The Joker's Wild/YMMV

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• Memetic Mutation: "Joker... Joker... [something arcane that's not a Joker]."
  • "Jack, I'll go off the board and take [something]."
  • "As we know, The Joker's Wild is a game of definitions."
• Moment of Awesome: A champion by the name of Hal was in dire straits in his eighth game against a challenger named Adrienne. Down $500-$200 and with no Fast Forward category in the game, his only hope was to spin three Jokers, which would give him a chance at an instant win. Luckily, he was wearing a rather loud "lucky suit". He gave it a quick rub, pulled the handle, and got his three Jokers. After Jack Barry nearly faints from shock, he explains how astronomical the odds would be of someone both needing and getting three Jokers. Hal proceeds to get a very simple question right and win his game. A bit of a Downer Ending for Adrienne, though...
  • This clip at the 3:56 mark shows a rare case where in the "How Low Will You Go?" category, the contestant could have up to seven more clues to answer a question. She asks for NO more clues and still gets it right!
  • This clip shows Jack Barry sending off Joe Dunn as an UNDEFEATED champion (by showing his accomplishments, including $66,200 in cash and prizes). It also shows this was that the first time the network limit on game-show winnings was raised to $50,000 from a previous $35,000, with a charity receiving what went over that. Given this was twenty one years before Ken Jennings on "Jeopardy!", this was a big deal as he had been a REGULAR champion (Tournament of Champions winners had won more, but paid out over ten years at the time due to the limits on winning; while the show itself was syndicated at the time, it ran on network stations, and sadly subject to network rules) without even getting to a Tournament yet. So this made him the "Biggest (Regular Show) Winner" in the history of "The Joker's Wild."
• Nightmare Fuel: If you were a young child in that era, the devious rendering of the Devil's face (supposedly a caricature of Barry) kept you up at night quite a few times.
• Replacement Scrappy: Much hatred for the monotonous Pat Finn. Also, many fans disliked Bill Cullen's run on the show; while he is usually praised as one of the best game show hosts of all time (if not the best), his laid-back hosting style was not a good fit for Joker, and old age had slowed him down considerably by this point.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Much hatred for the 1990s maingame and bonus round (first word, first definition...). The staff restored categories to the maingame on January 7, 1991, but the measure came far too late to save the show...and besides that, the money-based format came back for the last three shows (to avoid straddling, so that the final episode wouldn't end in the middle of a game.)
  • Also, the question values were $25/$50/$100 (half of what they'd been less than twenty years earlier). The jokers couldn't be used to go "off the board" as they hadn't let the contestants know what categories each game had on the reels (they had to be used for the full amount for whatever category was chosen). Also, three jokers gave a contestant an instant $250 and the right to answer $100 questions in one of three categories hidden behind each joker. Not like before.
• What an Idiot!: One of the special categories added was "Fast Forward _____", which allowed contestants to keep answering questions as long as they kept getting the right answer, each right answer adding the same amount to their score. In one game, the champion had $250 and needed to tie or beat the challenger who had reached $500. The champion spun a Joker and two regular categories then, without thinking, asked for "(Regular Category) for $200". An amazed Jack Barry told him that he just lost the game, when the contestant should've gone off the board with the Joker and taken "Fast Forward _____" to build up $50 questions and possibly win the game.