The Price Is Right / Tropes A to E

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A

• Abhorrent Admirer: During the Bob Barker run, he was absolutely frightened of Samoan contestants—especially women, as seen here.
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game:
  • Big Money Week, and how. One game each day is played with its prize cranked up to eleven, such as Punch-A-Bunch for $250,000, 3 Strikes (for a Ferrari with six digits in its price), Grand Game for $100,000, Cliff Hangers for $250,000 ($10,000 is deducted for every step the mountain climber travels), and Plinko (with a $100,000 center slot, and later with a $200,000 center slot).
    • In 2016, games also offered bonus objectives for additional cash prizes (such as winning Range Game within a smaller margin also marked on the rangefinder, and a $1,000 bonus per-second remaining on Bonkers), hitting 45 on a bonus spin in the Showcase Showdown awarded $45,000 (because season 45), and all games on that week's Friday episode were played for cash (and slightly higher cash values than usual on games that already used it).
    • On the Friday episode in 2018, contestants received the cash value of anything they won in their pricing game as a bonus. This even applied to Pay the Rent and yes, somebody won it; add all the other prizes and bonus cash given out, bonus spin payouts (which doubled for this week), plus the Showcases, and the show gave away $340,550.23 in total — breaking the daytime version's previous record.
  • Big Money Week also got a spin-off in the form of Dream Car Week, where one game each day is played for an expensive luxury or sports car.
  • The Million-Dollar Spectaculars, of course, with several ways to win a million bucks (such as a double-Showcase winning bid, meeting a condition in a specified pricing game, and in the original Bob Barker run, getting a dollar on the bonus spin)
  • Season 50 opened with a de facto Big Money Week, with one game per-day being played for a top prize of a million dollars, including Plinko with a $200,000 center slot, Pay the Rent, Time is Money, Grand Game, and Punch-a-Bunch.
  • Since 2019, the show has run occasional prime-time specials titled The Price is Right at Night, with pricing games played for much higher stakes (a chance to win both a truck and a boat in the Money Game, a top prize of $200,000 in Time Is Money, etc.).
• Actor Allusion: Bob Barker would regularly reference his longtime stint as host of Truth or Consequences, at least through the early 1980s. As the show became increasingly forgotten about as time progressed, he quit referencing it.
  • When contestants would react to the rules of a game with skepticism, Barker would respond with a variation of, "This isn't Truth or Consequences, I'm not trying to trick you."
  • In one 1983 episodes, a contestant would reveal to Barker that she appeared on Truth or Consequences as a child, where she won $5.^note She would win $10 in her pricing game.
  • Similarly, Craig Ferguson hosting the show on April Fool's Day 2014 is rooted in his old connection to Drew Carey via The Drew Carey Show.
• Adaptation Distillation: Many international versions of the show (particularly in Europe, most notably Bruce Forsyth's 1990s revival) used a half-hour format with elements from the flopped 1994 syndicated version (particularly the Showcase's "pick a range at random, guess the total price within that range to win"), although they still used One Bid, unlike said syndicated version.
• Affectionate Parody: The "Flaky Flick" Showcases, most notably The Eggs-O-Cist (February 16, 1976), a parody of The Exorcist and a thinly-veiled Take That! to NBC.
• ...And 99¢:
  • Grocery item prices are always in dollars and cents, so seeing a price end in 99 cents is not uncommon. Prize prices are always rounded to the nearest dollar, and quite a few of them will end in 99 dollars. Notable in Clock Game, where occasional Genre Savvy contestants go straight to $x99 to try for a quick win. This worked in one contestant's favor during one of the Million Dollar Spectaculars, when they were offering a $1,000,000 bonus if she could guess both prices within 10 seconds. She got the first one on the first try and the next one in 7 seconds, nearly always going with something ending in 99 dollars, and won the million.
  • Subverted by the retired Telephone Game, whose second half involved finding the price of a (four-digit) car by choosing from three options. Two of the options were actually the prices of two-digit small prizes, with the decimal point between dollars and cents omitted.
  • The Cullen version used cents in their retail prices. The contestants' bids would not be affected by this unless it was specified that certain items up for bids could be estimated in dollars and cents (or just cents in some rare cases).
• All or Nothing: Two different versions are in play for most of the pricing games:
  • The contestant either wins everything at stake or nothing at all. (Examples: Squeeze Play, One Away, Safe Crackers, Make Your Move)
  • If the contestant is offered a chance to stop playing but turns it down, he/she will either win the big prize or lose everything won up to that point. (Examples: Grand Game, Gas Money, Temptation, It's In The Bag, Hot Seat, To The Penny)
• The Announcer:
  • The Bill Cullen version had Don Pardo during the NBC run, and Johnny Gilbert during the ABC run.
  • The four main announcers on the CBS version have been Johnny Olson (1972-85), Rod Roddy (1985-2003), Rich Fields (2004-2010), and George Gray (2011-). Following Olson's and Roddy's deaths and Fields' firing, a number of substitutes ensued until the successor was chosen.
  • Burton Richardson announced the 1994-95 nighttime version; both he and Randy West would occasionally fill in when Rod's cancer treatments left him unavailable. Richardson also filled in on one episode in December 2006 due to Fields having laryngitis that day.
• April Fools' Day: Several times, the show has held April Fools' Day showcases that begin with gag prizes, but then become a high-value prize such as a Cool Car after the contestant is let off the hook.
  • The most notable April Fools' Showcase in the Barker era (aside from 1975, in which every prize got destroyed, and 1999, which consisted entirely of toy cars... then three real Chevrolet Metros) was a "Bicentennial Salute" (a semi-regular Showcase theme that year) to Dr. John Barrett Clapinger, featuring such prizes as his books The Clapinger Report and I'm OK and I Don't Give a Flying Fig Who You Are, a boring trip to Flushing, New York, a case of Athlete's Foot, and an autographed leg cast. The Showcase is then interrupted by two women claiming to be his wife, followed by an appearance by Clapinger himself (played by Roger Dobkowitz), who was thought to have disappeared, and then fled again after getting the women caught in the turntable. The real prize was a Cadillac Eldorado.
  • 2008's gag showcase suffered from a case of Techno Babble overload, featuring prizes such as a Stato-Intellicator (which delicates stordoite cylinders, organizes acetylcolene, and can be used as a gelatin mold), a Trans-Rebounder, and a trip to Boguslovania on OCD Air ("the airline which gets you there on time, even though it's not the cleanest"). The real prize was a Corvette.
  • Drew took the festivities even further beginning in Season 37, by filling the show with gags throughout. For 2009, the April Fool's Day episode (from the Bill Cullen Studio) had everyone wearing Groucho Marx glasses, Drew being introduced as the host of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Mimi Bobeck as a model, various inappropriate displays for prizes (such as a living room set displayed in a forest) and other miscellaneous inconsistencies, the Wheel playing different sounds each time instead of beeps (including the Cliff Hangers music, which even slowed down with the wheel), a Match Game Think Music cue being used for Cover Up, the second Showcase performed facing away from the audience, and the Match Game theme playing over the credits.
  • For 2010, Mimi became the show's new executive producer, setting up an office on the turntable. Among other things, she had the pages write "Pat" on everyone's nametags so Drew wouldn't have to remember everyone's name, demoted the models to stagehands and replaced them with an odd collection of men, became One Away's "almighty sound effects lady" (complete with a steering wheel on her desk), and had Rich Fields replaced by a monkey. Additionally, Plinko's prizes were all "as seen on TV" items, Pick-A-Pair's groceries were all holiday-related items, and both Showcases were exactly the same ... until the contestants were let off the hook and a Mini Cooper was added to the second one.
  • For 2011, the show celebrated its "10,000th"...something, which Drew wouldn't specify but said that those who have been watching the show over the years will know the moment when it comes. However, it was also a bad day for almost everyone: a TV gets smashed, the turntable starts smoking, prizes malfunction, boom mics get into the shots, Drew gives way too detailed instructions on how to visit their website, the Contestant's Row displays go out, George Gray somehow ends up in the "prize bag" for Balance Game (and gets pelted in the shoulder by a tennis ball throwing machine), the screen at the back of the audience malfunctions, the Basket crashes into the floor, Rachel plows a car into Door #3, a light falls from the ceiling and makes nearly everything go out, a prize display catches on fire, and the lights above the Turntable crash down. Oh, and that 10,000th thing? Nothing.
  • For 2013, the models staged a Hostile Show Takeover as hosts, making Drew and George be the models instead. It was relatively less crazy than Drew's past April Fool's Day episodes. Though watching George Gray scamper around trying (and failing) to change into different outfits for different weather prizes (a snowmobile, surfing gear, etc.) on the fly during the Showcase round was entertaining.
  • For 2014, they pulled the old switcheroo: Drew Carey fulfilled his 5-year old prophecy and hosted The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, with George Gray as sidekick. Meanwhile on Price, Craig Ferguson hosted, Late Late Show announcer Shadoe Stevens replaced George Gray, and Ferguson's sidekicks Geoff Peterson and Secretariat the horse were the models.
  • For 2015, George Gray introduced Drew as usual at the top of the show, but Bob Barker came out instead, and guest hosted the first game.
  • In 2016, the show paid tribute to The Drew Carey Show's "Spot the Mistakes" episodes by having hidden gags and abnormalities throughout the show, and inviting viewers to document them to enter a contest for a trip to Costa Rica. Among the more noticeable ones were staff and cameras getting into shots, Money Game's board having boat symbols despite being played for a car, Cliff Hangers being literally renamed "Yodely Guy" (and the titular Guy facing in the other direction), commercial break bumpers using a different logo every time (cycling through those of other holiday and theme episodes), and the wheel's carpet going awol during the second Showcase Showdown (plus, in a more subtle change, the dollar space on the Wheel had a decimal point on the number, which had been removed in the 1980's.). The "Shocases" featured Let's Make a Deal footage playing on a laptop whilst promoting Price is Right episodes on the CBS website, and the second contestant's Showcase was briefly said to include a year's supply of dandruff shampoo.
  • 2019 went down the "future tech overload Showcase" route a la 2008 with a series of "unreal" prizes, including a weird mind-control headset and tablet, a microwave-like device that uses "meal pods", and a "trip around the world" from Los Angeles to ... Los Angeles, on a 67-hour nonstop flight. After the contestants were let off the hook, the second Showcase would deliver on the promised "trip around the world" in a more reasonable manner, with a series of consecutive trips leading from L.A. to Washington D.C., South Africa, and finally Sydney, Australia.
  • 2021 had a running gag with mannequins appearing in prize displays (and eventually George Gray's booth), which would be introduced as characters during the first Showcase. The second Showcase would have prizes inspired by actual events that had occurred on April 1, such as $1,778 in cash and a trip to New Orleans (referencing Oliver Pollock having been attributed with the first usage of a dollar sign in association with the U.S. dollar on April 1, 1778, while working as a merchant in New Orleans), and an iMac (the anniversary of Apple's founding).
  • 2022 had a series of bizarre occurrences throughout the show (many of which catching Drew off-guard): the first item up for bids—a refrigerator—had its shelves and contents fall out as soon as it was opened, a video package for a trip to South Africa had Drew and George's faces edited into its photos, a car was an item up for bids (conversely, Cliff Hangers was played for a $500 dashcam, with cheap fuzzy dice, license plate frames, and floor mats as the small prizes), martini glasses were destroyed when clinked together (prompting George to clarify that the bar set came with four glasses and not six), the Push Over blocks were stuck to each other, a ping-pong table prize included 1,008 balls (promptly dumped on the models), the Balance Game prize sack was stuck to the table, someone in a gorilla suit surprised George Gray while demonstrating a tilting platform and VR headset, Drew threw to a break by saying that the show was "only on ABC", and It's in the Bag was renamed to just "Bag"—with Jonathan Mangum revealed to be snacking on the can of beans behind one of the bags (causing Drew to literally drop and break his microphone in shock). The Showcases were relatively normal, besides Mangum and the gorilla making appearances as the "models" for cars in both of them.
• Arc Number: Barker's spiel about Range Game about how long the Rangefinder needed to be turned off started with random numbers; Bob would most often say "we can't start it again for 37 hours". (It was 48 hours for the prime time specials.)
• The Artifact: A jack was installed on one of the Big Doors' frames for The Phone Home Game's telephone. After The Phone Home Game was retired, the jack sat unused for 18 years until the set's 2007 makeover.
• Artifact Title: Before its name was changed to "Bargain Game", Barker's Bargain Bar was this in the Carey era, since... well, there was no longer a Barker. The only other then-active pricing game to have Bob's name in the title, Barker's Marker$, was instead given its 1994 New Price Is Right name of "Make Your Mark" before its first Carey playing specifically to avoid this.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Manuela Arbeláez was originally supposed to be a substitute for Brandi Sherwood, who had a baby. In February 2010, however, Brandi sued the show over being fired because she was pregnant and won over $8,000,000 in 2012...so it looks like Manuela is here to stay. (Mike Richards attempted to point out that two other models on the show became pregnant and weren't fired, but those pregnancies were under completely different circumstances; further, Shane Stirling wound up quitting in Season 36 for unrelated reasons.)
  • The announcer role is a bit of an ascended extra. Johnny merely read the copy during the early days, but starting in mid-1974, he began participating in Showcase skits and appearing on-camera regularly, and this continued for many years when Rod took over. The on-camera appearances stopped at the beginning of Season 31, but restarted with Rich not long after Drew took over as host. When George took over, the Ascended Extra nature was turned up to eleven; he functions more like a co-host than any of the previous announcers, with a lot more off-copy banter with Drew and the contestants. Drew has taken to introducing him on-camera in every episode, and George sometimes participates in the pricing games, modeling the items and holding a price tag, usually during "Most Expensive".
  • Kyle Aletter was a contestant on the show in 1983, and became a Barker's Beauty several years later.
  • Roger Dobkowitz, who started as a lowly production assistant and stagehand when the show premiered in 1972, was promoted to producer in 1984 and by 1992, after Mark Goodson's passing, was second-in-command on the show only to Bob Barker.
  • Contestants making "shout-outs" to friends and family members while spinning the wheel in the Showcase Showdown. Before it became a regular occurrence, contestants would often give these shout-outs unprovoked. As more and more contestants picked up the idea, Drew now makes it a habit to ask everyone spinning the wheel if they want to make any shout-outs.
• Audience Participation:
  • Contestants were chosen from the audience since the beginning, but the 1972 return made this part of the show as aired. Much like today, the audience yelled out bid suggestions, "Higher!" and "Freeze!" during the original series (with Bill sometimes commenting that Price was a modern-day version of the Roman circuses).
  • Averted when the Clock Game is played. The audience is cautioned to remain silent so the contestant can hear the host's "higher"/"lower" responses to the bids. Offending members are subject to ejection and possible ban from the studio, as happened in the Barker era at least once. Ironically, early in the game's life, the audience was allowed to shout "Higher!" or "Lower!", but this practice was stopped because of its distracting nature.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The original set for Pick-a-Pair was a miniature Ferris wheel with one item on each platform, complete with carnival music playing. However, due to the way it was situated, only half the items were visible to the contestant at once, which caused the game to usually take much longer than it should have. The game was put on hiatus for two years before the much more familiar, single-row setup debuted.

B

• Berserk Button: When writing about or discussing Price, remember that the "Showcase Showdown" has three contestants competing against each other by spinning a giant wheel while the "Showcase" has two contestants bidding on...well...Showcases. Mixing these up often enrages certain fans, and Drew Carey himself brought this up on March 8, 2012 right before the beginning of the Showcase.
  Drew Carey: This is the Showcase round, not the Showcase Showdown as everybody calls it; that's when you spin the wheel. This is the Showcase round.
  • A mild version: For a good portion of the '80s, the show offered season tickets for Los Angeles' baseball, football, basketball, and hockey teams as prizes, usually having contestants match the season ticket price to the correct sport. This prize was rarely won, and Bob Barker noticeably had a harder and harder time hiding his annoyance at contestants' inability to price the tickets correctly. This generally took the form of him exasperatedly chastising the losing contestant for not realizing that the fewer home games a team played, the lower the price would be.
• Big "NO!":
  • The hosts frequently yell "No!" whenever the contestant guesses the wrong price.
  • Bob had one of these in reaction to two separate cheating incidents. The first was on October 6, 1986 when a contestant looked under one of the shells in Shell Game, and the second was on April 4, 2005 when a contestant pushed the button that opened Flip Flop's answer prop.
• Big Red Button: Used in several pricing games, including in Range Game to stop the rangefinder, and the reveal mechanism on 10 Chances and Flip Flop. The one used in Split Decision was later adapted for Ten Chances after the original numbered buttons broke.
• Big Win Sirens: The "clang-clang-clang, whoop, Whoop, WHOOP" heard when a large cash prize is won or a contestant wins both Showcases is one of the most recognizable examples.
• Bittersweet Ending: Whenever all six pricing games are lost but ends with a Double Showcase Win. Known to have happened on a Carey Million Dollar Spectacular in March 2008.
• Blatant Lies: Bob had a habit of declaring "historic moments" despite the slightly unusual circumstance having happened countless times before (most notably, every time that the four bidders in Contestant's Row each ended up bidding $1 over the other). In 1997, GSN did a promo which showed a supposed "historic moment" in late 1982 occurring on April 15, 1975 (the promo shows their tapedates)...although it also happened even earlier on November 17 and 29, 1972 as well as an early-1976 James episode.
  "Be careful what you say...Game Show Network is watching."
• Blinking Lights of Victory:
  • Whenever a contestant wins a game, the lights making up a number display or parts of the stage props blink and flash. With a big dollar amount from $10,000 and higher, the amount won often flashes on the screen. If a contestant in the 1970s up to around the end of Barker's tenure won both showcases at the end of the show, the words "DOUBLE SHOWCASE WINNER" would flash on screen. In at least one instance, a glitch caused the ENTIRE screen to flash white (The white was the color for keying in the graphic).
  • In a subversion, the short-lived "Professor Price" had moving characters and props on the game structure, so on both of its wins, when a player won, not only would lights surrounding the price of the prize blink, an owl would flap its wings, a cuckoo clock's hands would go crazy, and the Professor would continue nodding.
• Book Ends: Any Number was the first and last pricing game played with Bob Barker as host. On the June 26, 2023 episode, it was also the final pricing game played at Television City before the show's move to Glendale, California for season 52.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Present in the game "Flip Flop", which presents a four-digit total. The game has three options that invoke this trope: the contestant may "flip" (i.e., reverse the first two digits to get the right price), "flop" (reverse the second two), or "flip flop" (reverse both sets).
• Brick Joke:
  • Bob Barker normally introduced the Check Game by talking about how often contestants struggle to figure out how to properly play it. (The price of the prize and the amount of money written on the check must add up to between $5-6,000. If it does, the contestant wins the prize and the amount of money on the check. If they lose, the still get the giant novelty check with a large "VOID" stamped across it as a Consolation Prize).
  • A contestant who wore a shirt proclaiming himself to be "The Price Is Right's first male model" (which, according to the Golden Road timeline, isn't quite technically true) ended up being a model in a Showcase later in the show.
• Butt-Monkey: Squeeze Play during the Barker years (until around 2004), Rich Fields during Season 37 (and maybe Summer 2010), That's Too Much! during the Carey years.

C

• Call-Back: Drew sometimes gives the winning Showcase price tag to the winner, much like Bill Cullen did to winners of the bidding games on his show.
• The Cameo:
  • Several Goodson-Todman hosts made walk-ons to promote the debuts of their new shows, including Bert Convy (for both versions of Tattletales), Bob Eubanks (for the revival of Card Sharks) and Ray Combs (for the revival of Family Feud). Eubanks was even called down as a "contestant". Sometimes, they would also come on for other reasons, such as Charles Nelson Reilly congratulating Bob on the show's 3rd Anniversary.
  • Before she was a well-known movie star, Meg Ryan appeared in one of the Showcases in 1983.
  • Bill Cullen made an appearance in 1982 plugging his new show "Child's Play". Oddly enough, no mention was made that he was the original host of the program during the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Bob Goen appeared in 1989 to plug daytime "Wheel of Fortune" moving from NBC to CBS. It was the only known time a non-Goodson game show was promoted on the show.
  • Although phased out in the 1990s, walk-ons started occurring again in the Carey era. While most are inoccuous enough (e.g., Country Music singers promoting country-themed prizes/Showcases on the episode before the Academy of Country Music Awards, which are also on CBS), some have been derided by the fanbase. One notorious walk-on involved Jack Wagner popping up repeatedly to complain about the noise; he spent a great deal of time Chewing the Scenery, even pretending to "flash" the contestants before deciding that he liked the noise — which he demonstrated by beating on a drum set in a Showcase.
  • Until his death in December 1992, series co-creator Mark Goodson would occasionally appear at season premieres and other milestones. His daughter Marjorie Goodson appeared in his place afterwards; game show fans will recognize her as the Lovely Assistant from the Alex Trebek hosted Classic Concentration.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Come on down!"
  • "A NEW CAR!"
    • The Mexican edition was famous for rendering the previous line as "¡¡UN AUTO!!"
  • "All this can be yours, if the price is right."
  • Don Pardo and Johnny Gilbert: "Price authority: (name of manufacturer/distributor).
  • "Dennis James saying don't miss the show next week, 'cause if you do then we'll miss you."
  • "This is Bob Barker, reminding you to help control the pet population: have your pets spayed or neutered!" Carried on by Drew as a homage.
  • Of Range Game: "Once it's stopped, we can't start it again for 37 hours."^note Changed to "48 hours" for primetime specials. Drew tried to carry on this phrase, but said "days" by mistake and has not attempted the phrase since.
  • If Contestants spinning the wheel closely miss a needed number, Bob would often say 'You ate one too many (or one too few) Wheaties this morning'.
  • Drew Carey's advice to the final contestant called down: "This is your one chance to bid, don't blow it!"
  • "THAT'S TOO MUCH!" ^note (The phrase needed to stop the game of the same name.)
  • Another contestant example for One Away: "Gentleman/Ladies/Oh Mighty Sound Effects Lady, do I have X numbers right?"
  • "And the actual retail price is (pause).."
  • Drew during a pricing game right-or-wrong reveal: "One, two, three, give it to him/her!"
  • For George Gray: "Hi, Mama May!"
  • For much of Barker's tenure, he would close the tag as the show went to commercial by ending with the phrase "...after we do a little business with you" or some variation of the phrase.
• Celebrity Edition:
  • Subverted with the Celebrity Weeks introduced in 2012, where a different celebrity each day gets to help out with the proceedings, everyone's winnings in the pricing games (plus a special spin multiplied by $100) are awarded to a charity they represent, and they present the Showcases. Aside from that, it's business as usual. The May 2016 "salute to CBS's reality show franchises" specials had a similar format, except that there was a larger pool of "celebrities", and they were called down alongside the civilian players (much like the "couples" episodes sometimes done on the daytime version), and the celebrity whose partner won the Showcase got the value of their overall winnings donated to charity.
  • Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn appeared on the October 30, 2017 episode to promote A Bad Moms Christmas. Unlike other celebrity episodes, this was a minor Hostile Show Takeover; they replaced the female models, called down contestants instead of George Gray, and even ran props on occasion (Hahn popped out from behind Squeeze Play, and Kristen Bell ran the cash register on Grocery Game). There were also interstitial segments featuring them trying out things like Plinko and the wheel.
  • On Gameshow Marathon, The Price Is Right was the opening round of a primetime celebrity tournament spanning across seven game shows. In this case, a variation of the half-hour format (but with the Showcase Showdown still intact) was played, and the winner in the Showcase moved to Finalist's Row. a general rule set much closer to several foreign versions.
  • The first "true" celebrity edition of the actual show (with celebrities playing instead of civilians) was a primetime special on November 2, 2020 with the cast of The Neighborhood as contestants. All games were played for cash.
  • When Bill Cullen's version did a Channel Hop from NBC to ABC, a celebrity was employed to play for members of the studio audience.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • In the early days, Bob was a lot more upbeat and jovial. Around the time his wife died, he became much more of a Deadpan Snarker although he still got a few laughs in. He grew increasingly curmudgeonly and testy in the 1990s and 2000s.
  • Bob Barker's hair, which was brown when the show began, but in October 1987 he let it go to its natural white color, a very controversial move at the time that was not supported by Mark Goodson, CBS or the show's sponsors. However, he received a standing ovation from the audience in his first appearance with the new hair and the ratings stayed strong. By the time he retired in 2007, he hosted more seasons with white hair (20) than he did with brown hair (15).
  • Rod Roddy was very high energy and enthusiastic from 1986 to about 1992, when his delivery became much more subdued.
  • Similarly, Drew began his tenure as an upbeat sort who was learning the ropes (even if he was "winging it" by refusing to study the pricing games or attend rehearsals), so the fanbase gave him a pass for Season 36. Carey began creeping about in Season 37, as exemplified by his immature need to smash groceries, but he became jovial again in Season 39 (presumably due to losing so much weight over the taping break- he had a brush with death and was spurred into becoming thin). He seems to show more enthusiasm when contestants are winning a lot.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Mostly subverted. There are only six known occasions of cheaters during the Bob Barker era:
  • October 6, 1986: A contestant playing Shell Game lifted one of the shells to place her first chip. Although the ball was not there, she realized her mistake and placed the chip by the same shell she had just looked under. One Aside Glance from Barker later, she moved it to another shell upon his request, then won two more chips. Bob then made a funny moment with the "exciting" reveal.
  • October 7, 1988: A contestant playing Three Strikes almost pulled out the third Strike but shoved it back in. She later drew the Strike anyway.
  • February 28, 1992 (unproven): A contestant playing Three Strikes for a Porsche had two chips left (the number and the third Strike) and allegedly very nearly pulled the Strike out of the bag...but suddenly dunked it back in and pulled out the number. Despite it never being proven that she cheated, Three Strikes + wasn't played for the rest of Season 20 and the Strike discs became white with red X's for a brief time.
  • December 1, 1992: A contestant playing Pathfinder briefly touched a digit with his foot and moved it back, causing the digit (which was the correct choice at that point of the game) to light up. (To be fair, this could just be the result of the technician having an itchy trigger finger.)
  • April 4, 2005: A contestant playing Flip Flop hit the price reveal button without actually changing the price. Barker, after declaring that "I'm going home" and calling the contestant a "troublemaker", gave him the prize anyway. When this happened again in the Drew Carey era- albeit after the contestant had made their choice and pushed the button without delay- the button was relocated out of direct view and changed to a less enticing pushpin to avoid anymore mishaps.
  • October 13, 2006: A contestant playing the Showcase Showdown grabbed onto the wheel, slowing it down after she spun it and got the dollar. A second contestant later tied her and not only did she get no extra money from her bonus spin, she also lost the spinoff.
  • And a variant: In 2008, a lady played Plinko and won $30,000, but it was discovered that the producers had "rigged" the game with fishing line so the chip would land in the $10,000 space every time — however, this rigging was done entirely for a promo, and they forgot to "un-rig" it once they were done. They later stopped tape and had her play with the normal board, where she won only $3,000... but to be fair, they awarded her the $30,000 she had "won" before that.
  • December 18, 2018: A contestant playing 3 Strikes (now refurbished to use actual baseballs instead of flat chips) not once, but twice peeked inside the bag and tried to drop a strike ball before fully pulling it out, much like the 1992 incident. Fortunately, Drew was paying close attention and forced her to pull out the strike both times.
• Chroma Key: Used for several parts of the show:
  • The old (1972-2014) Clock Game board had a section where a shot of the contestant or the prizes could be superimposed. It was originally blue, but this led to an unexpected problem when the set was redesigned in 2003: the pink-purple-blue pattern on the wall behind the game interfered with the Chroma Key. A quick fix was initially made by putting a yellow circle behind the board for two playings, then the board itself was repainted with the Chroma key section becoming green.
  • The original (1976-86) Danger Price board also had a section to superimpose a shot of the contestant or the prizes on.
  • Season 37 (2008-09) saw the replacement of the long-used "trip skins" (the giant artwork-filled displays seen in the Big Doors whenever a trip was offered) with green screens of the same shape. Due to technical problems (they couldn't be used in Door #3, which is green) and lackluster reactions from fans and contestants alike (only the home viewer could see the display; the audience and the contestants only saw a green wall) led to them being replaced by decorative arrangements built around LCD screens, and the addition of a new platform at the back of the audience with a similar screen.
  • The "flashing lights" border that was introduced in 1975 used chroma key to insert the flashing lights around the image of the audience. When Drew took over, the flashing lights began to be inserted with CGI.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The four numerical displays in Contestant's Row are separated into red, blue, yellow, and green.
• Comically Missing the Point: During the brief period of the Carey era when Bargain Game was still known as Barker's Bargain Bar, Drew would explain to the contestant that the game was named after "Ezekiel Barker", the "founder" of The Price Is Right. The fandom took this and ran with it.
• Commuting on a Bus: The now-retired Phone Home Game took an annual hiatus from early November until late January due to the "Christmas Memories"-themed Home Viewer Showcase taking place during those months.
• Confetti Drop: When someone wins $1,000,000 on the primetime specials, or $100,000 on Pay the Rent. Balloons were also released at the end of the Season 35 premiere (which, coincidentally, ended with a contestant winning both Showcases and setting the then-current winnings record for the daytime version ^note it's now the fourth highest win).
• Consolation Prize:
  • The Giant Novelty Checks used in Check Game are given to the players regardless of whether they win or lose, with a nice big "VOID" stamped on losers' checks. Barker joked that they always found voided checks in the trash outside the studio. At least one of these checks, complete with VOID and framed, turned up on eBay in 2007. It went for $50.
  • Drew Carey will sometimes give a contestant that loses in a grocery based-game one of the grocery items as a consolation prize (potato chips, whipped cream, etc.).
  • The "contestants not appearing on stage" prizes (for those who get called down but don't make it out of Contestants' Row), always plugged before the second Showcase Showdown. In Season 41, the plug was ousted and the consolation prize became an unstated $300.
  • Drew Carey has taken to reminding losing contestants that they at least get whatever it was they had bid on, which gets on some fans' nerves due to it being pretty much the only thing he says to losing players. (This, despite the fact that virtually every other game show host will tell bonus-round losing contestants what they had already won in their recap.)
  • Very early in the show's history, Grocery Game contestants were automatically awarded with supplies of the groceries used in the game and were awarded $100 if they didn't go over $7, even if they didn't reach $6.75. Those could double as consolation prizes for contestants who lost the game.
  • One episode featured Kathy Griffin making an appearance in the Showcases to plug the Grammys (she's won in comedy categories). When there was a double overbid, they decided to give both contestants tickets to the show anyway.
• Cool Old Guy: Even as Barker surpassed 80, Barker had this air to him as thousands of college-age contestants dreamed of meeting him. Also true of both Johnny Olson (who stayed with the show until shortly before his death at age 75) and Rod Roddy (who was 66).
• Covering Up Your Gray: Discussed by Bob Barker in an interview with the L.A. Times. He started graying early, but disliked how it looked and spent years using tints and dyes to cover it up. However, he finally decided to just go with the gray, debuting the look in the episode that aired on October 15, 1987. Episodes that had been recorded while his hair was still dyed but not aired featured a brief overdubbed piece from him at the very start explaining this when they were broadcast.
• Crossover:
  • The show held a "Salute to CBS Soaps" on the week of June 27-July 1, 1983, where actors from As the World Turns, Guiding Light, The Young and the Restless, and Capitol appeared as guests.
  • Bob, Rod, and some of the models appeared on Family Feud (which at the time preceded Price on CBS and even taped in the same studio), competing against the cast of The Young and the Restless and beating them senseless. The first Feud episode that week even copied the Price intro, and had Bob and his team "come on down" out of the studio audience while Feud announcer Gene Wood called their names. Said Y&R team was led by Doug Davidson, who later helmed a version of Price which got beaten senseless.
  • The 2001 Yes, Dear episode The Ticket had Jimmy appear on The Price is Right where he tries to get the money to pay for his ticket by cheating on the show, namely by trying to move the Showcase Showdown wheel to the $1.00 spot from behind. Bob reprimands him for attempting to cheat but says he can't stay mad at a guy like him, telling him to stay around after taping for a game of Plinko.
  • Pam & Donna get tickets to a Price Is Right taping on the June 17, 2009 episode of The Bold and the Beautiful and Donna winds up playing winning a Double Showcase on the June 18 episode.
  • In the 2016 Scorpion episode "The Fast and the Nerdiest", Sylvester goes on the show and winds up playing Pay the Rent. Because he's Good with Numbers, he's able to rattle off the correct solution before Drew even has a chance to explain the rules of the game.
  • For sweeps in May 2016, the show did a crossover week with the current Let's Make a Deal: each day, a game from Deal was played on Price and vice versa, with their rules modified to add a pricing component to them, which included Car Pong (bounce a ping pong ball into the designated cup to win. A Danger Price-styled small prize portion was used to earn additional time), Go For a Spin (guess the correct vertical orientation of the price to remove a Zonk from the wheel), Gold Rush (basically Any Number meets Gas Money: pick the 5 numbers of the price of the car from 7 to collect bailout money, make two mistakes and its over), Accelerator (send a ball into a roulette wheel to collect the letters C-A-R and earn bailout money, but spaces for letters collected turn into Zonk spaces that deduct the money; order grocery items Hole in One style to earn turns), and Smash for Cash (basically Grand Game with one more item than usual, a $20,000 top prize, and more piggy bank destruction). The two shows did it again in 2020.
  • Later that month, CBS aired a series of three primetime specials that featured "superfans" of Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race playing alongside past participants from said shows. Each episode featured approriate flourishes, decorations, and small prizes that tied into the themes of each show (the Survivor episode had camping-related products come up as small prizes, and the first item up for bids was an electric fire pit that was promoted as being good for hosting your own Tribal Council), cameos by their respective hosts, and referencing their elimination procedures when the contestants were culled by the Showcase Showdowns.
  • With The Talk on their show several times. The hosts have made appearances on their own a few times. Julie Chen appeared during the Big Brother primetime special since she is the host of Big Brother. On February 20, 2013; Sharon Osbourne made a special appearance on the show. Also in 2015, Sheryl Underwood made a surprise appearance on the show and made another appearance in 2016 during a CBS Daytime sketch involving The Price Is Right.
  • On January 4, 2019 the show had another crossover with The Bold and the Beautiful as it marked 8,000 episodes on the air. The episode had a few of the main cast members presenting prizes and a special showcase.
  • On December 22, 2019 the show had a primetime crossover with SEAL Team where the cast from that show was playing along with every contestant for charity.
  • On January 9, 2020 the show had a crossover with Carol's Second Act where that show's cast acted as the models.
  • A primetime special on November 2, 2020 had the cast of The Neighborhood as the contestants.
  • On January 19, 2022 the show had appearances from the cast of The Talk
• Cross Promotion: The show has occasionally done cross-promotions for other CBS programming, typically by having actors or hosts appearing in a themed Showcase or elsewhere, such as, for instance, random cameos from The Young and the Restless actors (with Drew inevitably noting that they film at Television City too), having Pauley Perrette and Brian Dietzen doing a Showcase to plug the 300th episode of NCIS, and a "30 Years of CBS Daytime at #1" celebration. If CBS is broadcasting a special event soon (such as the Grammy or ACM Awards, or a major sporting event), the show will inevitably bring it up in some way, if not use it as the basis for a special episode (such as a salute to the Super Bowl — complete with their NFL theme music replacing the usual, and the polarizing "College Rivals" format used to coincide with the NCAA basketball tournament). Expect tickets to said event to possibly be included as a bonus in a Showcase.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Holly Hallstrom. It didn't help that the guys behind the scenes often tried to invoke it by messing with the prizes (e.g., setting the seat on a bicycle too high).
  • Janice Pennington had her moments too, most often accidentally driving prize cars (or the train) into the wall. Her most well-remembered incident is probably from the game of Lucky Seven during the 26th season premiere, when the prize Ford Windstar she drove onstage had a smashed passenger door hanging open from her side-swiping the wall on the way out. The sight of the damaged Windstar knocked Barker and the rest of the crew so far out of the loop that Rod Roddy forgot to read the ad copy for the contestant.^note This proved a boon for the contestant, as the minivan had optional features they initially didn't account for. So Bob reset the contestant to $7 on the third digit, and they ultimately won the car.

D

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The Doug Davidson version did not use the One Bid round, but a handful of contestants still stopped in Contestant's Row when they were called down.
  • During Drew's first two seasons a good number of contestants still referred to him as "Bob".
• Didn't Think This Through: The short-lived "Professor Price"; since it was quiz-based, Bob had to tell the folks in the audience that they could not yell out answers to help the contestant. Since TPIR relies heavily on Audience Participation, this went over as well as you'd expect and the game died a quick death. (Clock Game, despite also calling for quiet from the audience, doesn't have this problem because a smart contestant can win easily via binary search, and a loud audience would only distract from this.)
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Remixes of the show's theme song have made appearances as a prize cue once in a while, most recently in a piano-based arrangement for certain prizes, and a techno-ish version used on electronics such as video game consoles.
  • One time, when the prize was a piano, Mandel Ilagan (inventor of "1/2 Off", and producer on Whammy and Family Game Night) appeared playing it, with him playing the "Splendido" cue instead of a normal cue, and he played the main theme as the show went to break.
  • The Cover Up wrong numbers running gag had a literal example one day, by putting sheet music of the first five notes on the cards.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • Numerous contestants who, due to their excitement over winning or just getting on stage, will grab Barker, bearhug him, etc. Barker will invariably joke afterward that he had been injured, although he almost always comes away unhurt. This most often is attributed to female Samoan contestants, with many of these examples appearing on online video sharing services. Carey didn't carry on this joke after taking over as host.
  • When a contestant spins the Big Wheel with great strength (causing it to spin very fast and thus take longer than usual to stop), Barker — in addition to making jokes about the show possibly having to pre-empt other programs, usually The Young and the Restless — would sometimes remark that the contestant's vigorous spin will cause the wheel to come off its moorings.
  • Several game props have been damaged through the years. These have happened by contestants trying to complete an objective but breaking the prop, or the host trying to dislodge a stuck prop.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect:
  • In Cover Up, rather than trying to get the price right on the first try, it might be beneficial to leave the first number (or one of the first two numbers) incorrect in hopes of guaranteeing yourself another try and eliminating some of the wrong choices if you get any of the other digits, although you also run the risk of getting no numbers right on your first guess if you try this trick, as happened to at least one contestant over the years.
  • In One Away, getting either one or four numbers right on the first try is better than two or three. You have a better chance of making the needed corrections (1 in 5 vs. 1 in 10), and since the first number is usually the easiest one to get right, the odds shift a bit more in your favor.
  • In Line 'em Up, having zero correct numbers on your first attempt is often better than one or two. The middle prize has only two possibilities, so you already know which digit is correct. Guessing the thousands' digit of a car is easier than the others and that now becomes a 50/50 guess between the other two choices. It just comes down to the tens' digit - also a 50/50 guess.
  • Step Up is based around this trope. After picking the first prize, the next prizes need to be more expensive than the previous one, but not so expensive that there is no room to continue.
• Downer Ending:
  • Double Overbids in the Showcase, especially after a Perfect Show. An "El Skunko" is worse, being any episode in which all six games are lost followed by a Double Overbid. ^note As of July 2015, there have been 7 known El Skunkos in the show's history - 2/23/2006, 11/3/2006, 12/18/2007, 3/31/2010, 5/24/2010, 10/28/2010, and 11/10/2010.
  • Drew tends to treat very close overbids as this, going as far as to ignore the contestant who did not overbid.
  • At least two contestants have overbid by $1 on their Showcases. One of these also led to a Double Overbid.
  • In one of the first $1,000,000 Spectaculars, a player just barely missed the $1,000,000 win on his bonus spin of the Big Wheel. It looked as if he could've blown on the Big Wheel and it would've clicked into place.
  • On Dennis James' third-to-last show (taped March 1, 1977), a contestant playing Grocery Game lost by one penny. This also happened at least once during the Barker era, with one audience member yelling for Bob to give the contestant the prize anyway, and happened again during the 2011 Thanksgiving show.
  • January 20, 2010: One contestant bid $58,500 on a Showcase including a Porsche. Drew was hesitant to read the actual retail price out loud. The contestant overbid by $176.
• The Drag-Along: Drew has noted that sometimes people who are really eager to be on the show will bring their friends with them on the trip so they aren't by themselves, only for the friends to end up on the stage. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, these people are completely unfamiliar with the game itself and contribute to some its most infamous pricing game moments.
• Dramatic Irony: On the Yolanda episode, Bob appreciated the raucous welcome he got from the audience. He was completely unaware of Yolanda's Wardrobe Malfunction until someone notified him during a commercial break.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • One playing of Cliff Hangers in the syndicated 1970s nighttime series in 1976, when host Dennis James yelled out "There goes Fritz!" after the mountain climber's fall... not realizing that Janice Pennington's husband Fritz had disappeared while mountain climbing in Afghanistan. Pennington spent the rest of the episode backstage crying.
  • On March 10, 1983, Bob claims that it's the first time Blank Check (now known as Check Game) is played by a male contestant. He tells the contestant that he hopes he understands the game, because "the women have a hard time" with it. All the women in the audience boo Bob, and when the contestant asks Bob to repeat his explanation, Bob chides the "liberated women" for cheering. Later in the show, during a playing of Trader Bob, Holly Halstrom writes on a drawing pad, "WOMEN UNDERSTAND BLANK CHECK!!!". Once again, the women in the audience cheer. Bob responds by writing "BOO".
• Dull Surprise: Drew tends to undersell the accomplishment of the Showcase winner in order to get to the outro spiel. Particularly in one case, where a contestant got the Showcase price right on the nose for the first time in years and he seemed very unexcited about it. However, that time was somewhat justified as Drew suspected the contestant of cheating, and actually thought that the show wasn't going to air at all. ^note He didn't, he simply pulled a "Michael Larson" and memorized the prices through countless hours of watching the show.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • The catch phrase. When Price moved to ABC, a celebrity was employed to play for people in the audience. When the celebrity called an audience member's name (as per drawn cards), they were told to "come on down" to a waiting area adjacent to the stage.
  • One Cullen episode had future announcer Johnny Olson filling in for Don Pardo (who was out with laryngitis).
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Very early Cullen episodes had the possibility that a four-way loss could occur through overbidding on every item up for bids. A rule was quickly introduced where, at Cullen's discretion and to guarantee a daily/weekly champion, certain items would go back to the contestants for bidding if all four contestants overbid. In addition, a few early shows (including one which can be found at Shokus Video) used five games instead of the standard four.
  • The 1972 return. First, the audience didn't show much excitement until Johnny Olson told the first four contestants to "stand up" (not "come on down", but stand up and stay in place — and after all four names were called, then "come on down"). Upon Bob's entrance, the very first item up for bids was a fur coat. The first two pricing games revealed themselves as Bob and the contestant approached them, and had a brown podium nearby for the contestant to stand behind (this only lasted the very first day). Any Number had an actual piggy bank prop brought out, which remained until partway through Week 2. The Showcase podiums had no "description" plaque until after the commercial, and the prices were revealed by a push-button flap (also only used on day 1). Also on the very first episodes, Johnny Olson gave the Title Drop after every Item Up for Bids, instead of only during the Showcase; the One Bid was always done left-to-right, instead of starting with the newest contestant first and then wrapping around; and most of the pricing games did not have official names yet. These were all ironed out after the first week.
  • For the first two or three months of the 1972 return, an IUFB music cue was sometimes used when a new car was announced as a prize. This went away once use of cues became consistent.
  • Early in the first season, the prizes in the showcases were not necessarily presented from least expensive to most expensive. It was common for a showcase that had a car in it to simply start right away with the car, for example.
  • No bonuses were given out for perfect bids in the One Bid portion of the game. These did not start until 1977.
  • The Big Win Sirens were slightly different in the early years; the klaxon was a separate sound effect that played on top of the regular dings.
  • The Big Wheel looked much different when it premiered in 1975; the so-called "Rainbow Wheel" (used for an "anniversary week" of hour-long shows from September 8-12) was much smaller and entirely visible on-screen, and the contestants who spun it were seated in Contestant's Row instead of standing in front of it. When the modern wheel premiered a few months later, the beeping sound was different and there originally weren't green sections until December 1978, when the Bonus Spin for getting $1.00 was introduced. Also, contestants for the first few weeks were not required to get the wheel all the way around one time for the spin to count.
  • Rod Roddy's wardrobe was pretty much a standard suit and tie in his first few years. It wasn't until the show returned from summer break that he showed the cast and crew the colorful suits he got while vacationing in Thailand that Bob Barker suggested he incorporate them into his wardrobe and the flashy suits became his trademark.
  • On a wider scale, the show's first few years were far more staid and formal. Most of the contestants were housewives; the set was mainly brown and earth tones; and there was an overall more formal feel. Over time, it hit a sort of Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: the contestant pool widened significantly; the showcases went from generic prize bundles to clever skits; more pricing games were added, many of which required more interaction from the contestant; and the audience became more involved by shouting out advice to the contestants. By the end of the decade, the show's overall tone had pretty much solidified into what it is now.
  • Also true of individual pricing games, many of which are discussed on the "Game Show" subpage of this trope.
  • At the start of taping for Season 37, the Big Wheel was refurbished for HD and adopted a tasteful new color scheme with green borders, violet walls, and dark purple spaces, seemingly meant to go with the now-discarded Season 36 set.^note (the one with the circled diamonds and the violet turntable walls. The Million Dollar Spectaculars and Season 37 proper replaced this with a squares motif and a blue turntable instead) When Drew first saw it, he did not like it. In the first episode it was used, he shrugged it off by claiming that it was "accidentally painted purple", and even called it "the big ugly wheel" after someone won $1,000. After five shows with the "Purple Wheel", it was briefly replaced for the sixth taping by a Stunt Double of the Barker-era wheel from the touring Price Is Right Live! casino show, while the actual wheel was re-painted with black borders and spaces, and orange walls carrying the aforementioned squares motif. All of the affected episodes were moved later into the season.
• El Spanish "-o": "El Cheapo", a term Bob used that referred to a card of less than $10 (e.g. cards valued from 01 to 09) whenever it appears on playing of Money Game. Contestants still still use the El Cheapo nickname to this day.
• Enforced Plug: Some items up for bid come with a supply of a grocery product as a bonus. We get a close-up shot of a model holding the product while the announcer delivers a plug for it. The entire show is a series of enforced plugs, but what pushes this practice further into this territory is that there is never a logical connection between the item up for bids and the bonus; in one instance, kayak equipment came with a supply of drain opener. Drew heavily lampshaded this during his first season ("Muffins and a range? Finally, two prizes that go together!").
• Episode Code Number:
  • For the 1972 version, the daytime series originally used a "D" designation corresponding to the week number and day of that week — for example, #6543D was the Wednesday show of the 654th week (aired June 10, 1987). Once the show reached week #1000 in May 1996, they switched the "D" to a "K" and went from #9995D to #0011K, skipping a week. Some fans may refer to "K" episodes with their "D" variation in parentheses — e.g., Barker's last show was #4035K (or #14025D). After #9993K (aired November 23, 2022), the letter advanced from "K" to "L" starting with #0011L (December 5, 2022). Because the last digit represents the day of the week, there are no daytime production numbers ending in digits 6-9 or 0. When a week only has one new episode (such as a Fourth of July special), it will typically always end in 1 even if it is not scheduled for a Monday.
  • The first week taped in 1972 used a second number according to the taping order. For example, #0011D was also called #0101-1.
  • Exceptions to the rule include #0013D(R) ^note (the replacement September 6, 1972 episode; the original #0013D was shelved after it was found out one of the contestants was ineligible), #58XXD ^note (originally numbered #5811D and slated to air on September 23, 1985; it was replaced by another #5811D for unknown reasons) and #1513X ^note (originally numbered #1513K and slated to air on September 27, 2000; due to Contestant's Row shuffling around without anyone noticing, it was shelved and replaced with a second #1513K).
  • The 1972-80 nighttime show used a three-digit number followed by "N", for nighttime. 39 episodes were cranked out each season from 1972-1977, and from 1977-1980, that number was reduced to 35 each, totaling an even 300 episodes for the run.
  • The Kennedy nighttime version used a system similar to the daytime version, except with a "N" at the beginning, followed by a space. For example, the Friday show of the 10th week was labeled #N 0105.
  • The Davidson nighttime version used a system similar to the 1972-80 version, albeit with four digits (#0015N being, for example, the 15th episode).
  • The 1986 nighttime specials used three digits followed by "P". Nighttime specials from 2002 (the "Salutes" series) onward, including The Price is Right at Night, used the same method, but with "SP". The sole exception was the 30th Anniversary special taped in Las Vegas, which is labeled #0001LV.
• Escort Mission: Cliff Hangers, in a unique way.
• Exact Words:
  • A contestant playing Race Game on June 1, 2011 took Drew's advice to "throw down the price tags" a little too literally, throwing the tags haphazardly on the floor in front of the prizes instead of hanging them on their hooks. As a result, the game operator couldn't tell what was where, so she was told that she only had one right instead of two. The confusion resulted in her winning all four prizes.
  • During "That's Too Much", if the contestant says "stop" or the like instead of the titular phrase, Drew will usually wait in silence until the contestant remembers what exactly they have to say to end the game (sometimes he points his microphone at the game title on the board to clue the contestant in.) During his tenure, Bob Barker demanded that the contestant shout the Catchphrase, and the contestant would get booed if they didn't.
  • The new pricing game Back to '72, billed as being exclusive to Season 50, was taken out of the rotation as expected at the start of Season 51. However, right on cue for the first episode of 2023, the game came back as Back to '73 — with its The New Price is Right logo replaced with the normal Price is Right logo, and was later renamed Back to '74 in 2024.