The 6 Most Insane Game Shows From Around the World

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.

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.

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 .