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Contestants and Freeloaders
Contestants in General
- Animal Motif: Fish, particularly those kept in small fish tanks. While keeping fish may seem simple, overcrowded aquariums can actually lead to mental problems, not to mention the risk of fish eating each other.
- Anyone Can Be Evicted: All of the contestants are at danger of elimination throughout the six-week runtime — if they don't decide to drop out first. Elimination is stated to be based on a mixture of contest performance and audience participation.
- Audience Participation: Along with having a live chat for subscribers, viewers can spend money on "tokens", which they can spend to vote on polls, or send text-to-speech messages to various rooms in the house. They can also cash in their tokens on "fishtoys", with various effects such as sending goodies to contestants, switching on/off camera feeds, or turning up or down the temperature in the house.
- Confession Cam: Certain contestants, such as Vance and Sylvia, have spoken directly to the camera to speak about their motivations and strategies. Unlike with normal reality TV fare, the livestream format helps remove the risk of their "confessions" being selectively edited.
- Consolation Prize: While eliminated contestants miss out on the $30,000 grand prize, they're allowed to keep any "fishbucks" they've collected throughout the contest, each of which is worth $500.
Freeloaders In General
- Sixth Ranger: The Freeloaders were brought on after about two weeks. This was done to keep things fresh, but also to avoid making the house feel empty once enough contestants started to be expelled, evicted or dropped out.
Staff
In General
Jason Goldstriker (Sam Hyde)
Sam Hyde/Jason Goldstriker/Jebediah Goldstriker
- Blatant Lies: He uses them to frequently misdirect the fish. Among his more egregious ones are the claim that he is 29 years old.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: The bad cop to Jet's good cop.
- Large-Ham Announcer: It couldn't be more appropriate considering who Sam is.
- Meaningful Name: To strike gold means to find something valuable in a pile of nothing, which is what he's trying to do by finding entertainment talent among a bunch of nerdy people.
- Suddenly Bilingual: When kicking Simmons out, he tells him "I'm kicking you off the show!" in perfect Mandarin.
- Sudden Name Change: Initially went by Jonathan Goldstriker before switching to Jason, probably to avoid confusion with the contestant also named Jonathan.
- In Season 2, he adopts a new name and persona, Jebediah Goldstriker.
- Trumplica: Jason Goldstriker is one, and he seems to be parodying Trump circa The Apprentice.
- Vague Age: It's already a bit hard to tell from his looks, and he makes it harder for the fish by just straight up lying. During a Jebediah bit, he "breaks character" to tell the fish about how he based his persona on his abusive stepfather who he lived with in the 70s. Another time, he claimed he was 29 years old. note
Jet
Jet
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: The good cop to Sam's bad cop.
- Number Two: To Sam, who is running the show for real.
- Only Sane Man: Is one to Sam and Ben.
Sharks
Sharks
- Expy: Their costumes seem to be a mix of a Stormtrooper from Star Wars and a Pink Soldier from Squid Game. Their color schemes even match the two pretty accurately.
- Punny Name: They're called Sharks because they prey on the Fish. Not really, though.
- Those Two Guys: Of a sort. There's no way to know if there's only two of them, but the two costumes are white and red.
Ben
Ben
- Ascended Extra: Originally just a staff member, Ben became his own character on the show after he started giving pep talks to contestants.
- Character Filibuster: Ben became rather notorious for his long unprompted tracts about life, his ex-girlfriend, insecurities, and issues with the contestants.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives the contestants an unprompted speech in which he berates each of them, calling them spoiled idiots who don't appreciate and actively mess with everything the staff does.
The Entity
The Entity
- Ambiguously Evil: Its not exactly clear what the deal is with The Entity. Throughout the show, it causes Ominous Visual Glitches, lurks through the house where the fish aren't around to mess with stuff and furniture (usually by knocking over or displacing them), and at one point during the fake disability, it manages to cross the threshold into a schizophrenic Vance's bedroom, terrifying him greatly. It does all this without a clear reason.
- On Day 35, once The Entity appears after Alex convinces the others to help him call upon it through a ritual, it simply roams through the garage it was summoned in before moving through the rest of the house and eventually retreating into the basement. This would be the last time The Entity appears.
- Monstrous Humanoid: It is a pitch black creature with Creepy Long Fingers and glowing red eyes.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: It can randomly cause this
to happen to the website, sometimes with accompanying audio saying "my...house..." in a low distorted voice. - Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Goldstriker explains to the Fish that The Entity is a creature that he claims is completely harmless unless directly interacted with (like making eye contact or trying to talk to it) and will otherwise remain wandering the halls while they sleep, unable to "cross the threshold" into their bedrooms. It will not appear while any of the fish are awake.
Vance and Josie
See Season 1 Contestants.
