| 1 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[folder:Subpages]] |
| 4 | [[index]] |
| 5 | * [[BaseBreakingCharacter/TheAmazingRace Base-Breaking Character]] |
| 6 | * [[EliminationHoudini/TheAmazingRace Elimination Houdini]] |
| 7 | * [[ShockingElimination/TheAmazingRace Shocking Elimination]] |
| 8 | [[/index]] |
| 9 | [[/folder]] |
| 10 | |
| 11 | [[folder:All Versions]] |
| 12 | * BreatherLevel: Well, Breather Task or more rarely Leg. On occasion, one task (or leg) is usually pretty easy compared to the last couple. Usually it appears around the middle, and sometimes after a particularly grueling leg. |
| 13 | * BrokenBase: Many: |
| 14 | ** There's the [[ThisIsACompetition This Is A Race]] fans, and the CallItKarma fans. They generally get along at the beginning of a season, until something sets them off and the CasualCompetitiveConflict carries on for the remainder of the season. |
| 15 | ** Team selection, in particular the inclusion of StuntCasting teams. [=CBS=] imports of [[Series/{{Survivor}} other]] [[Series/BigBrother reality]] shows are especially considered this for the American version. |
| 16 | ** How the courses should be planned out, whether the travel and adventure aspect should be more emphasized, or the challenges. |
| 17 | ** Teams helping each other on tasks. |
| 18 | ** The change of the Fast Forward being common to rare. Some said that Fast Forward being common is strategic for racers to choose when to strike and rare Fast Forwards just became a task to racers to get 1st place. While others think that it's good since it cut unnecessary budgets and makes teams fully experience the country. |
| 19 | ** The existence of equalizers. Some fans feel that evening teams up at the beginning of every leg does not reward those who did well on the previous leg, and keeps the show from being a cumulative effort, as a team can win every leg up to a certain point, but then get eliminated due to one bad performance. Other fans feel that evening up the teams keeps the show from being a boring ForegoneConclusion every week, where the teams rarely ever change position, and prevents a team from having one lucky leg early on, and using that to dominate an entire season. |
| 20 | ** Non-elimination legs. Some view them as an opportunity to give teams screwed over by circumstances beyond their control a second chance, while others view them as nothing more than a means for the producers to protect [[CreatorsPet their favorite teams]] from elimination via AssPull, even when they badly deserve it. Some seasons in particular are divisive due to how these [=NELs=] are stacked, like seasons with a format of NEL, elimination, NEL, elimination or even putting 3 non eliminations legs in a row. When Non-elimination legs were removed in Season 34, the fanbase was divided. |
| 21 | ** Season 22's Vietnam leg became an unusually (for this show) large fanbase splitter as it featured a patriotic Vietnamese song glorifying communism and the wreckage as a B-52 Bomber from the Vietnam War used as a monument. Both of these sparked enough political controversy that CBS had to apologize to the veterans and any offended viewers, though other viewers were pleased that they presented aspects of Vietnamese culture so candidly including the Vietnamese perspective of the War and some were even disappointed at what was to them an unnecessary apology. Of special note is that channels outside the USA did not air the apology as the Vietnam War is primarily an American political issue. |
| 22 | ** A DarkHorseVictory. A portion of fans feel the team just got lucky on the final leg and robbed a more "deserving" team of a win especially if they survived a non-elimination leg or never won a leg. The rest feel that it makes a great surprise ending and proof that anyone can win the race. |
| 23 | ** Handling COVID. Depending on which part of the fanbase you ask, the charter flight and other chartered transport US 33 used may have removed some level of tension, but the increased level of self-driving may have made up for it. On top of that, Canada 8 and US 33 decided to allow previously eliminated teams to return to replace teams impacted by COVID, with the latter giving returning teams a Speed Bump[[note]]This Speed Bump went unaired[[/note]], but Australia 6 allowed the teams to sit out their isolation period and then do a Speed Bump upon their return. |
| 24 | * CasualCompetitiveConflict: There's notable tension on this point between different factions of fans and racers. A good example is in reactions to the U-Turn and other mechanics; some see it as dirty play while others see it as just a tool to be used. |
| 25 | * EliminationHoudini: There's usually one per season, so many it has its own page. |
| 26 | * FanNickname: Even ignoring season-specific nicknames for teams and individual racers, we have "The Philbrow" (Phil's FascinatingEyebrow), "Philimination" (being EliminatedFromTheRace by Phil), "Exposition Hands" (AnInsert), "Killer Fatigue" (the point when stress starts to take its toll on the racers), "MercyKill" (automatically eliminating a team that is trailing to the point that it's simply not possible for them to catch up, barring all the other teams dropping dead before they get to the Pit Stop, instead of making them finish the leg), "[=NELs=]" (short for Non-Elimination Legs), and the "Super Leg" (for those double length legs which last two episodes). |
| 27 | * NauseaFuel: The ForeignQueasine challenges, or, if the food is palatable, the teams then have to eat either massive amounts of it or eat it ''really fast''. The worst one was probably a roadblock in season 5 where the players had to eat a whole kilo of caviar by themselves. Christy spent the entire challenge crying because it was so disgusting. |
| 28 | * ScrappyMechanic: |
| 29 | ** The Intersection. Making two teams work together is more in line with something a show like ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' would do. Instead of creating interesting interactions between the racers, it made whatever team arrived in an odd-numbered position stand around and wait for the other teams to show up. Sometimes they would be stuck waiting for hours. |
| 30 | *** Not only that, but several of these were placed in legs where a team was "Marked for Elimination". The Intersection pretty much made survival impossible for these teams, as it bunched them with the pack until it was too late to get 30 minutes ahead of anyone else. Bill and Joe swear to this day that when they raced in All Stars Eric intentionally did the intersection slowly to get them out when it happened to them. |
| 31 | ** The "mugging" penalty for teams saved by non-elimination legs[[note]](Used in Seasons 5-9: the last place team had to surrender all of their money and weren’t given any money for the next leg. Also in 7-9: the team had to surrender ''everything'', except their passports and the clothes they were wearing, for the ''rest'' of the season. Also in 7: begging was not allowed prior to the start of each leg)[[/note]] was widely loathed because it forced the awkward situation of well-off people begging for money (and later, other possessions) in impoverished nations just to survive in a reality TV competition (taken to extreme levels in U.S. Season 6 when the team that had to beg was on an island in Senegal known for its slave trade). On top of that, it barely penalized teams time-wise since, most of the time, begging easily made up for the resources lost and they could do it even during Pit Stop breaks in its debut. At least it was a step in the right direction, since it was still better than the saved teams getting off scot-free. |
| 32 | ** The "Marked for Elimination" penalty is widely known for practically being a OneHitKill for most of the teams slapped with it, especially since most of the teams hit with the penalty were some of the "weaker" teams of the season anyways. Producers also tended to make the following legs UnwinnableByDesign, as stated above. |
| 33 | ** Any early elimination twist is reviled for giving the first out team less airtime, especially the Starting Line Elimination of US Season 15, China Rush Season 3 and Asia Season 5. Also, since the draw of applying for the show is the opportunity to experience different countries, getting eliminated before leaving the first airport (Israel Season 2, Norway Season 1) or even the starting line as mentioned runs counter to that purpose. |
| 34 | ** Luck tasks. Noted, not all luck tasks are bad, and no one minds them when they're part of a Detour when there are other options, but when tasks that rely on a huge amount of luck that can take anywhere from minutes to over an hour are put at vital points late in the season, it causes complaints that the winner is not decided by merit, but instead by who got the luckiest on those tasks. The first season of Australia was particularly bad, as it had three random luck tasks in the final leg. |
| 35 | *** Similar to that are the opinion matching tasks, where teams are asked five question about the other teams, and their teammate has to match their answers. The U.S. version only used it once, during All-Stars, and it pissed off fans when it ended up costing Dustin & Kandice the Race, but it's been used a lot in other versions of the show, usually late in the season, when it has a huge effect on the winner. |
| 36 | * SequelDifficultyDrop: |
| 37 | ** Season 8 was just a giant loop around North America, and included challenges that could easily be completed by a child early on, though the difficulty did ramp up later on. |
| 38 | ** Season 11 had almost no tough physical challenges, and the mental challenges would have been easy for first time racers, let alone All-Stars. It was the biggest complaint fans had about the first All-Star season. |
| 39 | ** Season 15 again had the fans complaining about how easy the course was (even with them bringing back the Hay Bale Roadblock). |
| 40 | ** Season 23 pulled back on a lot of the physical challenges teams had been put through in the past three season, only they did not make up for it by increasing the mental difficulty, leaving a few difficult tasks sprinkled in with a bunch of easy ones. |
| 41 | ** Disappointing course aside, the challenges in Season 24 were considered too easy and linear for returning players. |
| 42 | ** The 1st season of the second China version as compared not only to China Rush, but every other version of the show in the traveling aspect where the celebrity teams sleep in rather comfortable hotel rooms, book flight tickets before the race starts and take breaks before resuming the race [[note]]which ended up taking 20 weeks for this season to end[[/note]], lessening a huge part of the frustration that teams usually face in the other versions. This was done due to the logistics of trying to get celebrities to run the Race, but Vietnam still managed their celebrity editions without such concessions. |
| 43 | * SequelDifficultySpike: |
| 44 | ** The tasks on Season 5 were not particularly harder than what came before, but a few permanent additions upped the overall difficulty of the series from that point out. The addition of penalties for teams saved by a non-elimination leg made it even more costly to finish last at any point, and the reduction of the Fast Forward from one every leg to one or two per Race took away each team's one free pass per season. |
| 45 | ** Season 6 was the hardest of the single digit seasons, with a number of tough challenges, including the infamous Hay Bale Roadblock (in which the odds of finding a clue were ''Seven percent''. 20/270), the Spicy Soup challenge (which caused nearly every racer to throw up, one even ''in their bowl''), and the row of locks racers were forced to try and unlock on the penultimate leg (which caused one team to quit and take a penalty, and almost did it to another team as well). Plus, with an overabundance of equalizers, it was nearly impossible for a team to get an advantage through their travel knowledge. It also introduced limits on Roadblocks for each team member, making it harder for a strong racer to carry a much weaker teammate through the season. |
| 46 | ** Season 10 was, by far, the hardest course they put together at that point, setting a new standard for course difficulty that would not be topped until Unfinished Business. Teams faced challenges on the first few legs that were not usually faced until midway through the season. This was also the first season teams were sent west to Asia to start the race, where communication with locals is generally the hardest, instead of east (Europe) or south (South America), and the first where there were rules against begging for money, taking away what had been a major Game Breaker for the last seven seasons. |
| 47 | ** Season 17 at the time had one of the hardest routes from All-Stars to Unfinished Business, especially in the wake of the poor course design in the previous two seasons. Even with the introduction of the Express Pass this season, producers upped the difficulty by including a wide variety of physical tasks in addition to incredibly tricky mental tasks to throw off the teams. |
| 48 | ** Season 18 not only featured an increase in the difficulty of the tasks that was missing in the first All-Star season, but they took out any learning curve, hitting the teams with difficult tasks right from the start, issued an automatic U-Turn for the team who finished last on the first task, created combination tasks (by taking what would normally be two separate tasks and making the teams do them either simultaneously, or as part of the same Roadblock), replaced two non-elimination legs with back-to-back Super Legs, and for the first time, had no (shown) Fast Forward. This season also began the trend of hitting each team member with their own Roadblock in the final leg (or at least forcing teammates to trade off tasks, in the case of Season 19). |
| 49 | ** Season 19, not so much with the challenges, but the ''clues'', as they seemed to have been specifically designed to exploit teams who forget to [[ReadTheFreakingManual Read The Freaking Clue]], changed small things to throw off expectations of teams who knew the metagame, and exploited teams' tendencies to [[FailedASpotCheck miss obvious things]]. |
| 50 | ** Season 27 was one of the hardest post All-Stars 2 seasons. The first half was riddled with hard or time consuming challenges, and the second half relied mostly on combination tasks, but what really threw teams for a loop was several new twists designed to test the teams adaptability such as having both members do the Roadblock as their speed bump. |
| 51 | ** The tasks in Season 29 were more difficult than the previous three seasons. Some examples include the Boat detour in Panama, the weaving detour in Zanzibar, and the video game roadblock in South Korea. |
| 52 | ** After several complaints about Season 33 being a tad too-easy (although being filmed while the COVID-19 pandemic was still in effect didn't help), Season 34 was easily one of the hardest races in a long time, as a combination of every leg needing teams to navigate themselves either by driving or walking, challenges that may have looked easy but were surprisingly difficult, and every leg being an elimination (except for one that had an elimination due to the team testing positive for COVID-19) along with no Yields or U-Turns meaning playing catch-up was even more difficult yet necessary than before. |
| 53 | * SerialNumbersFiledOff: ABC's ''Expedition Impossible'' was basically "''The Amazing Race'', only 13 teams instead of 11, three team members instead of two, a far lamer prize ($150,000 + [[UndesirablePrize 3 SUVs]], as opposed to ''Race'''s $1,000,000), and [[SoOkayItsAverage a helluva lot less exciting]]." |
| 54 | * SpoiledByTheFormat: |
| 55 | ** It's a pretty sure sign that it's a "To be continued..." leg if it's just a few minutes until the end of the episode and still no teams whatsoever have checked into the Pit Stop. |
| 56 | ** Because the penultimate and final legs are shown together in the finale, there has been a trend (to much of the fanbase's chagrin) in recent seasons to show the teams in the final leg, spoiling the final elimination. |
| 57 | ** Because {{Confession Cam}}s are recorded only after the leg ends, fans can often figure out that a struggling team will not be eliminated just by their demeanor in the Confession Cams. |
| 58 | * [[ThatOneLevel That One Leg]] & [[ThatOneBoss That One Challenge]]: Almost every race, a couple teams state they had difficulty with one or two legs. Not to mention, there's almost always ''one'' challenge of ''any'' kind that trips up almost every team on it. These include: |
| 59 | ** [[LuckBasedMission "Needle-in-a-haystack" challenges]], where the teams have to find the right object in a sea of similar ones, a tiny object within a large area or a pile of something, a specific sign in a sea of neon, or a bunch of signs in a certain order. Especially if it's nighttime, or you're on a moving object and don't have time to stop if you didn't read a sign properly, or missed it. |
| 60 | ** Repeating a phrase you hear. |
| 61 | ** For female racers and models, there's the oft repeated head shaving Fast Forward. |
| 62 | ** [[EatThat Eating challenges]]. When it's not ForeignQueasine, it's either eating a ''huge'' amount of it or eating it ''really fast''. |
| 63 | ** Dancing challenges tend to trip up racers as well, since they are required to (sometimes) memorize complicated steps or perform in harsh conditions (U.S. Season 20's Bollywood Roadblock, Canada Season 1's Line Dancing Roadblock) |
| 64 | * ValuesDissonance: Multiple editions might include EatThat challenges where they have to eat items that are considered local delicacies but are considered ForeignQueasine by the racers. |
| 65 | [[/folder]] |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[folder:American Version]] |
| 68 | * AccidentalInnuendo: |
| 69 | ** Millie & Chuck (Season 4) were a little infamous for this, especially considering they were labeled "The Virgins". |
| 70 | ---> '''Chuck''' (on his inability to get in an F1 race car due to his claustrophobia): It's feeling tight. Hot and tight. |
| 71 | ** Christine Godlweski (Season 8) to her sister Tricia, when giving her a water pump to help bail out their row boat in the leg 8 Detour: |
| 72 | --->'''Christine''': Put it between your legs and pump. |
| 73 | ** Dustin & Kandice (Season 11), upset at Mirna for her attempt to cut in line and steal their standby tickets, gave this exchange to the camera: |
| 74 | --->'''Dustin''': We're bigger than she is. We can make a Beauty Queen sandwich outta her. |
| 75 | ** Season 20, episode 1: |
| 76 | ---> '''Phil''': The Express Pass is a great piece of power in your pocket. |
| 77 | ---> '''Dave''': That's a little perverse, but we'll take it. |
| 78 | ** In Season 26, the show gave the hashtag [=#TruckStopLove=] to Mike & Rochelle, with seemingly no realization of what kind of subversive hookups truck stops are generally infamous for. |
| 79 | ** A couple of other contestants said that Blair (28) constantly saying stuff like "Let's go, daddy" or "Good job, daddy" made them uncomfortable due to the sexual way that "daddy" is often used. |
| 80 | ** Pretty much any task involving eating/making sausages or other suggestive objects/tasks, like milking animals, are full of these. |
| 81 | * AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: |
| 82 | ** Bill & Joe during Season 1 were seen as the WickedCultured gay couple who thought they were better than the other teams, and would do anything to win rather than play "fair." This portrayal has become increasingly debated since, with their "sinister side" being mostly chalked up to ManipulativeEditing. It didn't hurt that their style of play was emulated by other teams from the second season on, making them seem like the smarter team in retrospect. |
| 83 | ** The Amazing Race anthology ''My Ox is Broken!'', which repeatedly asserts that what is shown of the Racers on-screen is not necessarily reflective of their true selves because of ManipulativeEditing and the unique stresses of the Race, did this with Flo, arguing that instead of the common view of her as a bitchy, useless drama queen who didn't deserve her half of the million dollars or the continuation of her friendship with Zach, she was ultimately just someone who found that she wasn't as ready for the rigors of the Race as she thought, gradually cracked under very real stresses and found the strength to go on with the support of her best friend, and was able to laugh afterwards at the terrible impression she left on-screen. |
| 84 | ** Margie & Luke (14 & 18) either came off as a group of nice/average racers who performed beyond Luke's disability... or Luke was a KarmaHoudini who acted like a spoiled asshat and managed to avoid being called out on it, especially since Margie refused to see him do any wrong. |
| 85 | ** Brook & Claire (17). View #1: Brook was one of the single greatest racers ever, whose boundless energy and inability to be embarrassed made her the best part of Season 17, only she was held back by a partner who was average at best. View #2: Claire was a likable [[TheEveryman Everywoman]], partnered with an annoying, hyper, shrieky-voiced ball of energy that dragged her along at a pace she could never hope to meet. View #3: Their contrasting personalities fed off well in relation to each other, with Brook keeping Claire motivated and Claire controlling Brook's manic personality. |
| 86 | ** Cindy (19) was either a neurotic ControlFreak who saw herself as better than everyone else and had to be perfect at everything, or she was just a woman who was [[FreudianExcuse over-pressurized into repeatedly having to prove herself and her relationship]] to her EducationMama. |
| 87 | ** There were a number of fans who insisted that Max & Katie (22) were only villains because [[ManipulativeEditing they were edited this way]] by the liberal editors/producers wanting to demonize the pair of admitted Republicans, even though Max & Katie outright said during {{Confession Cam}}s that they had come into the season wanting and expecting to be the dominating villains. |
| 88 | ** Travis (23) was either a partner who was getting increasing frustrated with his partner for her lackluster performance in the last half of the race, or he was an unbearable {{Jerkass}} for constantly contributing to her performance by his berating comments. Most (if not all) of the fanbase take the latter interpretation. |
| 89 | ** The Philly Jawns (35). Is their loudness (including [[CharacterCatchphrase the "Out of towners!" exclamation]]) annoying or entertaining? In-universe, some Vietnamese locals subscribe to the latter interpretation and give their hats to the ladies (albeit not on camera - we only learn they received their hats for free [[WordOfSaintPaul when Todd and Ashlie mention it in their recap of the episode]]). |
| 90 | * ArcFatigue: The LoveTriangle[=/=]alliance between Tara & Wil and Chris & Alex in Season 2 lasted the entire season, with only the first leg being free from its influence. It was not that it lasted so long as much that it got so much focus despite it cycling through the same plot points over and over (Tara forsaking Wil to flirt with Alex, Wil constantly changing his mind on whether he wants to be in an alliance or not), and neither team being all that popular. |
| 91 | * AudienceAlienatingEra: Seasons 15 and 16, notable for being the first year in which the Race failed to win the Emmy for best Reality-Competition Show (Even Seasons 8 ([[SeasonalRot The Family Edition]]) and 9 (which was widely considered sub-par for the first eight episodes) managed to win it). The biggest complaints came from the casting, which relied far too heavily on gimmick teams and pseudo-celebrities (of the 23 teams, 9 fit into one of these categories), though the courses and the competence of the teams also caused complaints. |
| 92 | * AwesomeEgo: Rob & Amber, Colin & Christie, and Misti & Jim. |
| 93 | * BadassDecay: A few teams have become noticeably less strong their second or third time around. Inevitable, really, since by definition, everybody in the All-Stars is an experienced racer, and early eliminations are as always a part of the game. Examples include Kevin & Drew (11), Jaime & Cara (18), Jet & Cord (18), Jessica & John (24), Flight Time & Big Easy (24) and both Art & JJ and Leo & Jamal. (31) |
| 94 | * BigLippedAlligatorMoment: |
| 95 | ** In Season 23, as the teams were racing out of the airport in Indonesia, the editors randomly cut from Ashley & Ally in their cab, to a monkey walking on stilts in front of a line of motorcycles, then to Leo & Jamal in their cab. |
| 96 | ** Leg 4 of Season 36 starts with the teams paragliding over Colombia, ''before the leg begins''. They don't even paraglide in the order the arrived in the previous leg and it makes no difference in the leg as the departure times were after the paragliding was over. |
| 97 | * BreatherLevel: |
| 98 | ** Leg 11 of Amazing Race 29 was this, after a very grueling leg. Teams only had to do Cup Stacking (which, while intended to be HarderThanItLooks, was still easy enough to learn with practice), make Kimchi, and beat a Korean eSports player in VideoGame/StreetFighterV (with some handicaps added later to [[AntiFrustrationFeatures make it possible]]). It felt an awful lot like a first or second leg, in comparison to a penultimate leg. This might have been because the 10th leg was ''very'' grueling. |
| 99 | ** Leg 5 of Amazing Race 32, which came after a brutal DifficultySpike in leg 4(see [[ThatOneLevel That One Task]] below). All the teams had to do was match party goers to paintings, make pies and deliver them, and win three carnival games. This came after a leg which fused several extremely hard challenges from the past, along with equally challenging new ones. Although it did make up for the difficulty somewhat by it being a self-driving leg (more than one team struggled just getting to the first task, and a frontrunner team ended up eliminated because of this) and the cars being stick shift (which some teams fail to realize may come up at least once even after two decades on air). |
| 100 | *** An egregious case happened later on where it was the ''finale'' that was one. The previous leg had a grueling memory task that involved the minutiae of remembering background music at tasks. The finale had the first two tasks be luck-based tasks, a copy of the height task in Season 28, and a final challenge that was basically placing strips of a Winkle Trifle map on a globe which would've felt more in place as a final challenge in Season 2, not 32. |
| 101 | ** Leg 5 of Amazing Race 34 plays with this, as the leg is standard difficulty for its position in the race, but due to a NonGameplayElimination happening before the leg begins, the racers are told at the beginning of the leg that none of them will be eliminated, which naturally takes a lot of stress off the racers. |
| 102 | * BrokenBase: |
| 103 | ** Ask the fans to rank the seasons. Though there seem to be a few seasons that will hit the bottom of most people's lists (the forgettable Season 4, the bickering couple-dominated 6, the Family Edition, the StuntCasting riddled Seasons 15 & 16 and the poorly produced Season 24), every single season will hit the top of someone's list. Especially since most fans tend to favor one group of races over all the others. |
| 104 | ** The decision to move the show to Fridays. Some don't mind because they don't have anything to do on that night, hated having the show preempted by sports overruns, and it make recording the show much easier. Others hated it of the fact they are otherwise busy and were used to watching it on Sundays. Not helped by the fact that the change after Season 24 and FridayNightDeathSlot. |
| 105 | ** The incredibly upsetting crapshoot in Season 29 where teams were paired up as total strangers. One team that got along very well and was interesting to watch went out first, another favorite suffered an elimination by default when one member got heatstroke, and ''many'' teams bickered. Worse, the final few to go to the end were considered either dull as dirt or annoying, and the winners were essentially a [[CampGay gay banshee]] and [[TheLoad Flo 2.0.]] |
| 106 | ** Head To Head has 3 groups. One who loves it, another who hates it, and a third who likes it but doesn't feel it should be right before the Pit Stop |
| 107 | * [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff Canadians Love The Amazing Race]]: The show is consistently top-rated in Canada, and is much more popular there than it is in its home country (it's consistently in the top 5 most watched shows in the country, with ratings that are at times comparable to ''Series/HockeyNightInCanada''). The many, many requests to let Canadians apply can attest to this popularity. Phil claimed that passport issues prevented Canadians from appearing and suggested they make their own version. |
| 108 | ** Which they eventually did, and the Canadian version's premiere garnered the highest ratings of any Canadian premiere ever. This is despite it being a summer series and traveling in only Canada. |
| 109 | * CaptainObviousReveal: While there is a standard accepted "winners' edit" among the fanbase, sometimes the show makes it so obvious that even those who aren't trying can tell who wins, such as [[spoiler:Meghan & Cheyne and Kim & Penn]]. |
| 110 | * CatharsisFactor: Kendra calling Jon Baker an asshole to his face after having to watch him abuse virtually everyone all season, and then he and Victoria '''''finally''''' go home without a single leg win despite [[AlwaysSecondBest numerous close calls]]. |
| 111 | * CharacterPerceptionEvolution: |
| 112 | ** Joe & Bill were despised by fans during Season 1. However, after watching the show turn much more competitive in later seasons, they're now seen as the fathers of the {{Metagame}}, and the show's first great villain team. |
| 113 | ** Zach & Flo (3) were considered the show's worst winners for the longest time. However, over time, Zach came to be seen as one of the best individual racers to ever be on the show (Flo is still seen as the most undeserving winner ever), and they are nowhere near as hated as winners such as Freddy & Kendra (6) and Eric & Danielle (11). |
| 114 | ** Lynn and Alex from Season 7 were well-liked by the fan base for their campaign against the villains Rob & Amber. Nowadays their attitudes are looked at in a far less positive light due to many of their comments about the places they visited coming off as racist and many fans group them with their least favorites of the season alongside Susan & Patrick, Ray & Deana, and Ron & Kelly. |
| 115 | ** Dave & Connor were rather unpopular after their win in 24 for their poor sportsmanship about the U-Turn. After the hate died down, many fans started seeing their more likable traits such as their overwhelming kindness, loyalty to their allies, humble demeanor, and consistently strong performance and are now upheld as respected and well-liked winners. |
| 116 | * ComplacentGamingSyndrome: Averted in Season 25, leg 3. While the other teams camped out at the train station, waiting for their train to Aberdeen, Scotland in six hours, Kym & Alli instead went out to explore Oxford, England, calling the other teams boring for just sitting around and waiting. While teams taking breaks to explore during their downtime was a common sight in the first few seasons, it has been a rare sight since Colin rewrote the {{Metagame}} in [[Characters/TheAmazingRace5 Season 5]]. |
| 117 | * CreatorsPet: One of the complaints against Season 24 was that the production team just stocked the cast with their favorite teams and [[AttentionWhore camera whores]]. This was leveled against Margie & Luke (14, 18), Jet & Cord (16, 18) and Flight Time & Big Easy (15, 18) in particular for being brought back for a third time, and Mark Jackson (20) for getting to race with a replacement partner when Bopper was disqualified instead of being replaced with an emergency alternate team. |
| 118 | ** Some fans have criticized Season 25 as being set up for surfers Adam & Bethany due to A) having only one Roadblock before Leg 4 along with an easy to retrieve Express Pass, B) an "overly positive edit," combined with massive CharacterShilling proclaiming how awesome Bethany is, and C) in Leg 9, a pre-determined Fast Forward "just happened" to be a surfing-based task, which ended up taking out fan favorites Kym & Alli when they won it. [[note]]It should also be noted Kym & Alli also got two cycling tasks, one in Leg 3 (an elimination leg) and one in Leg 4 (a non-elimination leg). [[/note]] |
| 119 | * DesignatedHero: There are many teams who the producers expect to be popular, and are edited thusly, but instead end up coming off as preachy or annoying. |
| 120 | ** This was pretty much most of the teams on Season 10, which led to Dustin & Kandice's popularity. |
| 121 | ** They tried so hard to sell Meghan & Cheyne (15) as [[InvincibleHero Invincible Heroes]], but most of the fans just didn't care either way about a team that came off as simply boring. |
| 122 | ** Travis & Nicole (23) were played up to this, as they constantly made claims about wanting to run a good race, but their hypocrisy-fueled FaceHeelTurn in the last third of the race made them immensely unpopular (Travis even more so). |
| 123 | * DesignatedVillain: |
| 124 | ** Played fairly straight early on with Bill & Joe (1) and Wil (2). However, later seasons tend to treat teams more fairly, showing the good sides of even the biggest [[JerkAss Jerk Asses]]. |
| 125 | ** Nearly this for Thomas (17), simply by having a Y-chromosome. While not that bad of a guy all around, had he prevented a female team from finally winning the race, there's no doubt he would have become one of the most hated winners ever. |
| 126 | ** Phil has stated in interviews that, as of Season 17, The Race is deliberately trying not to create teams like this, as they feel it makes the show better, and the fans enjoy it more when they're not given a specific team they're supposed to root against. |
| 127 | *** The best example of this is, Art & J.J. (20), who spent the first four episodes of Season 20 looking like the typical dominating, egotistical villain in the same vein as a Colin (5) or a Rob (7), but, starting with their giving Mark & Bopper half of their prize for winning leg 4, the editing has begun to show that there's more to their personality than brash egotism, and that their "villain" status was more than just editing. |
| 128 | ** Brendon & Rachel (24), whose only real villainous acts came in the finale. They were given enough sympathetic moments in their first 11 episodes to have some viewers to see them as underdogs due to being an outcast for doing something that is now common (U-Turning somebody). |
| 129 | * [[DisappointingLastLevel Disappointing Last Leg]]: The show has struggled with sticking the landing since the beginning. With time, production has been able to largely remedy that but it still pops up from time to time in the later seasons: |
| 130 | ** The first eleven seasons suffered from this in general, as multiple flights in every finale would negate all but the last part of the leg, which would many times include just a single task and some cab rides. This resulted in the winner coming down to whoever got the better cab several times. |
| 131 | *** Especially noticeable in Season 10. For the most part, the season was filled with a wide variety of challenging and visually engaging tasks, but as the season went on, less inspired tasks started showing up. This culminated in a finale with four equalizers, and a final US leg consisting of a long taxi ride with a 30-block run down the street in between, and was decided by which cab driver had an automatic toll collection system in his vehicle. This was fixed post-All-Stars by setting the entire final leg in the same city, though cabs still often make the difference between staying or being taken out of contention. |
| 132 | ** Season 24. It was aesthetically pleasing, but the fact that the hardest task on that leg is just screwing and counting light bulbs (and not having a penalty for an incorrect answer) is just inexcusable for an All-Stars season. Additionally, the final task & Roadblock being a first-come, first-serve type gave the second and third place teams no chance of catching up. In fact, Caroline and Jennifer claim in [[http://www.hitfix.com/the-fien-print/interview-jennifer-caroline-talk-the-amazing-race-all-stars post-race interviews]] that they reached the task first, but Dave & Connor got to skydive ahead of them because they got to the cluebox first. |
| 133 | ** Season 32’s had a good theme with Mardi Gras but the typical hard memory task that’s usually in the finale came in the penultimate leg. The secret alliance within the alliance teamed up to get through it so they could get into the top three. This left the finale with two of the dreaded needle in a haystack challenges that ended up deciding who won, not anything based on skill. The team who got through those challenges first was the most divisive team, Will & James, ending it on a sour note. |
| 134 | * DracoInLeatherPants: Gary & [=DeAngelo=] get this treatment from fans. The editing has made it very clear that Gary & [=DeAngelo=] would not have made it nearly as far as they did without their allies and were reaping the benefits without contributing in any way. Fans on the other hand see them as the victim of "cheating" by teams working together. |
| 135 | * EndingFatigue: |
| 136 | ** Gary (2) managed to make his elimination this by making a show out of leaving the mat. |
| 137 | ** There have been a couple of instances where teams have fallen behind the point of no return late in the season, only to wind up being non-eliminated. Unfortunately, production’s hands are tied when this happens as they can’t legally change the placement of non-elimination legs for insurance reasons and therefore the teams have to be allowed to continue. This causes the end of the season to drag on as one team whose elimination is inevitable is still going and it takes the excitement out of the end: |
| 138 | *** Nick & Vicki (17) got as far as fourth place but quit a task in frustration on the second to last leg. The finale is three teams and there was still the penultimate leg to go, which should have clued them into the fact it was non-elimination but they still quit. This got them a six hour penalty that put them way behind the other teams, causing their inevitable elimination to drag out two episodes at the end. |
| 139 | *** In season 21, James & Abba’s elimination also drug out over two legs but this time because of a stolen passport. They were allowed to keep racing (even though they were at one point twelve hours in front of two teams who’d taken a risk on a short connecting flight that didn’t work out) since the next leg had no travel but they spent their time trying to find the passport. They had no such luck and were finally eliminated at the end of the second episode with travel looming over their heads. |
| 140 | %%% |
| 141 | %% Please do NOT add Ensemble Dark Horse entries for any teams or competitors on the show as, since it's a reality competition series, all the contestants are meant to have a chance to shine by design. |
| 142 | %%% |
| 143 | * FairForItsDay: When Chip and Reichen competed in season 4 (filmed early 2003), CBS allowed them to call themselves a married couple, which was a huge thing at the time. They even showed them kissing at the victory map, which also managed to cause some waves. When looked at today, this seems pedestrian and wouldn't be seen as something incredibly progressive. However, no state at that point would grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples [[note]] Massachusetts started allowing it the following year [[/note]] and there were certainly no gay married couples on any other show. Nowadays, same-sex marriage has been legal all across the US since 2015 and there are quite a few married same-sex couples on TV. Just for example, 3 out of the Fab Five on ''Series/QueerEye2018'' are married and it's never been treated as anything out of the ordinary. |
| 144 | * FandomRivalry: With TV network partner ''Survivor''. Fans of the Race tend to dislike the latter show for a perceived emphasis on intertribal drama and backstabbing as opposed to actual competition; fans of ''Survivor'' claim that ''TAR'' is little more than a glorified scavenger hunt that is too luck-based and relies too heavily on [[RubberBandAI equalizers]] to keep things interesting week-to-week. It didn't help matters when [[Characters/TheAmazingRace7 Rob and Amber]] and [[Characters/TheAmazingRace19 Ethan and Jenna]] came to the Race after winning a million dollars on ''Survivor'', leading fans to openly question whether or not they belonged on another reality show. Inflamed further when [[Characters/TheAmazingRace21 Natalie Anderson]] went on to win ''[[Characters/SurvivorSanJuanDelSur Survivor: San Juan del Sur]]''. |
| 145 | * FountainOfMemes: At least one per season. Generally the [[SpotlightStealingSquad spotlight hog]] or the villain. The list includes, but not limit to: [[BigFun Kevin]] (S1), [[JerkassWoobie Flo]], [[DeadpanSnarker Ken]] [[PluckyComicRelief &]] [[SelfDeprecation Gerald]] (S3), [[TheMillstone Mary]] (S10), [[{{Hypocrite}} Mirna]] (All-star), [[AlwaysSecondBest Jen]][[AlphaBitch ni]][[HairTriggerTemper fer]] (S12), [[DecoyProtagonist Z]][[BrutalHonesty e]][[InnocentlyInsensitive v]] (S15 & 18), [[HairTriggerTemper Big]] [[LargeHam Ea]][[TheBigGuy sy]] (S15 & 18), [[CloudCuckooLander Brook]] (S17), [[GenkiGirl Mallory]] (S18), [[{{Wangst}} Rachel]] (S20), [[BadLiar Leo]] [[LargeHam &]] [[NoIndoorVoice Jamal]], [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Marie]] (S23) and, [[LongRunner of course]], [[DramaticPause P]][[FascinatingEyebrow h]][[WittyBanter il]] (for the grace of hosting ''every single season''). |
| 146 | * FranchiseOriginalSin: Though it's considered one of the best seasons, the casting of ''Big Brother's'' Alison Irwin and InspirationallyDisadvantaged Charla in Season 5 started the trend of StuntCasting that would drag down many later seasons of the Race. |
| 147 | ** Season 22 is frequently grouped in among the best seasons, though it was one of the first seasons to have heavy uses of alliances. That season, the alliances were more evenly matched and didn't rely on answer sharing and was more centered around using the U-Turns. |
| 148 | * FridgeLogic: |
| 149 | ** This gem of a comment came from Mirna on All-Stars 2007: |
| 150 | --->"The Yield wasn't really necessary. Why would you ever Yield a team in the beginning of a leg knowing that they're not that far behind and they can catch-up and pass you at any moment? It didn't make logical sense to me." |
| 151 | ** Brendon on All-Stars 2014, after winning the seventh leg, compared their Race to a sinusoidal wave, saying they had started at the top, gone down to the bottom, were now back at the top, and that they would eventually end on top. Except that they still had five legs left, and they spent four at the bottom. They would have to go back down at least twice if he was right. |
| 152 | * GameBreaker: |
| 153 | ** The first nine seasons favored physically strong teams (the first four seasons especially so). It was exceedingly simple for fit teams to power their way through the race, waiting for fatigue to take out the smarter teams. However, since then the game has tilted more and more towards favoring intelligent teams, as (1) teams have learned that cardio is far more useful than brute strength, and started preparing accordingly, (2) while physical teams can still dominate and string wins together at the beginning of a season, they are put at a huge disadvantage late in the season when the puzzles and mental tasks get harder, while the strength tasks remain relatively the same, and (3) budgetary cuts at the beginning of Season 12 (see ScrewedByTheNetwork under the Trivia tab) forced production to shorten the race by two legs and a whole week of filming time. Though the twelfth leg would be added back in Season 14, the actual length of the race has remained around three weeks (as opposed to the month it took for the first eleven seasons), meaning the fatigue the teams are working under in the final leg is much less than it used to be. Since about season 20, it’s settled on being designed for teamwork and fitness, not so much intelligence. |
| 154 | ** For a large portion of the series (mainly Seasons 3-9) allowing the teams to beg for money destroyed the whole "money management" part of the game, as begging easily garnered more money than whatever the teams were given at the beginning of the leg. |
| 155 | ** Also from the early seasons, there was the practice of teams getting locals to guide them throughout the legs (known as "Ferns" to fans). It wasn't that bad at first, but Rob & Amber abused it horribly on Season 7 using their ''Survivor'' popularity to get locals to guide them through four different legs, each time gaining huge amounts of time on all the other teams who ran the legs for themselves, then again by several returning teams during All-Stars, forcing the producers to make rules against it from Season 12 on, culminating with them banning the use of hiring taxis to lead teams when self-navigating in Season 17. |
| 156 | ** The U-Turn, which replaced the Yield, from Seasons 12-16. It forced the team hit by it to go back and complete the other side of a Detour, and all but ensured they would finish last, especially if the they were already in last place to begin with. It didn't help that during these seasons the U-Turn was always placed on an elimination leg. The Double U-Turn was introduced in Season 17 to alleviate this. |
| 157 | ** Giving away answers to other teams has happened every now and then on the race, but it was so widespread in ''Unfinished Business'' that it reached this level. Since the teams had raced before and had figured out that the only goal until the final leg is to avoid last place, alliances formed in which teams would give away answers to guarantee they would not be eliminated. Mental tasks was de-emphasized, and as a result, Flight Time & Big Easy, who rarely solved a puzzle by themselves, managed to get into the Final Three with this strategy. |
| 158 | *** Again in Season 23 when two teams (Ashley & Ally (Leg 9) and Leo & Jamal (Leg 11)) were eliminated due to Jason & Amy's "unhealthy" alliance with Nicole & Travis, with Amy helping the struggling Nicole complete two puzzle-based Roadblocks before Pit Stops. If you believe Amy's claimed motive, this is perhaps the only time where the "goat" strategy[[note]]bringing the weakest player to the finals to fill one opposing slot[[/note]] popularized by ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' actually worked, but that would also mean they thought a team that won three legs and never finished lower than 4th was less of a threat than a team who never finished higher than 5th. |
| 159 | * GeniusBonus: One recurring element of the race is putting racers in [[CultureEqualsCostume silly costumes based on the foreign country they're visiting]]. In Season 19, one such set of costumes was the detectives from ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'' - characters who regularly attempt to blend in foreign countries using costumes that turn out ridiculous and conspicuous. |
| 160 | * {{Glurge}}: Two teams from Amazing Race 33 were so fixated on playing it up for the camera it took up the majority of how they ran as opposed to them actually running the race. |
| 161 | ** Raquel & Cayla would not stop talking about empowering women, positive vibes, and losing their jobs from COVID it felt more like a soliloquy from a spoken word event. Alongside their unpleasant attitude towards foreign countries, it feels like they came on the show as an ego trip. |
| 162 | ** Kim & Penn make a massive spectacle out of every aspect of the race giving obviously rehearsed compliments to task judges and making a spectacle out of simple things like having kids and the phrase "Do your best" which most people hear in preschool. They used incredibly unnecessary tangents clearly intended to win fans over talking about a wedding in Santorini, Penn calling his ADHD a superpower, and claiming he's a new character when he puts his sunglasses on that it comes off like they're playing a character not being genuine.[[note]] Youtube personalities are already playing a character so that can't be compared with how they act on Youtube.[[/note]] |
| 163 | * HarsherInHindsight: |
| 164 | ** Watching the likable season 6 contestant Hera [=McLeod=] is unsettling nowadays, if you have any awareness of [[http://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/the-police-told-her-to-report-her-rape-then-arrested-her-for#.if52vMakX how tragic her life became years after participating in the show]]. |
| 165 | ** David & Connor's promotional photo for Season 22 had them wearing Livestrong jackets. The cast reveal occurred soon after Lance Armstrong had his Tour de France titles taken away for doping (and mere days after his confession in an interview with Oprah). Not only that, but Connor is a professional cyclist who racers for the Livestrong team. |
| 166 | ** Jim having the tightrope wire snap on him in Season 25 was already one of the most frightening moments in the show, but it's even more unsettling to see him dangling on for dear life after his death in 2019. |
| 167 | ** To a lesser extent in Season 31, Rachel's line "Your brand is watching." towards Nicole Franzel comes off as this, as in Big Brother Season 22, Nicole's influencer status takes a hit (i.e having sponsors cut ties without her knowing) for laughing at an autism joke made by another houseguest. |
| 168 | * HilariousInHindsight: |
| 169 | ** Burnie and Ashley being in Season 28. One of Creator/RoosterTeeth's videos was a small series called "A Million Dollars, But..." in which Burnie and others would come up with hypothetical conditions a person would be put through if they were given a million dollars. Their appearance in Season 28 is essentially a season-long version of this video. |
| 170 | ** In Season 25, Kym & Alli called Misti & Jim "Team No Fun" for their SeriousBusiness attitude. Come around Season 29, another team, Becca & Floyd receives the hashtag [=#TeamFun=] |
| 171 | ** Boston native Joey shouting "Go Red Sox!" at Wrigley Field during the season 29 finale is definitely this, as the Cubs would go on to win their first World Series in 108 years a few months after filming, while the Red Sox were swept by the Cleveland Indians in the first round. |
| 172 | * HoYay: |
| 173 | ** Debbie & Bianca (7). |
| 174 | ** Intentionally invoked by Eric & Jeremy and BJ & Tyler (9). The half naked pictures of them "frolicking" together that leaked onto the Internet attest to that. |
| 175 | ** Tyler & James (10), who did not so much sit next to each other as ''on top of each other'' during post-leg interviews, and at the beginning of leg 8, Tyler gave a confessional about how James was too passive, and he needed to take a more "dominant" role over him. |
| 176 | ** Nat & Kat, (17). |
| 177 | * JerkassWoobie: |
| 178 | ** Wil (2) spent most of the Race arguing with his separated wife Tara and ticking off everyone else who came into contact with him. However, Tara harangued and pushed him around to a degree surpassing his, flirted with another Racer in front of him [[note]]it's understandable that she would want to hang out with people other than Wil, but it's worth keeping in mind that she was ''still technically married to Wil'' and seemed to think that any complaints from him about it were not worth listening to, not even the gameplay-related ones that ''did'' turn out to be justified, as her insisting on dragging Chris & Alex into the Final 3 cost them the race[[/note]], and had maybe one or two moments of showing something other than irritation or disgust regarding him even during the occasional moments where he seemed to be genuinely trying to reconcile with or impress her. All of which led many fans to comment that as much as they hated Wil, they also felt sorry for him due to the way Tara treated him. |
| 179 | *** Tara has stated in interviews that, during the Race, Wil treated her ''better'' than when they were a couple, while she'd been treating him ''worse''. Given all the onscreen evidence of friction between the two of them, that's a sorry statement indeed. |
| 180 | ** No one denies the fact that Flo (3) was a lousy racer and a terrible partner for Zach ([[SelfDeprecation least of all Flo herself]]). But since by all accounts, outside the race she's a genuinely nice and friendly person [[note]]and even during the race was able to attract Drew and get into a long term relationship with him, which suggests that there were times offscreen where she actually was charming and lovable[[/note]], the ''My Ox Is Broken'' book's [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation interpretation of her as a normal person who was totally unprepared for the Killer Fatigue of the race]] becomes quite plausible. Her epic meltdown in leg 12 can even arouse sympathy when you consider her perspective. She's exhausted, she's spent, she's sick of the race, she just wants to go home...but she ''can't'' go home. There's no more easy out for her because, since she and Zach have made it to the final 3, they can no longer be eliminated. So on the day when she feels she can't be a part of the race for even a second longer, she already knows that ''[[FridgeHorror she still has two more legs and several more days to go of this shit!]]'' |
| 181 | ** While Rachel Reilly (20) could be the TropeCodifier for AttentionWhore in Reality TV, sometimes her outbursts were actually a little more justified - such as Art & JJ's bullying of her and Brendon, or when Brendon is rude to her. (Which he actually does ''a lot''.) And almost all the contestants who spent time with her felt that she was bullied in the race according to the interviews (especially by Vanessa). |
| 182 | ** Ryan (21) may have been a pompous blowhard, but he and Abbie went through a horrible series of events in their last three legs. They missed two connecting flights in the same city, putting them hours behind the other teams both times, Abbie struggled with the Trees of Love Roadblock, Ryan struggled with the Russian Time Zone Roadblock & was the only player to struggle with ditch vaulting, and they got U-Turned out of the race thanks to the other teams' manipulation of the Double U-Turn. |
| 183 | * LoveToHate: |
| 184 | ** Bill & Joe (1) broke every unwritten rule set up by the other teams and did everything they could to win, even going so far as to try to prevent three teams from making their flight by blocking security. At the same time, they established the basis for what would become the Race's {{Metagame}}, and were by far the most memorable team from Season 1. Their Love to Hate status led to people actually being disappointed they were less cutthroat in ''All-Stars''. |
| 185 | ** Wil (2) spent the majority of the Race arguing with his separated wife Tara and irritating everyone else he came into contact with. He was also the single biggest driving force behind that season, even over fan favorites Danny & Oswald, and actually became something of a JerkassWoobie when it became clear that Tara was no better than him (and even ''worse'' in some aspects). |
| 186 | ** Flo (3) was the worst partner imaginable, both slowing down Zach because she was a bad racer, and actively finding ways to screw him over, but she was inherently quotable, and still holds the record for most episode quotes in a season. She became the standard by which [[TheLoad useless partners]] and race breakdowns were judged. |
| 187 | ** Colin (5) was a JerkAss with a short temper that irritated the other teams and almost landed him in jail, but he also redefined how teams ran the Race, and provided the series with it's [[SignatureLine single most memorable line]]. In fact, when he returned in Season 31, many fans were actually ''disappointed'' that he TookALevelInKindness. |
| 188 | ** Rob (7) had an ego you dearly wanted to see punctured, and yet had to also grudgingly admire him for walking the walk and being just as good a Racer as he made himself out to be. His EvilGloating and NothingCanStopUsNow boasts also made the two crucial times he got [[LaserGuidedKarma asskicked by karma]] extremely satisfying to watch. |
| 189 | ** Linda Weaver (8) initially garnered a lot of sympathy from viewers for her back story of having lost her husband in a race car accident, but that sympathy evaporated when she (and the rest of her family) became a HolierThanThou hypocrite who harped on other teams' supposed deficiencies, and alienated them to the point where they declared an EnemyMine against her family. All of this made her as entertaining to watch as similar HolierThanThou wives showcased on ''Series/WifeSwap''. |
| 190 | ** Mirna's (11) prissiness and self-righteousness came into full bloom compared to her original season. At the same time, she decided to start a feud with the increasingly popular Dustin & Kandice, hypocritically harping on all their supposed deficiencies. However, she also became almost as quotable as Flo in the process. |
| 191 | ** Jennifer (12) was one of the poorest sports in the race's history, constantly sabotaging her game by yelling and arguing with her partner Nathan, and clashed with the other teams in a rather friendly season for the most part. She treated other teams catching up to or getting ahead of them as a personal offense, yet that made it ever so satisfying to see her foiled time and time again at her first place ambitions. |
| 192 | ** Jaime (14) constantly yelled at her teammate Cara and any cab drivers that didn't speak English, but there was something about her freak-outs that separated her from the "Ugh, here's ''another'' Ugly American tirade coming" likes of Kendra and placed her into "Ooh, let's see just how badly she reacts to ''this''!" territory instead. It helped that in the end, when she was unable to complete the final Roadblock without help, she took full responsibility for it and showed that she meant no malice towards Cara. |
| 193 | ** Lance (15) was an obnoxious blowhard who spent every minute of the race arguing with his fiance or gloating about his perceived strength. Every challenge he approached with either unnecessary aggression and/or complete bumbling through the task to the point seeing him set himself up for failure was just plain hilarious to watch. |
| 194 | ** Brandy (16) spent almost her whole time on the race arguing, complaining, screeching, harping on her teammate (Carol) and generally looking like she might have enjoyed maybe ten minutes of the entire race as a whole. She and Carol also got more airtime and more press than anyone else from Season 16 outside of Jet & Cord, and viewership dropped by a million after they were eliminated. |
| 195 | ** Art & JJ (20) were a throwback to the arrogant, dominant villains who were so prevalent in the show prior to All-Stars, like Colin (5) and Rob (7 & 11), and in between their bullying of other teams and their failed attempt to turn everyone against Nary & Jamie, they were just as entertaining to watch as well. |
| 196 | ** Ryan (21) started off with an ego and a competitive fire on the same level as Colin (5), and went on to start a feud with Natalie & Nadiya. Aside from his eventual [[CallItKarma Karmic beat down]] being entertaining as all hell, he and Abbie had some of the best lines of the season. |
| 197 | ** Marie (23) who abused and dominated her ex-boyfriend Tim, and managed to make all the other teams hate her with her pushiness. However, her frequent outbursts of anger, combined with her almost self-destructively aggressive gameplay, made her the star of a season where a lot of the more likable big personalities went out early, leaving a cast full of likable but boring teams, and the even more irritating Leo & Jamal. Even the other racers shared this sentiment as most of them said something along the lines of "she wasn't ''that'' bad" in the exit interviews. |
| 198 | ** Jim (25) had a huge ego begging to be popped, wanting to be the most dominating team in Race history, and constantly wore an expression that made him look intensely angry. At the same time, he never said anything bad about his wife and was nice to the other teams, and was able to back up his boasting in the game. |
| 199 | %%* MemeticMutation: |
| 200 | %%** "I just got electrocuted!" |
| 201 | %%** "I'm PACKING it!" |
| 202 | %%** "My ox is broken! This is bullshit!" |
| 203 | * {{Moe}}: Twin sisters Lulu and Lala from Season 33 can be considered this due to their cute looks, cutesy hairdos and matching outfits, and really sweet personalities which include some quirky behaviors that come across as adorable. |
| 204 | * MoralEventHorizon: Teams treating each other and other teams horribly is nothing new but some have severely crossed the line. |
| 205 | ** Jon Baker crossed it when he shoved Victoria because they came in second. |
| 206 | ** The Schroeder family from Season 8 crossed it when they laughed at the idea of the Weaver family being traumatized by their father's death |
| 207 | * SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The triumphant fanfare that plays in the PreviouslyOn segments and during moments of success, nicknamed the Horns of Perseverance by fans. |
| 208 | * {{Narm}}: While it's very understandable that Tyler and Korey were apprehensive about going to Uganda which has a terrible LGBT rights record in 31, the way it was brought up comes off as an odd and ham-fisted GayAesop. The reason this comes off as odd is because the previous leg had taken place in the United Arab Emirates which has just as bad of a human rights record as Uganda but they never mentioned it about the UAE. They had also been to the UAE in their previous season without it ever being mentioned. It's unclear if this is a case of ManipulativeEditing. Perhaps Tyler and Korey were also apprehensive about the UAE and the editing team just chose to cut it for the final product but the whole situation just seemed like it was kept in for that episode to coincide with their leg win. |
| 209 | ** A lot of Kim & Penn's attempts to be inspirational come off as this, but the biggest one was the last leg where they talked about trying to prove married parents and older couples can win. They seem to think Chip & Kim didn't win back in Season 5 despite the fact their season was both one of the hardest and most competitive. |
| 210 | * NauseaFuel: One Season 6 Roadblock had teams eating a spicy Hungarian soup. Freddy not only threw up, but some of it got in his bowl, forcing him to eat it again unless he wanted a four hour penalty. |
| 211 | * NeverLiveItDown:. |
| 212 | ** Jonathan shoving his wife in Season 6. |
| 213 | *** The season's eventual winner Kendra talking about the way people in Africa keep "breeding and breeding," which moved her and Freddy from a bland, inoffensive team to one of the most hated in record time. She was quickly stuck with the nickname "[=KKKendra=]." |
| 214 | ** Mika (15) in the water sliding incident. |
| 215 | ** InUniverse. In an interview, Claire (Season 17) said that no matter what she does for the rest of her life, she expects to always be remembered as the woman who got hit in the face with a watermelon. |
| 216 | *** Nick (17) in Hong Kong, where his attitude became extremely nasty compared to other episodes. Venting out his frustration on Vicki when they were lagging behind and deciding to quit the Detour made him really disliked in record time. It didn’t help that they were in China and Vicki was struggling because the poor air quality was flairing up her asthma. |
| 217 | ** Nary & Jamie (20) lying about their jobs as federal agents and telling everyone they were teachers. The "teachers" reference has become the go-to comment anytime a team admits or is caught lying about their profession. Though they were not the first (for example, Maria & Tiffany [[MetaphoricallyTrue telling]] everyone that they worked for a charity in Season 15), they are the best example in the show. |
| 218 | ** The twins picking up James and Abba’s money and causing two rich white guys to have to beg for money in the poor country of Bangladesh. |
| 219 | * NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity: Despite the controversy following Season 22's Vietnam leg, the show's ratings went up for the next episode, and remained higher than the Vietnamese episode for the rest of the season. |
| 220 | * OlderThanTheyThink: Kim & Penn got praised by the editors and fanbase for taking the initiative to take notes for the FinalExamFinale. This tactic has been around for years, with notes being banned from use a decade prior,and since then, teams have gotten around it by only reading their notes before the memory task. |
| 221 | * OnceOriginalNowCommon: |
| 222 | ** In the early seasons, thrill tasks like bungee jumping and sky diving were seen as some of the more difficult tasks, with them often appearing as the "scary" side of Detours late in the game. However, as the seasons went on, they became less intimidating as teams came to expect them, to the point that post-Unfinished Business, thrill tasks are not only expected, but they're usually put early in the season as an introduction to the game, and unless someone completely freaks out, little time is spent on how "scary" the task is, and even became a hindrance for teams that lagged behind to have any chance of catching up. |
| 223 | ** Reichen & Chip winning Season 4 might not seem like a big deal now, but in 2003 a pair of ManlyGay guys in a loving, stable relationship excelling at a physically and mentally based competition was a huge deal, to the point that it was one of the the main story lines of the season, especially near the end, and their kiss at the Finish Line was hugely controversial, and was even censored in many places. In comparison, when gay couple Brent & Josh kissed after winning Season 21, people barely batted an eye at their relationship or their kiss at the Finish Line. |
| 224 | ** Newer fans may not be aware that Dave & Lori were actually a huge deal when Season 9 first aired for their "nerd love" arc, to the point the majority of advertising around that season was centered around them. Even bigger was how this was a year before Series/TheBigBangTheory hit the airwaves and revolutionized the perception of nerds being in love. Nowadays, this archetype is seen as no different than any other couple, as seen with how Leo & Alana were treated the same as the other teams. |
| 225 | * OneSceneWonder: |
| 226 | ** Some Pit Stop greeters become popular just due to their appearance, costume, or behavior at the Pit Stop. Such as the town crier from Australia in Season 2, and a whopping four different greeters from Season 13, Phil's dad in New Zealand, the woman with the feathered hat in Bolivia, the woman with fire on her head in India, and the gardener, also in India, who instead of standing next to Phil, continued to water the lawn until a team appeared, then ran over to the mat to greet them. |
| 227 | ** Several task judges: |
| 228 | *** Miss Rose, at the trailer setting task in the Unfinished Business finale, with her unmoving BeehiveHairdo. |
| 229 | *** The judge at the time zone Roadblock in Season 21, who Chewed the Scenery whether the teams succeeded or failed at the task. |
| 230 | *** The DrillSergeantNasty Buckingham Palace Guard at the Detour in Season 25. |
| 231 | * PoorMansSubstitute: Eric & Danielle (9) being cast in place of Flow and Drew (3) on All-Stars. Not only was their relationship far less memorable, and Danielle mostly a non-factor during Season 9, but they ended up becoming the fighting couple, and their victory is generally sited as one of the worst parts of All-Stars. |
| 232 | |
| 233 | * QuestionableCasting: This will happen on any All-Star edition: |
| 234 | ** All-Stars 2007 fostered complaints about the validity of teams chosen to Race in a season consisting of "the best of the best." This includes Teri & Ian and John Vito & Jill (3), for being chosen over fan favorites Ken & Gerard or Derek & Drew, who were considered the best team from the season at the time (this was prior to Zach being fully RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap), Charla & Mirna (5) for perceived weakness, Eric & Danielle (9) for not racing together in their original seasons, and consist of a team who placed 8th, and David & Mary (10) for again, perceived weakness. Though they all raced to varying degrees of success, Charla & Mirna were the only ones who fully redeemed their casting in the eyes of most fans. |
| 235 | ** Unfinished Business had Amanda & Kris and Mel & Mike (both 14), Amanda & Kris for being an 8th place team who most people didn't remember, and Mel because most people thought a 70-year-old wouldn't be able to handle the increased competition of an All-Star season. Plus, there were three other teams brought back from Season 14, giving a bit of Season 14 overload. They ended up being the first two teams eliminated, so the complaining didn't last long. |
| 236 | ** All-Stars 2014, so much that the general reaction to the cast list was overwhelming disbelief. The complaints included Margie & Luke (14), Flight Time & Big Easy (15), and Jet & Cord (16) for being brought back for a third time, bringing in Malory (17, 18) to race with Mark (20) after Bopper suffered from pancreatitis [[note]]for (1) being another manufactured team after the disaster that was Eric & Danielle on All-Stars, (2) them not knowing each other that well and making no sense as a team, and (3) being made up of the weaker members of two teams[[/note]], Brendon & Rachel (20) for being a ''Series/BigBrother'' import that was hugely polarizing amongst viewers, Caroline & Jennifer and Meghan & Joey (22) for perceived weakness, Leo & Jamal (23) for being the more hated and less entertaining villain from their season(next to Tim & Marie). John & Jessica and Dave & Connor (22) would have had more justification on another second chance season, due to how they were eliminated, but did not go over well on an All-Star cast. Though the racers raced with varying degrees of success, Leo & Jamal are the only team that fully redeemed the casting of many fans, and to a lesser extent, Brendon & Rachel. |
| 237 | ** Season 31. Obviously the contestants being all imported from reality shows wouldn't fare well with people wanting to see normal people competing. |
| 238 | *** Specifically, for the Amazing Race group the complaints include bringing back Leo & Jamal (23, 24) & Rachel Reilly (20, 24) for a third time and Art & JJ (20) for being unlikable villains. While the biggest questionable casting comes from the Survivor team of Bret & Chris (33) as they are not the most memorable contestant even in their season. |
| 239 | * RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: |
| 240 | ** Season 3 winner Zach. Initially he was dumped in with Flo as the worst team to ever win the Race, but as time went on and more races were run, fans started to realize that he was a pretty good racer who just happened to be saddled with the worst handicap possible. Though Flo is still pretty much hated (albeit with a significant LoveToHate contingent of fans), Zach now gets quite a bit of respect from the fans. |
| 241 | ** Dustin & Kandice (10), who went from being the most hated team at the midpoint to being the fan favorite on All-Stars when the editors started showing their "evil acts" were actually them caring more about running the race than socializing with the other teams. Not to mention they were the highest placing female team for the first 17 seasons and did well in the race twice when the tasks were more about upper body strength and consuming large amounts of food which made it harder for female teams to do well. |
| 242 | ** Ronald became Season 12's most hated team member after Episode 2 showed him acting like a complete {{Jerkass}} toward his daughter Christina, constantly heckling her in front of the other teams, even telling her that she needed to lose weight. He continued to berate Christina later on at times, but eventually pulled himself together enough to regain the respect of a significant portion of the fanbase. |
| 243 | ** Leo & Jamal on Season 24. Their rescuing started near the end of their original season, when they called Travis & Nicole out on their hypocrisy, and looked like the only team amongst the top 4 who were having any fun. A lot of the hatred that had been focused on them started to spread out through the other teams. With the editing being much kinder to them in this season, focusing on the goofy nature of their antics rather than the ugly side of them, and they became much more likable as a result. |
| 244 | ** Rachel Reilly on Season 24, for the first 10 episodes anyway. She shed most of the {{Wangst}} that had made her unlikable on Season 20, had a defining moment where she calmed down Luke when he was falling apart at the drink mixing Detour in leg 4 (a strategically poor move, but a fan pleasing move) and later said a prayer with Brendon that showed a huge amount of CharacterDevelopment. Unfortunately, she reverted to the whiny Rachel, and the editors amping up her wanting a Brenchel Baby in the last 2 episodes. |
| 245 | ** Brooke was unpopular early on in Season 25, not because of her occasional mean-spirited demeanor, but because she simply never stopped whining and complaining. Starting around Leg 4, however, her and Robbie soon became a lot more well-liked when the season began focusing more on their [[PluckyComicRelief comedic antics]]. |
| 246 | ** Redmond on Season 29. He initially left a bad impression on the fanbase for is overly-competitive and somewhat condescending attitude towards other team, even calling Vanck & Ashton weak for U-Turning them. After that instance, this attitude pretty much disappeared. He retained his competitive outlook, but he was nicer to the other teams, even helping Brooke during her first meltdown. Also, taking his missing leg in good humor definitely helped as well. When he and Matt were eliminated on Leg 11, most of the fanbase were saddened by it |
| 247 | ** Colin & Christie were not necessarily [[TheScrappy Scrappies]], but incredibly divisive due to Colin's aggressive nature. When they returned for Season 31, they underwent one of the biggest transformations in reality TV history being calm and flat-out friendly while losing none of the skill from their previous season. They even arguably gained strength due to Christie adjusting to the Roadblock rule with little issue. The duo is now regarded as one of the most beloved teams of all time and a huge factor to 31's popularity to the point where them even being obvious winners was seen as something worth getting hyped over rather than ruining any suspense. |
| 248 | * RomanticPlotTumor: |
| 249 | ** The most famous one was in Season 2, when the Wil/Tara/Alex LoveTriangle took over the season, despite the racers involved being less than popular, starting in leg 2 and lasting all the way through the finale. In comparison, the Flo/Drew/Zach LoveTriangle in Season 3 started halfway through the season, and was then only a part of Zach's overall story. |
| 250 | ** Eric & Danielle being included on All-Stars, even though their relationship was nothing more than casual flirting on Season 9, and Danielle's team lasted four legs. This was an obvious attempt for Race producers to create their own Rob & Amber, as Eric & Danielle were offered the spot in replacement of Season 3's Flo & Drew (as Flo turned them down) or Season 4 Reichen & Lance Bass (as Reichen declined since he thinks it's unfair to Chip). Instead of a SuperCouple, they got an unpopular bickering couple that won the race over several more popular teams, and broke up right after the race was over [[note]]If you believe a story, it turns out Eric & Danielle already broken up prior to casting, and Eric is dating someone else[[/note]]. |
| 251 | ** Leg 8 of Season 17 got sidetracked by Chad deciding to propose to Stephanie in the middle of the leg. The entire leg then became devoted to them and their relationship. However, all that airtime did keep them from getting ADeathInTheLimelight episode on the next leg. |
| 252 | ** Invoked by season 26, as the premiere is a race between 11 couples, 5 of whom are blind dates, meaning they never met. And the fact that Phil kept bringing up the romance between the Blind Dates despite most of the Blind Dates teams outright admitted that there are no chemistry starting as early as the 4th episode. |
| 253 | * TheScrappy: Most teams -- even unlikable, annoying, or incompetent ones -- still contribute something. However, every once in a while some team comes along that just completely annoys the hell out of everyone with no redeeming qualities. |
| 254 | ** Gary from Season 2. He and Dave were cast as a supposedly funny friends team, in the same vein as Kevin & Drew (1 & 11). However, his sense of humor came off as ugly and irritating, he had a tendency to start arguments with other teams (both real and fake... and somehow the fake ones were more annoying), and would never shut up, much to the chagrin of every other racer. |
| 255 | ** Flo, Season 3, to the production crew. None of the camera crews wanted to work with her as all she did was whine all day. They assigned the low men on the totem pole to her. She actually got a relatively flattering edit, so they say. |
| 256 | ** Kelly & Jon, Season 4, especially when they started mocking Millie & Chuck for no apparent reason. |
| 257 | --->'''Kelly''': Millie reminds of the girls [[TheBully I used to throw spitballs into their hair.]] |
| 258 | *** Jaree as well. She didn't contribute anything to her team, making Tian do all the Roadblocks and spending all but her last leg starting arguments. |
| 259 | ** Marshall & Lance, Season 5. They did nothing but complain during the entire race. Like Gary & Dave, their humor (which included a drive-by "BITCH!" at Mirna) came off as mean-spirited instead of funny. Marshall even admitted in ''My Ox is Broken'' that they got a good edit. |
| 260 | ** Jonathan from Season 6 may be the most hated racer ever. The man verbally abused his wife for most of the race, and shoved her at one point [[note]]Made worse that this came directly after she refused to give into his demands that she drop her bag, meaning she carried ''both her and his backpacks'' to the finish line and completely exhausted every last ounce of energy she had left in her in the name of ensuring their bags wouldn't get stolen. To see her crying out in such pain and agony, and a shove being the thanks she got for her troubles really didn't exactly help people like him any more[[/note]]. Made even worse when his abuse was not reserved only to her, as seen in the second leg where he screamed at and berated another racer, Meredith, to the point of her breaking down in tears. It's not even satisfying watching him losing or getting frustrated since whenever that happens, he takes it out on his wife (or sometimes another racer, [[NeverMyFault never himself, of course]]). Not even Phil wanted to see him back on All-Stars. |
| 261 | *** Then he and Victoria went on to compete in an episode of ''Series/FearFactor'' alongside contestants of other reality shows. Jonathan was so insufferable and horrid that it took the Fear Factor production to prevent host Joe Rogan from beating the living daylights out of him. |
| 262 | ** Also in Season 6 was Kendra. She complained about every single place they went that did not live up to her standards and whined about Sri Lanka smelling and making comments such as "these people just keep breeding and breeding". Made worse by the fact that she seemed completely oblivious to how offensive she came across. |
| 263 | ** Adam, also from Season 6. Next to Jonathan, he was the biggest magnet for drama that season with his repeated whining and manchild tendencies. He could accurately be called a DistaffCounterpart to Flo. |
| 264 | ** Peter from Season 10. He was a total Jerkass to Sarah despite being called a dating couple, even though they never dated. |
| 265 | *** Karlyn. Despite forming good bonds with the teams in the Back Pack/Six Pack alliances, she was very unpleasant to most of the other teams (particularly Dustin and Kandice), and even towards her own partner Lyn in the penultimate leg. This extends to the following season, where she didn't bother to sign her and Lyn's letter to Dustin and Kandice. |
| 266 | ** Eric & Danielle, Season 11. Not only had they not raced together in Season 9, but they had been dating less than a year when they were foisted upon the fans as a RomanticPlotTumor for All-Stars. They were even chosen from Season 9 over BJ & Tyler, who at that point were probably the most popular team to ever run the race. They became that season's fighting couple, won the show with a luck based task over two popular female teams at a point where an all-female team hasn't won in the American version. Then, to cap it all off, they promptly broke up after the season was over. Individually, Eric was a {{Jerkass}} to his partner and the other teams. Danielle was TheLoad who came from a cannon fodder team and often whines at any inconvenience. |
| 267 | ** Dan & Sam, Season 15. They could not stop fighting, ''ever''. |
| 268 | ** Brent & Caite, Season 16. "Shut Up!!" "You Shut Up!!!" "I hate those mean lesbians." Repeat ad nauseaum. It's quite telling that most of their storyline revolved around Carol & Brandy, and how much Caite hated them. |
| 269 | *** Carol and Brandy themselves weren't much better, as their feud with Caite played a big part in why Season 16 had so much negativity surrounding it. |
| 270 | ** Nick from Season 17, due to expressing his frustration by screaming and berating his girlfriend Vicki, who put far more effort into running the race than Nick did, and essentially convinced Vicki into quitting the Detour when the race is nearing it's end because they are sure that they are going to be last. |
| 271 | ** Laurence, Season 19. First he tore his son apart for struggling on the spirit house reassembling Roadblock when he was the one who refused to let Zac take notes in the first place. Then, in the next episode, he relentlessly mocked Sandy (a nurse practitioner) for not being able to sew. |
| 272 | ** Dave from Season 20. He and his wife Rachel became the season's fighting couple (which is quite impressive, given then the 2 other couples in the race essentially played the same "fighting couple" role as them), with him treating Rachel more as a soldier than a partner. He had a large ego (that was somewhat justified because they won the most legs with 8), but unlike Art & JJ, he had no PetTheDog moments and his winning streak sucked out the excitement of the season. Unsurprisingly, Rachel and Dave divorced a year after their season aired, rendering their success run AllForNothing. |
| 273 | *** Rachel Reilly as well, with (mostly the viewers) hearing her finding at least one topic to Wangst about in almost every episode and (for mostly the contestants before closer interaction) having already won 500 grand from Series/BigBrother. Granted, this Season has one of the most hated Final 3, with Rachel Brown being the only person that viewers like. |
| 274 | ** Travis from Season 23. He and Nicole had started the race as one of the most likable teams of not only the season, but maybe the series. Then came leg 9 when he started he started berating his wife for her performance and his hypocrisy. It went all downhill after that when he spent his a lot time after that leg insulting how his wife was doing tasks. |
| 275 | ** While they're very much liked on their original teams, Mark and Mallory as a pair were not popular in Season 24. They had no relation aside from being from the same state, and as such, had serious communication problems which led to them fighting over a ''backpack''. Most fans agree that their inclusion was a waste of a casting slot in an already iffy cast. |
| 276 | ** Kurt from Season 26. He only did the show because he’s a gay guy from a small town in a red state and has a limited dating pool which is certainly understandable. What’s not understandable is acting like a child and quitting on Bergen at the halfway mark who was still determined to keep going because they didn’t hit it off. Further adding to this was the fact that Kurt’s family had money so there was no financial aspect to winning, which everyone else had. Bergen wanted to use the money to pay off his student loans and get a master’s degree. So not only did he come off as childish, he also came off as a SpoiledBrat for denying Bergen something that would greatly benefit him. |
| 277 | ** Akbar from Season 33 was never popular due to constantly putting a burden on his wife, who was putting in an admirable effort despite no longer being as in shape as she used to be. It only got worse when they returned over teams fans wanted to see back like Connie & Sam or Anthony & Spencer when he learned absolutely nothing and arguably got worse. |
| 278 | * ScrappyMechanic: The Selfie Cam, introduced in Season 26. Managed to get complaints by fans after only one episode. |
| 279 | * {{Scrub}}: There are teams who complain about others not playing the game "right", though this was much more common on the early seasons. |
| 280 | ** Both Joe & Bill (1) and Blake & Paige (2) got a lot of flack for not "playing fair" and following the unwritten rules set down by the others, though most of the things they got complaints about are considered common practice now, and they were not so much "cheating" as they were "making every effort to win the Race". |
| 281 | ** Kevin & Drew were pretty scrubby while complaining about Bill & Joe during Season 1, but they became the Race's ultimate scrubs on Season 11 when, after being eliminated at the end of leg 2, they forced the production crew to stop the race for six hours, forcing the other teams to stand out in the heat and waste half of their Pit Stop while the crew reviewed the tapes to make sure none of the other teams had gone even 1 kph over the speed limit. This was because Drew didn't realize that halfway through the driving trip the speed limit increased by 10 km/h, despite having both a road sign and [[ReadTheFreakingManual the clue]] to tell him so. His staying well below the speed limit wreaked havoc on other teams' driving through that stretch, to the point where Mirna yelled at him that he drove like a girl. |
| 282 | ** Jennifer of Nathan & Jennifer (12), who complained that Azaria & Hendekea, who had won three of the first four legs at that point, should let someone else have a turn at being first. |
| 283 | ** Near the end of Season 23, Travis & Nicole's U-Turning of Leo & Jamal because they lied about U-Turning another team, and their subsequent complaining about how they were above that sort of dirty lying to win a game. Jason & Amy also did this to a lesser degree, complaining along with Travis & Nicole. |
| 284 | * SeasonalRot: |
| 285 | ** Season 4 had a cast full of unlikable teams (Jon & Al being the exception, possibly Tian as well) who resorted to bickering and ugliness whenever anything didn't go their way. There was far too much fighting over what was "fair" and who had what place in line, with teams playing cutthroat one second, then complaining about other teams doing the same the next. Then Jon & Al got eliminated in 4th, leaving the fans no one to root for in the finale. |
| 286 | ** Season 6, as almost all the likable teams were eliminated early on and, by the latter half of the race, Kris & Jon were the only likable team left with the rest of the teams being whiny, annoying, and constantly bickering. Pretty much every single ongoing storyline involved racers bickering with each other, and there were a lot of bad feelings all around. And then Kris & Jon lost the million to the most hated team of the season. Another point against the season was the overuse of equalizers, which sucked a lot of excitement from the legs knowing only the last portion mattered, and spent most of the first 9 legs in Europe. The season also had the bad luck to be sandwiched between two seasons that are widely considered among the series' best. |
| 287 | ** The Family Edition for the American viewers. Having children on the Race, as well as having teams of 4 (as the show already requires a huge travel budget with teams of 2), restricted international travel, meaning the entirety of the race ended up taking place in North and Central America. The challenges had to be watered down, and viewers watched as families turning seemingly [[DysfunctionalFamily dysfunctional]] while being challenged to such difficult tasks as pitching a tent in exotic Pennsylvania. Some people actually think it wasn't that bad; just better on paper than it was in practice. |
| 288 | ** Season 15 had a whiny, mediocre cast full of pseudo-celebrities running on a subpar course [[note]] admittedly, the [=H1N1=] virus scare was taking place at the time, which meant that several of the planned countries had to be switched and new legs had to be put together on the fly[[/note]]. It did not help either that three teams essentially quit the race when they came up against something "too difficult" [[note]]which included, of all things, going down a waterslide and unscrambling the name "Franz", though the other instance was being physically unable to complete one of two strength-based detour tasks and wasn't for lack of trying[[/note]]. The season started off fine, but took two noticeable dips, first when fan favorites Zev & Justin lost a passport, then again when Maria & Tiffany quit the race, essentially removing the only two teams who were keeping the season afloat. Once Zev & Justin got put out, the eventual winners Meghan & Chanyne had no competion whatsoever and waltzed to a FlawlessVictory as one of three teams ever with a sub-2.0 average placement which made the season boring. |
| 289 | ** Season 16. Despite producing one of the most popular teams in the series, everyone else ended up boring or unlikable, and a huge amount of time was devoted to a rivalry between two unpopular teams. When the most popular team lost in the finale, to a team that cut in line in front of them at the final airport, many of fans overreacted, and wouldn't stop accusing the show of letting a pair of cheaters win for over a year. |
| 290 | ** Season 24, mostly thanks to the production. Despite being an All-Stars season, the producers just let a lot of people down with it's rather boring course [[note]]Having 6 Asia legs and 5 Europe legs, no helping is that 3 of the legs are last minute replacements[[/note]], mostly easy & linear challenges [[note]]Shaving a balloon, toy chariot racing and shirt sewing[[/note]], and production mistakes that was inexcusable for a series that had been going on for 20+ more seasons [[note]]Having a 3 hour time difference for the first 6 teams and the last 3 teams in Leg 3, narrative editing that made both hero & villain unlikable in the end[[/note]]. The route was also sub-par because they only visited Asia and Europe while hitting a lot of OnceASeason countries like China, the UK, and Switzerland. |
| 291 | ** Season 31 didn't go over too well due to it being seen as a boring, predictable CurbStompBattle stemming primarily from the unfair advantage the returning ''Race'' teams had over the ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' and ''Series/BigBrother'' teams due to having experience with the game before[[note]]Only one non-''Race'' team member, Rachel Reilly, had any prior experience with the show whatsoever[[/note]]. Even the early stacking of non-elimination legs from Leg 3 to 8, the non-''Race'' teams still dropped like flies, comprising five of the first six eliminations. The last non-''Race'' team, Nicole and Victor, was knocked out in the penultimate leg, leading to a dull all-''Race'' finale that many fans had predicted, down to the three teams who would participate, since as early as the ''second leg''. At the very least, the season did end with a popular winner. |
| 292 | ** Season 32 and 33 seem to be headed down this path too, given the former people tend to sympathize with [=DeAngelo=] and Gary, both had obvious winners, especially 33, and while the former suffered from an abundance of alliances making this essentially Survivor: The Race, the latter suffered from relatively mostly easy challenges, people who were on the show to inspire and promote their careers (all three of the final three suffered from this), fan favourite teams such as Anthony and Spencer, and Connie and Sam going out early due to the 19 month pitstop, with ''none'' of them [[{{Unperson}} being]] at the finish line, as well as a lack of equalizers. |
| 293 | * SpecialEffectsFailure: In Season 31, leg 8, a cameraman is seen running behind Rachel & Elissa at the Roadblock |
| 294 | * SpoiledByTheFormat: If a team is talking about their time on the race before Phil tells them whether or not they are eliminated, it's non-elimination. |
| 295 | * {{Squick}}: The China Cups Detour in Season 25, Leg 9 involved a VERY painful deep-tissue massage, followed by a very close skin exfoliation, and then a suction treatment with glass bulbs and fire. Three of the teams still in the race at this point chose this Detour (one team skipped this altogether via the Fast Forward) and were screaming all the way through. The upside to this task is just enduring the massage would earn the teams their next clue. |
| 296 | * StopHavingFunGuys: It doesn't happen in the Race as much as in some other shows, though there are a few. Specifically, Colin (5) and J.J. (20) are the best examples. |
| 297 | ** For example, Colin & Christie constantly complained in the final two episodes of Season 5 that Chip & Kim had "played unfairly" by Yielding them, and insisted that [[LaserGuidedKarma karma would get them in the end]], when: 1) the Yield was a perfectly fair (if new) part of the game rules, and 2) ''every team left at that point'' agreed to Yield Colin & Christie if they got the chance, as the couple had been so dominant up to that point, that it was the only way any of them thought they might win the race. |
| 298 | ** One of the few complaints about Season 18 was that the final four teams were all far too nice with each other, and there was not as much of a sense of urgency and competition as in some other seasons. It got to the point where people were calling for rules to be made against teams helping each other complete tasks. That's right, the ''fans'' were the StopHavingFunGuys. |
| 299 | *** This same reaction would later occur toward the Mine 5 alliance in Season 32. Many fans did not like that the alliance steamrolled their way to the Final 5 through a combination of blatant answer-sharing and wanting to have all the "stronger" teams at the end, when most of the point of race strategy is to get the stronger teams out before the endgame. |
| 300 | ** Art & JJ (20) decried other teams for "not deserving to be on the Race with them," pointed out that they were fine finishing second to a Fast Forward because it meant they had really won the leg, called out other teams for copying them simply because they went to the same travel agency, and then criticized Rachel & Dave for choosing to break a deal and not U-Turn Brendon & Rachel on a leg that they essentially saw as a ForegoneConclusion. |
| 301 | ** It's been pointed out by Jordan on ''Series/BigBrother'' that people are generally a lot more friendly on ''Series/TheAmazingRace'' than other social game shows. One of the most important things on ''Series/TheAmazingRace'' isn't so much getting people to like you as it is being able to work with your partners. |
| 302 | * SweetnessAversion: For more competitive fans, Season 33 fell into this after the return due to every single team (yes, even Akbar & Sheri) trying to regurgitate an inspirational story and the editors focusing more on that than to the competition. |
| 303 | * [[ThatOneLevel That One Task]]: Some of the challenges can be flat out ''sadistic''. Examples include: |
| 304 | ** The Hay Bale Roadblock (6). Showing an example of a RandomNumberGod, there were 270 hay bales, and only 20 of them had clues. If you do the math, you'll find that you have around a ''seven percent chance'' of finding a clue in that one. Not to mention unrolling the bales was a task in itself, as they stood almost as tall as the racers. And that wasn't the worst challenge of the season in terms of luck. The penultimate leg's Roadblock required racers to unlock one of ''3000'' locks. |
| 305 | ** [[EatThat Any eating task]], though special note goes to Seasons 5-7, which included two pounds of caviar, an ostrich egg, a bowl of spicy Hungarian soup, and four pounds of meat, the last of which had 3 teams quit on. |
| 306 | ** Season 12's [[FinalExamFinale Final Roadblock]], widely considered to be one of the best final task. It required the racers to figure out a specific combination of 10 items on the race out of 15 fulfilling several specific conditions. It establishes itself as this immediately when Phil ended the complicated explanation with "If you think it sounds easy, think again." The racers were all prepared for a final memory challenge, but every one of them got stuck for at least an hour trying to figure it out and attempting to discern such things as a human being considered an animal and a stick being used as transportation. |
| 307 | ** Season 14 had a Detour in which one side was fairly straightforward: swimming 400 meters and alternating every 100. The other side just looked easy, but was actually extremely difficult: get a perfect score in a synchronized diving routine. The form wasn't hard, but it was flat out impossible to get a perfect score unless you hit the water at exactly the same time which requires a lot of luck. |
| 308 | ** Season 16 had a detour, the first side was fairly straightforward, crawl 100 feet under barbed wire, retrieve a message, and come back. The other side however was much harder, translate a message in Morse code. Given the nature of Morse code if even 1 letter was wrong, it would screw up the whole message. The only team who did this (because of a U-Turn) was stuck overnight. |
| 309 | ** In Season 17, [[SadisticChoice it was pretty much nails on both sides and picking which one would hurt the least]] - Either take parakeets to a boat which you had to correctly identify by locating a series of numbers on the hull (made even worse with how the teams had to do this at night), or ride on a tram and look for three signs that were well hidden if you didn't know what you were looking for; and if you didn't get them then you had to ride the tram again and again until you got them. To make matters worse, this came after a Roadblock combining two of the most hated kinds of tasks into a needle-in-a-haystack eating challenge. |
| 310 | ** Season 18 had the Nautical Flag Roadblock in Sydney. Teams had to scuba dive to find a compass, then decode a message to find the next clue. For one of the earliest task for this season, it really demands teams to both physically and mentally skilled. |
| 311 | *** And then the Dinosaur Assembling Roadblock in China. Where they had to build a life size puzzle [[note]]Which is a 20-foot long model of a Dilophosaurus[[/note]], where puzzle sharing could not help for once. |
| 312 | ** Leg 3 of Season 20 had a Detour choice of stacking a watermelon pyramid in hot weather, where 5 teams decided to switch to a more manageable choice of fixing a harp, and the last team that finished the task took until nighttime to finish it. |
| 313 | *** Bollywood Roadblock, in which the participating member had to correctly perform a Bollywood routine in hot weather. Only 1 team got through in one try and that’s because she was a competitive dancer growing up. |
| 314 | ** The leg 7 Detour in in Season 21. One side involved searching through a Russian card catalog for four specific books from a list, while the other side the teams had to learn a synchronized swimming routine. |
| 315 | *** It also had a fairly difficult final Roadblock ("Hello Goodbye") which saw a lead change that decided the victor, as well as the only night finish on the American version of the race until Season 24 (it took the first team to finish it at least three hours). |
| 316 | ** The sand castle Roadblock in Season 22's first leg, in which teams had to search through over 400 sandcastles for a clue, and every sand castle they tore down they had to rebuild, all in 100 degree weather. Also, not reading the clue properly ([[ReadTheFreakingManual as it stated that you needed to dig under the sandcastles]]) made the task virtually impossible to complete. Three teams ended up quitting the task. |
| 317 | ** Season 23 had a Roadblock in which racers had to sing with the Vienna Boy's Choir. Not only did the racers have to sing in German correctly, they had to also get pitches and rhythms correct. |
| 318 | ** The Detour in Kuala Lumpur in Season 24, which gave the teams a choice of completing a very complicated trick drink pouring, or playing follow the leader with a DJ music mixer challenge. Both sides of the Detour took hours to complete, and took of more than half the episode[[note]]Although it was the ''only'' task that they had to do once they reach Kuala Lumpur[[/note]]. |
| 319 | ** The first roadblock of Season 25 was to find a treasure chest using only a shovel as a yardstick and a compass that had the direction you were facing face towards the user. Like Season 22, 3 teams quit the task. |
| 320 | ** Season 26, The Syncing Steps Detour in Tokyo, where teams have to do synchronized robotic dance, it ended up dragging teams to nighttime. |
| 321 | ** The menacing task of having to decipher a message hidden in pieces amongst a cacophonic sea of ringing telephones, which returned in Season 30. Not only is it hard to discover which phones have the recordings of words, when one tries to figure it out over the bedlam of ringing, it is mind-numbing and migraine-inducing... bring aspirin. |
| 322 | ** The finale had two brutal memory tasks: |
| 323 | *** In the penultimate leg, one racer would be handcuffed to a suitcase, and to find the combination, they would have to look for three signs that would correspond to legs they appeared in on the race and use the leg numbers to figure out the combo to unlock the suitcase. The signs were well-hidden and there were some signs that meant nothing but could be mistaken for another leg (like a boat for Leg 4 despite 4 not being a number). Also, one of the signs wasn't even marked yellow and red so there was no way to tell it was one of the signs. To top it all off, everyone had a different combination so answer sharing wouldn't help. |
| 324 | *** The final leg, racers had to search through a freaking ''aircraft carrier'' for twelve pieces of a model plane as big as the racers themselves with 2 pictures on each part of something from a leg. The pictures were not easy either, for example one was a helmet they wore during one task. They would then have to put 6 of the pieces on to build the model plane so that each leg had only one picture on the plane. The task took well over 2 hours and the winner took 10 attempts to get it right. |
| 325 | ** Given how a number of tasks that were done in Season 20's Paraguay leg were recycled for Season 32, it wasn't too surprising that it proved to be one of the more difficult legs in recent memory. First, there was the Roadblock where teams had to build a cello using trash. Granted, they were given a guide on which pieces of trash to get, but the actual building took some teams at least an hour to do, no thanks to the precise placement of parts and the strings being easy to snap. Then the detour was a SadisticChoice between the above-mentioned watermelon stacking task or the bottle dance from the same leg, now with both members needing to complete it (though with the caveat that there were more bottles available to use meaning breaking them all would be practically impossible unlike last time). |
| 326 | *** The final task of the penultimate leg had teams listen to a band playing four songs heard in previous legs and match instrument cases containing the respective countries' flags. To be fair, this was largely due to everyone's failure to [[ReadTheFreakingManual Read The Freaking Clue]][[note]]The clue told them to place the cases in the order they visited the countries, ''not'' the order the band was playing them[[/note]]. But even then, apart from "Day-O", the rest of the songs were background music that at the time was easy to overlook. No team was able to solve this task individually. 3 of the Final Four teams ended up working together while the remaining team skipped the task and took a two hour penalty. |
| 327 | ** After a mostly easy season, Leg 9 of 33 kicked things up to 20 with the first task of the leg. Teams had to search over a thousand rocks for one of ''four'' with a gold coin on the bottom. Finding one came down to complete and utter luck, with it taking over an hour for the first person to find one while also knocking a front runner team down to last when it took them nearly three hours just to find the last one. |
| 328 | ** Season 35 Leg 4's Roadblock saw teams [[NeedleInAStackOfNeedles look for one tile that matched the exact one given to them]], already a daunting task on its own, but when you take into account that the temple complex it took place at was sprawling, even the tiniest of details being scrutinized, and being the last task after two grueling back-to-back legs, not helped by the sweltering Vietnam heat factoring in to their fatigue, and you have a task you'd swear was designed by the devil himself. |
| 329 | ** Season 35 Leg 7 had a Detour that was nails on both sides ''after'' a double Roadblock. One side involved kicking Velcro soccer balls at a dartboard to accumulate ''exactly'' 66 points in four kicks. The other side is a hard classic of tasting nine mustards and correctly guessing them by memory. |
| 330 | * TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot / [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter Team]]: Unavoidably showed up in every single All-star season, except for maybe ''Unfinished Business''. The most glaring example would be Eric & Jeremy: Instead of finding out whether or not they are the strongest team when not facing with a bunch of mistake-prone crowd, what we got is a brutal StrangledByTheRedString case in the form of Eric & Danielle that were immediately thrown into the Scrappy heap because of their constant arguing and Eric TookALevelInJerkass, as well as winning over fan favorite Dustin & Kandice by a ''opinion matching task''. Another one would be season 24, where we have teams that raced for the ''3rd'' time, instead of picking more memorable teams from the last 5 seasons or even from the beginning, as well as poor production value (see Seasonal Rot). |
| 331 | ** As devastating as the production halt in 33 was it was a great opportunity for the show to fill the spots of teams who couldn't return with 9th place teams since they raced about the same number of legs and some of them were really popular or had devastating eliminations like Lena & Kristy, Chester & Ephraim, Debbie & Bianca, Seth & Olive, or Connor & Jonathan. Instead, they just brought back the teams already eliminated which still left them with fewer teams than before the production halt. |
| 332 | * UnexpectedCharacter: Season 31, none of the viewers and especially the fans expected Colin & Christie from Season 5 would be participating. Though they had originally been invited back for season 10 but had to decline because Christie was pregnant. |
| 333 | * UnintentionallySympathetic: |
| 334 | ** Dustin & Kandice (10) were originally cut as the "villains", but a combination of the other teams being either preachy, self-righteous or outright stupid, and the fans being happy to ''finally'' see a competent female team who weren't just competing, but were the favorites to win, caused them to jump in popularity, ''especially'' after they beat out the Fast Forward in leg 8. Their elimination, which was supposed to lead to much rejoicing from the fanbase, instead led to what would be one of the show's most hated Final 3's. |
| 335 | ** Joe & Bill (1) can come off as this to fans who only watched the early seasons after some of the later ones, as the "villainous acts" other teams hated them for are now common use strategies. Also, because post-race interviews indicate they didn't want to be portrayed as villains because of the impression it would leave on gay people. They manage to be one of the few teams who actually sound genuine about claiming to be screwed by the editing. |
| 336 | * UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: |
| 337 | ** The Weaver Family (8) started out this way, until the whole sympathy angle was dumped, and they were turned into outright LoveToHate villains. |
| 338 | ** BJ & Tyler in Season 9. The edit and even the majority of the fans viewed them as the heroes to Joseph & Monica as having a seemingly IrrationalHatred towards them. If you view the season from [=MoJo's=] perspective, their hatred seems entirely justified. The hippies would frequently follow [=MoJo=] then ditch them when they were close enough to make it on their own, something Andre & Damon were frequently vilified for in Season 3. Towards the second half of the season, the way the hippies treated the couple bordered on flat-out bullying, such as threatening to Yield them if they didn't give them money after their non-elimination at the Final 5, and reached its pinnacle when they started a fake rumor Monica was cheating on Joseph with Eric. This could've had devastating real-world repercussions had it not been dead in the water as soon as it started. |
| 339 | ** Dave (24), some saw him as a poor sport after being U-Turned by Brendon & Rachel, thanks to the editors bizarre decision to repeatedly show him bringing up the fact that Brendon & Rachel U-Turned a 60-year-old man. At least the editors managed to salvage it for the last two episodes. |
| 340 | * [[UnpopularPopularCharacter Unpopular Popular Team]]: Dustin & Kandice were the most popular team on both Seasons 10 and 11 despite being hated by most of the other teams to the point where, in both seasons, others were plotting their elimination. |
| 341 | ** In Season 25, by mid season all of the remaining teams had grown to abhor Kym & Alli. The fanbase on the other hand adored them. |
| 342 | * UnwinnableByDesign: The bottle dancing roadblock from season 20. Basically, the teams had to learn a dance routine and do it without dropping a bottle on their head. Problem? There was a limited amount of bottles for each team. And once they were out of bottles, that's it, the roadblock could no longer be attempted. This was fixed when the roadblock returned for season 32 by giving teams way more bottles to use and the ability to practice as much as they need to. |
| 343 | * ValuesDissonance: |
| 344 | ** The early seasons have this from time to time, which is shocking considering the first season was filmed in 2001, but some offhanded remarks come off as sexist or homophobic, and there are several uses of the phrase "This is/We're retarded." All things the editors wouldn't include now, but didn't think twice about then. |
| 345 | ** The early seasons showed how lenient some countries are with sexual harassment. Some prime examples were every female player in India in Season 4 getting groped on the train and Yolanda being verbally harassed by guys when fixing the motorcycle in leg one of season 9. |
| 346 | ** In the early season where twists in Yield & U-Turn exists, teams and viewers had a polarizing point of view about them about used as a tool for winning the race, or a seeker of bad karma. Come around the seasons starting from Season 14, they are now considered an expected part of the game, to the point in Season 24, Dave actually got criticized by viewers for having a sour attitude when they are U-Turned. |
| 347 | * VindicatedByHistory: |
| 348 | ** The only reason the show lasted past one season was the high critical praise and the devoted audience, with Sarah Jessica Parker even calling CBS President Les Moonves to save the show. It wasn't until they gave the show a huge advertising push during Season 5 that the show started to catch on with audiences. |
| 349 | ** Season 15 was regarded as possibly the worst season ever produced, however years later 2 of the teams put on stellar showings in Season 18 and the starting line task and Switchback are still used to this day which helped salvage it's reputation to an extent. |
| 350 | * {{Wangst}}: |
| 351 | ** There was nothing Flo (3) couldn't manage to complain about and blow out of proportion. She even almost quit the Race on the penultimate leg, when it was already down to the final three teams. |
| 352 | ** If Mika (15) wasn't already this, she definitely hit this on the water slide task when she threw a fit and practically threw a temper tantrum like a child all because she had to go down a water slide. Even her fear of heights and water didn't justify this |
| 353 | ** [[Series/BigBrother Rachel]] (20). She somehow managed to cry in nearly every ''single'' episode. |
| 354 | ** Shamir (29) complaining about the harness for the window cleaning challenge being uncomfortable. Every other guy that did it did so with minimal complaining. Phil even told him he should have been expecting to have to wear one at some point in the race and that he should have been prepared. |
| 355 | ** Sharik (34) after chiseling the statue which while easier than it looked was still decently challenging, and she spends the whole leg begging her father to quit. You could tell Phil wanted her to quit at the mat. |
| 356 | * WinBackTheCrowd: |
| 357 | ** Season 12. Family Edition was universally hated, and was followed by the disappointing Season 9. Seasons 10 and All-Stars were better, but both ended with unpopular winners. With the show on the verge of cancellation, and the budget cut, the show was restructured, and it ended up saving the series. |
| 358 | ** Season 17 to some extent. After following the underwhelming season 13, and The Dork Age of seasons 15 and 16, The Season itself produced strong, memorable and likable racers and the First All-Female Team to win in the United States Version of the show. |
| 359 | ** Season 25 could be seen as this to an extent, [[HistoryRepeats as it followed a subpar All-Star season]], because of the casting, tasks, and route, despite being on a similar budget to All-Stars 2. |
| 360 | * TheWoobie: |
| 361 | ** Zach (3). He came on the race with his friend Flo [[RelationshipUpgrade to see if they wanted to be more than friends]], but instead she spent the entire race flirting with another racer and verbally abusing him. |
| 362 | *** Flo herself has some fans who see her as this, claiming that her periodic nervous breakdowns throughout the show are equally hilarious and endearing. |
| 363 | ** Linda (14), especially when she got lost during the Roadblock on leg 2 and wandered way off course, you just wanted to give her a hug when she started crying. |
| 364 | ** Eric & Lisa (15). They were eliminated at the Starting Line. They were ''so'' pissed that they [[RageQuit stomped off the set and didn't even appear at the Finish Line.]] Given that every other team at the very ''least'' gets to spend some time in another country, it's understandable why they would be so angry. |
| 365 | ** Claire (17) hit herself in the face with a watermelon, was stranded dangling from a bridge when she had trouble using an ascender, spent hours eating through a Chinese buffet looking for a piece of fake food, and through it all was partnered with [[GenkiGirl Brook]], who moved at a pace far beyond that of a normal human, and kept up a constant chant of, "Come on, Claire!" whenever Claire started lagging. |
| 366 | ** Vicki (17), though mainly during their penultimate leg, where Nick was at his nastiest towards her and decided to take a nap at the Detour while Vicki (who had pretty much done all the hard work during that leg) continued to try until Nick convinced her to quit too. |
| 367 | ** James & Abba (21). Over the course of four legs, Abba got his knee injured, James's father was revealed to have stage 4 cancer, they dropped their money (forcing them to beg in the streets of Bangladesh), and then their cab driver drove off with their bags and passports. They're like the [[Literature/BookOfJob Job]] of Amazing Racers. |
| 368 | ** Mark & Bopper (20 & 24). During the race it was revealed Bopper's daughter was sick and they needed the money for treatment. Throughout the race Bopper hurt his knee making him unable to do the Bollywood Roadblock, forcing Mark to do it. Mark is really prone to being motion sick and driving around in an Indian rickshaw did him no favors. He was already not feeling well when he started the task and spent hours in the heat trying and failing to the point of dehydration. They were eliminated the next leg despite using the Fast Forward. In the All Stars preview, Phil had revealed between seasons they had lost their jobs. On Season 24, Bopper was forced to leave before the race started because of pancreatitis. Mark was paired up a partner (Mallory, 17 and 18) who is basically a stranger; they were eliminated on the second leg. |
| 369 | ** Blair (26). He's stuck in a pretty tight situation being stuck on a blind date with a girl who nags him all the time. Even when she asked him to make the decisions she still contradicted them. |
| 370 | [[/folder]] |
| 371 | |
| 372 | |
| 373 | |
| 374 | [[folder:International Versions]] |
| 375 | * AssPull: |
| 376 | ** The 3 non-elimination legs in a row in China Rush 1. Seeing as Alan didn't say the third one was pre-determined, but said it with the others, it made it feel like they just moved around non-elimination legs to keep Rachel & Charlie in. |
| 377 | ** The penultimate leg U-Turn Vote in Australia 4. Tom & Tyler, who finished first '''8''' out of the 11 legs, were seemingly best contenders for the win. That is, until a convenient second U-Turn Vote occurred (there was a U-Turn vote for Leg 9), in which their former alliance members; Viv & Joey, and Jasmin & Jasmine capitalized on the opportunity and voted to Tom & Tyler. The U-Turn was just enough of a setback that Jasmin & Jerome were able to finish a mere minute just before Tom & Tyler arrived, cutting them from the Race just before the finale. It's quite odd that two U-Turn votes occurred very near the end[[note]]outside of Philippine and Israeli versions, which has a vote every leg[[/note]], and some have theorized that it was specifically placed to avoid a ForegoneConclusion with Tom & Tyler winning. This, however, is an iffy example seeing as production had made more glaring errors even before this. The biggest being scheduling the Mongolia leg the same time as Putin was visiting. |
| 378 | ** The insanely short penalties in Australia 5. Quitting a task, even a Roadblock results in a 30 minute penalty and hitching a ride results in a 10 minute penalty. It looks even worse considering how in Australia 1, Sam & Renae got a two hour penalty for "quitting a task" when it was Chris & Anastasia's fault. Furthermore, Australia 6 carried the 30 minute quit penalty over - which several teams tried to use to their advantage, only to be eliminated on the leg they used it - as well as a 15 minute penalty for using another team's items without their permission (Stuart & Glennon got this with the Bunch challenge and they pointed out even they didn't see it coming) and a 15 minute penalty for not completing a Roadblock (Pako and Mori got this after failing to memorise the seasons at Optus Stadium). |
| 379 | ** The Stowaway Teams mechanic, unlike the Invader Twist in China, they don't have to place first on the leg to officially join in. With them not having to participate in half of this unusually long season and being able to rest for a leg if they win some legs, it's not hard for the viewers to see it as unfair. Most fans either weren't sad after both teams were eliminated, or wished both teams raced from the start. |
| 380 | ** The two Virtual Pit Stops in Mexico in Australia 6 after a Double U-Turn. Sure, someone got eliminated at the end, but it just served to drag that out. |
| 381 | * AudienceAlienatingEra: Australia 4 - 6. Fans don't really like these seasons due to the ToughActToFollow nature of seasons 1 - 3 and [[SpotlightStealingSquad Beau Ryan not knowing how to rein in his antics]]. |
| 382 | * BigLippedAlligatorMoment: |
| 383 | ** China Leg 4, where Zhong Hangliang & Jackie stumbled upon an Indian who knew Chinese & told them a folktale about Ganesha combined with Indian music outside, and it's not even a Route Info. |
| 384 | ** "Look! It's a pair of cats having sex!" from Australia 6. The randomness of the moment was even pointed out on ''The Cheap Seats''. |
| 385 | * CaptainObviousReveal: Like the American version, the international versions have their share of obvious winners' edits, such as [[spoiler: Anthony & James and Catherine & Craig.]] |
| 386 | * CatharsisFactor: Justin & Jermaine, possibly the most widely-despised Canadian team, being sent home after numerous lucky breaks which saved them over far more deserving teams. |
| 387 | * CultClassic: China Rush 2 is a difficult season to find, but those who watch it agree it's one of the franchise's most underappreciated seasons. |
| 388 | * DesignatedVillain: |
| 389 | ** Ann & Diane of Asia Season 2. Other than the BatmanGambit in Seoul, they did not seem as villainous as every other team claims. |
| 390 | ** Dimple & Sunaina of Asia Season 4, other than Yielding Claire & Michelle in retaliation for trying to get a ticketing agent to lie to them, they really never did anything villainous as every other team claims. Even Allan Wu didn't seem to like them that much as he called Claire & Michelle U-Turning them "finally getting revenge" and on the archery task their picture was used for the demonstration of the task. |
| 391 | ** Played with and conversed: Jess & Lani of Asia Season 4, not by ManipulativeEditing (the team had remained relatively OutOfFocus and obscure until they started leading the pack, not even a single hint that they were "villainous"), but due to fingers pointed by the remaining teams; they theorized that since that they were the only [[ThisIsACompetition serious racers]] left, and the only other "villain" team, Dimple & Suinana, had been eliminated two legs earlier, the rest of the Final 4 needed someone to take out their aggression on. |
| 392 | ** Beverley & Veronica are the de facto villains in Canada 8 because they're... playing the game. They're actually quite a nice team to each other and don't do much in terms of villainy, but because they're the only competitive team in a season of people focused more on having fun, the edit wants you to root against them. |
| 393 | * EnsembleDarkhorse: |
| 394 | ** Zabrina & Joe Jer from the Asia 1 are beloved by fans due to being very nice and a break from the usual all-female teams of gorgeous ladies who looked identical, and for being the first all-female team to ever win the race, something which absolutely thrilled fans of the franchise as a whole. |
| 395 | ** Despite the poor reception of China Rush 1, it brought us Bonnie & Mel: the middle-aged FunPersonified [[BlitheSpirit Blithe Spirits]] who despite accepting the fact they were the underdogs never let it get to them. |
| 396 | ** From China Rush 3, Xiao Bing & Xiao Bang were very popular with the fanbase for their strength and DecoyProtagonist status. What made them even more popular was how they were eliminated in 8th place due to a 30 minutes penalty despite arriving 2nd at the Pit Stop, losing out to EliminationHoudini Henry & Jennifer. |
| 397 | ** In Canada 3, Dana & Amanda were OutOfFocus and the 3rd eliminated, but wound up winning fan favorites (well 2nd to Gino & Jesse) and free gas for a year. |
| 398 | * FanonDiscontinuity: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. Most fans will refer to post-revival seasons of ''The Amazing Race Australia'' as [="TARAu4"=] for the 2019 revival and [="TARAu5"=] for its subsequent 2020 season owing to Creator/SevenNetwork's prior three seasons before the Australian version's cancellation despite Creator/NetworkTen restarting season count back to one, referring the 2020 season as the second season. Especially since the two are marketed under the same name as opposed to China, which differentiated itself from China ''Rush''. |
| 399 | * GrowingTheBeard: |
| 400 | ** In the first season of Asia, Allan Wu was very stiff when greeting the teams, and his {{Dramatic Pause}}s did not flow very well (as he placed them after "you are team number..." instead of before, and did it for every single team, not just for those at the top or bottom of the standings). He fixed these issues on the second season. |
| 401 | ** Like Wu, Grant Bowler was kind of stiff and awkward in the first season of the Australian version, and seemed to be doing his best to copy Phil and Allan Wu. By the second season he had loosened up quite a bit, and had self-tailored the host {{Catch Phrase}}s. |
| 402 | ** Beau Ryan, the Australian host after the ChannelHop, was rather stiff in his greeting before, about halfway through season 4, he utilised his existing career in comedy to liven up challenge demonstrations and lessened the amount of "bringing it in" (i.e. awkward hugs) he did post-greeting. Scott carried over the comedic demonstrations, as well as introducing fist bump greetings at the mat...only for Beau to bring back "bringing it in" as soon as he could after his isolation period. |
| 403 | * HarsherInHindsight: In Amazing Race China Rush 2 Leg 9, teams traveled to Xining, a heavily Muslim area. All the teams took steps to respect the culture there such as helping prepare taqiyahs, delivering care packages to a mosque, or dressing more conservatively to not offend the citizens. China has come under fire in 2019 due to accusations of genocide towards Muslims. |
| 404 | ** In Canada 5 Leg 3, Ryan gave his respects to two of his friends who died in a skiing accident in Nelson. In 2019, his race partner, Kenneth, died in a hiking accident. |
| 405 | * HilariousInHindsight: Natalie's (Asia 3) negative attitude towards the normal traveling aspect became this when the second China version came out, in which the celebrity teams always sleep in hotel rooms, have personal assistants to apply skin care (Yijian in India), taking breaks before resuming the race, and bringing underage children to the race location just to take care of them. |
| 406 | * LoveToHate: |
| 407 | ** Paul (Australia 2) seemingly relished this role. Everything he said either made the audience or the other teams despise him more. In leg 5 he knocked over Grace while running for a clue, supposedly by accident. However, he had clashed with Grace earlier in the leg, and stated to the camera that he would deliberately run over anyone who got in his way. The level of ManipulativeEditing used on them puts the other teams' fear/dislike of them on equal levels with the likes of Rob & Amber (US 7 & 11) and Dustin & Kandice (US 10 & 11). It also helped that Steve wore a [[Franchise/GIJoe Cobra Command]] hat. |
| 408 | ** Dave & Irina (Canada 7) were condescending, hyper-competitive, and had no qualms about cutting corners on tasks. They also were the reason the season was as good as it was, with their competitive attitude and abrasiveness pushing the other teams to be willing to sink to their level just to get rid of them. They quickly made the season a lot more interesting to watch, and it was a nice change of pace after two seasons with no villains. |
| 409 | * NightmareFuel: Corrida Millionaria has one of the scariest moments in race history where a team was ''robbed at gunpoint, and it was on cameras''. Making matters worse, there were three perpetrators, but only two were found. |
| 410 | * OneSceneWonder: The baba master from China Rush 2 was an uptight bitch with a stick up her ass, and it was hilarious to watch. |
| 411 | * {{Padding}}: |
| 412 | * Asia suffered from this, especially the first two seasons, when they were thirteen episodes long, and included five non-elimination legs. As the episodes were around six minutes longer each, and used far fewer {{Confession Cam}}s than other versions, a lot of time was spent focusing on teams doing tasks, such as a Roadblock in Season 2 which involved matching a key to its lock. Multiple teams were shown trying as many as ten locks, without any sort of commentary. |
| 413 | ** At least it's saner than some other versions of the show like the Philippines and the Israel edition. The first season in Philippines alone manages to provide 43 episodes, while the first season of Israel provide 20 episodes, and it escalates from there. |
| 414 | ** ''The Amazing Race Australia 5'' features a ''whopping 24 episodes'' over ''24 legs'', double than any other version or season, due in part of Network Ten asking for 24 hour-and-a-half episodes. |
| 415 | * ProtagonistCenteredMorality: A grating example occurred in Season 7 of Canada. Dave copying off Trish's whiteboard in Leg 5 was treated as the ultimate evil and turned all the other teams against them. In the Season 3 finale, Brent & Sean copied off Gino & Jesse's whiteboard at the miles mapping task. During that instance, the editing portrayed that as Gino & Jesse's fault for not being mindful enough to erase their equation. |
| 416 | * TheScrappy: |
| 417 | ** Terri, Asia Season 2. Constantly nagging at her husband about whatever blunder they had come across. She did that so much that her husband would often break down in tears. |
| 418 | ** Natalie Glebova, Asia Season 3, Miss Universe 2005. She pretty much complained about every detail that was outside her comfort zone, claiming that being dirty was the lowest form of existence and that sleeping at the airport had got to be the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Did she expect that the Amazing Race would be like the Miss Universe Pageant? |
| 419 | ** Amy, China Rush Season 1. She treated Sean horribly throughout the race and would constantly get angry for the most minor reasons. She even annoyed other teams with her attitude. |
| 420 | ** Rachel, China Rush Season 1. Starting on Leg 7, she started yelling at and berating Charlie. She whined about everything, some of which weren't even true and acted like not being in first was the end of the world. |
| 421 | ** Wei Tong, China Season 1. Due to the amount of nagging and motormouth complaining or advice giving that she can inflict towards everyone. |
| 422 | ** Matt & Phoebe are the most despised team in the entire Philippines spin off for having the most toxic relationship in any international version even beating out Tom & Adele or Matias & Tamara. They would argue nonstop, Phoebe played the victim every time she started a fight with Matt, and they would not only physically abuse each other, but other teams. The only reason they're not as despised as Jonathan Baker is because not many American fans know who they are. |
| 423 | ** Justin, Canada 9. As soon as Leg 3 hit, he would repeatedly talk about quitting when things got too much for him, which proved to be a very low bar. His confessionals were also insulting as he would hypocritically talk about being positive and inspiring others to be their "authentic selves" despite doing nothing to put his money where his mouth is. He would also browbeat Jermaine, who at least was trying his damnedest to stay ahead of the pack, into quitting to the point Jermaine questioned his partnership with him. Many fans thought it was an insult that he made it further than Gracie & Lily and Derek & Jaspal who were both strong, competitive players who refused to give up. |
| 424 | ** Beau Ryan himself has been subjected to this treatment for treating the show as an ego trip on his part using himself as the focal point in advertising and even going as far to take breaks from the show to show himself while he had COVID. While he has at least gotten a little better compared to Season 4 where he purple edited the entire cast to turn the show into his own personal video journal, his adamance to remove it has annoyed fans to no end. He is widely regarded as the worst host for his treatment of the show. |
| 425 | * ScrappyMechanic: The Pass became this in Season 9 when a severe flaw was shown to the audience: the team who gets passed could be at the whim of a team who was hours behind and be stuck behind them despite doing nothing wrong. |
| 426 | * {{Scrub}}: |
| 427 | ** Claire & Michelle (Asia 4) took it weirdly personal when Jess & Lani or Dimple & Sunaina did anything they saw as "unfair play." When Jess & Lani subverted the ticket line at the airport in Indonesia, Michelle said she only wanted to race against people who played fair. |
| 428 | ** Joseph (Australia 2) twice cited his reason for wanting to U-Turn Paul was that "he wasn't running the race right". Noted, five other teams U-Turned Paul & Steve as well, but they did it because they saw them as a potential threat and thought Paul was a jerk. Joseph gave a diatribe on how he was running the race "wrong". |
| 429 | ** At the Reunion episode of Canada season 1, they showed controversial moments from the season and had teams vote on whether or not it was a fair move. Naturally, the the teams who made it further generally defended the controversial moves, while the teams eliminated early generally generally called them unfair moves. |
| 430 | * SeasonalRot: After the highly regarded Canada 4, its successors have been seen as inferior for various reasons, including: |
| 431 | ** Canada 5 had very good tasks and production-wise made the fewest mistakes, but the cast was not very exciting, with only a few teams being moderately interesting. |
| 432 | ** Canada 6 had a cast that wasn't very competitive and gave up the variety that made the Canadian version lauded in favor of performance tasks on every single leg. |
| 433 | ** Canada 7 brought back the task variety and even had a good cast and good twists to boot, but severely reduced the difficulty, had bad editing that made the villains out to be worse than they really were, and not only made the winners obvious but had the majority of tasks be ones they had experience with, making the season at the very least look rigged. |
| 434 | ** Canada 8 was the worst of these. They had some of the most basic challenges in the entire franchise, the cast was not vested in winning, the editing portrayed the only two teams who were vested in winning negatively for doing so, poor handling of COVID, and a winner who only ran nine of the eleven legs. |
| 435 | * SophomoreSlump: Every season of the Asian version has been held in high regard except Season 2. |
| 436 | * SpoiledByTheFormat: Averted in Australia v New Zealand. Usually when two non-finale legs are mashed together into one, two-hour long episode, the first leg is a non-elimination leg, and the second is an elimination. So, when legs 4 and 5 were mashed together, and Emily & Jono checked in last at the midpoint of the episode, it was a huge shock to see them eliminated, while the end of the episode was a Virtual Pit Stop and a ToBeContinued point. |
| 437 | * {{Squick}}: Tom Kashty from Hamerotz Lamillion 2 admitted he and Adele had been dating since she was 15. Keep in mind there is a five-year age gap between them. |
| 438 | * [[ThatOneLevel That One Task]]: |
| 439 | ** Asia Season 1, Episode 3 had a Roadblock where one team member had to dig deep in sand to search for a mini surfboard. This proved so difficult that it took two hours for the ''first'' surfboard to be found, at least an hour and half more for two more surfboards to be found, ''well into the night'' for one especially unlucky racer to find her surfboard, and ''five'' out of nine teams gave up on the Roadblock entirely and went for the 4-hour penalty. (Although it wasn't helped by most team members somehow not thinking to use or ask for shovels until much later.) |
| 440 | ** Asia Season 4, Leg 9 has a Detour Choice of searching a person's grave named Fam Sam Moy. A luck task of finding a grave is hard enough, but finding a person that even the Internet themselves can't find any information on makes it ridiculously difficult. |
| 441 | ** Asia Season 5, Leg 5 has a Fast Forward of cracking a lot of pots to find one sticky rice that has a coin. If they don't, they have to eat the rice. The 2 teams that went for it failed. |
| 442 | ** Canada Season 1, the entire leg in Nunavut for all the teams (especially those who were WeakButSkilled), where teams did mostly physically demanding tasks in a very cold environment. |
| 443 | ** In Canada 2 Leg 8,there was a Roadblock where teams had to perfectly recreate a piece of art with Mentos. Everyone who did it wound up taking hours to finish and one team wound up taking nearly 8 hours |
| 444 | ** Canada 2, leg 9 had the Detour choice of tasting and identifying ten different cheeses by memory, or making five beads perfectly. Both tasks required a huge level of attention to detail. |
| 445 | ** China (Celebrity), Leg 2. The entire leg in Texas was downright physically exhausting. Detour: Recreate 1 of the 8 pictures by posing & had to run a distance if got it wrong or line dancing. Then they have to ride a mechanical bull for 45 seconds. Speedbump: makes a team to find navigate a maze to find 4 blocks. Next, forcing teams to run back to the entrance of Mainstay Farm to get the clue, which is a Roadblock to lure an armadillo to a specific spot. After that, [[spoiler: Hay Bale]] [[note]] at least teams only need to roll the bale to find a clue beneath[[/note]]. Then, another Roadblock that makes teams remember a sequence while hanging on a zip line. Finally, after all the bruises they went through, [[spoiler: they have to navigate to the Pitstop, by foot]] |
| 446 | *** Leg 6, the Detour choice between Sharp Eyes and Seeing Stars. Sharp Eyes require teams to match 5 pictures of the women eyes in the villa, and the makeup in the pictures do not help the teams. While Seeing Stars require teams to spin in a set speed for 30 seconds, and stack 8 clay pots each. How nasty is this Detour? This is the first task (excluding the team that has to face a Speed Bump), and everybody (especially teams that did the Seeing Stars) is in shambles when they finished. |
| 447 | ** China (Celebrity), Leg 3. Aside from having teams to give up all their money and had to earn their allowance in just 1 task. It also had a Roadblock where teams had to climb up a rope ladder in 5 minutes. Only 1 team finished it. |
| 448 | ** The finale of Corrida Milionaria had an absolutely brutal eating task where each team member had to eat 2 kilograms of smoked clams. Unlike the 2 kilos of meat earlier in the season, quitting wasn't an option as the one team who did quit was eliminated from the finale. The two teams who managed to complete it took over 6 hours to complete and wound up missing the operation hours at the next task. |
| 449 | ** China Rush 2, Leg 4. One team member had to climb down a rope ladder hanging off a cliff, grab a clue from the treetops, and climb back to their partner. Sound easy? Four teams would up quitting after their arms gave out. |
| 450 | ** Canada 7, Leg 5. Teams would have to find four types of clams, turning in 30 of each, with the exception of the butter clam, which they only needed five of. The butterclams seemed to be excruciatingly so rare and elusive that four out of seven teams ended up quitting the task. Even then, two of the three teams who completed the task worked together. |
| 451 | ** Canada 9, Leg 9 saw two grueling tasks done back to back that due to the nature of both of them and how long completing them took, made up the latter half of a 2 part leg: |
| 452 | *** The first was an acting challenge involving memorising a script, which isn't anything new for the race, except unlike most tasks of a similar kind, the script was in a completely made-up alien language, meaning teams had to rely purely on memory. |
| 453 | *** Immediately following this was a shopping task, which again had been done before, but this time only some of the ingredients were found in the area they started at, with the rest being in different parts of the city. Keep in mind that Toronto is Canada's largest city. Oh yeah, and they had to rely on a general description of the area and otherwise had to find the stores themselves, in the middle of the day when people were also doing their shopping. Making the challenge more difficult, is that they were required to buy each item from a specific store and bring the receipt back as proof of purchase, voiding any attempts at CuttingTheKnot by buying several products at the same store. |
| 454 | * [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot They Wasted A Perfectly Good Leg]]: |
| 455 | ** Hong Kong in Asia 2, where when the teams arrive, the only task they did was counting money, and then left for Australia. |
| 456 | ** Netherlands in Australia 1. The teams only ate applebollen, a simple pastry, before taking a train to the Czech Republic. |
| 457 | * ToughActToFollow: |
| 458 | ** Australia V New Zealand is this for Australia 2. |
| 459 | * UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: |
| 460 | ** Catherine & Craig towards the end of Canada 8 held a vendetta towards Franca & Nella over not helping them on a single task. Yes, they had been in an alliance for a while but as far as they knew there were 3 legs till the finale and no one had been told it would be a final 4 so at that point, they were just trying to ensure they would make the finale. They continued to be upset about even getting mad at them for so much as having a good strategy in the finale of ordering food from other trucks while theirs was still cooking. It came off as them feeling entitled to the other teams' help like they were only there to ensure their victory not try to win themselves. |
| 461 | ** Claire & Michelle from Asia season 4 was supposed to gain sympathy due to being Yielded by Dimple and Sunaina and got their revenge by U-Turning the latter back. But their awful attitude towards a relatively nice and sympathetic team as well as their extreme reaction toward Jess & Lani just make them incredibly unlikable. Not helping matters is how they cursed out a flight agent in the final leg, thereby making a scene for something that wasn't her fault. |
| 462 | * ValuesDissonance: |
| 463 | ** Li Xiaopeng & Li Anqi in China 1 got derided from Chinese viewers for their strategical maneuvering to stay in the game, especially when they Yielded well known fan favorites Chen Xiaochun & Zhen Yijian in South Korea. In America, this type of maneuvering is kinda expected. |
| 464 | ** While other versions of the race took place in their hometown, local viewers of Amazing Race Canada surprised fans with them wanting the race to mostly focus on Canada. |
| 465 | ** Seasons 1, 3, and 5 of the Canadian version were criticized for the lack of villains. However in the American version, seasons that use villains notably 1, 2 [[note]] Despite its overall positive reception [[/note]], and 24 are bogged down by the use of a villain, while seasons without a stand out villain (notably 14 and 25) are considered among the all time greats. |
| 466 | ** Tom & Adele from Hamerotz Lamillion 2 freely admitted they have been dating since she was 15 and he was 20. Even in Israel, the age of consent is 16, and if this appeared in the American version, Tom would be facing severe backlash from the public, if not criminal charges. |
| 467 | ** One episode of Australia 6 had a "Viewer Discretion Advised" warning because pictures of deceased relatives of Stuart and Glennon were shown on screen. It's taboo in Australian First Nations culture to do such a thing, but American viewers wouldn't bat an eye at it, especially as this sort of thing is extremely common to milk out a sob story for the cameras. |
| 468 | ** Crystal and Mykey's reason for going on the show, that they were married to other people and wanted to use the money to file for annulments so they could marry each other, would come off as incredibly disrespectful to an American audience. In the Philippines, divorce is illegal, and the only way to end a marriage is through annulment, which is very expensive. In that context, they're just resorting to their best option. |
| 469 | * {{Wangst}}: Downplayed with Aleisha from Australia 5, who would find the time to complain & cry in tasks that were outside her wheelhouse. |
| 470 | * TheWoobie: Jorge from Corrida Milionaria was constantly plagued with illness and chronic pain, neither of which was made better by his wife's nagging. |
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