YMMV / Survival Of The Fittest Mini

• Base-Breaking Character: Anastasia Arcadia in TV2, who was already divisive with her over-the-top quirky hedonist persona, and either won readers over or lost them completely when she went off the deep end.
• Cargo Ship: As an officially canonical example from Virtua, no less: Sycanus Appletin and her teddy bear are... rather close. At one point she is shown making out with it.
• Fan Nickname: Many. Examples include 'Bcarv' for Bryant Carver and Captain America for Tyler Blake.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Program setting was created in 2010: presidentially-endorsed nationalism and fascism in the US was more fantastical a premise at that time.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Battle Royale AU, Haruka Tanizawa was played as a lesbian with a crush on Yuka Nakagawa. The bonus chapter of the original story, Battle Royale: Angel's Border, that came out four years after the AU would reveal that Haruka is indeed a lesbian, but with a crush on Yukie Utsumi, another member of the lighthouse group.
• Ho Yay: Program Prologue piles this on with Mina Mashall and Charlie Cade. At its most prominent when Mina wonders about getting with Charlie and then promptly ditches her in her sleep. Appeared to be a victim of Ship Sinking when Charlie seemingly died, but then came back online with force when she turned out to survive after all.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Second Chances, again, as reusing old characters who were mostly handled by the same writers, combined with the same basic plotline as SOTF Main, limited its novelty value for a lot of readers. It wasn't helped by most of the characters coming from V4, the version that took place just before Second Chances, which meant that most of the characters had just been seen in action a few months ago.
  • Second Chances 2, on the other hand, has subverted this trope magnificently, with a more diverse cast and vastly improved activity. The fact that most of the returning characters are covering ground that was unexplored by their previous incarnations combined with the very high bar for quality has made it one of the most praised minis in recent years.
• Memetic Badass: From SOTF-TV you have Jared Fuckin' Clayton, a previous winner who was enlisted as a mentor for one of the teams. He serves as this in-universe as well.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Put Blaine back in the barrel", coined after Blaine Eno got stuffed in a barrel early in SC2, only to escape and go on to do very bad things.
  • "YOU SAYIN' JAY LIKES DUDES?!" tends to get shouted out whenever there's any hint that Jay Harland may not be straight.
  • When PV3's prologue hit, there was a way to submit NPCs that would die within ten posts. Multiple NPCs were named "Scott", to the point where staff actually had to send out a PSA noting that while it was funny, there was now a ban on the name due to 10% of the version's males being named such.
  • PV3 proper introduced an opaque jar of hornets labeled "BEES" as an assigned weapon. Naturally, many handlers found the concept hilariously amazing, to the point where any discussion of the character who received it (Phoebe Quincey) will eventually devolve into puns or pre-existing memes about bees. The meme was revived in TV3 due to Gregory Miller having a passionate interest in beekeeping, to the point of wearing a 'save the bees' t-shirt and talking about bees in his opening post.
  • stinky bnuny ^Explanation Bunny Barlowe undergoes Adaptational Villainy in SC2, to the point of being one of the major villains of the version. Any discussion of her or her TV2 counterpart will refer to her as such (or variants) for this reason.
  • SC3 deconfirmed. ^Explanation After SC2 turned out to be a surprise hit, many handlers pre-emptively started planning for SC3. Reminding handlers that SC3 hasn't been confirmed or joking about it being canceled has in itself become a meme.
    • SC3 undeconfirmed! ^Explanation Naturally, this was the label by which SC3 actually going ahead was announced.
  • Anthony is the hero of TV3. ^Explanation Over the course of TV3, the formerly well-intentioned Anthony Golden deteriorates into a Tautological Templar bad enough to rival Seryu, fully convinced he is the hero even as he kills eight of his former classmates.
    • [X] is a player. ^Explanation Anthony tends to rationalize his Ax-Crazy behaviour by telling himself his victims were "playing" the Deadly Game, and thus deserved it.
  • What's the over-under on [insert event here]? ^Explanation Stokely Keeper misused the gambling term 'over-under', but the error was explained as an in character mistake and left unchanged. Asking the over-under became a common joke to poke fun at the situation.
• Moral Event Horizon: Blaine Eno's horrific torture of Michael Crowe.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: In TV2, the couple Vahka Basayev and Regina Aston is referred to OOC as Vagina.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Second Chances and Virtua both seem to have gotten some of this treatment as overall versions; Second Chances 2 has been much more active and well-received than SC1, and Virtua's epilogue provided closure and some striking Fridge Horror regarding the setting, which elevated it somewhat.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The original Second Chances was plagued with severe activity issues and had a fairly poor reception, throwing the idea of a sequel into question. When Second Chances 2 came around, it was an instant success, with an incredibly active cast and a lot of action and interesting character concepts right out of the gate. Within one in-game day, SC2 had almost as many total posts as the entirety of SC1!
• Take That, Scrappy!: According to site staff, most of them were not fond of Leonardo Dahnke, the TV1 announcer. A large part of the reason why is because he was created by a single person with no input from the rest of staff (In fact, it was originally supposed to be Patrick Buckley, a character who appeared in the prologue). It wasn't helped by the fact that his characterization was essentially a retread of main site's Big Bad Danya (who was himself an Expy of Kamon), or that he had a tendency to get details wrong. In the lead-up to TV2, these actually became plot points; there was heavy in-universe speculation that Dahnke was going to get fired, precisely because of his incompetence and egotism. Sure enough, he was, and was replaced by Rhiannon "Ritzy Daggers" Durrett, who had a much more likable personality.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Second Chances.
  • Evo can easily invoke this. The characters have no friends, some people get permanently and horribly mutilated before the game even starts and even if they win, there's a chance if their change was too great, they'd never let them go home and they'd be an experiment forever.
  • The Program is such a dark, depressing setting that some handlers find it too unpleasant to be enjoyable, and have a hard time getting enthusiastic for it as a result.
  • SOTF-TV is an inversion, in that the Lighter and Softer comedic elements caused some handlers to feel less concern for the characters.

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