A primetime Game Show on NBC, hosted by Jane Lynch and co-created by Sean Hayes (who is also an executive producer and occasional player). It is, essentially, an informal and laid back Minigame Game where two contestants — each teamed up with a trio of celebrity guests — compete in various trivia and puzzle-based challenges for a chance to win $25,000 (and $10,000 for a celebrity's charity). Hilarity Ensues.
The series premiered on NBC on July 11, 2013, and a sixth season will premiere in 2019. GSN has also picked up reruns.
List of current and former games
By the way, every timed game lasts ninety seconds unless otherwise noted.
- Be Kind, Rewind: Jane reads a film's plot backwards and the two teams must buzz-in to say the film's name backwards as well, one word at a time per team player.
- Block Busters: No, not that game. Each member of the team is given a large block with words on them. They must pick the right words and rearrange themselves to match a movie title (six in total) that is being asked for.
- Casting Couch: It's musical chairs with throw pillows that have celebrities' faces on them. Jane asks for something relating to all but one of the celebrities while the band plays and the two teams circle around the couches. When the music stops, everyone must grab a pillow that fits. If you're stuck with the incorrect pillow, you and the pillow are out and sent to the bar and the other team scores points.
- Celebrity Fusion: Guess which two celebrities' faces were combined in this composite photo (with a Before and After-type name).
- Movie/TV Mash-Up: Introduced in the second season, it's the same game, but obviously with movie titles and their posters or TV show titles.
- Celebrity Name Game: The Bonus Round. See the trope below for more.
- Clue-Boom!: It's Catchphrase meets hot potato with an exploding bowl of confetti.note A player from each side take turns reading a card pulled from the bowl and try to get a player from their team to say the word, then passing the bowl to the other side once the correct answer has been read. Whoever has the bowl bursting in their face loses, and the winning side gets points based on how many correct answers their team got.
- Popped Quiz: Introduced in the third season, all eight players sit around a table with a rotating popcorn popper and are asked dual-choice questions when it faces one of them. Get the question right, score points. Get the question wrong, receive popcorn. Considering that we've placed this under Clue-Boom!, that's not a good thing.
- Four Letter Words: Rearrange foam letters to spell out an answer while wearing vision-blocking glasses.
- How Do You Doo?: Guess the songs that a team member is singing. Oh, and you can only hum it out with "doos".
- How Do You Doo-et? The same, except with two singers instead of one. (season 5)
- Jane's Odd-itions: Jane does a first-person monologue about a subject in a "Fame Game" vein.
- I Love a Charade: It's charades. Jane almost always sings the title of this game whenever it's introduced.
- Letter Have It!: Choose a letter from a group of blocks, and give an answer that fits the category.
- Lil' Picassos: Guess the celebrity based off a child's drawing and a clue.
- Link in the Chain: Guess words, but you must recite each previous answer in order, à la Smush.
- Lost in Translation: Guess a film based off a translation of its Market-Based Title somewhere else.
- Matchmaker: Match up members of celebrity duos.
- Marquee Madness: A combination of three movie titles and one must deduce the actor or actress all three have in common (so Mr. and Mrs. Panda Raider is Angelina Jolie for Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Kung Fu Panda, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider)
- Picture Purrfect: Identify films based off screenshots with cats photoshopped in place of humans.
- Song Sung Wrong: Jane sings a few lines of a song with the band, but deliberately messes up the last line's lyrics. Players buzz-in to see who can sing or say the correct lyrics.
- Smash the Buzzer: A list is read; smash said buzzer once something that does fit the given criteria is read. The side who gets this right will pick a player from the other team to be eliminated and sent to the on-set bar after each list.
- Timeline: Arrange the photos (often of the same person) in chronological order, Race Game-style.
- Take the Hint: It's basically Password with the
Serial Numbers Filed Off. - TV ID: A cross between Bid-a-Note and Password; bid on the number of clue words you can use to get someone to identify a TV show.
- Where Ya Goin'?: A celebrity plays taxi driver for his/her team and asks this game's phrase to his/her passenger (i.e. one of the other members of the team). The passenger tells the celebrity the real or fictional place they want to go without actually saying the location's name, so the taxi driver must guess it to get the points and a new location to figure out.
- Various disciplines of identifying magnified photos of snack foods.
Tropes playing in Jane's house tonight:
- Auto-Incorrect: Jane Lynch once returned from commercial with (paraphrased) "Welcome back to Hollywood Game Night; I'm June Launch. Damn you, autocorrect."
- Bonus Round: Celebrity Name Game (musical flourish) "With a celebrity!" (higher-pitched flourish) And as of the third season, "And with another celebrity!" (third flourish) Played by only the winning contestant and one/two of the celebrities, the player has to identify other celebrities that their partner(s) is describing. The contestant and the celebrity/ies (playing for charity) receives $1,000 for each correct answer; $25,000 for the contestant for getting ten celebrities correct within ninety seconds. Not to be confused with that other Celebrity Name Game.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Season 3 episode "Singin' in the Jane" had a final score of 96—68, with the eventual winning team dominating the first four rounds with a perfect game of Block Busters in one round and having Paul Scheer single-handedly eliminating the other team in Smash the Buzzer. Only in the last round did the eventual losing team came close in a game of I Love a Charade.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Jane's usual signoff is "If you had half as much fun as I did, then I had twice as much fun as you."
- Double Entendre: Season 5 introduces some games with blatantly suggestive names, like "Hold My Balls", "Get in My Pants", and "Nice Package".
- Drunken Master: Jason Sudeikis.
- Expy: In particular, Take the Hint and Celebrity Name Game are played almost just like Password and Pyramid, respectively.
- Game Show Host / Deadpan Snarker: Jane Lynch.
- Hidden Depths/
The Cast Showoff: Occasionally, after a cut from commercial, one of the celebrities will be playing an instrument (usually drums) with Dean Butterworth and the Scorekeepers. It becomes more the former trope if it's a celebrity not typically known for music (e.g. Michael Chiklis, who's actually an accomplished musician by the way) and much more the latter if they are (e.g. John Legend). - Home Game: The box literally says that Jane Lynch and celebrity guests are not included.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: There is a bar on-set, but are the celebrities drunk? Oh, yes. They are.
- Live Episode: A live New Year's Eve Game Night special was held on December 31, 2015. Andy Cohen hosted instead of Lynch.
- Manchild: Martin Short, especially in season 2.
- Minigame Game
- Rimshot: The house band occasionally provides one.
- Running Gag: Jane always tells the losing contestant they would not be going home empty-handed, and says they will receive a joke Consolation Prize. One notable one was the losing contestant receiving a Fiat 500 Abarth... steering wheel (the one used in Where Ya Goin'?).
- Signing Off Catchphrase: See the bottom of this page.
- Think of the Censors!: In a game of Letter Have It, the category was one-syllable words that rhyme with 'Duck'. Jane removes the "F" block from play because this is a family show.
Jane Lynch: If you had half as much fun as I did, then I had twice as much fun as you. Dean Butterworth and the Scorekeepers, play us out!
