Most episodes of this series are lost. This was due to NBC's network policy at the time where the master tapes of game shows because they saw no value in keeping the tapes intact for reruns since most game shows were not rerun after they aired. Thus, the network saw no reason to preserve the tapes. Only a small number of episodes of the show survive.
The show's set was recreated for the music video of 'Weird Al' Yankovic: I Lost on Jeopardy (1984) (A parody of Greg Kihn Band: Jeopardy (1983)) with Art Fleming and Don Pardo. Rumors also abound that this video helped inspire the reboot of Jeopardy! (1984) that launched in the fall of that year, the 20th anniversary of this original version.
The best-known song on Jeopardy! is "Think!", originally composed by Merv Griffin. "Think!" has always been used for the 30-second period in Final Jeopardy! when the contestants write down their responses. According to Merv's son Tony Griffin, while out to dinner with his wife Julann Griffin, Merv wrote the Jeopardy! "Think!" music in a minute and thirty seconds. Merv said the song is just as famous as "Happy Birthday" and has estimated that the use of "Think!" had earned him royalties of over $70 million throughout his lifetime.
Burns Cameron was the largest winner of this version of Jeopardy!, winning a total of $11,110 between his five-day stint and the 1965 annual tournament of champions. Burns was also asked to come back for the show's ceremonial 2000th episode and this time played for charity. He was later invited to compete on the summer invitational tournament, Super Jeopardy! (1990), as the only contestant of this era invited to compete.
During it's developmental phase, one aspect of Jeopardy! that appealed to the network surprisingly was its humor according to creator and executive producer Merv Griffin. What happened in early run-throughs was the answer-question reverse led to great fun. For example, if an answer was "Islands that sold for twenty-four dollars," the contestant often came up with "Where is Manhattan?"; they'd ask for a rephrasing and get "How is Manhattan?" No. "Who is Manhattan?" It became funny the same office they did the run-throughs, listening to contestants arm-wrestle the language trying to phrase the response in the form of a question. Since the networks were queasy about the quiz show scandals, the idea of a humorous question-answer show appealed to them. As they put Jeopardy! on its legs, however, Griffin realized it was unfair an boring to badger the contestants about being grammatically correct for every question. They were only getting twenty answers into a game, because the contestants spent their entire time trying to phrase the question correctly. They weren't ruling them wrong, they played with them until they got it right, but that idea went out the window. The show needed to be hard-edged and fast-paced if it was to endure, and it evolved in that direction.