?" and Jack ruled correct for "What is Israel?" After the end of the round, the judges decided to throw out the clue, reset the scores, and record a new clue, which Jack also responded to correctly. However, post-production forgot to dub the new clue into the episode, so viewers saw the problematic clue and then Katie suddenly gaining back $200 at the start of Double Jeopardy! The show responded to the error by explaining the situation and posting the corrected clue on YouTube.
• Bury Your Art:
  • Kiddie spin-off Jep! doesn't get that much recognition. Luckily, because of this, kids who competed on Jep! back in the day are allowed to apply for the main series as adults.
  • The March 1986 five-day champion reign of Barbara Lowe is basically forgotten now, as she was considered by many fans to be a Jerkass, and she lied on her application as to her frequent past game show appearances under aliases, which violated her eligibility requirements. Her episodes have never rerun, either, despite her first win coming over Lionel Goldbart, a four-day champion and eventual Tournament of Champions competitor. They discovered the lies after her 5th and final game, and they barred her from the tournament. They also refused to pay her the money she won until she threatened to sue the studio.
    • Or at least, that was the story Jeopardy! producers repeatedly put forth, until her episodes were found and she proved to be a very personable, average woman. Documents from the show reveal she had fully disclosed the other game shows she'd appeared on, as well, leaving the question of why Jeopardy! tried so hard to scrub her from its history. According to Lowe, the show tried to withhold her winnings because Trebek claimed a gastrointestinal issue she experienced had cost the production time and money; she eventually had to settle for half. If anything, it seems like Trebek personally disliked her (in addition to the bathroom emergency, she'd also corrected him on an answer immediately instead of waiting for a commercial break) and tried to be punitive, and that removing her episodes is less about her and more about protecting him.
  • The same treatment was given to Season 30 5-time champion Jerry Slowik, who did meet eligibility requirements, but got arrested for an unlawful sex act, prompting Jeopardy! to drop him from the 2014 Tournament Of Champions and replace him with Mark Japinga, the 4-time champion who had the most money in that cycle. (That said, his episodes haven't been barred from reruns; at least one aired during the 2014-15 weekend rerun cycle.)
  • Sony has already given Mike Richards' brief tenure this treatment. It's pretty safe to say that his two weeks from Season 37 and his five episodes from Season 38 are likely never going to see the light of day ever again. What hurts is Matt Amodio appeared during his one week from Season 38.
• Corpsing: Despite his Deadpan Snarker nature, Trebek has been known to crack up at more amusingly-written clues or categories. He's even done it in the interviews a few times. In 2012, one contestant's interview had to do with her pet goat dying after eating a bag of quick-drying concrete; when he asked if it was a 60- or 80-pound bag, she snarked that Alex was "being insensitive", causing him to laugh so hard that he declined to interview the next contestant.
  Trebek: I can't follow that.
• Creator Backlash:
  • According to a 1989 interview in Sports Illustrated, Art Fleming disliked many facets of the Trebek version, finding it too glitzy and dumbed-down compared to his versions, while also expressing disdain for only paying out to winners and giving parting gifts to losers.
  • The series has all but distanced itself from Kids' Weeks due to sportsmanship incidents the last two times they were done. The first happened on the July 31, 2013 episode where media outlets and angry Facebook posts ignored a $66,600 win in favor of a judgment call that didn't affect the game. They tried another Kids' Week in December 2014 but a Stage Mom caused a stir with Trebek when her daughter finished with a negative score and he did not console her, and also acknowledged the loss the start of the next episode, causing the mother to demand that intro be re-shot. It didn't help that the latter fiasco was exposed by the Sony hacks. Jeopardy! hasn't done a Kids' Week since.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: With their crack research team, Jeopardy! rarely has wrong information in a clue, but it has happened very sporadically.
  • For instance, one clue on April 9, 2004 said that Johnny Gilbert announced on the Bob Barker version of The Price Is Right, which he did not (the late Johnny Olson did.)^note Johnny Gilbert had, however, announced Bill Cullen's version of The Price is Right, and on one occasion actually guest-hosted an episode.
  • One in mid-2011 was actually acknowledged by Alex in a post-production segment during a commercial break. The clue read "The sixth tone in the scale of C minor", with the intended response being "What is A?" In actuality, A is the sixth tone in the scale of C major (A flat would have been the correct answer for the clue as written.) Alex also noted that it ended up not affecting the outcome of the game (champion Linda Percy's guess of B was wrong for either scale, and she won in a lock anyway).
  • Heck, Alex got the name of his first American game show wrong, calling it The Wizard of Oz rather than The Wizard Of Odds during a 2002 episode. He corrected his mistake before Double Jeopardy!, noting that it was "easily forgotten", and jokingly asked "Was it me or was it the show?" After audience laughter, he concluded that it was the show.
  • A clue on September 23rd, 2016 asked for a Saturday Night Live alumnus who died in 1992, and accepted Chris Farley as the correct response. Farley died in 1997.
  • February 21st, 2017 had one based on The Legend of Zelda with the answer being "'Hyrule Legends' & 'Link's Crossbow Training' are Wii options in this 'Legendary' game series." There is no Zelda game titled "Hyrule Legends" and the closest match, "Hyrule Warriors Legends," is a 3DS port of a Wii U title. The "Link's Crossbow Training" portion is accurate, however.
  • January 11, 2018 had a Final Jeopardy! clue of "It's the first Oscar nominee for Best Picture to be produced by an Internet streaming service". The answer they were looking for was Manchester by the Sea, but the show had a post-production correction that aired immediately after the game with Trebek explaining that the clue was erroneous: Amazon Pictures didn't produce the film, but rather was a co-distributor. The error didn't affect champion Gilbert Collins (who had a near-runaway game and wagered small on an incorrect guess of "What is The Social Network?"). The player who entered the round in second, Rebecca Zoshak, was just within range of the champion's lock-game total, bet nearly her entire total and couldn't come up with a response, dropping her to third with a total of $25, while eventual second-place finisher Julie Zauzmer did come up with the intended response after trailing Zoshak's total by precisely half. Trebek's correction included that Zoshak would be invited back, and in an episode that aired two months later, Zoshak was a one-day winner with $14,407.
  • A clue in a video games category on October 7, 2019 fell victim to a hoax image on Twitter claiming that the pieces in Tetris have such names as "Orange Ricky" and "Smashboy". Officially, the pieces are named after the letters they resemble.
  • A question about Animaniacs fell victim to this trope. The answer was "On the Warner Bros. lot tour you can see the water tower that this cartoon trio calls home." The contestant responded "Who are The Warner Brothers and Warner Sister?" His response was judged incorrect, with the question the show was looking for being "Who are the Animaniacs?" (Animaniacs is the name of the show, while the main characters are Yakko, Wakko and Dot, also known as the Warner Brothers and Warner Sister). They gave it back to him after the commercial, with Alex Trebek professing that he hadn't known that; he learns something new every day.
  • A clue on June 3, 2022 read "Type of institution that has a 'Row' in Garden City on Long Island, including one about firefighting & a children's one" with the correct response being "museums". "Museum Row" is actually in Uniondale, not Garden City. Local newspapers and the Nassau County legislator were quick to point this out. However, no one rang in to guess.
  • The Final Jeopardy on November 17, 2022 read "Paul's letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations". The answer that was accepted, Hebrews, is frequently debated to this day by Biblical scholars and not generally accepted as one of Paul's letters.^note All of the other Pauline letters are attributed to Paul within the text. Hebrews lacks this, and there are some other subtleties in the text that don't entirely line up with Paul's theology or worldview from the other epistles, so while it's frequently attributed to Paul it isn't considered a canonical Pauline epistle by most sects. The "correct" answer, Romans, was marked as wrong and resulted in the contestant that would have won ending in 3rd place. Adding to the controversy, this was a match in the Tournament of Champions. It's entirely possible that this one ruling changed how the whole tournament played out.
• Died During Production: Alex Trebek passed away from pancreatic cancer on November 8, 2020 (his last shows were taped on October 29, over a week before his death). The show used guest hosts for the remainder of the season; his last show was to air on Christmas Day but was pushed back to the week of January 4 due to preemptions by some affiliates.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • On March 4, 2022, a clue made reference to the border between Russia and Ukraine. A disclaimer showing the episode's tape date of January 11, 2022 was displayed while the clue was in play.
  • April 5, 2022 saw the same thing, with its VTR of January 27, 2022.
  • December 6, 2023: One Celebrity episode had a clue about Matthew Perry who passed away on October 28. When the clue was selected, the episode's recording date of October 11, 2023 was shown onscreen.
  • January 9, 2024: Another Celebrity episode had its tape date of August 23, 2023 onscreen with a clue about Israel.
• Early-Bird Release:
  • The November 8, 2016 episode intentionally aired one day early on New York affiliate WABC-TV, with the November 7 episode being skipped. This was done due to one of the contestants on the 8th being from Brooklyn; the episode would have been pre-empted on its official date for election coverage.
  • For many years, Montgomery, Alabama CBS affiliate WAKA aired Jeopardy! before anyone else in the United States, at 9:30 AM Central Time, leading into The Price Is Right. After their early airings became well known in the fandom (with tech-savvy fans watching them using a VPN or IPTV), and after many notable moments and champion streak snaps were spoiled for others, WAKA moved the show to its more common Central Time Zone slot of 4:30 PM starting in the 2020-21 season.
• Edited for Syndication:
  • The September 10, 1984 premiere has been rerun from time to time, with various edits each time. One of the more consistent edits, seen on the official DVD and Pluto streaming version, is replacing the Audio Daily Double with a royalty-free MIDI version of the same song. It's "The Song Of The Volga Boatmen", for those playing along.
  • Season 12 (1995-96) had Johnny Gilbert adding "An official sponsor of the 1996 Olympic games..." to the openings of some episodes with its logo plastered on the globe. When the season aired on GSN, the line was cut from said episodes.
  • Episodes that aired on GSN from August 2000 onward had promotional consideration plugs edited out. Starting a year later, consolation prizes from pre-May 2002 episodes were also edited out.
  • During the College Championship semifinal game 2, contestant Viraj Mehta appeared to be Flipping the Bird during the interviews. This was edited out of reruns by cutting to a shot of Alex.
  • The January 11, 2017 episode had a clue read by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. Following his sexual allegations, the rerun of the show in 2018 dubbed it over with Alex reading a slightly rewritten version of the clue.
  • The four hour-long episodes of Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time were edited into eight half-hour reruns that aired as part of the syndicated version's various repeats during the COVID-19 hiatus. To round them out into an even two-week span, the eight half-episodes were bookended with reruns of the first and last games of Ken Jennings' original run.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Former associate producer Harry Eisenberg released the book Inside Jeopardy!: What Really Goes on at TV's Top Quiz Show in 1993 which, among other things, claimed that producers would tamper with the questions to help more female players win. Alex Trebek denied the allegations. (An edited version, with these allegations removed, was issued in 1995 as Jeopardy!: A Revealing Look Inside TV's Top Quiz Show.) The second edition also notes that George Vosburgh (the show's producer from seasons 1987 to 1997) tended to insist on having more factual clues while cutting back on ones that focused on humor, "pop culture" and "wordplay".
  • According to the Sony e-mail hacks, Sony tried to do this during Kids Week when a Stage Mom wrote to them, angry over an incident when her daughter learned she wouldn't participate in that episode's Final Jeopardy! and she ran off in a huff, demanding some sort of reparations over it and that her daughter was not a Sore Loser. Sony was actually willing to retape the entire segment to appease them, but Alex Trebek pretty much told Sony that if this was what things were coming to, then it was time for him to leave.
  • Nearly happened during the original Art Fleming run. A few executives were frustrated by the game's Nintendo Hard difficulty and urged Merv to tone it down in an attempt to make the show more appealing to young audiences and to those less scholastically inclined, but Merv refused, believing diluting the game would completely wreck the whole point of it.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy:
  • June 11, 2012: Final Jeopardy! asked "Acts 1:13 says this event occurred in 'an upper room'." They were looking for "The Last Supper", and initially ruled the champion's response of "Pentecost" wrong, but Alex later acknowledged the latter as right in a dubbed-in clip and mentioned that, starting with the next game, his score would be adjusted accordingly. The truth is, there is no right answer — Acts 1:13 makes no mention of any "act" besides the disciples meeting there, and Pentecost doesn't show up until Acts 2. Furthermore, the exact location of the Last Supper is unknown; it is believed to have happened in an upper room simply because that was tradition. Fortunately, this did not affect the outcome, since only two players were present at Final Jeopardy! and the champion, who answered "Pentecost", had a "lock" game.
  • April 3rd, 2015: One clue asked for the Catholic sacrament that allows a person to take Communion. They were looking for the response "What is Confirmation?" Communion is a sacrament in and of itself, the initiation of it is just called "First Communion", and the "Confirmation before Communion" concept is generally found in Protestant churches. At the end of the show, Alex took a moment to acknowledge the mistake and promise they would be more careful in the future.
  • October 8, 2019: One clue asked for a video game whose rotatable blocks have names such as "Orange Ricky, Hero, and Smashboy". While a contestant does provide the correct reponse of Tetris, the names are actually incorrect, having originated from a Twitter meme post showing these names in a supposed copy of the NES version's manual. Even the game's official Twitter account called the show out on it.
  • November 30, 2021: The Daily Double clue in the Double Jeopardy! "Ends in 'Ex'" reads "In math, these 2 words are often used interchangeably for the top point of a figure, like a cone". The response they were looking for was "the apex and the vertex", even though mathematically, a vertex is not correct and an apex is not a mathematical term.
  • February 18, 2022: One Daily Double, "In 2019 China's Chang'e 4 probe made the first landing here, a place not even glimpsed by humanity until 1959" called for the far side of the moon. However, the contestant was ruled correct for saying "the dark side of the moon", even though the "dark" side is whatever side of the moon the sun doesn't hit and is constantly changing.
  • March 4, 2022: One clue misgenders Sam Smith as "he", even though they came out as non-binary in 2019. Making this error worse is that the May 11, 2021 episode correctly used "they/them" pronouns for Smith (the clue referred to them coming out as non-binary).
  • November 16, 2022: The Final Jeopardy! clue in the third finals game asked, "Paul's letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations"; this is a disputed claim, with a June 2021 clue saying that Barnabas is sometimes credited for writing. According to Brittanica, it is “now widely believed to be the work of another Jewish Christian”.
  • December 12, 2022: One clue claims that the Japanese title for Leaving Las Vegas is "I'm Drunk And You're A Prostitute", which was made up for a spoof article in 1998 and was erroneously reported by several news outlets before it was debunked. The actual Japanese title for said film is a katakana version of the English title.
  • The NES game has a blatant one that the Game Grumps discovered. A clue asked for the Disney Princess cursed by "Queen Malificent" to which both Arin and Jon correctly claimed was Sleeping Beauty. They were surprised to discover the game was saying that was wrong, and they both gave a Big "WHAT?!" when the "correct" response was revealed to be Snow White.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Whenever a long-running champion employs tactics such as the Forrest Bounce and/or aggressive Daily Double wagering, it is common for contestants who appear after their run to try the same tactics. Results have been mixed, with many challengers faltering for one reason or another despite their best laid plans, while a number of notable Jeopardy! champions have won a large number of games while largely playing the "traditional" way, including notable 12+ time champions like Julia Collins and Seth Wilson.
  • In terms of the Jeopardy! format, it has seen its share of later game shows with a big board of questions selected by three contestants, like Debt, The Challengers (which was an update of another NBC quizzer, The Who What or Where Game (1969-74), which focused more on current-events and wagering/betting), Make the Grade, Let's Go Back, and Canada's Game On. In fact, Let's Go Back producer Scott Sternberg would later create and produce Jep!, the short-lived kids version of Jeopardy! from 1998.
• Friday Night Death Slot:
  • In an aversion during seasons 17-18, 21, 23, 25, 27-29 and 33, many of Jeopardy!s traditional two-week tournaments would begin on a Wednesday and end on a Tuesday two weeks later (starting with the November 2000 College Championship), rather than the usual scheduling of two full, self-contained weeks of tournament play from Monday of one week to Friday of the next. While this often occurs in November to avoid conflicting with the US presidential election and Thanksgiving-related pre-emptions, this can also allow tournament finals to take place on a Monday and Tuesday, which traditionally get bigger television audiences than Thursdays and Fridays. After over three seasons of typical tournament scheduling, Jeopardy! brought back a Wednesday-Tuesday format for November 2016's Teen Tournament.
  • Uniquely, the February 2011 Teen Tournament began on a Thursday and ended on a Wednesday, as it was scheduled immediately following the IBM Challenge, which aired across three episodes from Monday-Wednesday. As a result, the semifinal games were broken up due to the weekend, the only time this has ever occurred with a regular 2 week tournament.
  • Boston affiliate WBZ-TV is notorious for pre-empting Jeopardy! (and Wheel of Fortune) almost every Friday during NFL season for local program Patriots All Access. If Jeopardy! is a regular episode on a day where it is pre-empted, it airs at 2:37 AM following Wheel. If it's a tournament finals episode, it usually airs at its regular time of 7:30 PM on sister station WSBK-TV (Wheel still airs at 2:07 AM regardless, since that show has not had a tournament of any kind since 1999). However, they did not do this with the 2021 Professors Tournament finals, to local fans' disappointment. Starting in the 2022 season, both game shows now always move to WSBK when pre-empted for any reason, replacing reruns of The Big Bang Theory.
• Hypothetical Casting: Prior to Alex Trebek's death in 2020, he threw around some possible names to succeed him as host. Among these were Alex Faust, Laura Coates, and Ben Mankiewicz. He also jokingly told an audience member that Betty White should take his place.
• In Memoriam:
  • Before the November 9, 2020 episode, executive producer Mike Richards paid tribute to Trebek, who had died the previous day. The same episode, as well as all Trebek-hosted episodes after it, had a brief line of text at the end also mentioning it is dedicated to Trebek. Unfortunately, at least one affiliate (Detroit's WDIV-TV) did not air either tribute, although they did create their own text dedicated to Trebek that aired at the start of the first commercial break during their broadcast of the following day's episode.^note November 9 was a Monday, and Monday episodes are fed to affiliates on the previous Friday. Since Trebek died on Sunday morning, the show had to quickly shoot and edit the tribute so Sony could do an emergency re-feed on Sunday night. Technical issues with getting the new feed, or simple ignorance about the new feed, could explain why a station like WDIV didn't air the tribute Trebek’s final episode ended with a series of clips from his tenure set to Hugh Jackman‘s cover of “Once Before I Go”, originally by Peter Allen.
  • The 2021 tournament of champions included a tribute to five-day champion Brayden Smith, who would have qualified for said tournament but died unexpectedly of surgery complications in January 2021. Guest Host Buzzy Cohen also noted that the show would be donating to a memorial fund.
  • During the summer re-runs of classic Jeopardy episodes, the first ever Celebrity Jeopardy from 1992 which featured Regis Phillbin, Carol Burnett and Donna Mills was aired in Regis Phillbin's memory, as Philbin had passed away a few days before the re-airing of the episode.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The original Fleming era is believed to have been destroyed by NBC, although about 20+ episodes are known to exist and four (plus the first five minutes of another) circulate. ^note (September 7, 1966 {the five-minute excerpt}; February 21, 1972 {the 2,000th show}; April 24, 1974 {seen in Twilight Zone: The Movie}; June 27, 1974 {Kim/Kent/Karen, called "the three K's" by Art}; and the Grand Finale.)
    • In January 2010, five consecutive episodes from August 1968 and a Tournament of Champions show from late 1969 surfaced on audio tape featuring Burt Sherman's run to become the 48th undefeated champion. The person who presented the tapes, Steve Sherman (Burt's son), also had a pair of four-minute "home movies" consisting entirely of footage from these games; a slideshow of Game 5, plus nine clips from it matching up the audio and video, can be viewed here.
  • The 1974-75 syndicated run and 1978-79 revival are intact; a single episode circulates of the former, while seven episodes circulate of the latter. ^note (October 2-3, November 13 {an episode which surfaced following the above events}, January 1 {audio only}, January 16 {surfaced in March 2013}, a Tournament of Champions final sometime between 1/16 and 3/2, and the Grand Finale.)
  • When reran on GSN, certain Trebek-era seasons were rarely seen there, especially from seasons prior to 1996. Just 5 episodes have been officially released on DVD via 2006's Jeopardy - An Inside Look at America's Favorite Quiz Show, those being the series premiere from 1984 and 4 Ken Jennings games (his 75th and final regular game from November 2004 and the Ultimate Tournament of Champions final games from 2005).
    • March 1986 five day champion Barbara Lowe's games never re-aired after their original run in any form. Home recordings of her episodes eventually surfaced in late 2022, and her games were subsequently cataloged on J! archive.
    • Towards the end of (and after) Trebek's life, vintage reruns became more prominent in syndication (especially when COVID-19 halted production of Season 36 early). Several notable episodes over the years were also aired by GSN as a tribute to Alex six days after his passing.
  • Although a rotating selection of Trebek-era episodes were available for streaming on Netflix and Hulu starting in 2018, they were removed in Summer 2021, and there is no word if the show will ever return to either service.
  • Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time, a four-day ABC primetime event, was never rerun after its conclusion in its original hour form, although a repackaged version of the event, split into eight half-hour episodes, were rerun as part of the syndicated version in Summer 2020 and again as part of the daytime rerun package in October 2021. The four hour-long episodes were available to stream on Hulu, but, as per their usual practice with ABC game shows, were removed roughly a year after their original runs.
  • All of the 2021 guest hosts, except for Mayim and Ken, have not been acknowledged or had their episodes rerun since their stints.
  • While Jeopardy!'s daytime and weekend runs have almost-always been episodes from the previous season (guaranteeing that nearly every episode would rerun at least once), they were forced to jump ahead to episodes from the current season in order to only feature games hosted by Mayim or Ken, or special events (including the half-hour syndicated edits of Jeopardy!: Greatest of All Time, the only games hosted by Trebek to have aired in the daytime run this season). Daytime Jeopardy! can now be as recent as episodes from one month ago, rather than a year ago. Even the first 75 episodes of Season 37 hosted by Trebek before his death have not been rerun in either rotation, though all but four of them are available on Pluto TV.
• Life Imitates Art: After winning 2002's Million Dollar Masters tournament, Brad Rutter took a page from Alex Trebek's playbook and became a game show host of his own, on the regional Pennsylvania quiz bowl series Inquizitive with Brad Rutter, and was introduced as a TV quiz show host during 2005's Ultimate Tournament of Champions.
  • A handful of Celebrity Jeopardy! and Power Players Week contestants have also followed their Jeopardy! appearances by becoming game show hosts, like Regis Philbin, Meredith Vieira, Wayne Brady, Jeff Foxworthy, Andy Richter, Chris Hardwick, Patrick Duffy, and Anderson Cooper, who became a guest host for two weeks in Season 37. There have also been celebrity contestants who hosted game shows at the time (like Pat Sajak) and others who had hosted game shows previously (like Tom Bergeron.)
  • Saturday Night Live's popular Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches always featured an inaccurate board layout, with four clues in each, rather than five. When Sports Jeopardy! premiered in 2014, it too only had four clues per category, though in this case, any similarity to SNL is likely coincidental (especially with different clue values, and six categories instead of SNL's seven.)
  • Well after "Weird Al" Yankovic's classic parody song "I Lost On Jeopardy!" came out, he has been a celebrity contestant on a handful of real game shows. Though he did help his team win on Double Dare and Remote Control, and win over $30,000 in defeat on Wheel of Fortune, he did indeed lose on (Rock & Roll) Jeopardy in 2001, and "I Lost on Jeopardy!" played during the end credits.
  • In SNL's first ever Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch from 1996, one contestant was Jerry Lewis (played by host Martin Short), who predictably did poorly, helping set the pattern for the recurring sketches to follow. A decade later, Martin Short competed on the real Celebrity Jeopardy!, and didn't play much better, finishing Double Jeopardy! with a whopping -$1,600, never climbing above $400 during the entire game.
  • Rock and Roll Jeopardy! host Jeff Probst appeared on the regular Jeopardy! as a celebrity contestant twice, losing to Joshua Malina in a runaway in 2001 (during R&R J!'s final season) and to Martha Stewart in a closer 2003 episode. He also provided at least one category's worth of video clues in each year from seasons 18-24, typically in a Survivor context.
• Long-Runners:
  • Trebek's version began its 30th season in September 2013, placing it third behind only Wheel of Fortune (nighttime version started in 1983; daytime in 1975) and The Price Is Right (CBS version started in 1972; the show itself started in 1956). As per his wishes, it officially outlived him in 2021.
  • Even the classic 1964-75 Art Fleming version counts in its own right — it ran for nearly 11 years, and was practically a tradition for businessmen and college students on their lunch break (which is how the show got mega-popular in the first place).
• Looping Lines:
  • If the host stumbles when reading a clue, the clue is usually re-dubbed over in post. This is easy to do since the reading is usually done over a shot of the clue's text.
  • Taken to its logical extreme during the final week of the 2014-15 season (including 5-day champion Scott Lord's loss), where all of the clues were re-recorded in post, due to Alex having a cold that left his voice really hoarse during that taping day. He addressed it on air for the first game, and disclaimers aired to notify viewers afterward.
  • If Johnny Gilbert misses a taping, a member of the Clue Crew announces in-studio and Johnny is dubbed in post-production. This has also been the case on Monday-Wednesday episodes since Season 36, which typically have Sarah Whitcomb Foss announce in-studio before being overdubbed by Johnny. Given that Johnny in is his 90s, it's perhaps not surprising that the crew decided to let him have the mornings off.
• Marathon Running: On November 14, 2020, GSN aired a 7-hour marathon of the show to pay tribute to Alex Trebek a week after his death, alongside “words of tribute” to Alex from stars of the network.
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • The show occasionally peppers jokes and memes in categories and clues. The January 31, 2014 episode, for example, the final two categories of the Jeopardy! round are "I Have the Wine" and "By Johnny Cash", in reference to an infamous Wheel of Fortune incident where a contestant thought that was the answer to the puzzle (it was actually "I Walk the Line").
  • In 2015, YouTube channel gr18vidz uploaded a video called "Jeffpardy", in which all names, clues, and responses are dubbed over by the contestants and Alex saying the name "Jeff". This has been acknowledged twice:
    • On January 5, 2018, Claudia Hochstein put down "What is Jeff?" as an incorrect Final Jeopardy! response.
    • On April 16, 2019 (the game before James Holzhauer re-established his final single-day record), one category was titled "5 Jeffs" with the next being "Yeah, We Saw It On The Internet".
  • On November 11, 2019, Alex acknowledged the supercut of him saying "genre" (created by Tournament of Champions winner Alex Jacob).
• Milestone Celebration: Jeopardy! celebrated its 10th anniversary with the 10th Anniversary Tournament in December 1993 (featuring notable contestants from the first 9 seasons.) For their 20th season, the 5-day winning limit was abolished (much to Ken Jennings' benefit), while season 25 was celebrated with a rare Tournament of Champions held on the road (in Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show). Most recently, season 30 saw Jeopardy! host the Battle of the Decades tournament featuring 15 contestants from each decade that the show had aired to that point.
  • Jeopardy! has also celebrated milestones for the number of episodes. The 3,000th episode was celebrated during a normal game in September 1997 (with archival clips featured during it), while the 4,000th episode was marked with the Million Dollar Masters tournament in May 2002, immediately followed by a 4,000th episode clip show to mark the milestone (though that was actually episode #4,088)
• No Budget:
  • The current show averts this, even with the rule that only the winner would receive their cash total. The clue values were quadrupled (doubled pre-November 2001) from the 1978-79 version, and this made it possible for the top winner to win much more than on the former version, even with its bonus round format. Still, the current version could feel cheap for anyone who finishes in second or third place and leaves with only the consolation prize. The runner-up prizes of $2,000 for second and $1,000 for third were unchanged for almost 22 years until being increased to $3,000 and $2,000, respectively.
  • Then a major rule change implied this in Season 31, the first after Sony's hacking incident. After four shows where co-champions were crowned, the show axed the co-champion rule. Instead of the tied players returning the following day with the same amount of winnings, all ties are now decided with a tie-breaker clue. The winner keeps their bank and plays on while the loser goes home with $3,000. Many fans qualified it as this trope, seeing it as a cheap way to save money in the wake of the Sony hacking incident, and because the contestant who loses the tiebreaker doesn't keep their winnings.
  • Season 37 shows some glaring examples of budget cuts. Much of the show's budget went into set changes—specifically, the contestants' islands now six feet apart from each other—deemed necessary as a result of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Since the season started, there have been substantially fewer video clues presented by the Clue Crew and celebrity guests. Clue Crew answers were quietly discontinued after Season 38 ended.
• Older Than They Think: What was the first game show to feature a video board of sports questions with 4 point values in each category, and three contestants buzzing in to answer questions on a sports bar-themed set? If you said Sports Jeopardy!, you obviously aren't Canadian. Game On, a Canadian game show that aired from 1998-2000 on Global, basically looks like an early prototype of Sports Jeopardy!, just with a unique "Two Minute Warning" final round featuring a contracted (yet expensive) board, less categories, no need to phrase in the form of a question, and a far lower budget (a sports bar prize package toplined with a 56-inch TV was the top prize for the season-ending championship game.) Other differences were cosmetic, notably including podiums replaced with lounge chairs and a wet bar.
  • Officially speaking, Jeopardy! had an sports version way back in 1994... as a video game for Sega and Nintendo consoles and handheld devices. However, this was basically a re-release of GameTek's contemporary Jeopardy! video game with sports-themed clues, as well as digitized pictures of athletes wearing athletic gear to represent the contestants.
• Out of Holiday Episode: Trebek's last two episodes were originally supposed to air on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, respectively. That entire week's shows were delayed to air two weeks later (since the show would have been pre-empted in many markets by ABC's Christmas NBA games), yet those two episodes still make mentions of Christmas.
• Out of Order:
  • Due to 2009's Tournament of Champions being taped during that January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (and having firm taping dates outside of regular taping schedules), as well as that year's February sweeps period being postponed to March to accommodate the transition from analog to digital TV signals in the United States, the first few games of the 2010 TOC qualifying period actually aired before the 2009 TOC aired that March. However, no contestants during this period won 3 games.
  • Three Jeopardy! champions competed in reunion tournaments before they competed in their Tournament of Champions. Season 6's top winners Frank Spangenberg and Bob Blake were both invited to the Super Jeopardy! tournament in the summer of 1990, before their TOC aired that November (Blake was a semifinalist in the former and winner of the latter, Spangenberg was a quarterfinalist in the former and a semifinalist in the latter.) As well, 2004 College Champion Kermin Fleming was invited to 2005's Ultimate Tournament of Champions, a year before his TOC actually took place in May 2006, though he lost his only game in both events.
  • Due to the Battle of the Decades tournament in season 30, the 2014 Tournament of Champions was not held that season (despite there already being 6 confirmed contestants for that event from the prior season.) It instead took place in November 2014, early in season 31. As a result of the delay, the qualifying period for that TOC concluded at the end of season 30 in July 2014, meaning that the first two months of season 31 were the beginning of the qualifying period for the season 32 TOC, not unlike how TOCs were scheduled in the first 9 seasons. During this stretch, the only qualifier for the November 2015 TOC was 4 day champion Catherine Hardee (who wouldn't have made the 2014 field had the qualifying period not ended early.)
  • Trebek's final five shows were scheduled to air during the week of Christmas, 2020. Citing reduced viewership during the holiday season and potential pre-emptions on ABC affiliates by NBA, ten episodes, themed "Around the World With Alex", were aired between December 21, 2020, and January 1, 2021. Trebek's final episodes were aired during the week of January 4-8, 2021.
• The Pete Best:
  • Art Fleming, Don Pardo, and John Harlan are comparatively lesser-known for their tenures than Alex Trebek and Johnny Gilbert, except maybe among "Weird Al" Yankovic fans or die-hard game show fans. Nowadays, Pardo is more well-known for being the announcer on Saturday Night Live from its 1975 premiere until his death in 2014 (except during the 1981-82 season, when he was temporarily replaced by Mel Brandt and/or Bill Hanrahan); game-show fans also tend to remember him for announcing several other NBC games, including Three on a Match and its successor, the trainwreck that was Winning Streak.
  • The original Clue Crew members upon their 2001 debut were Jimmy McGuire, Sarah Whitcomb (Foss), Cheryl Farrell, and Sofia Lidskog. Sofia quit in 2004 and was replaced by both Kelly Miyahara and Jon Cannon. Cheryl and Jon left in 2008 and 2009, leaving the most familiar lineup of Jimmy, Sarah, and Kelly which stayed the same until Kelly quit in 2019.
  • For three months in season 20, Sean Ryan laid claim to being the only Jeopardy! contestant to become a six day champion, thanks to the removal of winning limits. Then Tom Walsh took the record by winning his 7th game in January 2004. Five months passed, and then came a certain software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah...
• Produced by Cast Member:
  • Trebek was a producer for first three years he hosted the revival. He even came up with the tournament format used from 1985-2021 entirely on his own.
  • A variation, in 2020, Ken Jennings became a new "consulting producer" for the program. He would later guest host six weeks of episodes in Season 37, becoming the first to emcee the show after Trebek's passing.
  • Then-executive producer Mike Richards guest hosted two weeks in Season 37. On August 11, 2021, Richards was announced as one of Trebek's permanent replacements. Nine days later, he resigned from hosting after his troubled past, which included sex assault allegations and derogatory comments on his podcasts, went viral.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: September 18, 2013 had a category based on fetus development, which featured The Clue Crew's Sarah Whitcomb Foss delivering clues on the baby she was actually pregnant with at the time.
• Recycled Script:
  • Given the show's incredibly long history, there have been multiple cases of clues being repeated verbatim or near-verbatim. Sometimes a previous Final Jeopardy! will show up in a main game a few years later, or vice-versa.
  • Clues that are left unplayed due to time running out are often repurposed for later episodes. At least in the early years, this was the basis of the "Potpourri" category.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Mike Richards resigned from being the full-time new host just a week after he was officially announced to be taking the job. His selection as host was almost uniformly rejected by fans amid allegations that he perverted the host selection process to give himself the job, so after sexist behavior during his time on The Price Is Right, including a lawsuit over demeaning comments and harassments toward the show's models as well as provocative statements he made on his old podcast The Randumb Show were brought to light, it was game over. He was fired from the show (as well as Wheel of Fortune) entirely just another week later.
• Screwed by the Network: Oy.
  • Lin Bolen, who was then NBC's vice president for daytime programming, wanted to oust all of the network's games hosted by middle-aged men on technologically-obsolete sets, as part of an aggressive attempt to bolster ratings among women aged 18-34, so she moved Jeopardy! on January 7, 1974 from its long-held (and ratings-proven) Noon slot to 10:30 AM — directly against The $10,000 Pyramid on CBS; Fleming pummeled Clark's new game into a very unexpected submission at the end of March and ran equal with Pyramid's replacement at that slot, Gambit. Needless to say, this was not what Bolen wanted, and so she moved it on July 1 to 1:30 PM Eastern/12 Noon Pacific — against Let's Make a Deal and As the World Turns in the east (against local programming on CBS affiliates and Password on ABC in the west), which pummeled it into submission. In exchange for the final year of the show's contract, Merv Griffin debuted Wheel of Fortune the Monday after Jeopardy! ended.
  • The 1978-79 version began its life on October 2 at 10:30 AM against the first half of The Price Is Right. On January 8, the show moved to its old Noon slot — though now against The Young and the Restless and The $20,000 Pyramid. Jeopardy! was canned two months later.
  • While most syndicated programs put out reruns on holidays or days where they are expected to be pre-empted in a large number of markets (such as Election Day or March Madness), Jeopardy! (and Wheel of Fortune) always does a straight run of new episodes for the entire season, and rarely does mid-season reruns. In the most extreme case, any episode scheduled to air on Christmas Day does not air on most ABC affiliates (which compose most of Jeopardy!'s broadcasts, especially since it's carried on all eight of its O&O stations in top markets including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago) due to the traditional NBA games. What ended up being Alex Trebek's final episode was scheduled to air Christmas Day 2020, but because it wouldn't have aired in roughly half the country, it was decided to delay Alex's final week by two weeks and put out a package of reruns instead. Alex's final episode ended up airing January 8, 2021, despite wishing viewers a Merry Christmas during his final sign-off.
  • Whatever episode airs Black Friday ends up not being seen on most East Coast ABC affiliates, due to the network running college football all afternoon (affecting most Central and Mountain Time Zone airings). In most years, the games are scheduled to end at 7:00 PM Eastern, which is Jeopardy!'s time slot on all of the Eastern ABC O&O's and in many other markets. Since college football tends to run longer than regulation football due to different rules, the final game almost-always runs past 7:00 and causes Jeopardy! to get joined in progress or even skipped entirely. In some years, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia would work around this by intentionally pre-empting the 7:00 slot with a local newscast and bumping Jeopardy! overnight or to its digital subchannel to ensure that the episode airs in its entirety (with Wheel getting joined in progress or skipped over following the newscast if it started after 7:00). Starting in 2022, ABC now carries a third game, affecting Jeopardy! (and Wheel) on all of its affiliates nationwide.
  • Being a pre-taped syndicated program, local affiliates will occasionally make a mistake and schedule the wrong episode to air, usually a repeat of the previous weekday's episode, or the episode meant for the secondary "Daytime Jeopardy!" run. For a show as continuity-driven as Jeopardy!, these mixups do not go unnoticed by fans. Of all days, South Carolina affiliate WBTW made this mistake on the day Matt Amodio's 39-game run came to an end, accidentally rerunning the previous Friday's episode. They properly aired the episode the next day. This would happen again later that season when Lincoln, Nebraska affiliate KOLN made this mistake on the day Amy Schneider's 41-game run came to an end, accidentally rerunning the previous day's episode (they properly aired the episode later that night at 12:37 AM, announcing such on a crawl during that night's Wheel of Fortune).
  • On Denver FOX affiliate KDVR, any time the FOX network carries a Major League Baseball game from 7-10 PM Eastern Time (5-8 PM Mountain Time locally), Jeopardy! is scheduled immediately afterward. Because MLB is notorious for its slow game pace (and almost always running longer than its three-hour time slot allotted by FOX), Jeopardy! has never aired in its entirety when scheduled in this fashion, and unlike other Mountain Time Zone affiliates where sports overruns are common, KDVR does not opt to start Jeopardy! from the beginning. The first two Thursday episodes of Season 39 suffered from this, with the first only seeing the tail end aired, and the second not airing at all due to the game running into Wheel of Fortune's time slot afterward. Game 3 of the first Second Chance Tournament was also pre-empted on this affiliate thanks to being scheduled half an hour after Game 2 of the 2022 National League Championship Series. The latter overran by over an hour, resulting in none of Jeopardy! and only the second half of Wheel airing that day. This also happens on Thanksgiving and Black Friday when the FOX network schedules NFL and college football games (which almost-always run long) until 8 PM Eastern/6 PM Mountain, Jeopardy!'s time slot on KDVR (and pre-empting it and Wheel outright on all other FOX affiliates carrying the shows). KDVR eventually alleviated this starting in Season 40 by moving both game shows to sister station KWGN.
  • Affiliates generally favor Jeopardy! over Wheel of Fortune when it comes to having to pre-empt one of the two shows for a local special. One of the few exceptions is Elmira, New York affiliate WETM-TV. This and several other Upstate New York stations owned by Nexstar Media Group have a partnership with the Buffalo Bills that includes carrying intermittent specials on the team, most of which are titled "Buffalo Kickoff Live". These air at 7:00 PM on all affiliates that carry them, which pre-empts Jeopardy! on WETM in almost all cases, moving the game show to its Antenna TV subchannel. During the summer, when Jeopardy! still has mostly new episodes while most other shows have already gone into repeats, Nexstar also distributes multiple travel specials titled "Destination New York", which also air at 7:00. WETM is the only affiliate where Jeopardy! is the show impacted by these specials; Wheel is impacted in larger markets including Buffalo and Rochester.
  • Amy Schneider's victory in the 2022 Tournament of Champions on November 21 was ironically pre-empted in her own local market on KGO-TV, an owned-and-operated ABC station serving the San Francisco Bay Area, which includes Schneider's hometown of Oakland. This was due to the San Francisco 49ers competing in Monday Night Football that night, and KGO having the rights to locally broadcast all Monday games involving said team. Jeopardy! was forced to air at 3:00 AM that night (and a College Week episode of Wheel of Fortune at 3:30, although that show did not have any Bay Area-based contestants or colleges that day).
  • In September 2023, ABC began carrying several Monday Night Football games nationally to fill slots vacated by the lack of scripted programming as a result of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. All of the games initially agreed upon were preceded by a pregame show at 7:30 PM Eastern. Although 7:30 is more commonly the time slot for Wheel of Fortune on ABC stations, this did result in several Monday episodes of Jeopardy!, including the Season 40 premiere, being pre-empted in some markets including Washington, D.C. and Miami. The third week of the season, ABC's game started at 7:00 PM instead of 8:00, pre-empting both Jeopardy! and Wheel on all ABC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone (and Wheel on all Central Time Zone affiliates, as Wheel is not allowed to be scheduled in the afternoon to make room for news, as many do with Jeopardy!). ABC later decided to air MNF games every week of NFL season, but the added games not originally scheduled did not have pregame shows.
  • The highly-anticipated week guest-hosted by Levar Burton ended up being scheduled to air July 26-30, 2021. This was problematic for many NBC affiliates due to conflicting with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics; many were forced to pre-empt Jeopardy! that week (and the one after it, guest-hosted by David Faber). What added salt to the wound for fans on the East Coast was that the pre-emptions were not for the Olympics themselves (which start at 8:00 PM), but for The Olympic Zone, a localized program that is optionally carried at 7:30 PM (many affiliates that air Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune in that time slot decline it, however). The fact that most of the affiliates pre-empting Jeopardy! continued to air Wheel, which had already wrapped its season the previous month and was in reruns, did not sit well with fans. Many impacted affiliates were forced to air Jeopardy! on low-reach sister stations or subchannels (some of which were not available over-the-air, such as WBIR-TV in Knoxville's cable-exclusive channel "10News2"), or in late night time slots, or even not at all (including WBRE-TV in Pennsylvania, despite being part of a duopoly with CBS affiliate WYOU). WDIV-TV in Detroit moved Jeopardy! to replace Wheel during the Olympics, bumping the latter to a subchannel, but some local viewers reported that their TV providers' guides were still listing Wheel for 7:00 and had no listing for Jeopardy! despite the change. The West Coast was also a bit more accommodating. Although the games themselves impacted Jeopardy! and most other syndicated programs, several West Coast affiliates moved Jeopardy! to an earlier time slot between games (with most of them not doing the same for Wheel, either due to it being in reruns or because that show has stricter scheduling policies and is generally not allowed to air in the afternoon). Inversely, on some affiliates, Jeopardy! was the only syndicated program to still air at a decent time slot, if at all, during the Olympics.
    • The effective relegation of Burton - a fan favorite to take over the hosting job - to a one-week slot during the Olympics aroused suspicion and anger among fans and fueled allegations that Mike Richards deliberately messed with the host selection process to give himself the job once he was named as Trebek's permanent replacement.
    • There were also allegations that Burton's episodes were tampered with as they were being edited, as Burton publicly said he had no chance to re-record lines when he screwed up questions, something that all of the other guest hosts were allowed to do.
• Scully Box: Shorter contestants are placed on boxes so that they can see over the podium, which can be obvious when contestants are seen chatting with Alex during the credits, after leaving their podiums. One contestant on October 23, 2014 actually played from a chair on top of the box, because her leg was in a cast.
  • 1993 College Champion Phoebe Juel recounted how the coordinators had to search the studio for more boxes because the ones which were on hand were too short for her.
  • The 'boxes' currently used are actually platforms built into the studio floor, raised and lowered by a remote control. Contestants now remain behind the podiums for the credits chat, and are constantly reminded to not move too much and fall off.
• Star-Making Role: Some contestants go on to become media figures in their own right thanks to their run on Jeopardy!, most-notably Ken Jennings, whose record-breaking run turned into decades in the spotlight before he was finally tapped to become one of Alex Trebek's successors as presenter.
• Throw It In!:
  • On March 5th, 2004, Alex read off the clue in the category Sew What? for $800, which said "The handy-dandy device seen here helps sewers do this". However, he pronounced "sewers" as in the context of a sewage system ("soo-ers"), not people who sew ("soh-ers"). Alex laughed upon realizing his mistake, and demanded that it be left in (which it was).
  • November 19, 1986: In Double Jeopardy! of a Tournament of Champions semifinal game, 4 day champion Lionel Goldbart was credited with $400 for a $200 clue, which was never explicitly corrected. In any event, he lost everything on a late Daily Double after he forgot to phrase the correct answer in the form of a question. It is possible that producers felt it was their mistake and let him keep the extra $200, or that a correction wouldn't have mattered given that he lost everything on the Daily Double.
  • October 16, 1997: After Johnny finished reading the copy for the official Jeopardy! Challenger Scorekeeper, Alex accidentally called him "Johnner", causing Johnny to laugh. Alex then lampshaded his slip-up by intentionally misreading the Final Jeopardy! category of Famous Pairs as "Famous Pores".
  • July 5, 2000: In the introduction, Johnny Gilbert mistakenly announced Alex as "Glen Trebek". While this may seem like a totally arbitrary name-switch, Glen was the name of both that day's returning champion (Glen Savory) and one of the contestant coordinators, who at the time hosted the "practice" games that contestants-to-be played.
• Un-Cancelled:
  • By NBC nearly four years after it was Screwed by the Network. The Retool only lasted five months.
  • Jeopardy! was uncancelled again in 1984 (mostly thanks to the success of Wheel of Fortune's then-new syndicated run) and has been running in syndication ever since.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The unaired pilot of the Art Fleming era had a different format for Daily Doubles; rather than being awarded immediately to whoever picked the right clue, the Daily Double was instead hidden behind a regular clue, and awarded to whoever gave the correct response.
  • Merv Griffin initially considered sportswriter and future host of The All-New Dating Game Jeff MacGregor to emcee the 1984 revival. King World countered with, and eventually got, Alex Trebek.
  • After The New Battlestars was cancelled, Alex Trebek considered giving up game shows for good. Suppose he stuck to his word when he got a telephone call from Merv...
    • Likewise, Art Fleming was reportedly approached to host the current version but chose to retire instead.
  • With a huge field of 145 contestants, it's impressive that only four living Jeopardy! champions declined invites to 2005's Ultimate Tournament of Champions: 1990 TOC finalist Larry Mcknight (due to illness); Million Dollar Masters semifinalist Leslie Shannon (née Miller); and Teen Tournament winners Michael Block and Amanda Goad. Would any of them had found success had they competed? Also, no living Seniors Tournament winners competed either, though it's unclear if any were invited.
  • Ken Jennings never competed in the regular Tournament of Champions, as he was still champion when the 2004 tournament was held, and he gave up his spot in the 2006 tournament in favour of the automatic finals bye for 2005's Ultimate Tournament of Champions. Had he competed in either, he could have been matched up with notable champions like Tom Kavanaugh, David Madden, Chris Miller, Tom Walsh, and the eventual winners, Russ Schumacher in 2004 and Michael Falk in 2006. Would Ken have won either event? It's impossible to say, but Ken went head to head with both winners in 2014's Battle of the Decades tournament, where he dominated Falk (and 2004 semifinalist Vinita Kailasanath) in the opening round, and Schumacher was effectively a non-factor against Ken and Chuck Forrest in the semifinals.
  • Despite winning the first game of season 26's Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational Tournament in a complete runaway with $68,000 (a record for Celebrity Jeopardy! games, and among the best in Jeopardy! history), then-The Tonight Show announcer Andy Richter had to drop out of the tournament prior to the quarterfinals due to touring commitments with Conan O'Brien's Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour (the first round games were spread out through the season before the semifinals aired in May 2010, and his game aired before the 2010 Tonight Show conflict helped set the tour in motion.) He was replaced by the highest scoring first-round loser (designer Isaac Mizrahi, who lost his quarterfinal in a close contest), but how far would Andy have ran had he been able to stay in the tournament?
  • The guest host rotation for post-Trebek episodes of Season 37:
    • Meredith Vieira expressed interest in being a possible candidate. She was turned down because of her contract with 25 Words or Less.
    • Bob Costas was offered the chance to guest host. He rejected the position because of COVID-19 concerns.
    • Sunny Hostin negotiated to guest host but was rejected for being "too controversial".
• Working Title: Merv pitched it as What's the Question?, which he admitted wasn't a compelling enough title. The name came to him when NBC executives told him the game should have more jeopardies in it.
• Written-In Infirmity:
  • A variant: Season 28 began with Alex Trebek staying at his podium for the whole game, as opposed to walking to the contestant podiums during the interviews and credits, after he tore an Achilles tendon during the summer while chasing a would-be burglar out of a hotel room. Similar accommodations happened again for the games following December 21, 2015, due to Alex undergoing knee replacement surgery.
  • On several occasions between 2004 and 2010, Alex sported a cast on his right wrist, rumored to be a result of carpal tunnel syndrome.
  • Season 25 had an unusual variant: contestant Priscilla Ball (who became champion on January 16, 2009) was unable to make the next taping day due to illness. As a result, she was brought back as co-champion on an episode that aired on April 9th, and she won that game as well before losing her third game (ironically, also on a separate taping day.) Similar circumstances affected December 2015 2 day champion Claudia Corriere, and though her absence the following week was due to a gig for her church band, taping cancellations relating to Trebek's knee surgery led to the scheduling conflict when taping resumed.
  • Said knee surgery also resulted in Alex using a cane for about two weeks' worth of episodes in December 2015.
  • Sarah Whitcomb Foss of the Clue Crew had her own real-life pregnancy worked into a pregnancy-themed video category on September 18, 2013.

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