The 16 Most Ridiculous ‘What Would You Do’ Situations Ever

In more than 150 episodes, ABC has staged bizarre, awkward, and criminal situations, recorded the reactions of unsuspecting passersby, and asked What Would You Do? Now the hidden-camera show is coming back for its midseason return on Wednesday, January 8, and we’re listing our picks some of the wildest hypotheticals from the show so far.

A list of episodes shows WWYD banks on situations of discrimination, whether they’re “phobias” — homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, et cetera — or “isms” — racism, sexism, ageism, and the like.

Then there are the more humorous set-ups — a customer takes too many free samples, a child drops profanities in a store, a woman rips recipes out of a cookbook she didn’t pay for, and so on.

But the WWYD situations below — listed as they appear in Wikipedia synopses, along with our commentary — are the ones we find most ridiculous.

16. “A husband and wife disagree over whether the husband should get a vasectomy.” Not to get snippy, but perhaps WWYD started to run out of ideas by the time of this 2024 episode? (Props to W. Kamau Bell, though, for sharing his experience.)

15. “An old man with a heart condition tells his granddaughter not to worry when they go ziplining.” Ziplining?! This What Would You Do set-up sounds like the result of a Mad Libs game.

14. “A mother stops her vehicle and tells her kids in the back seat to get out of the car and walk home.” Our parents just threatened to “turn this car around” when we weren’t behaving, but believe it or not, this kind of thing does happen in real life.

13. “A mother takes photos of her daughter on a gym rowing machine so she can make it seem as if the daughter is on her high school’s rowing team.” We would title this episode “What Would You Do: The Lori Loughlin Story.”

12. “A couple yell at a pregnant teen who no longer wants to be their surrogate.” We can just imagine some ABC employee watching Juno and then running out of the movie theater with the next great What Would You Do? idea.

11. “A person who believes in life outside Earth and a nonbeliever argue at a museum.” Unless the two people are arguing too loudly — and these are actors trying to be overheard, so they probably are — we don’t know why anyone would bother getting involved.

10. “A woman asks strangers to pretend to be her boss in front of her mom.” There must be easier ways to make your mother think you’re still employed… and why would the woman leave the table during the ruse?! The jig should have been up right then.

9. “At a grocery store, a young woman allows an elderly woman to skip her in line, only to argue with her when the elderly woman gets a cash prize for being the five millionth customer.” That young woman took the express (checkout) lane from selfless to selfish, but in this scenario, perhaps the older woman could have at least given her a cut of the jackpot?

8. “A man takes another person’s running pump at a gas station while they’re inside the store.” We can’t even imagine the logistics of this happening in real life. But on the plus side, the WWYD producers were showing fully-leaded creativity!

7. “On a date with a blind man, a woman lies to the man by saying she’s a supermodel.” We just feel bad that some actor was hired for what WWYD producers deemed to be sub-supermodel looks.

6. “A test-taker cheats during a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire test audition.” Nice cross-promotion, ABC, but this situation seems far-fetched — as if the overseers of a game show with a $1 million prize would sleep on the job.

5. “A mother asks customers to listen to her baby via her baby monitor while she takes a break.” So many questions! Don’t parents use baby monitors at home, to monitor babies in their cribs? Did this mother take her baby monitor with her on a shopping trip?

4. “A shopper obsessed with selfies takes a picture with an injured man who just fell off a ladder.” We can think of more plausible situations where people might take inappropriate selfies, but then again, we also wouldn’t put this faux pas past the image-obsessed among us.

3. “An unhygienic ice-cream store employee touches (and even tastes) a customer’s ice-cream.” Apparently, this episode aired mere weeks before Ariana Grande’s #DonutGate scandal. It was a big summer for fast-food cooties.

2. “For free food at a drive-thru, strangers are asked to do jumping jacks or to sing their order.” What would we do? For free food, we’d do jumping jacks or sing our order! Is that even a question?

1. “A young boy begs strangers to pose as his karate instructor to fend off bullies.” What’s more ridiculous: that the kid bullies tested strangers on their karate abilities to gauge the veracity of the boy’s claims, or that this scenario had adults threatening children?

What Would You Do? Midseason Premiere, Wednesday, January 8, 10/9c, ABC