My first exposure to Takeshi's Castle was when I was in the US military and stationed in England in the early 2000s. I worked night shift and our shop has this old TV that only picked up a few stations. One of which was a German station that showed nothing but Takeshi's Castle and 900 number commercials. So, we spent our nights watching a insane Japanese game show subtitled in German with a bunch of commercials with topless women.