Breaking Old Trends in this series.
Total Drama Action
- Action was the first season to:
- feature no team switches,
- have someone debut to the competition in the middle of it,
- have finalists from opposing teams.
Total Drama World Tour
- World Tour was the first season to:
- introduce new contestants: Sierra, Alejandro, and Blaineley,
- not include all contestants in the opening, as Blaineley and those who failed to qualify for the season don't appear,
- be a musical,
- feature three smaller teams as opposed to just two,
- not have Izzy return after her elimination
- have DJ be eliminated before a horror-themed episode,
- have the main Big Bad of the season make it to the finale,
- not feature a longer special episode.
Total Drama: Revenge of the Island
- Revenge of the Island was the first season to :
- feature a whole new cast,
- have half of the usual 26 episodes of the first three seasons,
- have a red-colored team as the superior one,
- have the final two not be a boy vs. girl.
Total Drama All-Stars
- All-Stars was the first season to:
- start the trend of not having any contestant return to the competition after their elimination, a new trend only interrupted by Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race,
- not have all of the eliminated contestants be Back for the Finale, a new trend that is also repeated in Pahkitew Island,
- start the trend of shorter opening themes,
- have one of the teams not win the first two challenges, only winning the very first one before the pattern is broken.
Pahkitew Island
- Pahkitew Island was the first season to:
- have the team which won the first two challenges end up being the inferior one, not winning any challenges afterwards,
- have the highest-ranking member of one team be someone who switched teams.
Total Drama Island (2023) Part 1
- While All-Stars came close to achieving that, Part 1 of Island (2023) is the first time when both teams are truly equal to each other. Both teams lost/won the exact same number of times before the merge (3 out of 6 each, exactly half).
- Island (2023) also is the first season ever to:
- have only one winner as a result of having only one ending,
- feature Chef as an outright co-host,
- not give everyone individual moment prior to the final shot in the opening (with Chase, Damien, and Emma missing one),
- Bring back the Dock of Shame elimination method (Albeit with the Boat of Losers now being replaced with the Drone of Despair),
- have no non-elimination episodes at all,
- have neither of the teams gain any additional members, either through returns and debuts or through team switches,
- feature parts of contestants' audition tapes upon their introduction to establish their characters rather than as an exclusive clips after the episode they were eliminated in.
Total Drama Island (2023) Part 2
- Part 2 of ''Total Drama Island (2023) is the first season to:
- have a contestant be the Big Bad for the second time (in a row), with Julia sharing the role with Bowie in Part 1 and now sharing the role with MK for majority of the season until she truly is the last antagonist left,
- reuse the previous season's elimination method, as the Dock of Shame continues to be used. With the finalists of the previous season being eliminated regularly here, it's also the first elimination method that was used by the entire cast,
- reuse the previous opening theme,
- have a contestant follow the Recurring Element of a Traumatic Haircut but not end up truly bald, as the raptor who got "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Julia eats a part of her hair, but she still retains a shorter hairstyle,
- not have the final challenge be a competition between only two people. Previously, the final challenges were either between two people or a two-part challenge for the final 3, with one of them getting eliminated before the second part of the challenge. This time, the entire challenge is a competition between the three finalists.
Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race
- The spin-off, The Ridonculous Race, not only has a format based off of The Amazing Race rather than Survivor, but is also the first time in the franchise where some of the finalists are the ones who returned from previously being eliminated.
