American Gladiators/YMMV


 * Ear Worm: Bill Conti's original opening theme.
 * Seasonal Rot: The production values dropped noticeably in Seasons 6-7 (1994-96) and made some awful set design changes, the quality and range of events decreased, and the Eliminator was changed to start with a Versaclimber (boring, difficult to catch up on) instead of the travelator/reverse treadmill (moved to the end...which was, in fairness, pretty cool).
 * Not to mention that the spinning cylinder was replaced in these seasons with...a Chuck E. Cheese-esque ball pit. Not only did it take forever for the contenders to wade through them, it added more than a dash of Narm to the proceedings.
 * Special Effects Failure: When they switched to the more modern-looking set halfway through Season 1 and increased the lighting, the last few rows of "spectators" were shown to be cardboard cutouts.
 * In one game of Atlasphere, the smoke that would come out anytime a contestant scored failed to work.
 * The Scrappy: Viper, who was usually booed anytime he showed his face. Whether this was because the crowd just loved to hate him or if they genuinely disliked him (he was a noted dirty player) is unclear.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Several times.
 * One of the rules for Power Ball was "no tackling around the head" for safety reasons. Fair enough, but at one point in Season 1 they actually made it illegal to tackle the contenders at all, which left the Gladiators trying to strip the ball or just shove the contenders out of bounds. Not only did this cause the Gladiators to flounder in their attempts to stop the contenders, taking the aura of might away from them, but the contenders went down to the ground several times anyway, and in one instance in the women's event two of the Gladiators were disqualified, leaving just one of them to defend against the two contenders. Thankfully, this was quickly done away with.
 * The shortened Season 7 (which included claims that they would return) had two ball pits replacing the spinning cylinder in the Eliminator. This new obstacle was tremendously-difficult to wade through, took forever, and blew up the contenders badly, turning the Eliminator into an overly-long nightmare that you would think they tried no practice runs on.
 * The revival's Eliminator was even longer and more soul-crushing, albeit for different reasons.