Fanfic / Cast Swap

Cast Swap is a dead Total Drama fanfic written by Animation Adventures. It can be found here.

The premise is simple: What if the cast of Pahkitew Island was the cast of Revenge of the Island and vice versa?

This in turn raises many more questions. How would the elimination order change? Who would win the season? How would the characters' stories change in their new scenarios? How would the Pahkitew contestants interact with the Island and World Tour campers? How would the infamous All-Stars season turn out? What unfolds is much interesting.

(NOTE: The series hasn't been updated since December 2020, stopping on "Three Zones and a Baby".)

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This work contains examples of:

• A Death in the Limelight:
  • "Food Fright" has Beardo trying to find his place on All-Stars. He gets eliminated, but as a consolation prize, his friends tell him that by being himself, he's important to the show, and end it by taking a group selfie.
  • This also occurred to Duncan in "A Scramble Between Good and Evil", as he tries to prove he's a bad guy through multiple attempts. He gets eliminated, but regains his status by stealing Chris's wallet.
  • "Mo' Monkey Mo' Problems" is one for Sam. He attempts to get help from Dakota in winning the challenge, but when she is unable to help, he finds another way to contribute by befriending a moose he names Montana. His team wins, but he still gets eliminated after being framed by Scott for a crime against Chris.
• Adapted Out: Courtney and Lindsay do not participate in All-Stars, and are replaced with Owen and Cody.
• Adaptation Name Change: Several episode titles are changed to better fit the new continuity. "Truth or Laser Shark" becomes "Truth or Mutant Shark", "No One Eggs-pects the Spanish Opposition" becomes "A Scramble between Good and Evil", "I Love You, Grease Pig" becomes "Piggy Panic", "Twinning isn't Everything" becomes "Sabotage isn't Everything", "I Love You, I Love You Knots" becomes "Scared of the Truth", and "A Blast From the Past" becomes "X Marks the Winning Team".
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Sammy, thanks to avoiding early elimination this time, is able to develop into a much braver and stronger competitor able to face the ultra-intelligent Scarlett in the finale.
  • Sugar too. While still a villainous character like in canon, she is much more devious, manipulative, and strategic in this story, especially in All-Stars.
  • Cody demonstrates himself to be a competent competitor throughout All-Stars and makes it to the final 2 compared to his canon run in World Tour, where he was mostly dragged through the season by Sierra.
• Adaptational Friendship: In canon, Dave detests Beardo due to viewing his sound effects as being immensely annoying. Here, because Beardo is not eliminated first and eventually starts talking, Dave instead becomes one of his best friends.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In canon, Dave detested Beardo due to viewing his sound effects as being immensely annoying. Here, because Beardo is not eliminated first and eventually starts talking, Dave instead becomes one of his best friends on the show.
  • Like in canon, Duncan and Gwen break up in All-Stars. But whereas that occurred in canon because of Gwen becoming fed up with how Duncan was clearly still interested in Courtney, Gwen here was instead feeling incredibly guilty about the fact the relationship began with an act of infidelity and becomes Amicable Exes with Duncan afterwards.
• Adaptational Wimp: An odd, non-direct example with Courtney, who's offhandedly mentioned to have initially been selected for All-Stars as she was in canon, only to reject it due to her heartbreak over Duncan's cheating on her with Gwen. Canon Courtney was also heartbroken, but not to the extent of giving up another chance at the million over it. This change is especially notable as being one of the few changes that does not occur as a direct result of the cast swap.
• Alternate Universe Fic: The Pahkitew Island cast is swapped with the Revenge of the Island cast in season 4 of Total Drama in this story and vice versa for season 6.
• Amicable Exes: Unlike canon, Duncan and Gwen become this after the latter breaks up with him (for different reasons than canon).
• Ascended Extra: Beardo goes from the first boot in the canon version of Pahkitew Island to a merger in Revenge of the Island and qualifier for All-Stars.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Scarlett in her ending.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sammy wins Revenge of the Island due to a combination of being underestimated and determination that surprises everyone. In "Suckers Punched", the Villainous Vultures vote her out in order to avoid making the same mistake again.
• Big Bad: Scarlett for Revenge of the Island, Sugar for All-Stars, and Scott for Pahkitew Island.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Alejandro and Topher try to be the Big Bad Duumvirate of All-Stars but fail due to a combination of bad luck, poor teamwork, and general unpopularity with their fellow castmates.
• Big Brother Bully:
  • Both genders are played with Amy towards Sammy in Revenge of the Island and Jose towards Alejandro in All-Stars.
  • Scarlett is also implied to be this to her own brother when she is given the chance to talk to her family in Revenge of the Island.
• Big Damn Heroes: In All-Stars, the people who don't compete are tasked with picking up the contestants due to the contestants being flushed to a location from World Tour.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Scarlett and Sugar, as per canon. Sugar stands out in this case, as she also has the benefit of being seen as a joke by everyone else due to her embarrassing elimination in Revenge of the Island and her general lack of booksmarts.
• The Cameo:
  • The canonical ones of Revenge of the Island are kept in, except Geoff joins Bridgette in her cameo in "Backstabbers Ahoy!".
  • All of the bonus clips in All-Stars feature two non-participating contestants making cameos as they arrive to rescue the flushed contestants. The pairs are Izzy and Eva, Max and Amy, Beth and Dave, Leshawna and Lindsay, Geoff and DJ, Bridgette and Tyler, Katie and Sadie, Rodney and Ella, Noah and Justin, Harold and Sky, and Trent, Courtney, and Leonard (who was originally meant to come with Ezekiel).
  • Izzy cameos in the Pahkitew Island episode "This is the Pits!" wearing her spider costume again.
• Character Development:
  • Due to having gotten over his crush on Gwen, Cody has greatly matured since Island and World Tour, becoming much more amicable with Gwen during All-Stars as a result.
  • Sierra goes through this in All-Stars too. Thanks to becoming much less obsessed with Cody than in canon, she begins to develop genuine friendships with Cody and Gwen.
  • Beardo gets some of this too, as he tries to find a way to carve a niche for himself during the competition in both Revenge of the Island and All-Stars.
  • Sammy's growth is much stronger than in canon, as she manages to grow out of her satellite relationship with Amy, becomes much braver and tougher, and ultimately becomes the underdog finalist against Scarlett.
• Chekhov's Gun: Max's helmet of evil allows Scarlett to take control of the giant beetle, and use it to win the challenge in "Ice Ice Baby".
• Create Your Own Hero: An odd indirect example - Scarlett's early-game decision to help eliminate Amy instead of Sammy actually allows Sammy the time to grow a spine throughout the course of the show and eventually take down Scarlett in the final challenge. The twist is that Sammy isn't even aware Scarlett did this, and neither of them bring it up by the end of the season.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Leonard, Ella, Dave, Sugar and Sky don't last as long in their first season as they did in canon.
  • The same goes for Lightning and Cameron, the finalists of canon Revenge of the Island, who don't reach the merge in Pahkitew Island here.
• Determinator: Sammy becomes a pretty impressive one.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: In episode 12 of All-Stars, Sugar sabotages her competition before heading to the finish line with her treasure. It costs her the challenge and the game; had she focused on her own game she could have won the challenge and gotten a guaranteed spot in the finale.
• Double Take: Amy when she realizes she's been eliminated instead of Sammy.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Sugar overhears Sky making some negative comments about their team, and then blabs about it to their teammates to undermine Sky's leadership.
• Fix Fic: Several subplots end much better than in canon, while a few episodes are drastically improved in some way.
  • Dave and Sky's relationship is much better handled here. In canon, Dave went crazy and performed a Face–Heel Turn as a result of learning Sky already had a boyfriend. Here, while he's still miserable, he learns of Keith much earlier and merely has himself eliminated early to get away from the heartbreak. The final scene of All-Stars implies he and Sky are slowly becoming Just Friends.
  • The All-Stars season is full of this: Feral Ezekiel gets treatment and slowly becomes a human again; Gwen and Courtney make up without anything to ruin it afterwards; Duncan and Gwen break up on amicable terms and the former does not go to prison (but still rebuilds his "bad boy" image by stealing Chris' wallet); the balloon-imprisoned contestants in the finale are freed instead of sent floating away; Duncan and Courtney reconcile over him cheating on her; etc.
• Frame-Up: In Pahkitew Island, Scott steals Chris' belongings and plans to pin it on Dawn. Unable to follow through, he pins it on Sam instead, who promptly gets eliminated.
• Freudian Excuse: Staci wants to impress people, so she lies about her family in order to do so. Dawn figures this out, and tells her that she doesn't need to lie.
• Genre Savvy: Topher knows a lot about the show's twists regarding challenges, how relationship drama on the show usually goes, and what is good for ratings.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Topher, surprisingly, has good relationship advice for Rodney.
  • Staci demonstrates some in the first episode of Pahkitew Island too. Dawn encouraged her not to make up lies about her family history to impress her teammates and revealed that she lies because she never wins anything other than a participant ribbon. In the confessional, Staci admits that Dawn's right, that growing up, people told amazing stories about their families, and she thought making up stories would make her popular.
• I Lied: Scarlett throws her spray can at Sammy in order to win the race, leaving Sammy hanging on the totem. Scarlett promised to help her, but after she reveals her plans for the game, she leaves her alone, not caring for her life.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Due to starting on Revenge of the Island, the events of Island, Action and World Tour happened the exact same way.
  • Despite the change in casts, the runner-up of Revenge of the Island, in this case, Scarlett, is still the second person eliminated in All-Stars.
  • Dakota still ends up interning for Chris after she's eliminated though here, after she pranks him and Chef multiple times for getting Sam unjustly disqualified, he returns her to Team Maskwak to get her out of his hair.
• Irony: In her elimination, Sierra gets flushed to Egypt, where she had her first challenge as a contestant. The author revealed that it was intended this way, as it was supposed to be symbolic. Similarly, Alejandro is flushed to Hawaii, where he was defeated in World Tour.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Amy gets voted off first from her team for being mean to Sammy, forced to become Chris' intern, and is mutated by the radioactive waste in the mines as a result of abusing Sammy for most of their lives.
  • Chef and Chris also get this in "This is the Pits." Dakota pranks them as payback for disqualifying Sam, and it's well-received as they don't receive enough punishment for their misdeeds.
• Last-Minute Hookup: Rodney and Ella in the finale of Revenge of the Island.
• The Leader: Noah for the non-competing contestants in All-Stars. He tasks the other non-contestants into rescuing the people who got eliminated.
• The Load: Anne Maria doesn't do well in Pahkitew Island due to her lifestyle being pitted against an island where you need survival the most. When eliminated, she even said that Pahkitew Island isn't suited for her.
• Loners Are Freaks: Shawn and Jasmine feel this way; Shawn because of his zombie gimmick, and Jasmine because of her Australian experience toughening her up to the point that she killed a snake in a playground in order to protect the students, making the students scared of her and her height.
• Missing Mom: Word of God says that Rodney's mother died while giving birth to his youngest brother, so she was never around to give him advice on falling in love with girls.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In a confessional, Gwen talks about having a headless doll when she was little, which scared all the other kids at the daycare, referencing her Total DramaRama counterpart who has much the same.
  • Scarlett admits in a confessional that without her glasses, she would be unable to differentiate a person from a robot duplicate. In the canon version of Pahkitew Island, the head of a robot Chris was used to deceive her.
  • The giant robot Scarlett creates to battle Sammy in the Revenge of the Island finale is identical to the one she and Max build in the Pahkitew Island intro.
• Nerdy Bully: Scarlett, as she's a cold-hearted and ruthlessly calculating jerk to everyone.
• Odd Friendship: Narcissistic wannabe TV host Topher and shy Gentle Giant farmboy Rodney develop one as Topher gives relationship advice to Rodney.
• Once a Season: Chris having something stolen from him. In order, Topher steals his phone, Duncan steals his wallet, and Scott steals both. Coincidentally, these events happen in the sixth episode.
• Only Friend: Amy and Max seem like this to Scarlett, as they are the only ones to support her in the Revenge of the Island finale and pick her up when she got eliminated in All-Stars.
• Only Sane Man: Beardo shows signs of this once he starts talking, demonstrating himself to be one of the more sensible and down-to-earth contestants on the show and trying to stay out of the drama as much as possible.
• Pushed at the Monster: In Revenge of the Island, Topher does this to Shawn in the final four challenge, which is repeated by Topher in All-Stars, this time to Alejandro. In both cases, this backfires, with Topher getting caught anyway, and sent home in the same episode.
• Related in the Adaptation: Blaineley is Amy and Sammy's aunt in this story, though they call her by her real name, Mildred.
• Revenge: Dakota's pranks on Chris after he wrongfully eliminates Sam certainly qualify.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Even though Alejandro told him not to, Topher made Sugar reveal the idol at the elimination ceremony. Alejandro figures it out and gets him eliminated as retribution.
• Rule of Three: Occurs twice with Lightning. He directly faces Jo three times in the competition, and loses all three before he gets eliminated. He also is in the bottom two three times, surviving twice before finally being eliminated.
  • Also occurs with Chris, where Topher steals his phone, Duncan steals his wallet, and Scott steals both.
• Role Swap AU: The fic swaps the cast of Pahkitew Island with the cast of Revenge of the Island.
• Sadistic Choice: In "Sundae Muddy Sundae", Sugar does this to the two alliances of Shawn & Jasmine and Gwen & Cody when she wins the challenge and immunity. She forces both alliances to vote for each other, leaving her with the ultimate authority who gets the boot.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Sugar is an example of this trope as she quits because she found a diamond that was just priceless. The author brought her back in All-Stars so she could be "redeemed" (if promoting her to Big Bad counts as such).
• Ship Tease: Dave and Sky, Shawn and Jasmine, Ella and Rodney, Mike and Zoey, Sam and Dakota, and Brick and Jo are all teased. Scott also suggests Dawn has feelings for B at one point.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the All-Stars bonus clips, Beardo is rescued by Beth and Jasmine by Harold, which Word of God confirms is a reference to the Total Shuffled Island Series, where Beardo is close friends with Beth and Harold has a romantic plot with Jasmine. In fact, the general idea of the bonus clips being about the contestants being rescued by the non-participants was inspired by that fanfic series' bonus clips for its version of All-Stars. There's also the scene where Sammy is flustered from seeing DJ in "Eat, Puke and Be Wary", which is a reference to them being a couple in Shuffled.
  • Anne Maria's elimination is similar to the Shuffled series, since she doesn't do well in that series' version of Pahkitew. Similarly, Mike revealing his disorder to his team much earlier than he did in canon is scripted similarly to when he did the same in Shuffled Pahkitew. Coincidentally, both were done in the same episode for both fics.
  • During a confessional in the first episode of Pahkitew Island, Staci mentions one of her classmates being related to Mr. Ridgemount from Stōked.
  • The scene where Sam uses Montana to retrieve the coin in Mo Monkey Mo Problems is a shout out to Pokémon, referencing the interface and overall playstyle of the games.
• The Sixth Ranger: Max is this for the Toxic Rats after being switched over. He is swiftly eliminated shortly afterwards when he costs them the challenge.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Sugar forms this kind of rivalry with Fang over his missing tooth. Unlike with Scott in canon, Sugar has the upper hand in the feud.
• Smarter Than You Look: This is what allows Sugar to become the Big Bad in All-Stars. None of the other contestants treat her as a threat until it's too late due to her history on Revenge of the Island and her crude nature leading others to underestimate her capacity for sabotage and manipulation. Gwen even lampshades this when she learns it was Sugar who stole her diary and framed Heather for it.
• Smug Snake: Topher fancies himself as being a master schemer and enters alliances with Scarlett and Alejandro with plans to backstab them once they reach the end of the competition. His plans backfire both times and he ends up being outsmarted by them.
• Spanner in the Works: Scott's plan to sabotage Dawn is preempted, not by any deliberate actions on her end, but rather, her lack of pockets preventing him from planting incriminating evidence.
• The Stations of the Canon:
  • In Revenge of the Island, the good cabin still gets blown up, Lindsay still gets kidnapped by Sasquatchanakwa, Heather still steals the zeppelin and the money, Topher still snags Chris' phone in the sixth episode (though he doesn't get eliminated for it this time), someone still gets eliminated because of a fake diamond (Sugar in this case), and someone is still mutated by the waste in the mine (Amy here, though she's not as badly mutated as Dakota was in canon).
  • In All-Stars, Sierra's phone still gets destroyed (this time by Sugar as an act of sabotage to break her), Gwen still breaks up with Duncan (though they become Amicable Exes), Heather and Alejandro still become an Official Couple, and the island still sinks after the final challenge.
  • Although the Pahkitew Island cast is now on Wawanakwa instead, some of their actions similar to what occurred in canon. For instance, Max still attempts to burn ants with a magnifying glass, only to set his bed on fire. This time around though, the ants are mutants placed there by Scarlett, so they fight back.
• Sweet Tooth: Cody, like in canon. "Sundae Muddy Sundae" features a Running Gag of him gorging on chocolate ice cream during his confessionals and talking about how much he loves the challenge's theme.
• Too Dumb to Live: Max throws a stone at a mutant squirrel just For the Evulz. The result: the squirrel starts shooting lasers at Max's team and everyone tries to avoid it. Somehow it ends up helping his team with the challenge.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Cody demands that Ezekiel get medical treatment since it was Chris and the producers' fault that he turned feral.
• Two Girls and a Guy: Jasmine, Sammy, and Shawn form this dynamic once the merge arrives in Revenge of the Island and then during All-Stars.
  • Dawn, Dakota and Mike end up fitting under this when Dakota is put back in the game and the latter is switched to Waneyihtam Maskwak in Pahkitew Island.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Leonard gets eliminated in the first episode of Revenge of the Island and Staci in the first episode of Pahkitew Island.
• What If?: The premise of the story is based on the simple question of how the show might have been different if the third and second generation contestants' debut seasons were switched.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Shawn gives one to Jasmine due to her leaving him to Fang because of her claustrophobia. He forgives her later on.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When eliminated in All-Stars, Beardo says that he doesn't have a role on the show and isn't important. The Hamsters tell him he's isn't like that and is very special for being himself.