History Series / Taskmaster

* EyeScream: In "Stay Humble", one of the tasks invovles making the most realistic injury out of food. Joe Thomas creates a public information film about a man who trips while holding a birthday cake and ends up stabbing his eye with candles.

* CutenessProximity: Pretty much the entire audiences reaction in "The Barrel Dad" when Nell the toddler entered the living room for a task.

** Throughout the eighth series, Greg treats Paul Sinha with a degree of respect, more than most other contestants, and has largely not made fun of him. In "Stay Humble", Paul mentions offhand in the prize task that he went from over 14 stone to 11 and a half stone, which prompted the audience to clap at his weight loss. Later in the same segment, Paul (indirectly) insults him by Gregs mother telling Paul's agent that Greg should get weight loss tips from Paul, which prompted Greg be a little annoyed, but nothing more. Paul then makes a YourMom joke at his face (comparing him to a blobfish) a bit later on, and doesn't seem fazed by it. It even extends to the other contestants. In the prize Task for "Hello", Paul had issues getting into his sleeping bag (He'd fractured his arm prior to coming onto the show, which made arm movements hard for him), which prompted his team mates to help him get into it so he could finish the task.

* OverlyNarrowSuperlative: In "Wiley Giraffe Blower", Alex's lead-in to one of Josh's tasks refers to him as "one of Devon's top 30 comedians".

* IResembleThatRemark: During the ball-throwing task in "The Perfect Stuff", Alex and Rhod have an argument about whether Alex's umpire chair is included in the task description's prohibition on ladders, which mostly consists of Alex repeating that it is and Rhod repeating that it's not. In the studio afterward, Greg remarks that it's like every conversation he's ever had with Rhod. Rhod replies, "It's not."

* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine:
** Several of the contestants are this to Greg:
*** Series one has Roisin, who co-starred with Greg in ''Series/ManDown''.
*** Rhod in series seven. Aside from being long-term friends, Greg also appeared as a team captain in Rhod's panel show ''Ask Rhod Gilbert''.
*** Greg's former ''Series/TheInbetweeners'' co-star Joe Thomas as a contestant in Series 8.
*** Ed Gamble (Series 9) is also a long-time friend of Greg's, and co-wrote his sitcom ''Man Down''.
*** Mike Wozniak from series 11 also co-starred with Greg in ''Series/ManDown''.
** Alex as well:
*** Alex used to co-host ''We Need Answers'' with Tim (series one) and Mark (series five). Mark and Alex's friendship is also touched on in several episodes.
*** The musicians who provided the music for the final task in "Hollowing Out A Baguette" are Joe Auckland and Mark Brown. They are both members of Alex's band The Horne Section.

* {{Nepotism}}: James Acaster accuses Greg of scoring good old friend Rhod Gilbert much more generously than he does everyone else, when he's usually stricter about scoring [[LoopholeAbuse creative interpretation]] and BitingTheHandHumor.

** Alex Horne is the show's ongoing Butt-Monkey. Greg constantly insults or mocks him, and in many of the later series the contestants join on. As the assistant around to observe the contestants as they undertake a challenge he also takes the brunt of their verbal abuse when they get frustrated with the task. In the spirit of the show, Alex typically goes along with whatever humiliating things are requested of him. Among other things, he has been made to eat several pies full of unusual fillings in "The Pie Whisperer", eat dog food in "The Last Supper", and put his bare arse into a cake in "He Was A Different Man". For the team task in "The Last Supper", the teams had to make a blooper reel; and Josh, Romesh, and Roisin decided to [[PieInTheFace shove Alex's face into a cake]] before making him fall into a paddling pool full of water. The blooper reel example ends up backfiring on the team, however; after watching the blooper back, Greg pointed out that the team were supposed to make one of ''themselves'' the victim of the misfortune rather than inflicting it on a third party.

** "A Couple of Ethels" has a tie between Alan and Guz. They have to blow a feather across and off a table using only their noses the quickest. [[Spoiler:Alan wins by a mile]].

* HilariousOuttakes: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVBgaN6u-jk This compilation reel for Series 10]], other series' have clips are also on the official task aster youtube channel.

** James Acaster was a fan before he appeared on the show, so he was familiar with its conventions. He'd know to go find tools in the kitchen and shed and regularly held off on reading out "Your times starts now" to give himself a few moments to think, to varying results. He got genuinely angry during team challenges when Rhod Gilbert, who wasn't familiar with the show, rushed through reading tasks and cost them precious seconds.

** In Season 7, Rhod's submission for the "draw the biggest circle" task is to get a map of Europe and trace a circle around as much of the continent as possible. This, naturally, creates some debate regarding whether it counts as the "biggest" circle (it's the largest when relative scale is taken into account, but clearly much smaller than the other attempts in practical terms). At one point James Acaster tries to chime in against Rhod... and considering his own failure to even accurately understand the task requirements led to a nonsensical effort wherein he tried to find as many circles as possible, he's quickly shut down by Greg.

* HypocriticalHumor: Greg often mocks the oldest contestant in any given series despite he himself often being very close to the same age. A particularly egregious example is how he calls Rhod "grandad" throughout series 7 even though Rhod is 5 months younger than Greg.

* HiddenPurposeTest: Several tasks over the course of the series have had a second part that is only revealed after the first part is completed, and are usually set up so that doing well in the first part will be a handicap for the true task. For instance, in "Tony Three Pies", a task begins with the contestants being instructed to make an exotic sandwich, but the real task turns out to be [[spoiler:"Eat your exotic sandwich. Fastest wins." Between choosing bizarre ingredients and going for a more-is-more approach, not one contestant completes the eating task]].

* StringTheory: Two teams (Asim, Tim and Liza vs Russell and Alice) in "H." had to "Find the link, then do it 100 times" in the shortest amount of time. The board contained string connecting an overhead projector, various letter scrawlings, the word "Urination", as well as other odd pictures that seemingly mean nothing. The table below had Whiskey, a Bunny, and a Hotel Bell. The Link? [[spoiler: They had to hop 100 times. The bunny was referring to... well ''"Hopping".'' The string arrangement spelled out the word ''"Hop"'', The whiskey was a ''Hop'' Whiskey, the Hotel Bell would be used to call a bell''Hop'']]. [[spoiler: Asim's team got 5 points, while Russell's team got 3 points.]]

** Invoked in the second part of the "Have Fun!" task in the episode [="BMXing"=]. The first part required the teams to have fun, and the second part required them to recreate what they did as accurately as possible. Russell and Alice played keepy-uppeys with a football and sat in a bathtub with some sherry respectively, while Tim, Liza and Asim did Hula hooping on roller skates, Asim used ukulele's to throw tennis balls in the air, and Liza did [=BMXing=][[note]]"What's the best fun you can ever have?, [=BMX-ing!=] - Greg and Alex after the challenge was shown off, there's the title![[/note]] and immediately giving up, and they moved onto throwing hoops over themselves, then throwing balls into the hoops (or at least, trying to), then moving the picket fence off the ground, ''then'' messing up the cushions in the caravan while Asim put a cake tray over his head. [[spoiler: Seven points were awarded to Russell and Alice overall (5 for first part, 2 for second part), with the other three getting eight points overall (5 for the first part, 3 for the second part)]]

* AmbiguousSyntax: Intentionally using the specific wording of the task to your advantage is an intended part of the show. Sometimes this is done when setting the task, such as in the "painting in the dark" task in Series 5, in which the task letter intentionally ''never'' specifies that the task had to actually be done with the lights off). Other times the contestant will come up with a way of CuttingTheKnot, abusing ExactWords, or employing LoopholeAbuse. It will be up to the Taskmaster's discretion as to whether or not their unorthodox solution is allowed. This often leads to contestants to their advantage.

** Nobody receives points in the live task in "Tarpeters" because Greg is able to eliminate all the contestants by correctly deducing whether the grape is in each contestant's hand or mouth (in Russell's case, he left his grape in his pocket).

** In "Boing Boing", one task involves rolling coconuts down a ramp. During one attempt, a coconut veers off to the side and hits the camera positioned at the bottom of the slope.

** Richard Osman from the second series (frequently lampshaded by Greg referring to the lineup as some variation on "four comedians and Richard Osman"); he is better known as a producer and television presenter for ''Series/{{Pointless}}''. [[note]]He is, however, a regular on the panel show circuit, to the point that he'd even managed to get a prestigious guest spot on ''Radio/ImSorryIHaventAClue''[[/note]]. Unlike some of the others listed under this trope, however, he actually adapted to the show and the many curveballs it throws to contestants quite well, to the point where he is arguably the codifier for the many examples of ExactWords and LoopholeAbuse that later contestants would employ.[[note]]His interpretation of the "put these exercise balls on the mat on top of the hill, which unlike the other contestants he interpreted as allowing him to bring the mat down from the hill to the balls rather than having to struggle to get the balls up the hill, is generally credited as the point where contestants realised they could creatively reinterpret the tasks rather than relying on a purely literal interpretation[[/note]]

** In "Another Spoon," Rose realises that she can move the line (marked by a piece of tape) closer to Alex in order lasso him. However, she initially folds up the carpet and doesn't move the line very close. Eventually, she does move the line immediately in front of Alex just like Jo and Ed do.

** A Task in "Shaqinahat" was to provide lyrics for the Taskmaster theme tune. Ed thought the song sounded like crying, and dressed up as a baby and made lyrics asking for him mom, Rose made a Texan hoedown song (that got the audience clapping along!), Jo just insulted Alex and Greg in song form with accompanying backup dancers and saxophone musician, Katy attempted to rhyme to the tune, and David did a stilted piano piece of him making lyrics up on the spot. [[spoiler:Jo gets one point (guess why), David gets 2 points, Katy gets 3 points, Ed gets 4 points, and Rose came first with 5 points.]]

** The final pre-recorded task of Series 9 was made up of seven intersecting mini-tasks, and failing in one of them meant you had to start from the beginning again. This happened to [[spoiler: Ed Gamble]], who was the only one who had to restart, and took ''far longer'' to finish than any of the rest of the contestants... except ''all of the other contestants'' were disqualified, as the rest all failed because they should have restarted but didn't, and so the other contestants failed to complete one of the tasks ([[spoiler:Jo took items out of her wheelbarrow, Rose's brick tower was 23 inches, not 26, David kept removing his hand from his hip, and Katy did not have enough items in er wheelbarrow]]), meaning that not only did [[spoiler: Ed Gamble]] take first place by default but was the only one to score '''any''' points on that task at all.