Trivia / Showoffs

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• Died During Production: Larry Blyden was killed in a Morocco car accident a few days before the show was to begin taping.
• Edited for Syndication: The Christmas episode had contestants on both teams give clues for the word "tomahawk" by doing a stereotyped Native American impression. Buzzr's airing removed them; the first time by covering it with a shot of the audience, the second time by clipping out the offending part of the video.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: The "clang" heard for correct guesses was later used on Family Feud.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Only three episodes circulate. The first is the Blyden-hosted pilot. The second is the November 28, 1975 episode, notable for an incident where celebrity guest Dr. Joyce Brothers injures herself. Finally, there's the next-to last episode; #128, which taped on November 29, 1975 and aired on Christmas day. The celebrities are Vicki Lawrence, Greg Morris, Tina Cole, and Robert Urich. Held by UCLA, it was aired by Buzzr on September 25, 2021.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Some claimed that toward the end of the show's run, the theme music was replaced with the future Dream House theme. This claim was dispelled when the next-to-last episode aired on Buzzr.
• What Could Have Been: Rather than air repeats of Password (which Showoffs was to replace), have Goodson-Todman do more Password, have Hatos-Hall do more Split Second (1972) (which was ending the same day as Password), or give Lipp-Greenberg's The Big Showdown (which was ending the week after Password) a reprieve... ABC decided in the wake of Blyden's death that Showoffs would go ahead anyway, with Bobby Van as host and re-editing network promos to remove any trace of Blyden. ^note (The other game show ABC was removing from its schedule around this point, Lipp-Greenberg's The Money Maze, had been canned due to extremely high production costs, so a reprieve there would've been very unlikely.)
  • This might not have been for the best. While by all indication all involved had a good time on-camera, according to Gene Wood in a 1996 phone interview: "That was such a strange situation; the program has so much sadness attached to it." (It should be noted that Gene was referring to both hosts, as Van had died in 1980.)

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