Family Feud/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



  • Ray Combs and Richard Dawson both died on June 2 -- Combs in 1996 and Dawson in 2012.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty: It's "survey said", not "says", and it's only ever used in Fast Money (never in the main game).
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Every host of the show save for Ray Combs was fairly well-known before taking control of the show:
    • Richard Dawson was Corporal Peter Newkirk on Hogan's Heroes and a panelist on Match Game. He left the latter in 1978.
    • Louie Anderson is known as a stand-up comedian and the creator of the cartoon Life With Louie.
    • Richard Karn played Al Borland on Home Improvement.
    • John O'Hurley played J. Peterman on Seinfeld and hosted the 2000-2002 revival of To Tell the Truth. He was also a finalist on Dancing With the Stars.
    • Steve Harvey is also a comedian and sitcom star (The Steve Harvey Show)
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
    • Gene Wood was heard on countless Goodson-Todman game shows.
    • Burton Richardson was first heard on The Arsenio Hall Show and did some work for Mark Goodson Productions, including the last two incarnations of To Tell the Truth (one of which also had him working with O'Hurley) and the 1994 nighttime version of The Price Is Right (and some substitute work on the daytime version).
    • Joey Fatone made use of his vocal talents in the band 'N Sync. Like O'Hurley, he was a Dancing finalist.
  • Parody: More parodies were done that weren't affectionate or deconstructive.
    • The French version "Une famille en or" ("A golden family") was parodied as "Une famille en plomb" ("A lead [as in the metal] family") which mocked the fact that answers came from a poll: In this version, educated answers were "wrong", while "uneducated" answers from more "hillbilly" families were accepted.
      • The skit illustrated it with the "things in a kitchen" category, in which "refrigerator" was refused because the "right" word was supposedly "frigogidaire" [1].
  • What Could Have Been:
    • In a 2011 interview, Richard Dawson said that William Shatner had gotten a crack.
    • On the newsgroup alt.tv.game-shows, Geoff Edwards confirmed that he had been tapped to host the original Feud, but declined because at the time, he had a deal pending with Bob Stewart for what became Shoot for the Stars on NBC. Jack Narz was supposedly in the running at one point as well.
    • Joe Namath tried out for the revival that ended up being hosted by Ray Combs.
    • Dolly Parton did a pilot for what ended up being the 1999 revival, but didn't make the cut. It's hard to imagine her doing any worse than Anderson or Karn, at least.
  1. (which isn't even a word, as it's a portmanteau of popular abbreviation "frigo" and Brand Name Takeover "Frigidaire")