Woobie / Survivor

Some contestants can be this at times, especially when they're in the minority or the victims of mean-spirited players. Sometimes, people actually are pretty woobie-ish, especially people who are having mental breakdowns or are being physically evacuated. A lot of people wanted to just reach through the screen and hug some of the players who were evacuated.

• Borneo, when Jenna was the only person that didn't get a video from her family.
• Debb Eaton from Australia was definitely a fish out of water, but where she most certainly qualifies is post-show. After being voted out first, she was constantly mocked by inmates at the prison where she worked at, not only that but the media tore her apart after she got home. By the time Australia's reunion show rolled around she was still upset about it.
• Rupert from Pearl Islands, especially if you listen to his backstory. He was bullied by literally every jock he came across and even during the game several of his tribemates make fun of his weight, called him insulting names, etc. He's been such a victim of bullying that he's a mentor to troubled teens, helping them get through a difficult time of a young man's life. So many people connected with Rupert that is it any wonder why the man got America's Favourite for Pearl Islands?
• Janu in Palau. The best part of her experience on the show? When she was on Exile Island - away from the rest of her tribe. And in the challenge before, everyone (sans Stephanie) was laughing at her and teasing her, and it was not meant in jest. Who knows what was going on that wasn't shown?
• Dreamz in Fiji. His "Car deal" was one of he signature scenes of Fiji, to the point where it basically overshadowed everything else in the season. After the show, people started to learn just what Dreamz had been going through and had still been through (ie, homelessness) and that he had quite the Sadistic Choice.
• Dan Kay of Gabon is very candid about his struggles with mental health, saying he came onto the show to "find himself." He never manages to fit into his tribe, is ostracized by Corinne, Marcus, and others for being anxious and sensitive, and gets voted out right before the merge. Watching him is especially poignant and Harsher in Hindsight after his untimely passing on December 31, 2016.
• Sierra from Tocantins starts off on a bad foot with the rest of her tribe and never gets in their good graces. She is recovering from strep throat on the first day of the game, which leads to her being seen as weak. She is "voted out of the adventure", which turns out to be a 4-hour hike to camp, with her being airlifted by helicopter instead. However, this deprives her of vital bonding time with the rest of her tribe. She forgoes looking for the immunity idol in order to set up the camp before the rest of the tribe arrives, and she actually finishes the tribe's lean-to before they arrive. The rest of the tribe still sees her as an outcast, and she's not included in any alliances formed during the hike. This contributes to (but does not entirely excuse) her perceived whininess, which further alienates the castaways. Despite generally helping around camp and being decent at challenges, she is constantly on the list of removal candidates in every episode. Due to there always being bigger fish to fry, she survives to the merge. Brendan, her only ally, is blindsided by the rest of the "exile alliance" at the merge, leaving Sierra in the game with no friends. She begs various tribe members for a reprieve, but is bullied and gaslit by Coach, Debbie, and Tyson, who call her a traitor and a liar for voting for Coach (despite Coach himself organizing the blindside of Brendan) and taunt her. She finally catches a break after the Jalapao Three decide to blindside Tyson (a major physical threat) instead. The next morning, Debbie and Coach attempt to bring her back into their alliance, but she tells them that they burned that bridge. Coach and Debbie proceed to tell the Jalapao Three that Sierra begged to be let into their alliance and they were the ones to say no. To clear her name, Sierra confronts Coach publicly, and while the resulting blow-up convinces Jalapao that she's probably telling the truth, Stephen and J.T. still vote to remove her for being hard to live with and an unwanted chaotic element.
• One World:
  • Christina. The entire tribe yells at her in the first three days. Then when the tribes are switched around, everyone else is mean to her. Tarzan even says to her face that he wouldn't be friends with her.
  • Kat. At first she appears to be a chipper Genki Girl and is well-liked by her tribe. But during her boot episode, she reveals that she's about to go under an expensive operation which could kill her. At 22 no less! Fortunately, she survived, as was revealed by her participation in Blood vs. Water with Hayden.
  • Kourtney as well. She broke her arm in three different places after landing on it the wrong way (The challenge was never used again for this very reason) but her post show checkup revealed she had a grapefruit-sized tumour inside her that slipped past the pre-show checkup.
• Russell Swan from Samoa and Philippines. In his first season, he was the hardworking leader whose charismatic leadership led his tribe, Galu, to dominate the Foa Foas. However, he is taken out by his own work ethic and tragically evacuated, even begging Jeff to stay despite being close to death. He then gets to return in Philippines, however he gets another dose of bad luck, as his new tribe, Matsing, is the first tribe in Survivor history to never win a single challenge. After he loses the episode 4 immunity challenge, he is visibly upset with his tribe's performance, and he is voted out that night. After the show, he went into a depression. It's hard not to feel bad for this guy.
• Francesca Hogi, the only person in the history of Survivor to be voted out first twice, in Redemption Island and Caramoan. What makes matters worse is that both times it was at the hands of Phillip, her rival from both seasons.
• Allie in Caramoan. She was voted out over resident Jerkass Shamar. It gets even worse when you learn that she wanted to be on the show since she was 11 years old. On top of that, for the first time ever, the people from the pre-jury stage weren't allowed on the reunion stage, and Allie only found this out ''after'' spending hundreds on a dress and paying for her entire family to be there with her.
• Erik. His body couldn't take the game anymore and he was tragically medically evacuated at the exact same place he finished in the last time. If you don't think he's an idiot for giving away immunity in Micronesia, he's this for that as well. And just like Brenda, he was a Living Prop for most of the season.
• Dawn from Caramoan got lots of hate for playing a cutthroat game but she is really nice in person in real life. Dawn had to delete her Twitter account as a result of fan sending hate her way.
• Todd Herzog becomes this on an episode of Dr. Phil when it's revealed after he won Survivor, he ended up with a drinking problem so severe it hurts for him to stand, has constant seizures which put him in the ER, and constantly vomits. He was 22 when he started drinking and is only 28 and very close to death. Watching him shake violently and stuttering when he struggles to speak is heart wrenching.
• Purple Kelly - but only when people learned what happened behind the scenes. It turns out, her bikini and sundress wasn't Reality Show Genre Blindness but Executive Meddling. She didn't apply specifically for survivor, but was recruited. Nicaragua turned out to be one of the "harsher" seasons in terms of the environment, having little body fat meant she started suffering from muscle degeneration and because it was relatively cold at night, she had it worse.
• Tina Wesson and Katie Collins from Blood Vs Water. To start, this mother/daughter pair was constantly put against each other throughout the season culminating in Tina beating Katie in the semifinal Redemption Island duel. If that wasn't bad enough, Tina's son and Katie's brother died after filming.
• Aras in Blood vs Water for being bullied when he was younger by Vytas and wanting to play with/against his brother, only to get voted out three days after merging.
• Candice, her husband John, and Rubert's wife Laura in Blood vs. Water. Thanks to a twist that people generally agree was horrible (Voting people out based solely upon first impressions) and pre-game alliances (Candice was an alternate), they essentially never had a chance as they were always on the outs. Only John truly had a chance to integrate himself, but Candice's early elimination still put a target on his back.
• Woo from Cagayan. A very compassionate and upbeat guy, he was poor if his backstory revealed in the finale is any indication. He's considered "dumb" by Kass when he's actually quite intelligent and deep. And then we have the big reveal where it turns out his mother is completely paralyzed and all he wants to do with the money is help her and start a family with his girlfriend back at home. While he arguably held the Idiot Ball in the finale by taking Tony over Kass (who was almost unanimously despised by the jury), he did it because of Honor, the principle he's followed in his life from day one. There are some people who even say he didn't even deserve to get second place and should have been voted out and replaced by someone like Kass or Spencer. Like Spencer, he also got to come back for Cambodia.
• Worlds Apart:
  • The first evictee, So Kim. Originally she was cast for San Juan del Sur with her sister Do. However Do failed a pre-game medical checkup, causing her to be cast for Worlds Apart... where she was voted out first.
  • Shirin is an extremely positive, peppy, and upbeat person who almost everyone else in the game finds annoying for mostly unexplained reasons, and gets violently berated by many contestants over the course of the season. This includes Dan saying someone should slap her, and Will telling her to her face that nobody has ever loved her in her entire life and that she has no soul. It gets worse when she starts to cry at episode 10's Tribal after revealing that she was a victim of Domestic Abuse as a child.
• A very meta example, Shane Powers. He was intended to return first for Micronesia, but couldn't. He had another chance for the Villains tribe in Heroes vs. Villains, but was replaced with Russell. He was supposedly asked for the first Blood vs. Water, but his family member wasn't able to attend. He was listed as someone who could have a shot at a second chance, but was not one of the ones voted in. Given that a lot of seasons since Fans vs. Favourites have had returning players, as well as people who have had third and fourth chances in between the time it took for him to just get two, it's hard to not feel sorry for the guy for being constantly screwed over.
• Kimmi from Australian Outback and Cambodia becomes one, when you find out that after her divorce she was financially struggling to provide for her children. While it doesn't seem to be the case now, it makes her second try at a million dollars very sympathetic.
• Alecia from Kaoh Rong. During her short stay, she was treated like crap, especially by Scot and Jason, was constantly on the bottom, but nonetheless managed to stay determined and wouldn't give up. It's hard not to root for her.
• Thanks to Character Perception Evolution (as well as some Heel Realization) many of the "Quitters" were portrayed in a more sympathetic light, citing mental or physical health problems. Some examples include:
  • Dana Lambert, who is considered to have "quit", but did so citing medical reasons. What didn't help was that Philippines turned out to have been one of the most brutal seasons in terms of survival thanks to it being unseasonably rainy.
  • Bi Nguyen. Her knee injury was indeed considered to be fairly minor, but as an MMA fighter, Bi knew that continuing would have actually put her at greater risk and thus risked her career, so she was given a sympathetic portrayal.
• Adam Klein from Millennials Vs. Gen-X. All Adam wants to do was live his dream and bring some joy to his dying mother by playing on Survivor, their favorite show. But things rarely seem to go right for him, as his character is questioned because of Taylor's vindictive smear campaign, and circumstances put him on the bottom or in danger almost constantly. And even if he does make it to the end and win, he can never fulfill his dream of presenting the million dollar check to his mother, because she passed away two days after filming. And guess what? He won.
• Zeke after Episode Seven of Game Changers when Jeff Varner outs him as transgender to millions of people and framing it as him 'victimizing the tribe by being deceptive'.
• Tai in Game Changers, although it is completely self-inflicted. His tactless game moves and poor social skills slowly cause every single one of his friends and allies to turn against him, with Brad ultimately using intimidation and bullying tactics to force Tai into compliance. It is clear during the finale that Tai is completely miserable. Didn't stop him from trying as hard as he could to make it to the end, though.
• Cirie Fields has been noticeably been screwed by twists in all four of her seasons despite playing good games in almost all of them. In Panama, she gets taken out by Terry's immunity idol, which was a Game-Breaker due to not having been balanced yet. In Micronesia she makes it to the end again, only for all the medical evacuations that season to prompt an extra tribal council, which she gets taken out in. In Heroes vs Villains she's in the majority again, but goes out early thanks to an idol. In Game Changers she's inexplicably taken out for the sole reason that everyone else has immunity.
• Desi from Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers. She wants to break away from Joe and play for herself because she sees him as a heel. She wins immunity all of one time and becomes an instant target of Chrissy's crosshairs because she's a Healer. Desi goes home next due to an unfortunate tiebreaker and has a tearful exit from the game.
• Ben. The poor man is an ex-Marine who has seen actual combat and suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder cannot hang around a campfire when the sticks start to snap and pop in the flames, because it makes him think of explosions going off. He tells us in confessionals that he regrets a lot of things he did or couldn't do in the Marines. Then Joe finds the stones to mouth off to him and berate his loyalty to the Marine code, which absolutely infuriates Ben and gets them into a bitter rivalry. Worse, his decision to make a drastic move under the guidance of Devon backfires when Chrissy becomes extremely territorial and rejects him for causing JP to be booted out despite using that as a springboard to eliminate Joe- which was all Devon's idea. Ben gets to see his wife on the family reunion challenge... and Chrissy wins. Chrissy snubs the hell out of him and prevents him from being with his wife. That is not getting into the backlash he has received for the final four twist which was not his own idea.
  • Chrissy herself - sure she may have snubbed Ben and was rather aggressive with her social game, but several felt that she actually had the game well into the bag were it not for the final four twist. A twist that she and nobody else had any way to anticipate or prepare for.
• Michael from Ghost Island. The poor guy has to go through all but two tribal councils, and watch his original Malolo tribe members get voted out by the stronger Naviti members who care more about the original tribal lines than winning challenges.
• Laurel can come across as a Woobie. While she did somewhat bring it upon herself by not making any moves against Dom or Wendell, it's still rather sad to see her devastated reaction when she realized no one voted for her, and that she would ultimately have to cast the deciding vote between her two closest friends and allies. Even if you were annoyed at her, you have to feel somewhat for her as she cries on her way to the voting booth.
• A lot of members of the David tribe in David vs. Goliath ended up having a Dark and Troubled Past. Jessica, who's just a 19-year-old girl, has to deal with being a mature person in her family thanks to her mother being in a toxic relationship. Bi was a victim of domestic violence and also was in a toxic relationship with a man. In addition, Nick ended up losing his mother to drugs in which after he brought it up, he cries for the first time since her death.
• Island of the Idols:
  • Janet was the Team Mom and the younger women came to her to seek refuge for Dan's shitty behaviour. She lost a comfortable position because she wanted to do what was right and ended up being punished for her actions.
  • Karishma has been to almost every single tribal council in danger of elimination, every single time due to being The Load, has little to no friends, as the majority of the remaining players (besides Janet and Elaine) are Gamebots who only care about advancing themselves. She especially became this when she cut her finger so deep it touched bone giving her no feeling left in her finger post game, and not one person came to check on her showing just how callous the Lairo tribe was. It got worse come the merge and Missy used her as a soldier who she took every single opportunity to belittle and talk down to. Elaine, the only other remaining sympathetic player (Elaine) decided to side with Karishma over Missy, and rather than bully and belittle her, she showed human decency and talked to her about all her problems and actually cared. It also doesn't help that Karishma was in an Arranged Marriage and at first likened her relationship to her husband as "roommates" until she lost her allies besides Elaine, then she broke down realizing she just wants someone to treat her decently, which her husband did.
  • Some fans also feel sorry for Dan's 13-year-old son, who visited during the loved ones episode; out of sympathy that Dan's reprehensible behavior and the public backlash to it is likely to retroactively ruin that visit for him and negatively impact his life in general.
  • The unnamed person (who is implied to be a member of production) that Dan got handsy on (leading to Dan's ejection from the game). Whoever they are, you kinda have to feel bad for them.
  • Kellee. The viewers got a clear view of how badly Dan's touching was effecting her, to the point where the producers had to step in to do something. And to make matters worse for her is that she is sent home, with two idols, because she thought everyone would do the right thing and vote Dan out.
• Winners at War
  • Michele. She was already considered to be an undeserving winner (the editing strongly favoured Aubry, and allegedly several jurors said if they knew what was happening behind the scenes, would have voted for Aubry over her) and was basically the last of her kind. Then at the final tribal council, she essentially was just seen as a survivor who only got lucky because of Natalie - instead interpreting Natalie's re-entry not as her taking an opportunity but as just being lucky. Michele is still one of the few players who have played twice and were never voted out, and one of the only winners to have been so, an honour shared only by Sandra prior to Game Changers. What's even worse is that plenty of people actually did want to vote for her because they thought she deserved second place over Natalie, but were worried that doing so would split the vote with Tony and hand Natalie the win, leading them to vote for Tony in order to solidify his victory.
  • Natalie, but only when you learn what happened after the show. Many of the jurors were voting against her not because she didn't take the chance Chris Underwood did (and give immunity to Michele or pit Michele against Tony) but on principle of being the returning player from Edge of Extinction. Which they would have done with literally anybody else. Thus this makes her and Michele arguably a stronger case for "Loss via Bitter Jury" than other people like Russell Hantz or Chase Rice.
  • Sophie. She's absent from the penultimate tribal council because of illness. Then at the final tribal council, she's obviously still very sick and combined with the rain, it's obvious she's just plain miserable.
  • Amber. Much like Michele, she was considered an undeserving winner by most fans for beating Boston Rob in All Stars... and she ''fully'' believes this. She truly believes she never should have won over her husband and should not be in Winners at War, and breaks down in tears over it. Even Boston Rob starts to cry when she's admitting this, because he's devastated by how his wife feels and considers her a Survivor Champion. It's just really sad to see the first returnee winner, who got everything she could ever want from Survivor - money, love, a family - be so down on herself and her win just because of stupid fan reception.
  • Adam plays this role again. While he tried to play both sides, so while his unpopularity is kind of his fault, he tried so hard to get back in the good graces of his tribe. Even when things look up for him after booting Boston Rob, he legitimately doesn't fit in with ''any'' of the tribes he joins especially Yara (Ben, Sarah and Sophie) which were actually considering booting him over Rob according to postgame interviews. There's also the fact that he's considered yet another "undeserving" winner, due to several people thinking David or Ken should have won, and people claim he only won because his mom died of cancer. He's also an extreme Momma's Boy as there are deleted scenes where he prays for his mom and cries to himself, and constantly reminds himself he doesn't deserve to be in the game, despite the fact he won, trying his best to fit in.
• Xander from 41. It's revealed he was fat as a child and suffered major insecurity issues. He suffered a huge case of No-Respect Guy in the final tribal council, especially after he blew his final jury questioning despite his genuinely good gameplay. He not only got no votes but even placed below Deshawn. It only got worse after the show where fans kept rubbing his loss in his face giving him derisive comparisons to Colby and Woo despite it being a false equivalency and Xander's decision to bring Erika to the finale actually having passable logic behind it.
• Erika from 41 had this status for most of the game, due to her one attempt to talk strategy with Deshawn backfiring on her and causing Deshawn to start a rumor that she’s “sneaky”, leading to most of her team attempting to throw the next challenge as an excuse to get her out, which would have happened if not for Naseer being out of the loop and singlehandedly winning it for them. Despite doing nothing wrong, the rumor that she’s “sneaky” still causes her to be one of the most unpopular players by the time of the tribes disbanding, where she is unlucky enough to draw a rock that makes her sit out the challenge, and then be at the mercy of her own former tribemates and their irrational hatred of her, where they take the opportunity to exile her to a separate island where she has to fend for herself for two days and nights, and everyone makes her the number one target for the next vote out while she’s gone. She finally gets a Throw the Dog a Bone moment when Jeff allows her to reverse the challenge outcome and save herself, and from here she does okay... until Deshawn drops a “truth bomb” at a Tribal Council (which was apparently not fully shown on the episode itself) which was genuinely hurtful enough that Erika couldn’t talk to Deshawn for months afterward. After putting up with so much crap from everyone, she actually manages to earn her happy ending and win the game. Although even then, the editors chose to keep her Out of Focus so much that many fans claimed she didn’t deserve to win despite how well she played, solely based on how little screen time she was given by the showrunners.
• Chanelle from 42 goes on a hike and risks her vote, which fails, preventing her from being able to save her ally Jenny, and when her tribe finds out that she lied during this situation, she becomes the pariah of her tribe. Once the tribes are disbanded, all of her former tribemates go out of their way to poison the well for her with the entire cast, making her Hated by All and seeming to have no friends at all, which she is clearly aware of and seems depressed about. Even the show’s editors seem to hate her at this point as they treat her like a Butt-Monkey, dedicating a clip to her slipping and falling on her butt to injure herself which doesn’t come up again or impact the story at all, show another clip of her spilling rice before showing another player on a completely different island successfully getting every grain of rice in his bowl and talking about how important it is to not waste food, and showing two separate occasions of her attempting to talk to people but everyone making excuses to leave immediately. She seems so pitiful at this point in the game that it’s easy to feel sorry for her.
• Karla from 43. She has one of the rougher upbringings among the contestants of the season, having been impoverished and forced to steal to survive. She comes in and plays a pretty good game, only to be plagued with injuries. Despite that, she never stops trying but still goes home in the final 5. It only gets worse for her post-game when voting for Gabler to win got her maliciously attacked more so than any other juror by viewers who thought she was obligated to vote for Cassidy.
• Jake from 45. Despite starting the game out well in a fairly good position on his starting tribe, Jake's troubles begin early as he faints twice in the early game, his body already getting worn down by the elements. Then the merge hits, and he tries and fails to save his ally Kaleb when the entire tribe turns on him. After that, Jake spends the rest of the game being used as a decoy, tool, extra vote, and occasionally punching bag of the other players as his starting tribe gets whittled down around him. Through all this, Jake constantly tries to make moves to shake up the game, only for his "allies" to constantly screw them up. This reaches the point that Jake breaks down crying in despair before the firemaking challenge, needing at least one thing to go right for him.
• Bhanu from 46 is a genuinely nice guy and is a rare case in modern times where someone came onto the show not looking to win, but simply to enjoy the experience. However, Bhanu's lack of understanding of how cutthroat the game can be leads to him repeatedly spilling everything he knows about his tribe, costing him any allies that could have helped him. Even the game itself seems to delight in screwing him over, as he's on the losing tribe (by the time he goes home, they've only won one challenge and it was a reward), he loses his vote, preventing him from even trying to save himself with his Shot in the Dark and ultimately gets voted out vocally as there's not even any need for a standard vote when he's so obviously screwed.