Jeopardy / Tropes E To O

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E

• Early-Bird Cameo: According to NBC records, Alex Trebek appeared in the Fleming run twice in 1974 (March 7 and the first week of April) to promote his short-lived game show (and his first American show), The Wizard of Odds, a decade before starting his long run as host.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first episodes in 1964 had a slightly different board (with the category titles located above and below the dollar amounts) and different contestant podiums (the score displays were directly in the middle, while the nameplates were on top). By mid-1965, the lower category displays had been removed and the contestant podiums reworked into the form used for the rest of the run. See also Obvious Rule Patch, below.
  • The first Trebek season, for that matter. Just like the Fleming version, contestants could ring in as soon as the clue was revealed; Alex would often add chatter about each clue; and of course, a Rules Spiel before each round. It's been said that not one game in the first season saw all 61 clues played. As well, there were no on screen graphics listing contestant names during the introduction.
  • The first Trebek season also aired on most stations late at night or early in the morning. The poor clearances were due to the fact that most stations at the time didn't think a serious game show (game shows by this point were mostly lite faire) would succeed. Merv Griffin used his clout from the success of Wheel of Fortune to request stations to move the program to the more lucrative evening time. Most of them did this, with many of them pairing the program with Wheel of Fortune for an hour block. Some affiliates continue to air the program in the morning or afternoon time frame.
  • Early on, the Daily Double sound effect on the Trebek version was a "sweeping" sound on a synthesizer, somewhat like a baby version of the THX "deep note". After about a month, the sound effect was changed to the electronic "trill" still used to this day.
  • There seemed to be more of an attempt to incite drama in the early Alex Trebek episodes, as there were often canned gasps after incorrect or missed questions. Trebek would also "caution [the players] about the jeopardy" — namely, that they would lose money for incorrect questions — and tell them that they were "out of jeopardy" at the end of each round. These dramatics were quickly dropped.
  • Trebek himself had a different personality for the first 7-8 seasons, where he was more of a game show host stereotype with his sometimes overly enthusiastic positivity and high energy. Around season eight or nine, he developed more of the personality he was known for, and stayed that way until his death in 2020.
  • The shots of the clues would rotate between the now-familiar full-screen zoom of the text and an actual shot of the monitor where the text was displayed (which also rotated between a static shot and a camera push on the monitor). Eventually the latter was phased out. Relatedly, Daily Doubles would originally show a still shot of the monitor with the Daily Double logo flashing within, cut to the contestant as he or she wagered, then cut back to the monitor to show the clue. By Season 2, the clue text began to be superimposed on a shot of the contestant after the wager, and by 1986, the Daily Double logo began "flying" out of the monitor as the clues do.
  • Season 2 began in September 1985 by placing the defending champions in the third podium at the far right, and introducing them first in an episode. This experiment only lasted one week before moving back to the first podium at the left.
  • The original 1985 Tournament of Champions quarterfinals saw contestants grouped together in games in chronological order by when their original run on the show was (resulting in one game featuring two contestants named Paul). Starting the next year, Jeopardy! ignored chronological order when selecting quarterfinal matchups.
  • Competition wise, Jeopardy!'s first two seasons are seen by many fans as lacking in "great" champions and the common gameplay strategies and preparation that most notable champions have since utilized. No one from the inaugural 1984-85 season has ever won a game in a later reunion tournament, and from season 2, the only contestant to do so is 1986 TOC winner Chuck Forrest, who is often considered the modern show's first great player. Six of the nine lowest earning TOC qualifiers in history came from season 2.
  • For the first 11 seasons, Jeopardy! rigidly scheduled their annual tournaments in the same sweeps period month each year, with the Tournament of Champions in November (later preceded by a week of Celebrity games), the Teen Tournament in February, the College Championship in May, and the Seniors Tournament ending the season in July (and previously airing in May before the College Championship was introduced). Starting in season 12, tournaments were moved to a fluid scheduling pattern, though with the exception of the December 1995 Seniors Tournament, and the September 2004 and March 2009 ToCs, they are still held at least partially in sweeps periods.
    • As well, the Tournament of Champions ran for its first 9 installments (1985-1993) as an annual November event with the entire previous season being the qualifying period for it. Starting in the 1993-1994 season, the qualifying periods changed to all games between tournaments.
  • From January 1998 until April 1999, Jeopardy! held nine one-off Celebrity Jeopardy! games that weren't scheduled as part of a week of celebrity episodes, though the last four were scheduled on consecutive Mondays. These episodes featured themed contestant groupings and names (i.e. Sitcom Stars Night, Olympians Night, and so on). One-off celebrity episodes were largely retired afterwards, save for one in March 2009 (as a precursor to that year's Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas) and the quarterfinals of the next season's Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational Tournament (which were scattered throughout the season before the final rounds aired in May).
  • Though Celebrity Jeopardy! and Power Players Week contestants typically get $1,000 to play with in Final Jeopardy! if they finish with no money, the amounts varied prior to 2009 for scores below $0. Many celebrities with negative totals basically had the minus removed from their negative post-Double score (effectively multiplying it by -1), but there are recorded games prior to 2009 where celebrities with negative money were spotted even less (i.e. $500, $100), possibly depending on how the game itself went.
  • Though only in its third season, Sports Jeopardy! differed in its first season by not having returning champions. As a result, the chase to get into the season-ending two day championships saw contestants making high and risky wagers to rack up points in order to try and qualify. Now, returning champions are in full effect, with victories gaining precedence over accumulated points.
  • Seasons 1-8 (1984-92) had contestant interviews held after the first commercial break and the Jeopardy! round wrapped up afterwards. However, from seasons 9 through 12 (1992-96), the Jeopardy! round would be completed immediately following the first break and the interviews took place afterwards. Season 13 (1996-97) switched them back to where they've been since.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: On February 4, 1994, Tom Nichols was in his 5th game, but lost due to an incorrect Final Jeopardy answer. Several months later, it was determined that there was a "clue discrepancy" and he was correct after all, and he was invited back on October 10, 1994 to try again for his 5th victory. He got it, qualifying in time for the Tournament of Champions that took place the following month.
• Easter Egg: The Season 35 intro is full of them, including images of Running Gag categories such as "Potpourri", "Those Darn Etruscans", and "The Dreaded Opera Category", along with a picture of a mustache dated September 22, 2001 (the first episode which Alex hosted without a mustache).
• Escape Artist: Often cited for Jeopardy! champions who frequently win games despite trailing going into Final Jeopardy!, where they're not in control of their destiny and likely need the leading contestant to be incorrect or do the wagering math wrong to have a shot at victory.
  • September 2001 5 day champion Mark Dawson used some skill and luck to force some big escapes in Final. In his very first game (where he trailed $7,600-$7,000), he won after wagering all but $1 in Final, as the leader just wagered $1,400, rather than the $6,401 lockout wager. A $0 wager on a triple stumper won him his fourth game, while a $200 math error from leading finalist Brian Weikle handed Mark the Tournament of Champions victory in May 2003. More recently, a light wager from second helped Mark win his opening game of 2014's Battle of the Decades tournament, allowing him to lock out Claudia Perry and allow him to steal the win when Dave Abbott missed Final.
  • June 2006 5 day champion Celeste DiNucci definitely knew how to wager from behind during her games, winning her second and final regular games with Final comebacks when her opponents missed and she wagered to stay above them if she did the same. She pulled it off again in the 2007 Tournament of Champions, surging past Jeff Spoeri to force a tiebreaker with Christian Haines in the semifinals (which she won), before one final savvy wager helped her steal the championship from Doug Hicton in the finals, despite his own impressive performance in the second game.
  • May 2012 6 day champion Joel Pool needed an escape from second place to win four of his six games, only leading going into Final for his second and fourth games. In each case, the leader missed, with Joel wagering almost everything in 3 of 4 occasions.
  • Eventual 2015 TOC finalist Kerry Greene won her third-fifth games that April after betting basically everything while the leader missed in each case. She pulled one more escape in the Tournament of Champions under similar circumstances that November, rallying past Dan Feitel to make the finals.
  • May 2015 5 day champion Andrew Haringer made a habit out of this in his championship reign, winning his first four games after the leading challenger missed Final, including a savvy game 3 wager where he won by $1. However, his final win was a runaway. Coincidentally, Andrew faced Kerry in the TOC quarterfinals. In this case, Kerry led going into Final and won the game, though Andrew secured a wild card.
  • Though his massive Jeopardy! successes and winnings speak for themselves, even Brad Rutter needed some big escapes en route to winning his $4 million plus over the years. Were it not for Leslie Frates gambling on a $0 wager in the Million Dollar Masters semifinals, Michael Rooney missing Final and not accounting for Brad's wagering savvy in the Ultimate TOC quarterfinals, and Ken Jennings missing Final in game 2 of the Battle of the Decades finals, Brad's career winnings would only be $330,102.
• Every Year They Fizzle Out:
  • After becoming the biggest cash winner of season 17, 2001 Tournament of Champions semifinalist Babu Srinivasan was invited to all three of Jeopardy!'s most recent reunion tournaments (the Million Dollar Masters Tournament in 2002, the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005, and the Battle of the Decades in 2014), but was eliminated in the opening round each time. If you count the 2001 Tournament of Champions, he's 0-5 in tournament play (he was a wild card semifinalist in 2001). Coincidentally, all four tournaments that he was in were won by all-time money winner Brad Rutter, but they oddly have never been drawn into the same match.
  • Similarly, two early 4 day champions (Lionel Goldbart in 1986 and Kate Waits in 1987) were favourite invitees to later tournaments, but they also finished their Jeopardy! runs with 5 straight losses. Both lost their 5th and final regular play game, both games in their respective TOC (they were each wild card semifinalists), the Super Jeopardy! quarterfinals, and their opening game in a later reunion tournament each (Lionel in 1993's 10th Anniversary Tournament and Kate in 2002's Million Dollar Masters tournament). If you count Sports Jeopardy!, Kate has lost six straight, having lost on the Crackle spinoff in February 2015.
  • Since winning her five games in December 2007, Cora Peck has gone 0-4, losing in her attempt to win her sixth game, in the quarterfinals and semifinals in the 2009 Tournament of Champions (she was a wildcard semifinalist), and on Sports Jeopardy! in July 2015, when she overwagered in a lock situation.

F-H

• Fate Drives Us Together:
  • The last quarterfinal of the May 2010 Tournament of Champions saw Vijay Balse defeat Jason Zollinger and Stefan Goodreau to advance to the semifinals, though Jason and Stefan both also advanced as wild cards. As fate would have it, the finalists in that year's TOC were... Vijay Balse, Jason Zollinger, and Stefan Goodreau, who each won their separate semifinal games. (Balse won the two-day final rematch.)
  • 1987 Tournament of Champions winner Bob Verini seemed fated to rematch many of his tournament opponents. In 1990's Super Jeopardy! tournament, he faced both of the other 1987 finalists (Eugene Finerman and Dave Traini) in the last two rounds, and while he did defeat Finerman (and 1989 Teen Tournament winner Eric Newhouse) in their rematch, he and Traini both were upset by Bruce Seymour in the finals. Then, in 2002, Verini rematched Eric Newhouse in the finals of the Million Dollar Masters tournament, though both lost to Brad Rutter.
  • In tournament play on the syndicated version, Jeopardy! producers traditionally avert booking rematches from prior rounds or tournaments unless it's the finals when you can't get around it, and fate has seen a number of rematches from quarterfinal opponents there. TOC rematches from regular play games, however, have occurred on two rare occasions. After eventual 3 day champion Vik Vaz defeated 4 day champion Bill Macdonald in November 2005, they both managed to advance to the finals of the May 2006 Tournament of Champions, where Vaz outplayed Macdonald again, only for both to lose to Michael Falk. 7 years later, eventual 5 day champion Paul Nelson dethroned 7 day champion Keith Whitener in November 2012, only for them to surprisingly be booked against each other in the semifinals of the February 2013 TOC. Despite the presence of 9 day champion Jason Keller in the same match, Whitener avenged his original loss to advance to the finals.
  • Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter have competed against each other in a record eight episodes of Jeopardy!, with Brad defeating Ken in the finals of both the Ultimate Tournament of Champions and the Battle of the Decades, while both lost to the Watson supercomputer in The IBM Challenge. However, as both are elite level Jeopardy! contestants, their own knowledge bases and buzzer skills are arguably more to blame than fate.
  • Similar to the 2010 TOC example, the finalists of the 1992 College Tournament, Nick Jungman, Stephanie Leveene, and Billy Baxter, all played against one another in the quarterfinals. Nick had won their quarterfinal match with Billy and Stephanie advancing as wildcards, each winning their separate semifinal games, before Billy ended up winning the tournament.
  • The November 2019 Tournament of Champions found James Holzhauer competing against Emma Boetcher, who defeated him in regular play. James defeated her in the tournament.
• Filler: The November 8, 2022 episode fell during that year's Tournament of Champions. Because Jeopardy! was expected to be pre-empted on nearly the entire West Coast for network coverage of midterm elections, along with some East Coast markets for local election coverage, the episode for this day was merely a filler "practice" game that had no impact on the tournament's proceedings, meaning viewers who couldn't watch Jeopardy! on Election Day would not miss out on anything. Sister program Wheel of Fortune was a still typical new episode on this day.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • If the player in the lead has more than twice as much as the second-place player going into Final Jeopardy!, no one can catch them. This is known as a "lock" or "runaway" game, assuring the first-place contestant of winning (as long as they don't do something so amazingly stupid as pulling a Cliff Clavin).
  • And then there's the 2011 Tournament of Champions, for which "lock" was an understatement. Champion Roger Craig finished the first day of the final with a $31,200 lead over 2nd place opponent Tom Nissley, who finished Double Jeopardy! with $14,600 on the second day; Roger was therefore guaranteed to win the tournament by $2,000 or more no matter what everybody wagered.
  • A 2004 Power Players Week game featuring Al Franken had a category entitled "SNL Presidential Players". Needless to say, Al swept the category. Then he apologized to his opponents (Keith Olbermann and Gretchen Carlson), explaining that he wrote four of the five sketches featured in the category.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • The IBM Challenge in 2011, which was taped at an IBM lab in New York, with the first match was split between two episodes, allowing room for lots of behind-the-scenes footage (Also, the whole conceit of a computer facing off with real Jeopardy! contestants.)
  • When Jeopardy! travelled to Berkeley, California to tape the 1998 College Championship, they also taped a special episode called "The Battle of the Bay Area Brains" that aired only in the San Francisco market, rather than among that season's national syndicated run. It featured three notable champions from the area competing for charity, with 1988 TOC semifinalist Michael Rankins defeating 10th Anniversary Tournament finalist Leslie Frates and 1996 TOC semifinalst Beverly Spurs to win a $7,700 prize package.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The set pieces for road shows in the 2000s often included oversized replicas of books, most of which had funny titles that were only seen for a couple seconds as the camera panned the set going in and out of commercial breaks.
• Game Show Host: Art Fleming, Alex Trebek, Mike Richards, Mayim Bialik, and Ken Jennings have all hosted the regular version, with Bialik and Jennings doing so simultaneously until December 2023. Bob Bergen hosted Jep!, Jeff Probst hosted Rock & Roll Jeopardy! before he would become known for Survivor, and sportscaster Dan Patrick hosts Sports Jeopardy!
• Game Show Winnings Cap:
  • Until 2003, contestants could only stay on for five days and win up to $75,000 (later $100,000), with the excess donated to a charity of the contestant's choice. Since then, a contestant can stay on so long as s/he keeps winning, and keep all winnings. Shortly after the cap was removed, Ken Jennings ran for 75 games (74 wins and then his defeat by Nancy Zerg).
  • Jeopardy! is far more lenient than Wheel of Fortune in that it still has returning champions (Wheel did away with them in 1998, with exceptions for single weeks in 1999, 2023, and 2024). Once you've appeared on the current version of Jeopardy!, whether before or after Alex Trebek's death, you're ineligible to play again unless one of the following happens:
    • You're invited back for a tournament or a special game (such as Jennings vs. Rutter vs. IBM's Watson).
    • You're invited back because of a ruling error that may have affected the result of your game.
    • You're not able to continue as champion due to illness, previous commitments, etc., and are called back to continue playing once your schedule clears.
  • Sports Jeopardy! had no returning champions for its first season. Like its parent show did in 2004, winning limits were abolished for its second season, and like Ken a decade prior, Vinny Varadarajan capitalized on the new rule for a 15 day reign as champion.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: On 21 February 2017 episode of , during the College Tournament, Stanford student Viraj Mehta displayed an extended middle finger for at least seven seconds, supposedly to illustrate his interview subject, the geometry of folded pizza slices. Mehta layer confirmed on Twitter that his gesture was deliberate.
• Golden Snitch: Played with. In theory, Final Jeopardy can result in people doubling their money or losing everything. It is, however, rather common for Double Jeopardy! to end with second place having less than half of the leader's score. The leader can simply bet nothing and be guaranteed a victory. Also, if the leader bets enough money, they can guarantee themselves victory if they're correct.
• Grand Finale: The last NBC episode of the original Fleming era featured some clips of notable moments — the end of the 1967 College Tourney (with Fleming as the most excited guy in the room), Mel Brooks on the 2,000th episode (1972), and Gene Shalit amusingly tackling a Daily Double. At the end, Fleming thanked the viewers and left the now-darkened set to Charlie Chaplin's "Smile".
  • 2020’s Greatest of All Time event is considered this for the Trebek era, reuniting the show’s three most successful contestants to determine which one of them is the most outstanding player in Jeopardy! history. Despite the sense of closure, Trebek continued to host regular episodes until his death later that year.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Ken Jennings would occasionally give his responses in foreign languages (e.g. "¿Qué es nada?"). Sometimes, entire categories focus on foreign languages, and the answer usually must be a translation, or the word itself. Trebek was rather good at accents. He also liked to throw foreign phrases at contestants who mention that they are fluent in another language.
• Guest Host: Following Trebek's death in Season 37, the show confirmed a multitude of guest hosts would fill in for the remainder of the season until a new successor was chosen; Ken Jennings was first, followed by executive producer Mike Richards. After him came Katie Couric, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Anderson Cooper, Bill Whitaker, 2017 Tournament of Champions winner Buzzy Cohen, Mayim Bialik, Savannah Guthrie, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts, Squawk on the Street anchor David Faber, sportscaster Joe Buck, and LeVar Burton. Richards was tapped as the new host, but stepped down after taping only one week's worth of episodes. The rest of Season 38 was split between Jennings and Bialik.
• Halloween Episode: On Halloween 1997 (eventual TOC finalist Bob Harris' debut game), Alex dressed as the Statue of Liberty.
• Hammerspace Hair: Leonard Cooper, champion of the 2013 Teen Tournament, revealed in an anecdote that a fellow student hid a highlighter in his afro, and it remained undiscovered for several days.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • Eddie Timanus, the first blind contestant on the show and quite the high winner, becoming a retired 5-day champion and a 2000 Tournament of Champions semifinalist. Although he proved that it's not that difficult for Jeopardy! to accommodate blind contestants, only one or two others have ever appeared after him.
  • The changes that were made to accommodate Timanus were: no visual clues or Video Daily Doubles; a card with the categories printed in Braille (handed to him at the start of each round), a tone that would denote when the contestants could buzz in (usually, the contestants would see a light around the board when Alex was finished speaking and they could buzz in without a small time penalty) and a Braille keyboard to type in his wagers and responses in Final Jeopardy!
  • Also, though not related to Timanus's blindness, it is notable that starting with his shows, contestants began the show already standing at their podiums when Johnny Gilbert introduced them, instead of the old practice of them walking up to the podiums as they were being introduced. The practice became permanent starting in September 2000.
• Helium Speech: On February 23, 1987, Alex inhaled helium before delivering the Audio Daily Double "Type of gas I just inhaled that makes me talk like this" in the category Chemistry for $600.
• History Repeats: The first giant-killer, Nancy Zerg (who defeated Ken Jennings), lost her next game pretty handily. The first giant-giant-killer, Nancy Donehower (who defeated Jonathan Fisher, the 11-day champion who’d defeated Matt Amodio) also lost her next game.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Averted. Instead of singing, Alex (or occasionally Johnny) reads the lyrics in a hilariously deadpan manner. One category even had pre-recorded clues where Trebek performed five songs with the help of Auto-Tune.
• Home Field Advantage:
  • Robin Carroll definitely used this to her advantage in her victory in the 2000 Tournament of Champions, as that year's event was held in Atlanta, Georgia (she's from nearby Marietta). On a wider scale, she also had the home field advantage for her victory in the next year's International Tournament (held in Las Vegas) as the only representative of the American Jeopardy! in the field.
  • A pair of College Champions have won that event near their alma maters during the years when it took road trips away from the main studio. 1999 College Champion Carolyn Cracraft (a then-junior at The University of Chicago) won that year's tournament in nearby Rosemont, Illinois, while 2007 College Champion Cliff Galiher (a then-sophomore at UCLA) won his tournament while on the campus of the nearby rival University of Southern California.
  • In a sense, any Los Angeles-area contestants will have home field advantage as they will have less travel and work commitments to worry about, but then again, most Jeopardy! contestants are from California for a reason, and none are guaranteed to win when they do make the show.
  • Arguably, any returning champion will have home field advantage simply from their recent experience on the show and familiarity with the buzzer compared to the new challengers.
• Home Game:
  • Several board games, video game versions as early as the NES (an Atari 2600 version was planned shortly before the market crashed), and several PC versions as well. THQ released Wii versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune in 2010, and again for multiple systems in 2012. There's also a school version that uses a dedicated console and allows custom answers and images to be used. Modified scoring calculators are also sold which allow playing along with the actual show.
  • Milton Bradley's home game merely reused the plastic board from its Concentration home games and tinted the window red. As such, only five categories could be played per round and one window in Double Jeopardy! had to be reserved for Final.
  • Inexplicably, the later 1980s/90s Pressman versions kept the same odd setup for the board and Final Jeopardy, and even versions released as late as 2003 still had it; they also released Electric Jeopardy!- with a set of battery operated buzz-in devices with rotating dials for scorekeeping. Conversely, the 1992 Tyco version had a radically different style of gameplay (six category stands instead of a board, with the players splitting up the duties of answering and reading each one), while the 1999 Parker Brothers version finally had the board with the correct amount of categories, pre-selected Daily Doubles and reserved a special space for Final Jeopardy! below the main board.
  • Around 1990, there was also a premium-rate Home Participation Sweepstakes phone-in version known as "Phone Jeopardy!" (Wheel had one, too).
  • For many years, Jeopardy! advertised on-air and sold the Jeopardy! Challenger Scorekeeper, a handheld LCD device that allowed contestants to keep score at home as they played along, as well as wager on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy! While often mistaken for a game, it's basically a modified calculator. Though it's obsolete for modern episodes (as it was made for games before dollar amounts were doubled), equivalent scorekeepers are available online and on mobile devices that feature the current values.
  • Tiger Electronics released two handheld LCD Jeopardy! games in the late 1990s. Due to technical limitations, the first version merely listed numbers for each clue that you'd have to read in a companion book that came with the game or its expansion cartridges, while the second version allowed for a scrolling clue display, and is better received as a result.
• Home Participation Sweepstakes:
  • 1990 “Phone Jeopardy!” (See Home Game above)
  • The “Play and Win!” contest in 1998 sponsored by Sears, where home viewers were given a category (different ones each week) and a clue (different clues daily). Viewers who submitted correct responses were entered into a drawing where the grand prize was $1,000,000. (Wheel of Fortune also had this as well.)
    • In addition, the second and third place contestants during the two-week sweepstakes received Sears gift certificates.
  • During season 26 (2009-2010), Sony invited viewers to join the “Jeopardy! Premier Club” to earn rewards points daily for submitting the correct Final Jeopardy! category. In addition, tournaments were held each weekend with clues taken from that week’s episodes. Weekly winners played in a quarterly tournament with a mixture of show material and fresh material. The three quarterly tournament winners played in a Final tournament with all fresh material. The eventual champion won $5,000 in cash ($10,000 if they were an active Sony Card holder) and a trip to Los Angeles for a taping of the show that would air in season 27 (2010-2011).
• Hufflepuff House: Sometimes, one or two players Can't Catch Up or otherwise have so much trouble keeping pace that they almost become irrelevant in the game. This was especially apparent in Ken Jennings' shows, particularly towards the end when he'd have upwards of 40+ total responses per show.
• Hurricane of Puns: Variations on "The 'L' You Say" to indicate that correct responses will begin with L, are just one example of these.

I-M

• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • If a contestant mentions alcohol in any way during their interviews, Alex seems to take great notice.
  • Subverted in a notorious clip that shows Trebek swearing like a sailor and supposedly drinking while trying to shoot a "Phone Jeopardy!" promo. Although the Cluster F Bombs are real, Trebek was actually alternating between Diet Coke and a glass of water.
• In-Series Nickname: Occasionally, Jeopardy! contestants will play under a nickname rather than their first name, even if they're billed under their first name in the introductions. Notable examples include 1995 Tournament of Champions winner Ryan Holznagel (who played under his long-time nickname Fritz in 2014's Battle of the Decades), 2004 4 day champion Scott Renzoni (who played as "Renzo" for his appearances), and 2008 Teen Tournament finalist Rachel Cooke, who played as "Steve" for the whole tournament, luckily so when she faced Rachel Horn in the finals. Averted with 1988 Teen Tournament finalist David Javerbaum, who only played as "DJ" in the finals out of necessity, as another finalist was named David.
  • Similarly, some Jeopardy! champions have made return appearances under a different variation of the first name they originally played under. Some examples include Dan Green (Danny in the 1986 TOC), Sandra Gore (Sandy in Super Jeopardy!), Mike Day (Michael in the 1985 and Ultimate TOCs), Michael Dupee (Mike in the 1996 TOC and Battle of the Decades), Michael Thayer (Mike in the Ultimate TOC), Dave Traini (David in the Ultimate TOC), and Andy Westney (Andrew in the Ultimate TOC and Battle of the Decades).
  • Sports Jeopardy! host Dan Patrick occasionally gives nicknames to successful repeat champions, like "The Duke of Earl" for season 3 8-time champion Earl Holland, and "Vinny V" for season 2 15-time champion Vinny Varadarajan.
• Inflation Negation:
  • The Fleming version used the same dollar figures in its entire run, with the lowest clue valued at a mere $10. At the time of its cancellation, other game shows were offering much larger purses, most notably The $10,000 Pyramid.
  • The minimum allowed wager on a Daily Double is still $5, which was half the value of the lowest valued clue on the board in the Fleming years. Nowadays, you only see a wager that small if a contestant isn't certain that they'll get it right, and don't feel like risking any money on it. One notable example was when Arthur Chu found a Daily Double in a sports category during his second game in January 2014.
• Irony:
  • In the 2006 Teen Tournament semifinals, high school sophomore Papa Chakravarthy (who is of Indian descent) lost $1,000 on the first Daily Double in a clue about an Asian 2 word capital constructed in the 1910s and 1920s. He guessed Phnom Penh, Cambodia, but the correct question was "What is New Dehli?" Despite the ironic miss, he only lost $1,000, and still won both the game and the tournament.
  • On April 27, 2012, a contestant missed the last clue of the game, a Daily Double which presented lyrics to "I Lost on Jeopardy" by "Weird Al" Yankovic ("My hope of winning sank, 'cause I got the Daily Double now, and then my mind went blank"). She didn't recognize the song and ended up losing in Final Jeopardy!
• It Runs in the Family:
  • With Jeopardy! being such a Long Runner, there have been a few contestants to be parents, siblings, and/or offspring to other contestants. For example, 1986 TOC finalist Marvin Shinkman's son Ron was a one day champion in 2001, while 2010 TOC finalist Stefan Goodreau competed on Jeopardy! just one season after his father John, who won $30,600 in his only win.
  • For a majority of the Trebek era, it was not uncommon to see contestants who competed on either the original version or the short-lived 1978 version hosted by Art Fleming.
• Jeopardy! Intelligence Test: IBM's Watson computer, an AI experiment, was a contestant February 14-16, 2011. If Watson managed to win, IBM would continue developing its artificial intelligence algorithms and sell them as a knowledge management platform. Watson won spectacularly, and thanks to this successful test it has branched out into an entire new product line from IBM.
• Just a Kid: Played literally with the Kids/Back To School weeks from seasons 16-29 and 31, where 11-12 year old kids play standalone Jeopardy! games against each other. The clue difficulties are obviously easier than in regular games, but the performance of some can make fans wonder how they'd have done in regular games had they waited until they were older.
  • When Teen Tournament winners were invited to the Tournament of Champions, this was often averted when said teenagers held their own against adults in their matches. Many Teen Tournament champs made TOC semifinals, with Eric Newhouse, Matt Zielenski, Sahir Islam, and Chacko George winning TOC quarterfinal games to get there (Chacko even defeated eventual finalist Steve Fried in their opening game), and The Final Wager's Keith Williams noted that Teen Tournament winners performed better on average than College Champions in the TOC. However, no Teen champions ever made the finals in their own right, a possible contributing factor to why they're no longer in the TOC field.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • 1986 contestant Barbara Lowe was said by many eyewitnesses to be a total Jerkass—she quibbled with Trebek on-camera when one of her answers was ruled wrong, and, according to ex-writer Harry Eisenberg, drew irate letters from fans for her behavior. Nonetheless, she retired undefeated. However, she had previously appeared on several game shows, most by using aliases, and had lied to Jeopardy! about how many she'd been on (at the time, you could only be on two in a five-year span). She was barred from appearing in the Tournament of Champions, and her winnings were withheld until she threatened them with a lawsuit.
  • On October 12, 2009, one of the contestants was Jeff Kirby, who originally appeared on the show in December 1999. As stated at Game Show Winnings Cap, Trebek-era contestants are not allowed to appear again, but Jeff somehow got through the audition process. He didn't get caught until someone on the show's message board pointed out that he was wearing the same tie he had worn in his 1999 appearance. (Either he has a spectacularly limited wardrobe, or he was thumbing his nose at the powers that be.) What makes him fit into this trope? He finished in third place on both shows (and of course, was denied the then $1,000 third-place winnings from his 2009 episode).
• Leg Focus: The "Long Lovely Ladies" category was about women who qualify for this trope.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The clues were initially far more straightforward, as compared to the show's current affinity for puns and Shout Outs. Whether or not this has dumbed down the show is up to the viewer.
  • Alex Trebek himself. During the early seasons, Trebek was more akin to a very strict teacher: he would snap at the contestants if they forgot a rule (most commonly, phrasing with "What is ...?") or giving an answer that was inappropriate to the category (such as in a category about numbers, anything other than a numerical answer), and treated the show very seriously. Once the writers began loosening up with more esoteric and humorous categories, Trebek's hosting style became less formal with it. Particularly in the 2000s, it became very common for him to laugh, smile, and joke around with the contestants.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Since 1997, the opening themes for Jeopardy! are full two-to-three-minute orchestrations featuring a wide array of arrangements on a variety of instruments, from electric guitars to saxophones to brass. However, the opening introduction is only 45 seconds long, and with the closing credits shaved for time constraints over the years, most viewers will never hear the theme in full unless they go hunting for it online. Even the original 1984 synthesized theme fell into this in its early seasons, as the building opening notes were stretched out over the contestant introductions (with a Truck Driver's Gear Change halfway through), but Alex would be introduced and the music stopped before the actual melody kicked in. This was fixed in 1989, in which the song would start with the key change so that the think-music melody would begin by the champion's introduction.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Any time a contestant bends the "form of a question" rules by saying something like "Could that be ____?" or "Is that an ____?". The judges aren't terribly picky on what constitutes a question.
    • One contestant actually got credit for answering "Time Magazine. [Beat] What's that?", and another got credit for just saying "Who?" when the correct response was "Who are The Who?"
    • 2021 ultrachamp Matt Amodio is known for abusing this by starting all of his responses with "What's (answer)" even when it's a person's name rather than a thing.
  • If the response itself is a question, nothing more needs to be done.
  • Ken Jennings had fun with this in his 46th game from September 2004, questioning an answer with "What be ebonics?", which was accepted.
  • Picking clues out of order (known as the "Forrest Bounce") can be seen as this by many, although in many cases it may be strategically advantageous. It also seemed to become more commonplace after Arthur Chu used it to his advantage.
  • One Final Jeopardy! had the correct response of "What is oxygen?" A contestant only got as far as writing "What is O?" before time ran out, but the judges accepted it because "O" is the periodic symbol for oxygen.
  • Countless contestants have given an incorrect response, and quickly corrected themselves before Alex or the judges can rule them correct. As long as the correction is made before the ruling is given, then the response is valid.
  • When tie games were allowed in regular play, a handful of contestants in the lead after Double Jeopardy! were known to play to tie games on purpose. Some would do so out of kindness (such as to allow a challenger to come back after the reigning champion's 5th and final win), but others like Arthur Chu used it as strategy, to allow a trailing contestant (that was perceived to be weaker) to tie them, come back the next day, and be outperformed again.
• Lovely Assistant: Downplayed example with the "Clue Crew", a cast of assistants who provide pre-recorded visual clues regularly.
• Manipulative Editing: If a round ends with multiple clues on which no one rings in, then they are typically edited out. So to home viewers, it merely appears that they ran out of time instead.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: Commonly used, usually by putting a key word in quotes to hint at the right response, or wording the clue so that it mentions something else of an identical name. Referred to as the "Tease-Out Metric" by the fandom, and lampshaded by the show with "Stupid Answers".
• Musical Gag: The fanfare at the end of the 2008-present theme is the same melody as the Daily Double jingle.
• Must Make Amends:
  • It's not uncommon for scores to be changed within the course of the game. This is usually due to either the judges or Alex mishearing a response; Alex failing to explain a category with a gimmick; or an inaccurate or ambiguous clue misleading a contestant. Should a correction be needed, it will usually be given upon returning from commercial, or before a Daily Double.
  • If a contestant is found to have lost a game via an unfair ruling on a question that impacted the outcome, or via a flaw in game mechanics, they're often brought back on later episodes as a concession. Contestants like India Cooper, Paul Croshier, Bob Mesko, Tom Nichols, and Claudia Perry have benefited from such re-invites to later secure Tournament of Champions slots.
    • Averted if a contestant is brought back after an aforementioned error, only to lose worse than they did originally. For example, October 2002 4 day champion Phillip Steele was brought back for a second shot at his 5th win (and a 2003 TOC berth) the following April after a technical error in his original 5th game, only for his return episode to be the day that Brian Weikle won a then-record $52,000 in an absolute runaway.
  • In a unique example from tournaments, high school senior Milo Dochow was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the February 1999 Teen Tournament, but after a questionable judges ruling was found to have possibly cost him a semifinal spot, he was brought back for the February 2000 College Championship (though he didn't make it any farther there).
  • On December 29, 2015, Final Jeopardy! in the category "Famous Last Names" read, "The first woman space shuttle pilot shares this surname with a man on the 1st manned lunar landing 26 years earlier", with the intended response being "Who is Collins?" Contestant Ashley Wilson answered "Aldrin" and lost all of her $9,400. After the show, a clip was dubbed in of Alex explaining that the clue "should have referred to the entire Apollo 11 mission rather than to just the lunar landing part of it", so Wilson was brought back on the 31st and went on to become a two-day champion.
  • This happened three times in Season 34:
    • Rebecca Zoshak lost on the January 11, 2018 episode, which had the Final Jeopardy! clue "It's the first Oscar nominee for Best Picture to be produced by an internet streaming service" with the correct response being "What is Manchester by the Sea?" Rebecca, in second place trailing by $7,200 with $7,600, wagered $7,575 and gave no response. In a post-production clip before the credits, Alex pointed out that the clue was imprecise due to the film being distributed, not produced, by a streaming service. Zoshak was brought back for March 21, 2018, where she became a one-day champion with $14,407.
    • Ryan Fenster, on his fifth game airing February 2, 2018, picked the $1,200 clue in the category "Roamin' Catholics", which read: "St. Thomas Aquinas died traveling to Lyon, France while attempting to heal this rift between the Latin & Greek churches." He rang in with "What is the great schism?", which was deemed too precise for the intended response of just "schism", and he ended up losing the game. Later on, a former writer for the show contacted them and pointed out that "great schism" should've been accepted, so Fenster was brought back to defend in July 2018, where he went on to play for three more games.
    • Vincent Valenzuela was a challenger on the July 13, 2018 episode, where Final Jeopardy! was "This slang term for an environmentalist is literally true of groups that used passive resistance vs. deforestation, as in India in 1973." However, when the clue was displayed on the studio's monitors, the "T" was missing, causing it to say "His slang term..." instead and misleading Vincent into crossing out the correct response of "What is a tree hugger?" in favor of a different response. Due to the typo, the producers agreed to bring Vincent back. He reappeared on the September 25, 2018 episode.

N-O

• Negated Moment of Awesome: On July 3, 2000, all three contestants finished Double Jeopardy! with $5,200. Alex brought up the possiblity of the game ending in a three-way tie, meaning they all play again on the next show. Each player got Final Jeopardy! right and the two challengers bet everything... but returning champion Jeeks Rajagopal only wagered $5,000 and finished $200 short of tying. She not only lost her right to keep playing, she spoiled what would have been the first three-way tie in the show's history. A three-way tie eventually did happen seven years later^note and that's the only occurrence thanks to tiebreaker clues being introduced in Season 31.
• Nintendo Hard: While many players at home will know at least a small handful of clues, being good at the game is another story entirely, as it requires very extensive knowledge across a very wide range of topics, many of which aren't always practical to know for everyday life. These include topics such as literature, cinema, television, world history, world geography, current events, opera, stage plays, science, English linguistics, famous figures, and everything in between. Many of these are topics that the contestants' age range learned once in school but haven't needed to know since then, further elevating the difficulty of the game, and even a profession that might help in one type of question (such as working in the science or writing fields) will still leave the other topics to be filled. The difficulty raises even higher if one watches an older episode of the show, which requires you to be familiar with what was in the news at the time.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Final Jeopardy! on March 15, 2007, reigning champion Scott Weiss was leading with his opponents, James Kirby and Anders Martinson, tied for second. Both James and Anders got FJ! right, and Scott wagered to tie, leading to the first non-zero three-way tie in Jeopardy! history. Scott lost the next game to James.
• No-Hoper Repeat:
  • Most affiliates carry daily reruns of the show under the title Daytime Jeopardy!, with many in the Central Time Zone airing it in a double-run with that day's current episode. During the Trebek era, this feed was simply the entire previous season from start to finish. However, starting in the 2021-22 season, in order to avoid showing any host that wasn't Ken or Mayim, they were forced to skip ahead to late Season 37, resulting in Daytime Jeopardy! now being only a few weeks behind the new episodes. As of 2024, Daytime Jeopardy! is now just seven weeks behind, and for arguably the most continuity-driven game show on television, is pointless to watch unless you missed the episode's original airing. With syndication slowly dying out, Daytime Jeopardy! is merely filler for local stations to replace recently-cancelled shows, and the mostly-self-contained sister show Wheel of Fortune still does not have an equivalent of this due to a decades-old clause to avoid conflict with its long-gone network daytime version.
  • On Super Bowl Sundays since 2023, ABC airs repeats of the most recent Celebrity Jeopardy! finals as Super Bowl counterprogramming. During the 2023 broadcast, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia interrupted the show during the first commercial break (halfway through the Jeopardy! round) to show Eagles fans storming the streets after the team lost to the Kansas City Chiefs.
• No Indoor Voice: Sportscaster Joe Buck’s guest hosting stint in August 2021, which received criticism from viewers on social media regarding his loud voice.
• Obligatory Joke: The May 1, 2007 Final Jeopardy! answer of, "This character was mentioned in the first line of Atlas Shrugged" led to one contestant correctly asking, "Who is John Galt?"
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Very early in the original Fleming run, only the proper phrasing was ruled as correct — contestants phrasing a question incorrectly (e.g., "What is Abraham Lincoln?") were asked by Fleming to use the "proper" phrasing. After Merv Griffin discovered that this was slowing down gameplay, the rule was slightly altered to give credit for a correct response so long as it was phrased in the form of a question. This rule often gets exploited to its limits.
  • Early on, the Final Jeopardy! board was located to the left of the contestants; such a viewpoint not only hurt some necks, but also gave the contestants the ability to see their opponent jotting down their response during the 30-second writing time.
  • For the first season of the Trebek era, contestants could ring in as soon as the clue was revealed, which was also true of the Fleming era. This often led to more than one podium lighting up at the same time, or contestants buzzing in so quickly that their time limit expired before Alex finished reading the clue. In addition, Alex himself said that he found the original buzzer system annoying and distracting to home viewers. From season 2 onward, the buzzers activate after the clue is finished (indicated by white flashing lights around the game board), and premature ring-ins are locked out for 1/8 of a second.
  • After a contestant lost because she forgot to phrase her Final Jeopardy! response as a question, they changed the rules so that the contestants write the "What" or "Who" part on their screens during the commercial break along with their wager, as opposed to writing it concurrently with the response. This is why some contestants who fail to come up with a Final Jeopardy! response will have only the word "what" or "who" on their screen, while others will accidentally omit the "is".
  • Celebrity Jeopardy! games originally saw each contestant guaranteed $10,000 for their charity, unless they won more during the game, with the week's biggest winner having their cash total doubled. As a result, if a low-scoring game resulted in no one surpassing $10,000 after Final Jeopardy!, everyone left with the same amount of money no matter who won. After three of the five Celebrity games from November 1996 resulted in sub-$10,000 scores for winning contestants (including a triple zero finish when all three contestants went all-in on Final), the first place minimum was increased to $15,000 for future installments, later jumping to $50,000 after clue values were doubled in 2002, and the doubled cash bonus was also eliminated after 1996. As well, after the triple-zero game, the rules were changed so that the leader after Double Jeopardy! would be named the winner if everyone went all-in and lost on Final, as seen with the 1998 "Ladies Night" celebrity game.
  • Money equal to their score was awarded to all contestants in the Art Fleming era, but that changed to a "winner-take-all" format for the Trebek version, which promotes more risk taking for a more exciting show, and prevents contestants from ending participation if they've reached some needed goal amount.
  • The 1994-95 season saw Jeopardy! move their production from Hollywood to Culver City; and on the September 19, 1994 episode, the telewriter used to write the Final Jeopardy response wasn't working properly on the center podium, resulting in the response not appearing very legibly. On the September 20, 1994 episode, Alex opened by explaining the issues and noting that as a backup; contestants would be able to write the answers on a card using a magic marker in case of any further issues with the telewriter.
  • According to 2002 1-day champion (and future Hollywood actor) Dileep Rao, he was told by Jeopardy! producers that if he had to miss a scheduled taping due to his then-illness, he'd be retired as champion (he made the taping as a result, and finished Double Jeopardy! in the red). Since then, the show's stance has mellowed, allowing then-champions Priscilla Ball (due to illness) and Claudia Corriere (due to work conflicts, which occurred only because Alex's knee surgery postponed tapings for a few weeks) to miss their next taping day and come back for a later taping when ready and able.
  • In Jeopardy! tournaments with wild cards since (at least) February 2002, all clues are guaranteed to be cleared from the board in every quarterfinal round, no matter what happened during the game beforehand. This is to ensure an even playing field in regards to contestants competing for wild cards, so as not to disadvantage anyone just because their game went a little slower. The possible instigating moment was in game 4 of the 2002 Teen Tournament quarterfinals, where the losing contestants missed the last wild card slot by $807 and $1,207 respectively, and time ran out before the last $1,000 clue could be called in the first round. However, ensuring 100% of clues get revealed can lead to some awkward cuts and edits when the episode airs.
  • In the 2013 Teen Tournament semifinals where all three contestants finished with no money, the tiebreaker rules in tournament play were changed so that every game would have a declared winner, as the previous method was unfair to other semifinalists who wouldn't know about an extra wild card spot. If a triple zero finish happens again in a tournament, a tiebreaker clue is played, similar to how every other tie is decided in tournament play.
  • After a barrage of ties at the start of Season 31, the long-standing rule that ties for first place during regular play result in the tied players becoming co-champions was eliminated in November 2014. As is the case during tournaments, ties for first during regular play are now broken by a tiebreaker clue, though this scenario didn't occur until March 1, 2018.
  • Averted with the 2004 addition of extra rehearsal time before games taped in season 21, which followed Ken Jennings' then-48 game winning streak to end season 20. (His first 38 games, plus the first two weeks of season 21, taped during season 20 as a precaution against a potential strike-related work stoppage.) With Ken's streak in full force, producers realized that new challengers might not have as much rehearsal time to effectively compete, hence the added rehearsal time. As a result, Ken only won 26 more games once season 21 tapings resumed that summer.
• Off the Rails:
  • A contestant who obviously doesn't know the right Final Jeopardy! sometimes draws a picture, makes Shout Outs, or openly writes "I don't know." On other occasions, a contestant knows the answer, but because the game has become a Foregone Conclusion in their favor (or, in some cases, it's to their advantage to bet $0 even though they're not in the lead), just puts down something silly like "Hot Pastrami Sandwiches" or "Woo Hoo Yee Haw Yeah Baby".
  • At least twice during Ken's run, a contestant wrote some variation on "What is Whatever Ken Wrote Down?", which also occurred during Sports Jeopardy! champion Vinny Varadarajan's ninth win. A couple others have written variants of "What is I have no idea?" Double subverted on Ken's 64th game. The middle contestant wrote "See next podium" with an arrow, only to point to the one on the right from the audience's point of view. It turned out that the contestant on the right gave a correct response while Ken did not, although Ken won anyway in a runaway.
  • At least once, a contestant has proposed to his girlfriend in the audience via Final Jeopardy!
  • And of course, if there's a list of things in the answer, giving a response of "What are X things that have never been in my kitchen?"
  • 1995 Tournament of Champions winner Ryan "Fritz" Holznagel liked wagering in palindromic numbers for Final Jeopardy! (anywhere from $888 to $7,887), only not doing so in two of his regular games and his Olympic Games Tournament semifinal. He also made similar wagers on Daily Doubles in game 2 of his TOC final and his reunion tournament appearances, even asking Alex if his $1,111 wager was possible the first time he tried it.
  • On June 15th, 2007, 2 day champion Jared Cohen (who finished Double Jeopardy! with just $1) jokingly responded in Final with "What Is Kebert Xela", referencing the Family Guy cutaway gag where Alex Trebek reciting his name backwards sent him back to his home dimension (though Alex amusingly forgot the reference, despite doing his own voice).
  • November 4, 2011: In a Tournament of Champions quarterfinal, John Krizel and Tom Kunzen enter Final Jeopardy! trailing Joon Pahk by a wide margin. When it came time to reveal the responses, Krizel wrote "What is I have no idea?" and Kunzen drew a rage face◊.
  • 2015 Sports Jeopardy! 15-day champion Vinny Varadarajan made a habit of this on his Final responses during many of his runaway wins, especially as he was playing for points and had already sewn up the $5,000 winners prize in these games. Among the highlights: "What is Kcirtap Nad?" (trying to send host Dan Patrick to another dimension, though he too didn't get the reference), "Who are two people who have never been in my kitchen?" (referencing Cliff Clavin's Final response on Cheers), "Who is the freeway I got stuck on today I really hate!" (he used Final as a platform to vent over being stuck on California's Interstate 405 that day, fittingly wagering $405), "What is IDK my BFF Jill?" (referencing a popular 2007 Cingular Wireless commercial), and "What is I award you this # of points, & may Dan have mercy on my soul" (referencing a line from the principal during the game show climax of Billy Madison).
  • In the final episode of the IBM challenge, Ken Jennings wrote "I for one welcome our new computer overlords" with his answer and bet (see the Shout-Out entry, below). This itself got a Shout-Out on September 21, 2011.
  • In the 2015 Tournament of Champions semifinals, Alex Jacob responded to Final with "What is Aleve", in reference their long-running sponsorship of the show, with "What is Aleve" often used in the plugs. As he was leading in a runaway, he wagered nothing. In that same tournament, he wagered $143 in his quarterfinal win, a common shorthand number for "I love you" popularized by Mr. Rogers. His Final Jeopardy! responses were tamer, complimenting his challengers and the show itself rather than answering (again, wagering nothing on both due to having massive leads).
  • Leonard Cooper on the Final Jeopardy! at the end of the Teen Tournament in 2013: "Who is some guy in Normandy? But I just won $75,000!"
  • 2004 College Champion Kermin Fleming memorably wagered $1,337 (in leetspeak) during his quarterfinal victory, which he won in a runaway.
  • 2016 9 day champion Buzzy Cohen, obviously inspired by the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches on Saturday Night Live, turned into Sean Connery for his Final Jeopardy! responses in his three runwaway victories, answering with "See you tomorrow, Trebek!", "You aren't rid of me yet, Trebek!", and "Once more, Trebek... once more!" (The latter was particularly accurate, as he did lose his next game.)
• "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Can happen when nobody rings in for certain clues. It happened to all three contestants simultaneously on June 15, 2011; the audience groaned when none of them could answer a clue about High Rollers, which even had a photo of Alex Trebek on the set.
• Old Master: Any winner of Jeopardy!'s 10 Seniors Tournaments from 1987-1995 for contestants 50 and older, including two Tournament of Champions finalists (Lou Pryor and Marilyn Kneeland). Also applies to any older contestants in regular play that have long championship reigns on the show, and any past champions who do well in later Jeopardy! reunion tournaments, some over 20 years after their original runs.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Definitely utilized in regular play games to avoid confusion between contestants (hence why no one named Ken ever faced Ken Jennings). For example, after 13 day champion Matt Jackson's loss in October 2015, he was followed a few games later (on the same taping day) by a contestant named Matt Akridge, whose game would presumably have been postponed had Matt Jackson continued his reign that week.
  • In tournament play, mostly instituted after the inaugural 1985 Tournament of Champions, which grouped contestants together chronologically via when their original reign on the show was. As a result, 5 day champions Paul Boymel and Paul Croshier were seeded together in the quarterfinals, so Paul Croshier went by "SSGT Paul" for that game, referencing his post as a United States Marine Staff Sergeant. Paul Boymel won and advanced, and Jeopardy! has since seeded quarterfinal matchups without considering the contestants' chronological order. Now, producers avoid having same or similarly-named contestants in the same match where possible, hence why such conflicts only occur in tournament finals.
  • In the 1996 Tournament of Champions, there were two contestants each named Michael (Dupee and Daunt), Bill (Sloan and Dickenson), and David (Sampugnaro and Cuneo), with Michael Dupee going as "Mike" for the tournament to avoid confusion. Both of the Davids went out in the quarterfinals, and ditto for the Bills in the semifinals, but both Michaels made the finals, where Dupee won the tournament. He played as Michael again for 2005's Ultimate Tournament of Champions, and then flipped back to Mike in 2014's Battle of the Decades.
    • In an earlier example, the 1988 Tournament of Champions had two contestants each named Bruce (Naegeli and Seymour) and Michael (Rankins and Block), as well as Steven Popper and Stephen Lebowitz, with their first names pronounced the same. In each case, one of the same-named pairs was eliminated in the quarterfinals, and the other made the semifinals (or in Bruce Naegeli's case, the finals).
    • The 1990 Tournament of Champions had Eric Terzuolo and Erik Larsen, who were both semifinalists that year.
    • In the 1995 Tournament of Champions, two of the finalists were David Siegel and Isaac Segal, both last names pronounced the same way. Interestingly, David Siegel was Isaac Segal's immediate predecessor as champion, which Alex lampshaded in the latter's first 2 games.
  • Two Teen Tournament finals have seen same-named contestants. The 1988 Teen Tournament finals featured finalists David Javerbaum and David Cook, with Javerbaum going by "DJ" for the finals (both lost to Michael Block). 20 years later, two of the competitors in the 2008 Teen Tournament, who both made the finals, were Rachel Horn (the eventual winner) and Rachel Cooke. In this case, Rachel Cooke was introduced as Rachel "Steve" Cooke, and played as Steve, which was a nickname she was referred to at school.
  • This trope was especially needed in the 2003 Tournament of Champions, which had three contestants named Mark (Brown, Dawson, and Lee), and as they weren't seeded together, only three of that year's 10 TOC games didn't feature a contestant named Mark. Luckily, the scenario of a final round with three Marks didn't occur, as Mark Lee didn't make the semifinals, and Mark Brown didn't make the finals, while Mark Dawson eventually claimed first place in the tournament.
    • On a far bigger scale, 2005's Ultimate Tournament of Champions featured nine players that played as Michael during prior runs on the show, with only 1990 College Champion Michael Thayer opting to play as Mike this time around. Of the nine, both Michael Daunt and Michael Rooney advanced to the quarterfinals. Also, had Michael Block accepted his invite, there would have been ten Michaels in the field.
  • Averted when there are contestants named Alex, as Alex Trebek has posed answers to a number of contestants with the same first name, most notably 2015 Tournament of Champions winner and 6 day champion Alex Jacob. Johnny Gilbert has announced contestants that went by the name Johnny (as opposed to John or Jonathan) on the show as well.
  • In 2013, contestants named Tim Anderson and Stuart Anderson each became 3 day champions with winnings in the $50,000 range. Ironically, both lost their fourth game after missing Final Jeopardy! and wagering big in the process. The next time a 3 day champion with the last name Anderson competed on Jeopardy! (Sean Anderson in October 2015), he too lost after missing Final and wagering most of his money.
• Opening Narration:
  • The traditional narration by Johnny Gilbert. For the rest of Season 37 after Alex Trebek's passing, replace "the host of Jeopardy!" with "the guest host of Jeopardy!" or (in Mike Richards' case) "the executive producer of Jeopardy!". Ken Jennings' Season 38 episodes use "hosting jeopardy!" due to him filling in for Mayim Bialik.
    Johnny Gilbert: This... is... Jeopardy! Introducing today's contestants: [lists off the two challengers and their occupations and city], AND our returning champion, [gives occupation, city, and name], whose [X] day cash winnings total [amount] dollars. And now, here is the host of Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek!
  • From 1997-2000, the line "From the Sony Pictures Studios..." was added to the above. Starting in the second episode of Season 38, "From the Alex Trebek Stage at Sony Pictures Studios..." was added.
    • The 2024 UK version uses a modified version of the US version's titles, and it's narration says "from the Dock10 Studios in Salford".
  • In the 2000s, the original "now entering the studio are today's contestants" is replaced with one of five slightly different intros, depending on the day. This coincided with the contestants no longer actually entering the studio, not coincidentally around the time Eddie Timanus, a blind man, was on the show.
• On the Next: Starting midway through Season 38, episodes end by showing the three contestants who will compete on the next episode.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: After Jeopardy! did away with the five-day limit on wins in 2003, two different champions (Sean Ryan and Tom Walsh) surpassed five games fairly quickly. Too bad Ken Jennings came along later that same season, completely overshadowing both of them.