Trivia / The Oprah Winfrey Show

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The infamous "Everybody Gets a Car" giveaway was a publicity stunt arranged by General Motors to bring attention to their new Pontiac G6 sedan. Oprah herself wasn't giving away the cars to the audience. Additionally, as car blog Autoblog clarified in a 2014 retrospective, the audience members didn't leave the show with new cars, they picked the cars up later at local Pontiac dealers - as is normal procedure when contestants win new cars on game shows.
• Channel Hop: In Britain moved to BBC Two from Channel 4.
• Colbert Bump: Arguably the Trope Codifier.
• Missing Episode: There was an episode dedicated to the Duggar family that was filmed in 2006 that got cancelled and has never seen the light of day. The production team received an email that alleged oldest son Josh had molested a handful of girls (some of whom were his sisters) over the course of a few years. They contacted the state of Arkansas and cut all ties.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Being the biggest, she is usually the target of a few. The most common are of her throwing a fashion designer (Tommy Hilfiger or Liz Claiborne) off her show for saying that they don't design their clothes for black people, and another rumor claiming that there was a Missing Episode featuring Donald Trump containing a line that he would run for president with an eerie level of prescience decades before it came true^note Specifically with the quote: "If I were to run, I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they'd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific." Note that most people claim the line to have been from an episode in 1988, and Fox News wouldn't be launched until 1996.
• Throw It In!: Allegedly, her mother named her "Orpah" but it was written down incorrectly on her birth certificate. For the record, Orpah is a name from the Book of Ruth; Orpah and the eponymous Ruth were native Moabite women who married the sons of Naomi.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Oprah wanted to wrap up her talk show after twenty years, but Mattie Stepanek talked her into waiting for the twenty-five year mark.
  • Winfrey was also in the running for the role of Amanda Waller in the DC Extended Universe, but the part ultimately went to Viola Davis.