El Gran Juego de la Oca

El gran juego de la oca (The Great Game of the Goose) was a mid-1990s Game Show from Spain that preceded the Fear Factor-type game/reality program by five or ten years (and wonderfully lacked many of the now-overused Reality TV Tropes). One of the country's most popular offerings at the time, it was rebroadcast in Spanish-speaking countries around the world as well as the United States.

Four contestants played a giant board game based on the actual children's "Game of the Goose" (basically a linear "Chutes and Ladders"), but anything that might have been oriented toward children ended there. One at a time, players rolled the electronic dice, earned money for each space they walked, and finally wagered some of their money on a prueba (mission) they would then be required to perform. Completing a challenge won the wager, while a failed mission deducted it. As in the board game, there were also some shortcuts scattered throughout the board, especially the titular Oca spaces. Also included were a few "punishment" spaces that affected any contestant that landed on them, just to make things interesting; the most notable were the ones that required the player to receive Body Paint or a Traumatic Haircut.

The player to successfully make it to space 63 by exact count won any money he or she had banked and earned the right to perform a final challenge outside the studio, sometimes even abroad, for a chance to win a car.

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The following Game Show tropes appear in El Gran Juego de la Oca:

• Bonus Round: La Reoca, in which a player had one week to complete a final mission outside the studio to win the car.
• Bonus Space: Landing on an Oca (goose) allowed you to move to the next Oca and roll again.
• Carried by the Host: Season 1 was hosted and directed by Spanish personality Emilio Aragón. When they changed the hosts (and nearly everyone else) for Season 2, the show lost popularity.
• Consolation Prize: None were mentioned until the tournament semifinals, where the losers had to complete a Reoca to win one. Losing tournament finalists each won a motorcycle.
• Home Game: Inverted; the board game was invented first.
• Let's Just See What Would Have Happened: Most frequently seen if a challenge is set up to end with a massive explosion and doesn't - it is usually set off anyway after everyone is at a safe distance just for ooh's and ahh's.
• Losing Horns: Used when a challenge was failed. Type B in Season 1, and Type A afterward.
• Mystery Box: Several challenges involved the contestant sticking his hand blindly into one to retrieve objects. Naturally, these boxes often contained reptiles, bugs, and/or mice.
• Personnel:
  • The Announcer
  • Game Show Host: The three most well-known were Emilio Aragón, Lydia Bosch, and Patricia Pérez from Season 1.
  • Studio Audience: Unique, in that the audience members are scattered around the in-the-round set.
• Promotional Consideration: At least one challenge per episode was sponsored; some of them included Nintendo, Hyundai, Boskys cereal, and milk.
• Speed Round: If time ran short, the game went into tirada rápida mode, in which no more challenges were played and contestants simply rolled the dice until a winner was crowned.
• Unexpectedly Obscure Answer: Played with, in that the final question in the haircut game was always impossible.
• Whammy: The "Death" space (a skull and crossbones) near the end of the course. If you landed here you were sent back to start by the Grim Reaper, although you kept your money.
  • The Ruleta Cruel space (literally means "Cruel Roulette"). You have to spin the wheel (or get onto a giant torture wheel; your head is the pointer), and whatever it lands on, you lose that percentage of money.
  • Any other "punishment" space, as not going through with the "punishment" cleaned out the contestant's bankroll.

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Tropes played with as part of specific challenges:

• Bankruptcy Barrel: On a couple of episodes, a contestant would be required to lie down on a large wheel which would then be spun. Along with spaces that awarded or took away money, as well as one that did nothing, three of them had a picture of a goose in a barrel - if the contestant's head landed on one of these, he or she had to get inside an actual barrel, strip completely naked, and finish the rest of the show wearing only the barrel.
• Body Paint: One of the "punishment" spaces, which featured a model wearing it and pretty much nothing else. If you landed here you spun the wheel and they painted the show's logo (a goose head) on whatever it landed on.
• Buried Alive
• Covered in Gunge
• Creepy Centipedes: Found on occasion in the tanks full of bugs the show featured.
• Damsel in Distress: Rescue her, or whatever she's chained to will explode.
• Death Trap: Many of the games were based on them, and could actually become such if the safety equipment malfunctioned or the contestant was stupid enough not to bail before running out of time.
• Eat That: "Picante Picante" in the first season; the "Chinese Restaurant" in the second. The latter was a "punishment" space in which the contestant had to at least sample whatever was presented (a whole rat cooked in sweet and sour sauce, hair and all, in the finale).
• Incendiary Exponent: The goal of at least one or two challenges per episode was "put out the fire" or "set something on fire".
• Knife-Throwing Act: Italian knife thrower Alberto Murroni performed a demonstration with his Lovely Assistant Vesna Peracino Once an Episode in both the Italian and Spanish versions, after which the contestant was asked to wager on the outcome of a second demonstration.
• Lock and Key Puzzle
• Marilyn Maneuver: An entire challenge was based on this. The male contestant had to remember what color garter was on each dancer's leg as they performed the dance one by one.
• Mud Wrestling: The contestant had to complete a challenge in a mud pit while being hindered by a female mud wrestler.
• Nintendo Hard: Many, many of the challenges.
  • The Nintendo-sponsored Super Mario Challenge was beaten by only one contestant in the entire first season. Coincidence?
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: One of the show's mainstay challenges was locking the contestant in a snake tunnel and forcing them to find the key to get out. Plenty of the other challenges featured reptiles of different kinds as well.
• Rewarding Vandalism
• Stuff Blowing Up
• Tar and Feathers: Used on contestants who landed on "death" in later episodes, with the tar obviously being replaced by a less hazardous substance.
• Timed Mission
• Time Bomb
• Traumatic Haircut: If you landed on the deranged barber's space, you WOULD get one, whether you were a man or a woman.

Tropes used in El Gran Juego de la Oca include:

• Absurdly High Stakes Game: Not only are you gambling hundreds of dollars tens of thousands of pesetas (and your dignity) with every challenge, some of them are potentially deadly.
• Breakout Character: "Flequi", the crazy barber in Season 1, quickly and easily became the most popular character on the show, to a point where he was sent with the contestant on quite a few Bonus Round missions toward the end of the run.
• Catch Phrase: Many.
• Celebrity Edition: Done twice; one on New Year's Eve and one in the spring.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Maxtor attempted it once, and the challenge was automatically awarded to the contestant.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The contestants' outfits — red, yellow, green, and blue.
• Crowd Chant: "¡Fle-qui! ¡Fle-qui! ¡Fle-qui!"
  • Done for some contestants as well (most in 3/4 time).
  • Maxtor had a slow one with a drumbeat, during which he would come out and beat the tar out of some of the very ones chanting his name!
• Crowd Song: "Olé olé olé", among others.
• Deadpan Snarker: Pepe Navarro, the host in Season 2.
• Don't Try This At Home: Natch.
• Expository Theme Tune: The lyrics are an invitation for you as the viewer to come play the game yourself if you are brave and "feel like Superman.
• Everything's Better with Cows: A two-person cow appeared onstage whenever milk was the mission sponsor.
• Fan Service: Pretty much any supporting cast member.
• Fan Disservice: La fea besucona ("the ugly kissing lady") and her male counterpart el mimoso pringoso ("the greasy lover").
• Foreshadowing: The electronic dice are pre-programmed, so when someone gets three-quarters of the way around the board in one or two turns, it is almost inevitable that they will be going back to start.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: The American one, anyway, as censorship standards are much more relaxed in Spain.
• Gratuitous English: Emilio, who is apparently bilingual as seen whenever non-Spanish speaking guests were featured, used it frequently.
• Gross Up Close-Up
• Half-Hour Comedy: More like "three-hour comedy", given the length of each episode.
• Hey, It's That Guy!!: Mr. T appeared as a contestant on the New Year's Eve episode.
• Kick the Dog: Part of Maxtor's act (see Scary Black Man below) as he came out was to have "extras" in the audience to beat up, some of which were wearing slings or were otherwise "handicapped".
• Minigame Game: Consisted of pruebas in three or four different forms: those that appeared every show and were assigned a specific space (the wall, chopping watermelons, and the "punishment" spaces, to name a few, although this did not mean they were actually played every episode); those that appeared regularly but were not assigned a space (most notably "Beso y tortazo", the "kiss or slap" game); those that appeared only a handful of times throughout the run; and those that were only played once.
• Recursive Import: The show originated in Italy as Il grande gioco dell' oca. The Spanish version was the first to use a barber (an idea of Emilio's). The next season in Italy, they had a barber.
• Rule of Three: You were asked three questions on the haircut space, the third of which was always impossible to answer.
• Running Gag: Many, but Alberto Murroni (the knife thrower) asking to close the stage gates (to avoid potentially dangerous wind interference) became one of the most recognizable.
• Sampling: The end of the Theme Tune and the cut-to-commercial music both sample the opening bar of "Stars and Stripes Forever".
• Scary Black Man / Proud Warrior Race Guy: Maxtor, who started beating the crap out of everyone immediately upon entering and against whom the contestant had to beat in a contest.
• Signature Sound Effect: TONS. Try finding a five second clip of the show where they are not playing some kind of sound effect, except for maybe the super dangerous challenges.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The song sung when a contestant lands on an Oca space is based on the melody of "Camptown Races".
• The Thunderdome: The cage near the end of the board.
• Troperrific: The show used so many and to such an extent that it was almost (if not directly) an invitation for contestants to test their skills against the raw elements of every movie and TV show ever produced.
• Unwinnable by Design: The aforementioned barber's space, as well as a challenge in which a contestant had to wager money that a professional magician would not successfully perform an everyday sleight-of-hand trick.