YMMV / Takeshi's Castle

• Awesome Music: The Japanese version used several well known scores from TV, Films, Anime and bands.
  • Especially with the main theme, which was so good it was used in the Final Showdown as well.
• Broken Base:
  • Challenge viewers got a version of Takeshi's Castle that's much more faithful to the original product than MXC. It's understandable, then, that many of Craig Charles' fans loathe the American dub. (Of course, the reverse is also true - many fans of MXC loathe Craig's commentary. Go to any MXC forum and you'll understand.)
  • It can also be played both ways, as some prefer other foreign versions (mainly the German or Spanish narrations).
• Cult Classic: What this became after it took off internationally and remains so to this day.
• Fountain of Memes: Just about every line from Craig Charles' commentary. "Oh you wazzock!", "Can they avoid the black-handed, black-hearted Emerald Guard?", "Ladies favourite General Lee", "Back to the funny farm with you!", "As my old man used to say", and as ever "No winners tonight on Takeshi's Castle!"
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series was a smashing success in Spain, even if it was mercilessly edited, given a Gag Dub containing commentary recorded over the real audio (which can also still be heard) and given the jaw-droppingly racist title "Humor Amarillo" ("Yellow Humor"), which was also far from being the only racist thing in the show.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Craig Charles narrating a show about crazy challenges... and then appearing on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • When someone beat the maze by climbing on top of it and running over the guards.
  • Really, anyone who managed to win this show. Over the course of Takeshi's Castle there have only ever been nine winners - these people managed to prove they are the best of the best.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • As LGBTI humor wasn't weird in the 2000s Spain due to the collective's highly countercultural tradition since eras like La Movida Madrileña, it was hard that any of their members would get offended with their tongue-in-cheek portrayal in the show, and many of them enjoyed it with no problem. (Nowadays, after the cultural change brought by the The New '10s, the same jokes would be likely considered from seriously offensive to downright horrifying, though.)
  • Rumoredly, the show was also very popular among Asian people living in Spain.
• That One Level: Among many, "Rice Bowl Down Hill" is a prime example.
  • Ditto for "Single Roller": more than half are unable to keep their balance on the first half, but it's extremely rare for anyone to keep their balance when it speeds up.
  • "Stepping Stones" and "Knock Knock" for being a Luck-Based Mission (the former has some of the stepping stones something soft and thus will make the contestant fell down, the latter has the contestant stopped if they hit the solid wall).
  • Ditto for "Final Fall" where the contestant have to choose between 5 holes, 2 of them containing the Villain of the Week.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Humor Amarillo basically screams "2000s Spain" in every one of its aspects: proto-otaku references, political incorrectness turned up to eleven, racial and LGBTI-related humor, crass sexual jokes, and unapologetic raunchiness in general.
• Values Dissonance: Continental Spain doesn't have much of a modern history of racism, at least compared to countries like United States where it is instrumental to their nation, so racist humor wasn't a big deal when the 2006-2007 Spanish Gag Dub of the show was produced. Needless to say, the kind of jokes the show made would have been essentially impossible to make on American ground (or in current Spain after The New '10s).
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Humor Amarillo was officially in the G-rated slot of Cuatro TV, but being a product of Spain in the 2000's, it featured metric craptons of sexual allusions of varied explicitness, as well as storylines and references that completely broke the Parental Bonus. It was not any less popular among children for it.

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