TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Go To

  • Accidental Innuendo: In one of the Super Millionaire episodes, one of the questions was which of the given The Sopranos characters had not yet been whacked. Of course, it was talking about who had not been killed yet, but since the audience snickered, it could be taken another way.
  • Awesome Music:
    • Amazingly for game shows, especially the Club Mix by Amoure and its respective Radio Edit of the main theme. During the height of the show's popularity, there was even an official soundtrack released.
      • The original music for the series was written by father and son composer team Keith and Matthew Strachan in eight days between the pilot and filming of the first broadcast episode, with the two actually over-delivering on their contract by submitting 95 tracks instead of 45.
    • The "Rave" music initially composed for the UK's 2007 revamp by Nick Magnus and Ramon Covalo. The theme tune (and its subsequent variations), host entrance and "In the Hot Seat" cue (composed by Magnus) give the show just the right mix of epicness, fast-paced excitement and "party" nature, while its cue for the first few questions is a nice, relaxed bit of a bop that eases you into the game while helping you to focus, and the cues for the next few questions get more ominous up until the penultimate, and the final question cue is quite menacing. That being said, the pre-closing bed is a banger, as is the closing theme. In fact, in all countries that use the Rave pre-closing (except the Netherlands in 2011) have the audience clapping in time to it - they're clearly enjoying the tune!
    • The US version gained arguably even more awesome remixes in 2004 and in 2008 to coincide with Super Millionaire and the Clock format.
    • The Indian version has some really good remixes; for example, the absolutely glorious orchestral rearrangement by Ajay-Atul, used since 2019, that instantly elevates the show to a whole new level.
    • Australia's 2004 theme is a more epic, rock-based arrangement of the regular theme song.
    • The Australian version's original theme tune from 1999 to 2004, and again for 2006, was also a nice reorchestration of the usual theme with a few guitars added for good measure.
  • Broken Base: The US version originally had a hotline for potential contestants. For the initial run in August 1999, the hotline was a 900 Number, but some states used a toll-free number for legal reasons. When the show returned in November, the toll-free number was rolled out nationwide. Callers played a Fastest Finger game using the phone's keypad, and the fastest players were entered into a lottery drawing. When the syndicated version debuted, the hotline was retired and replaced with standard contestant auditions.note  Fans were divided after the phone game was discontinued. Some fans believe that the phone game rewarded quick-witted players and weeded out many who wouldn't make it past the first tier of questions. They also believe that the phone game gave average Joes a chance to be on TV, and it did attract players who weren't likely to be chosen to appear on other game shows. Those opposed to the phone game believe that putting things in order had nothing to do with the show's format of multiple-choice questions, especially after the syndicated version got rid of the Fastest Finger round. Another drawback was that the blind process contributed to the show's unintentional Monochrome and Chromosome Casting early in its run. The majority of the contestants were middle-aged white men, which even Regis noticed.
  • The Catchphrase Catches On:
    • ... is that your final answer?
    • Can I Phone-a-Friend?
    • Invoked by a sponsorship advert in the UK, which used Chris Tarrant's PAF introduction "Now, the next voice you hear will be [contestant name]'s, alright?"
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • Switch the Question on the US version from 2004-2008 was given to contestants for clearing the tenth question... and 99% of the time was used on the eleventh. The same happened when it arrived in the UK in 2010, and was given out after the seventh question.
    • The German version since about 2008 has given contestants the option to have either a second safety net, or an extra lifeline.note  Almost nobody goes for the safety net, so much that it's occasionally lampshaded on the show.
    • That said, Austria, which also uses a Zusatzjokernote  has the opposite issue - very few contestants actually pick it. Because it's Switch the Questionnote , of all things, many players would rather have the certainty of an extra safety net over a risk that a tough question could be swapped for another tough question, at least with the current lifeline.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • In the US, the show's name is commonly shortened to Millionaire, including on the show itself. Meredith and every other host through Terry Crews rarely, if ever, said the show's full title. Chris Harrison has occasionally used the full name more than his predecessors, though. This shorthand is less commonly used in the UK and other English-language versions.
    • "Llama" was a longtime fan term for any question gotten wrong in the first five questions ($100-$1,000 under the original money ladder), named after the losing answer for the first $100 question that a contestant missed.note 
    • During the time the Russian version of the show was called O, Shchastlivchik!, the show's first special edition featuring NTV hosts and journalists led to the term "Shenderovich zone" for questions after sixth and "Kara-Murza zone" for questions after tenth.
    • In Poland, a person who lost on the second safety net question (especially before 2023 when the UK high-risk format was introduced), is often nicknamed "Copernicus".
    • Starting in the late 2000s, the Phone a Friend lifeline became known among other things as "Phone an Internet User" or "Phone Someone to Google the Answer" thanks to the friends not even attempting to hide how they were coming up with the answers.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • Fans of Jeopardy!, Greed, The Weakest Link, Winning Lines or many others often call Millionaire boring, padded and dull in comparison. But many Millionaire fans defend the show as being the only quiz show that allows contestants to explain how they know or deduced the answers and what each step on the money ladder would mean to them versus the risk, whereas on Jeopardy! or anywhere else, viewers rarely know how contestants picked up this knowledge or their moment to moment feelings.
    • Furthermore, Millionaire fans defend how fair the show fundamentally is: You can walk at any time with all the money you've earned, and under classic rules were allowed a huge amount of time to think through your answer and the risk involved. Compare that to Million Dollar Money Drop, where you're forced to go through every question and lose every penny if you get the last one wrong, or Weakest Link or Greed where the smartest players lose their money due to the actions of idiotic strangers, or the convoluted rules and 49 possible answers to each question on Winning Lines... and Millionaire has constantly been revived (such as the 20th Anniversary UK specials becoming ongoing) as many see it as fair and simple in comparison. It also brings up the question of what show you'd want to go on versus what show you want to watch, as game shows have drifted back to leaning on Fake Difficulty over Anti-Frustration Features since Millionaire.
    • That being said, there are numerous contestants who have competed on both Jeopardy! and Millionaire, including Jeopardy! superchampion Ken Jennings. During Jennings' second appearance in 2025, he admitted that Millionaire is more difficult than Jeopardy! in his opinion and described the difference between the two shows:
      Jennings: Jeopardy! has tough stuff, but on Jeopardy!, if you don't know a particular clue, you can just hang back and wait for the next one. Here, a miss really can stop you.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • Unlike many of its cousins, the German localization is still running in two weekly primetime slots (Mondays and Fridays) and is still, after many years, one of the most popular TV shows in Germany. This is partly because of host Günther Jauch.
    • The Hindi version is also extremely popular. Being hosted by Amitabh Bachchan certainly helps. India has six other long running versions on top of this for other Indian languages such as Telugu and Bengali.
    • In general, while the show became seen as a flash in the pan compared to Jeopardy! by some American Quiz Show fans, Jeopardy! has struggled to establish any wide international franchising whilst Millionaire has, outlasting its original UK and blockbuster US versions.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • The second batch of episodes in the US version (starting in November 1999) were when the show got really good, as it expanded to an hour format which gave us more contestants per episode, and Regis inserted more of his trademark humor into hosting, which was a big draw of the series. Plus, this was when the show had its first million dollar winner.
    • Ever since 2010, the 7 multiple-language Indian versions (Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, etc...) have been well received for the incredibly lavish sets and innovative improvements to the game mechanics (such as the improvement of the Switch the Question lifeline by the contestant selecting one of 11 categories before the game which allows for a guaranteed question from the contestants' strongest category) while still remaining true to the drama Millionaire has become famous for.
  • He Really Can Act: Jeremy Clarkson seemed like an odd choice for hosting the revival of the UK series, but after the 20th Anniversary specials in 2018, viewers quickly warmed up to him.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: In the UK version, there was once a contestant from Ballymena in Northern Ireland. During his phone a friend call, he jokingly said to his friend that if she was wrong that he would hunt her down. Years later, someone else from Ballymena would make a similar threat over the phone.
    • The original UK promo mentioned that "you can even ask me for help" due to the hint system in place in the first season. It wasn't until twenty years later that this properly became a thing.
    • In general in the earlier series, anytime contestants expressed a wish to be able to ask the host on a question they think they may know the answer to by themselves becomes funny in the modern era when "Ask the Host" is now an actual lifeline.
  • Hype Backlash: The American version of the show is an excellent example of this. The show's enormous popularity quickly evaporated due to ABC's overexposure of it. At its peak the show was airing at least four nights a week. Michael Eisner - who, as CEO of Disney, was ultimately responsible for how hard the show was pushed - actually passed up opportunities to buy shows like Survivor which are still popular today because he was so confident that Millionaire would be an evergreen hit.
  • It Will Never Catch On: When asked to design the logo and title sequence, apparently the design agency, Jump, actually laughed when they heard the title, as well as wondering how on Earth it would fit on a logo. Both the logo and title sequence went around the world, to the extent that many fans thought their owners themselves were millionaires from it.note 
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A heavily debated case among trivia show fans in the US. The British insurance agency who financed $500K and $1M wins on the original Philbin US series sued over questions being too easy and there being too many million and half-million winners. Many thought John Carpenter's question stack was relatively general knowledge (and UK host Chris Tarrant actually agreed that his million-dollar question was easier than most), and Dan Blonsky's million dollar question, "The Earth is approximately how many miles away from the sun?",Answer is taught to young children in school. Compare that to Blonsky's $500,000 question, which asked what celebrity was featured on the cover of the very first People magazine.Answer
    • Some fans have questioned whether this is invoked by producers: the million-dollar gamble on Q15 is often about whether the contestant is sure enough to have a go, while Q11-Q14 are simply about increasingly tough questions.
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The syndicated version of Millionaire in the US became this with ridiculously esoteric questions and brutal 15-second timers, as shown here and here. Syndicated Millionaire surprisingly survived until 2019 before being rebooted as a primetime show with Jimmy Kimmel in 2020, despite long-dwindling ratings; some would argue that keeping the slow pace, unlimited(ish) answer time limits and easier questions, but reducing the jackpot to $250K or $125K, would have actually helped the show do better in audience ratings due to its contrast with Jeopardy!'s relatively rapid pace and direct-response vs. multiple-choice questions. The late-era syndicated show both alienated the audience who enjoyed its slow pacing and didn't attract audiences from Jeopardy! either.
    • Subverted in the Turkish version, where the questions are known for becoming very difficult after question 7, yet despite this the show enjoys a fairly large fanbase, and has seen three top-prize winners, not to mention the clock used on the first seven questions (although at least the timer starts after each answer has been read, and the time limit in tier 2 is 45 seconds rather than 30).
    • Late-order UK episodes, with 12 questions rather than 15, bridges the gap - the question for £50,000 was often seen as a big jump in difficulty and they didn't get any easier after that. Given that one of the first few questions would usually be about ITV soaps or other programming (a trap to Ask the Audience if nothing else), contestants rarely had enough lifelines to get above £75,000, and nobody won £250,000 or more.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • The idiom of the "million-dollar question", similar to the preceding "$64(,000) question", to describe a very important question, has its roots in the show.
    • "I hate cricket."note 
    • "Some kind of machine?"note 
  • Mis-blamed:
    • Michael Davies is often blamed by his detractors for pushing the primetime Millionaire way too hard, leading to its cancellation. It was actually Michael Eisner and Bob Iger who were responsible for the over-scheduling, according to the 2005 exposé DisneyWar. Davies actually wanted to reserve Millionaire for sweeps and special events like in the UK.
    • Some complained that the Sequel Difficulty Spike occurred mainly because the show and its executives became "a bunch of cheap bastards". The actual reason for the increased difficulty was because the ratings of the syndicated version were never as huge as the network version once was (ABC's Executive Meddling didn't help matters), and thus couldn't offer as much money. According to Alex Davis (co-runner of BuzzerBlog and a critic of the Clock format), the staff was in a panic during the last episode of that format because there was only $10,000 left in the budget.
  • Narm: In Super Millionaire, the Three Wise Men were ostensibly going for a mysterious tone with the "shrouded in shadows" imagery, but thanks to the tongue-in-cheek description of them (Regis would often say they're locked away in a dungeon underneath Manhattan), it ends up being more funny than anything. Even Regis cracked up a couple of times.
  • Never Live It Down: Charles Ingram will forever be known as the "Major Fraud."
  • Nintendo Hard: The top tier of questions, as they should be.
    • The brief 2004 run of Super Millionaire is especially infamous for this. Money prizes aren't the only thing to be scaled up to a staggering $10,000,000 - so is the questions' difficulty. The first 10 are already harder than the primetime version, but the "New Dimension" of the final five questions takes this up to eleven. If the 11th and 12th questions (valued at $500,000 and $1,000,000 respectively) are comparable to the 14th and 15th questions with identical values from the classic show, then the final three take the cake for several reasons. One, the contestant would be playing for - and risking - millions of dollars. Two, the immense pressure of this high-stakes game would eventually get to the contestants and force them to walk away. Three, only one contestant reached the $2,500,000 mark - and walked away with a million dollars, meaning that the $5 Million and $10 Million questions were never seen during the Super Millionaire run.
      • Producers who worked on Super Millionaire suggested that they reused a few of the $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 questions as regular Million Dollar Questions later in the syndicated version. Which would explain a few things.
    • Exaggerated on the Hot Seat format. Unlike the US version's clock format, which gives you your unused time back for the final question, the Hot Seat format gives you a flat 45 seconds, no lifelines, and you cannot walk away with the amount you have. Similarly, if the answer you gave is wrong or (as the last standing contestant) fail to lock in your answer before time runs out, your prize money drops back down to the 5th question's value ($1,000), regardless of how much the final question is worth. Yes, if you get the Top Prize question wrong, you only receive the value of the sole safety net.
    • The Academy Awards special that aired in 2000. Hoo boy, even if you consider yourself a movie buff, these questions were tough. To give you an idea, the first contestant left with nothing after getting the $200 question wrong, the second walked away with $4,000, and the third walked away with $16,000. That's right, none of the three made it to the $32,000 level.
    • After his experience on the show, John Carpenter authored a book called "Matching Wits With the Million-Dollar Mind". Special mention goes towards "The World's Toughest Trivia Questions" section of this book. It consists of 50 "Million Dollar Challenges" where even the first five questions can stump people willing to attempt those. Hundreds of obscure and well-researched questions make the aforementioned Super Millionaire a cakewalk by comparison — most of these "Million Dollar Challenges" include worthy $2.5-10 Million contenders.Notable examples include...
  • No Problem with Licensed Games: While the overall quality of the games varies, most of the console/handheld/PC games utilize the classic format (the only exceptions were the versions published by Ubisoft one of which utilized the clock format and the other of which utilized the the shuffle format). Even the Special Editions version (which came out during the "Shuffle" era of the syndicated run) utilized the classic format (and used it as a selling point).
    • The same goes for the board game versions, all of which mainly utilize the classic format and includes special card holders that hide the answer from the host.
  • Older Than They Think: The UK first tried out four lifelines way back in 2002, when Switch the Question arrived as "Flip" for a one-episode trial. In 2010 it became a permanent fixture as "Switch"; and then in 2018 the fourth lifeline became the much more popular "Ask the Host".
  • Pandering to the Base:
    • In response to the drought, the show created the Tournament of Ten in 2009... but although fans were finally going to get a Millionaire without the need to lower difficulty, they now complained about not only the "manufacturing" of a Millionaire (not a "legit" win by the normal rules of the game, i.e. "answer the standard number of questions right to win"; similar criticism was also leveled against Deal or No Deal's Million-Dollar Missions) but the Tournament's format proving the show was cheap (each seed risked what they already won, with a drop to $25,000 if incorrect), along with it not really being "Tournament". The results of the questions proved 'em out, too — nine of the ten seeds, including all but one of the $50,000 winners, decided to walk. Not surprisingly, it was only used that one time.
    • They did it again for season 14 by reverting back to the money tree and bringing back 50:50.
    • In 2017, the Australian version of Hot Seat brought back the lifelines and Fastest Finger First, along with expanding the show to one hour. However, many viewers felt that the changes made Hot Seat drag on for an hour. The first half of the show was Fastest Finger First... except it consisted of fifteen questions. And the winner got a check for $1,000 that they can either keep or use in exchange for using one of the classic lifelines. It was the most disliked change in the format. Compare the Australian FFF to the Belgian Hot Seat, Wie Wordt Miljonair?, which had only 5 questions (and was fairly well-received by their fans), and the Indian (Hindi) version, Kaun Banega Crorepati, which had 3 questions.
  • Periphery Demographic: Despite being the world's most straight-laced game, the UK version won the prize for Best Light Entertainment Programme at the British Comedy Awards. (After which, they changed the name of the category to Best Comedy Entertainment Programme to stop that happening again.)
  • Replacement Scrappy:
    • In the US version, Meredith Vieira is seen as this by some, particularly due to her more low-key approach compared to Regis. Cedric and Terry in the Shuffle era are also seen as inferior, as the former tried to shoehorn comedy into what’s traditionally a non-comedy oriented show, and the latter had a bad case of NO INDOOR VOICE. Finally, Jimmy Kimmel, unlike the previous hosts before him, didn't seem to show much energy or even care about the show. This is generally not the case on civilian shows, however, in which Kimmel is seen as much better, and he is agreed to have improved in the 2024 run.
    • When the Dutch version was revived in 2011, original host Robert ten Brink was unavailable, so Jeroen van der Boom replaced him. Van der Boom was unpopular among viewers, and the revival was short-lived. Ten Brink was brought back when the Dutch version was revived again in 2019.
    • In India, Shah Rukh Khan (who hosted the third season of ''Kaun Banega Crorepati), while considered a fine host in his own right, was seen as inferior to Amitabh Bachchan due to his lack of Bachchan's ability to engage the audience, to the point where Bachchan was brought back when the fourth season premiered in 2010. Reportedly, Bachchan disapproved of Khan's performance.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The Spanish version premiered in 1999, yet was (and looked) extremely rushed, with the question graphics not even being formatted properly, the music being changed drastically, and much of the tension being removed. Telecinco then reformatted it to make it a much lighter show, not even making the set dark, and keeping Q11's extra-dramatic music used on... questions 1 to 5. Telecinco finally saw sense and changed it in 2000 in line with other versions, but the damage was done and the show was axed in 2001. However, the show channel hopped to Antena 3 in 2005, which made it more like other versions and honed Carlos Sobera's presenting talent, making it a more light-hearted show more fitting for his style. The reboot was a hit, and lasted a few more years (with a well-received reboot, without Sobera actually, in 2020).
  • Retroactive Recognition: Mark Labbett, aka The Beast on The Chase (Game Show), was a contestant on the UK version. He got the wrong answer on the £64,000 question, using up the last of his lifelines, and finished with £32,000.
    • Judith & Pat from Eggheads are both jackpot winners on the UK version.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The 50:50 lifeline. Almost every time a contestant struggled between two answers, then used the 50:50 only for it to leave them with (or worse, eliminate) the two answers they were struggling between. It happened so frequently over the years that many viewers complained the "random removal" felt more like rigging (a fact Norm MacDonald caught on to, as mentioned under the Funny Moments tab), especially at the very end of a themed week where the contestant's only options are really Quit or Fail. Several fans suggested to potential contestants that, if they considered using the 50:50, not to say the answers they were considering out loud. The fact that it originally wasn't random (though this wasn't made clear to the viewers) doesn't help any — although the removals were set in advance and not done in response to the contestants' musings, the answers least likely to get picked were always the ones removed, including when Norm was on. A Random Number Generator system was eventually introduced, but even then it was seen as the least useful lifeline, hence when a "Choose 3 of 4" system for lifelines has been in place such as on the Kimmel reboot, it is almost always discarded.
    • The clock format used from 2008-2010, a prime example of a good idea on paper with horrible execution.
      • To start, the time limits gave the contestants extra stress on an already pulse-pounding game show. Contestants had 15 seconds to answer each question on the first tier, 30 for each on the second and 45 on the first four of the third. The million-dollar question used the entire time banked plus an extra 45 seconds. That meant contestants had as much time on the eleventh safe haven question as they had to answer the second-hardest question of the game.
      • Even worse, the clock began ticking the instant the answers were displayed on the screen. This wasted precious seconds as the host read them, longer if the host is a slow reader or fumbles while giving the answers. When Regis returned to host the 10th Anniversary specials, two contestants nearly got timed out because of his reactions to the first question's joke D choices. Steve Harvey, one of the last guest hosts in that era, is commonly cited as a reason for the show axing said format with his speed at reading the answers (which was even mercilessly parodied on Saturday Night Live).
      • When the Double Dip lifeline was introduced in Super Millionaire, it was given to players after clearing the tenth question. Regis always asked for confirmation if a contestant wanted to use it, and he warned them that they would forfeit their ability to walk away from the question. Double Dip returned when the clock format was introduced (replacing the 50:50), and it was handled much differently. It was given to contestants at the start of the game, and it activated instantaneously once they decided to use it. The clock was only frozen for the first guess; if it was incorrect, both the timer and the normal question music resumed, though players still weren't allowed to walk away. The hosts never fully explained how the lifeline worked, only mentioning that the player gets two chances to answer and will lose if both guesses are wrong. All of these factors led to an incident where a contestant attempted to walk away after giving his first answer, only for Meredith to tell him that he wasn't allowed to do so. Two other contestants activated their Double Dips with very little time left on the clock; one couldn't give her second answer in time, and the other locked in his second answer (which turned out to be correct) right before time expired. Granted, contestants were expected to remember the rules and not waste time,note  but these incidents involving the Double Dip exposed more flaws with the clock format.
      • The original British version adopted a modified version of the clock format in 2010, and that, too, led to its decline. Some versions that use the clock try to alleviate this (for example, the Turkish version lets the host finish reading the answer choices before the clock starts, while the Indian versions give more lenient time limits).
    • Thousandaire, a mini-game played on the US version from 2010-2019 (referred to as The $1,000 Question before 2013) if a contestant departed and there wasn't enough time to begin a major run with another, a very anti-climactic watered down version of the standard format used as shameless Padding. Some felt like it robbed the show of a chance to get underway and severely limited its ability to get contestants, and was like an unspoken recognition that they failed to give the grand prize away in that particular taping and weren't willing to bother trying in earnest. Others, especially the audience, liked the perk of possibly being picked to pick up some fast cash. But considering the major drought in winners had lasted almost two decades, it was too late to be doing anything to delay a grand prize win.
    • The "Ask The Host" lifeline, introduced in the 20th anniversary edition of the UK version. Despite it being about asking the host, Jeremy Clarkson often doesn't have a clue what the answer is much of the time, rendering it useless (as he won't hesitate to let you know). He actually asked people to do their research into what he knows, so they can use him more effectively. The lifeline was also used on several other versions, including the 2020s US version where Jimmy Kimmel had a much higher success rate.
  • Seasonal Rot: While the original U.S. version never got unwatchable, after 9/11 it wasn't quite the same. They relied more on celebrity runs and gimmicks to get people to tune in- the last four months of 2001 alone had Sports Edition, Comedy Edition, Armed Services Edition, Supermodels Edition, and Celebrity Millionaire 4, and 2002 had Olympic Edition 2, Stars of Aaron Spelling Productions, Couples Edition 2, and Ladies Night (all women contestants). 2002 is also when the show greatly reduced its airings to just once a week, signifying it was losing popularity and was on its last legs. There were also no more million dollar winners after Ed Toutant on 9/7/01.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike:
    • The US syndicated version is much harder than the ABC version, with entire seasons going by without million-dollar winners. Justified, considering ratings of the syndicated version aren't as huge as the network version once was (ABC's Executive Meddling didn't help matters), and thus can't offer as much money.
    • The Canadian version bragged about this, even though it was done for the same reason.
    • Super Millionaire was even harder than the syndicated version. You can expect the 11th and 12th questions for $500,000 and $1,000,000 to be at least as hard as the 14th and final questions valued at the same amount on the syndicated version, and on the final two questions, which have never been seennote , you would be literally risking millions.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • Changes to any version vary among the fans to say the least, regardless of the extent or the justification. From Meredith Vieira in the US, to the Clock format in the US and UK, the Hot Seat format in the Aussie version, the new "rave" remixes of the music in the UK, and then the new money ladder in the US and UK, and then the shuffle format, a.k.a. "Super Mix"... the announcement of Cedric the Entertainer becoming host, the move to Connecticut the next season with Cedric being replaced by Terry Crews, the replacement of Crews by Chris Harrison after the former hosted just one season, the move to Las Vegas in 2016, a new graphics package and logo in 2018 for the US version (which looked very cheap and inconsistent), and it goes on. Granted, the show had arguably been in a funk for a while with a dwindling fanbase and thus needed to be freshened up, but until its cancellation in 2019 each new change alienated as many fans as it reclaimed.
    • The Harrison era had an abundance of questions relying on internet memes, social media, and pop culture current events, even in the first tier, rather than the more "general knowledge" questions the previous eras were known for. Most infamously, one episode had a $500 question involving a Buzzfeed article that managed to get lost. It didn't help that the correct answer was D which for the longest time was a guaranteed joke answer on the first question.
    • The Kimmel era only has celebrities playing for charity, an odd decision considering what led to the original ABC version's cancellation, and especially odd when it premiered at a time when people could use the money. Kimmel's second season did have frontline workers and first responders in addition to celebrities, but when the show returned in 2024, it has pairs of celebrities competing together. It's safe to say that civilians won't be able to compete on the American version anytime soon.
    • One set of versions that constantly seems to avert this trope are the 7+ Indian versions, each one for a different language though the shows have shared multilingual production crews. Ever since 2010 (the first version to radically depart from any pre-established format by using the 2010 UK clock format as the basis, but with an added bonus jackpot question like in the 2007 Australian series and also using the 2008 US clock format graphics and lifelines) the shows have been consistently well received despite changing up things every season. The reason why is because the producers actually take the effort to make all changes gel with the format. Some of the more interesting innovations that came from Kaun Banega Crorepati (Hindi/English) and the other Indian versions of the show are: Power Paplu (a lifeline that allows another lifeline to be used again), Code Red (a passive lifeline activated by the family members of the contestant sitting in the audience, which allows them to warn the contestant not to go for the wrong answer), Chat Room (a chat room full of viewers sends answers to a question in a limited time period) etc. Even existing lifelines are not immune to being tinkered with: Phone-a-Friend became powered by video calls instead of ordinary phone calls, and Switch the Question introduced question categories which allow the contestant to actually get a question from their strongest category, instead of at random.
    • The Australian version originally replaced the brilliantly well-executed logo template of most versions with... a gold coin? They changed it back in 2000.
  • Unexpected Character: In 2011, a celebrity contestant in Austria called Mirjam Weichselbraun was stuck on the €50,000 question. Who did she call as her Phone-a-Friend? None other than German host Günther Jauch, of all people, completely surprising viewers.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Since 2018, the Indian versions have implemented augmented reality technology that allows the producers to insert graphics that move directly with the camera. These graphics are very well-done, and in Season 13, those graphics have extended not only to the floor (even below it), but also the ceiling.
  • Vocal Minority: A small percentage of people believe that Charles Ingram didn't cheat despite lots of evidence to the contrary.
  • Win Back the Crowd: The 2020 ABC primetime version with Jimmy Kimmel received this reaction, largely reverting back to the "classic" look and feel (based on the current Jeremy Clarkson UK version) and format, using the original Strachan soundtrack, in comparison to the syndicated version, which had been using other music for a decade.

Top