Funny / Jet Lag: The Game

As per policy on Moments subpages, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Season 0 (Crime Spree)

• The "Sam is digging a hole" song.
• After a whole season of breaking laws, Sam protests over the closing credits that he didn't actually break the final law he needed to win — failing to compensate JT for working overtime.

Season 1

• Sam saying in the introduction that Ben and Adam don't get to talk because they're not famous. It's even better when you realize that Ben and Adam are two of the people who edit the episodes and they must have either came up with or left in this line as a self-deprecating joke.
• The comedic tone of the series is immediately established with this hilarious introduction in the first episode after Sam explains the rules of the game.
  Sam: Cut to us the most excited and energized we've ever been, now!
  (Description Cut to the four all looking tired and bored)
  Ben: This is like the world's crappiest New Year's party.
• Ben and Adam declaring that Sam and Brian are totally screwed close to the end of the first episode — almost immediately rebuffed when the former two claim California and Nevada.
• At the end of the season, Sam casually walks out from behind the statue Ben and Adam are in front of to reveal that he and Brian already claimed Montana, winning them the game via Connect Four. Adam's reaction to seeing Sam is hilarious.
  Sam: Do you wanna see what I have here?
  Adam: No, I really don't.
  (the card is revealed to be "claim the state immediately")
  Ben: OH!! (jumps and shakes his fists in frustration) You had to hide behind the thing!?
• The trophy that Adam gives Sam in all of its blatantly photoshopped glory...only for Sam to immediately drop it.

Season 2

• Sam jokes that Ben and Adam's main advantage over him and Joseph is that they don't have jobs (outside of making Jet Lag) and hence have more free time than them to strategize. He immediately follows this up by revealing that he had enough free time to make a spreadsheet of every single transatlantic flight from the U.S.
• Ben and Adam's conversation after Adam has just finished throwing up in public from doing a pastry mile:
  Adam: Sorry to all the nice people at McCarran Park whose afternoons I've ruined.
  Ben: If it makes you feel any better, we're going to be leaving the country immediately.
• Ben & Adam's "go kart" is so flimsy that the first time Ben tries riding it down an incline, he goes backwards and immediately breaks off the handle.
• The subtitles for Ben and Adam's attempts to provide entertaining content while they're on a 12-hour flight:
  Ben: I'm gonna juggle my phone.
  Adam: Do it. x3
  (Ben juggles his phone)
  Adam: ooooooo **entertained**
  (Ben drops his phone and Adam laughs)
  Adam: **entertained most when Ben fails**

Season 3

• Ben's nonchalant response to a mean YouTube comment made about him and Adam:
  Ben: Let's answer some of your questions... Mayor Video asks: "I'm probably the only person who finds Ben and Adam extremely annoying." I'm sorry, Mayor Video. That is not a question.
  • Later in the same scene:
  Ben: Leave a comment below if you've ever been hunted. By men.
• Adam complaining while doing a "100 squats" challenge that he was on vacation when the producing team came up with this challenge and calling it "the dumbest thing we've ever come up with".
• Adam donning an elaborate disguise, including a long wig, a green soccer top and new trousers...only to take off the unbearably hot wig on the train and forget to put it back on while getting off, getting him caught immediately.
  • Later, after taking a suboptimal travel route, Ben says "at least I'm not wearing a wig".
• During Ben's second turn as the runner, Adam and Sam's frantic calculations and theories on what Ben could be planning are humorously contrasted with Ben just chilling out and wandering wherever the mood strikes him.
  Adam: I have to assume that [Ben] is acting as if we're right on his tail, 'cause he has to assume that we are.
  Sam: He's got to be so paranoid.
  (cut to Ben relaxing in the woods)
  Ben: ...I think there's an owl over there. That's kind of fun.
• Adam singing random ditties as he's strolling through the French countryside:
  Adam: This ship we sail is a kayak / It's a kayak that we rented here / We love to sail our lovely — whatever really stupid bits made it into the edit, there's like fifteen even worse bits that you aren't even gonna get to see.

Season 4

• When Ben and Adam inform Sam and Brian that they've claimed Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Sam mistakenly thinks that they did the "transport a pumpkin carved with the Jet Lag logo" challenge which leads to this exchange:
  Brian: Can we see your pumpkin?
  Sam: Yeah, show us your pumpkin.
  Adam: I think that as our boss, you saying "show us your pumpkin" is harassment.
• Sam complains that Brian used $400 of Sam's own money to buy a telescope but Brian insists it was necessary. Not too long after this argument, they do a challenge about photographing one team member from far away, which would be the perfect use for a $400 telescope...except Brian utterly fails to get the telescope to work.
• Ben and Adam need to break a law in Michigan, and decide to "seduce and debauch an unmarried woman." They decide this means they need to get a single woman to commit a crime she wouldn't have otherwise. Their solution? Meet a stranger on Tinder and get her to record a TikTok accusing Brian of not really being Irish.
  • They also spend $40 of their boss's money to get more views for their Tinder request.
    Sam: I hope Ben and Adam are being entertaining right now.
    (Description Cut)
    Ben: Sam, I'm spending 40 of your dollars on a super boost on my Tinder profile.
• Sam, to make absolutely sure that he and Brian can drink soup during a helicopter ride, pours some of the soup onto his shirt with the plan to suck it off if they can't drink from the soup container.
  Brian: You're literally pouring soup on your shirt.
  Sam: This is my job, Brian!
• When both teams are doing the battle challenge of drawing the best portrait of George Washington, Adam's sketch comes out poorly so he tries to add "pizzazz" to it by using gummy worms to make up Washington's hair. And it works; his drawing gets more votes on Twitter than Brian's much more accurate drawing!
  Brian: All the arts and crafts in the world couldn't have beaten [bleep] gummy worms.

Season 5

• The first challenge at the Te Paki Sand Dunes involves sand-boarding down the dunes, which is built up to as both teams race against each-other to get to the top while the music swells...until Sam and Adam start going down at a snail's pace. Complete with Record Scratch.
  Ben: Sam, you suck!
  Sam: Ben says I suck!
• The Running Gag of Ben and Adam having "The Snack Zone" breaks to taste various New Zealand snacks. These breaks are given elaborate opening and closing animations that are almost always longer than the actual Snack Zone breaks, which are usually just them saying a single line about the snack they just ate.
  Adam (on Weet-bix): It basically tastes like nothing.
  • The Weet-bix Snack Zone was very funny for New Zealand and Australian viewers because you're supposed to eat it with flavouring (sometimes jam, but plain sugar is also common). Adam and Ben, however, just eat them completely straight and these AUSNZ viewers were sent into orbit.
  • Ben has to get drunk on a bottle of local wine, so the two take the opportunity to do a Snack Zone.
  Ben: I just don't really like wine that much.
• Ben and Adam screw up the Ōkaihau Express song so many times that they begin swearing furiously every time they get it wrong. Special mentions go to the time they misread the "when they're drippin' from the rack" line as "when they're drippin' from the sack" and Toby's statement that she hopes Ben and Adam are having fun seguing right into Adam screaming with enraged frustration.
  • A punk rock cover of "The Ōkaihau Express" plays over the end credits to the season.
• Ben and Adam do the easiest challenge in the game: using the Hundertwasser Public Toilets. On its own it's pretty mundane, but looking at the challenge card it's possible to see that the challenge has a veto penalty of 30 minutes. One has to wonder what could possibly happen in a bathroom that would force a veto.
• Ben constantly falling off the obstacles at Adrenalin Adventure Park as Adam repeatedly bursts into laughter from behind the camera.
• Sam, while complimenting Toby on her math YouTube channel, leans closer to the camera to stage-whisper that he actually hates math.
• Ben getting obsessed with the idea of eating the glowworms at the Waipu Caves.
  Ben: I'm gonna eat so many [bleep] glowworms.
  Adam: Don't eat the glowworms, don't eat the glowworms.
• Sam and Toby arrive at the Megazone in the morning for their challenge... only to find out that it's closed. So they improvise by having fun outside of the Megazone.
  • Sam & Toby do a Snack Zone break in everything but name.
  Sam: So to start our Mukbang, we have Cookie Bake, by Cookie Time!
  • Sam plays 20 Questions with Toby and guesses who she was thinking of almost immediately.
• Adam tries a Zorb.
  Ben and Adam: Zorb! Zorb! Zorb! Zorb!
  Ben: Looks like Adam's having some trouble in his Zorb.
• Ben and Adam were so certain the cheese-making challenge would be extremely difficult to do that they wrote the "relax in a hot spring" challenge on the alternative route to include the participants saying, "Gee, I sure am glad I'm not making cheese right now." However, Sam and Toby make the cheese far more easily and quickly than expected, which results in Ben and Adam saying this line very sarcastically and an immediate cut to Toby saying without a trace of sarcasm that she's glad she didn't have to wait in a hot spring.
  Adam: Well, I sure am glad I'm not making cheese.
  Ben: Well, I sure am glad I'm not making cheese even though apparently that would be way [bleep] faster.
  (cut to Sam and Toby, who are already finished with their cheese-making challenge)
  Toby: I sure am glad that I'm not having to chill at the thermal wonderland.
  • As if that wasn't enough, an information box pops up on the screen soon after about how the hot springs Ben and Adam are relaxing in are actually full of brain-eating amoebas.
• Ben & Adam hit Sam & Toby with a curse that prevents them from saying any words with the letter "E" in them. Once the latter two see the curse, Sam intentionally tries to avoid talking as much as possible, and instructs Toby to do the same in an attempt to not say "E". This results in some pretty funny moments afterwards.
  • In telling Toby not to talk, Sam insistently says "No talk", even though "No talking" or "don't talk" don't have an "E" either.
  • Toby accidentally says "one" almost immediately after the curse goes into effect, and Sam exclaims and motions to Toby with his finger "one" and she immediately does a Face Palm once she catches on. The music that plays while this all happens really sells the mood.
  • The challenge in Wellington involves running for Prime Minister, and making speeches in front of city landmarks. Because of the curse, Toby is forced to give all her campaign speeches without using "E."
  Toby: Kia ora, I'm Toby, running for top job. If I win that job, I'll construct many good buildings that you'll say "wow" about!
  (later, when they reach the last landmark) I'll ban all Adams from Waitangi Park!
• When showing the teams' positions during the ferry ride, the editors took the time to edit in Toby's ultra-long braid flying in the wind behind them.
• When Sam & Toby reach the Timaru Skateboard Park, Sam tries to complete its challenge by riding his snowboard down the shallowest incline possible. Then the "ROAD UNLOCKED" screen pops up, only for it to immediately fall as Toby asks Sam if he can ride down a steeper incline. While he's initially hesitant, he does so while a local kid watches.
• When Sam and Toby win the season, the Blatantly Digitally-Edited-In Trophy gag is brought back yet again with Ben pulling out a very small "trophy" for them from his pocket. Then Adam says they're just kidding and Ben pours out a much bigger "trophy" from his shoe that's so heavy that Sam and Toby struggle to hold it up together until they drop it, whereupon the "trophy" sprouts wings and flies away.

Season 6

• After Sam and Scotty fail the sake pong challenge, Sam decides to drink all the leftover sake even though it's not required for the challenge.
• Ben's extreme awkwardness while doing the "hold an umbrella over your head and smile at a bus stop" challenge.
  Ben: (muttering through a rictus grin) I look crazy again. [...] If I saw this I would be really scared. This is a really scary thing that I'm doing.
• After Sam and Scotty tag Ben, all three have to ride the same train back to Tokyo Station. Sam makes Ben participate in a knockoff Snack Zone called "Choo Choo Chews" where snacks must be rated "how many Choos out of Chew."
  • The Layover Podcast reveals that "Choo Choo Chews" came from an AI-generated list of transportation-themed snack shows, all the rest of which were worse.
• One of the flags is a bottle of "tea" that inexplicably has a whole fish in it. The "tea" turned out to be soy sauce, with Sam and Scotty only realizing after they drink it.
• At the end of episode 3, Ben knows that he's close to Sam's location but says that he'll walk in unpredictable patterns so that Sam won't catch him. Cue the tracker showing that Ben is walking in a straight line to Sam's location, being caught almost immediately afterwards.
• Adam gets a curse that requires him to become Hello Kitty by wearing a pink bow in public for two hours. He makes the bow out of feminine hygiene pads, which leads to a lot of people looking at him very oddly.
  • To top all this off, the subtitles refer to him as "Hello Kitty" for the entire pink bow-wearing period, including in this gem of an info box:
    Hello Kitty accidentally slid the chicken intestine stew out of its plastic sleeve and can't get it back in. To all Tokyo-area transit users: we are sorry for Hello Kitty's incompetence.
• In Episode 5, Adam ran several miles to catch Sam before he can jump on a train going north to escape. After being tagged, Sam immediately points out that the only train he could have caught to escape had to pass through the station where Adam was waiting before arriving at Sam's station, and so the entire run was completely unnecessary.
• Episode 6 is a tense affair, as Adam and Ben just need to get their Far Flag as far as possible in order to win. Towards the end they manage to pull off an insane attempt of careful tower placement, hiding, and successfully beating Sam and Scotty's own tower in order to zip ahead to where they need to go. It is an incredible sequence worthy of cinema, only for the two to immediately pull a curse that requires a train in Japan to run late and screwing themselves over. With their capture inevitable, they decide to use a Mud Tower on Scotty to force him to walk sideways just for fun, which leads to the highly amusing visual of Scotty approaching them from the edge of the camera screen while dancing/scuttling sideways like a madman.

Season 7

• In Episode 1, Sam says that Ben is smart because he went to Brown University. Cut to Ben struggling to get his breakfast out of a vending machine.
• "Comment below if children have a special car on German trains, or if that was just a large band of transit-oriented children."
• Ben and Sam brainstorming ideas in Episode 2 on how to close the three-hour lead time that Adam has built up:
  Ben: But only theoretically three hours ahead.
  Sam: You banking on a derailment?
  Ben: We could call in a bomb threat?
  • Episode 4 would feature more of Ben's absurd comments when Adam pushes back on him stating that Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Belgium all look the same and he decides to double down.
  Adam: 'Cause think about who did want it to be all one thing and who didn't.
  Ben: A man by the name of Jesus Christ-
  Adam loses it
• In Episode 3, Adam's disguise makes a return, as he is determined to make up for what happened last time. To his credit, the disguise is a lot more well put together this time and looks like clothing someone would wear for real, and he keeps all of it on while in public. However, Sam sees through his disguise instantly. Not only because he's used to Adam dressing as a woman to evade detection, but also because he happens to be by himself, while in a spot Sam can see the spot his tracker's pointing to.
• Throughout Ben's final run through Episodes 5 and 6, Adam and Sam are repeatedly thrown by Ben's seemingly-odd-and-then-subsequently-seemingly-genius moves, taking unexpected trains and evading them at a station on two different occasions, assuming that he saw them and acted accordingly. This is by the nature of the show interspersed with cuts to Ben who is completely oblivious to all of this, took odd moves because he was cursed, and was unaware of just how close he came to being caught.
• In episode 5, Ben mentions that he had a dream where Adam and Sam fell down a well and he won and got a parade thrown in his honor and Joe Biden kissed his forehead and gave him the key to the city. When he wins and gets the "trophy", his victory celebration is edited to look exactly like his dream, complete with Adam and Sam sinking into the ground and Joe Biden showing up to give him a kiss and key.

Season 8

• Michelle starts a minor Running Gag of pointing out that Adam's a Scorpio in Scorpio season whenever he experiences good luck. This starts as gag but by episode 4 it's blown into full on Sitcom Arch-Nemesis status where drunk Michelle is outright cursing Adam over it. Adam, for his part, is too busy to notice.
  • For added hilarity, this season was noted for Ben and Adam having horrific luck, with that same episode 4 having an extended sequence of Ben and Adam's plane being delayed by 2 hours right after she mentions it.
• In Episode 2, Michelle correctly predicting Adam's reaction to learning that his flight is delayed by over an hour.
• In episode 3, Adam has to buy sweaters and ties from Goodwill. Since he wasn't allowed to film inside Goodwill, we're instead treated to an animation of chibi Adam being utterly freaked out by the sheer Retail Riot mayhem that ensued inside the building and him backing slowly away from the mob fighting over the bins like a Shell-Shocked Veteran.
• In episode 4, Sam and Michelle have to explain "the birds and the bees" to a bird and a bee for 20 seconds. Michelle, who is still drunk from the failed "Run a Drunk Mile" challenge, is given the job of doing it to the bird and her explanation is glorious.

Season 9

• From the official trailer, Ben burning his mouth with hot cheese fondue.
• In Episode 3, Ben hides in a playground in the town of Merlischachen. When Sam and Adam eventually reach the town they take over three hours to find him, bemoaning that none of the playgrounds are labelled on Google Maps. By the time the YouTube copy of Episode 3 went live, the playground Ben was hiding in was labelled "Benjamin Doyle Children's Playground".
• Episode 4 begins with Sam's guesses as to how Ben and Adam are behaving as they start searching for him. He gets Adam pretty much spot on, and when he comes to Ben...
  Sam: And I think there's maybe a 50-50 shot Ben is clutching his hat like this?
  Ben: (trips over a sign in the dark)
• All the outpourings of rage upon finally discovering a hiding spot.
  Adam (first words upon finding Ben at the playground): THIS SUCKED.
  • When finding Sam in the woods:
  Adam: I'm not mad at you.
  Ben: I am mad at you.
• One curse requires the seekers to fill the holes in a block of Swiss cheese.
  • "We fixed your cheese, Switzerland. You're welcome."
  • The fact that after Ben and Adam recieve the curse, they debate whether or not to deal with it immediately, only to realise that they are across the road from a cheese shop.
• The entire sequence of Ben and Adam looking for Sam in the forest is gold.
  • "We have been in the woods for forty-five minutes."
  • "God, I wish that guy was Sam."
  • "I'm caught on a bramble."
  • While waiting, Sam tries to do an episode of Choo Choo Chews: Derailed, commenting that it's way better than The Snack Zone. He's immediately interrupted by the Snack Zone intro.
• In the finale, Sam and Ben make a critical miscalculation of Adam’s location leading them no closer to finding him with the information they have. With Adam’s victory quickly approaching, Sam and Ben resort to spamming Adam with the most annoying challenges in the deck (such as making him walk for half a mile on Strava or keep the seekers on FaceTime until he shows them a bird on camera), both for catharsis and in the hopes he’ll slip up and accidentally give the seekers some more information.