Bonus Round

The bonus round is that part of a Game Show which follows the main game, typically played by the player or team who won the main game. Usually, this is where the real money/prizes are handed out, with only a token amount of cash given to the winner of the main game. The original Password was first, with its Lightning Round. Other notable bonus rounds:

Examples of Bonus Round include:

• "Fast Money" on Family Feud, played by two members of the winning family.
• The "Lightning Round" on Password, the Trope Maker.
  • "Alphabetics" on Password Plus. Super Password and Million Dollar Password's bonus rounds had the same name as the series, though "Super Password" became referred to as "the endgame" later in the series' run.
• The "(Super) Gold Rush" on Blockbusters. The name was changed to "Gold Run" halfway through the original series' run, for unknown reasons.
• The "Golden Medley" on Name That Tune
• "Face the Devil" on The Joker's Wild.
• "Double Play" on the Jack Narz version of Concentration
• The "(Big Money) Bonus Round" on Wheel of Fortune.
  • The German version, Glücksrad, had an interesting pre-bonus round. The Super-spiel was a 4-5 word crossword puzzle using the board that all three players played as a team. Each player picks two letters, and then they have 90 seconds (each player as captain for 30) to solve the puzzle. If they cleared the wall in time, they all got a share of a rolling jackpot (which in some cases was worth more than the actual Bonus Round win). Then the normal Bonus Round's played like usual.
• The "Best of Ten Test of Knowledge" on Win Ben Stein's Money, where the winning contestant from the previous two rounds goes up against Ben himself for the show's full prize of $5,000.
• "Money Cards" on Card Sharks
• The Sprint round on Scrabble (and later, the "Bonus Sprint")
• The "Big Numbers" on High Rollers
• The Price Is Right not only has a standard Bonus Round with the Showcase, but also has a "pre-Bonus Round" Bonus Round in the Showcase Showdown (that big wheel).
  • The Showcase was played more true to "bonus round" form on the 1994 Davidson incarnation, with one player playing an adaptation of the Range Game for a single (usually massive) Showcase.
  • The nighttime version of the original Price had contestants who won certain items up for bids either winning a bonus prize or competing in separate contests to win bonus cash or prizes.
  • It could be convincingly argued that the Showcase is actually a competitive apex that the first 40 minutes of show has been building toward, like a price-guessing Super Bowl, but it does fit on this list by virtue of being a chance for people who've already won to win even more.
• The "Winners' Circle" on The $10,000 Pyramid (and its subsequent versions)
• The Obstacle Course on |Double Dare
• The "Room-to-Room Romp" on Finders Keepers
• The "Bonus Sweep" on Supermarket Sweep
• The Temple Run on Legends of the Hidden Temple
• The Map on Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego??, later replaced by The Gates of History on Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?.
• The "Video Zone" on Nick Arcade
• "Mega Memory" on Get The Picture
• The Locker Room on Think Fast
• "Shopping 'til you Drop" on Shop 'Til You Drop
• The Big Wheel on The Big Spin
• The "Gauntlet of Villains" on Whew!
• "Strolling down Rodeo Drive"
• The Fun House
• The "Honors Round" on Make the Grade; on a few episodes, a player who won the game early was awarded a second bonus round, entitled the University Round.
• The "Million Dollar Round" on The One Million Chance of a Lifetime; you had to win the game AND the bonus round three times, without failing at any point, to win the million dollars.
• Remote Control had two: an identify-the-music-video round on the MTV version, and the "Wheel of Jeopardy" in the syndicated run.
• Inverted on Distraction; instead of playing to win more prizes, the contestant must save his already won prizes from being damaged or destroyed.
• "The Big Deal" on Let's Make a Deal. This is a slight inversion, as the big winner (or, if the big winner passes, one of the next in line) has to surrender their original winnings to play the Big Deal.
  • The "Super Deal" on the same functions as a Bonus Bonus Round.
• The UK version of Duel gave contestants who won 2 consecutive Duels a bonus question for £10,000, and another for £20,000 if they won a third Duel. Also a rare example of a Bonus Round which did not offer the big money; the jackpot was won by winning four Duels in a row.
• Fictional example: the kids-versus-adults game "What Do Kids Know?" in Magnolia had a bonus round. Everyone expects Child Prodigy Stanley to represent the kids in the bonus round but he doesn't want to go because he has to go to the bathroom .
• Double-or-Nothing Video Bonus on Cash Cab.
• "Jack Attack" in You Don't Know Jack.
• Fictional game show example: In Garfield and Friends, the Dream Sequence game show "Name that Fish" had a bonus round in which Garfield (or presumably, any contestant) gets into a booth that starts filling with water, and is challenged to name the fish that come in with it.
• In Jeopardy!, if only one player finishes Double Jeopardy! with a positive score, Final Jeopardy! effectively becomes this. The player simply wagers any amount of their score on a clue that they answer alone. Regardless of whether or not the response is correct, the player is guaranteed the win- unless they wager everything and get it wrong. ($0 is never a winning score.)
• The "Wonderwall" on Winning Lines
• Tokyo Friend Park 2 had a variant: If a team successfully wins a game early, they're often allowed to use their remaining tries or time to try and reach an even harder goal (usually double the original goal, or a Flawless Victory if the goal was more than half the maximum possible). A success doubles their winnings from the game, with no penalty for failure. In some games, it's even possible to win that early, and earn a chance to go for triple and up (and a triple win has been pulled off at least once).
• The Audience Match on the original Match Game and the Super Match on versions up to the 1998 show.
• The bonus board on the original You Don't Say! had three clues to a name for a cash prize. If a contestant won a game by a 3-0 score, the prize for getting the name on the first clue was a new car. On the 1975 revival, there was no board; the contestant gave clues to the celebrities. If a contestant could get the celebrity chosen to get four names in five clues, it was worth $5000. Getting five names in five clues doubled it.
• "The Spoilers" on the Alex Trebek version of |Double Dare
• "Turnabout" on Child's Play. That's where the contestant gives the kids definitions and the kids guess the words.
  • "Triple Play," which came first, featured the contestant guessing a word based on three different definitions from children.
• Showoffs and its reboot Body Language had contestants trying to guess up to ten words being mimed to them in sixty seconds. Whatever was correctly guessed was worth up to 10 times the amount by getting three additional words in 15 seconds (20 in Body Language).
• "Channel Roulette" on Couch Potatoes