The 6 Most Insane Game Shows From Around the World

6 El Gran Juego de la Oca (Great Game of the Grey Goose)

Country of Origin:
Spain.

How to Play:
No, this is not an elaborate drinking game based on French vodka. Rather, it is an elaborate board game based on geese. Yes, someone in Spain decided to create an entire game show around geese, natures most terrifying animal ... what with the hissing, and the biting, and the shitting, and the feathers flying, and our mothers screaming, and the sirens ... we would rather they go with the vodka.

The idea seems simple and harmless enough. A contestant earns money by rolling virtual dice and progressing along a giant, twisting 63-square board game while being cheered on by the host, studio audience and "chicas ocas" (goose girls, who are all in varying stages of undress, naturally). When the contestant lands on a square, he or she either wins a cash prize or has to complete a "stunt." Finally, the contestant who gets to the end of the board is given a reoca (final stunt) that they must complete within a week to win a new car. Easy enough, eh?

Why It's Insane:
Unfortunately the "stunts" involve pain, humiliation and being kissed by fat, messy Italian stereotypes. Even worse, it sometimes involves getting your feet licked by a goat.

What is it with Spaniards and incorporating farm animals into their game shows?

Here's a fun sample of a few of the squares one can land on:

Space No. 8: The "stunt" here must be completed in the mud. Usually this involves finding a key or some such object. Meanwhile a female mud wrestler is "inhibiting" the progress of the player. Inhibiting is a nice way of saying "hurling about and generally emasculating."

Space No. 47: The player is locked inside an acrylic glass prison filled only with sand and boa constrictors. His goal? Find the key in the sand, get out and not die of snake-related asphyxiation.

Space No. 57: Here, the contestant is asked questions by a sexy woman in a nurse outfit. He must answer questions right or have his leg hair waxed off. Also, he must keep his heart rate down to a minimum, a theme later turned into an American talk show where John McEnroe screamed at people for 30 minutes. Oh yeah, did we mention the nurse is stripteasing the whole time? Because she is, and she's nude, very nude.

Theoretically one could win 800,000 pesetas and a car, assuming the player doesn't die of crushing, burning or snake-related injuries. Or, that they didn't lose it all during the "Cruel Roulette" round, where the contestant is attached to a giant roulette wheel and spun around, and whatever percentage value their head lands at is the percentage of their winnings they lose. Need even more reason not to appear on the show? 800,000 pesetas is only equal to roughly $6,000, an amount we're pretty sure an actual goose could win on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

5 Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! (Downtown's "Not An Errand Boy!")

Country of Origin:
Japan

How to Play:
You may have seen clips from this show on the web (including this one where the contestants have to recited a tongue twister or else get smacked in the balls). If you don't know the background, the show appears to be a series of small, cruel challenges, none with an obvious reward for winning and all involving serious physical or psychological pain. You may speculate that the contestants are desperate commoners looking for prize money to pay for, say, an operation for a family member. This is fortunately not the case.

The contestants are comedians, attempting to launch themselves to stardom by receiving a spring-loaded lever blow to their groin. It's kind of like Saturday Night Live only instead of proving their comedic talent by creating characters and being funny, the comedians are tortured.

Each challenge is called a Batsu, or punishment game, which involves completing nearly impossible tasks like not laughing while watching other contestants suffer humiliation and excruciating pain, or dressing up as female comic book characters and ordering spaghetti. The punishment for not completing these tasks is usually a sound whipping, but occasionally a friendly spanking or nipple clamping is in order.

Why It's Insane:
If you watched that video and don't think it was self explanatory then you're either a robot, masochist, masochistic robot, creator of the show or the masochistic robot that created this show. If you are one of the above, or if you're afraid to watch Japanese videos at work (and rightfully so), then let us elaborate. This clip features forced nose hair removal, asphyxiation by "bad smell air," and a grown man sobbing like a little girl as an old man gums his ear.

What's worse is that the contestants have to be restrained while doing most of these tasks. Meanwhile, their comrades try not to laugh too loud at their friend's misfortune lest they find themselves on the business end of the slapping machine's whirling dervish of blows.

Adding to the humiliation is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any prize or goal other than survival, and another week of continued semi-fame in the world of Japanese comedy.

4 Le Bigdil (The Big Deal)

Country of Origin:
France

How to Play:
According to the Wikipedia entry, as deciphered by Google Translator, "Applicants must pass a test rather amusing to earn a certain amount of moneys or gifts from Bil, which had its saucer filled. Suffering from half of the game, the candidate had the ability to stop the game and take what was behind the curtain (or the garage during the last season). This could be both a car or bunch of leeks, but the interest of the game was that the candidate was completely unaware of what's hiding behind the curtain."

That sounded awesome, until we later found out it was just a French rip-off of Let's Make a Deal.

Why It's Insane:
Those wacky Frenchmen did make one small change from the American version: They replaced Monty Hall with an alien. The entire premise is that the host is a goofy interstellar benefactor who just happens to also be a Francophone and resemble French comedian Vincent Lagaf.

As the story goes, Bil the Extraterrestrial was zipping through space with his flying saucer filled with game show prizes, when he crash-landed in a French television studio. The studio naturally gave him a game show. We are only left to assume that Bil and his family are now being held captive on Earth and forced to continue doing this show until their incredible swag ship is entirely looted. The interstellar fleets of planet Fricus are presumably enroute for intergalactic war. Way to go France.

3 Tonneruzu no Minasan no Okage Deshita

Country of Origin:
Japan

How to Play:
You may have seen their Human Tetris bits on YouTube; basically the contestants are subjected to a series of games whose names begin with "Human" and end with whatever twisted idea the producers and writers come up with. Human Soccer, Human Shuffleboard, Human Tetris, Human Catapult, Human Misery.

Following is a clip from "Hyper!," which features human shuffleboard, a man in a skin-tight gray suit with a raging hard on, and women being strangled. It is indeed a winning combination. Look closely at 3:00, the exact moment it progresses from an innocent game into snuff porn.

The prize is apparently pork chops.

Why It's Insane:
Much like Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!!, all of the contestants are comedians. Unlike Downtown, it's the same comedians each and every time, a comedy group called Tunnels. So, rather than this being a springboard into fame for some young comedians, it's the only fame these young comedians will ever get. They will forever be remembered as those guys who tried to jump through shapes on YouTube but got knocked into a pool of urine instead.

2 Distraction

Country of Origin:
United Kingdom

How to Play:
The idea is simplicity itself. Two contestants compete against each other in a battle of wits and intelligence. They must answer a series of questions presented in a traditional quiz show format. They begin the show by revealing humorous or quirky stories about themselves, and then they progress into the show, meanwhile being regaled with candor presented by Irish host Jimmy Carr. The host also has a group of "distractors" that try to hinder the contestant's thought process during quizzing. This show turned out to have such universal appeal they made a U.S. version for Comedy Central, followed by Dutch, Israeli and Italian editions.

Why It's Insane:

If you've seen the Americanized version of this show, you know that the distractions usually involve the contestants getting his or her feet tickled while being quizzed, or possibly they get something gross squirted on them. However, we're talking about the United Kingdom version, the version with balls, the version where people said "fuck" and nudists frolicked about, wangs flapping freely and midgets kicked men (and probably women) in the groinal region, and very little of this was censored ... you know, the good version.

Nudity: a staple of Distraction

The distractions could range anywhere from having paintballs fired at your barely protected body at close range to lying on a bed of spikes while a strongman crushed concrete blocks on your stomach with a sledgehammer. Of course, the actual distractions were nothing compared to the horror of having to actually hit the buzzer to answer a question. Here's just a quick sample of some of the buzzers.

Cactus buzzer: The buzzer is surrounded by cacti, midway through the contestant is blindfolded and the buzzer and cacti are moved around.

Pee Buzzer: Male contestant's junk is inside of a specialized toilet/sensor, and they must "make a wee" to activate the buzzer.

Dog Collar Buzzer: If contestant activates buzzer, a dog collar on their neck administers a severe shock, later on the dog collars are activated at random.

Final Round Buzzer: Contestants must drink a combination of hot sauce, slush and their own urine to activate the buzzer, later on they must drink their opponent's urine.

Considering the reward is only 5,000 pounds, or about $10,000, it makes you wonder where they find people who think it's worth it.

1 The Intercept

Country of Origin:
Russia

How to Play:
Imagine, if you will, that someone offers to give you a new car.

"Fantastic!" You say. "I'm sick of driving this Le Citron full of onions, how do I sign up?"

"Well," They say. "We just give it to you."

"Sounds good," You say. "What's the catch?"

"Oh, it's not a big deal," they say, "you just have to drive it away while ... mumble mumble"

"Oh, OK, well that sounds good," You say.

Sure enough, you're given the set of keys to a brand new car, and best of all, all you have to do to get it is to drive it away ...

Why It's Insane:
If you had been clever enough to question this strange man offering you a car when he trailed off and said "mumble mumble," you wouldn't be in your current situation. You see, the car he just gave you just happens to have been reported to the police as stolen. It seems you just signed up to be on The Intercept, a hugely popular Russian game show. Your goal now is to evade the police for 35 minutes while speeding through crowded streets and down narrow tunnels. That's right; they basically invented a live action Grand Theft Auto game.

As if things weren't bad enough, each car is equipped with a high energy transmitter so the contestants can be tracked at all times by the police. Reportedly only a handful of people have ever won a car, and those participants only barely made it. One man ended up hiding the stolen vehicle in a boxcar (we like to think the guy had to ramp the car up onto the train while it was moving), and another drove the car onto a sturdy raft and floated it out into the middle of a lake. We're beginning to think it would just be easier for these people to steal cars the old fashioned way.

According to Time magazine, the Russian traffic cops (GAIs) actually were the ones that created this show as propaganda (for the car thief almost always gets caught). However, the GAIs seemed surprised that a game show which features people inventing ingenious new ways to steal stuff was actually encouraging crime.

If you want a measure of just how nuts the show was, realize that despite the fact that it had twice the ratings of our American Idol (85 million Russians watched it at one point), not even Fox has created an American version. Probably because of the risks of traffic deaths and massive lawsuits or something. As badass as the show sounds, you probably won't get to see one like it until after the Running Man apocalpytic future gets here. Then, all bets are off.

If you liked this article, check out The 10 Most Insane "Sports" in the World .