YMMV / Survivor: Fan Characters

• Abandon Shipping: "Vitsy" took a drastic hit when Bitsy used Violet to split the vote and sent him out the door.
  • Hogan/Wendy from Season 1 as well, due to their rivalry in All-Stars.
  • Starr/Prescilla took a new and unfortunate meaning after Prescilla is revealed to be a massive Bitch in Sheep's Clothing (something Starr is unaware of).
  • Jim/Alleio, similar to the example above.
  • Lizmond, when Desmond throws a pitch to Jojo to eliminate Liz while belittling the latter, and Liz returns the favor by voting him out.
• Archive Binge: Twenty-one completed seasons and over 2000 comics in total, with more on the way. Even reading just one season is going to require you to set aside a good chunk of time.
• Ass Pull: Micah winning the final immunity of Season 19 has occasionally been accused of being this. He mentions suddenly that his skill as a thief has given him great upper-body strength… despite this never coming up before at any point and his remarkably average build not conveying any noticeable physical strength. Many saw it as an arbitrary excuse to justify him and Shiro being able to squeak into the Final Tribal Council at all.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Started somewhere around seasons 4-6 and lasted until Midway Island.
• Author Tract: Amelia's entire character in Season 14 is frequently accused of being a incredibly heavy-handed diatribe against 'SJW's' that detracted from the actual plot of the season.
  • There's also the frequent potshots at Survivor: Redemption Island and its two returnees, though according to the initial draft for Season 12 that never got made, it could have been even worse. Luckily, this has slowed down in recent years, and SWSU-Master has been able to crack jokes about it in recent times.
• Broken Base: The rift was first created in Fans vs Canons and was widened further during Cursed Islands and All-Stars. Mainly divided along the lines of supporting either positive or negative characters. Mainly condoned on the author's part as he appreciates differing opinions.
  • Ker fans versus Wrecker fans. There have been debates, debates, and more debates about the two. The fact that they were the two finalists the public was voting for to win Season 7 didn't help matters.
  • There's also the argument over who should have won Season 12 between Lola, Shelby and Spongebob. Lola is praised for having a strong social game, but didn't have many strategic moves under her belt. Spongebob is under the same boat as Lola, but was praised for managing to survive to Day 39 despite being a non-factor. And Shelby was a smug slacker, but was surprisingly articulate in her FTC arguments, and was unfortunate to be in the finals against two more popular opponents.
  • The endgame of Season 15 has caused a sharp divide amongst fans, particularly over whether they support Taro and Ky or not, with comment section after comment section turning into a warzone. This became especially bad when Ky got voted out.
  • Season 17 is either considered a strong season with tons of unexpected twists and turns, or a season that has its plot suffer greatly from those very same twists and turns.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Villainous winners such as Melanie and Marius; supporters say that they were great players who just happened to have a darker shade of morality and deserve recognition for their games despite their less than desirable ethics, while naysayers have thrown Villain Sue accusations towards the former and criticized the morals of the latter.
  • Juiced Up and Claus are easily the most divisive characters of Season 11. Either you think they are very funny fail villains, or you think that they are total annoyances who made it way further in the game than they deserved to. There is no middle ground.
  • From the same season, Eli is either one of the most innovative, entertaining characters ever, or a glorified, overexposed fanboy who cheated his way to the finals. His return for Blood vs. Water only widened the rift at first, although it was softened by him being much less prominent and being eliminated before the merge.
  • Kim from Season 12 is either a likable, capable player who was the only complex character in Season 12, or an Invincible Hero who talked nothing but strategy riding the game until the final four.
  • Survivor Critic: Either you think he's a funny villain and a good idea of a character or you think he's the exact opposite and repetitive and almost never somewhere in between.
  • Cordelia and Brandi became this almost immediately. Half the readers like them for bringing a lot of conflict to the season, while the other half (mostly Marie fans) view them as insufferable Jerkasses who can't leave soon enough. However, Brandi would redeem herself one season later.
  • Ky and Shaega, two of the biggest characters in the season, are usually on either the top or the bottom of most people's rankings, with almost no in-between.
  • In Season 16, Bowser Jr. is either a unique personality who played a surprisingly good game that got downplayed by his edit, or an immature kid who was rather irrelevant outside of avenging his dad in two separate votes.
  • Sierra from the same season became this rather quickly within the last couple of episodes. Most of the debate is between those who consider her to be a good low-key presence and those who think that she's a useless character who got undeservedly dragged further than more interesting members of the cast. Her actions during the Tribal Council that led to Riley's elimination are the biggest source of negative feelings towards her.
  • Sierra's loved one, Thorne, is also this. While many love her for being a good secondary villain with a lot of Hidden Depths, just as many people feel like she had crossed the Moral Event Horizon and deserved to leave as soon as possible.
  • Kade from Season 17. Is he a cunning villain who keeps things interesting by surviving through manipulation, or an Obviously Evil Jerkass who only gets by through Plot Armor and other players trusting him despite history showing that they shouldn't?
  • Ollie, the winner of season 17, is either the most unique and entertaining winner in the recent seasons, or a painfully unfunny Joke Character who did nothing to deserve the win.
  • Shiro from season 19 is either a painfully one-dimensional and unpleasant character who absolutely didn't deserve to be dragged to victory by Micah or an unfortunate victim of her upbringing who's been absolved of her wrongdoing by her actions in the reunion show. Alternatively, she's a genuinely amusing villain who avoids many of the toxic traits present in more Scrappy-tier villains while still offering entertaining conflict throughout the season, all while making the otherwise generic Micah's win more palatable.
• Cargo Ship: Violet x Tree and Popper x Ootsies (Tootsie Rolls).
• Creator's Pet: Bonnie. While she was very popular in Season 9, thanks to the fact that she was perhaps the most vile and horrifying villain in the series and got one hell of a downfall to go with it, she is relatively less popular in Season 10 thanks to somehow managing to pull off moves that she shouldn't be able to, taking every opportunity to brag about how awesome she is, and having no discernible motivation besides just being a disgusting human being who outlasted several more popular characters. Ironically, not unlike Russell Hantz. Although she has been humiliated a number of times, she had another downfall, and her Creator's Pet status was later acknowledged by Eli.

  • She is also an in-universe one. The producers in the series allowed her to get away with way too much during both of her seasons.
  • She was even brought back for a third time in Season 16, although she was voted out much earlier and most fans agree that she was voted off at the right time in this season instead of lasting for way too long.

  • Speaking of Eli, he is also accused of being this due to his Elimination Houdini status, every single edit-based scheme working in his favor, and lasting the entire season while having a prominent role in all of episodes from 1 to 14.
  • Sky hits this trope running and never looked back. The author acknowledged in his first seasonal note the first season was built around him winning. He pulled all kind of ridiculous gambit and yet no one bothered doing much to stop him (even if they should've known better). He behaved like a jerk most of the time yet nobody except Hugo, a Hate Sink, had anything to say truly negative to say about his behavior when he faced the jury. If anything, they had nothing but gushing praise for him for his gameplay. Even to this day, the author seems to enjoy drawing him much more than any other characters, if his gallery is any indication. However, this is somewhat mitigated because the author thinks Sky's portrayal in SFC1 is one of his top 10 worst ideas. His portrayal in Season 20 could be a response to this, as now he's a fair bit nicer while still actually having to deal with the consequences of his actions this time around thanks to playing with a cast that's far less prone to praising his every decision.
  • In Season 6, Bitsy was frequently accused of being one due to her masterminding every single vote, competent characters like Wendy being given the Idiot Ball so they would fall for Bitsy's obvious lies, and winning the game despite having backstabbed most of the people who voted for her to win. However, she has been defended by people pointing out that she was often emotionally wrecked by the game and was up against Kala.
  • Melanie. The author said that he wanted Season 8 to be the story of how two players' intended goat (Melanie, to Heinz and Matt) ended up unexpectedly beating them in the end, which was the reason for Melanie having a relatively easy ride to the merge because Heinz and Matt were too focused on each other to see her as a threat in contrast to the other "negative" winners (Skylar and Marius) who came close to being voted out several times. Unfortunately, this ended up coming across as "show how cool Melanie is for doing all these secret manipulations and how idiotic Heinz and Matt are for not realizing this" to some readers, especially at the final Tribal Council where it became painfully obvious that Melanie had won with Heinz and Matt being called giant liars and idiots by the jury and Melanie getting little to no flack from the same jury in spite of having been behind most of their ousters- once again in contrast to Skylar and Marius, who were both savaged by at least one jury member and whose wins were very much in doubt even after their final tribal councils- which made many readers label it as "Just give Melanie the million".
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Everything that Kala says or does during 4's post-merge or All-Stars. Mo, Ker, and Ollie also qualify as such.
  • Angel trying to murder Claus with lightning. Or, speaking of Claus, his and Juiced Up's treatment of their loved ones.
  • Also in Season 11, Rosemary's backstory.
  • Lola repeatedly talking about stealing from her fan counterpart Shelby or damaging her property. The fact that she has a habit of speaking in small print when talking about uncomfortable things doesn't help.
  • The many horrible things that happened to Skippy during the show, especially being eaten by a shark in Season 1, attacked by Mercy in Season 9, and assaulted by bombs at the hands of Tiny Tina in Season 13.
• Designated Hero:
  • Greg often was the instigator in his fights with Marius.
  • Jackie was accused of being one in Battle of the Tribes. Despite his aggressive and sexist behavior, No Indoor Voice and general Flanderization, he was still treated with respect by the majority of the cast, with even his Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Emilee praising him for perseverance and supposed underdog status. It didn't help that he won the season over the much more popular Minerva, despite logic pointing to Minerva having the majority of the jury votes.
  • Lola was treated like a hero, despite doing almost nothing strategically and bragging about stealing from Shelby out-of-game.
• Designated Villain: Arnold from Season 13 is a saint compared to the "Arnold" the other characters talk about when the former isn't listening.
• Elimination Houdini: Vinnie in all of his seasons, Minerva in Season 4, Kala in Season 6, Russell in Season 7, Matt in Season 8, Cherman in Season 9, Bonnie in Season 10, Eli in Season 11, and Enter in Season 12. All of them have been on the chopping block numerous times and yet managed to survive by either Manipulative Bastardry or having someone more threatening voted out over them.
  • Angel from Season 11 was an unusual example. She was in the minority for the entire second half of the game and received votes against her multiple times. However, she kept surviving due to Eli's method of eliminating people based on post-show edits.
  • Alleio from Season 13 managed to survive five tribal councils after being outed as a malicious psychopath. He would have lived on longer had he not given the super idol to Luna.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Popper, a Katamari Damacy fan character who can only communicate with signs and short words, was the original notable Ensemble Dark Horse for this series. He made it onto the All-Star season despite being the fifth voted out on his original season.
  • Other Ensemble Darkhorses include Al and Bitsy from Season 2, Ella and P. Bear from Season 4, Driz and Betty from Season 7, and Cherman and Robert from Season 9.
  • In a popularity poll that had every contestant from the first 11 seasons, Montana was the winner. Then again, she always was popular among the readers. And in another popularity poll held a couple of years later, she won again, showing that her popularity is enduring. Her continued popularity during her return appearance on Season 20 is hardly a surprise as a result, especially thanks to her interactions with characters like Starr and Taro.
  • While not as popular his first time, Joe became a huge fan favorite in All Stars for his very Adorkable personality.
  • Starr is one of the most popular characters from season 9 due to her incredibly unique and surprisingly likable personality, Hidden Depths, and interactions with her cast members, especially Bonnie, Emilee, and Adrian. Her reappearance in Season 20 so far has gotten a lot of praise as well, thanks to her being in a much better place mentally and going from a high school student to an Older and Wiser Cool Teacher.
  • Season 13 gave us Damon, whose hamminess and big heart won over the readers. The announcement of his return in Season 16 was very warmly received.
  • Most of the later winners are divisive in one way or another, but Jim has been almost unanimously praised for being a likable presence who does a good job of bouncing off of all the insanity going on around him.
  • Marie is an incredibly popular contestant from season 15 who is almost universally beloved b the fanbase due to her hilarious and unique backstory, great subversion of the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing trope, and being one of the only genuinely really likable characters in a season filled with so much negativity.
  • Although she was unpopular in her original season, after her run in Season 16 it became very difficult to find people who disliked Brandi after her addition of Hidden Depths and a genuinely sympathetic Freudian Excuse.
  • Quickscope from Season 17 got a rather positive reception for being a genuinely funny Joke Character who didn't overstay his welcome.
  • Shin from season 18 got a very positive reception for his complex and emotional arc of playing the game while being puppeteered by his future self, who knows exactly how the game is going to play out. His emotional struggles with trying to stick to the script to "change his future", as his future self states, or come clean about the fact that he's cheating, is seen by many as one of the biggest highlights of the season.
  • Season 21.5 brought along Karen, a comic relief character who made it all the way to the Final 9 and still remained a fan-favorite thanks to her brand of deadpan humor proving heavily popular with the reader base, with many wishing she'd made it even further.
• Fan Nickname: "Baxtabber" for Baxter, and "Staypuff" for Alex (but that one's used in the comic as well). The nicknames from the actual show are often used as well.
  • It's also become something of a trend to call popular female players "goddesses", like with Montana and Ker.
  • "HUMAN COCKROACH" was a semi-popular one for Bonnie.
  • The alliance of Casey, Claus, and Juiced Up in Season 11 was commonly referred to as "The Three Stooges".
  • "McBitch" for Iyzebel in Season 13.
  • The invisible Jake from Season 14 quickly became known as Jake from State Farm. It is unknown whether singing the jingle will make him appear.
  • Diego and Prussia from Season 14 are collectively known as "The Disney Afternoon" thanks to their nodes.
  • Angelo from Season 16 is regularly referred to as Green Damon because of his tendency to come off as a less likable clone of the latter.
  • Beckett from Season 19 is frequently referred to as "Bucket".
  • Season 21 gave the world a few, such as Masanari becoming "Macaroni", Stone becoming "Stoner" or Danger becoming "Dangre the Brown Rat".
• Flame War: Hoo boy. In recent seasons, this has been a major problem within the fandom, with at least one major war taking place per season.
  • The flame wars in Season 11 broke the comments record several times over before the major individual responsible for them got suspended on DeviantArt.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Many in the fanbase, whether ironically or otherwise, started shipping Electra and Sally-Anne from Season 21.5, despite Sally-Anne being responsible for Electra being the first boot and Electra being vocal about her hatred of Sally-Anne.
• Franchise Original Sin: Ever since the unexpected success of Season 9's storyline, every season after that had a major villain, who can't seem to be eliminated despite massive unpopularity from the other contestants; which forces the majority of the players, both good and bad, to band together to eliminate said player. Said alliance would take a few episodes, some fractious dealings with the villain's side, and the elimination of some of the big players, before the Big Bad was voted off. Of course, this has the unfortunate effect of the show focusing too much on the villain rather than everyone, making the story tedious viewing for some viewers and accusations of Seasonal Rot from some viewers. To note the examples, Season 9 and 10 could have been named "The Bonnie Show" due to her being the main antagonist of both seasons and the central focus of both, for better or worse. Season 12 then ramps up this trend by having Enter copypasta idols, which sparked arguments from some fans whether Enter's activities were considered legit or blatant cheating. Season 11 have Crisco throwing challenges so he could get rid of his whole tribe and could have gone further into the game, but, being in a very unconventional season, he was screwed over by a Mutiny and by Eli's machinations.
  • The author has realized this and taken steps to avoid it in later seasons with several Arc Villains with different goals instead of one Big Bad in Season 13 and more realistic antagonists who had some redeemable qualities and didn't hog the spotlight away from the eventual final duo in Season 14. The series returned to "one baddie per season" format from Season 15 onward, but they seem to be getting less attention now and are still occasionally broken up by seasons using 13's arc-villain format, such as Season 21.5.
• Fridge Brilliance: At first you'd think that Marius giving up the ability to win individual immunity in Season 5 would be stupid. As it turns out, this twist saved him when people assumed they could take him out at any time and kept him in until the finals, where he won.
  • Why did the producers never penalize Bonnie for her multiple malicious actions in her original season? Because that would have ruined her Prescilla image.
• Fridge Logic: After her elimination, Denise claims to have played the perfect under-the-radar game. Yet by all accounts (except by the camera), she was a motor mouth who didn't know when to shut up. How exactly is that playing under-the-radar?
• Friendly Fandoms: With Danganronpa. Some fans even attempted to link Season 13 and 14 to Danganronpa's events.
• Growing the Beard: Season 1 was considered So Okay, It's Average. The characters were likable, but pretty one-note; the sprites were passable; and the plot was so-so. Season 2 saw a slight update in terms of sprites, much more dynamic characters and a more solid story. This trend has continued as the comic goes on, with the art growing more polished and the writing eventually maturing so that it was neither a pure comedy nor unnecessarily edgy.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Cha'Telle being labeled untrustworthy and getting voted out for hiding his true gender became a lot more uncomfortable after a very similar thing happened for real on Survivor: Game Changers.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Sometimes, characters or fans say things that turn out to be quite ironic later on. An excellent example of this is the comments on this comic, which features Prescilla.
  • Baxter is considered to be Russell Hantz before Russell Hantz; guess who shows up four seasons later...
  • Speaking of Russell, Season 7 features an alliance consisting of an older woman and younger man on a badly losing team that has a returning contestant named Russell, which ends up fighting to the end with the older woman winning. What were the odds of that happening?
  • After Delta's early elimination in season 3, The Rant claims robots would never do well in Survivor. The first robot to compete after Delta was Cherman, who won Season 9.
    • Then another robot won Season 17.
  • An under-the-radar female player who was insignificant at first, but after negating 9 votes with an idol and sending the opposing alliance's leader home, got enough fame to return for another season. Chrii Yukizome, or Kelley Wentworth?
  • Season 12's finale involves the obvious main protagonist since the merge being shockingly and abruptly eliminated on Day 38, leaving a team of oddballs in the Final 3 to fight over what were clearly going to be their votes. Are we talking about Kim Possible, or Rick Devens?
• Ho Yay: Baxter/Alex, Joe/Marc, Joe/Hogan, Gatemaster/Marius, Johnny/Matt, Heinz/Jackie, Juiced Up/Claus, Eli/Paine...
  • Female examples: Meredith/Rene, Ellise/Kris, Hope/Iris, Amy/Miranda, Melanie/Oehda, Prescilla/Starr, Montana/Starr, Clara/Nolaa...
  • From Season 13: Alleio/Jim, to the point Alleio points out they're close they have even synchronized drowning and Tapioca thought they were dating.
• I Knew It!: As soon as the luxury item burning happened in Season 9, almost everyone guessed Prescilla was behind it.
  • Many correctly pinned Alleio as the saboteur in Season 13. Mostly by the way he repeatedly talks about how being starved is worth it for friendship.
  • Liz and Jojo being twins and swapping clothes was quickly figured out, mostly due to a theory pitched by a fan. Didn't stop said fan from acting like it was obvious.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Russell Hantz was masquerading as a fan character for the first few episodes in season 7.
  • Prescilla is really a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing named Bonnie.
  • Sarah from Season 16 is Bonnie in disguise, and the "Bonnie" that got voted off first was actually an actress that was hired by the real Bonnie.
  • Derrick from Season 17 is actually Slash from Season 2.
• Informed Loner: It's stated numerous time by several characters that Hash has a bad social game. However, he isn't really shown to have any problems interacting with anyone (even those whom he didn't like such as Arnold) and he isn't playing a relatively dirty game. The last part DOES come into question when "he" turns out to have been hiding her true gender since the start of the game, however.
• Iron Woobie: Tialayla from Season 11 had some of the worst luck imaginable and was down in numbers the entire game, but still kept fighting on.
  • Jim in Season 13 was consistently targeted at nearly every Tribal Council he attended. Luckily, he managed to keep fighting on, eventually becoming the winner of the season.
• Jerkass Woobie: Maria/Mo (Season 5, not so much in All-Stars), Bitsy and Vinnie (at least in All-Stars), Ryuia (Season 7), Malik (Season 8), Jewel (Season 9), and Adrian (Season 9).
  • Ivan from Season 14 may not have been particularly nice, but between having his plans blow up in his face constantly and being Amelia's main target, it's hard not to feel sorry for him.
• Love to Hate: Vinnie, Baxter, Marius, Kala, Bonnie, White Phil, Wrecker, Desmond, Iyzebel, Shaega, Kade, Kasai, Hope, and especially Minerva.
• Memetic Mutation: "I support Violet x Tree", and "I support Violet x Bitsy x Tree".
  • Season 7 has a ton of them: Skazzatrazz x Russell Ho Yay, Driz being a mastermind and an angel, "Dinahsty"'s journal, voting for Betty to win the season...
  • Matt from Season 8 being a rapist.
  • “Joy is a thot” from Season 17. Becomes an Ascended Meme in Episode 10.
  • Nazi Sagi^ExplanationSagittaria gaslighting Yessi at the merge immunity challenge caused a storm of angry comments on DeviantArt, leading the other part of the fanbase who saw this as Ron the Death Eater to satirically describe Sagi as literally Hitler and responsible for World War 2.
  • Aurora from Season 19 became a meme before she was even officially revealed, the reason being a friend of her owner leaking her name and identity on Discord and being salty about her making the season.
  • Fat male furries.^ExplanationFrom around SFC 15 onward, it's become noted in the community that if there's an overweight anthro character, especially a male one, they're almost guaranteed to make it far in the season. Starting with the season's winner, Taro, this would extend to the likes of Atlas, Okawa and Danger as well, leading to claims that the trope is a matter of Author Appeal for SWSU, along with a lot of arguing over whether that's the only reason they get as far as they do.
• Moe: Several examples exist; prominent ones include Taylor, Bitsy (at least in her original season), Betty, Alice, Starr, Honey, Sunflower, Zoella, Luna (season 13), Marie, Jeannie, and Clover.
  • Male ones include Hogan, Brock, Joe, Cherman, SpongeBob, Jim, Mac, Ky, Riley and Parmesan.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Mo attempting to murder Vinnie in All-Stars.
  • While more mundane than other examples, Matt betraying Heinz and mocking him for gullibility (even though they used to be friends at Midway) is one of the most sickening moments of the entire series.
  • Bonnie framing Adrian for sexual assault.
  • Basically everything that Bonnie does in general, really. Other examples include physically assaulting Starr by spitting in her face, sexually assaulting Emilee in a challenge, breaking Aleksan's leg, and breaking Jackie's arm.
  • Baxter (along with Bonnie) got one by stealing Phil's food to further drive him into madness. This had no ulterior strategic motive, and it was done purely For the Evulz.
  • Bradlyn killing his own son, who is implied to have been a small child, to escape Death's list. This apparently happened before the show, though.
  • Hunter trying to provoke Sgt. Stagg into punching him, using Fantastic Racism slurs and considering shooting him in self defense. It was done before by Bonnie, but it came as no surprise knowing what kind of person she is, but this coming from an incompetent Jerkass redneck...
  • Shaega threatening Ky's friends just so he could get him to suffer negative emotions.
  • Although he was never going to do it Kade threatening to destroy Jeannie's magic ring, which would kill her, if the other players voted him out. Thankfully, he didn't have the real ring.
  • Chloe was already a hated contestant for her Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies, but when she came back for Season 20, said tendencies led her to try and get Okawa to hook up with her, followed by her mocking Nolaa's past as a sex slave as well as her being inappropriately touched by E.T. when Nolaa invites her to a reward crossed several lines.
• Never Live It Down: E.T. touching Yessi to find out more about her anatomy has been given this treatment, although the scene hasn't been referenced since (until the reunion show, at least, where Yessi makes it clear that she, at least, forgives him).
• Nightmare Fuel: Phil (from season 1) shirtless. Wendy says it best:
  "Oh my god, my good eye is bleeding."
  • The producers have no qualms about allowing people like Bonnie, Wrecker, Maria/Mo, Kade, and Enter, yes that Enter to compete.
  • Alleio being very creepy when his true colors were revealed. Even his speech bubbles started to tilt.
  • Jake hijacking his own ouster.
• One-Scene Wonder: "Oooooohhhh, I'm an evil talking buuuuush..." is pretty much the only reason Ella has a fanbase.
• Parody Sue: Ventious, who has almost absolutely no flaws, and his entire tribe relies on him to win challenges for them because he's apparently so good at everything. Naturally, Chrii takes advantage of the fact that the whole tribe relies on Ventious and gets rid of him using a hidden immunity idol, which basically causes the entire tribe to crumble apart once he's gone. He did return for Battle of the Tribes but the author made a conscious effort to avoid this trope for him this time around, with him being unable to avoid his tribe being reduced to just two members, having the mother of all Clingy Jealous Girls in Ryuia, and admitting that he actually likes it better when he's not the Jesus of his tribe.
  • Zachary. He's a young master strategist that everyone around him loves and admires. He leaves first.
  • Frost, who has a completely game-breaking set of superpowers that includes telepathy. It doesn't stop her from losing immunity by sneezing and being voted out right after.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Vitsy" for Violet and Bitsy, "Kerauss" for Ker and Krauss, "Lizmond" for Liz and Desmond, "Tarokawa" for Taro and Okawa, "Monstarr" for Montana and Starr... there's plenty more to list.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Many examples, but few top Minerva. Initially the Hate Sink from Season 4, her short time on All-Stars gained her a few fans, (the fact that there were much worse villains since her helped). Battle of the Tribes saw people actively rooting for her to win, and were upset when she didn't.
  • Jackie is an inversion. He was the most popular member of Season 8's cast despite being eliminated right before the merge, and his return in Season 10 was greatly anticipated. However, he Took a Level in Jerkass and was pushed too hard as a hero, which led to him being disliked instead.
  • Brandi was a borderline scrappy in Season 15, but her return in the following season, which showed her as The Atoner with a solid Freudian Excuse, was far more well recieved, easily becoming one of the season's more popular players. In a popularity poll conducted before Season 19, she placed first for her season and second overall, only behind Montana.
  • Slash was never really hated as much as he was completely irrelevant and forgotten aside from his bizarre elimination in Season 2. However, his return in Season 17 was very well-regarded, and he picked up a lot of fan love for being a wise and reasonable father figure to his fellow castaways.
• The Scrappy: With a series that has this many characters, there's bound to be a few.
  • Luke from Season 4, for lasting the entire season yet having virtually no personality and for his gimmick of latching onto the biggest alpha male of the tribe as his "master" and voting however they do without question making the second half of the season extremely predictable and handing the win to his final "master" Barney, turning an otherwise likable hero into a boring Invincible Hero being handed the win on a silver platter. SWSU-Master has openly called Luke one of the worst characters in the history of SFC.
  • Iraenus from Season 8 was unpopular due to being an annoying pervert who sexually harassed Malik, and later made fun of Malik's morbidly obese son during a family visit. The revelation that the person who submitted Iraenus to the comic deliberately intended for him to be a negative stereotype of bisexuals only further assured this status.
  • Also from Season 8, Matt is widely considered to be one of the absolute worst major villains in the entire series for being an utterly one-note Flat Character whose sole personality trait was being an insufferable Smug Snake, being devoid of any complexity, funny, or badass moments unlike other SFC villains, with his entire character consisting of bragging about how awesome he was and how all the other players were idiots, and despite all that accomplishing nothing in the game but being dragged all the way to the Final 3 by the season's actual mastermind for no reason other than Plot Armor.
  • Chloe was hated in Season 7 due to her personality, unappealing storyline, and the fact that she was a member of an unpopular majority alliance. When she came back for Battle of the Tribes, the hatred grew much stronger because she became even MORE unpleasant and never talked about anything aside from hating Chrii and wanting her gone. Fans were very relieved by her early elimination in the latter season, but she already received vitriol against her when she returned for Season 20 thanks to her continuous tendencies, even trying to hook up with Okawa, a gay character, despite him very clearly not being interested. It's led to her being possibly the only truly widely hated contestant on said season.
  • Bonnie became one in Season 10 thanks to Villain Decay and overexposure. The most positive thing that most could say about her third run in Season 16 (where she tried the same Bitch in Sheep's Clothing tactic from her initial appearance again) is that she was out of the game much earlier than in her previous appearances.
  • Jackie in Season 8 was the most popular character, however in Battle of the Tribes, he took a turn for the worse. His Flanderization into a bully with No Indoor Voice, while still being depicted as one of the good guys was poorly received, and the fact that he won over Minerva, who had been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap this season really rubbed people the wrong way.
  • Enter, the Super Sentai canon from Season 12 manages to top the combined hatred of the above examples due to his blatant cheating, extreme arrogance, and being an overall God-Mode Villain Stu. This becomes even more glaring when you realize that in the Super Sentai fandom, Enter is an Ensemble Dark Horse. He is revealed to be a Take That! against overpowered characters in his elimination note.
  • Amelia in Season 14, for being an obnoxious, entitled, hipster, getting Ivan voted out for extremely petty reasons, being one of the most lazy Straw Feminist characters ever, and lasting much longer than many people felt she should have.
  • Josh from Season 17. Despite being a genuinely nice character at first, his fandom reception went downhill rapidly due to his constant angst in the latter half of the season. Audience reactions skewed extremely negative following him attempting to bribe the other contestants at Final Tribal Council and it didn't help that his creator personally attacked anyone who criticized Josh, as he is notorious for doing with all his characters.
  • Kitsunie from Season 18 quickly headed this way due to his irrational hatred of any sort of authority, bullying his tribe mates for petty reasons, and sexual harassment towards Yessi. Thankfully, his time in the game is incredibly short, being the third person voted out.
  • E.T. from season 18 is an interesting retroactive example. At the time of the finale he was merely a Base-Breaking Character, but as time has passed he has become increasingly despised by the fanbase due to his infamous sexual harassment of Yessi alongside fellow scrappy Kitsunie. Not helping matters is a perceived lack of consistent characterization and motives in retrospect and his excellent social game being largely an Informed Ability.
  • Striker from Season 19 was intended to be a parody of contemporary Survivor players who rely on finding idols and advantages instead of cultivating a social game, but quickly fell into irony poisoning territory with the audience. Not helping matters was his active rejection of any social connections and whiny, paranoiac attitude upon being divested of said idols.
  • Danger Roo from Season 21.5 was unpopular to varying degrees and for differing reasons depending on the episode. Early focus was on his aggressive defense of Oskar, then shifted to focusing on his confrontational attitude toward the likes of Trella and Masanari for their demeanors that many deemed hypocritical due to his own similar behavior, before settling near the end of his run as an unexciting, negative-leaning strategy bot and follower of Bria. This was all compounded by his physical appearance (an overweight, anthro kangaroo), which gave way to allegations of him being a Creator's Pet.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 8 was once universally considered the worst season ever due to the lack of Character Development, lower character quality to earlier seasons, and a easily predictable winner. One of the reasons pinpointed for this fall in quality is directed at the characters being fan-submitted, and thus harder for the author to write with, but this has been addressed as of Season 9 by mixing up the author's characters with fan-submitted ones, with just about every season since having an even or close-to-even split.
  • Season 10 was also a low point (and seems to have taken 8's title as worst series ever), due to the return of several disliked characters, such as Quadratic, Frank and Chloe; the return of Bonnie, and her subsequent hyping up and survival over fan-favorites like Ventious and Kris; the Flanderization of former fan-fave Jackie into a douchebag with No Indoor Voice and an overall totally mean-spirited feel.
  • Season 12 didn't turn out well either due to the over-exposure of Enter and the overall rather boring cast.
  • Season 18 has become this in hindsight, due in large part to its winner being one of the most despised in series history for sexually harassing another character, getting no real blowback and ultimately getting away with it, along with much of the side-cast outside of a small few being rather one-note.
• Shocking Elimination:
  • Merideth in the original season.
  • Slash, thanks to a 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 vote.
  • Denise in Brains vs. Brawn. Ellise won immunity, then handed it to Kris at tribal council. After the votes, she played her Hidden Immunity Idol, forcing Vinnie to play his Hidden Immunity Idol. When the votes were read, none of them counted. The four people in the majority then had to draw rocks to see who went since they were technically all tied with zero votes. Denise pulled the purple rock and was sent home.
  • Several in All-Stars: Beth, Hogan, and Violet.
  • Three people in Season 7 were idoled quite unexpectedly: Betty, Ventious, and Quadratic.
  • Kiara in Season 8, in a manner similar to Denise above. Melanie nullifies her vote, forcing a tie between Matt and Heinz - once it's deadlocked, everyone except Heinz and Matt are forced to draw purple rocks, and Kiara is the unlucky recipient.
  • Sanza in Season 9, especially since everyone had thought that he was a shoo-in for the winning spot.
  • Quadratic in Season 10. Four Corsona members were voting for Chloe but Chloe herself was voting for Chrii, and Minerva, Baxter and Kris tried to take advantage of this split by using their idol on Chloe and voting Ventious out. However, Chrii catches onto their plan and plays her idol on Ventious, with only Miranda and Phil's throwaway votes against Quadratic counting.
  • Oehda, also from Season 10.
  • Crisco from Season 11.
  • Flaithri, also from Season 11.
  • Juiced Up, yet again from Season 11.
  • This happens a lot in Season 12 due to Enter's idols, but the most notable one is Zoella.
  • Bowser from the same season, due to one of Enter's idols being invalid.
  • Annabelle from Season 13, in a 3-2-1-1-1 vote no less.
  • Luna from the same season.
  • Prussia in Season 14. Nobody expected Desmond to play an idol, yet he did.
  • Luna in Season 15, in a similar manner to Annabelle.
  • Marie in Season 15.
  • Eli from Season 16: Blood vs. Water.
  • Plenty in Season 17: Charity, Jahira, Raiza and especially Derek.
  • Ethan in Season 18.
  • Jojo in Season 20.
  • El in Season 20.
• Spoiled by the Format: Aside from a few exceptions, most from the early seasons; reader submitted characters generally do not leave until at least the third episode but more often the fourth or later. Thus, if you know which characters are and aren't viewer summited, then you can easily tell who's in actual danger or who is not.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The Big Bad of each season. Baxter in particular had 90 confessionals - 7 per episode! And then Bonnie from Season 9 and Enter from Season 12 managed to one-up that. This was addressed in Season 13 by having multiple ArcVillains.
  • The final three in Season 8. It didn't help that Melanie was supposed to be the odd one out between Matt and Heinz's rivalry, yet she ended up receiving just as much attention as the other two.
  • Eli's Power Trio (and especially Eli himself) is viewed that way towards Angel, Dwayne and Whitney. It is actually intentional, as the author wanted a less noticeable winner this season.
  • In Season 11, Eli cites Bonnie as a prime example of "Survivor camera hogs who production fawns over."
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The stretch of seasons from 8 to 10 can get bad at times, but the last one in that group is perhaps the most noteworthy example of all due to a highly unlikable series of endgame characters such as Jackie, Bonnie, Phil, and Adrian.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • A large part of the dislike towards Season 4 is caused by the fact that it followed Season 3, one of the most beloved seasons even to this day. A dominant winner who evaded all attempts at voting him out due to a blindly loyal Ally was even more unsatisfying in contrast to Season 3's Montana.
  • Season 14 is a good season on its own, but it is the least remembered modern season due to the success of the previous season, and its cast and twists were cited as boring compared to Season 13.
    • However, Season 14 has a increasing Vocal Minority of strong supporters that consider it one of the best seasons, mainly due to its extremely complex endgamers, with the Final 4 all considered some of the most fleshed out characters in the series, and one of the only universally popular and most likable winners in all of SFC to this day in Liz.
  • Season 21.5 had the misfortune of following the incredibly popular Season 20. Despite both having incredibly popular winners and the rest of the most popular characters were similarly beloved, it following Season 20 led to a greater fan focus on 21.5's more negative-toned cast, with nearly a third of the cast falling into Hate Sink or even Scrappy territory and receiving plenty of fan hate as a result (some even compared the situation to the infamously-hated seasons 8 and 10). This combined with said negative characters' high level of focus in the pre-merge at the expense of later major characters' screentime led to the feeling that the cast was weaker than 20's by a sizeable margin.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Surely no one expected actual human being Russell Hantz to be a player on Season 7.
  • Not a physical appearance, but Clydia from Season 16 of all players gets a minor shoutout as being a cohost on Jojo and Sasha's podcast in Season 20, alongside Sierra from the same season.
• Vindicated by History: Cursed Islands is viewed in a much more positive light these days, especially when compared to Midway Island or Battle of the Tribes, cited as having a more goofy feel, several interesting twists, and Gatemaster.
  • Fans vs. Canons is an inversion; despite being well received at first, it is now a Broken Base at best, mainly due to its final two.
• Wangst: This is what caused Josh from Season 17 to receive so much hate in the latter half of the season. After Raiza is voted out, Josh begins wallowing in self-pity and much of his screentime is him saying how useless he is. This all culminated in the Final Tribal Council, where he tries to bribe the jury and says that not winning would make his time in the game not worth it.
• Win Back the Crowd: After a season which was critically panned by pretty much everyone, and the series in general having gone through its first Audience-Alienating Era, Season 9 was welcomed with open arms and is considered to be on par with Season 3.
  • Season 11 is also generally considered to be a return to form from the previous season thanks to most of the hard-to-like personalities going relatively early and the later stages having a lot more positive, rootable figures.
  • Continuing the trend, Season 13 is seen as a big step up from the season before thanks to its colourful cast and use of a Big Bad Ensemble to keep any one villain from hogging the spotlight.
• The Woobie: Driz, Bitsy in Season 2, Lucky, Iris, Chaona, "N" in Season 3, and Cherman all count.
  • Starr is one of the biggest examples in the series of this trope. In her two seasons, she's subject to tons of abuse from various characters and suffers a MASSIVE Trauma Conga Line. After attempting to fit in with Gretchen, she finds out after Gretchen was eliminated that Gretchen never actually liked her and was using her the whole time, much to her disappointment. Then, after Jewel is framed by the mystery villain of destroying everyone's luxury items, Jewel thinks that Starr is the one that did it and proceeds to physically confront her consistently for the entire rest of the episode as Starr is too shocked to even be able to defend herself. Her Woobie points then increase even further when she manages to get used by ANOTHER, even more vile person in the form of mystery villain Bonnie, who she becomes an Unwitting Pawn to the entire rest of the season, even managing to fall in love with her fake "Prescilla" persona and opens up her vulnerable persona to "Prescilla"... only for "Prescilla" to repeatedly make homophobic remarks about her behind her back. All of this then comes to light at the Final Tribal Council, which brings Starr to tears leaving Cherman as her only friend from the season. And then it gets even worse in season 10, where Bonnie repeatedly tries to frame all of her actions from her previous season (that most of the contestants had not been able to see yet) on Starr, and Bonnie spits in Starr's face after Starr successfully exposes her. Then, Bonnie successfully manages to get Starr booted from the game later that episode with the help of Retro, although Starr at least got to give Bonnie a dose of humiliation at Tribal Council and left with quite a few friends this time. Oof.
    • But then, in season 20, she finally gets a break and gets to earn her happy ending. After two seasons of being constantly tormented and abused by Bonnie, Starr finally gets everything she ever could've wanted in a Survivor season outside of winning in the end. She becomes incredibly well-respected and the biggest social threat of the game, makes it all the way to the final four, doesn't have to deal with any Bonnie-like forces, makes a ton of friends, gets all the way to the family visit and gets to bring her sister to the island with her, and even meets her true love for real this time in Montana. She's not even upset she's voted off in the end because of how much fun she finally got to have.
  • Marie from Season 15, who is constantly subjected to suspicion and verbal attacks from Brandi and Cordelia.
  • Brandi in season 16. Attempting to redeem her image from the previous season, she tries so hard to show that she's much savvier and doesn't have any Jerkass Ball moments this time around, and yet she is constantly disapproved by and even gaslighted by her own father, leading her to have several emotional breakdowns. Even when Brandi manages to successfully uncover "Sarah" as Bonnie and expose her, her father still shows no respect for her. She then is constantly targeted by Vinnie and his alliance solely thanks to her father's actions as well.
  • Riley from Season 16 couldn't be a nicer guy, but he's easily intimidated by nearly everyone and has a tendency to beat himself up for his poor challenge performances. The fact that he has to deal with a thoroughly unpleasant werewolf Split Personality only makes him more pitiable. It gets even worse when he gets eliminated due to said split personality showing up on the night of a crucial vote.
  • Atlas in Season 18 has anterograde amnesia (meaning he doesn't remember anything that happened to him before the current date), and is very sorry about not remembering his friends.
  • Yessi grew up as a sex slave and has an unfortunate (even if unintentional on the latter party's behalf) reminder of said past when E.T. begins "examining" her.