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.

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.

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 "f**k" 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.

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.

While you may think that these contestants merely lose the car if caught, it gets worse. The police are allowed to beat the participants upon interception, so almost every show ends with the wannabe criminal face down on the asphalt while a crowd of law enforcement officers kick him in the ribs.

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 .