Recap / Game Changer S6 E6 "Deja Vu"

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Trapp, Ify, and Siobhan get trapped in a time loop.

This episode contains examples of:

• Bribing Your Way to Victory: One challenge explicitly asks the players to bribe Sam with cash in their podiums. Siobhan takes it a step further by using the cash in her podium to bribe the people running other challenges, though these don't always succeed. Trapp gets in on it by bribing "Grant" to avoid his podium in one loop.
• Call-Back: Mike Trapp is introduced as "taking another bite of the show," a reference to "A Sponsored Episode".
• The Cameo: The YouTuber FixItMan78 is played by SungWon Cho, whereas Brian David Gilbert appears as the Podium Inspector.
• Chekhov's Gun: The boxes. Initially, the purpose of the question “point or box” is unclear, as choosing “box” results in a missed opportunity for a point. But once the game loops, the players realize that they’ve run out of rubber ducks for the “give me a duck” question. A high-up shelf next to the podiums contains many rubber ducks, and it can only be reached by stacking boxes from multiple loops.
• Company Cross-References: At one point, the "Josh Ruben" name card briefly changes into a Leet Lingo version of "No Problem," Josh's catchphrase in Make Some Noise.
• Cutting the Knot: The players are given the prompt "gimme a duck", with a bunch of rubber ducks placed on a very high shelf. Siobhan and Ify eventually figure out that a different prompt, "point or box", is meant to help with this, since they can gather boxes and stack them high enough to get to the shelf. Meanwhile, Trapp just runs off to find a ladder.
  Sam: Oh, Trapp, I'm afraid that there's a very-
  Trapp: Oh, you don't like out of the box thinking on Game Changer?!
  Sam: There is a very specific game mechanic in mind that we have to-
  Trapp: Yeah, you want us to stack up the boxes. But guess what? I've got a fucking ladder, and it's way taller!
• Dance Party Ending: At the end of every cycle of the "Groundhog Day" Loop, Sam does “the wenis,” a dance routine. The players join in Sam’s dance until he kicks over the camera and the next cycle begins. With each cycle, more and more of the crew members join in the dance. In the final cycle, when the camera doesn’t get kicked over, the players, Sam, most of the crew, and even the characters like Roscoe the Creepy Clown join in the dance.
• Dance Sensation:
  Everybody do the Wenis!
  The Wenis is a dance
  Everybody is a genius
  Who knows it in advance!
• Deliberate VHS Quality: After multiple iterations of the time loop, the video and audio quality starts noticeably degrading like a VHS tape would, with tracking lines and static cuts throughout, as part of the whole show breaking down with each cycle.
• Fan Community Nicknames: invoked According to Ash, the fans of FixItMan78 are called the “FixItMan Fan Fam”.
• Foreshadowing: The player intros all hint towards the "Groundhog Day" Loop plot of the episode: Trapp is introduced as “taking another bite of the show”, Ify’s intro has Sam ask if he’s “seeing Um, Actually host double”, and Siobhan’s intro states that “one appearance wasn’t enough for her”. On the third loop, Ify expresses frustration about the fact that the intros were foreshadowing.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The third loop has the name cards for the players, Sam, and the various cameos glitching out to say new things like "Mike Trapped", "Infinity Nwadiwe", "Siobhan Thompsagain", and "Same Reich". In the fourth loop, the names start glitching to random characters or the normal names with the characters replaced Leet Lingo-style, but for one moment, Josh Ruben’s name glitches into a Leet Lingo version of “No Problem”.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The first five or so minutes of the episode are slightly chaotic, but otherwise as normal as Game Changer ever gets, save for the fact that most of the questions are much harder than usual. Then Sam kicks a camera by accident, and the show holds for a couple minutes. When the players return to the stage, Sam redoes his entire intro exactly as he did it before, and proceeds to ask the players the same questions again. This happens many times over the course of the episode, and the players gradually learn to exploit the time loop to solve questions and prompts that wouldn't otherwise be possible.
• Ironic Echo: The Podium Inspector calls for a random podium inspection. Sam says he didn’t know about that, which the Podium Inspector says “If you did, it wouldn’t be random, would it?” Later in the episode, both Ify and Siobhan get out of an inspection by claiming that it is actually a “random ponytail inspection” and inspecting the Inspector's ponytail.
  Podium Inspector: I didn’t know I was due for a random ponytail inspection.
  Siobhan: If you did then it wouldn’t be random, would it?
• The Many Deaths of You: The maze video game contains a variety of possible ways to die, including by snake bite, falling in a hole, severe paper cut, and peacefully in your sleep.
• Monster Clown: Roscoe the Creepy Clown, played by Josh Ruben.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: The last few loops start to break down, gaining glitchy VHS taping artifacts along the way. By the final loop, the video is jumping around all over the place and keeps cutting to archival footage of Sam as a baby, and the name cards for players and guests are either illegible or modified to be on theme.
• The Other Darrin: Lampshaded, as Zac had to step in at the last minute for a role originally written for Grant (spilling spaghetti everywhere just before a surprise podium inspection) due to Grant contracting COVID. Sam still insists on calling him "Grant" throughout.invoked
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: When the podiums get too dirty from "Grant"'s messy pasta eating to easily clean, the players start bribing the podium inspector with the money they received for the “bribe Sam” question. As revealed in the behind the scenes episode, this was not expected, but Brian accepted the bribes when Sam’s back was turned, so Sam went along with it. In the end, it made the game easier, allowing players to pass the inspection without throwing spaghetti at each other.
• Retraux: The maze video game is pixellated with a chiptune version of the show's theme song as its music.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The camera that Sam kept accidentally breaking, causing the loop to reset? It never had any tape in it to begin with.
• Stylistic Suck: The FixItMan78 tech tutorial is full of lame effects, contains about a minute of product and Patreon plugs before he gets to the actual tutorial, and is presented in the driest, most deadpan way possible, even when the required fix is to scream at the contraption (courtesy of SungWon Cho).
• Undignified Death: Many of the deaths in the maze video game are hilariously lame ways to die, including "bleeding to death from a paper cut" and the unused "getting a haircut to death".
• Unexpectedly Obscure Answer: The episode opens with a battery of these, including asking for a specific HTML color code. Since the episode contains a "Groundhog Day" Loop, the players eventually figure them all out.