YMMV / Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

• Accidental Innuendo: In one of the Super Millionaire episodes, one of the questions was which of the given The Sopranos characters had not yet been whacked. Of course, it was talking about who had not been killed yet, but since the audience snickered, it could be taken another way.
• Awesome Music:
  • Amazingly for game shows, especially the Club Mix by Amoure and its respective Radio Edit of the main theme. During the height of the show's popularity, there was even an official soundtrack released.
    • The original music for the series was written by father and son composer team Keith and Matthew Strachan in 8 days between the "Cash Mountain" pilot and filming of the first broadcast episode, with the two actually over-delivering on their contract by submitting 95 tracks instead of 45.
  • The "Rave" music initially composed for the UK's 2007 revamp by Nick Magnus and Ramon Covalo. The theme tune (and its subsequent variations), host entrance and "In the Hot Seat" cue (composed by Magnus) give the show just the right mix of epicness, fast-paced excitement and "party" nature, while its cue for the first few questions is a nice, relaxed bit of a bop that eases you into the game while helping you to focus, and the cues for the next few questions get more ominous up until the penultimate, and the final question cue is quite menacing. That being said, the pre-closing bed is a banger, as is the closing theme. In fact, in all countries that use the Rave pre-closing (except the Netherlands in 2011) have the audience clapping in time to it - they're clearly enjoying the tune!
  • The US version gained arguably even more awesome remixes in 2004 and in 2008 to coincide with Super Millionaire and the Clock format.
  • The Indian version has some really good remixes; for example, the absolutely glorious orchestral rearrangement by Ajay-Atul that instantly elevates the show to a whole new level.
  • Australia's 2004 theme is a more epic, rock-based arrangement of the regular theme song.
  • The Australian version's original theme tune from 1999 to 2004, and again from 2006 to 2007, was also a nice reorchestration of the usual theme.
• Broken Base: The US version originally had a hotline for potential contestants — the initial run in August 1999 used a 900 Number, but it became a toll-free number when the show returned in November.^note Some states used the toll-free number from the beginning. Callers played a Fastest Finger game using the phone's keypad, and the fastest players entered a lottery drawing. When the syndicated version debuted, the hotline was retired and replaced with standard contestant auditions.^note The phone game briefly returned for Super Millionaire and the 10th Anniversary specials. Fans were divided after the phone game was discontinued. Some fans believe that the phone game rewarded quick-witted players, weeded out many who wouldn't make it past the first tier of questions, and gave average Joes who normally wouldn't appear on a game show a chance to be on TV. Detractors believe that putting things in order had little to do with the show's format, especially after the syndicated version got rid of the Fastest Finger round. They also believe that the blind process contributed to the show's unintentional Monochrome and Chromosome Casting early in its run, as the majority of the contestants were middle-aged white men, which even Regis noticed.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Switch the Question on the US version from 2004-2008 was given to contestants for clearing the tenth question... and 99% of the time was used on the eleventh.
• Fan Nickname:
  • In the US, the show's name is commonly shortened to Millionaire, including on the show itself. Meredith and every other host through Terry Crews rarely, if ever, said the show's full title. Chris Harrison has occasionally used the full name more than his predecessors, though. This shorthand is less commonly used in the UK and other English-language versions.
  • "Llama" was a longtime fan term for any question gotten wrong in the first five questions ($100-$1,000 under the original money ladder), named after the losing answer for the first $100 question that a contestant missed.^note Robby Roseman was the first contestant to miss the $100 question when he incorrectly guessed that Hannibal crossed the Alps using llamas instead of elephants.
  • During the time the Russian version of the show was called O, Shchastlivchik!, the show's first special edition featuring NTV hosts and journalists led to the term "Shenderovich zone" for questions after sixth and "Kara-Murza zone" for questions after tenth.
  • Starting in the late 2000s, the Phone a Friend lifeline became known among other things as "Phone an Internet User" or "Phone Someone to Google the Answer" thanks to the friends not even attempting to hide how they were coming up with the answers.
• Fandom Rivalry: Fans of Jeopardy!, Greed, The Weakest Link, Winning Lines or many others often call Millionaire boring, padded and dull in comparison. But many Millionaire fans defend the show as being the only quiz show that allows contestants to explain how they know or deduced the answers and what each step on the money ladder would mean to them versus the risk, whereas on Jeopardy! or anywhere else, viewers rarely know how contestants picked up this knowledge or their moment to moment feelings. Furthermore, Millionaire fans defend how fair the show fundamentally is: You can walk at any time with all the money you've earned, and under classic rules were allowed a huge amount of time to think through your answer and the risk involved. Compare that to Million Dollar Money Drop, where you're forced to go through every question and lose every penny if you get the last one wrong, or Weakest Link or Greed where the smartest players lose their money due to the actions of idiotic strangers, or the convoluted rules and 49 possible answers to each question on Winning Lines... and Millionaire has constantly been revived (such as the 20th Anniversary UK specials becoming ongoing) as many see it as fair and simple in comparison. It also brings up the question of what show you'd want to go on versus what show you want to watch, as game shows have drifted back to leaning on Fake Difficulty over Anti-Frustration Features since Millionaire. That being said, there are numerous contestants who have competed on both Jeopardy! and Millionaire, including Jeopardy! superchampion Ken Jennings.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Unlike many of its cousins, the German localization is still running in two weekly primetime slots (Mondays and Fridays) and is still, after many years, one of the most popular TV shows in Germany. This is partly because of host Günther Jauch.
  • The Hindi version is also extremely popular. Being hosted by Amitabh Bachchan certainly helps. India has six other long running versions on top of this for other Indian languages such as Telugu and Bengali.
  • In general, while the show became seen as a flash in the pan compared to Jeopardy! by some American Quiz Show fans, Jeopardy! has struggled to establish any wide international franchising whilst Millionaire has, outlasting its original UK and blockbuster US versions whose Jeremy Clarkson and Jimmy Kimmel revivals are currently in limbo.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The second batch of episodes in the US version (starting in November 1999) were when the show got really good, as it expanded to an hour format which gave us more contestants per episode, and Regis inserted more of his trademark humor into hosting, which was a big draw of the series. Plus, this was when the show had its first million dollar winner.
  • Ever since 2010, the 7 multiple language (Hindi, Bengali , Telugu, Tamil etc...)Indian versions has been well received for the incredibly lavish sets and innovative improvements to the game mechanics (such as the improvement of the Switch the Question lifeline by the contestant selecting one of 11 categories before the game which allows for a guaranteed question from the contestants' strongest category) while still remaining true to the drama Millionaire has become famous for.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • After Kevin Smith (Not that one) became the first $1,000,000 winner on the syndicated version, he called his retired mother, who he was playing to help, from the studio.
  • John Carpenter calling his dad to tell him he was going to win the $1,000,000. His dad then stayed on the line to hear it all unfold.
  • Jay Popover's Phone-a-Friend on the $4,000 question is his 11-year-old son.
  • Steve Fayne gets a second chance at the million as a Zero Dollar Winner player (he missed the $500 question on his first go-around). He uses his Phone-a-Friend on the $16,000 question asking what kind of animal Franklin is. He calls up his aunt, and while she goes over the options, a young kid can be heard confidently saying "Turtle!" Steve makes that his final answer, and he's right. He eventually wins $64,000.
  • When "Bob-O" Essig passed away in February 2019, the first person to report the sad news was Nancy Christy. Yes, THAT Nancy Christy; the 2003 winner on the syndicated version.
• He Really Can Act: Jeremy Clarkson seemed like an odd choice for hosting the revival of the UK series, but after the 20th Anniversary specials in 2018, viewers quickly warmed up to him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the UK version, there was once a contestant from Ballymena in Northern Ireland. During his phone a friend call, he jokingly said to his friend that if she was wrong that he would hunt her down. Years later, someone else from Ballymena would make a similar threat over the phone.
  • In general in the earlier series, anytime contestants expressed a wish to be able to ask the host on a question they think they may know the answer to by themselves becomes funny in the modern era when "Ask the Host" is now an actual lifeline.
• Hype Backlash: The American version of the show is an excellent example of this. The show's enormous popularity quickly evaporated due to ABC's overexposure of it. At its peak the show was airing at least four nights a week. Michael Eisner - who, as CEO of Disney, was ultimately responsible for how hard the show was pushed - actually passed up opportunities to buy shows like Survivor which are still popular today because he was so confident that Millionaire would be an evergreen hit.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A heavily debated case among trivia show fans in the US. The British insurance agency who financed $500K and $1M wins on the original Philbin US series sued over questions being too easy and there being too many million and half-million winners. Many thought John Carpenter's question stack was relatively general knowledge, and Dan Blonsky's million dollar question, "The Earth is approximately how many miles away from the sun?",^Answer93 million miles is taught to young children in school. Compare that to Blonsky's $500,000 question, which asked what celebrity was featured on the cover of the very first People magazine.^AnswerMia Farrow
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The syndicated version of Millionaire in the US became this with ridiculously esoteric questions and brutal 15-second timers, as shown here and here. Syndicated Millionaire surprisingly survived until 2019 before being rebooted as a primetime show with Jimmy Kimmel in 2020, despite long-dwindling ratings; some would argue that keeping the slow pace, unlimited(ish) answer time limits and easier questions, but reducing the jackpot to $250K or $125K, would have actually helped the show do better in audience ratings due to its contrast with Jeopardy!'s relatively rapid pace and direct-response vs. multiple-choice questions. The late-era syndicated show both alienated the audience who enjoyed its slow pacing and didn't attract audiences from Jeopardy! either.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The idiom of the "million-dollar question", similar to the preceding "$64(,000) question", to describe a very important question, has its roots from the show.
  • "I hate cricket."^note Clarkson's reply to the first time the "Ask the Host" lifeline was used.
  • "Some kind of machine?"^note (an actual quote by Regis when asking what Steve Perry's Phone-a-Friend was using to get the answer. Obviously funny because of how out-of-touch it sounds, even at the time the episode aired.)
• Mis-blamed: Some complained that the Sequel Difficulty Spike occurred mainly because the show and its executives became "a bunch of cheap bastards". The actual reason for the increased difficulty was because the ratings of the syndicated version were never as huge as the network version once was (ABC's Executive Meddling didn't help matters), and thus couldn't offer as much money. According to Alex Davis (co-runner of BuzzerBlog and a critic of the Clock format), the staff was in a panic during the last episode of that format because there was only $10,000 left in the budget.
• Narm: In Super Millionaire, the Three Wise Men were ostensibly going for a mysterious tone with the "shrouded in shadows" imagery, but thanks to the tongue-in-cheek description of them (Regis would often say they're locked away in a dungeon underneath Manhattan), it ends up being more funny than anything. Even Regis cracked up a couple of times.
• Never Live It Down: Charles Ingram will forever be known as the "Major Fraud."
• Nightmare Fuel: Some of the music can be quite jarring. After the first checkpoint is reached, the soundtrack takes on an anxious tone for the consequences of getting the answer wrong after all the progress so fare, while the jingles that are heard after a wrong answer can be real scary because you may not expect them.
  • As the questions progress, the score gets more ominous and takes the pitch up a semitone for each subsequent question for the middle and upper portion and there's a background heartbeat sound for both of them. On the $1,000,000 question, there's no music, just a Drone of Dread and a heartbeat. It's either go big or go home.
  • The "Out of Time" note is like a Scare Chord straight out of a horror film.
  • The piano chords played for the lower portion alongside the harp sound are pretty creepy, though it's only minor compared to what's next.
  • The Losing Horns played for the later parts are more jarring, especially the fact that the loss theme changed from simple piano notes to blaring horns playing in minor-key. The pitch is also increased by a semitone for every question left to reach top of those portions, and the upper portion's bass lasts slightly longer.
  • And if you thought that was dramatic, just listen to the music that plays when you get the $1,000,000 question wrong. Being a distorted minor-key version of the usual victory fanfare, it's especially jarring to those who have heard it. Said music was never heard on the British version,^note Apart from the five winners (six if you include Charles Ingram) nine other people have managed to reach the £1,000,000 question and all decided not to play. One celebrity team reached the £1,000,000 question and fell due to faulty question wording. On said "loss" (the couple were invited back to play again for the same value), the £500,000 loss cue played instead. and only ever heard once on the American version, and prior to that was only available to hear on a CD-ROM game or certain websites. For the "Super Mix" format, the "$1,000,000 loss" cue is the same one used for losing on the other "Classic Millionaire" questions.
  • The US syndicated version from 2010-2019 adds an Ethereal Choir to the final four questions, which becomes increasingly distorted the closer you get to the million.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: While the overall quality of the games varies, most of the console/handheld/PC games utilize the classic format (the only exceptions were the versions published by Ubisoft one of which utilized the clock format and the other of which utilized the the shuffle format). Even the Special Editions version (which came out during the "Shuffle" era of the syndicated run) utilized the classic format (and used it as a selling point).
• Pandering to the Base:
  • In response to the drought, the show created the Tournament of Ten in 2009... but although fans were finally going to get a Millionaire without the need to lower difficulty, they now complained about not only the "manufacturing" of a Millionaire (not a "legit" win by the normal rules of the game, i.e. "answer the standard number of questions right to win"; similar criticism was also leveled against Deal or No Deal's Million-Dollar Missions) but the Tournament's format proving the show was cheap (each seed risked what they already won, with a drop to $25,000 if incorrect), along with it not really being "Tournament". The results of the questions proved 'em out, too — nine of the ten seeds, including all but one of the $50,000 winners, decided to walk. Not surprisingly, it was only used that one time.
  • They did it again for season 14 by reverting back to the money tree and bringing back 50:50.
  • In 2017, the Australian version of Hot Seat brought back the lifelines and Fastest Finger First, along with expanding the show to one hour. However, many viewers felt that the changes made Hot Seat drag on for an hour. The first half of the show was Fastest Finger First... except it consisted of fifteen questions. And the winner got a check for $1,000 that they can either keep or use in exchange for using one of the classic lifelines. It was the most disliked change in the format. Compare the Australian FFF to the Belgian Hot Seat, Wie Wordt Miljonair?, which had only 5 questions (and is well-received by their fans), and the Indian (Hindi) version, Kaun Banega Crorepati, which had 3 questions.
• Periphery Demographic: Despite being the world's most straight-laced game, the UK version won the prize for Best Light Entertainment Programme at the British Comedy Awards. (After which, they changed the name of the category to Best Comedy Entertainment Programme to stop that happening again.)
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Meredith Vieira is seen as this by some, particularly due to her more low-key approach compared to Regis.
  • Cedric and Terry in the Shuffle era; the former tried to shoehorn comedy into what’s traditionally a non-comedy oriented show, and the latter had a bad case of No Indoor Voice.
  • When the Dutch version was revived in 2011, original host Robert ten Brink was unavailable, so Jeroen van der Boom replaced him. Van der Boom was unpopular among viewers, and the revival was short-lived. Ten Brink was brought back when the Dutch version was revived again in 2019.
  • Jimmy Kimmel in the 2020 US version, at least on celebrity shows. Unlike the previous hosts before him, he does not seem to show much energy or even care about the show. This is generally not the case on civilian shows, however, in which Kimmel is seen as much better.
• Retroactive Recognition: Mark Labbett, aka The Beast on The Chase (Game Show), was a contestant on the UK version. He got the wrong answer on the £64,000 question, using up the last of his lifelines, and finished with £32,000.
  • Judith & Pat from Eggheads are both jackpot winners on the UK version.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The 50:50 lifeline. Almost every time a contestant struggled between two answers, then used the 50:50 only for it to leave them with (or worse, eliminate) the two answers they were struggling between. It happened so frequently over the years that many viewers complained the "random removal" felt more like rigging (a fact Norm MacDonald caught on to, as mentioned under the Funny Moments tab), especially at the very end of a themed week where the contestant's only options are really Quit or Fail. Several fans suggested to potential contestants that, if they considered using the 50:50, not to say the answers they were considering out loud. The fact that it originally wasn't random (though this wasn't made clear to the viewers) doesn't help any — although the removals were set in advance and not done in response to the contestants' musings, the answers least likely to get picked were always the ones removed, including when Norm was on. A Random Number Generator system was eventually introduced, but even then it was seen as the least useful lifeline, hence when a "Choose 3 of 4" system for lifelines has been in place such as on the Kimmel reboot, it is almost always discarded.
  • The clock format used from 2008-2010, a prime example of a good idea on paper with horrible execution.
    • To start, the time limits gave the contestants extra stress on an already pulse-pounding game show. Contestants had 15 seconds to answer each question on the first tier, 30 for each on the second and 45 on the first four of the third. The million-dollar question used the entire time banked plus an extra 45 seconds. That meant contestants had as much time on the eleventh safe haven question as they had to answer the second-hardest question of the game.
    • Even worse, the clock began ticking the instant the answers were displayed on the screen. This wasted precious seconds as the host read them, longer if the host is a slow reader or fumbles while giving the answers. When Regis returned to host the 10th Anniversary specials, two contestants nearly got timed out because of his reactions to the first question's joke D choices. Steve Harvey, one of the last guest hosts in that era, is commonly cited as a reason for the show axing said format with his speed at reading the answers (which was even mercilessly parodied on Saturday Night Live.)
    • When the Double Dip lifeline was introduced in Super Millionaire, Regis always asked contestants to confirm if they wanted to use it; he also reminded contestants that they could not walk away. Double Dip returned during the clock format (replacing the 50:50), where it was handled slightly differently; it activated instantaneously once a contestant decided to use it. The hosts never fully explained how the lifeline worked, which led to this moment where a contestant attempted to walk away, only for Meredith to tell him that walking away is not allowed. Two other contestants activated their Double Dips with very little time left on the clock; one couldn't give her second answer in time, and the other locked in his second answer (which turned out to be correct) right before time expired. Granted, contestants were expected to remember the rules and not waste time,^note and especially not say "I'm gonna go with" when there are only three seconds left but these incidents involving the Double Dip otherwise exposed more flaws with the clock format.
    • The original British version adopted a modified version of the clock format in 2010, and that, too, led to the British version’s downfall. Some versions that use the clock try to alleviate this (for example, the Turkish version lets the host finish reading the answer choices before the clock starts, while the Indian versions give more lenient time limits).
  • Thousandaire, a mini-game played on the US version from 2010-2019 (referred to as The $1,000 Question before 2013) if a contestant departed and there wasn't enough time to begin a major run with another, a very anti-climactic watered down version of the standard format used as shameless Padding. Some felt like it robbed the show of a chance to get underway and severely retarded its ability to get contestants, and was like an unspoken recognition that they failed to give the grand prize away in that particular taping and weren't willing to bother trying in earnest. Others, especially the audience, liked the perk of possibly being picked to pick up some fast cash. But considering the major drought in winners had lasted almost two decades, it was too late to be doing anything to delay a grand prize win.
  • The "Ask The Host" lifeline, introduced in the 20th anniversary edition of the UK version. Despite it being Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Jeremy Clarkson often doesn't have a clue what the answer is most of the time, rendering it useless. The lifeline was however also used on the 2020-21 US version where Jimmy Kimmel had a much higher success rate.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • The US syndicated version is much harder than the ABC version, with entire seasons going by without million-dollar winners. Justified, considering ratings of the syndicated version aren't as huge as the network version once was (ABC's Executive Meddling didn't help matters), and thus can't offer as much money.
  • The Canadian version bragged about this, even though it was done for the same reason.
  • Super Millionaire was even harder than the syndicated version. You can expect the 11th and 12th questions for $500,000 and $1,000,000 to be at least as hard as the 14th and final questions valued at the same amount on the syndicated version, and on the final two questions, which have never been seen ^note It's been hinted by EP Michael Davies, now of Jeopardy! fame, that some unused Super Millionaire $2.5M-$10M questions were later used for $1M on syndicated Millionaire, such as the Nostradamus's Jams Treatise and Benjamin Franklin's Drinker's Dictionary questions, you would be literally risking millions.
• Tear Jerker:
  • During the Regis era, a woman named Kati Knudsen slogged her way to the $500,000 question, determined to be the first female contestant to win the million... And she got the question wrong. The worst part? She would have been right, but she second-guessed herself. Kati's reaction when she realizes she lost just screams that she had a nervous breakdown, and all her husband could do was lead her away as she kept repeating "I had it... No, I had it...".
  • Any time a contestant misses one of the last 3 questions certainly qualifies:
    • Lawrence Caplan missed his $500,000 question after eliminating one of the answers as a possibility; the one answer he eliminated was the correct answer.
    • Mark McDermott also missed his $500,000 question.
    • British contestants Duncan Bickley and Rob Mitchell missed their penultimate questions as well.
    • The Australian Hot Seat version had many contestants who were unfortunate enough to miss the last question.
    • The first contestant to ever miss the last question was on the Japanese version of the show. The Japanese version also has many other contestants who fell at the final hurdle.
    • Ken Basin's million-dollar loss, accompanied by the heartbreaking Dark Reprise of the victory jingle that plays when missing the final question.
      Regis: No, it's not the final answer, you just lost a lot of money.
    • Speaking of the million pound lose cue, this compilation shows (almost) all international instances of it playing up to 2020, and you can clearly see the heartbreak from the contestants.
    • Josina Reaves became the second contestant to miss the million dollar question on the US version. She completed Round 1 without jumping any questions, then she correctly answered the $100,000 question and used both Jumps to skip directly to the million. Cedric called her "an amazing player" before revealing the correct answer.
  • When a contestant walks away, only to realize they would have been right if they went for it. Doubly so if it's the final question. (This happened at least seven times on the Tournament of Ten.)
    • Adam West would have won $500,000 if he had gone for his guess on said question. Ditto for Jason Alexander.
    • Ogi Ogas made it to the $1,000,000 question, and was very sure that he knew it. However, he ultimately decided to walk away, deeming it too much of a risk...and then he found out that he would have won the million if he went for it. However, his hilarious rant when he realized he would have won was pretty hilarious.
  Meredith: It was William!
  Ogi: AUGH! DAMMIT!!!
  Meredith: O-Ogi?
  [Ogi continues to cuss himself out as the audience laughs]
  • Andrew Townsley on the British version also would have won the million if he had gone for it.
    • Jeremy Clarkson's sigh as he reads the question and says the answers is also a sad moment in and of itself. Considering what else Jeremy is famous for, it's very obvious he knew the answer... but Andrew used "Ask The Host" on the thirteenth question, so he wasn't able to tell him.
  • If John Carpenter had listened to his brother when he called him for help on his $500,000 question during his Champion's Edition run, he would have been right. (To be fair, his brother wasn't very sure.)
  • Norm Macdonald is a notorious example; he would have won the million if Regis would've just shut his mouth and let Norm answer, leading to lots of speculation that Regis intentionally screwed him over.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Changes to any version vary among the fans to say the least, regardless of the extent or the justification. From Meredith Vieira in the US, to the Clock format in the US and UK, the Hot Seat format in the Aussie version, the new "rave" remixes of the music in the UK, and then the new money ladder in the US and UK, and then the shuffle format, a.k.a. "Super Mix"... the announcement of Cedric the Entertainer becoming host, the move to Connecticut the next season with Cedric being replaced by Terry Crews, the replacement of Crews by Chris Harrison after the former hosted just one season, the move to Las Vegas in 2016, a new graphics package and logo in 2018 for the US version (which looked very cheap and inconsistent), and it goes on. Granted, the show had arguably been in a funk for a while with a dwindling fanbase and thus needed to be freshened up, but until its cancellation in 2019 each new change alienated as many fans as it reclaimed.
  • The Harrison era had an abundance of questions relying on internet memes, social media, and pop culture current events, even in the first tier, rather than the more "general knowledge" questions the previous eras were known for. Most infamously, one episode had a $500 question involving a Buzzfeed article that managed to get lost. It didn't help that the correct answer was D which for the longest time was a guaranteed joke answer on the first question.
  • One set of versions that constantly seems to avert this trope are the 7+ Indian versions, each one for a different language though the shows have shared multilingual production crews. Ever since 2010 (the first version to radically depart from any pre-established format by using the 2010 UK clock format as the basis, but with an added bonus jackpot question like in the 2007 Australian series and also using the 2008 US clock format graphics and lifelines) the shows have been consistently well received despite changing up things every season. The reason why is because the producers actually take the effort to make all changes gel with the format. Some of the more interesting innovations that came from Kaun Banega Crorepati (Hindi/English) and the other Indian versions of the show are: Power Paplu (a lifeline that allows another lifeline to be used again), Code Red (a passive lifeline activated by the family members of the contestant sitting in the audience, which allows them to warn the contestant not to go for the wrong answer), Chat Room (Exactly What It Says on the Tin - a chat room full of viewers sends answers to a question in a limited time period) etc. Even existing lifelines are not immune to being tinkered with: Phone-a-Friend became powered by video calls instead of ordinary phone calls, and Switch the Question introduced question categories which allow the contestant to actually get a question from their strongest category, instead of at random.
  • The Australian version originally replaced the brilliantly well-executed logo template of most versions with... a gold coin? They changed it back in 2000.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Since 2018, the Indian versions have implemented augmented reality technology that allows the producers to insert graphics that move directly with the camera. These graphics are very well-done, and in Season 13, those graphics have extended not only to the floor (even below it), but also the ceiling.
• Vocal Minority: A small percentage of people believe that Charles Ingram didn't cheat despite lots of evidence to the contrary.
• Win Back the Crowd: The 2020 ABC primetime version with Jimmy Kimmel received this reaction, largely reverting back to the "classic" look and feel (based on the current Jeremy Clarkson UK version) and format, using the original Strachan soundtrack, in comparison to the syndicated version.

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