Admit it. You all watch it and secretly love it. What’s not to love? People making ridiculous fools of themselves. I judge because I am extremely jealous since I would do anything to tackle Wipeout course. I even applied last year but got nowhere. Originally I thought the show was based on a Japanese game show but after doing some research I found out that the origin of the show is actually a point of contention.

From Wikipedia.

The concept and style of the show has been compared to several Japanese game shows most notably Sasuke and Takeshi’s Castle. [2][3][4] Wipeout creator and executive producer Matt Kunitz, who also executive produced NBC’s Fear Factor, states Wipeout is “90 percent Fear Factor- inspired, 10 percent Japanese game show.”[3] Kunitz claimed, in the Los Angeles Times, that Wipeout was born from a desire to do a funny stunt series. He wanted to sell the show as Fear Factor meets America’s Funniest Home Videos.[5]

Leading Japanese broadcaster TBS has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against ABC, charging that Wipeout is “a blatant copycat” of several of its classic Japanese competition game shows. Among the charges are that ABC bought search terms such as MXC on Google to help drive traffic to the official Wipeout page, and that specific obstacles in Wipeout were knock-offs of challenges in the Japanese game shows.[7]

If you’re interested in applying for the show, check out their requirements on the ABC site. In the meantime, here are some of the best moments on Wipeout that I could find on YouTube. Surprisingly there weren’t that many from the US show but tonnes from the BBC version.

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